Studio One Pro 4.5

[jinotsuh]

When I say ergonomics I mean accomplishing as much as possible with as few physical movements. There is a prevailing goal in the culture of the software team to do more things with less. Not all of these things are documented well, sadly, but things like Alt + Clicking on an insert rack to close all insert racks. Selecting 100 tracks and CMD + Dragging an insert they all share out of the insert rack and it will remove every single one. It's not just drag and drop, it's what they considered about their customers when deciding what you could drag where. It's a little mouse heavy (only a problem on a laptop touchpad imho) but I cannot imagine using a mixer or arrange view without Studio One's workflow.

Lots of DAWs have customizable modifiers, macros, and hotkeys, and I used to have to make use of them in other software. They don't offer a lot of that here, but I haven't really needed it. They actually thought about how I want to work and how to make it faster. That's priceless. I think that's the reason S1 users are so critical about features that are still getting refined or fleshed out. The core feature set of the DAW interface has been so considerately designed that anything basic or rough feels out of place And it wasn't just desinged that way at the beginning, tons of very efficient little behaviors were introduced in 3.3 and 3.5. Now 4.5 was more about actions/commands honestly, but if they remember that people came and stayed for their design and efficiency and keep bringing that in future versions, customers are going to reward them again and again and again.

+1 . . . Fast and easy and very intuitive.

[rmacattack]

One thing I like to note in regards of the new Midi tools...
Perhaps someone responsable sees and understand this...

I was first impressed to have them before really trying and really thinking...
After this initial euphoria...:

As most of them are more or less copied from FL Studio please consider to do it correctly...

The magic of FL Studio´s PR editor is not only to have these tools but the visually realtime preview what they do to the midi and to be able to tweak these tools live while playing ... see and hear in realtime what you do... this is the point and this how most of you all work, right??

I cannot imagine most of you closing your eyes and randomly clicking in notes on the PR editor for serious work (other than for some rare experimantal stuff)...
Neither would I expect from a mixing engineer that he tweaks the compressor or EQ while the audio is stopped, then listen, ok rubbish, stop the audio and make a new try...
So why should this be ok with these midi tools??

It´s always nice to have new tools built in into S1 but tbh the usage of these atm is only blind flying, respectively trial and error... select your events, make some adjustments to the controls of the macro and hit ok... you don´t like it...hmmm lets undo all, make the selection again, tweak the controls again and hit ok again... you don´t like it again... hmmm let´s undo...

It´s easy to make some quick changes in a demo video and tell the people how much you love the changes... real life sadly works different most of the time...
Just having the tools without being able to see what they do is like trying to repair a broken machine in darkest night... ever tried???

Perhaps someone at Presonus is brave enough to make these really useable ...atm... they are a nice gimmick which could serve you in some cases but with equal chance it´s quicker to make the desired changes manually... in this case the new tool has failed imo... and your are beaten by a 15 year old implementation of the same tools into a DAW people have called a toy for many many years...

No offense, just some critism as a client because atm you didn´t do your work on them properly...

I do RNB/Pop music. FL is very underrated, and they will continue to dominate the urban/dance market. Studio One 4 will not be able to shake that it just a mix program stigma. Read the blogs with songwriters in Presonus blogs who thought that. Hate to this but the people coming from feature rich DAW's like Cubase, DP, Pro Tools, Sonar or the one's with the "old school" way of doing things have wrecked Studio One. Now its come to a point where workflow is not an priority. Do you see any of the newer generation producers showcasing using studio one compared to someone using FL Studio or Ableton with Push? 70 new features is typical cubase release. Now I see the same videos with 20 minutes talking about gain staging or recording a guitar through a studio 192 interface lol. Hey I wanna do video in it, I need notation and all this crap that will make it bloated. You are not getting rid of Pro Tools or Logic in a commercial studio sense. The atom market they are going for you will have to beat Ableton/Native Instruments.

How are you adjusting to today's market. The market that is hitting is users who are one man bands who are looking for something simple. Like FL, Native Instruments controllers, live and Push. What are you gonna do when Logic add a chord track (I think they will) or Native Instruments and Ableton drop cool controllers with software enhancements. Where does the Atom fit? 70 new features and no new atom features? But hey let's get DJ ATB or get other producer/songwriters to say they user our software but just give a release to Pro Tool users. I'm confused....

[rageix]

The only other DAW I've use extensively is Live. I've been playing around with the 4.5 demo for a few hours and have a more positive experience than when I demoed it a year a go. Some of these features are good and where really needed. Snap to 0 crossings is a no brainier. Randomly generating notes is way easier than doing it in Live. The new side-chain controls make it really easy to side chain things together, even third party VSTs. Those are the most useful things I've found so far.

I don't really understand how the new grouping system is useful. Seems useful on the surface, but not in all practicality. The group/folder system in Live is just easier in my opinion. I'd love to see folder tracks just become bus tracks automatically and when you add a new track it's sent to the bus like in Live.

One question I do have is that I see lots of people say that Studio One is better for mixing than Live. What about Studio One is that much better for mixing?

S1 has a workflow similar to Ableton already in terms of folder etc. You have to use Pack Folder. Once you pack a folder you create a bus for that folder and if you have Link expand turned on then it works pretty much like Live except imo far more flexible.

Before this version I would agree with your that grouping wasn't;t very useful, but S1 also has VCAs so it really wasn't a big deal. Grouping in this version is different, you can things like add/remove an insert to all tracks in a group, Pan multiple tracks, etc. One really useful one is to be able record arm multiple tracks if you have band or something to record. Just group them and you hit record arm on one of the tracks. You can also layer groups so you can have a track in multiple groups. Really useful for guitars or drums.

S1 is really great for mixing. They've done a lot work to make entice Pro Tools users over to the DAW so a lot of PT features are there and are more often than not even better. You can mix in Live for sure, you can mix in anything, but imo Live is not great for mixing. No VCAs, no real metering tools. If I were doing a large mix Live would be my last choice.

I did discover that you can more easily add bus track to folder on my own, but I do appreciate the tip.

I have spent the last few days exploring, learning to mix and using this DAW. The truth is... it's f**king good. This version is very speedy. I've had one crash at the very beginning, but outside of that nothing in at least dozens of hours.

To say it's better for mixing than Ableton or any other DAW though is simply disingenuous. S1 good, no doubt, but at the end of the day all you're doing is setting levels, eq, compression, doing some automation, adding some effects and you can do that in either. I'm not sure what kind of metering you think S1 has that Ableton doesn't but I haven't really found it, and nothing that couldn't be replaced by a basic UV meter.

If your goal is to be more towards Pro-Tools, OK then I can agree to that. No reason you can't mix as well in Ableton though.To me that's a problem on it's own in the professional audio realm that professional level often times requires knowledge of Pro Tools. Whatever. For most people they shouldn't care.

I like S1. I think more people should use it. For the money it's better than Live, but at the end of the day they both do more or less the same thing. I haven't been able to give a real advantage to one or the other.

[dellboy]

Oh when I say clip launching im not talking about pattern based sequencing. I'm talking about firing off clips in real time improvisationally and then taking that performance and editing it. Which is where ableton and maschine always fell apart for me... I dumped the performance into the arrangemnet window and went... great... now what? Still so clunky multiple versions later.

I only have Live LIte, and even then I never use the arrangement window.

Live Lite allows to export the audio waves to the desktop from where you can drag them into Studio One and use the arrange page there.

[Trancit]

Is that true???

My S1 4.5 only scans plugins if I am online...
As soon as I go offline and try to start S1 the plugin scanner hangs with the options "Disable", "Skip" and "Cancel"
Skip and Cancel do nothing and if I choose disable I get only the presonus native plugins...
I never noticed this before but I am not sure if I tried that before...

Is this for you the same??? Would be a mega bummer...

[Trancit]

I just saw on the Presonus forums, that it´s the same for all users...

I really hope for Presonus that this is a bug or a bad joke... otherwise this journey ends here and now!!!

[chk071]

I just tried it, and, it works fine here. Why would a plugin scan need online anyway?

It's probably one of your plugins which needs a online check for the copy protection, or something.

[Trancit]

Do you have "Scan at startup" in the options checked??

I don´t need and more important I don´t want to have the need of an internet connection for being able to use S1 with VSTs...

[chk071]

Yep, it's checked here, and, it does check. Try to blacklist some of your "suspicious" online copy protection check plugins, to see which one is causing this. It isn't Studio One, that's for sure. It's a plugin.

[Trancit]

Yep, it's checked here, and, it does check. Try to blacklist some of your "suspicious" online copy protection check plugins, to see which one is causing this. It isn't Studio One, that's for sure. It's a plugin.

Hmm weird... seem to be a common problem...

This is an official answer from the presonus faq:

If you have upgraded to Studio One 4.5 and your plug-in scanner is hanging when launching the program, it is because you are offline. One solution to this issue would be to go online with your computer. If this is not an option, here is what you can do...

Go to Run in the Windows Start menu or open Cortana. Type in %appdata% and press enter. From the Roaming folder that appears, go into PreSonus/Studio One 4

From the Studio One 4 folder, go into x64 and locate the Vstplugins.settings file. Right-click the file and choose to open it with Notepad.

In the Vstplugins.settings file, locate the following line: <Attibutes scanAtStartup="1"> Change the 1 to a zero and save the file.

This workaround will prevent Studio One from scanning plug-ins on launch and should resolve your issue. Previously scanned plug-ins will still load. Another option is to install the 4.1.4 build of Studio One and go into Studio One>Options>Locations>VST Plug-ins. From here, you can un-check the "scan at startup" option. You can then install Studio one 4.5 after doing this, to get around the problem.

If you would like to roll back to a previous build, you can. Just log into your my.presonus.com and go to My Products>Software>Studio One 4. There is a link to view previous versions. You can download 4.1.4 from this list. Just uninstall version 4.5 and install version 4.1.4. Please check future release notes to see if the issue has been resolved.

This means to me, S1 isn´t able anymore to scan plugins offline... and this means to me: Bye bye S1!!!

[LawrenceF]

I really hope for Presonus that this is a bug ...

It is.

[chk071]

This means to me, S1 isn´t able anymore to scan plugins offline... and this means to me: Bye bye S1!!!

Hello? Didn't i just tell you that i tried it out and it works fine here...

[Trancit]

This means to me, S1 isn´t able anymore to scan plugins offline... and this means to me: Bye bye S1!!!

Hello? Didn't i just tell you that i tried it out and it works fine here...

Did you see that this an official answer from Presonus and that this is actually the case??

[chk071]

Well, OK then. If it's a bug, it doesn't happen here though. Hope they can reproduce it, when it's only happening on some systems.

[Trancit]

I really hope for Presonus that this is a bug ...

It is.

Thx... I hope this gets sorted out very soon as this is a no-go...

I saw in another post (was in russian ) that it would be possible to copy over the ucnet.dll from 4.14 to 4.5 to solve the problem...