Fender Studio Pro 8 Released

[Crossinger]

@dastewart Good news for you! That exact feature of Studio One has been introduced to Cubase 15.0.20 last week.

[jens]

I've got into the habit of having nested folders, e.g. "kick out" going to "kick" folder going to "drum" folder, or LH grunge guitar going to "grunge gtr" folder, going to "rhythm gtrs" going to "electrics" folder and just having the routing all working for me via the buses in the folder.
[...]

I couldn't even get my point across at how useful this kind of thing is.

Yeah, that sounds like a complete mess to me as well... while I also think the option for folder-tracks to include automatic signal routing that follows the folder structure is very useful, your nested folder examples sound really weird to me tbh. If I may ask: Why does e.g. the grunge guitar first go into its own respective folder before ending up in the rhythm guitar folder?

[dastewart]

I've got into the habit of having nested folders, e.g. "kick out" going to "kick" folder going to "drum" folder, or LH grunge guitar going to "grunge gtr" folder, going to "rhythm gtrs" going to "electrics" folder and just having the routing all working for me via the buses in the folder.
[...]

I couldn't even get my point across at how useful this kind of thing is.

If I may ask: Why does e.g. the grunge guitar first go into its own respective folder before ending up in the rhythm guitar folder?

I don't always do it but it just so happened on the current song I'm mixing I have double track "grunge" guitars so I've got a left (LH) and right (RH) wide panned both going into the grunge folder/bus. That's part of a general rhythm group (hence the rhythm folder) which has other double tracked guitars picking a rhythm and all of that goes into the electrics folder/bus which has all the electric guitars.

I've got some sort of gentle processing on each of the bus/folders and, of course, it makes it far easier to balance levels in the mix.

I've never thought of this as a particularly special way of doing things because I've "grown up" with Studio One as my first DAW and just assumed that all other DAWs had the same basic functionality. I think I've made it fairly clear I'm not a Studio One fanboy but each time I try and move away (this is the second) I find that there are features or workflows in Studio One that aren't necessarily replicated in other DAWs.

[jens]

I don't always do it but it just so happened on the current song I'm mixing I have double track "grunge" guitars so I've got a left (LH) and right (RH) wide panned both going into the grunge folder/bus. That's part of a general rhythm group (hence the rhythm folder) which has other double tracked guitars picking a rhythm and all of that goes into the electrics folder/bus which has all the electric guitars.

I've got some sort of gentle processing on each of the bus/folders and, of course, it makes it far easier to balance levels in the mix.

Yes, I assumed as much.

Of course we all do the stuff the way that seems to suit us and I was just asking because you brought it up as an example where the folder-track automatically being a bus channel is a good thing

(but with that out of the way:)

and I was thinking that in this example you'd be better of just processing the two (or more) "grunge"-tracks on a mixer sub-group without having a dedicated folder-track for it that just clutters up you track-list/timeline without having any actual function (besides being a mixing sub-group.)

After all the actual function of folder-tracks is helping to reduce clutter, right? But if you have too many of them then they rather do the exact opposite and add to the problem instead of the solution, don't they?

I mean: if you have 15 or so folder-tracks they eat up about half the visible vertical screen-estate all by themselves, right?



(By the way: my personal trick/workaround is to limit myself/my songs to the number of tracks that can be visible at once so that I can avoid using any folder-tracks altogether.)

[dastewart]

No rights and wrongs here but, in this particular example, once I've processed each individual track then I collapse the folder and I've only got one "grunge" bus to balance with the rest of the mix rather than two individual tracks. In fact, I've mapped a hotkey to "collapse all folders" which is a really useful way of getting a top down view of my mix. I normally have 6 or 7 major folders/buses depending on the song and I can then drill down into each one as required.

[BONES]

I'd find it impossible to finish anything if I was nesting things in folders. When Studio Pro does stem separation it puts them into a folder and the first thing I do is delete the folder. It's just another track in the timeline but it doesn't bloody do anything. I don't even use folders for my vocal takes. I do one, then delete it and do the next one, delete that and do the next one, etc. Then, when I'm mixing, I'll create a second vocal track so I can preview the "deleted" takes to find the best two to double-track left and right, because the deleted tracks are still saved in the Media folder for the song. I might end up with three vocal tracks in the final mix but even then I never put them in a folder or run them into a bus. I keep everything as simple as I possibly can. Once the song is finished I might group the percussion tracks into a folder, just to make the timeline a little tidier for using on stage but, if I'm honest, I mostly do that for the aesthetics - tracks in a folder look cool.

the Studio One render bug (it moves things by 1 sample which can kind of screw things up when you mixdown stuff)

How? Seriously, how would you even know it was doing that?

[dastewart]

How? Seriously, how would you even know it was doing that?

Pretty simply tbh. When I'm finished a project I render down all the individual tracks to plain audio files to bake in all the plugins and/or render the virtual instruments. Just in case in the future the plugins don't work or have been updated in some not backward compatible way I still have the session.

I then flipped phase between the new renders and the original tracks and was surprised to hear they didn't always null. Fast forward through lots of testing and checking with others and discovered that if a track (or render point) starts between samples then Studio One can't cope and moves the track either backwards or forwards to start at the next sample.

Cubase and Reaper (and possible others, I only had demos of those two) don't.

Does it matter? Yes. Can you avoid it? Yes, by doing this ...

1. Set the timebase to samples
2. Set snap on
3. Set snap to adaptive (is fine)
4. Set quantize to 1/16 (1/64 doesn't work).
5. Move the start of the event and/or render point.

[BONES]

So no reason at all, then? Seriously, who would f**king care? No-one can hear a timing difference of one sample, making it totally irrelevant. We back up our stuff regularly but we don't render it all out as stems. Even if I stop installing a plugin down the line, I'll have a dozen others that can do the same job so what's the point of rendering it all out? Sorry, but it's crazy talk, tin-foil hat stuff.

[Crossinger]

No-one can hear a timing difference of one sample, making it totally irrelevant.

I assume that it’s more of a phasing topic and not timing. But then: my mixing skills are average at best so I have plenty of options to ruin my mixes before a phase issue becomes relevant to me.

[jamcat]

if a track (or render point) starts between samples then Studio One can't cope and moves the track either backwards or forwards to start at the next sample.

Cubase and Reaper (and possible others, I only had demos of those two) don't.

Does it matter? Yes. Can you avoid it? Yes, by doing this ...

1. Set the timebase to samples
2. Set snap on
3. Set snap to adaptive (is fine)
4. Set quantize to 1/16 (1/64 doesn't work).
5. Move the start of the event and/or render point.

Maybe I’m off base here, but it sounds like what you’re doing is baking in the same sample position alignment to your song file that Studio One Pro makes on the fly during render?

[dastewart]

if a track (or render point) starts between samples then Studio One can't cope and moves the track either backwards or forwards to start at the next sample.

Cubase and Reaper (and possible others, I only had demos of those two) don't.

Does it matter? Yes. Can you avoid it? Yes, by doing this ...

1. Set the timebase to samples
2. Set snap on
3. Set snap to adaptive (is fine)
4. Set quantize to 1/16 (1/64 doesn't work).
5. Move the start of the event and/or render point.

Maybe I’m off base here, but it sounds like what you’re doing is baking in the same sample position alignment to your song file that Studio One Pro makes on the fly during render?

I guess that's right, it's aligning the playback engine with the render engine, neither of which is actually working from quite the right point as it's jumping to the next/previous sample.

Like I say, Cubase and Reaper are both able to play back and render from the correct point but Studio One can't and I've been told that's also true of Ableton. I've no idea about any other DAWs.

[jens]

No rights and wrongs here but, in this particular example, once I've processed each individual track then I collapse the folder and I've only got one "grunge" bus to balance with the rest of the mix rather than two individual tracks. In fact, I've mapped a hotkey to "collapse all folders" which is a really useful way of getting a top down view of my mix. I normally have 6 or 7 major folders/buses depending on the song and I can then drill down into each one as required.

Ah, yes, of course, I completely forgot: you can do that since collapsing the child-tracks more or less permanently works really well in Studio One - good thinking!

[BONES]

I assume that it’s more of a phasing topic and not timing. But then: my mixing skills are average at best so I have plenty of options to ruin my mixes before a phase issue becomes relevant to me.

I don't think so, not at that scale. I assume it's more that because you know about something, you think it matters, that you can hear the difference, but I'll guarantee you can't.

[nusound mind]

double post

[nusound mind]

Like I say, Cubase and Reaper are both able to play back and render from the correct point but Studio One can't and I've been told that's also true of Ableton. I've no idea about any other DAWs.

Get something like Sonnox Codec plugin, set to low latency and record it live. Better yet, you can record live right in S1 by changing some settings. There's a presonus yt vid that shows how to do that.

Tbh I'd be more concerned if I'd heard of this problem before from more than 1 person. I've personally not had a problem once I have my sample size/ latency right, but then I don't render wholesale in Studio One anymore.

You could also print stems and then make whatever micro- adjustments you deem necessary.