My opinion, any automation type changes you would want should be done at the mixing level. All automation / track fx / track eq / etc., should be done before mastering. Project page is for mastering / album building.

If you are mastering someone else's mixdowns, I could see where automation might be useful on the project page, but yeah there are probably bigger fish to fry.

There's nothing stopping you from mastering in the Studio One song window.

Just put each song on its own Stereo track and you have all the automation you could ask for. The only thing you're missing is the ability to place track markers. But when you're done you can export the whole thing as a single stereo master track. Then Import it as a project and just add track markers.

darrenporter1 wrotethere are probably bigger fish to fry.

It's the chief complaint I hear from ME's regarding the Project Page and I've seen Presonus reach out to ME's about feedback on the Project Page. So, if we're talking about the Project Page I'd ask, "what fish exactly?" If you simply mean Mastering Engineers versus other user groups, ok sure there are much less of them.

gregghart wroteMy opinion, any automation type changes you would want should be done at the mixing level. All automation / track fx / track eq / etc., should be done before mastering. Project page is for mastering / album building.

Just because YOU think that mastering shouldn't involve volume automation doesn't mean that the wider mastering community does. I'm assuming Presonus wanted the Project Page to offer widespread benefit, so I'm only echoing the sentiments of engineers that I have master my work.

mikemanthei wroteThere's nothing stopping you from mastering in the Studio One song window.

Just put each song on its own Stereo track and you have all the automation you could ask for. The only thing you're missing is the ability to place track markers. But when you're done you can export the whole thing as a single stereo master track. Then Import it as a project and just add track markers.

Yes and professional mastering engineers who are colleagues of mine and use Studio One all say they just use the song page because

1- it has automation

and

2- you can transform tracks with pipeline as an insert, because hardware is part of their workflow

the Project Page, which is designed for mastering, has

0 - of these things

robertgray3 wrote2- you can transform tracks with pipeline as an insert, because hardware is part of their workflow

the Project Page, which is designed for mastering, has

0 - of these things

You sure about that? It's just an insert effect. I was able to add Pipeline to the Project Page. I didn't test if it worked, but it most certainly is available there.

darrenporter1 wrote

robertgray3 wrotetransform tracks

darrenporter1 wroteYou sure about that?

Yes I'm sure you can't transform tracks in the Project Page, they need that feature for to "print" processing while continuing to work.

That's not what it says on the bottom of this page...
https://s1manual.presonus.com/Content/M ... ffects.htm

What am I missing?

darrenporter1 wroteThat's not what it says on the bottom of this page...
https://s1manual.presonus.com/Content/M ... ffects.htm

What am I missing?

Transform, not Bounce. Transforming you can undo and re-do at any point independent of other choices in the session while saving the insert settings.

This is a small example of why this feature hasn't been implemented. Even the developers probably don't realize why Transforming vs Bouncing would make such a huge difference to someone's workflow.

robertgray3 wrote

gregghart wroteMy opinion, any automation type changes you would want should be done at the mixing level. All automation / track fx / track eq / etc., should be done before mastering. Project page is for mastering / album building.

Look, I'm not trying to start something or argue with you. So don't take that comment as if I was. I just don't think the project page was designed to be that way. I think the terms "Mixing" and "Mastering" get confused. Mixing is about creating balance and emotion in the song. It includes the various effects, dynamics, and tones in the song. Mastering is about making that mix sound on par with the rest of the stuff on the radio. In other words, taking an already mixed track applying overall EQ, limiting, compression. Automation belongs to the mixing category as it has to do with dynamics. Mixing is 80% of the sound of the song. Mastering is the remaining 20%.

What types of things are you looking to automate that shouldn't have been done at the song level? I'm just curious. Maybe I'm missing something really cool here. I've been doing this for 25 years (electronic music, orchestral music, rock music) and have never needed automation "after the fact."

The nice thing about the project page, if you decided you needed to automate something, you can literally go back into the song, make the changes, and it sends the new mix right to the project to replace what was already there. You can also do basic fades / cross fades right there as well.

gregghart wroteWhat types of things are you looking to automate that shouldn't have been done at the song level?

Funny that you ask. Because I like gathering info for improving my favorite DAW, I asked that question to colleagues who master my work.

Common ones I heard were:

- Light volume automation (with something like Mixtool) going into their processing chain.
- Some threshold automation on one of the limiters.

Outside of stem mastering situations, they are mastering from a 2 track stereo file. Nobody (including me) is sending them a full session in Studio One .song format. Even then they basically master a song in 30 minutes, so I'm not sure they have time to deal with the back and forth.

Ah. Makes sense. I'd still just import them into the song page, do what needs to be done, including mastering. If it's multiple files for an album, create multiple song pages, do what needs to be done, then send them all to the project page for track layout. Shouldn't take any more time than doing it all via project page. Project page is really only meant for mastering. What you are doing isn't technically mastering since you are looking to automate things. As far as I know, there are no mastering suites out there that do this. Not even Sound Forge Pro which is one of the more popular stand alone mastering programs out there.

gregghart wroteWhat you are doing isn't technically mastering since you are looking to automate things.

Next time I'm working with them I'll be sure to let them know they're not technically mastering

Simply trying to bring in some perspective since these are pro users that only master and want to use the Project Page for singles or albums and can't because of these two limitations. But Presonus already asked these "non-mastering" mastering engineers for feedback on why they aren't using the Project Page anyway. Only relaying it here because many users (not just you and darren, it's pretty common honestly) don't quite see why anybody's asking for this.

It's cool. Note that I never said they were "non mastering" mastering engineers. Those are your words. All I said is that the process of mastering comes after the mixing. I know of no mastering software that automates. Mastering is file based, not time based.

gregghart wroteWhat types of things are you looking to automate that shouldn't have been done at the song level? I'm just curious.

Volume automation, or at least some kind of post-plugins volume would be a start. Currently, we only have access to the handles on the waveforms, which are before the plugins. Not ideal if you're doing any dynamics or other otherwise non-linear processing.

(And while we're on it, if you choose to use "range of track markers" it *STILL* includes the 2 seconds of silence required by CD protocol in your rendered audio)

Maybe I'm missing something, but surely if you needed to use automation you would just dump it all into a song.

Regardless I'm not a pureist, I understand exactly what mastering is in the classical sense but if people need to work outside the norm with a different methodology then so be it. There is a use case here for them.

Hello

S1 still keeps crashing on osx. Its such a great DAW and i would love to work with it, but it crashes.
It works perfekt bevor version 4.5 cames out.
Pla make it stable again!

Crashes on loading?
Crashes on Closing?
Crashes during a given process?

To get help on the forum, we need more info. Specs of your system would be a good start

Best
Scott