Looking to get up to speed on the latest tips ‘n’ tricks in Studio One? If you live in Los Angeles, New York, Toronto, or Chicago, come on by IMSTA FESTA and learn from the best! You’ll have the chance to learn from longtime PreSonus regulars like: KATFYR, Johnny Geib, Marcus Huyskens, and David Vignola. Click here to register.

KATFYR: All-around bad-to-the-bone EDM producer, DJ, songwriter, and longtime Studio One advocate. KATFYR has done some NAMM demos for us over the years and has had some hits over on BeatPort that he produced in Studio One.

Johnny Geib: Anyone who has even skimmed our forum at one point or another over the past decade has probably learned something from Johnny Geib. Johnny is one of our longest-running and most vocal advocates, and a good friend. When not doling out seasoned answers to forum newcomers (and vets), Johnny runs HomeStudioTrainer.com, where he doles out even MORE answers.

Marcus Huyskens: An editor at Studio One Expert and Producer/Mixer/Engineer at Bad Cat Media Group, Marcus is a freelance Sound Recordist & Mixer for music, television, films, and web. Marcus also has an extensive knowledge of Pro Tools for those using both or making the switch to Studio One, and has created amazing training videos for Studio One Expert and specializes in advanced audio editing techniques for Studio One.

David Vignola: The Main Man behind Vision Recording Studios, where he has been a professional audio mixing and mastering engineer for over 15 years. He specializes in an “in-the-box” workflow that yields warm, analog-like results. Don’t believe it? Listen for yourself here. He’s also responsible for Home Recording Made Easy, where he has tons of great training videos for Studio One.

Click here to visit www.imsta.org, where you can learn more info and sign up! Hurry, space is limited—be sure to get your seat ahead of time.

• Los Angeles: May 14. Presenter: KATFYR
• Chicago: July 23. Presenter: Johnny Geib
• New York: Sept. 24. Presenter: David Vignola
• Toronto: Oct. 15. Presenter: Marcus Huyskens

[This just in from Scigor of SFGames. He has been using Studio One Prime in the development of a forthcoming game, and is doing some fascinating things with it!]

I’m Scigor, a Tokyo based Creative Visual Artist.

And I’m the (crazy) mastermind behind SFGames, an indie games development team made of creative waywards.

SFGames is a team of artists and professionals joined together to work on various projects, starting on our first game with the working title of “Operation Cerulean Dew”—an action survival/horror game with sci-fi elements. We are lucky enough to be part of OSVR (Open Source Virtual Reality) partnership, so in addition to our main game, we have the chance to make new projects exclusively for Virtual Reality. We grabbed a great opportunity to develop an educational project for the Centenary of the Great War. And we have another cinematic VR project in the pipeline, a fantastic journey about human imagination and the spark of creativeness.

Illustration and character design are my main activity but I’m also a 3D enthusiast, passionate about video games and animation, and interested in many others artistic fields like music and cinema; a kind of “factotum” artist. But I’m not a pro musician; my approach is very self-taught and by ear. So why do I take care of sound design by myself?

Because I’m fascinated by how any forms of art are inextricably linked—creative ways to express emotions and ideas. For any idea that I write, every illustration that I paint, or melody that I record, I cannot think of these as separated things. If you’re creative, you can develop anything with the right methods and skills—but you will also need the right tools!

All this led me to a new approach to sound design and scoring, since these projects represent VR experiences addressed to a much more cinematic style in a “real” 3D space. While Francesco (our musician) has been working with Pro Tools and Logic, I’ve always tried to get by with free software as GarageBand, Ardour, and Audacity—but non of them offered enough. A couple of years ago I came across Studio One, which I found amazing from the beginning, mostly due to its great sound engine, so I was immediately convinced to use it in my work. It’s one of the very few programs that I was able to use right away without reading the manual!

I must say that are many artists like me with the need for a friendly and intuitive interface like Studio One, and while some state that the user interface doesn’t matter when you make music, I believe otherwise. Complex and hard-to-use interfaces become boring over time, and we are forced to waste too much time to learn how to use it, rather than create.

I’m working in a Windows multi-monitor environment, with a Wacom Cintiq tablet with touch screen as second monitor, and because this setup makes it hard use a standard keyboard (my tablet is huge), I mapped the most used key commands to a programmable Logitech G13 gameboard. Studio One works perfectly with my tablet, and it’s so responsive that I can “paint” music!

Even if Francesco is the one that works on the main soundtrack, I also have ideas that sometime I want use in our games. My workflow starts with a simple idea or direction to follow, a main theme using my simple template for scoring. So I basically rough out what the theme should sound like: add some instruments (a free orchestral library), some textures and colors, just to blend and fill the sound. And Studio One helps hugely on “sketching” quick ideas.  Once I’ve reached my technical limitations, I send everything to Francesco who provides a professional rework of my ideas.

When it comes to sound recording and editing, I start with recording foley and sound effects on my own, if I have the right gear available. When I cannot do this by myself, I send some samples (sometimes made with my own voice on a webcam, as a guide) to Francesco: I give him a sound assets list and he records all needed sounds with extra variations. I remix everything in Studio One, and once I’ve finalized the sounds, I export the stems as sound cues for Unreal Engine.

I like that Studio One Prime is almost a complete DAW per se, very important in the Indie world! I find it very user friendly and works smoothly on any platform; I can still use it on my five years old MacBook Pro, and I don’t notice a difference in performance.

Also, I cannot work without the visual workflow and tool palette that Studio One provides me. Intuitive, simple, direct. What I need and in the right place. And scratch pads! I never get tired to say how useful they are for someone like me who doesn’t have knowledge of reading or writing musical notation, but has a lot of ideas to remember! And last but not least, I have never had a crash. 

There are still many things I want to explore and experiment with Studio One, like the powerful macro system and the Mix Engine FX , very useful to give emphasis and personality to a set of sound effects all at once. As I said at the beginning, I’m not a professional musician, but Studio One fits my workflow naturally, and makes me feel as I’ve always use it. It simply sounds better!

I recommend Studio One 3 to indie developers and artists on a budget who want to start with a free yet powerful DAW, and later can move to more powerful versions for cheap.

SFGames is:

• Scigor: Game Design, Art, 3D Modeling, Sound Design
• Francesco Tresca: Music and Sound Design
• Marco Frisan: Art, 3D Modeling and Programming

We are still getting off the ground, so follow us on! It would help a lot if you can spread the word!

• Follow SFGames on Twitter
• Subscribe to SFGames on YouTube

We recently collected the opinions of some engineers and producers who recently switched to Studio One, including Paul Drew, Jonas Westling, Justin Bryant, and Pete “Boxsta’ Martin. Did you know that  if you’re using a qualifying DAW, you’re entitled to a discount when you Crossgrade to Studio One? It’s true!

• To see the list of qualifying products, click here.
• Not sure if you’re ready to make the switch? Try the Studio One Professional demo here, it’s free!

Check out this two-part video from John Tendy detailing his use of the StudioLive RM16AI to mix and record a real gig, and then take home the recordings to do a quick (and I mean quick) mix in Studio One!

This is a great no-frills, real-world look at the practicality and power of the StudioLive RM16AI. Tremendous thanks to John for his work on this and support of PreSonus! We appreciate you.

Big thanks to Music and Sound Retailer for this recognition at NAMM 2016. While the award bears MSR’s name, Studio One 3 Professional was chosen by music dealers who voted it to be the best of the year. We’re honored, and you all are too kind. To learn more about Studio One 3, click here. 

Ever bring your laptop to a coffeeshop to work on your music outside the house? It’s a known fact that a change of environment can do a lot for your creativity.

But check out this guy. Go big or go home, am I right? This dude set up his Studio One rig at a Starbucks in California, complete with a huge curved monitor, mixer, power conditioner, MIDI keyboard controller, computer, two cell phones, a pack of fig newtons (I think) and several Priority Mail boxes.

Anybody know this guy?

Credit to dmizz over on Reddit for posting the photo. Click here for the original thread.

You can get the e-bass add-ons via our online store. Click here to shop.

We’ve got a new Mai Tai preset collection for Studio One 3 Artist and Professional! Take a trip back in time with Nori Ubukata’s 20th Century Sound Box and rediscover the legendary analog sounds of the 70s and 80s. Famed Japanese sound designer and synth/theremin artist Nori Ubukata recreated some of the most memorable sounds by electronic music artists such as Kraftwerk, Tangerine Dream, Vangelis and Wendy Carlos. The set contains a total of 111 presets and Instrument+FX presets (adding reverb, EQ and other effects). Also included are 50 Musicloops with sound elements showcasing the best presets in musical context.

Click here to buy it from our online store.

Getting started with home recording just got a whole lot easier this holiday season. Purchase any PreSonus audio interface and register it at my.presonus.com before January first and you will receive the Recording in Studio One Made Easy course from Home Recording Made Easy.

Home Recording Made Easy will teach you on how to do everything from hooking up your hardware to your computer, recording an entire song using a modest recording studio set-up and finally mixing that song using the tools in Studio One.

This series is nearly 3 hours in length and has 10 video sections. Whether you have switched from another DAW to Studio One or if you are brand new to home recording this series is for you. This is also the perfect enhancement when giving the gift of recording this Holiday Season.

• Learn More about PreSonus Audio Interfaces.
• Learn More about Home Recording Made Easy.

How would you like to mix in Studio One using a 27″ touchscreen?

Well, now you can, thanks to Slate Digital LLC—check out the Raven Console running Studio One 3! For several months, our Hamburg team worked closely with Slate to get the best user experience out of this solution.

Learn more about it at http://www.slatemt.com