Making a switch to Studio One Pro :) ...some questions for anyone using it

Recording, Mixing and Producing
#1

So the need has arisen to add Studio One Pro 4 to the Jonathan studio family of DAWs.

First, its not clear on google if Studio One Pro 4 projects can be opened in Studio One 3 - or if there is a way to ‘save as’ for forward compatibility. Its clear that sessions are backwards compatible…is it possible to go in the other direction?

So is the Save to New Folder feature designed so that sessions can be packaged and shared between studios? Is that what this feature is primarily for?

In what ways does it differ from other DAWs you guys have used in terms of features and workflow details (however small they might be).

Does it have a ‘render in place’ or ‘commit audio effects to tracks’ function and is it any faster or slower than other DAW’s?

Does anyone find the stock plugin library lacking a certain genre of effects? Like ‘man I wish it had better compressors’ or ‘this thing needs better verbs’?

#2

I’ll be curious to see what your experiences are like with it. That’s one DAW I haven’t really put any meaningful time into but I’ve heard good things about it

#3

I’ll jump in. I went with Studio One a few years ago when I got back into home recording. The other contenders were Cakewalk and Reaper. For me, Studio One was just the right combination of older analog console feel and an updated UI and workflow.

I started on SO2 Producer, upgraded to SO3 Pro and am now on SO4 Pro. It’s the only DAW I really use, so I can’t answer your comparison questions, but I’ll tel you up front, I absolutely love it.

Correct, if you open a SO3 song in SO4, you are warned when you save that it can no longer be opened in SO3. However, if you need to keep them separate, SO4 and SO3 installed into 2 different directories, so I would think you could keep your songs separate for the 2 versions as well.

I’ve never used it. You can export the .WAV files if you want to copy those between session. Or, if you’re going to another Studio One installation with the same plugins etc., the songs are stored in a “songs” folder, and you can just copy the entire song from that folder and stick it on the other machine and Studio One can read it in. I do that between my DAW and my travel laptop - works great.

They’ve got a pretty respectable set of native plugins. If you jump soon, they are giving away their Fat Channel bundle and plugins for FREE too.
https://shop.presonus.com/products/software/Fat-Channel-Plug-ins/Fat-Channel-Collection-Vol-1-category/Bundles/Fat-Channel-Plug-in-Bundles-PreSonus-Bundle

https://shop.presonus.com/products/software/Fat-Channel-Plug-ins/Fat-Channel-Collection-Vol-1-category/Bundles/Fat-Channel-Plug-in-Bundles-Vintage-Channel-Strips-Bundle

They recently gave away UJAM’s “Virtual Guitarist Sparkle” for free too.

That said, they’ve got decent enough reverbs and delays. But a 3rd party delay was the first thing I went looking for. Still, I’m sure it was the user’s short coming and not the software. :wink:

All in all, I’m a total fanboy and have never once regretted going with Studio One.

1 Like
#4

I forgot to add that the Room Reverb and Groove Delay are pretty decent as is the ProEQ. Those three native plugins get frequent use. Oh, and the generic compressor. I use it for side-chaining. It’s a snap to set up and very kind to the CPU.

But I see you’ve already jumped in over on another thread. Have fun! As you said there, and I decided when I was looking, this is one of the most intuitive, robust and easy to use DAWs out there. (IMHO)