Any Experiences with Presonus's Studio One 2?

[Bunjji]

Pretty stable (I had an older laptop so it wasn't perfect, a few crashes with some particular plugins, but I just reopened the session and everything was pretty much how I had it), very quick and efficient. It gets out of the way; I can focus on recording and not so much everything else. Although the stock plugins aren't crazy good, they are sufficient. I am very happy with it. It runs just as good on Windows, so if you want to go Windows in the future, don't be afraid.

[pinkheadedbug]

It's good. I was a Logic 9 user, downloaded it to try it out, never went back.

Midi editing is not so good. That's the only thing that bugs me.

[Clonkified]

Works well,has some great workflow. Missing other stuff and not as mature. Horrendous color scheme. Went back to Logic for now.

[samsam]

Works good on my Mac and looks good too IMO. No DAW is perfect but I find it very nice to use.

[gvdv]

Hi Bunji, pinkheadedbug, Clonkified, and samsam,
Many thanks for your replies.

I am sticking to Mac for my DAW for now (because I invested so much money in it, and do not have more money to do the same thing over again for PC).

pinkheadedbug, can you say more about what you mean by "midi editing is not so good"? Are you referring to the difficulty of accomplishing something or the fact that one cannot accomplish some things? Or maybe you are referring to something else about midi - I would very much like to hear more.

Clonkified, what stuff is missing, and is this why is it not as mature?

Thanks,

[Clonkified]

Really depends on your own personal workflow and what you need in a DAW. Only you can answer that and you'll only really know after lots of experience.

For me, the key things that were missing are:
- Edit cursor (like PT)
- Looping of events (vs. duplicating)
- Ability to view and automate buses on arrange page
- Ability to record the output of a bus (finally coming in 2.5)
- Multi-point clip gain
- Full-length colored markers
- Ability to view insert plugins by manufacture instead of alphabetical (not in the browser, in the context menu)
- Better automation editing workflow

Like I said, personal preference.

[pinkheadedbug]

Midi editing -- mostly things that are more difficult to do. For example --

-- select all the snare hits in a drum part. There's no 'select similar events' command that I know of.
-- no midi crescendo/diminuendo or other programmatic manipulation
-- no 'colour by velocity' option, makes seeing velocities very hard

Logic is streets ahead for midi editing. If I did more of it I'd have to go back.

Tempo mapping is also vastly better in Logic

Structural rearrangements are much harder in S1 than they need to be. Just today I needed to swap a verse from before the bridge to after the bridge. It was WAY harder than it should have been.

It is much too easy to overwrite a take without noticing. For example, you record a guitar track, then switch over to record a keyboard part, but forget to disarm the guitar track. You record ten takes before you notice. Now you're in a pickle because you have a keyboard part that you like but the old guitar part has been overwritten. Logic solves this by always recording to new takes instead of having to do it manually.

I still prefer it to Logic for the fluidity of using it, but it has a long way to go.

[Lawrence]

Originally Posted by Clonkified

- Ability to view and automate buses on arrange page

Not nitpicking your list, but you actually can view and automate bus channels in arrange. When you right click the fader & "Edit (automation paramater))" it exposes in arrange on an automation track pretty much just like Cubase's bus groups show in arrange there by default.

Additionally, folder tracks can "attach" to group busses directly from arrange and display the bus automation directly in the folder lane or in sub-lanes and the inspector channel fader / pan becomes the bus fader / pan.

The best thing about automation track classes (and automation sub-lanes) in S1 is that they're "free". There's a flexibility there with grouping and editing grouped automation (from just about anywhere) that doesn't really exist in most other places. It's a bit of a different paradigm so a lot of people (I think) maybe miss its potential.

At any rate, I've been on board since 1.0 and know it like the back of my hand, so if you have questions about automation, I'll try to help if I can.

Thanks Clonkfield.

[triode]

If you have a presonus interface you can set sends to control pre-software levels from within Studio One to headphones. Fantastic zero-latency monitoring with zero-fuss. That's a feature you can't beat with other software.

[gvdv]

Hi Clonkfield and pinkheadedbug,

Thanks for your replies.

And, thank you also Lawrence and triode for adding to the discussion.

triode, the difficult with my presonus Firestudio is that it has never worked 'as adverstised' with my Mac Pro. In the Summer of 2011 I spent a total of about 5 days on the 'phone and in email correspondence with Presonus trying to figure out how to solve the problems I was having, but to no avail.

I am currently thinking of downgrading to another presonus (because I really do like the preamps), or switching to another audio interface.

Thank you all, once again,

[Bunjji]

My PreSonus FireStudio was killer on my 2006 MacBook, what problems are you having with it? I think that Studio One may solve some of those problems. You can read my review of the unit too!

[gvdv]

Hi Bunjji,
Many thanks for asking about the problems that I experienced with my Presonus Firestudio, and for the offer of help.

I will let you know what was going on, but at the moment will decline your kind offer of help because I am in the middle of some serious, non-musical stuff at the moment.

Also, I must confess that having dealt with Presonus, the Mac people, and having hired on audio engineer to come in and trouble-shoot things (all of this over the course of a couple of years, but particularly in one, intense three month period), I am not enthusiastic of spending more time in trying to get the Firestudio to work.

The problems with the Firestudio were/are:
1. Audio just stops (recording/playing back), even when working with one or two tracks in Garageband. This means having to reboot my Mac Pro.

2. Firestudio headphone sends/mixer have never worked (there are supposed to be 9, if memory serves, which are supposed to enable one to set up 9 independent headphone mixes).

By the way, here is some information about my DAW
DAW Set-up
- Mac Pro Dual Core Intel Xeon processors (i.e. 2 x 2.66 GHz / 4 cores)
- 5 GB RAM
- 1 TB HD space (total of 4 Seagate Barracuda hard drives)
- Presonus Firestudio 26x26 firewire audio interface
- OS X 10.6.2 (Snow Leopard)
- GarageBand ’09 Version 5.1 (398)

Bunjji, I do not want to appear ungrateful, but at the moment cannot really participate in a discussion about this because of other things happening, and due to a reluctance to re-tread territory which I have been over with those identified above.

All the best,

[Bunjji]

No problem, man.

[triode]

I had problems when I updated to the "Universal Control" driver. There was a list of files to delete to un-install the original "Firecontrol" driver on the presonus forum. Once I went through that process everything worked ok. I now have two 2626's daisy chained and everything is working. If you need more details PM me.

[nirsul]

Originally Posted by pinkheadedbug

-- select all the snare hits in a drum part. There's no 'select similar events' command that I know of.

Actually - You can - in the Piano Roll side view - if you click on a note name while holding the CTRL key - the whole range of this specific note will be selected.

[/QUOTE]

Originally Posted by pinkheadedbug

It is much too easy to overwrite a take without noticing. For example, you record a guitar track, then switch over to record a keyboard part, but forget to disarm the guitar track. You record ten takes before you notice. Now you're in a pickle because you have a keyboard part that you like but the old guitar part has been overwritten

Sadly - That is true - just an hour ago a friend whom I am trying to get into S1 reported his frustration about losing his newly recorded part.

[Lawrence]

Originally Posted by pinkheadedbug

It is much too easy to overwrite a take without noticing. For example, you record a guitar track, then switch over to record a keyboard part, but forget to disarm the guitar track. You record ten takes before you notice. Now you're in a pickle because you have a keyboard part that you like but the old guitar part has been overwritten.

ALT+Click the record button (exclusive) on the track to disable any other tracks in the same class (audio or midi) that might still be record enabled and maybe hidden.

Some of this will get better in an update I hope, but at any rate, you can't erase audio by recording over it anyway, it's always in the pool and can be easily spotted back to the timeline. So you never actually "lose" audio.

Hope that helps.

[Jisander]

I am a long time Logic user, have used that software since 2005. About a year ago I first tried Studio One after reading about it. I liked it but sticked with Logic. This summer I tried Studio One again, and I really liked it. Used it side by side with Logic for a couple of months, but now I have completely switched to Studio One. The main reason is simplicity and audio quality. All mix corrections like EQ and volume is much more obvious in Studio One. Great software - great audio quality. Don't miss Logic at all.

[gvdv]

Thanks, everyone.

gvdv