Fender Studio Pro review: Powerful digital audio workstation

Best Prices Today: Fender Studio Pro

We assumed that with the release of Fender Studio, a free basic audio recording app, somewhere down the line a pro version would appear and that it would also be based on Presonus’s flagship Studio One digital audio workstation. Presonus being the Louisiana company that Fender acquired for its highly-regarded software and audio interfaces.

Well, said pro DAW is here and it’s monikered as Fender Studio Pro. While it’s rebranded, it remains true to the power of its forebearer, and has evolved significantly as of the just-released version 8.

There’s also been a rebranding of Presonus’s other software as well as the Quantum LT/HD and AudioBox interfaces and controllers. Yup, basically it’s goodbye to the Presonus name, though the brand transition is not complete.

What are Fender Pro Studio’s features?

Studio Pro’s features are vast, varied, and in a couple of cases, unique. Primarily, it’s a DAW that lets you record and play back MIDI info and audio, then edit, process, assemble, and output both in myriad ways. These are saved as “sessions” (formerly “songs”). Why the change? Don’t know.

But Studio Pro is also unusual in integrating a module which allows you to create live performance “shows” with sets of songs including backing/canned tracks. You can assign tracks to various players as well. It’s similar to Apple’s Mainstage, a $30 standalone application.

Completely unique to Studio Pro is a mastering module that lets you create “projects” where you apply the same effects and processing to multiple mixdowns so that all they have the same timbre, volume, etc. There are a host of features such as advanced metering, and output to various types of media, including online services.

Fender Studio Pro presents tracks in the traditional way, stacked vertically. Along with MIDI and audio tracks, there are time signature, lyric, marker, tempo, etc. tracks. There’s also an arranger track that allows you to divide sessions into regions and move/copy those regions about about the arranger timeline. Don’t like that bridge after the second chorus? Move to after the third.

Additionally, there’s a clip/scene-based launcher of the kind that made Ableton Live famous. Basically you create independent clips (from arranger track material), play them independently or stack them in scenes so they can also be played in groups. It’s a boon for on-the-fly music creation, DJ’ing, and live performance.

All DAWs these days support virtual instruments, i.e. software simulations of just about any instrument you can think of, and some you haven’t. A few that Fender includes with Studio Pro are a drum sampler (Impact), monophonic and polyphonic samplers (SampleOne and Presence), synthesizers (Mojito, Mai Tai), plus some cinematic soundscapes and a lot more.

If you want even more loops, sounds, etc., Studio Pro interfaces with Splice.com, the online sound and loop service ($4.99 a month to start) as well as Fender’s own curated Studio Pro + collection (see the pricing section below). Fender also provides a license for the brand-new Tonalics, a guitar-focused loops and performance instrument that integrates into Studio Pro via ARA or as a standalone instrument–think of it as EZ Drummer on steroids for strummers.

Personally, I have no need for someone to play guitar for me. However, I did have fun bouncing some of the Tonalic clips to audio, then extracting the MIDI and playing various games with the results, such as creating grooves from them.

There are also numerous audio processing plug-ins (over 45 of them in Studio Pro) that simulate real life audio effects such as compressors, reverbs, delays, etc. They can even simulate various types of amplifiers and guitar FX.

Which brings us to the somewhat unique, and (by my ear) extremely authentic replications of Fender (and other popular) amplifiers, courtesy of plugin versions of the Fender’s Mustang (Guitar) and Rumble (Bass) modeling amps.

Note that the majority of the virtual instruments and plug-ins found in Fender Pro Studio are proprietary and can’t be used in other DAWs. Same with grooves, etc. Bummer.

In case you’re reading this, but know nothing of the musical instrument industry, Fender was started way back in the 1950s by Leo Fender, who created both iconic guitars and guitar amplifiers. It’s no longer privately owned, but what is these days?

Iconic? Look at any ancient Buddy Holly video and you’re likely to see him strumming a Fender classic, and mainstay of countless guit-fiddlers, the Stratocaster. Same with any recent Eric Clapton video. I have three. Most guitar players own at least one. Most country players also own another classic, the Telecaster.

Other features include AI stem separation (pulling individual vocal and instrument tracks out of recorded songs.), inline notation (per track), and ARA integration for inline advanced audio editing (pitch and phoneme adjustment) using third-party programs such as Celemony Melodyne. A license for the essential version of the latter is included with Fender Studio Pro.

I’ve only scratched the feature surface here. Long-time users could list (and no doubt ask for…) a lot more, but I’ll just say that nearly everything I went looking for, I found. Below is the audio menu demonstrating just how many features you’ll find, as well as just how large and cumbersome Studio Pro’s menus have become.

What’s new in Fender Studio Pro?

Fender Studio Pro adds two new overviews to help you visualize your song/session: the arrangement/timeline overview that helps you better navigate your session (in the image below at the top of the window), and the channel plugin overview shown in the next image.

The channel overview pane shows control-focused versions of the plugins and instruments present on a track. This lets you adjust major parameters without having to open their child windows (mostly). It also lets you map controls from third-party plug-ins if they don’t show up automatically.

This plugin overview pane (just above the transport in the image below) is common in other DAWs, but the Studio developers likely didn’t feel the need because you can switch between the virtual instruments and FX within one child window via a list of them at the top of said window. Few other DAWs allow this.

Two things I don’t care for in the channel overview is its fixed size (most are), and the navigation tabs at the bottom which take up a lot of screen real estate. It does detach and float which somewhat mitigates those criticisms.

Next up is Audio to Notes (converting audio to MIDI messages), something the program is also a bit tardy to the table with. For example, with audio to MIDI you can take a guitar recording, extract the notes and fatten up the mix using said MIDI notes to play a virtual guitar instrument. That’s just one example.

If you find metronome click tracks boring, there’s a new and unique-among-DAWs musical metronome that plays drum beats. You can select from a wide range of styles and grooves if you want to spice things up or just swing along. Think of it as Logic Pro X’s Drummers (sans fills) linked to the metronome. You can also stick with a plain click, but replace the sound with any number of other percussive audio samples.

Even better would be an option to immediately start recording without further user intervention (it’s only a single keystroke, but…) and a MIDI track set to record as well. Maybe in the next version.

There’s of course direct import from the free Fender Studio app. For those seeking creative stimulation, there are also a chord plug-in and chord track that will help you create and flesh out progressions (series of chords).

Note that the Fender amp simulations are also a new feature in Studio Pro 8, though they first appeared in the app.

How easy is Fender Pro Studio to use?

Visit any DAW forum, you’ll soon realize that ease-of-use is in the eye of the beholder. Opinions (and emotions) vary wildly, and much depends on your habits, needs, and experience. However…

Given the extremely complex and feature rich nature of modern DAWs (vendors have been piling on features for a good three decades now), Fender Studio Pro is easy to use and offers a decently short learning curve given some previous DAW experience.

It utilizes a paned/sectioned interface, though you can detach some of the panes as floating windows. For some reason you can’t do this with the toolbar or transport bar which would be best-served by this in my book.

Generally speaking, the updated look of the interface is a bit less angular and harsh (my take on the original). It’s a little rounder in spots, and sections in the toolbar and transport are easier for the eye to delineate than before.

I also appreciate that you’re now able (this was added previously) to customize the Inspector (Track info pane), Transport (play, record, etc. buttons) bar, the toolbar, and the file browsing pane to reduce clutter quite a bit. New for this version is customization of the track header. You’ll notice in some of the screen caps that the number of icons in the transport and toolbar were greatly reduced by yours truly.

There is still more small text and monochromatic icons than I’d like, as well as those decidedly long-winded menus pictured above in the features section. But on the whole the program is far, far easier to navigate, less visually confusing, and easier to use than it once was. I’d say it was vying for the top spot in that category.

Studio Pro also allows multiple songs, sessions, and mastering projects to be open without devolving into a crash fest or completely bogging down your system. That’s kind of rare and can make large ventures a lot easier.

How does Fender Studio Pro sound and perform?

There’s a continual, nonsensical debate among some concerning the overall sound of a DAW, which is often more about shape consciousness than the actual audio engine–all of which are basically flawless sonically at this point. If there ever were DAWs that didn’t sound as good as others, they’re long gone.

What’s really in play is not the DAW, but the quality of the instruments and FX, which are almost uniformly fantastic these days. All the Fender Studio Pro instruments and FX I played with (all of them at some point) are aurally excellent, as were all my recordings: guitar, bass, and really bad vocals.

I found the stem separation as good, or in some cases better than any other program I’ve tried. Most DAWs feature stem separation these days, and big hint: You’ll get much better results from audio to MIDI algorithms if you first separate mixdowns into stems.

When using separated stems, said audio to MIDI (Extract commands) for drums was nearly perfect note-wise, though velocities tended to miss subtleties. Bass notes were close, though some attacks didn’t make it through. To be fair, I play bass with my fingers and sharper attacks would likely register better. The guitar track was… Well the ideas were there.

As with all the other audio to MIDI I’ve tried, success depends on the quality of the audio you’re processing and sounds involved. Distinct transients help. A lot of editing can be required to match the MIDI results to the source audio, or not. Again, this is all par for the course with the current state of the technology.

I found Studio Pro’s playback and audio recording performance more than adequate, with decently low resource consumption. Full disclosure: I worked on a very, very fast M4 Max Studio and never exceeded 24 tracks.

I did, unfortunately run into an issue with MIDI which seems to have been a conflict with already installed Studio One 7.2. The MIDI monitor showed that messages were arriving from my keyboards, MIDI guitar controller, etc. However, they were not passed on to the track or the virtual instruments they contained, i.e., I could not record MIDI or play virtual instruments.

Uninstalling Studio One 7.2, then uninstalling and reinstalling Fender Studio Pro with an app cleaner fixed the issue (just reinstalling did not fix things), but they should be able to co-exist. Regardless, I like Studio Pro 8 so much that I won’t miss 7.2 in the least.

How much does Fender Studio Pro cost?

There’s some pretty good news in the cost-of-ownership department. Fender Studio Pro is available with a perpetual license for $200, the same as Apple’s own Logic Pro X, and a lot cheaper than alternatives such as Ableton Live, Steinberg Cubase, Bitwig Studio, etc.

A perpetual license is the best bet if you have your own FX and instrument plug-ins or can make do with Studio Pro’s very competent bundled stuff, though your $200 only covers updates for the subsequent 12 months. To be honest, the updates from Presonus were hardly what were promised when they first started offering the subscription so you’re likely going to have to rebuy if that “must have” feature appears more than a year later. Or…

There’s also a subscription plan for $180 a year that includes the perpetual license plus 12 months access to the Pro + content: samples, loops, the Notion notation software, etc. You may also pay $20 monthly for the program and Pro + if you only need music production for a little while. It’s also a good way to scope out the program to see if you like it, and or use once in a while for the mastering section.

There’s no trial or demo version available, so that’s pretty much your only way to kick the tires. Upgrades from 7.2 are $99.

Should you opt for Fender Studio Pro?

There’s absolutely no musical task that Studio Pro doesn’t cover or excel at, and mastering project section is worth the price of admission on its own for multi-song projects and publishing. Additionally, I think the amp simulations are top-notch. I really enjoyed playing through them.

But as I said earlier, a DAW must fit your needs and habits, aka workflow. There’s no trial or demo, but $20 and you can kick the tires for a full month.

Current users with perpetual licenses and no subscription will likely want to upgrade, and I think there’s enough new stuff to warrant it. That said, 7.2 is still plenty capable. You’re on your own with that decision.