PreSonus Studio One 2 Professional - Audio and MIDI Recording/Editing Software (Crossgrade)

Comments about PreSonus Studio One 2 Professional - Audio and MIDI Recording/Editing Software (Crossgrade):

Ok, firstly, I'm a guitar player in a prog-rock band who has recorded an album and is working on a second.The first album was done in Cubase 4 and 5.

DAWs I own, have owned: Cakewalk/Sonar, Cubase, Logic Pro, Propellerhead Reason/Record. I've also played with Ableton Live, and Pro Tools, and even Digital Performer.

To say that I'm on a quest for a perfect DAW is an understatement. I wouldn't say that I use every single feature of a DAW, but as a prog rock band, we heavily use virtual instruments/MIDI as well as audio. Having a lot of time signature and tempo changes can uncover shortcomings in the software pretty quickly. I'm happy to say that Studio One doesn't seem to have any problems in this area.

Recording an album as an amateur musician (we all have day jobs) is a constant process of refinement; writing, rewriting, recording, editing, tweaking. We use pitch shifting to help find harmony parts, then re-record the vocals, etc. Also, we do things like moving the bridge from before the 2nd verse to after the 3rd chorus (or whatever). Having to fight the software while doing stuff like this is extremely frustrating. For example, Cubase will just crash occasionally while doing pitch shifting. Logic Pro will drop or add beats when snipping parts - I assume because of the time signature changes.

Anyway, the point is that I want to use the DAW as a creative tool. If it crashes, or doesn't work, or I have to spend tens of hours trying to figure out how to do something, the creative spark is dimmed to say the least. StudioOne seems to have been written with this in mind. Most everything just works as expected, without having to search through archaic and confusing menus and options. You can drag and drop just about everything: instruments, instrument settings, effects, even entire effect chains.

All that said, it is worth watching some of the online tutorials as some things are even easier to do than one might think, especially if you have used other - more clunky - DAWs in the past.

Installing was pretty easy. I did have a few problems using instruments from the bundled "Native Instruments Komplete Elements". The software would crash when I tried creating tracks with those sounds. I had to manually download and apply a few patches (Native Instruments has their own auto-updater). Certainly not a big deal in the larger scheme of things. After this, no more crashes.

One thing I find strange is recording multiple takes. It seems to want you to use loop record to do this. This isn't normally how I work. I record a take, listen, and then record again as necessary. It is a simple matter to create another layer and do it this way, but I'd prefer if the software would automatically record another take if I record over something, rather than requiring me to loop record.

Also, I'll point out that it is worthwhile to watch the tutorials from the website. Some stuff is ridiculously easy in the software. So easy that one might miss it. Assigning control surfaces, for instance. For instance, you can assign a knob from your MIDI keyboard to control, say the Depth parameter on a Chorus insert. This takes a single click. The software then remembers that this knob is assigned to Depth IFF when you have the screen for the Chorus insert open. Note that you can assign this knob to other parameters of other inserts and it will remember those as well. If this weren't so easy, I wouldn't use it. I'd just drag the knob in the insert and be done with it. However, since it is this easy, I have a whole world of possibilities open to me now. There are a buttload of controls on my keyboard/midi control surface that I've never used because mapping them was such a pain. Using the DAW as a creative tool, rather than "I hope it doesn't get in the way too much" is quite refreshing.

That said, some of the tutorials, I believe the ones from third parties, are a little out of date. For example, one of them refers repeatedly to the lack of Folder Tracks in StudioOne, which it now has. Also, the tutorial on comping is out of date. The method used in the tutorial will work, but it is even easier to do. I'm assuming that these features were added in version 2, while the tutorial in question was done with version 1. Just something to keep in mind.