Menu
What's new
By:
Filters

Why does Presonus keep Studio One's scripting capabilities under lock and key??

C

clonewar

Active Member
I'm frustrated so this is a little bit of a rant. We know that S1 has a scripting engine under the hood, and based on scripts that have been made available it looks like it's pretty capable. There's a little info about scripting on the Presonus forum, but not enough to actually accomplish anything useful, and it seems like Presonus is not interested in sharing any information about S1's scripting API.

I really like S1, but I need to be able to write some custom midi manipulation scripts (for starters). Logic has Scripter, Cubase has the logical editor, and of course Reaper has an extensive scripting API with a built-in mini-IDE. I can't understand why Presonus is withholding this from users that want to dig into it?

I submitted a support ticket about this and they got back to me and said that scripting is unofficial and unsupported. I told them that I'm not looking for support or help, just a basic function/property reference, but they said that isn't available. Of course it has to be documented somewhere because S1 scripts and extensions exist.

I'll admit that I'm doubly frustrated today because I psyched myself up into thinking that Steinberg would finally address the issues with expression maps (especially working with large maps) in Cubase 12 and after the response from Presonus was planning to just go back to Cubase. But those hopes were dashed with today's C12 release.

I've gotten into Reaper scripting and it's awesome, but I just can't gel with actually making music in Reaper, especially working in the midi editor. If only I could have Reaper's scripting capabilities combined with S1's workflow and articulation management....Oh wait, that might already exist in S1, but.. :emoji_sob:
Click to read more...
 
Preaching to the choir...
But my best guess is the scripting language they have would get many users into trouble causing general stability issues with Studio One and create a major problem for support.
 
clonewar said:
I told them that I'm not looking for support or help, just a basic function/property reference
Click to expand...
I strongly suspect that Presonus believes they would be inundated with requests for help and support. If they don't have the resources to support it, they might be justified in not releasing it. Note that I said "might be". Perhaps the answer is for them to charge money for scripting so they can pay for support.
 
I understand the possible support issues that scripting can lead to, and offered to sign an NDA or 'no support' agreement to get access to the info that I'm looking for, but no dice. I can't see any reason to withhold this info from customers when they're willing to agree to assume the support risks.
 
My first DAW was Studio One 2.Something about 9 years ago before I got into orchestration, and as the new kid on the block the DAW was totally geared towards singer-songwriters, EDM, pop and mixing/mastering. It became a mostly-viable composer/orchestration DAW is several waves if you remember, and regardless how good it's getting, MIDI Orchestration never has the frontline focus. v5.2 through v5.5 has had that thankfully and I applaud them for big things like Sound Variations, but you still have a few big-game features that will have to come in the next wave, and hopefully scripting and video support HELLO will become part of the feature list. The pop/rock/EDM crowd is still their big customer base and you should see the whining and complaining when a version gets released with features we all on this nutty forum need, as if a violin over MIDI was causing world hunger, lol. However, changes are coming bigger and faster now, I think PreSonus needs to believe they are now nearly a top notch contender. Believe me, I didn't want to ditch S1 but in early 2019 it was not great, even had i9/Xeon issues with Notion and S1's CPU-core management in v4 was not stellar. I was bummed saying goodbye, believe me, but Cubase ticked all the boxes. So I don't use S1 now but since v5.2 S1 has really come of age and I'm glad. So hang in there... these things will come. Hammering them in their forums does work, they do listen. Well, not to my design a while back for a 4 fader CC controller, lol, but for S1 they do.
 
clonewar said:
it seems like Presonus is not interested in sharing any information about S1's scripting API.
Click to expand...
PreSonus just doesn't give out any info about future developments... this has always been the case. Also something like third party scripting needs an infrastructure and has to be built first - just like any other feature. And I agree, user scripting would be great.

clonewar said:
Of course it has to be documented somewhere because S1 scripts and extensions exist.
Click to expand...
Not really. There are only two script extensions that can be installed in Studio One. One of them is the Studio One Macro Toolbar and it's part of the program, the other one is my Navigation Essentials scripting freebie.

There used to be the Studio One X script package some years ago that added additional functionality to Studio One. The author apparently reverse engineered parts of the program and looked at the code. Apart from that, all other more advanced scripts that exist are written by people who have also worked on Studio One.
 
Last edited:
2023 bump.. Wondering if anything changed in S1 V6 regarding access to and any documentation for the scripting engine? I'm guessing the answer is no since I can't find any new info out there about it, but I'm keeping hope alive.
 
clonewar said:
I'm frustrated so this is a little bit of a rant. We know that S1 has a scripting engine under the hood, and based on scripts that have been made available it looks like it's pretty capable. There's a little info about scripting on the Presonus forum, but not enough to actually accomplish anything useful, and it seems like Presonus is not interested in sharing any information about S1's scripting API.

I really like S1, but I need to be able to write some custom midi manipulation scripts (for starters). Logic has Scripter, Cubase has the logical editor, and of course Reaper has an extensive scripting API with a built-in mini-IDE. I can't understand why Presonus is withholding this from users that want to dig into it?

I submitted a support ticket about this and they got back to me and said that scripting is unofficial and unsupported. I told them that I'm not looking for support or help, just a basic function/property reference, but they said that isn't available. Of course it has to be documented somewhere because S1 scripts and extensions exist.

I'll admit that I'm doubly frustrated today because I psyched myself up into thinking that Steinberg would finally address the issues with expression maps (especially working with large maps) in Cubase 12 and after the response from Presonus was planning to just go back to Cubase. But those hopes were dashed with today's C12 release.

I've gotten into Reaper scripting and it's awesome, but I just can't gel with actually making music in Reaper, especially working in the midi editor. If only I could have Reaper's scripting capabilities combined with S1's workflow and articulation management....Oh wait, that might already exist in S1, but.. :emoji_sob:
Click to expand...
Agree 100%.
No change at all in v6.
 
A couple of reinforcements... I applaud Presonus for keeping the lid on future plans, this is how it should be - relying on vaporware as a marketing tool seems to me a bit skeevy.

I do not applaud them for keeping scripting from users. It is abundantly clear that the capability exists.

It will cause support headaches - at first anyway, but in the long run, as more and more script gurus come up to speed, support requests will decrease as the user community will take that on, unofficially of course, but just look through their forums and you will see they have a pretty good community.
 
Hello. Thanks for all the support here in this forum. I'm new here and want to share my 2 cents.
To integrate SO6 with external systems, I did a Virtual MIDI Input on my laptop that I run to receive Studio One 6 messages and route to all the other systems. Examples include controlling my SoundCraft UI24R parameters, changing lyrics and in the future control lights. This isn't indeed the most optimal way, but this was the only chance I've seen at that moment. I hope to help some of you with this approach.
Regards
 
Hello. I have discovered how to make controllers work with Studio One 6. I have also discovered their Javascript SDK and will be posting some documentation soon.

Check out the script I created for the MPC Studio Mk2. It now works similar to the ATOM pad controller:

 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Top Bottom