PreSonus has recently released Studio One 2. When reviewing new releases of existing products, I must admit I am skeptical. A lot of software version releases are nothing buy new skins and bug fixes. Software companies will move around a few buttons and Ver. 2 is born. This is the furthest thing from the truth with Studio One 2.
There are over a 100 new features and enhancements to this new release. This is not a simple skin upgrade, PreSonus packed a lot of editing power into this release. As a matter of fact the skin itself seems for the most part untouched. This is great news seeing the Studio One interface is already super intuitive and very user freindly.
The past few weeks I have been remastering some of my Studio One tracks in PreSonus’ new release Studio One 2. My train of thought is the best way to see the differences is to re-author a few track to see the deltas.
The first thing I notice is my favorite plug-in has been upgraded. The Ampire guitar-amp modeler is now Ampire XT. Not only are there great new amp models but I am in love with the new reverbs. The new the new OpenAIR reverb are based on spaces and hardware. I was able to get beautiful cavernous reverbs on my guitar, very natural and soft.
I am also overly impressed with the integration of Celemony’s Melodyne pitch correction. The integration is so good that you do not feel like you are moving into another software tool. You can hear your edit with your arraignment when you have your tweaks done you render the audio in place. There is no track transferring or syncing issues to deal with.
The midi editing also got a shot in the arm with the release of Studio One 2. Not only can I view more than one midi track in the Music Editor I also have the ability to edit multiple track at once. This is a huge time saver for both the pro and the novice.
As I said in my review of Studio One 1, Studio One’s ease of use allows you to spend more time creating. This is even more evident in Studio One 2. If you need to edit existing tracks or create new arraignments this package will get you up and running faster that any recording package I have ever seen. Everything you need to produce professional production quality recording is all in one box. With a paltry street price of $399 Studio One Professional is a steal. You could pay 4 times that amount for a recording plug-in let alone a complete recording solution.
