In the previous Friday Tip of the Week, we covered how recording soft synths and amp sims at higher sample rates (like 96 kHz) can give higher sound quality in some situations. However, we also discussed some issues involved with recording at higher sample rates that aren’t so wonderful.

So this week, it’s time for a solution. Offline upsampling to higher sample rates can let you retain the CPU efficiencies of running at a lower sample rate, while reaping the sonic benefits of recording at higher sample rates… and you can do this in Studio One by upsampling in a separate project, rendering the file, and then importing the rendered file back into your original project.

But wait—wouldn’t you lose the benefits of upsampling when you later convert the sample rate back down to 44.1 kHz? The answer is no: Rendering at the higher sample rate eliminates any foldover distortion in the audio range, sample-rate converters include an anti-alias filter to avoid this problem, and 44.1 kHz has no problem playing back sounds in the audio range.

However, note that upsampling can’t fix audio that already has aliasing distortion; upsampling audio to 96 kHz that already contains foldover distortion will simply reproduce the existing distortion. This technique applies only to audio created in the computer. Similarly, it’s unlikely that upsampling something recorded via a computer’s audio interface will yield any benefits, because the audio interface itself will have already band-limited the signal’s frequency range so there will be no harmonics that interfere with the clock frequency.

UPSAMPLING IN STUDIO ONE

We’ll assume a 44.1 kHz project sampling rate, and that the virtual instrument’s MIDI track has been finalized but you haven’t transformed it to audio yet. Here’s how to upsample virtual instruments.

1. Save the virtual instrument preset so you can call it up in step 5.
2. Select the entire MIDI clip driving the instrument, and drag it into the Browser (or right-click on the MIDI clip, and choose Export Selection). In either case, place the MIDI .musicloop so it’s easy to find later.
3. Close the existing Song.
4. Create a new Song at a higher sample rate, like 88.2 or 96 kHz.
5. Insert the virtual instrument you used previously, and then load its preset.
6. Drag the MIDI .musicloop clip into the Instrument track.
7. Right-click on the track header and choose Transform to Audio Track. You can uncheck everything in the dialog box.
8. Drag the audio file into a findable location in the Browser, then close the Song.
9. Open the original Song with the 44.1 kHz sample rate.
10. Import the upsampled audio; Studio One will convert the sample rate back down to 44.1 kHz automatically. Use this as the transformed instrument audio instead of what you would have obtained in the 44.1 kHz project.

That’s all there is to it. If you want to upsample an amp sim, the process is similar: export the (presumably guitar) track, save the amp sim preset, render at 96 kHz, then import the rendered file into the 44.1 kHz project.

FINAL THOUGHTS

Listen to the audio example “Upsampling with Amp Sim,” which plays the sound of an amp sim at 44.1 kHz and then after upsampling to 96 kHz. The difference isn’t as dramatic as last week’s synth example, but you’ll still hear that the upsampled version is clearer, with more presence.

Do bear in mind you may not want the difference caused by upsampling. When I did an upsampling demo at a seminar with a particular synthesizer, most people preferred the sound with the aliasing because the upsampled sound was brighter than what they expected. However when I did upsampling with an amp sim, and with a different synth, the consensus was that the upsampled version sounded much better. Regardless, the point is now you have a choice—hear the instrument the way it’s supposed to be heard to decide if you like that better, or leave it as is. After all, distortion isn’t necessarily that horrible—think of how many guitar players wouldn’t have a career without it!

Although upsampling isn’t a panacea, don’t dismiss it either. Even with synths that don’t oversample, upsampling may make no audible difference. However, sometimes synths that do oversample still benefit from upsampling; with some sounds, it can take 4x or even 8x oversampling to reproduce the sound accurately. As always, use your ears to decide which sound works best in your music.

A Sweeter, Beefier Ampire

Let’s transform Ampire’s Crunch American from a motor scooter into a Harley. Here’s our point of departure:

Insert the Multiband Dynamics before Ampire. The default patch is fine, but drag the High Mid and High gain and ratio settings down all the way. The goal here is to add a bit of compression to give more even distortion in the mids and lower mids but also, to get rid of high frequencies that, when distorted, create harsh harmonics.

After Ampire, insert the Pro EQ. The steep notch around 8 kHz gets rid of the whistling sound you’ll really notice in the before-and-after audio example, while the high-frequency shelf adds brightness to offset the reduced high frequencies going into Ampire. But this time, we’re increasing the “good,” post-distortion high frequencies instead of the nasty pre-distortion ones.

Those two processors alone make a big difference, but let’s face it—people don’t listen to an amp with their ear a couple inches from the speaker, but in a room. So, let’s create a room and give the sound a stereo image with the Open Air convolution reverb. I’ve loaded one of my custom, synthetic IR responses; these are my go-to impulses for pretty much everything I do involving convolution reverb, and may be available in the PreSonus shop someday.  Meanwhile, feel free to use your own favorite impulses.

Of course, you can take this concept a lot further with the Channel Editor if you want to tweak specific parameters to optimize the sound for your particular playing style, choice of pickups, pickup type, and the like…hmmm, seems like that might be a good topic for a future tip.

That’s it! Now all that’s left is to compare the before and after example below. Hopefully you’ll agree that the “after” is a lot more like a Harley than a motor scooter.

Check out these new loop bundles over at shop.presonus.com—demo tracks are available to listen before you buy.

• Compatible with Studio One 3.2 Prime, Artist, and Professional and higher
• 24Bit 44.1kHz Files
• Hundreds of loops, samples, and one-shots.
• 100% Royalty FREE

Click here to visit shop.presonus.com

Culprate returns to Loopmasters for his second sample pack of a series which feature fully produced loops and sounds taken from previously released productions. This time out Culprate has chopped and mutated samples from the incredible 5 Star EP and includes all the best basses, tones, drums, FX and more from Ono, Tentacle, Finger and My Rock which can all be used in your productions 100% royalty Free.

5 Star Glitch Hop packs some serious weight, with a fine selection of loops, one-hits and multi samples. The loop content includes filthy basslines, epic digital synths and hard-hitting drums broken down into tops, percussion and full drums. Every musical loop is key-labeled for instant studio sound swapping and easy integration into your tracks.

The one-shot samples feature tough bass hits, hard kicks and snares, cinematic FX, synthetic synths and edgy vocals. You’ll find every one in the pre-formatted sampler patches. The collection is delivered with tempos ranging between 100-140BPM offering content for genres including glitch hop, downtempo, electronica, breaks, techno, dubstep and EDM.

Deep Trap from Loopmasters is a soulful collection of trap samples, with heavy bass, haunting musical elements, rich vocals, and incisive drums. Provided 100% royalty-free for your music, let Deep Trap take you on a wonky walk along the deep and chilled boundaries of Trap!

Deep Trap has over 300 loops including drums as full loops, kick/snare and hat variations to build upon. An abundance of musical loops feature organs, synths, plucked instruments, leads, and keys to enrich the mix—while solid bass, warped vocals, and filtered FX loops will fill out the sonic spectrum alongside 135 one-hit samples.

Deep Trap comes from the producers who brought you Chilled Trap and is heavily influenced by old school deep house and RnB tracks. We then extracted the essence from these two classic styles and blended them together with modern trap drums for an original take on Trap music.

Expect to hear extended jazzy sounding chord loops, classic FM bass sounds mixed with 808 bass sounds plus catchy lead melodies inspired by classic RnB tracks from the past. Also included is a special collection of chopped vocal loops to add depth to your mix. The drum loops section features multiple rhythm and sound variations plus tasty organic percussion loops to nicely fill out the space between kicks and snares. Add you also get one-shot drum samples to embellish your beats and create long, moving arrangements. Just experiment and have fun!

The collection has was designed with Trap in mind, but with wide-ranging applications for house, ambient and minimal genres. Deep Trap ensures every musical element is key-labeled.

Loopmasters present Future Bass Generation: a full-throttle collection of sounds for a fresh Future Bass sound, featuring tough synth lines, sharp beats and booming bass. Provided for you 100% royalty-free by Dan Larson, this collection of storming sounds will deliver that sleek Future Bass sound direct to your DAW!

Future Bass Generation Is a heavy pack with tons of loops, hits, sampler patches, and MIDI files. Over 300 loops are included with drum loops sharper than a razor’s edge–provided in full drums, tops, percussion, builds, fills, kicks, snares, and tom variations to make the beat kick! A load of fat synth loops including pads, keys, plucks, arps and xylophones feature, played in chordal and monophonic combinations, which perfectly compliment the earth-shattering bass loops. Build and drop FX are included, as well as chopped vocal loops for added chaos and atmosphere!

Over 150 hits come complete with urban synths, big kicks, tight snares and sparkling percussion to sequence in Studio One. 55 patches are ready for deployment in your favorite software sampler. A bonus collection of 150 MIDI files allow you to use the existing content in your sequencer, then flip, reverse and transpose it to fit your music.

For fans of Slushii, Flume, San Holo, Marshmello, The Chainsmokers, Illenium and more, this is the definitive Future Bass sample pack. At tempos between 160-175 BPM, this pack is ideal for up-tempo Genres including future bass, hardcore, drum & bass, and jungle.

Immersion is an electronic landscape of sound from Loopmasters – featuring rich instrumentation, lush vocals, lo-fi drums and dreamy synths. This pack is 100% royalty-free, and comes with loops, hits, MIDI and sampler patches for your musical productions– so bring your scuba gear and dive deep into Immersion!

This pack features over 256 loops, including fat bass, sharp drums [kicks, snare, hat, percussion, clicks, snaps, and claps], atmospheric FX, pitched vocals and diverse musical elements: synths, arps, piano, pads, and strings. The 294 one-hit samples included feature bass hits, drums, FX, and synths—with an awesome selection of multi-sampled instruments to play over a number of octaves, as originally intended.

60 sampler patches are formatted for Studio One, as are over 40 MIDI Loops which give you the freedom to edit, transpose and reverse existing sequences for more melodic experiments. Immersion comes at 140BPM, making it ideal for trap, chillout, electronica and downtempo genres. All musical content is key-labeled.

Anything else you want to share?

Notion is tightly integrated with Studio One. Sometimes, the classical musician in me wants to compose in Notion, then send the score to Studio One (I simply click “Send to Studio One”), where I can then use Studio One to produce tracks around my score. Other times, I’d prefer to write a song on guitar and vocals, and then “Send to Notion” so I can write scoring around my song.

Notion is available at a discounted price for Studio One owners: $49 for Studio One Professional users and $99 for Studio One Artist users.

Click here for more info and to purchase Notion!

[Nikola Jeremic is a longtime PreSonus user, fan, and all-around good friend to the company. He’s written outstanding blog pieces for us in the past, and this is no exception! Today he sheds some light on the oft-misunderstood process of music and audio for computer games, in particular, the just-released science fiction epic “Starpoint Gemini Warlords.”]

How is doing music for games different than doing music for film or TV? What features in Studio One make it particularly well-suited for this application? 

Doing music for games is technically a completely different process than composing for film or TV, because the music in video games is non-linear and interactive, unlike on films and TV. When you compose a cue for film or TV series, you are limited to the timeline of that particular scene, and you have to sync everything to fit in that particular timeline. In the game, the music needs to follow the decisions of the player and fit itself to the various situations the players will get into. That is why I compose a cue for a game in segments. In other words, I create a piece of music that can be divided into looped 8-16 bars parts that can be interchanged inside the audio middleware and each cue has a short ending stinger that can be triggered at any point to end the music cue. This idea is best applied to big action sequences and boss fights. When it comes to ambient atmospheric music, it’s fairly similar, but sometimes it’s not needed to be looped, and you can just transition from one ambient track to another, because I usually compose them in the same key, or I at least make them start and end on the same note for easier transition. That’s the approach I used for Starpoint Gemini Warlords for example.

You’ve been using Studio One for a long time. What are some of the more recent features that you found yourself using during the scoring of Starpoint Gemini Warlords? 

Scratch Pads are hands down THE BEST idea ever! I love having the option of being free to experiment and change the arrangement of a cue in a single project that’s opened.  It is very useful when I want to create different versions of one track to test how it sounds in different variations. I also love the fact that no matter how many scratch pads you have opened, everything is mixed in the same mix window, so I can bounce different versions very easily and quickly send them off to the developer for listening. I have to say that Studio One Mixer is absolutely the finest and probably the most respected mixing engine out there today. I have a lot of DAWs that I use for composing when collaborating with other people on projects, but I ALWAYS mix my tracks in Studio One. Project page is also awesome, especially when I need to deliver a big amount of mastered tracks to a client and I need to make sure they all sound the same and have the same levels. It’s just amazing, and the fact that I can quickly take care of meta-tags and add album art cover is really cool. The official soundtrack for Starpoint Gemini Warlords is being prepared in Project page, and it makes my life a whole lot easier. I also love the fact that it has all the needed metering in a single window, so I don’t have to load other plugins and use up my CPU. Bouncing in place and converting tracks in project pool is also a feature I use a lot. Creating FX chains with various plugins has made my mixing and sound designing process lightspeed faster, because I can always recall a preset I have created and use it over and over again no matter what plugins I have in the chain. Mojito is still my favorite go-to synth for bass lines. I generally love the sleek and clean look of Studio One interface and its plugins, because it makes my job a lost faster and easier to do without the need to think about  “ooh what does this button do?” or spend a lot of time in sub-menus to find the option I need.

Do you use the Notion integration?

Yes I do. Not always, but I most of the time when I am working on piano and orchestral pieces, I always check my score sheet with Notion. What I’d love to see in the future is having Notion editor as an actual part of Studio One Pro. For example, when you open up a midi editor, you can also switch to Notion editor in the same window and tweak the notes on the staff.

Does your score consist of recordings of live instruments or are you using virtual instruments exclusively? If so, which ones?

 The score for Starpoint Gemini Warlords consists of both virtual and live instruments. All of the guitar and bass parts are recorded via my FireStudio Project interface, and I also recorded my external hardware synths through FireStudio. This is mostly synth-oriented soundtrack that pays the homage to some of our favorite games and sci-fi franchises. My main synths here were my hardware synths Yamaha DX7 and KORG Volca Bass and Volca Keys, and all of them were processed through my guitar pedals, but regarding the software synths, I used Arturia V collection (mostly MiniMoog V, CS-80 V, ARP 2600 V, and Modular V) and U-He Zebra 2. I also used Mojito for basses and Mai Tai for some pad and drone sounds that were later processed via different FX plugins.

As Starpoint Gemini Warlords is clearly a Space Opera of sorts, do you take any inspiration from John Williams’ use of leitmotif in Star Wars? Any other musical influences you’d care to talk about? 

What I love about Little Green Men studio (the developers of the game) is that it’s a group of fanboys and fangirls and it was a lot of fun at brainstorming meetings regarding the soundtrack for the game. Everybody was into sci-fi music and everyone has their own favorite franchises, so I had to do a lot of research and take a listen of various sci-fi game and film soundtracks. There were no traditional leitmotifs for characters, instead we decided to represent each sector in the game with a different melodic theme based on what usually goes down there, so for example more friendly sectors have some light evocative music, alien sectors are more mysterious and feature elven type of vocals and exotic woodwind instruments, while pirate and outlaw sectors are very dark and aggressive in sounds. The biggest inspiration came from video game soundtracks such as Homeworld, EvE Online (I’d love to score that one in the future), Mass Effect, Deus Ex The Human Revolution, and Battlestar Galactica TV series.

Any advice to share for musicians and producers who want to get into game audio or music but don’t know where to start? 

First thing I suggest you do is to join audio societies such as AES (Audio Engineering Society), G.A.N.G. (Game Audio Network Guild), and visit conferences such as GDC (Game Developers Conference) and GamesoundCon. You will meet a lot of people from the industry, and they will all be more than happy to share knowledge and forward you to other people as well. Read books on game audio from publishers like Focal Press for example, I know that helped me a lot. You can always look for some smaller mobile gaming developers out there in your local communities and get in touch with them as well. And the most important thing of all is to learn your craft and learn it good. Don’t get overwhelmed by this or that plugin that’s newest on the market or whatever. Get a set of tools that you like and learn them well inside and out. You will be amazed by how easily you can get great results with bundled plugins that come with your DAW. I still use my Studio One Pro EQ and Compressor most of the time for sampled stuff. Create your own sounds from the stuff that you have. A developer will always learn to appreciate more the fact that you took your sweet time to create something original that’s only for them, than sending them something created with commercial instruments libraries that everyone uses.

Links:

• Get Starpoint Gemini Warlords on Steam
• Nikola’s Website
• Nikola’s Soundcloud
• Soundtrack Preview

Studio One 3.5 is here! This is a free update for owners of Studio One 3.x. Click “Check for updates” in Studio One’s start page to get it!

Full release notes follow. For a less-technical overview, check out the video below or visit our What’s New page here.

IMPORTANT: This version introduces an updated file format for Songs and Projects for faster
Save / Auto-Save. Files created in 3.5 will no longer open in previous versions of Studio One.
Make sure to work from copies of your existing songs created in Studio One 3.3.4 or older if
you like to continue working with a previous version as well.
______________________________

New features and improvements:

Audio Engine and Performance
Flexible Dropout Protection
• Native Low Latency Monitoring
• Low-latency virtual instrument monitoring
• Multi-processing enhancements for improved CPU balancing

Arrangement and Automation
New shortcut to “Select all Muted Events”
• Copy/Paste Events also copies Layer data
• Import tempo map, time signatures and markers when dragging MIDI file to
Arrangement [Cmd+Alt]
• Maximum Track Delay increased to 1,000ms
• New Track command: “Apply Track Names to Channels”
• “Cursor follows Edit Position” now limited to manually selected events or
ranges
• Batch renaming events always adds leading zero
• Event Inspector: Multi-editing for Event Start and End
• Arranger Track: Move Arranger Section only [Cmd+Alt]
• “Bounce to new Track” now preserves output routing
• Complete Show/Hide for Automation
• Automation Lanes on Instrument Track
• Improved time-stretching accuracy. “Audio Bend” mode now obsolete.

Mixer (Console)
• Mixer Undo
• Remote control of StudioLive Series III Fat Channel and mic pre-amps
• New command: “Remove Track Automation” removes all automation data
• Visual plug-in bypass state in console

Instruments and Plug-ins
Fat Channel XT
• Adjustable level range for Spectrum Meter (all modes)
• Updated micro-views for Spectrum Meter
• 12th octave mode in Spectrum Meter (incl. keyboard scale)
• Loudness Meter now EBU R-128 compliant
• [macOS] MIDI input for AU plug-ins
• Event FX window follows Event selection
• [macOS] Preset list support for AU instruments/plug-ins
• FX Routing: Splitter can now be moved freely

Music Editor
Unlimited number of controller lanes
• Option to “Resize adjacent Events” (multiple overlapping) [Alt]

Score Editing with Notion
• Send audio or note data to existing song
• Tempo map import (drag & drop)
• Other improvements within Notion (ReWire handling, Studio One application
launcher, and more)

Project Page
• Independent Track Markers
• Flexible Loudness Detection options
• New Loudness Meter
• New Spectrum Meter
• DDP import
• Improved meta-data editing
• Pool in Project Page
• New Bounce Track option
• Dynamic search for Songs in Project (improved compatibility)
• Faster rendering (if a Song is used multiple times)
• New command “Bounce Track” (includes Track inserts, not Master FX)
• Extended “Add to Project” menu
• Improved ID-tag export (adding Composer and ISRC)
• User interface improvements
• New “Split Track” and “Split at Cursor” commands + shortcuts

Browser
• New “Construction Kits” node in Loop Browser
• Search fields in Browser and Mixer reset on close

Hardware and Multitouch
• Dual-screen support (Raven MTi)
• Higher MIDI update rate for control surfaces

General
• Delete unsaved files and folders when closing new song w/o saving
• Warnings shown when errors occur while exporting mix in real-time
• Updated FLAC codec (better performance)
• Improved save and auto-save performance for Songs and Projects
• [macOS] Independent recording and playback devices
• Extended Bounce and Export options
• Support for 176.4 kHz sample rate in audio export
• [Developers] Gain Reduction API for VST2
—————————————————————————–
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The following issues have been fixed:

• “Invert Selection” didn’t restrict range when Scratch Pads exist
• Arranger Track section copy doesn’t work backwards on timeline
• Pre-recorded notes overlapping loop start are doubled after loop recording
• Fade handles are hard to reach when event volume is not at max.
• Overlapping audio events with fade-in are out of sync
• Crash when recording MIDI in loop
• Play Start Marker affects bounce between markers
• No “Paste” in context menu for Tempo Track
• [ARA] Events show wrong content when split after analysis with Melodyne 4.1
• Crash with NI Komplete Audio 6 when changing sample rate
• Audio time-stretch with bend markers is not exact
• Chorder: Crash when transposing out of range with automation
• Install from “Cloud” inside Studio One 3.3 hangs
• Plug-in menu search box loses focus
• Command for “Show in Finder/Explorer” not working for Macros
• Can’t drag more than one Instrument from Browser
• [macOS] Newly created folders not visible in Browser
• “Copy external files” not working for multiple opened songs
• [macOS] Studio One language changes after re-install
• Crash while closing all songs
• Musicloop exports without audio when routed to outputs other than Main
• Wrong-placed note events in loop recording
• Sustain pedal with latency writes wrong data
• Global plug-in bypass not functional if any plug-in in Chain is disabled
• Spectrum Meter curve has offset depending on FFT size
• Channel buttons missing on Multi-Instrument channels
• [macOS] AU Instruments saved in OFF status load back empty
• [macOS] Kontakt AU not showing all available outputs
• Global deactivate FX not working with disabled tracks
• Inconsistent behavior when chasing long notes
• [Impact] Wrong channel order when moving sub outs in mixer
• Wrong channel order after transform to audio and back
• Wrong channel order between folders and busses
• Wrong channel order when dragging instrument to track
• Studio One will not export note data to Notion if the file has an apostrophe in the name
• [macOS] Crash on start with OSX 10.11 El Capitan
• [macOS] AU presets always marked as edited
• |macOS] Invisible scroll bars in help window
• Offset when dragging audio file with bend-markers to Instrument Track
• Notes are transposed one octave when dragging to new Instrument Track via
Melodyne

Click here to browse and shop!

We’ve got five new amazing sample sets from Sample Tekk that we’ve just added to shop.presonus.com. These packs are compatible with Studio One Prime, Artist, and Professional (version 3.3.4 and higher).

The White Grand

Sample Tekk recorded The White Grand with the finest equipment available, using a specially-designed digital recording technique to give you unequaled performance and sound. Prepare to explore a tactile and expressive feast, not heard in many sampled pianos today.

INIL Choir

Get the crazy ethereal choir sounds of “I’m Not In Love” by 10CC with INIL Choir! These choirs are unique—the combination of voices and the way they were produced have given them a sound that’s truly one of a kind. Now, SampleTekk, in cooperation with Eric Stewart of 10CC are very proud to release of The INIL Choir, thus taking one of the most famous analog samples into the digital era.

Tubed Keys

Great-sounding Rhodes for Studio One, recorded through a Fender Twin as the Rhodes was intended to be heard. Sample Tekk didn’t go for 80s sheen and gloss with lots of tines and overtones. The Tubed Rhodes is more representative the 70’s: a gritty, hard-core rythm’n’blues kind of sound.

The Rain Piano

Somber sounds of a piano that has been left out in the rain and elements. Musical, but with extra overtones and character. The Rain Piano has become a kind of a synonym for character pianos. It has been used and is still used on countless productions where you want something that adds a different flavor rather than using a normal piano.

Singularis

Old School piano recorded with vintage mics, tape, and preamps. In glorious MONO!

Click here to browse and shop!

[We recently came across a great story—three different producers, all of whom use different DAWs, needed to collaborate on a single project. They decided that Studio One offered them the best of all three worlds, and chose it for their collaborative effort. Details below courtesy of Roger Hooper, Robert Holmes, and George Napier.]

George Napier’s Studio

George Napier kicks things off by describing the task at hand, as well as the backgrounds of the collaborators.

“Robert, Roger, and I took a group of 11 executives from a 75-person tech startup into Studio A of Omega Studios for two days of team building. We needed to prepare backing tracks and beds for them to play against. Roger is a film composer, former Logic guy and current Mac-based Cubase user. Robert is a musician and games music composer and a 20 year die hard Digital Performer user who switched to Windows on DP and was not liking the experience,” says George. “I’m a composer/sound designer and a bit of a serial monogamist when it comes to DAWs. I’ve used Studio One since version 1, left it for Logic/Cubase at 2.6, and came back to try it out with the release of 3 (all on Mac). FYI: We all work together on projects for each other’s companies. This particular project was done under Robert’s company ResonantClarity.

 

Roger Hooper is a longtime Cubase and Logic user who was new to Studio One for this collaboration. His impressions and description of the collaborative workflow follow.

Roger Hooper’s Studio

 

Robert Holmes is a long-time Digital Performer user who made the switch to Studio One after a 20-year commitment to DP. He’s a self-proclaimed “old pop/rock studio guy from LA who ended up doing game scores in the golden age of adventure games.”

Robert Holmes’ Studio

[This just in from James F. Reynolds, pop and dance music’s “secret weapon.” He has mixed and produced a wide range of acts including Ellie Goulding, Emeli Sande, Years and Years, Tinie Tempah, and The Saturdays. Last year he made the switch to Studio One and was kind enough to share his insights with us.] 

• For what applications are you using Studio One Pro? (Example: for recording, composing, sound design, and so on; in a commercial studio, project studio, for live recording, etc.)
I use Studio One 3 Professional for mixing, production, and recording.

James F. Reynolds

• What led you to choose Studio One? Was it the company’s reputation, audio quality, ease of use, specific features, price, other factors?
I spent many years using a combination of Logic, Pro Tools, and Ableton Live, as they all have strengths in different areas. I had been searching for a while for a DAW that has the best of all these platforms, for example:

1. The creative speed of Ableton
2. The accuracy and mixing ability of Pro Tools
3. The lay out and ease of use of Logic.

Last year I had quite a few producers in my studio talking about Studio One and decided to investigate further. After taking some time to get to know the program, it became apparent that this was a program that has been thought out really well and ticks the box of being a one stop shop for mixing/production and writing.

• Having used Studio One, what do you like most about it?
I have used it consistently for 5 months now and it has sped up my mixing and overall workflow. One of the best features is being able to set up a series of commands using Macros. It’s also very stable.

• What Studio One features have proven particularly useful and why?
The arranger track is very handy, as often when I am mixing a song, the label wants extended versions. The Arranger and also to try out different structures within the arrangement. This is very easy to do using the arranger as it can copy any section with all the automation related to it.

• Any user tips or tricks or interesting stories based on your experience with Studio One?
My tip is this: if you are trying Studio One out, stick with it. It’s always very difficult switching from a platform that you use day in day out for many years as everything is second nature. It takes a while to get back to this speed on a new platform but if you persevere it pays off !

• Please give me some basic background info on your career and current projects, credits, and so on.
I am mainly known as a mixer. I am currently mixing Emeli Sande and before that was mixing Ellie Goulding “Still falling for you” (U.S.A radio mix) and Kelly Clarkson. I also mix for a K Pop band called B.T.S who’s album last year broke records. I co wrote “Drinking from the bottle” with Mark Knight and Calvin Harris and Tinie Tempah. For more info, check out www.jamesfreynoldsmixing.com

• Any final comments about PreSonus and Studio One?
I am really excited about the future of Studio One and have been really encouraged by a development team that actually take on board feedback from mixers and producers and often implement ideas if they are good. This was a big frustration with other DAWs, as feedback was not listened to or acted on.

• James F. Reynolds’ Site
• James on Wikipedia

Baton Rouge-based Thou—winners of Pitchfork’s Metal Record of the Year in 2014—recently took a Studio 192 on the road to record rehearsal sessions and demos for a forthcoming full-length.

Opportunities for collaborative songwriting had become more difficult for the band, as their members have scattered across the country. They typically only get together for tours and shows, making songwriting and recording opportunities somewhat scarce.

Not anymore. Recording straight into Studio One via the Studio 192 allowed the band to write and record in whatever impromptu spaces their tour found them in. Josh Nee (Drums) took recordings home to edit and mix demos for the record after returning from their most recent tour. The full-length, Magus, is on its way.

Learn more:

• Studio 192
• Eris MTM
• Studio One
• Thou