Studio One 4 Mastering
- Presonus Studio One Mixing Tutorials
- Studio One 4 Mastering Tutorial
- Studio One 4 Mastering Tips
- Studio One 4 Mastering Tutorial
- Presonus
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Whether you’re a Grammy-winning producer or just getting started making music, there’s a version of Studio One® that’s right for you. Studio One comes in three flavors: Artist, our flagship Professional version, and Prime, a fully functioning free version. There’s no subscription model with Studio One, so you know what you’re getting today but you can customize it with Add-on features and content as your needs grow.
| General | Studio One Prime | Studio One Artist | Studio One Professional |
|---|---|---|---|
| Start page | • | • | • |
| Song page | • | • | • |
| Project page (Mastering, DDP, Red Book CD burning, digital release) | • | ||
| Elegant single-window work environment | • | • | • |
| Powerful drag-and-drop functionality | • | • | • |
| Native high-DPI and cross-platform multi-touch user interface | • | • | • |
| Unlimited audio tracks, MIDI tracks, virtual instruments, and FX channels | • | • | • |
| Unlimited buses | • | • | |
| Integrated Melodyne pitch correction | Trial | • | |
| Single and multitrack comping | • | • | • |
| Arranger Track | • | • | • |
| Scratch Pads | • | ||
| Chord Track and Harmonic Editing | • | ||
| Editable Folder Tracks | • | • | |
| Track display list with presets, linkable to console channel display | • | • | • |
| Content browser with search, user tabs, connections to the Internet, and Preview Player | • | • | • |
| Transient detection with editable markers | • | • | |
| Drag-and-drop groove extraction | • | • | |
| Multitrack MIDI editing | • | • | • |
| Instrument and Drum Editor | • | • | • |
| Drum and melodic patterns for pattern-based arranging | • | • | • |
| Multitrack Track Transform (advanced freezing capability) | • | • | • |
| Event-based effects | • | • | |
| Macro Toolbar (create and use command sequences) | • | • | |
| Automatic latency compensation | • | • | • |
| Dropout Protection for native low latency monitoring | • | • | • |
| Advanced automation | • | • | • |
| VCA faders | • | • | |
| Audio-processing resolution (floating-point) | 32-bit | 32-bit | 64-bit |
| Easy sidechain routing | • | • | • |
| Stunning virtual instruments | Presence XT only | 5 | 5 |
| Easy-to-use drag-and-drop live sampler (Sample One XT) | • | • | |
| Import sampler formats (EXS, GigaSampler, Kontakt, SoundFont) | • | ||
| Multi Instruments | • | ||
| Channel Editor with macro controls | • | ||
| Extended FX Chains with parallel processing | • | ||
| Control Link (most intuitive MIDI-mapping system available) | • | • | • |
| Real-time audio time-stretching, resampling, and normalization | • | • | • |
| Compatible with any ASIO-, Windows Audio-, or Core Audio-compliant audio interfaces | • | • | • |
| Use Pro Tools, Cubase, Logic, or Sonar keyboard shortcuts—or create your own | • | • | • |
| Integrated mastering suite with automatic mix updating, DDP import/export, Red Book CD burning, and digital release | • | ||
| Send Song or individual tracks to Notion (audio + note data) | • | • | |
| Export to SoundCloud™ | • | • | |
| AAF (Advanced Authoring Format) import and export | • | ||
| Import Song data | • | ||
| Video playback and sync | • | ||
| Video export | • | ||
| MP3 encoding and decoding | • | • | • |
| M4A (AAC / ALAC) encoding and decoding | • | • | • |
| NEW: Exchange 2.0 | • | • | |
| Third-party plug-in support (AU, VST2, and VST3 plug-ins and ReWire applications) | (Add-on available) | • | |
| Hardware I/O Support | 2/2 | Unlimited | Unlimited |
- May 05, 2019 Many people use Studio One 4 for mixing and mastering, but what you don’t hear about is Studio One’s mastering capabilities. Studio one has what they call “projects” that are a full-fledged mastering program. It’s almost two like having two pieces of software in one.
- The course contains three complete mastering demonstrations: a Pop/EDM song, a country song, and a 3-song rock EP. And when your mastering is completed, it’s time to export your songs or burn them to CD! So 'master' the art and science of mastering using Studio One 4 in this 20-tutorial course, with trainer and mastering engineer Joshua Carney!
Panning allows you to place each track in the stereo field. Bass, kick and all low frequency sounds stay central. This can cause issues with sounds sitting on top of one another but don’t worry, we’ll return to this. The popular ’imagine it’s a band on stage’ theory can apply so think of your tracks.
Presonus Studio One Mixing Tutorials
| Native Effects™ Plug-ins | Type | Studio One Prime | Studio One Artist | Studio One Professional |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Ampire | State Space-modeled guitar amp simulator | Basic | Basic | • |
| Analog Delay | Tape delay emulator | • | • | |
| Arpeggiator | Note FX arpeggiator with pattern sequencer | • | ||
| Auto Filter | Envelope-controlled filter | • | • | |
| Beat Delay | Tempo-synched delay | • | • | • |
| Binaural Pan | Stereo panner and imager | • | • | |
| Bitcrusher | Lo-fi and downsampling processor | • | • | |
| Channel Strip | Compressor / expander / equalizer | • | • | • |
| Chorder | Note FX chord processor | • | ||
| Chorus | Three-voice chorus with stereo width | • | • | • |
| Compressor | Full-featured RMS compressor with side-chain | • | • | |
| Console Shaper | Mix Engine FX analog console emulation | • | ||
| Dual Pan | Independent L/R channel panner | • | • | |
| Expander | Downward expander with sidechain | • | • | |
| Fat Channel XT | Native version of StudioLive Fat Channel | • | • | |
| Flanger | Flanger with tempo sync | • | • | • |
| Gate | Noise gate with MIDI trigger outp | • | • | |
| Groove Delay | Multi-tap delay with tempo sync and tap filtering | • | ||
| Input Filter | Note FX filter for velocity and key range | • | • | • |
| IR Maker | Impulse response creation utility | • | ||
| Level Meter | Resizable, multi-scale loudness / level meter | • | • | |
| Limiter | Brickwall peak limiter | • | • | |
| Mixtool | Channel utility | • | • | |
| MixVerb™ | Basic reverb | • | • | • |
| Multiband Dynamics | Multiband compressor/expander | • | ||
| Open AIR | Convolution reverb | • | ||
| Pedalboard | State Space-modeled guitar pedals | Basic | Basic | • |
| Phaser | Multistage allpass-filter phaser | • | • | • |
| Phase Meter | Phase analyzer | • | • | |
| Pipeline | External-processor insert | • | ||
| Pro EQ | Seven-band parametric equalizer | • | • | |
| RedlightDist™ | Analog distortion emulator | • | • | • |
| Repeater | Note FX delay with transpose | • | ||
| Room Reverb | Room simulator | • | • | |
| Rotor | Rotary speaker emulator | • | • | |
| Scope | Digital oscilloscope | • | • | |
| Spectrum Meter | Spectrum meter | • | • | |
| Tone Generator | Multi-waveform signal generator | • | • | |
| Tricomp™ | Basic multiband compressor | • | • | |
| Tuner | Chromatic instrument tuner | • | • | • |
| X-Trem | Tremolo/autopanner with tempo sync and step sequence modulation | • | • | |
| Total Native Effects™ Plug-ins | 10 | 32 | 41 |
| Virtual Instruments | Type | Studio One Prime | Studio One Artist | Studio One Professional |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Mojito | Monophonic subtractive synthesizer | • | • | |
| Mai Tai | Polyphonic virtual analog synth | (Add-on) | • | • |
| Impact XT | Multichannel drum sampler | • | • | |
| Sample One XT | Drag-and-drop integrated live sampler | • | • | |
| Presence XT | Sample playback instrument | • | • | • |
| Support for third-party sampler format (EXS, Giga, Kontakt) | • | |||
| Total Virtual Instruments | 1 | 5 | 5 |
| Bundled Content | Size | Studio One Prime | Studio One Artist | Studio One Professional |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Melodyne Essential | 120 MB | Trial | • | |
| Prime Selection Loops and Sounds | 785 MB | • | • | • |
| Presence XT Core Library | 15 GB | • | ||
| Impact XT Core Library | 1.8 GB | • | • | |
| Acoustic Drum Kits and Loops | 1.5 GB | • | ||
| Producer Loops and Kits (BigFishAudio, Sample Magic, MVP Loops) | 3.76 GB | • | ||
| Electronic Audioloops | 3.17 GB | • | ||
| Electronic Kits and Musicloops | 294 MB | • | ||
| Studio One FX | 546 MB | • | ||
| Studio One Impulse Responses | 1.19 GB | • | ||
| Studio One Instruments Vol. 1+2 | 1.68 GB | • | • | • |
| Studio One Musicloops 1+2 | 900 MB | • | • | |
| Studio One Expansion | 39 MB | • | • | |
| Ueberschall Impact Drums | 68 MB | • | ||
| Vengeance Sound | 880 MB | • | ||
| Voodoo One Synth Soundset | 900 MB | • | • |
on Aug 11, 2014 in Presonus Studio One 1 comments
Studio One Professional comes packaged with a great mastering tool application. You can create songs, and then bring these songs into projects to master them. Let’s take a look at some of the tools that are available and how they can assist you with your mastering. First I’ll cover the different metering options that are available, and then I’ll finish off with a suggested mastering chain order to use.
Tip 1 – Using The Frequency Spectrum Meters
The Projects page comes bundled with great visual meters that can help to assist you with your audio mastering. You should always first be using your eyes to judge the quality of your mastering, but these visual aids can be really helpful in confirming what you are hearing. I like to use the Frequency Spectrum graph and set it to FFT mode. You get a very clear indication of where the audio is most prominent along the frequency range. Use this graph to make sure you’re not overcompensating in areas.
Maybe you think your mastering is sounding ok, but from the frequency spectrograph it is showing a bit of a bump in the low midrange. By using the meters you will pick this up and your can correct it by doing a slight frequency cut in this frequency region.
If you hover your mouse pointer over the region it will give you details on the frequency and level, so use these accurate meters to assist you.
I find using the Hold mode also helps. This will draw in a line where the highest peaks are. You can set different hold times so that you can see these peaks for longer, or shorter if you prefer.
Tip 2 – Using The Peak/RSM Level Meter
Studio One Professional has an advanced output metering system in the Projects page. It uses a Peak/RMS mode and you can also choose different K-metering systems. The Peak/RMS mode is a great way to see your peaking levels on the output by the Peak Meter, and the RMS shows the average level. So maybe your highest level peaks are at -2 dB, but the average is sitting at -10 dB. This gives you a good indication of how much headroom you have in your song.
There is also a clip button that will go red if any of the audio clips the output. If your output level does clip, adjust accordingly and then click the Clip button to reset it. Then check if your output is still clipping, as you don’t want any digital distortion being introduced into your audio.
Studio One 4 Mastering Tutorial
Tip 3 – Using The K-Metering System Level Meter
The K-metering output options can be used to meter different styles of music, as the K-metering system suggests that different styles have different dynamic ranges and output levels. K12 is recommended for any broadcast audio. This will show a green meter and when it goes over the 0 dB level it’ll go yellow. The ideal level is below 0 dB, so probably around -6 to -3 dB, leaving you enough headroom in the audio. This metering system can also be used for rock and pop style music.
The K14 meter can be used with music and audio with more dynamic range, like the rock and country genres.
The primary executable is named BlueCatFreewarePack2.01uninst.exe. Free DigiRack Plug-Ins 8.0.3 is a software program developed by Avid Technology. While about 70% of users of Free DigiRack Plug-Ins come from the United States, it is also popular in United Kingdom and France.Program details. 
Relative to the overall usage of users who have this installed on their PCs, most are running Windows 7 (SP1) and Windows 10. The setup package generally installs about 29 files and is usually about 894.97 MB (938,448,655 bytes).
And K20 is used for styles with the most dynamic range such as orchestral and classical style or high fidelity recordings.
So if you want to use the K-meters, use the one that is most appropriate to the genre or style you are mastering. These meters are more sensitive to the audio than the Peak/RMS mode so make fine changes to the levels and keep a close eye on the meters to see when your audio is reaching the optimum level for the style.
Tip 4 – Using the Correlation Phase Meter to correct Phase Issues
If you have any potential phase issues in your audio, this is where the Correlation Phase Meter comes in handy. This visual graph in the Projects page next to the level meter is a little small, so I’d recommend rather adding the Phase Meter plug-in to your inserts and viewing it from there. The big visual graph shows the stereo image of the audio, and the bottom line shows the correlation phase of the audio.
Try changing the pan of your audio, maybe pan your stereo audio track all the way to the left and see how this changes the stereo image of your audio. Now try something else. Add the Binaural Pan plug-in to your inserts and click on the Mono button to mono your audio. See how this displays on the stereo width display. So you can get a good idea of how narrow or wide your audio is on this graph.
Now looking at the Correlation meter at the bottom of the Phase Meter, this should jump around between the 0 to 1 range. If this drops into the 0 to -1 range then there could be a possible phase issue somewhere in your audio. You’ll probably need to go back to your mix and check the tracks to see where the phasing issue could be stemming from. So go back to your Song file and use the MixTool plug-in to help you correcting phase issues. First insert the Phase Meter on your master track. Then solo each track while viewing this plug-in and see which track/s could be out of phase. On the tracks that are causing the phase issue, insert the MixTool plug-in and invert the phase.
Tip 5 – Building Up a Master Inserts Chain
What can really help streamline your mastering is to build up a mastering chain. This works especially well if you are working on a collection of songs for an album as you can have a coherent mastering process applied across your song and similar related mastering projects. The mastering processing chain is broken down into 3 sections. There’s the Inserts which is processing applied to each track, and then there is the Master Inserts and Post which is applied globally. So let’s build a mastering chain that can be applied across all tracks. Let’s do this by using the Master Inserts section, and then you can use the Inserts to apply processing to individual tracks.
First add a ProEQ. The ProEQ has a frequency analyzer as well so you can use this to analyze your audio. Use the ProEQ to make minor EQ adjustments. If you need to make any big EQ changes, rather go back to the mix to make them. I usually use the ProEQ to cut out some of the low frequencies that are inaudible (such as a low cut removing out all the frequencies below 50 Hz) and this will free up some extra headroom.
Studio One 4 Mastering Tips
Next add the MultiDynamics plug-in. This is a multiband compressor that can be used to alter the dynamics on your stereo audio file. Maybe you want to tighten up the lower bands with some compression, and then increase its level. And then maybe you want to increase the level of the higher frequency band. This can all be done through a multiband compressor like the MultiDynamics plug-in.
After this, add in the Limiter to increase the overall perceived volume of your audio, but at the same time prevent the audio from clipping. With the Limiter, set the ceiling to -0.3, so no audio will go over this ceiling. Now increase the Input and hear how this raises the overall level of your audio, but it doesn’t clip no matter how hard you push the Input level. Just make sure to keep some space for dynamics, so if you push the Input too far it’ll squash your audio dynamics that you worked so hard on in the mix. You can also change the metering on the Limiter from the Peak/RMS to K-meters.
The beauty of the Projects page is that you can still go into each track and add different processing through the Inserts section. Let’s say on your one track you’ll like to add in a tad more reverb to the sound than the others, then you can add a reverb effect on the Inserts, and it’ll only be applied to that particular track.
Conclusion
Take these tips and apply them in your next mastering project. Using the visuals meters will really help guide you with your audio and confirm that what you seeing is what you are hearing as well. And streamlining your mastering with mastering insert chains will help you focus more on the audio and less on the setup process.
Studio One 4 Mastering Tutorial
For more Studio One tips and tricks check out the following tutorials: