PreSonus Studio One - no longer my recommended DAW

octatonic

Stuckfast said:

What Studio One features are now subscription-only? If it's just add-on sample packs and third-party plug-ins then that wouldn't bother me. If it's actual core features of the program that seems weird and a bad idea.

I bought Logic in about 2017 in order to mix something and I've never been charged an upgrade fee. I think Apple see it as a loss leader to sell more Macs, and now also to drive the creation of Atmos content for Apple Music. I still don't find it very logical though.

I started with Logic so it is like breathing in and out for me.
I still have to think about Pro Tools, Nuendo, S1 etc.

Logic owns the composer sector.
Pro Tools owns the mixing and audio post worlds.
Pretty much everyone I've worked with has both and switches between them, as do I.
Non-professionals can use what they want and it probably won't matter- find what you like and learn it.

monquixote said:

I'm also using Logic iPad which is £50/year so don't be surprised if Logic for Mac doesn't follow.

This is unlikely, imho.
I've heard zero chatter about Logic going subscription.

People (I know you know this, Mon- just jumping off from this point) need to understand that Logic is a very different product to Apple than Pro Tools is to Avid or S1 is to Presonus.

Avid make Pro Tools, audio hardware and controllers that work optimally with Pro Tools (they also have Media Composer and products like Nexus).

Presonus make a load of hardware products in addition to S1 but it is still a bit of a jewel in their crown.

Apple bought Logic in 2002, kicked all the beta testers out (I was one of them) and brought everything in house, keeping many of the staff and I know many of hem are still there.

They made everything a lot cheaper- a full version of Platinum will all the plugins was over a grand in 2002.
@Stuckfast is right, it is a loss leader to sell Macs.

Logic, because it is cheap relative to its power, positioned Apple as a player in music production market.
It drives loads of Mac sales in education, studios, audio post and hobby producer sectors.
Pretty much every music school I've been into in the last 10 years has shedloads of iMacs, like 50 of them. 

I only know 2 or 3 professional engineers, mixers, audio post people using PC's.
Everyone else is on Mac and they all have a copy of Logic as well as another DAW, usually Pro Tools. 
Some also have Live, S1, Nuendo.

Moving Logic to a subscription model would potentially disrupt that.
Apple care more about other things- iPhones, spatial, Vision Pro, hardware sales.
It was reported years ago (like 2011) that Apple make 7 times the profit from a Mac sale than other computer vendors.
I don't know if that is true but it could be even higher now looking at prices, esp upgrade prices on hardware.

TTony

octatonic said:

They made everything a lot cheaper- a full version of Platinum will all the plugins was over a grand in 2002.
@Stuckfast is right, it is a loss leader to sell Macs.

Wow - I just checked the App Store.

Logic Pro for £199?  That's massively cheaper than I remember it being.

Q for @octatonic (as he probably knows), accepting that there will always be 3rd party plugins etc, does Apple charge extra for any extra bits that you'd really want/need to buy (like PreSonus does with S1) or is it pretty much fully functional straight out of the box from the download?

Almost viable to buy a half-decent M2 mini whilst I'm still VAT registered and a couple of external SSDs.  I've already got a couple of old 27" monitors propped up in the corner of the room looking for work ...

monquixote

octatonic said:

Stuckfast said:

What Studio One features are now subscription-only? If it's just add-on sample packs and third-party plug-ins then that wouldn't bother me. If it's actual core features of the program that seems weird and a bad idea.

I bought Logic in about 2017 in order to mix something and I've never been charged an upgrade fee. I think Apple see it as a loss leader to sell more Macs, and now also to drive the creation of Atmos content for Apple Music. I still don't find it very logical though.

I started with Logic so it is like breathing in and out for me.
I still have to think about Pro Tools, Nuendo, S1 etc.

Logic owns the composer sector.
Pro Tools owns the mixing and audio post worlds.
Pretty much everyone I've worked with has both and switches between them, as do I.
Non-professionals can use what they want and it probably won't matter- find what you like and learn it.

monquixote said:

I'm also using Logic iPad which is £50/year so don't be surprised if Logic for Mac doesn't follow.

This is unlikely, imho.
I've heard zero chatter about Logic going subscription.

People (I know you know this, Mon- just jumping off from this point) need to understand that Logic is a very different product to Apple than Pro Tools is to Avid or S1 is to Presonus.

Avid make Pro Tools, audio hardware and controllers that work optimally with Pro Tools (they also have Media Composer and products like Nexus).

Presonus make a load of hardware products in addition to S1 but it is still a bit of a jewel in their crown.

Apple bought Logic in 2002, kicked all the beta testers out (I was one of them) and brought everything in house, keeping many of the staff and I know many of hem are still there.

They made everything a lot cheaper- a full version of Platinum will all the plugins was over a grand in 2002.
@Stuckfast is right, it is a loss leader to sell Macs.

Logic, because it is cheap relative to its power, positioned Apple as a player in music production market.
It drives loads of Mac sales in education, studios, audio post and hobby producer sectors.
Pretty much every music school I've been into in the last 10 years has shedloads of iMacs, like 50 of them. 

I only know 2 or 3 professional engineers, mixers, audio post people using PC's.
Everyone else is on Mac and they all have a copy of Logic as well as another DAW, usually Pro Tools. 
Some also have Live, S1, Nuendo.

Moving Logic to a subscription model would potentially disrupt that.
Apple care more about other things- iPhones, spatial, Vision Pro, hardware sales.
It was reported years ago (like 2011) that Apple make 7 times the profit from a Mac sale than other computer vendors.
I don't know if that is true but it could be even higher now looking at prices, esp upgrade prices on hardware.

I agree with all of that however:

Apple have topped out in being able to grow at the pace they want to through hardware sales alone and have pivoted hard to subscription based services with Apple TV, Apple Music, Pushing iCloud harder, Game Subscriptions etc. 

The model of selling hardware and bundling software gets harder when new hardware updates are totally meh and people keep machines for ages. (The M1 was an exception but people are already mehing at the M3 machines). Unlike when people were rushing out to get the much more powerful machines / phones / ipads every year. 

They could also have made Logic for iPad free if you already have a Logic subscription, or a one off purchase and not worry about it too much to drive iPad sales, but they didn't choose to do that. It might be that they would have had to charge £200 which is more than iPad users would stomach (I would have paid it), but then Pianoteq is £800 for a full license and I assume they only sell it because people buy it. 

Finally I have the scars from when I was at the BBC of switching loads of people to Final Cut only for them to seemingly abandon the pro video (and I mean broadcast network pro) and seemingly focus more on semi pro or lone wolf content creators and basically not give a shit because the broadcast business was not big enough to care that much.

Everyone sees what Adobe did. Everyone bleated, but then most of the professionals just coughed up for a monthly license.

If Logic for Mac when subscription I'm assuming you would be angry, but I'm guessing you wouldn't want to lose years of muscle memory and would probably pony up eventually.

octatonic

TTony said:

octatonic said:

They made everything a lot cheaper- a full version of Platinum will all the plugins was over a grand in 2002.
@Stuckfast is right, it is a loss leader to sell Macs.

Wow - I just checked the App Store.

Logic Pro for £199?  That's massively cheaper than I remember it being.

Q for @octatonic (as he probably knows), accepting that there will always be 3rd party plugins etc, does Apple charge extra for any extra bits that you'd really want/need to buy (like PreSonus does with S1) or is it pretty much fully functional straight out of the box from the download?

Almost viable to buy a half-decent M2 mini whilst I'm still VAT registered and a couple of external SSDs.  I've already got a couple of old 27" monitors propped up in the corner of the room looking for work ...

Nope, they don't charge any extras.
It is £199 all in.

The bit in bold.
This is why Logic is £199, because it sells Macs.

Danny1969

It's worth noting that not only is Logic a bargain but Mainstage is only £29.99 now  ... that's unbelievably cheap for what you get. 
The software does sell the machines ... and there is a much higher margin on the machines that there is on a mainstream PC 

octatonic

monquixote said:

I agree with all of that however:

Apple have topped out in being able to grow at the pace they want to through hardware sales alone and have pivoted hard to subscription based services with Apple TV, Apple Music, Pushing iCloud harder, Game Subscriptions etc. 

The model of selling hardware and bundling software gets harder when new hardware updates are totally meh and people keep machines for ages. (The M1 was an exception but people are already mehing at the M3 machines). Unlike when people were rushing out to get the much more powerful machines / phones / ipads every year. 

They could also have made Logic for iPad free if you already have a Logic subscription, or a one off purchase and not worry about it too much to drive iPad sales, but they didn't choose to do that. It might be that they would have had to charge £200 which is more than iPad users would stomach (I would have paid it), but then Pianoteq is £800 for a full license and I assume they only sell it because people buy it. 

Finally I have the scars from when I was at the BBC of switching loads of people to Final Cut only for them to seemingly abandon the pro video (and I mean broadcast network pro) and seemingly focus more on semi pro or lone wolf content creators and basically not give a shit because the broadcast business was not big enough to care that much.

Everyone sees what Adobe did. Everyone bleated, but then most of the professionals just coughed up for a monthly license.

If Logic for Mac when subscription I'm assuming you would be angry, but I'm guessing you wouldn't want to lose years of muscle memory and would probably pony up eventually.

I wouldn't be angry- I tend to roll with things.
I do prefer a permanent license to a subscription but I have subscriptions to things when I have no option.
 
I'm an unusual case though - what I do isn't emblematic of the wider market.
The support contract for the S6 console is £2k a year, plus I have an Adobe subscription and two Pro Tools licenses that need support contract for updates and a bunch of other things.

I wouldn't say the M3 is meh, my M3 Pro laptop is faster than the Mac Studio M1 Ultra.
A lot faster.
It depends on the spec you buy.
Both are fast enough for professional use, audio and video though.

Yes, people went with Adobe but they lost some people to DaVinci Resolve.
Adobe is cheap compared to Media Composer though, about half the cost.

If Apple were releasing Logic (or FCP) now then they would likely be subscription only.
I don't dispute that.
But they don't have the monopoly that Adobe have.
Who is a real competitor to Adobe?

Avid on the video side, maybe FCP or Resolve.
But everything else?
No one really.
There are a lot of smaller app makers who do part of the Adobe portfolio.

Logic has market share- it owns the composer market and has a lot of education BECAUSE Logic is cheap.
Move to a subscription model and there are a lot of competitors to Logic.

Cubase, Nuendo, Cubase, Studio One, Reaper, Luna, FL Studio, BitWig, Ableton Live, Pro Tools, Digital Performer, Reason, Harrison MixBus.

And then there are a bunch of PC only apps- Samplitude, Sequoia etc.

I'm not saying all Logic users would go over to these.
Many would stay.

Jalapeno

Long time hold out for Tracktion/Waveform here - not that I record much these days - Reaper price band. Used to use it with Reason & Ableton.

Vintage65

jasonbone75 said:

I've recently switched from Studio One to Reaper and I have been really happy I did. I much prefer the interface of Reaper which appears to put me in the minority. The customisation is brilliant and I already have a far more comfortable workflow to what I had in Studio One after just a few hours of customisation and use.

This is my current theme and it's easy on the eyes.
   

https://stash.reaper.fm/theme/395/StudioOne.zip

monquixote

TTony said:

octatonic said:

They made everything a lot cheaper- a full version of Platinum will all the plugins was over a grand in 2002.
@Stuckfast is right, it is a loss leader to sell Macs.

Wow - I just checked the App Store.

Logic Pro for £199?  That's massively cheaper than I remember it being.

Q for @octatonic (as he probably knows), accepting that there will always be 3rd party plugins etc, does Apple charge extra for any extra bits that you'd really want/need to buy (like PreSonus does with S1) or is it pretty much fully functional straight out of the box from the download?

Almost viable to buy a half-decent M2 mini whilst I'm still VAT registered and a couple of external SSDs.  I've already got a couple of old 27" monitors propped up in the corner of the room looking for work ...

If you have a Mac it's a no brainer.

RichAC

I’m an outlier in that I use Reason, which is very much aimed at electronic music (but does audio ok). Similar to S1 in that you only get all the good stuff if you subscribe - I bought a (legit) 1 year subscription heap at Plug-in Boutique.

jasonbone75

Vintage65 said:

jasonbone75 said:

I've recently switched from Studio One to Reaper and I have been really happy I did. I much prefer the interface of Reaper which appears to put me in the minority. The customisation is brilliant and I already have a far more comfortable workflow to what I had in Studio One after just a few hours of customisation and use.

This is my current theme and it's easy on the eyes.
   

https://stash.reaper.fm/theme/395/StudioOne.zip

Looks good! This is what I ended up with. I should credit Alejandro from Reapertips for some of the suggestions: https://www.reapertips.com/

ewal

I recently moved to a Mac mini from a Windows laptop. I still use Reaper on a day to day basis - just don't see the point of switching to Logic and having music projects in different formats.

If I hadn't used Reaper previously I'd be all over Logic, for things like the collection of virtual instruments. I might still use it for certain types of project.

TTony

To be completely fair to PreSonus, they've offered to refund my upgrade purchase of S1 Pro and suggested that I could use that refund to pay for (most of) a Hybrid+ subscription, which I can then transfer back into a perpetual S1 Pro licence at the end of the initial 12mth Hybrid+ subscription period (its effectively an escape route, allowing people to "pay monthly" but then have a perpetual licence at the end of the 12mths).

If I take that offer, then I *might* effectively get a free upgrade to a later version of S1 Pro if they release a new version during the 12mth period.  But anything that I create with the additional functionality in Hybrid+ during the 12mths would be lost if it's not supported in the perpetual licence version available in 12mths time (thus pushing me towards sticking with the subscription basis, which I absolutely do NOT want).

But if I take the first part of the offer (refund the upgrade cost), then the incremental cost of Logic Pro would be considerably less.

Think I'll download the Logic Pro trial later today.  Main questions will be whether I find the UI sufficiently familiar and whether my library of S1 creations can be opened in Logic Pro.

Bod

monquixote said:

If you want the ultimate perpetual try FL.

You pay once and get free upgrades forever. 

I really don't know how they play it these days, but I was an early adopter of FruityLoops as it was in the late 90s and was sucked in by the "free upgrades forever" offer.  In 2003, they launched FL Studio as a new top-tier product as a chargeable upgrade.  No such thing etc...

Bod

longshins said:

Cubase 13 is pretty mega, no more dongle to worry about and the new plugins like the vocal channel strip are excellent. It’s tough to get used to though as has lots of deep functions and weird workflow things. 

I'm back on Cubase 13 Pro, and I love it.  It's where I started, and it always drags me back in.  Steinberg are a terrible company though.  The platform is *really* buggy and their maintenance update cycle is so slow.  They fix stuff that breaks other things and then take forever to fix it, often needing an paid upgrade to the latest release.

For example, exclusive solo and solo defeat were broken upon release of v13 in November.  13.0.20 in December claimed to have fixed it but it still had obvious issues.  13.0.30 was released ***3.5 months*** later, and there are still problems.  I swear that they don't even carry out basic checks sometimes.  This is just one small example, and it's things like this that makes Cubase difficult to recommend.

That said v13 addressed quite a lot of irksome, non-standard behaviours and bugs, and was a vast improvement on 12 IMO.

Sporky

Bod said:

monquixote said:

If you want the ultimate perpetual try FL.

You pay once and get free upgrades forever. 

I really don't know how they play it these days, but I was an early adopter of FruityLoops as it was in the late 90s and was sucked in by the "free upgrades forever" offer.  In 2003, they launched FL Studio as a new top-tier product as a chargeable upgrade.  No such thing etc...

I've not paid for an GL upgrade that I can remember, and I started with Fruity Loops and am now on the latest FL Studio, so if they did charge it was only that once. 

Bod

RichAC said:

I’m an outlier in that I use Reason, which is very much aimed at electronic music (but does audio ok). Similar to S1 in that you only get all the good stuff if you subscribe - I bought a (legit) 1 year subscription heap at Plug-in Boutique.

I've used Reason quite a bit, but since they released VST plugins I feel that development of the DAW side has fallen by the wayside.  I own a current licence and often dip into the effects and instruments via VST, but never use the main app now.  I won't subscribe though.

Danny1969

TTony said:

To be completely fair to PreSonus, they've offered to refund my upgrade purchase of S1 Pro and suggested that I could use that refund to pay for (most of) a Hybrid+ subscription, which I can then transfer back into a perpetual S1 Pro licence at the end of the initial 12mth Hybrid+ subscription period (its effectively an escape route, allowing people to "pay monthly" but then have a perpetual licence at the end of the 12mths).

If I take that offer, then I *might* effectively get a free upgrade to a later version of S1 Pro if they release a new version during the 12mth period.  But anything that I create with the additional functionality in Hybrid+ during the 12mths would be lost if it's not supported in the perpetual licence version available in 12mths time (thus pushing me towards sticking with the subscription basis, which I absolutely do NOT want).

But if I take the first part of the offer (refund the upgrade cost), then the incremental cost of Logic Pro would be considerably less.

Think I'll download the Logic Pro trial later today.  Main questions will be whether I find the UI sufficiently familiar and whether my library of S1 creations can be opened in Logic Pro.

I was a Protools user for 20 years, first at home then in a professional studio. It was a great system but the cost of the software now is just ridiculous. So I downloaded the Logic trial. At first it looks a bit like Garage band and a bit childish almost but once I got my head around that I started delving into it and was really impressed with what you get included in the install. 

All in all I think it's the best value Daw. I like Reaper and do use it but you need a fait few plugins and VI's to get Reaper into something that's on the same level as Logic. 

For £29.99 Mainstage is a no brainer too

Bod

Sporky said:

Bod said:

monquixote said:

If you want the ultimate perpetual try FL.

You pay once and get free upgrades forever. 

I really don't know how they play it these days, but I was an early adopter of FruityLoops as it was in the late 90s and was sucked in by the "free upgrades forever" offer.  In 2003, they launched FL Studio as a new top-tier product as a chargeable upgrade.  No such thing etc...

I've not paid for an GL upgrade that I can remember, and I started with Fruity Loops and am now on the latest FL Studio, so if they did charge it was only that once. 

That's good to know.  I was really miffed at that.

Sporky

Bod said:

Sporky said:

I've not paid for an FL upgrade that I can remember, and I started with Fruity Loops and am now on the latest FL Studio, so if they did charge it was only that once. 

That's good to know.  I was really miffed at that.

I can imagine!

I don't remember it - not calling you a fibber, mind.

I was more miffed by the user manual - IIRC they outsourced it to CafeExpress, who got the customs forms wrong and thus made it a lot more expensive than it should have been.