It a relatively short space of time (about 10 years) Studio One, PreSonus’ flagship DAW, has come from nowhere to being a DAW worth serious consideration for anyone wanting to record and mix music.
Studio one has already made waves since those early days with firsts such as Melodyne ARA (and other ARA equipped plugins) integration, drag and drop workflow and integrated mastering to name three.
With the release of Studio One 5, PreSonus hopes it can bring even more useful features to tempt new converts to Studio One. Those features include;
Score Editing.
Show Page.
Clip Gain Envelopes.
Keyswitch support, editing, and mapping.
Poly pressure and MPE support.
Melodyne 5 Essential integration.
Timestretch mode: Tape-Resample.
Marker Track Inspector.
The complete suite of Studio One’s Native Effect plug-ins have a fresh new look and some amazing new features
Extended Mixer Scenes.
Aux Channels.
Independent Listen Bus.
Recording and playback
in 64-bit float WAV format.External MTC/MMC Sync
Studio One 5 Artist now includes;
VST2/VST3/AU plug-in support now included (64-bit only)
Rewire support now included
Studio One Remote support now included
Score Editing
Studio One 5 already had some workflows to integrate PreSonus Notion into earlier versions of Studio One, but with Studio One 5 fully featured score editing is now included. Score editing is just that not to be confused with the ability to move stuff around on a score as a visual representation - in Studio One it’s done right. What this means is you can add notes, rests, symbols and it all affects playback. For musicians who like to work with scores this is fantastic, knowing a crescendo you have drawn will be applied during playback. Of course it’s not as powerful as the fully functioned Notion, but for many who want to work in scores when composing it’s a powerful tool.
Show Page
Taking a DAW to a gig has always bought many of us out in a hot-sweat, wondering if the complexity and pressure on the CPU is going to make live performance hell rather than heaven. What the new Show Page aims to do is reduce that fear and offer all you need for both the replay of backing tracks and control of keyboards, live instruments and vocals in a streamlined interface. It means you can set everything you need for a live performance, map any hardware controllers and other external instruments and then load that at the gig. We have a comprehensive guide to the Show Page, check it out. In summary, it’s an unexpected but highly useful feature now included in Studio One 5.
Recording And Mixing Improvements
One criticism that has been levelled at Studio One in the past is that it’s not a good DAW for those working in conventional studios, these who want a meat and potatoes DAW like Pro Tools or Nuendo. However, over the last few years the team at PreSonus has listened to feedback from top producers and engineers and version-by-version has added more tools for those kind of users. In version 5 we see the arrival of three features to address these shortcomings;
Extended Mixer Scenes
Clip Gain Envelopes
Independent Listen Bus
All of these features offer powerful new tools for recording, editing and mixing. The mixer scenes is a great way to take multiple snapshots of mixes and there’s a comprehensive list of items it can include, for example you can test a mix with an entirely different set of plugins if you wish and then save and recall both of them. Or you can create a mix sans vocals and save that - all of them in the same session. It’s simple but in our opinion bloody brilliant! Watch it in action in our video Studio One 5 - Everything You Need To Know
Clip Gain envelopes is like the clip gain feature in DAWs like Pro Tools but on steroids - it allows for both intricate adjustments as well as creative effects such as tremolo on a guitar applied to the gain rather than the volume. It’s a great addition for any mixing toolbox.
Finally in this section of recording and mixing improvements is the Independent Listen Bus. A complaint from those using other DAWs has been that when engaging solos it would interrupt things like headphone mixes for performers… no longer is this the case. The Independent Listen Bus effectively gives you a second monitor bus within Studio One which also means you can use it for both foldback sends without interruption and also software like Sonarworks for speaker correction and never have to worry about bypassing it during mix as it’s only on the monitor section and not the mix bus you are bouncing to.
Native Plugins
The native plugins included with Studio One have got a facelift and in some cases the addition of PreSonus’ State Space Modelling to give even more realism to those plugins modelling vintage gear. Highlights include the Analog Delay (think Roland Space Echo) and Rotor (Hammond organ cabinet) both look and sound gorgeous! You can see us putting 4 of these new plugins through their paces in this article containing 4 videos here.
Summary
As you can see from the large list shown at the top of this article there are many other headline features covering MIDI, hardware integration and more, making this an impressive upgrade for Studio One owners and a tempting proposition for those considering Studio One for the first time.
Some DAW manufacturers tend to make updates that cover a single user group, however PreSonus releases are more eclectic trying to give a wide range of users something to celebrate. This could easily lead to a compromised jumble, however this is not the case with Studio One 5, it means a package of updates that many users will find useful, even if unexpected.
Studio One 5 is a fantastic proposition and ticks boxes for those working in electronic music, a more conventional recording studio with a mixing desk and hardware, as well as composers. Of course it now also gives tools to those wanting to perform live in a slick and easy to use Show Page.
As we said at the start of this article, in less than a decade Studio One has gone from being the new-kid-on-the block to being a music production powerhouse. Studio One 5 not only cements its well-earned reputation but also offers even more reasons to consider it as the DAW of choice.
Does the latest version of Studio One 5 make it the number one DAW to own? Only you can decide that, but it’s certainly not a DAW you should ignore giving users plenty of power in a slick and easy to use package. For this reason it gets our Expert’s Choice Award.
Highly recommended.