Studio Onevs
REAPER
REAPER: Pick REAPER if the budget is tight and you want comparable recording and mixing for a fraction of the licence cost, at the price of building your own workflow.
Studio One
Single-window workstation with album mastering built into the same project, now owned by Fender
As of 31 August 2026, Studio One's pricing is not published; the vendor quotes on request. A workstation whose Project page masters a finished album inside the same file as the songs, so a mix change propagates to the master without a manual re-export. Softwr lists it under Music. Studio One is made by PreSonus Audio Electronics, available on Windows, macOS.
Overview
What Studio One does
Studio One is a digital audio workstation from PreSonus. Its design principle is one window and drag and drop: instruments, effects, files and buses are dragged from the browser onto tracks rather than assigned through menus. It bundles Melodyne Essential and supports ARA2, so pitch editing happens in the timeline rather than as an offline transfer. The Song page handles recording and mixing, and the Project page handles mastering. The Project page is the distinguishing feature and it is genuinely unusual. A Project holds the sequenced album, its levelling, its metadata and its deliverables, and it stays linked to the Song files feeding it. Change a mix and the master updates from the corrected song, rather than requiring a fresh bounce and a manual reimport. For anyone delivering albums, EPs or compilations instead of single tracks, that removes a whole category of version control error, and no other mainstream workstation removes it. Buyers are project studios, singer-songwriters and owners of PreSonus interfaces and Faderport surfaces. Two ownership facts should shape the decision. Fender acquired PreSonus in 2022, so roadmap priorities now sit inside a guitar hardware company rather than an independent software vendor. And PreSonus has moved its marketing to a subscription bundle that packages the workstation with sound content and cloud storage, while still selling a perpetual licence alongside it. Check which one you are buying at checkout, because the subscription stops working when you stop paying and the perpetual licence does not.
What people use it for
- Delivering an album or EP where mastering must stay linked to the mixes, so a late vocal fix does not mean rebuilding the master
- Project studios already on PreSonus interfaces and Faderport surfaces, where the control mapping is done for you
- Songwriters who want pitch editing in the timeline without buying Melodyne separately
- Running the same session live from the Show page rather than rebuilding the set in a separate performance tool
Related searches
The honest half
Where it falls short
Concrete and checkable, so you can decide whether any of them matter to you. This is the half of a review a vendor will not write about Studio One.
- The bundled Melodyne is the Essential tier, which corrects monophonic pitch only; polyphonic editing and the tools most people actually want are a paid upgrade from Celemony on top of the workstation licence.
- PreSonus now sells a subscription alongside the perpetual licence and the two are easy to confuse at checkout; the subscription stops working when payment stops, which is a very different asset for a studio planning in decades.
- Fender acquired PreSonus in 2022, so the roadmap sits inside a guitar hardware company, and long-term investment in the workstation is now a bet on that parent rather than on the original software team.
- There is no Linux build, and the MIDI editing tool set is shallower than Cubase, so composers doing rule based MIDI transformation or serious notation work will hit limits quickly.
- The plugin scanner has a long history of struggling with large third-party plugin collections, producing slow startup and occasional missing plugins when sessions move between machines.
Cross-shopped
What people choose instead of Studio One
Each pairing was judged by two reviewers asking whether a buyer would genuinely weigh the two against each other. The ones that failed were deleted rather than published.
- Studio OnevsLogic Pro
Logic Pro: Pick Logic Pro on macOS for a much larger bundled instrument and loop library at a one-off price, if you do not need the linked album mastering page.
- Studio OnevsAbleton Live
Ableton Live: Pick Live if the work is electronic or performance based, where clip launching matters more than album mastering.
Pricing
What Studio One costs
Taken from the vendor's own pricing page. Prices move, so check before you buy.
Studio One Pro (perpetual licence)
On request
- Bought outright and keeps working indefinitely
- Next major version is a separate paid upgrade
- Melodyne Essential included
Studio One Pro+ (subscription)
On request
- Workstation plus sound content and cloud storage
- Stops working when the subscription lapses
- Billed monthly or annually
Capabilities
Features
Project page
Sequences and masters an album in the same file as the songs, staying linked to the mixes it came from
Single window drag and drop
Adds instruments, effects and files by dragging from the browser rather than through menus
ARA2 with Melodyne
Edits pitch and timing in the timeline, with Melodyne Essential included in the box
Scratch Pad
Holds alternative arrangement ideas beside the main timeline without duplicating the song
Chord Track
Applies and follows harmony across both audio and MIDI tracks
Show page
Runs the same session as a live set with backing tracks and patch changes
Impact XT and Sample One
Bundled drum and sampling instruments
Faderport integration
Deep control surface mapping for the vendor hardware
Answered, with sources
Questions people ask
Each answer names the page it came from, so you can check it rather than take our word for it.
Who owns PreSonus?
Fender acquired PreSonus in 2022. Development continues, but the roadmap now sits inside a guitar hardware company rather than an independent software vendor.
Is Studio One a subscription?
Both are sold. Studio One Pro is a perpetual licence you keep; Studio One Pro+ is a subscription bundling sound content and cloud storage that stops working when you stop paying.
Why is no price listed here?
PreSonus publishes current pricing, but the tier structure has been restructured across recent versions, so this entry points at the vendor page rather than quoting a figure that may already be wrong.
What does the Project page actually do?
It sequences and masters a whole album inside the same file as the songs and stays linked to them, so changing a mix updates the master without a manual export and reimport.
Keep looking
Where to go from Studio One
- Studio One alternativesEvery product people weigh against it
- Studio One pricingPlans, floors and what the tiers exclude
- Studio One badgesWhich rules it meets, and the figure behind each
- All Music softwareThe full category
- Best Music softwareThe shortlist, and how it was cut
Best Music software for
Compare Studio One with
- Ableton Live
- REAPER
- Logic Pro
- Bitwig Studio
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- Ardour
- Cubase
- BandLab
- Pro Tools
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- Deezer
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- GarageBand
- Bitwig Studio
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Softwr does not host reviews and shows no star rating for Studio One, because a rating we did not collect is not ours to publish. What is here is the pricing and platform detail from the vendor’s own pages, limitations we could state concretely, and alternatives a reviewer confirmed people weigh against it. Tell us if any of it is wrong.
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