This week, PreSonus launched Studio One 5 Professional ($399.95, upgrade pricing available), a significant update of its DAW application. The new version adds even broader functionality, along with a host of powerful new features.
The top-line addition is called Show Page, a live-performance environment that joins Song (recording, arranging, mixing) and Project (mastering) as separate-but-integrated sections of Studio One.
PreSonus designed Show Page as a dedicated environment for hosting and mixing instruments, effects and backing tracks for live performance. You can create setlists that include mixer channels for live musicians to play through, backing tracks and effects, as well as extensive real-time controls for easy viewing onstage.
Another highlight of Studio One 5 is the addition of Score View, a notation section to the Note Editor. It’s based on technology from PreSonus Notion, a dedicated score editing application. Not only does the Note Editor transcribe your MIDI performances and let you edit them as notation, but you can also use step-entry from within it to add to or create new parts.
If you mix in Studio One, you’ll love the new Scenes feature, which allows you to save and recall mixer snapshots. You can save the state of your mix at any given time and reopen it with the press of a button. Use Scenes to compare mix versions, create alternate mixes in the same Song file, listen with and without specific tracks, and much more.
Studio One 5 also brings a revamp of the application’s Native Effects plug-ins. In addition to brand new, spiffed-up GUIs, PreSonus added features to many of the effects. Several have drive stages that offer analog-modeled saturation. Pro EQ received a considerable upgrade, adding a linear-phase, low-cut filter, a 12th-octave spectrum display, and meters with adjustable range and peak hold.
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Audio tracks in Studio One 5 can now display Clip Gain Envelopes, allowing you to adjust and automate increases or decreases in gain, pre-fader.
The new Listen bus lets you monitor soloed audio through a separate channel than the main outputs. It would allow you, for example, to solo a track during recording while leaving the mix that the talent hears unaffected.
Another cool addition is called Key Switch Articulations, which provides an editable visual reference that shows where in a virtual instrument track key switches have been used. PreSonus instruments are fully supported, and you can manually enter key switch parameters for third-party instruments.
PreSonus also announced a subscription plan called Sphere, which, for a monthly fee, provides full access to all the company’s software, including Studio One Professional and Notion. You also get access to all the Studio One and Notion Add-ons, plug-ins and sample and loop libraries. PreSonus also throws in 30GB of cloud storage, cloud collaboration tools, chats with experts, training, events and more. The subscription costs $14.95 monthly or $164.95 annually.
