PreSonus Blog

Ilias Gogakis on Studio One

[This just in from Ilias Gogakis, rock and metal producer/mix and mastering engineer at Master Sound Studio and longtime PreSonus user. He recently created some Studio One 3 videos in Greek—the playlist is linked below!]

EliasG

My name is Ilias Gogakis, and I have worked as a mix and mastering engineer for the past five years. I am currently based in High Wycombe, Buckinghamshire, in the United Kingdom. I am coming from a ten year career in IT, as a network engineer, but I decided to change careers and follow my big passion: music. I have also studied electric guitar and I have the RGT certificate from London College of Music. I was very lucky so far to have two very talented music tutors by my side, Kyriakos Kouvelas and Theodore Ziras. They both helped me to achieve my personal goals, open new horizons and overcome my limits as a guitarist. Today I am enrolled in a the Bucks New University, based in High Wycombe, in a module for Sound Design for Film and TV, as I want to expand my knowledge regarding sound design, surround effects and digital audio technology.

I remember myself as a hardcore Cubase user. But always looking for something better, as I had a feeling that something was missing from the software. My first contact with PreSonus Studio One was back in summer 2011, when I was searching the internet for demos and reviews about modern DAWs. I remember myself reading reviews from SoundOnSound magazine, Gearslutz.com, and all the major webzines, along with videos on YouTube.

I was very interested in testing it as, at that time, I was looking to change my DAW to something more modern. I have to admit that 2011 was the “DAW testing” year for me. I was downloading demos from every company’s website and testing them in order to try them out and look if there is that little something that would make me say “Yes, this is it. Now let’s start make some music—easy, fast, reliable.” I must say that after my friend told me to take a better look at Studio One, there was no turning back.

I remember I downloaded the demo for version 2 back in the day, installed in, and that was the beginning. Since I was a Cubase user, the key commands where similar, and the workflow was about 40% faster. I have to admit that I opened the manual only three times, just to change some options and see some new features, and fine-tune some advanced setting regarding my interface. Since that day, I use Studio One every day in my mixes. One of the great features that I really like is the integrated Project Page for mastering. It is a very helpful project page that helps me go back and forth in the mix and make instant changes to my master files. In my mixes I use OpenAir reverb and the Analog Delay on every song, and all the modulation effects such us chorus, flanger and the Redlight Distortion often find their place in my mixes. Also, the stock PreSonus ProEQ is a very good parametric EQ to make tonality changes to any instrument during my mixing sessions, and can be very helpful for mastering. Some other tools that I use every day in my mixes are the Slate Digital and Eiosis tools. These analog emulation tools they just sound amazing, and they work flawlessly with Studio One.

In conclusion, PreSonus Studio One in version 2 was an amazing production system—and version 3 is more mature, with many improvements. It’s more stable, more virtual instruments, and more new functions, which really helps you in your daily workflow, no matter how you use the software, recording, mixing or mastering.

Find out more about my work at the following links:

 

Greek Studio One videos: