I must confess, I never really used PreSonus Studio One [Tape Op #154]. While many of my friends are among its enthusiastic users, I was never able to find a place for it amongst my already crowded selection of DAWs. My workflow tends to look like this: Steinberg Cubase for film scoring (or Apple Logic or MOTU Digital Performer, if the job requires it); Avid Pro Tools for recording, mixing, and music editing; Ableton Live for what it does best; and Cockos Reaper for game audio and experimenting with extending its capabilities via its API (application programming interface). My needs are met, albeit scattered. I'd checked out the demo version of Studio One every few releases (version 5 was the last one I tried), but it never really clicked with me. My impression was always that it was like an amalgamation of Cubase and Logic. This isn't necessarily a bad thing – DAWs borrow features from one another all the time – but the lack of what felt like a unique identity kept me from diving into it beyond basic curiosity.
Fender has since acquired the PreSonus brand, and while the live sound and studio monitor products remain PreSonus by name, recording-specific software and hardware is being released under the new Fender Studio brand. In this review, I'll be attempting to let go of my previous impressions and take the rebrand as an opportunity to look at this DAW with fresh eyes.
Upon startup, I was greeted with one of the better implementations of a "hub" app that I've seen. It's tightly integrated with recent projects and audio interface settings, online features, and a news feed. Rather than being a separate window, it's always a click away via the Home button near the top-right corner of any project – I like that! Despite my aforementioned large collection of DAWs, my "home" (to the extent that I have one) is Cubase, and Studio Pro 8 feels very familiar. But unlike my previous impressions of Studio One, it feels less "ripped off" and more an adoption of what are simply good DAW design decisions that just happened to be (as far as I'm aware) first introduced in Cubase, all thoughtfully evolved with Studio Pro's ever-present focus on balancing information density with ease of use.
Moving from left to right: The Track List filters and search are powerful and provide quick and easy schemes for dealing with high track counts; being able to optionally view Groups and Scenes (a great feature – more on this later) is a smart decision. It's information-dense, but approachable. The Inspector is similar in that the interface gives a lot of control without being overwhelming. It offers enough functionality that one can choose to approach it from a "maximalist" position, making the Inspector the place that one looks for most track- and region-based functions; or one can hide some of its features, focusing its purpose into whatever one feels an Inspector should be used for. The primary window is clean but powerful and, once again, pretty Cubase-ish – but again, not in a bad way. I've always felt that Cubase arrived at certain design decisions by reasoning from first principles, similar to how "Leo Fender got it right the first time" with regard to the design of the Telecaster. As a result, I've no complaints here – it "just works" and feels good to jump in with right away.
Bonus points for the Info View, which elegantly solves the problem of feature discovery by showing a context-aware selection of actions depending on where your mouse is; actions that correspond to one or more modifier keys are highlighted when their respective modifier keys are held down. This really makes finding what you can do in any particular part of the interface a joy and will probably help counteract the sense of overwhelm that novices to DAWs might face. This is something I'm passionate about, as attempts to make DAWs more approachable too often result in simply dumbing their feature sets down to an unacceptable low, hurting the professional for the sake of the beginner. Features like Info View allow the DAW to remain a powerful choice for professionals while still offering a gentle learning curve for beginners. Smart.
The Editor (i.e., the piano roll) is similarly Cubase-ish. Working in it was natural and intuitive, with all the MIDI editing tools and features obvious and easily within reach. The fact that it offers multiple CC (continuous controller) lanes – a must in my book – is a huge plus.
The Console (mixer) is where Studio Pro is most original. The Instrument Rack, while somewhat confusing at first (Is it like the V-Rack in Digital Performer, or are these "just plug-ins"? Turns out, it's both.) is perhaps my new favorite design for separating instrument and track identity without separating signal flow. It's a design decision that feels similarly jarring to Ableton Live's horizontal placement of effects inserts – a design that Fender Studio Pro artfully steals – but becomes not just natural but preferred (at least for me).
The aforementioned Scenes feature is particularly wonderful. It provides quick and easy ways to try out new mix decisions without breaking your current mix; or one can simply use them as visibility presets. Scenes is a great example of a multi-faceted, powerful feature that is deceptively simple and yet somehow completely intuitive. The Launcher provides an Ableton Live/Bitwig-esque experience [See review in this issue. -Ed.] clip-focused way of working. It's simple but powerful enough to provide the basics of a more loop-based workflow. Perhaps my favorite feature of all is the Scratch Pad. The concept is incredibly simple – your timeline splits in half, and the new timeline to the right can be edited and played back without affecting your main timeline. This has so many uses: placing samples that you know you want to use but haven't found a place for yet, trying out new ideas, etc. It elegantly solves several problems we've all run into so much that I miss it when working in a DAW without a similar feature.
Put it all together, and my impression of Studio One has radically changed for the better. Instead of seeing it as an amalgamation of other DAWs without its own identity, I now see Studio Pro 8 as something that takes the best features of what came before it, makes them work together cohesively, and adds its own original ideas on top. The user experience is truly top-notch – the DAW offers a myriad of features and potential workflows but avoids feeling cluttered or overwhelming by thoughtfully guiding you toward your preferred workflow, striking a good balance of being opinionated while also allowing freedom to work the way you want. This is an extremely tricky thing to pull off, and frankly most DAWs fail at it to one degree or another. Users of any DAW will be able to more or less re-create the workflow they're used to as a launching-off point from which they can evolve by utilizing any of Studio Pro's more unique features, and/or those that take inspiration from other DAWs they may not have experience with. It's a very natural evolution of a DAW and exactly what I would expect a (still relatively) new player in the space to look like.
I've been so focused on user experience that I haven't gotten around to talking about Studio Pro 8's fantastic performance. It opens and closes projects incredibly quickly and handles large track counts like a champ. I'm glad to see that it offers performance-tuning features, such as setting the audio engine between 64-bit and 32-bit; the ability to enable Plug-in Nap, which turns off plug-in processing during muted sections and silence; and the ability to disable the use of Efficiency Cores. I truly had zero performance-related issues on macOS and Windows – Studio Pro 8 is best in class.
Lastly, let's talk pricing. At $199.99 for a perpetual license, it's very close to Logic Pro's bargain territory. You're paying for a perpetual license for the current version, but you also get 12 months of free updates, so if a new version is released within a year of your perpetual license purchase, you'll get the new version as well. Fender also offers a subscription for either $19.99/month or $179.99/year (three months free when compared to the monthly plan), but I find this a bit steep – with a perpetual license costing the same as roughly 13 months of a subscription (assuming you're on the yearly plan). However, the subscription does include a lot of extras, including access to sample libraries, cloud storage, cloud collaboration, and discounts on other Fender gear, so depending on your workflow, this could be a winner for you.
Lastly, a note on its Linux support: Wow! As Tape Op's resident Linux nerd, I can't adequately express how pleased I was to find that not only is Studio Pro supported on Linux, but it's very easy to install via Flatpak (meaning it should work just fine on any distribution; my Arch install ran it just fine). It's even Wayland native, whereas I believe all other major Linux DAWs are still locked to X11. Be still my heart! There were a couple of hard edges that I didn't experience on macOS or Windows, though. The content download window likes to get squished to the point that you can't read anything, and the content downloads failed multiple times before finally succeeding (I did not have this issue on other operating systems). I expect that this is due to my particular Wayland compositor, which is more indicative of a problem with Wayland's fractured design than Studio Pro. But then again, the responsibility does lie on Fender at least a little bit if they're going to offer a Wayland-native DAW. There were also a few graphical glitches, such as the transport cursor flashing when I focused the Editor or Console. It's annoying, but I'm sure this could easily be fixed with a patch. Lastly, on startup, I always had to re-license the computer. Eventually I ran out of activations and had to remove the duplicate activations. This one is particularly annoying, but I'm sure this too could be fixed. In fairness though, this is a public beta version, and it is updated with every new release. Bugs aside, this is easily the smoothest, most modern DAW experience I've had on Linux. Taking into consideration my introductory thoughts on the various "food groups" of DAWs and Studio One/Studio Pro's place within it, any resemblance it has to Cubase and Logic is 100 percent a plus on Linux, given that I can already run both Reaper and Bitwig (when I need to scratch my Ableton Live itch) natively. Until using Studio Pro 8, I always felt that Linux had a bit of a "traditional" DAW design paradigm-shaped hole. Now, though, I can say without hesitation that Studio Pro 8 is the best DAW I've used on Linux, and the fact that it feels vaguely like DAWs that are decidedly not (and I assume never will be) on Linux – Cubase, Logic, Pro Tools, etc. – is a huge plus. Given that I bounce around macOS, Windows, and Linux often multiple times per day, knowing that I can just fire up Studio Pro 8 regardless of which OS I'm on is as fantastic as it is unexpected.
Fender Studio Pro 8 has genuinely carved out a space for itself in my book. It's fast, stable, and thoughtfully designed. While it's a touch more expensive than I would like, it's worth noting that I'm saying this from the perspective of someone who's already paying for entirely too many subscriptions – my feelings are more indicative of subscription fatigue than any lack of value on Studio Pro's part. In fact, if I take a step back, it's easy to see that Studio Pro 8 is a hell of a deal, offering a ton of features and content. And given the slow but steady growth of the Linux user base, most recently pumped up by Valve's investment into Linux as a gaming platform, Studio Pro 8 is a particularly compelling product on that platform. Bravo, Fender!