Recording - July 2018 - 57

Later this year, PreSonus and Celemony plan to release ARA
2.0, which will be able to integrate with the Harmonic Editing
process for even more control. Even in this early form, though,
the Chord Track is great fun for playing with harmonies.

Impact XT and Sample One XT

Two of the built-in instruments in Studio One have been massively updated in version 4. Impact, the program's MPC-style
drum machine, has been replaced by the more powerful Impact XT, and the Sample One basic sample player has been
given such a massive facelift that it's nearly unrecognizable.

Impact XT now offers eight banks of 16 pads each, which
can be filled with samples from the Browser, or audio from
elsewhere in a Song. You can define a time range in Arrange
View and drag it to a pad, which automatically saves the
audio as a separate file for later reuse. You can drag loops in
and trigger them with a pad (with automatic time stretching to
match the Song tempo), or split their hits across multiple pads
by shift-dragging. Samples can be layered, looped, reversed,
transposed, and processed with new filters with overdrive/
clipping, and routed to up to 32 different output buses for
separate processing and creating stems. There's a new Sound
Set for it as well, with nearly 2 GB of samples and loops.

Sample One XT is now a full sampler with a new Record
page that allows sampling from external audio sources or elsewhere in the Song. Samples can be massively edited now, with
way more features than can be mentioned in a short article,
with many of the same options as are found in Impact XT, along
with multiple loop modes and a solid set of synthesizer-like
envelope and modulation capabilities.

Patterns

As an old-school step sequencer user, I was thrilled to try
out the new Patterns in Studio One 4. The Pattern Editor looks
like a conventional clickable step sequencer at first (there are
keyboard and drum versions), but it offers a lot of under-thehood features that greatly expand its power. It's possible to set
up different step size, quantization, and loop length for every
pitch, map MIDI control messages in curves across the step
range, adjust swing and probabilities for each step, repeats
for stutter/ratchet effects, and more.

Each Pattern can store multiple Variations that are easily
selectable, and can be dragged from Track to Track. I discovered by accident that you can even drop a Pattern right on top
of an existing Instrument Track, letting you throw in automated
flourishes within hand-played parts-terribly cool! It's great
to be able to have this level of control without leaving Studio
One, and Patterns will keep a lot of creative types "in the
zone" without having to switch DAWs.

And more

Those are the really big additions, but there are tons more
features and tweaks in Studio One 4. The list starts with AAF
file import/export for sharing with other DAWs, a new Drum
Editor, improved macro creation, better integration with
PreSonus' Notion notation software, and doesn't stop there.
We're going to revisit these new features in future issues of
Recording, but in the meantime, Studio One 4 is worth diving
into. If you're already a Studio One user, you'll find a lot to
like in the new version, and your familiar creative processes
will be enhanced when you want them to be (and left alone
when you don't). If you're new to Studio One and you were
wondering how friendly it would be to a nonlinear producer,
the answer is now, "Very!"

PRICES: Studio One Artist, $99.95 (free with most
PreSonus interfaces); Studio One Professional,
$399.95; see website for upgrade options
MORE FROM: PreSonus, www.presonus.com
RECORDING July 2018

http://www.presonus.com

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