PreSonus has released Studio One Prime – a free version of its Studio One DAW.
Studio One Prime offers the same drag-and drop workflow of its bigger brothers, along with providing unlimited tracks, 9 Audio Native Effects, Presence XT sampler, and advanced multi-track editing and comping.
Features:
- Single-window work environment with drag-and-drop functionality and multi-touch support
- Unlimited audio tracks, MIDI tracks, buses, and FX channels
- Presence XT expandable sampler with essential sound library
- 9 Audio Native Effects, including Ampire, Beat Delay, Chorus, MixVerb and more.
Users can (at any time) turn on the 30-day demo version of Studio One Professional to try out features that aren’t offered in Prime. You can get detailed info on what’s available in the various versions of Studio One at the Presonus site.
Awesome freebie but no third party VST support.
Presonus deserve all the plaudits they’re getting for Studio One 3, a great update.
There’s no excuse not to try it now with this very capable free version! Unlimited tracks man!
Your move Ableton, Logic etc.
WOW!
I never tried Studio One before. But within 10 minutes I’m now piano-roll-editing a MIDI track with a solo string instrument from their sound set on a macbook air (Windows also available). It’s good I already have an account, back from when I got Notion.
Base install is around 270+MB, then the optional sound sets come in 140+MB and 1.4GB.
Prime’s limitations are also not so bad and what’s there seems more than enough for hobbyists.
This is so generous of Presonous! 🙂
no au or vst support. Last time I fired up Studio One 3 it seemed like it was still in Alpha stage
oh well, there goes my initial excitement. 🙁 it’s now too late for my other post. it seems you need a bunch of files loadable by Presence XT if you want 3rd party sounds. I got to load an SF2, at least.
no au or vst plugin support…there goes my interest in downloading and trying it then.
anything to offer over Reaper?
I find it hard to imagine picking a crippled version of any of the other DAWs over the (effectively) free awesomeness that is Reaper, though I did put in my 60 bucks after using it for a year and change.
Nope. Reaper still look like silver bullet for it’s features/price/customization etc.
Also Ableton lite or Bitwig lite that are included almost with every piece of hardware nowdays look really good.
I’ve always found the limitation of not allowing plug ins to be far too harsh. It clearly makes this a “demo” rather than a “free DAW”. It’s a nice program. If they let people get comfortable and customiz I expect it would convert a lot more users, both new and old.
Considering how many great records were/are made on multitrack recorders without VSTs, reducing this to a ‘demo’ seems kind of short sighted. Also considering what’s on offer for free here, VST/AU support would make this the only DAW many people ever needed. They are in business after all.
If they could work out a way to only allow a single VST/AU at once or something, that might be a good middle ground so that folks who rely heavily on a particular plugin could give it a slightly more close-to-their-real-world try out.
Presumably, there’s nothing stopping you from loading your favorite VST instruments into an external VST host and sending MIDI to it.
For five bucks the new Garageband is hard to beat unless of course you are a Windows user.
I love Presonus Studio One… I’ve been using it since the first version and coming from a Cubase background it was a blessing. I just wish they’d add something similar to Ableton’s Session view. That said I am happy with it and really enjoy using it whenever I have time to make music.
Any chance to see a Linuxed version one day ?
I’m using Mixcraft 7 on PC. Affordable.