As with previous iterations, Studio One 5 comes in two versions: the top-tier Professional edition and the far cheaper, lower-spec Artist edition; but for this review, we’re only looking at Studio One 5 Professional - see the PreSonus website for more on Artist.
We should also point out that you can buy Studio One 5 outright or as part of the new PreSonus Sphere subscription service. This gets you all the company’s software (Studio One Professional and all its plugins, Notion, and a ton of sample-based instruments and loops), and various collaborative and networking tools, for a monthly (£12.05) or annual (£132.97) fee.
One Performance
For us, the new Studio One 5 feature we’re likely to get the most use out of is actually one of the more modest. Clip Gain Envelopes facilitate sample-accurate volume automation directly within individual audio regions, providing a far more targeted alternative to compression or regular volume fader automation. Tick the Gain Envelope box in any audio clip’s right-click menu, then use breakpoints or the Paint tool to shape your gain changes on the clip itself, which are reflected in its waveform in real time. It’s a brilliantly neat solution for making precise corrective and creative level adjustments over time, and we’d love to see an equivalent system for modulating pitch. One for v6 perhaps.