My Top 5 New Features in Studio One 4.5

If you have been following me for a while then you know that Studio One is my go-to DAW and I use it for everything audio.

Last week PreSonus released a new update to the program packed with features and today I want to go over some of my favorites.

Included in this list are:

The New Plug-in Manager

The plug-in manager is essentially a proper file management solution built right into Studio One that allows you to toggle your plug-ins on and off depending on which ones you use. This is super handy because as producers and engineers we are always getting new tools and this is a great way to declutter your list and help you get to the ones you actually use a lot quicker.

The New Gain Controls

Often times whenever we're mixing we might end up with audio files that are either too hot or too quiet. Before in Studio One to fix this, we had to either use the Mix tool trim plugin or use track clip gain to gain stage our tracks.

The problem is that the plugin can be annoying to use cause you have to remember to add it to every channel and on top of that, albeit very small, it still uses up CPU power. On the other hand, if you use the track clip gain you were forced to bounce back and forth between the mixer and the timeline.

With the 4.5 update, we get gain controls right on the mixer on every channel. So now as soon you get everything ready for mixing you can head to the mixer and do everything from there.

Advanced Group Management

In Studio One before if we wanted to group tracks for whatever reason you were essentially linking them and controlling every parameter at once. That included the volume, editing function, panning, etc.

The problem is that maybe sometimes you want to group tracks but only have the volume parameter linked, or maybe just the panning.

With the 4.5 update, we finally get this a la cart feature so we can choose what parameters we want to link when we group tracks.

Track Time/Edit Locks

This one is super simple but highly effective and the name says it all. If you right click on a track you can go to the audio section and enable the new time lock and edit lock features. With these, you are essentially locking tracks and either preventing yourself from moving them out of time or from being edited. This is a great tool that can prevent you from accidentally messing things up.

Smooth Waveforms

This last one is super trivial and does absolutely nothing for your workflow but it is just really nice to have. Essentially PreSonus has updated the visuals for the waveforms to look smoother. Again, super trivial but when you spend long hours staring at a program even the graphics improvements are appreciated

Don’t forget to download the update if you’re a Studio One user, it's free!