# Studio One's multi-monitor / 4k support is awful



## shponglefan (Nov 9, 2020)

Bit of a rant incoming...

After reading up on various people's like of Studio One's workflow, I decided to try it out for myself. I've been using Reaper, but I'm always interested in trying other DAWs to see if I 'click' better with a different interface, workflow, etc.

I'm currently running a pair of 4k 32" monitors on Windows 10 (running 175% scaling). I also have a third, smaller monitor which sits on top of my digital piano off to the side. That third monitor will become an issue later.


*4k issues*

Studio One supports High DPI mode which is encouraging. Enabling High DPI mode makes the interface look nice and crisp. However, plugins that don't support scaling (e.g. Kontakt) are tiny. Studio One does offer the option to enable System DPI mode on a per plug in basis. Unfortunately this feature doesn't work properly. When using it with Kontakt, while it does scale things, part of the interface is not displayed. Furthermore when clicking away from the plugin and then clicking back to it, I'm greeted with a grey window. Nothing is displayed at all.

After doing some internet searching, it appears I'm not the only one having this issue. System DPI mode seems broken.

Instead, I opted to disable High DPI mode so that plugins will scale correctly and I can actually view them at a decent size. The downside is now the Studio One interface is slightly blurry as it is also being scaled. Not ideal, but somewhat livable.


*Multi-Monitor issues*

The next thing I tried was using multiple monitors. When loading up Studio One, everything defaults on a single screen. It took a little bit of work to figure out that the mixer and MIDI editor windows could be undocked.

Yet when undocking them they just disappeared altogether. After more than a little hair pulling trying to figure out where they had went, I realized they were showing up on my third monitor atop my digital piano. So this meant going to my piano and manually dragging the windows back to my primary monitors.

At this point, I have the main Studio One interface window maximized on one monitor. I dragged the editor window to my other main monitor and hit the maximize button. And it proceeds to maximize onto the monitor I already had the main interface maximized on. So I try again, same result. Then I try the mixer window and same result.

I end up having to move the Studio One interface window to the second monitor, then maximize the editor / mixer (which now maximizes on that monitor) before dragging the main interface back to my other monitor.

With everything finally set, I decided to exit the program and restart to see if it would retain this configuration.

It didn't. Darn.


*It shouldn't be this difficult.*

I don't understand how things like multi-monitor and/or 4k support is such a challenge for a company making professional DAW software. Do they expect all their users to have single screens and nothing else? Do they not think that people have 4k screens (including now on laptops)?

The fact they can't get basic usability features right does not inspire any confidence in what is supposed to be a professional product costing hundreds of dollars.

At this point, I don't care how great the workflow in Studio One is supposed to be. If I have to spend several minutes trying to get a mixer window to properly maximize on a second monitor every time I run the program, it's just not worth it.


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## Lukas (Nov 10, 2020)

Where do I start? High DPI and scaling are rather complicated topics and there are so many misunderstandings out there, comparable to "my DAW sounds better than yours".

Okay. "*Studio One's 4k support is awful*"? Alright, you say at the beginning:



> *Enabling High DPI mode makes the interface look nice and crisp.*



Exactly! I'd say Studio One's High DPI support is pretty awesome. Or better: No there's nothing awesome about it but it just works. And it's so far one of the few DAWs (maybe the only one? I don't know - I don't know the others that well) that supports High DPI natively (which means that it uses the OS scaling configuration natively).

Now you say "_plugins that don't support scaling (e.g. Kontakt) are tiny_". Yes, of course they are. If they don't support High DPI, they're tiny! Blame Native Instruments for not supporting things that others support for 10 years  Studio One is not responsible for plug-ins developers that don't listen to their customers.



shponglefan said:


> Studio One does offer the option to enable System DPI mode on a per plug in basis. Unfortunately this feature doesn't work properly. When using it with Kontakt, while it does scale things, part of the interface is not displayed. Furthermore when clicking away from the plugin and then clicking back to it, I'm greeted with a grey window. Nothing is displayed at all.
> 
> After doing some internet searching, it appears I'm not the only one having this issue. System DPI mode seems broken.


That's true. It does not work properly with some plug-ins. So here is what Studio One does: Some time ago Microsoft introduced an experimental feature in Windows 10 which allows applying individual scaling to certain windows. It's rather a test mode than an official feature. PreSonus immediately made use of this test mode which is why you can enable scaling on a per plug-in basis. It's a Windows 10 functionality. Studio One just uses what the operating system offers.

Like all experimental things, this does not always work equally well in all scenarios. But it works quite well with a bunch of different plug-ins. Kontakt (again) seems to look really bad with this mode turned on. Native Instruments knows about this issue (for more than two years now). Seems they haven't changed anything here.

It's like blaming the DAW for plug-ins that are buggy / incompatible and make the host crash. If you want to judge Studio One's High DPI capabilities, you should look at the Studio One internal plug-ins. That's what Studio One is responsible for... but it can't change the way other plug-in manufacturers draw their GUI.

*Studio One's 4k support is awful?* When you take a look at Studio One on a 4k screen and when I take a look at Kontakt on a 4k screen... which one exactly looks awful? Studio One or Kontakt?



shponglefan said:


> *Multi-Monitor issues*
> 
> The next thing I tried was using multiple monitors. When loading up Studio One, everything defaults on a single screen. It took a little bit of work to figure out that the mixer and MIDI editor windows could be undocked.


I'm sorry that it took you a little bit of work to figure this out... but there are two buttons at the corner which have tooltips "Close" and "Detach". I think it's pretty straightforward!?






I don't know why the windows don't maximize at the right screen on your end. Maybe it has to do with the way your monitor setup is configured - hard to say without knowing the exact settings. Maybe there are some issues... but in the end Studio One simply uses what is set up in the OS. And on my Windows 10 system multi screen management works pretty flawlessly. Sure - there are things that I'd like to have like perfectly customizable screen sets that can be saved to presets and recalled easily.

It looks to me that you didn't really take the time to see how things are configured before writing that Studio One would be bad at High DPI or multi monitor workflows.

_*It shouldn't be this difficult. *_**


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## shponglefan (Nov 10, 2020)

Lukas said:


> Now you say "_plugins that don't support scaling (e.g. Kontakt) are tiny_". Yes, of course they are. If they don't support High DPI, they're tiny! Blame Native Instruments for not supporting things that others support for 10 years  Studio One is not responsible for plug-ins developers that don't listen to their customers.



Yup, I fully get this. I was simply reinforcing this is expected behavior.



> It's like blaming the DAW for plug-ins that are buggy / incompatible and make the host crash. If you want to judge Studio One's High DPI capabilities, you should look at the Studio One internal plug-ins. That's what Studio One is responsible for... but it can't change the way other plug-in manufacturers draw their GUI.



Except that other DAWs have found ways to make this work.

In both Bitwig Studio and Reaper the DAW uses High DPI mode, but I can still use Windows scaling for the respective plug ins.

So it's definitely possible. My question is why can't Presonus make it work in Studio One?



> I'm sorry that it took you a little bit of work to figure this out... but there are two buttons at the corner which have tooltips "Close" and "Detach". I think it's pretty straightforward!?



Yes, I understand how the detach option works. The problem is it doesn't work as expected, as I pointed out. It was detaching the windows and causing them to appear on my third monitor for some reason. Then when I moved the detached window to the screen I wanted to maximize them on, it was instead maximizing them over top of the main Studio One interface.



> I don't know why the windows don't maximize at the right screen on your end. Maybe it has to do with the way your monitor setup is configured - hard to say without knowing the exact settings.



There's nothing overly esoteric about my setup. It's a standard multi-monitor setup and I've been doing this in Windows for a decade now.

I don't have these types of issues with other applications. I use a variety of professional apps (music, graphics, video) with multi-monitor capabilities and they all just work.

Studio One is the only application I've seen that has this odd behavior.

Now Native Instruments' Access program does sometimes randomly start on my 3rd screen. But I can easily move it over using the Windows key + arrow keys. In the case of Studio One, that functionality doesn't work on the detached windows.



> Maybe there are some issues... but in the end Studio One simply uses what is set up in the OS.



This isn't (or shouldn't be) an OS specific issue. I mean, I'm just trying to maximize a window and it won't maximize on the screen I've got the window on.

As I said, I've got a host of other applications that have the same type of functionality and they all work fine.

And for the record, I just tried it again just to make sure I wasn't crazy, and it's still doing it. Maybe it's something specific to my system, but not having seem the same behavior in other applications, I don't know what that would be.


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## shponglefan (Nov 10, 2020)

Okay, I tested things further by disconnecting my third monitor. If I disconnect that monitor, then Studio One seems to work properly when it comes to maximizing windows on the correct monitor.

However, when I reconnect the third monitor, the maximizing behavior no longer works properly. I have no idea what about a three monitor setup is confusing Studio One, but that does seem to be the culprit.

Trying a few other applications including Bitwig Studio, Adobe Photoshop and Clip Studio Paint, everything maximizes correctly even with the 3rd monitor connected. This does appear to be a Studio One specific issue.


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## Trash Panda (Nov 10, 2020)

How do you get Kontakt to work in non high DPI mode in Reaper? It never works for me.


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## shponglefan (Nov 10, 2020)

The Serinator said:


> How do you get Kontakt to work in non high DPI mode in Reaper? It never works for me.



If you right click on a plugin and select "Run as", you can pick the option to run as a separate process. This runs the plugin bridged and will use the Windows scaling instead of running it in Reaper's High DPI mode.







You can also elect to run all plug ins in this mode in the Preferences -> Plugins -> Compatibility.

But I prefer to run them in Automatic mode except for plug ins that don't otherwise scale properly in 4k, like Kontakt.


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## pinki (Nov 10, 2020)

Use the 📌 on popped out windows?


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## shponglefan (Nov 10, 2020)

For point of comparison, this is what scaling looks like in the three DAWs (all screenshots originally captured at 4k).

Bitwig Studio:






Reaper (High DPI, standalone process for Kontakt):







Studio One (High DPI enabled and System DPI enabled for Kontakt):







As Bitwig Studio and Reaper indicate, it's definitely possible to use a High DPI mode for the DAW yet still scale a plugin using the Windows OS scaling.

Something is buggy in Studio One's implementation as is evident with the partially cut-off display. And as mentioned, if I click away and click back, the whole window just goes grey.


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## Ed Wine (Nov 10, 2020)

Use Bitwig and Reaper then. Or smaller screens, less monitors. Why get yourself so upset over something you don't need? It's not for you.


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## shponglefan (Nov 10, 2020)

Ed Wine said:


> Use Bitwig and Reaper then. Or smaller screens, less monitors. Why get yourself so upset over something you don't need? It's not for you.



Well that's just silly. If a piece of software doesn't work properly, the solution should be to fix the software, not tell a potential customer that it's "not for them".


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## pinki (Nov 10, 2020)

I thought 4k monitors were a bad idea with DAW’s? Im curious, are you saying in Reaper you can run the plugin outside of the DAW and bridge to it? Doesn’t that produce problems of its own?
Also, email support!
I am just trying out Studio One as well, and I really like it so far. The Mixer is a bit er...esoteric...but apart from that, it’s a good modern feeling DAW. 
I only have two non 4k monitors though.
(You will come across problems generally with DAWS and 4k I think)


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## Al Maurice (Nov 11, 2020)

The scaling hires feature is new to Studio One, so in a sense this is an early outing for them. 

Unlike Bitwig which was designed from the ground up, with a new UI with hires and multi screen support from the outset. Thus it's likely their devs/QA tested this with various configurations.

To redesign a UI is a hugely expensive process on resources, thus we need to be patient here. Plugins need to work on lots of scenarios and for years UIs all consisted of bitmap graphics. Thus many legacy plugins won't work well. Just look at Ableton lots of plugins fail with their UI, and are completely unusable whereas they work fine in Bitwig, SO and other DAWs.

4K will force lots of developers to up their game, as many apps now have illegible UIs, making the UX and workflow unworkable for long periods of time.


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## Minko (Nov 11, 2020)

Two things. 
1)
I set the windows to where I want them. Then save the song as a template or just as a song. Every time I open that song or the template based on that song. The windows open up where I want them. I'm on Mac so could be different on Windows.

2)
This is an exellent discription of what happens and what bothers you. Did you send this to Presonus support so they can actually work with it?


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## Lukas (Nov 11, 2020)

I agree you should send this report to the PreSonus support. On my system, it works fine out of the box, but the support can take a look what might be the problem here.



Al Maurice said:


> The scaling hires feature is new to Studio One, so in a sense this is an early outing for them.


What do you mean exactly? Studio One supports High DPI since version 3 (2015) ... as far as I know it was the first DAW that supported High DPI at all. If you mean the individual plug-in scaling functionality, this was added one or two weeks after Microsoft officially introduced this feature in Win 10. So....pretty directly I guess 



shponglefan said:


> Something is buggy in Studio One's implementation as is evident with the partially cut-off display. And as mentioned, if I click away and click back, the whole window just goes grey.


As I said, Studio One just uses what the OS offers. If KONTAKT doesn't scale correctly, ask Microsoft or NI to make KONTAKT compatible. I can only tell how Studio One works... but it seems to me that the other DAWs don't support native OS scaling at all.

It's like saying a DAW is buggy because a plug-in crashes. It's just wrong.


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## Geomir (Nov 11, 2020)

I think the title of this thread should just be "Studio One's multi-monitor / 4k support".


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## shponglefan (Nov 11, 2020)

pinki said:


> I thought 4k monitors were a bad idea with DAW’s?



That seems to be a running theme in various discussions on this subject I've read. But it astounds me that this is the case to begin with. 4k is not new technology and DAW/plugin developers have had years to catch up and implement solutions to scaling products to different resolutions and ensure they work.



> Im curious, are you saying in Reaper you can run the plugin outside of the DAW and bridge to it? Doesn’t that produce problems of its own?



The main issue that I know of is keyboard shortcuts not recognized by Reaper if the standalone plugin is in focus. Though I don't tend to use keyboard shortcuts much myself, so it's not something I've been affected by.


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## shponglefan (Nov 11, 2020)

Minko said:


> Two things.
> 1)
> I set the windows to where I want them. Then save the song as a template or just as a song. Every time I open that song or the template based on that song. The windows open up where I want them. I'm on Mac so could be different on Windows.



So the window positioning is a result of saving specific templates or songs? Good to know. With other DAWs I'm used to windows just saving as a result of using the DAW itself and not having that tied to specific projects.



> 2)
> This is an exellent discription of what happens and what bothers you. Did you send this to Presonus support so they can actually work with it?



I have posted comments on their site and upvoted where others have reported the 4k scaling issues. It is a known issue so I'm hoping they do fix it.

I haven't reported the weird issue with maximizing windows yet though. I'm going to do more testing this weekend and maybe try out some different configurations and different monitors to see which situations triggers it. It is a really odd issue.


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## shponglefan (Nov 11, 2020)

Lukas said:


> As I said, Studio One just uses what the OS offers. If KONTAKT doesn't scale correctly, ask Microsoft or NI to make KONTAKT compatible. I can only tell how Studio One works... but it seems to me that the other DAWs don't support native OS scaling at all.



Take a look at the screenshots in post #8. It scales fine in Reaper and Bitwig Studio.

Whereas, it doesn't fully display properly in Studio One.


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## shponglefan (Nov 11, 2020)

Al Maurice said:


> To redesign a UI is a hugely expensive process on resources, thus we need to be patient here. Plugins need to work on lots of scenarios and for years UIs all consisted of bitmap graphics. Thus many legacy plugins won't work well. Just look at Ableton lots of plugins fail with their UI, and are completely unusable whereas they work fine in Bitwig, SO and other DAWs.



I can appreciate it's not likely a trivial task, especially depending on whatever legacy code base they might be working from.

At the same time, I do expect that for any major version release of an application, that it should be designed to work with contemporary systems. This includes proper 4k support and support for VST plugins that may not have 4k support themselves.

With the Windows marketspace having at least a half dozen prominent DAWs right now, there are options. If these developers want to get customers, they need to get the basics right.


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## Lukas (Nov 11, 2020)

shponglefan said:


> Take a look at the screenshots in post #8. It scales fine in Reaper and Bitwig Studio.
> 
> Whereas, it doesn't fully display properly in Studio One.


Which does not mean anything is buggy in Studio One.


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## shponglefan (Nov 11, 2020)

Lukas said:


> Which does not mean anything is buggy in Studio One.



Then why does it show up fine in other DAWs? Or in standalone mode for that matter?

And even leaving aside the fact it doesn't fully display the Kontakt window in S1, there is still a bug where it doesn't refresh the display properly (leading to greyed out views). This is an issue with various plugins not just Kontakt and has been reported by other users on Presonus' site.

There are clearly some Studio One specific issues with their implementation of System OS display scaling.


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## PaulieDC (Nov 11, 2020)

Out of the box suggestion, to which you'll probably TP my house but here goes:

Dell 49


I doubt it would fit but I REALLY want this monitor. My wife got a 34" curved which I though would be weird. It's NOT, the screen distance is the same as you turn your head.

Kind of off topic I realize. OK gang, resume the debate!


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