Studio One 2 Pro - any thoughts?

[liquidsound]

Or like Patcher in FL Studio, which I love. I also know Mux, but does it allow third-party plugins?

Beside yes, you can then save the patch and recall it any time and the same internal configuration (VST VSTi etc) is loaded. In this way you can create extremely complex routing, effects routing etc. and load them anytime you need them. Better then templates and more practical since you can use them in any DAW.

[braj]

So just want to be clear: all my 3rd party plugins work fine in Studio One, the routing is fine, the Gui colors are fine, the midi editor is fine, audio editing is fine. It is a good solid DAW and it is only my weird way of using things that really is the issue for me. MuX is plugging a hole but not one that risks sinking the ship, not by a long shot, and naming conventions aside it took me a minute to figure out how to freeze a track. Studio One is relatively easy to navigate and easy to look at for hours on end in my experience. That has never been an issue for me. What I want are mostly just tweaks, like more included scales , stuff that is there but could be expanded and improved. But I'm quite happy they have my business.

[stillshaded]

That was a very entertaining post The Terminator. I agree that having a DAW that doesn't suit your workflow can serisously suck. If I had to work in Reason Id probably shoot myself. Fortunately studio one suits my workflow better than any daw I've used. I've used logic, ableton, and fl studio quite extensively, and S1 definitely gets me making the most music. Of course a lot of it (if not all) has to do with the particular set of features that are important to me, but another thin that I'm realizing is important to me personally, is that instead of having several ways to accomplish a task (perhaps each method havin slightly varied results), there's one well thought out method. In the end you lose flexibility, but IMO that's not necessarily a bad thing. As a youngster recording on 4 track tape was quite inspiring, it was easy to decide what to do next. I love logic and fl studio, but as a project developed I inevitably end up getting distracted by the possibilities those apps offer. Like I say, this is a personal issue, it has to do with the particular way my attention and focus works. Ableton is similar to S1 in that it presents a more particular way of doing things, but in the end I just doesn't work for me. I want to write things not perform, for the most part. likewise, studio will not be right for many individuals.


@braj. I share your interest in such developments. However, nvery hesitant to brace a third party solution. The mos brilliant thing about ableton IMO was the rack system. The key to it for me was that I didn't have to start by throwing a rack on every channel. When i saw fit, I could just group whatever I needed. Whereas in to studio, I never got used to starting every channel with pafcher, and transfer stuff from outside of patcher into it, was a pain. So I really never ended up using it. Ideally presonus will implement something similar, but I doubt it will be as good as the one in ableton, and I really doubt that I will have any modular capabilities such as MUX.

[stillshaded]

sorry for the typos.. iPhone. no way in hell I'm going back and editing

[braj]

Yeah im cool with Mux no problem, and see my brilliant idea about composite midi devices (I guess I learned that from Apple actually). That would be ideal and I wouldnt care if a native rack came or not with composure midi input devices as it is more elegant than using Mux for that.

[LawrenceF]

If 99% of other DAWs all call it "freeze," (I know, an over-used example), why does this one have to invent new terms? You can't get away with that nonsense in a professional studio. Does 'special' terminology make your DAW special, or does it come off as contrived and a form of fake elitism?

I'll try to answer that.

"Transform" is a concise description of what it does. Why? It actually doesn't really "freeze" anything. Transformed parts are editable and can be "Transformed" back with most edits intact... audio and midi edits. It doesn't just freeze midi in place, it actually creates a new audio track and puts a combo clip on it... a transformation.

So the terminology is as good a description as any... imo.

Besides, there really aren't any "standards" for most of this stuff. See Elastic Audio, Flex, Bend, Warp, etc, etc... all pretty much the same things. If you search "Elastic Audio" in the Cubase manual you won't find it... but the feature is there, it's just called something else.

[kev2525]

One exceptionally annoying thing in S1 is the fact that you can't play a VST and jam along with your controller and record the output on another track at the same time.

It has the Impact VST and is shipped with some nice drum samples, but it doesn't ave an intuitive way of sequencing drums. You need to use the piano roll which is a bit of a let down for drums. Something along the lines of the cubase drum grid would be very handy. Even better would be something like the cubase beat designer.

The implementation of midi effects is also a pain. If you want to use something like a 3rd party arp you need to set up a separate track and route the output of the arp to the input of the instrument you want to use. Hopefully at some point they will implement the same system as ableton or cubase where you can simply drop the midi effect onto the same track as the VST. Not a show stopper, but still annoying.

on the whole I still think it's a great program. Using the function keys on the keyboard to access the various screens is quite handy. The workflow is fast and the layout is very logical and straightforward. I'm hoping that they implement or address the gripes I have soon.

[samsam]

As the OP, allow me to say:

I bought it!

I liked what I found in the demo and, for now, i'll be combining using S1 and Live. Let's see how i get on and if I end up keeping both or sticking with just one.

[braj]

One exceptionally annoying thing in S1 is the fact that you can't play a VST and jam along with your controller and record the output on another track at the same time.

Maybe i'm missing something, but you can do exactly that. You can enable some tracks to record, some to monitor, you can create multiple tracks for the same instrument and monitor playback on one while you record the same instrument on another. I do this all the time with Strum for example and it is easy.

[LawrenceF]

Maybe i'm missing something,

You are. I think he's talking about recording the audio coming out of a virtual instrument directly in real time, routing the audio to another track for recording like PT, Cubase, Reaper, etc.

It's (I think) probably in the top 3 most requested FR's there... from electronic musicians anyway.

[braj]

Oh ok. That's not something I'd normally do so I see how I missed missing that

[kev2525]

Braj, so Lawrence nailed it. I want to record the output of the VST in real time. I looked for ages and ages and tried all sorts of routings before I realised it wasn't possible. It's a feature I really miss from cubase. It's probably best suited for electronic music as you can just end up with some really interesting stuff if you just randomly record while you jam. Big filter sweeps and crazy LFO madness and that sort of thing.

Another thing I'd like to try would be to assign more than one parameter on a synth to a knob on my controller. would this new MUX be able to do this?

[liquidsound]

Braj, so Lawrence nailed it. I want to record the output of the VST in real time. I looked for ages and ages and tried all sorts of routings before I realised it wasn't possible. It's a feature I really miss from cubase. It's probably best suited for electronic music as you can just end up with some really interesting stuff if you just randomly record while you jam. Big filter sweeps and crazy LFO madness and that sort of thing.

Another thing I'd like to try would be to assign more than one parameter on a synth to a knob on my controller. would this new MUX be able to do this?

If I understand correctly,
You can assign several parameters of a VST inside the MUX to a single knob of the MUX by right click the knob and choose Map MIDI Controller.
By choosing Edit then you can assign the the knob itself rather then your controller to multiple VST parameters.
You can go to MUTOOLS site and see the Docs for the MUX.

[lingyai]

I demoed Studio One V2 for a few weeks and then bought it...

Here's what I've found...

Cons...
-Only audio tracks in the mixer - no mixing of multi-timbral instruments using MIDI.
-Transform to audio doesn't work that great with some VST's, causing clicks, pops etc.

Whoa, whoa... has anyone else observed these? On the face of it, they sound like deal killers.... if I understand correclty (maybe I don't)

-- So if I can't mix my Kontakt outputs in the mixer, how can I mix them?

-- Does "Transorm to audio" mean freezing things during a session to ease the load on PC resources, or does it mean mixing down to wav file? If the latter, well, why bother to perect a track if it can't be rendered...

Would be grateful, JimmiG or anyone else, to chime in / clarify as these each sound like a pretty big deal to me

[braj]

VST instruments (midi no?) appear in the mixer definitely, and multi-timbral instruments are definitely supported. I'm not sure what he means exactly by the above. Maybe he means in the arranger only audio tracks have volume control (true but no big deal) and maybe needs to work with it more to understand how multi-timberal plugins function.