Ask A Sound Guy

PreSonus Studio One

Hardware wasn’t the only thing appearing at Musikmesse 2009, software had it’s place, too. Enter a new challenger to the DAW arena: PreSonus’ Studio One.

Coming out for the major platforms (XP/Vista and OS X), this program is being touted as a “get started straight out of the box” kind of program being aimed at novice producers/engineers. Unlimited tracks, unilimted plug-ins on every track, and automatic configuration for PreSonus hardware makes this DAW something worth looking at. It also features all the MIDI editing and audio recording features you’d want/need in a DAW.

The audio engine switches between 32-bit and 64-bit automatically…even on a 32-bit OS. This is supposed to ensure maximum audio quality, but I’m thinking there will be some bugs to work out with this feature. It’s compatible with ASIO and Core Audio drivers.

Studio One, in my opinion, looks a lot like Logic 8. In fact, PreSonus even makes a note of talking about its #1 design feature: everything is done within the one window you see, supposedly making your workflow ultra-streamlined. They seem to have gone the polar opposite route of Logic 7.

Studio One is all about drag and drop: drag any effect, loop, etc on any track and get started. It also features a Ableton Live-style warping engine that allows you to encode audio clips with a BPM, warp them (not sure how else to say it), and said clip will play back at whatever your session’s BPM is. I really doubt this will be a Live killer, though. Can you really see DJs using this instead of Live or even Traktor? I don’t think so.

As far as plug-in support, it puts up with VST (including the new VST3 format) and Audio Units. ReWire is also fully supported allowing you to use Reason and whatever other program you can think of inside Studio One.

Studio One also aims to bring mastering to the novie engineer: the Project Page allows you to make crossfades between two-track masters, do volume automation, and, most importantly, use effects (limiting) on your masters. In the same page, you can burn disc images (maybe ISOs?) and burn Red Book (44.1kHz/16-bit) CDs as well as create digital only releases complete with metadata.

Granted, all I’ve seen is a few screenshots and a press-release or two, but I’m kind of stoked on this thing. I doubt I’ll drop my Pro Tools/Live combo for this, but I would love to use this for some of its mastering features. Watch out for this thing.