Presonus Introduces Latency Compensation In Version 3.5

[starise]

So I've been a part time user of Studio One for some time now with my last version being 2.5. I had no real reason to change what I was using, but occasionally a new thing will come along that I just cant ignore.

 

Presonus has been making some interesting changes recently to Studio One Professional. The first big one I noticed this past year was the addition of the arranger. The closer you look at this function the better it gets. DAWs have always been able to shift audio around in chunks for arranging purposes. What is different here is the way they have designed the workflow to enable you to move large portions of audio around all at once very easily. Basically you determine which parts of the song you wish to arrange and give them labels. The most common being verse, chorus, break, pre chorus. Once labeled you can move them anywhere with seamless perfection in any order in your song with any number of repetitions. Let's say you want another verse or you don't like where the solo is and you want to move things around. You have 100 tracks you say????!!!!. It couldn't be easier to do in Studio One 3.5.

 

The closest I can come to that in Sonar is I can ripple edit tracks and songs. Not quite as intuitive. I have the matix view which is very similar to Ableton in how it works. So I can do it, but not as easily.

 

The second big thing is latency compensation. They have devised a way to reduce both audio effects and software instrument latency using a new native approach that cuts milliseconds off of latency. As far as I know no other DAW has this. Yes others can set their buffers, but the two are different animals. The new setup has a work around to systems that were held back by a slower internal routing scheme or slower hardware. It is still dependent  on your Cpu and interface to some extent, yet it can breathe some life into an older interface.

 

When used with a thunderbolt interface it can scream. I was able to get my old Presonus Firetube studio down to 3ms and 64 buffers. I haven't had the chance to really test it yet, but on paper it looks really good.

 

I just purchased an upgrade from 2.5 to the most recent 3.5 version. Older version won't have this feature.

 

I'll still probably track in Sonar because it's very easy to get good takes using it. Part of that has to do with my eyes liking the graphics and work flow of Sonar. From then on though I'm no longer so sure. SO seems to be leading the pack overall and that's hard for me to say as a partial Cakewalk Fanboy. 

 

The tools and layout in Studio One are better for mastering. It's cross platform which doesn't usually concern me as a PC user, however it also means I can share files cross platform. Friends with SO who have a Mac..no problem. If you own a few decent daws you likely really don't need any more plug ins since both Sonar and Studio One are loaded with juicy well done plug ins.

I still get the 3rd party ones I think will be helpful.

 

Studio one is tied very well to their Presonus interfaces which takes the quess work out of configuring an interface is using these compatible products. I can'y say the same about Cakewalk with respect to Tascam. Yes almost all interfaces will work in Sonar. It isn't the same as having an interface with control written into the daw. It would only make sense to upgrade my next interface from Presonus.

 

If you get the chance check it out. http://www.presonus.com/press/press-releases/Studio-One-35