Presonus Studio One Pro 4

[Trancer]

What do you think of this Daw?

Handling, ergonomics, its best assets, what is missing?

Is he a good Daw to compose electronic music (Trance / Edm)?

[alonl6]

What do you mean a good daw for edm? what are you looking for?
It's playing and composing music after all.. it's the same process most of the time, no matter what daw..
Im and old school when its come to this. just playing on the keyboard.. try to find nice harmony and melody. I don't use loops and all that stuff.

It's a nice daw.. I think I like it but the cpu handling is bad on my machine. not sure why. I have a beast MacBook pro from 2017.. It's important to download the demo and see how the daw works on your own machine. cpu handling in my opinion is the most important thing.

[SLiC]

If I was doing just trace/EDM I would go Bitwig over S1 4 (and I have both) unless you are recording a lot of live instruments/singers etc, Bitwig gives you both clip based (LIVE like) arranging and linear (S1 4 like) liner tracks.

S1 4 has better comping, Melodyne (and general better) audio editing and more traditional mixing, but Bitwig has clips (with in clip editing) and racks (with amazing modulation) which may be better suited to EDM (especially experiential, IDM etc)

[kevvvvv]

Take a look at atom.

Built for loop music like edm etc

And S1 artist thrown in the deal.

https://www.kvraudio.com/video/presonus ... ntent=9753

I'm expecting mine any day now.

True story: The very first I tried the free S1 verson years ago, I wrote a new tune inside 15 minutes without once looking at a manual.

Just wrote.

Never looked back since

kev

[SLiC]

Take a look at atom.

Built for loop music like edm etc

And S1 artist thrown in the deal.

https://www.kvraudio.com/video/presonus ... ntent=9753

I'm expecting mine any day now.

True story: The very first I tried the free S1 verson years ago, I wrote a new tune inside 15 minutes without once looking at a manual.

Just wrote.

Never looked back since

kev

That is a great deal (interested in your thoughts on the ATOM when you get it) and I agree that S1 is a very well designed DAW, I prefer it to Cubase. I so however think some people doing 'dance music' like the Bitwig/Live 'clip' type arrangement.(personal I just have Bitwig and S1 4 )

[e@rs]

The only DAW that fits me like a glove.

[Funkybot's Evil Twin]

What do you think of this Daw?

Handling, ergonomics, its best assets, what is missing?

Is he a good Daw to compose electronic music (Trance / Edm)?

Studio One's strengths are it's intuitive and fast workflow. Other DAWs have taken a lot of design cues from Studio One over the years. It also handles audio and mixing duties pretty well, but it's MIDI implementation still leaves much to be desired IMO and is lacking. If you were recording lots of audio, I'd say Studio One is a fantastic DAW. If you're doing a lot of virtual instrument work, MPE, might be integrating MIDI hardware into your setup, or do more complex things with MIDI/instruments in general, I'd say, "it can do the basics, but still not there yet."

Honestly, if I were making EDM I'd be looking at only two DAWs: Bitwig or Ableton. Those two products are designed with a focus on electronic music production allowing for things other DAWs just can't do, or don't do anywhere near as well.

Personally, I use Cubase and Studio One about equally, but have been doing more and more with Cubase these days due to it's more robust MIDI functionality. But I'm not making any kind of EDM either.

[SLiC]

What do you think of this Daw?

Handling, ergonomics, its best assets, what is missing?

Is he a good Daw to compose electronic music (Trance / Edm)?

Studio One's strengths are it's intuitive and fast workflow. Other DAWs have taken a lot of design cues from Studio One over the years. It also handles audio and mixing duties pretty well, but it's MIDI implementation still leaves much to be desired IMO and is lacking. If you were recording lots of audio, I'd say Studio One is a fantastic DAW. If you're doing a lot of virtual instrument work, MPE, might be integrating MIDI hardware into your setup, or do more complex things with MIDI/instruments in general, I'd say, "it can do the basics, but still not there yet."

Honestly, if I were making EDM I'd be looking at only two DAWs: Bitwig or Ableton. Those two products are designed with a focus on electronic music production allowing for things other DAWs just can't do, or don't do anywhere near as well.

Personally, I use Cubase and Studio One about equally, but have been doing more and more with Cubase these days due to it's more robust MIDI functionality. But I'm not making any kind of EDM either.

Cubase 10 is trying very hard to look and act like Studio One - VST snapshots, drag and drop, tabs at bottom (mixer, editor etc) so they have basically given in on the design war! Cubase still has way to many menus and windows for me and I think its pretty ugly (and HiDPI still not realy working on windows 10 even with V10)

[Caine123]

What do you think of this Daw?

Handling, ergonomics, its best assets, what is missing?

Is he a good Daw to compose electronic music (Trance / Edm)?

Studio One's strengths are it's intuitive and fast workflow. Other DAWs have taken a lot of design cues from Studio One over the years. It also handles audio and mixing duties pretty well, but it's MIDI implementation still leaves much to be desired IMO and is lacking. If you were recording lots of audio, I'd say Studio One is a fantastic DAW. If you're doing a lot of virtual instrument work, MPE, might be integrating MIDI hardware into your setup, or do more complex things with MIDI/instruments in general, I'd say, "it can do the basics, but still not there yet."

Honestly, if I were making EDM I'd be looking at only two DAWs: Bitwig or Ableton. Those two products are designed with a focus on electronic music production allowing for things other DAWs just can't do, or don't do anywhere near as well.

Personally, I use Cubase and Studio One about equally, but have been doing more and more with Cubase these days due to it's more robust MIDI functionality. But I'm not making any kind of EDM either.

Why are bitwig and ableton for electronic music faster? I did music there in fl studio as well and can imagine it will work in studo one etc as well? What advantages do bitwig and ableton have? Serious question

[antic604]

Is he a good Daw to compose electronic music (Trance / Edm)?

If you want to do linear compositions then yes, S1 would be awesome for that! IMO it's a more streamlined, more focused version of Cubase.

If however you'd prefer a more "live performance" workflow with a bit of generative music elements thrown in (random patterns, modulations, interfacing modular gear, etc.) then have a look at Bitwig, Live or Reason instead.

[antic604]

Why are bitwig and ableton for electronic music faster? I did music there in fl studio as well and can imagine it will work in studo one etc as well? What advantages do bitwig and ableton have? Serious question

Clip launcher / session view respectively, especially with Push/LPP/JAM. Just create a bunch of ideas - beats, bass lines, chords, melodies, effects and then jam with them changing the order, soloing & muting them, modulating the instruments, tweaking effects, playing stuff live on top of it, etc. You can leave it like it is and every time get a different tune or commit - record - your jams to linear timeline for further editing.

Below video was literally my 1st interaction with Live+Push2, recorded with 3 clips that I've created in 15 minutes straight from Push (not touching the computer!):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xPYV5EEcx4Q

[Trancit]

Why are bitwig and ableton for electronic music faster? I did music there in fl studio as well and can imagine it will work in studo one etc as well? What advantages do bitwig and ableton have? Serious question

That is indeed a very good question...

In fact, most tutors I´ve seen in my genre (Armin van Buuren, Protoculture, Björn Akesson and many more) working in traditional DAW´s like Logic Pro, Cubase, Studio One...
So, they are doing fine for electronic music as well...

One thing on the Pro side for Ableton and Bitwig is definetely the Session View/Clip launcher...
There are many integrated features, which allow a different workflow perfect for any loop based style...
That leads to the second pro: Looping of clips and inside of clips including easy achievable polyrythm...
Third pro which comes to my mind are the integrated FX and instruments, which are more suitable for electronic music than being optimized for being most "authentic/natural" sounding, while Studio One has catched up a lot with the 4.0 update and SampleOneXT and ImpactXT...
4. The way timestretching is implemented and the choice of timestretch algos are more on the experimental side and ideal for manipulating audio than just simple tempo match...

There are for sure hundreds or more points, but these would be the most obvious for me...
Nevertheless, electronic music can be made with any DAW perfectly fine...
Ableton/Bitwig/FL Studio got their pros but even these genres have the need of traditional work when it comes to arranging stuff... that´s where the linear DAW´s shine ...

Like always at the very end it´s again a matter of taste...
If your focus is more on the sound design and manipulating side (especially in the box), a Daw like Ableton or Bitwig will fit your needs better than a traditional one...
If your interest is more on the layout/arrangement and the creative possibilities in this part of the song and you use a lot 3rd party VST for the sound design and mangling of sounds, nothing will support you better than the linear DAW´s ...

[mholloway]

Studio One 3 and 4 are practically unusable on a Mac, fwiw. Performance is terrible, and it crashes constantly. And their tech support is comical garbage. If you're PC based, I hear there are far fewer issues. If you're Mac based, well, you've been warned.

[chk071]

The only DAW that fits me like a glove.

Yep.

[antic604]

Studio One 3 and 4 are practically unusable on a Mac, fwiw. Performance is terrible, and it crashes constantly. And their tech support is comical garbage. If you're PC based, I hear there are far fewer issues. If you're Mac based, well, you've been warned.

Are you on the FB group for Studio One? Lots of knowledgeable and helpful people there, incl. S1 devs. Frankly I never heard about S1 running substantially worse on OSX.