# PreSonus Studio One 3



## Bunford (Jun 17, 2015)

Anybody use this? Any views on it?

I use Cubase Pro 8 and Ableton 9 at the moment, but Studio One 3 has peaked my interest so having a little nose about it :D


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## samphony (Jun 17, 2015)

I use it and work between tools like others use guitars and drums  I'm a logic guy. So for me it was easy to get use to it and adjust it for consistency when working with logic. 

The scratchpad is my favorite part. In fact using the scratchpad for cues and the arrange view for the whole project is very cool. 

Then the arranger track and multi instrument are another cool part of this DAW. 

As u know how to work with cubase it should be relatively easy for you to work with studio one.


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## Bunford (Jun 17, 2015)

The scratchpad does look like a nifty feature!

I reckon i could get to grips with functionality quickly, but more about learning the workflow. Basically, i use Ableton for workflow and Cubase 8 for featres at the moment.

It seems like Studio One has features similar to Cubase but is more intuitive and user-friendly, making it a middle ground between both DAWs i currently use. This is what i'm being hooked by i think!


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## Farkle (Jun 17, 2015)

I'm a devout Studio One user (Version 2). I really like the workflow, and the seamless connections it has with hardware controllers.

I just bought the Ver 3 upgrade, and will be loading it in July (in the middle of finishing some cues for clients). Once I do that, I'll give you some feedback on it.

Right now, it looks really impressive, with the scratchpad and arrange window thing'y. Looks great for getting library cues written and run through.

Mike


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## José Herring (Jun 17, 2015)

Farkle how is Studio One working to picture? Also, does it have decent enough notation?

In the mood to switch DAWS. So I'm looking around. So far DP8 is looking pretty good. But Studio One caught my eye.


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## samphony (Jun 17, 2015)

I know a lot of people myself included would like to see more improvements in the music editing (there is no midi department to come closer to cubase and logic in that regard. But as Matthias stated they look into groups of people and build specific features and this time it was more for songwriting and edm so maybe composers are next on the list. 

In the mean time instead of using the one and only using a mix of different tools is the best approach I think. Totally dependent on workflow of course.


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## Chris Hurst (Jun 17, 2015)

I use it (as well as Logic) and think it is great. I find it really easy to get ideas down and the drag & drop workflow really suits me.

The scratchpad is really useful and the fact you can master the tracks in the same application really speeds things up too. It is really quick to flick between the mix and the master session (so you can tweak the mix and update the mastering file in a couple clicks).


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## samphony (Jun 17, 2015)

I think the project page, the one where you are supposed to master, could be overhauled. 

Think about this. Just imagine creating a cue per song. Then drag the song into the project page there you could arrange your cue. If the director wants a change on a specific cue you switch to the song conform or edit and switch back to the project page. The conformed or edited song will render automatically.


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## Farkle (Jun 17, 2015)

josejherring @ Wed Jun 17 said:


> Farkle how is Studio One working to picture? Also, does it have decent enough notation?
> 
> In the mood to switch DAWS. So I'm looking around. So far DP8 is looking pretty good. But Studio One caught my eye.



Hi, Jose!

Working to picture is well enough, probably as good as Pro Tools. There are certain export formats that work well (I think MP4 is one of them). The big limitation in Version 2 is no tempo ramping controls. If you want to fake a ritardando, you have to stepwise decrement the tempo to make a hit point. I don't know if tempo ramps were implemented in Ver 3.

Re: notation, it has no notation at all. Presonus bought Notion, and it is supposed to work very tightly with Notion. I'm still figuring out how best to integrate my Sibelius into Studio One. Right now, I compose (sometimes complete scores) in Sibelius, then play it into Studio One.

I used the DP 8 demo (on PC, Win 7 64 bit). I will say that there were three things that made me drop DP 8 and move to Studio One.

1. Studio One (Version 2) handled large templates, with multiple Kontakt instruments stupendously. DP 8 would hang, take forever to load, bouncing stems was a nightmare. Studio One was super clean.

2. Studio One's mixing environment was so much more intuitive and easy, I feel like I got better mixes because I could get the routing and plugins to work much more intuitively than in DP 8.

3. Even though MIDI is not as powerful in Studio One as in DP8, for what I needed to do, it was multiple times faster. And, I know that in Ver 3, they have implemented Step Input, which is huge.

All in all, I'm quite happy with Studio One. The lack of notation is not a big bother to me, as I play all the parts in anyways. Honestly, I'm back to a lot of paper and pencil for my sketches. The video doesn't bother me, but I haven't done a TV show or film in a while... when I get something that might require deep tempo mapping, etc... I might be a little swamped. But, I think I'll do the tempo mapping in Sibelius, then export the Midi tempo map to Studio One. We'll see how that works... 

Mike


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## Bunford (Jun 18, 2015)

Might be a daft question to ask nowadays, but i assume Studio One supports multiple monitors fine? Asking as i like to have an arrangement window on one monitor and mixer on the other.

Also, is it fairly easy to set up multi out Kontakt instances? Only asking as I know some DAWs make this a royal pain and way more complicated tha it needs to be!


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## Bohrium (Jun 18, 2015)

Bunford @ Thu Jun 18 said:


> Might be a daft question to ask nowadays, but i assume Studio One supports multiple monitors fine? Asking as i like to have an arrangement window on one monitor and mixer on the other.
> 
> Also, is it fairly easy to set up multi out Kontakt instances? Only asking as I know some DAWs make this a royal pain and way more complicated tha it needs to be!



Yes to both of your questions. Actually, it is easier to setup multi out Kontakt instances in Studio One than the work to set it up in Kontakt.


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## Farkle (Jun 18, 2015)

Bohrium @ Thu Jun 18 said:


> Bunford @ Thu Jun 18 said:
> 
> 
> > Might be a daft question to ask nowadays, but i assume Studio One supports multiple monitors fine? Asking as i like to have an arrangement window on one monitor and mixer on the other.
> ...



To elaborate further, after loading a multi in Kontakt, not only can I rename all the outputs of Kontakt in the Studio One mixer, I can rename the actual instance of Kontakt very easily, so when I bring up my list of loaded Kontakt Instruments, I see "LASS Vlns, CineBrass Hi", etc, instead of "Kontakt 1, Kontakt 2". Very easy to organize templates that way.

Mike


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## Michael K. Bain (Jun 18, 2015)

Farkle @ Thu Jun 18 said:


> Bohrium @ Thu Jun 18 said:
> 
> 
> > Bunford @ Thu Jun 18 said:
> ...



Yes, the S1 part of it is much easier than the Kontakt part of it.


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## José Herring (Jun 18, 2015)

Thanks for your reply Farkle.


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## Lawson. (Jun 18, 2015)

Farkle @ Wed Jun 17 said:


> 1. Studio One (Version 2) handled large templates, with multiple Kontakt instruments stupendously. DP 8 would hang, take forever to load, bouncing stems was a nightmare. Studio One was super clean.



What are your specs, and how big is your template? DP8 handles my 750 track template perfectly fine and bouncing is no problem at all.


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## samphony (Jun 18, 2015)

JUST FYI:

If you use the new multi instrument in S1v3 and you recall you setting. All names and settings will be recalled with it. 

So if you wanna use and later recall a kontakt instance including an arpeggiator note fx I recommend to use the multi instrument container for total recall.


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## Bunford (Jun 22, 2015)

Just got the trial and started using it. Gotta say, it looks good but not quite as intuitive as I thought it might be.

Struggling with things at the moment, like the mixer window not showing tracks in arrangement view properly and when tracks are created they only appear in one rather than both. Had a squiz through the manual but can't find the solution (or, more likely, i have been looking in the wrong place!).


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## Bohrium (Jun 22, 2015)

Bunford @ Mon Jun 22 said:


> Just got the trial and started using it. Gotta say, it looks good but not quite as intuitive as I thought it might be.
> 
> Struggling with things at the moment, like the mixer window not showing tracks in arrangement view properly and when tracks are created they only appear in one rather than both. Had a squiz through the manual but can't find the solution (or, more likely, i have been looking in the wrong place!).



In the mixer you see sound sources ... in the arrangement you have tracks with almost any source and target (even external MIDI devices). So if you create more tracks that send MIDI to one and the same instance of Kontakt for example, you see only one instance in the mixer but you have more arranger tracks. They're not just different views of the same data they're completely different things.

Could this be your problem?


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## Farkle (Jun 22, 2015)

Lawson. @ Thu Jun 18 said:


> Farkle @ Wed Jun 17 said:
> 
> 
> > 1. Studio One (Version 2) handled large templates, with multiple Kontakt instruments stupendously. DP 8 would hang, take forever to load, bouncing stems was a nightmare. Studio One was super clean.
> ...



I have a 2012 quad core i7 PC (win Pro 64 bit), with hyperthreading (8 virtual cores).

32 GB RAM, 2 TB Sample Drive, 200GB SSD Drive for LASS and Hollywood Strings.

My template is about 200 tracks, mostly Kontakt, with Stylus, Omnisphere, and several soft synths (Absynth, Massive, etc.).

I do have a PC, so my DP8 was the PC one... it just... didn't seem to use my multi-core PC optimally. Kept freezing, pausing, every time I would open a loaded Kontakt instance. If I switched tracks for record arming, it would pause for 10 seconds. Very difficult. Didn't work for me at all. :(


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## Farkle (Jun 22, 2015)

Bunford @ Mon Jun 22 said:


> Just got the trial and started using it. Gotta say, it looks good but not quite as intuitive as I thought it might be.
> 
> Struggling with things at the moment, like the mixer window not showing tracks in arrangement view properly and when tracks are created they only appear in one rather than both. Had a squiz through the manual but can't find the solution (or, more likely, i have been looking in the wrong place!).



Try hopping on to the studio One forum (www.presonus.com), and asking your question there. The user groups are really nice there.

Studio one ver 3 did do something new involving how it syncs up the track window with the mixer window, so you could be having issues because of their new functionality. (it's not a bug, it's a feature!!). o=? 

Mike


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## samphony (Jun 22, 2015)

Bunford @ Mon Jun 22 said:


> Just got the trial and started using it. Gotta say, it looks good but not quite as intuitive as I thought it might be.
> 
> Struggling with things at the moment, like the mixer window not showing tracks in arrangement view properly and when tracks are created they only appear in one rather than both. Had a squiz through the manual but can't find the solution (or, more likely, i have been looking in the wrong place!).



Empty unassigned instrument tracks never show up in the mix console. That's the way S1 deals with midi tracks.
If you drag a kontakt instance into the arrange window it creates an instrument track in the arrange window and a stereo out channelstrip in the mix console.


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## gtrwll (Jun 22, 2015)

(First post! Hello all and thanks for a wonderful forum which has given me a lot!  )

I tried the Studio One v2 demo a few months ago, but the midi capabilities didn't seem to suit my needs (I basically work only with midi), so I decided to wait for v3. Surprisingly that came out just two months later so I tried that one as well, but not much had changed in terms of what I would need from it. 

Sure, the workflow is good and some of the new features are neat (Scratchpad etc.), but the program itself seemed too unstable compared to v2. I'm sure its just bugs (and maybe my setup) and will be sorted out eventually, but it didn't really convince me to pay 300€ for the crossgrade. I did one small project with it and the program crashed quite a few times, mostly when I tried to use the track transform function to bounce several midi tracks to audio. And then there was this strange bug that expression automation affected different midi track than it was written into.

But then again, those were just my experiences with the product and I have to say that working with the program was fantastic momentarily, but the bugs and problems kinda put me off. Mixing and audio editing seemed just fine. Sadly I don't think that I can try the demo again in one year to see if they've fixed the bugs...


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## woodsdenis (Jun 23, 2015)

V3 is very buggy, unfortunately Presonus ability to fix bugs in the past has been less than stellar. Some really clever ideas and workflow without the ability to make them work reliably. Tried V3 and made it crash within 5 mins consistently.


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## scarred bunny (Jun 23, 2015)

I tried the demo... for one night. It seemed really unstable on my system as well unfortunately. And when I look at the features for V3, they mostly seem to revolve around things I don't need or care about, and no mention of things I do need and care about (like improving the MIDI side of things). I'm also less convinced of the superiority of its workflow/interface than most, possibly because I don't feel drag-and-drop is always the correct option. 

Too bad because there's some good stuff and clever ideas in there, like the effects routing and scratch pad. 

Oh well. Guess I'm staying in Cubase land a little while longer. Got my eyes fixed on the next Digital Performer though.


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## edwinkuipers (Jun 23, 2015)

woodsdenis @ Tue Jun 23 said:


> V3 is very buggy, unfortunately Presonus ability to fix bugs in the past has been less than stellar. Some really clever ideas and workflow without the ability to make them work reliably. Tried V3 and made it crash within 5 mins consistently.



Tried the demo and only had 1 crash in all the time I have used it. I love the GUI, and the new additions, but sadly MIDI is still the same. Really was hoping it would have been upgraded, same as the tempo track and some sort of Notion intergration. Here's hoping it will still come, since it's a great DAW.


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## edwinkuipers (Jun 23, 2015)

scarred bunny @ Tue Jun 23 said:


> Got my eyes fixed on the next Digital Performer though.



Looking forward to demo that one aswell, sadly DP8 (windows) doesn't seem to like PLAY, getting nothing but processing spikes along with dropouts etc. I don't have VEP5, seems that work better from what I've read.


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## scarred bunny (Jun 23, 2015)

edwinkuipers @ Tue Jun 23 said:


> Looking forward to demo that one aswell, sadly DP8 (windows) doesn't seem to like PLAY, getting nothing but processing spikes along with dropouts etc. I don't have VEP5, seems that work better from what I've read.



Yep... I find there's a lot to like about DP8, but in general it seems pretty hit and miss on the Windows side still. Very curious to see what the next one is like. Although I guess at this point I'm so set in my Cubase ways, it would have to be pretty spectacular to make me want to switch, but I'll give it a go. 

Hi, my name is Bunny and I'm a DAW-o-holic. I don't have time to make music because I spend all my days tweaking setups, rebuilding templates and demoing sequencers.


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