PreSonus Studio One

Studio One serves up a powerful drag-and-drop recording, mixing and mastering DAW environment with advanced songwriting and score creation tools plus instruments and effects galore. It’s all wrapped in a super-intuitive, single-window GUI that tightly integrates with PreSonus interfaces and mixers. But Studio One goes far beyond typical DAW functions. Its highly flexible workflows, extensive automation, smart browser, and hefty libraries all run within a bloat-free application in which playback issues and latency are things of the past. And with 64-bit processing, everything sounds amazing. But it’s probably in the realms of composition, orchestration, arrangement and song sketching that Studio One stands out. More about that in a moment.

PreSonus offers two paid points of entry into Studio One: Artist and Professional. The Artist version targets the intermediate user not quite ready for all the power of the Professional. It offers unlimited tracks, channels and advanced editing capabilities such as quantization, groove extraction and transient detection. Advanced folder structures help keep your projects organized. There are 30 very usable effects including the awesome Fat Channel that’s built into PreSonus hardware mixers. You also get the super-editable Mai Tai synth for a massive creativity boost.

Studio One Professional adds Arranger Tracks and Scratch Pads, a powerful what-if engine that allows you to non-destructively experiment with multiple variations of songs, passages and riffs on the fly. The 64-bit mix engine generates wonderfully detailed, nuanced sound. For complex recordings, exploit the power of extended FX chains as well as the robust loops, instruments and effects libraries. The 41 bundled effects include the user-friendly Multiband Dynamics compressor and Open Air reverb that add professional punch and sheen to your projects. Complete mastering and distribution tools means you can take your projects from an initial riff to a sketch to a polished, mastered production ready to distribute via CD, streaming or download. Read our in-depth Hands-On Review of PreSonus Studio One.

PreSonus is offering a full range of upgrade and crossgrade possibilities for owners of earlier Studio One versions and competing DAWs. Check out all the currently available options above.To lure some of the latter prospects and ease the transition process, the program can even be set up to respond to your current DAW’s command set.