Brad tricked me.  He sent me this vid titled “Steve Vai Hand on Heart – Carvin DC400 PreSonus Studio One.” I got all excited, and clicked the link, and it started to play, and I was all “HOLY CRAP NO ONE TOLD ME WE SIGNED UP STEVE VAI.” Then the camera panned back from the guitar, and I realize it’s PreSonus artist Phil LaBarge! And not only does Phil play like Steve Vai, but he sounds like Steve Vai, thanks in no small part to the painstaking amp and cabinet re-creation algorithms of Ampire, the amp modeling package included in Studio One.

So, I guess it’s not all Brad’s fault. Our software engineers had a lot to do with it; listen for yourself! Sonically, it’s all here: buttery, polyunsaturated, gently delayed 80’s tubey-tone that makes me want to head down to the beach to practice my Karate Kid crane kicks.

With Ampire, you can fool your fans and have them thank you for it. Thanks Phil!

UPDATE!!!

Phil sent me the presets he used on these recordings, which can be downloaded here: http://www.presonusftp.com/social/Phil_LaBarge_Presets.zip

Perhaps “Transforming Audio” isn’t the ideal nomenclature. In the DAW sense, “Transforming” is all about rendering your malleable, spongey, VST-, reverb- and Melodyne-saturated audio track down to a single, simple, WAV. Think less like Optimus Prime turning into a truck and more like flattening layers in Photoshop. Do so once you’ve dialed in the effects to juuuuust the way you like them—this process frees up your rapidly aging CPU from thinking about all those heady, pitch-shifty convolution-reverberizing plugins. Freeing up RAM in this way means you can apply heady pitch-shifty convolution-reverberizing plugins to some other track. Or you can Transform to MIDI.

Fortunately, if you like, Transformation is non-destructive. If you’re unhappy with the changes you’ve committed to, you can always bring it back to the way it was before, much unlike my relationships with women.

Our dudes over at Obedia stay busy. Visit them!

We’re lucky to have the folks at Obedia in our corner, and so are you. These folks are experts at being experts, and serve as a fallback/auxiliary for our in-house tech support crew—effortlessly dispensing expert advice with a guru’s credibility and a surgeon’s hand.

Smart as whips but really much more kind than whips, Obedia’s video editors have been earning time-and-a-half while producing a new, five-part series of Studio One 2 techie videos. Episode 1, above, highlights tips’n’tricks concerning the mucho-lauded Celemony Melodyne.

Good news everyone! If you buy (or upgrade to) Studio One 2 Producer or Pro before the end of 2011, you’re entitled to some free training from OBEDIA!

OBEDIA is a rad company that ‘s all about making your gear work FOR you instead of against you. “Obedient media,” see what they did there? Their training is fun, concise, and above all informative. It makes even the expert-level functionality of the software easy-to-understand. OBEDIA videos have mined all the fun of the Pirates of the Caribbean movies and all the information of Carl Sagan’s “Cosmos,” and compressed it all into sparkly 6-minute infotainment diamonds.

At first glance, track organization may not sound like the most glamorous feature a DAW can offer. Fact is that cleanliness is next to good-producer-liness, and an orderly, easy-to-read workflow is just about as important as astute microphone placement.

Our good buds at Obedia are back again! Already! Today they bring us an in-depth look at Transient Beat Detection in Studio One 2. This technology allows the astute producer to correct timing inaccuracies in recorded audio. Snapping lazy snare hits to the grid is only the beginning; prepare yourself for the miracle of audio bending!

It’s a shame our guard alligator program was cut from the budget this year; we may have stood a chance against the oncoming zombie horde. Now that we’re all dead we know better. Fortunately Studio One 2 survived!