PreSonus Studio One is dead. Long live Fender Studio Pro.
If that sentence feels weird to read, imagine how it feels for those of us who’ve been working in Studio One for years. The DAW we know and trust just got a complete rebrand, and I have thoughts.
The Name Change Nobody Asked For
Let’s address the elephant in the room: Fender Studio Pro is a confusing name for a DAW. When someone says they use Fender software, your first thought isn’t “digital audio workstation”—it’s guitar plugins, amp sims, maybe some kind of tablature software.
PreSonus had built real credibility in the audio production space. The brand meant something. Killing it off feels like corporate decision-making at its finest—change for the sake of change, with little regard for how it actually serves the users.
To Fender’s credit, they emphasized in the intro video that the same development team in Hamburg is still building the software. That matters. The people who understand the product are still there. But I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t concerned about long-term direction.
Why Fender’s Track Record Worries Me
Here’s the thing about Fender’s acquisitions: they don’t have a great history of maintaining the brands they buy.
- SWR bass amps? Shut down.
- Tacoma guitars? Gone.
- Guild? Declined significantly under Fender ownership.
- Ovation, Sunn—the list continues.
These are all products in Fender’s wheelhouse: guitars and amplifiers. If they’ve struggled to maintain brands in categories they know intimately, what does that mean for a complex software product like a DAW?
My worry isn’t immediate. It’s the slow creep of Fender-specific feature bloat, the gradual pivot away from what made Studio One great, and eventually, the quiet sidelining of the product entirely. I hope I’m wrong. Time will tell.
The Annoying Stuff First
Application Name Changes Break Everything
Small annoyance, but worth mentioning: when you completely rename an application, it breaks compatibility with every other piece of software that references it.
I had to manually reconfigure:
- SoundFlow (all my custom hotkeys)
- Logitech mouse (quick key assignments)
It’s not the end of the world, but it’s unnecessary friction. If they’d kept the application identifier the same under the hood, this would have been seamless.
The Double-Click Disaster
For years—years—Studio One required a double-click to open a plugin. Single-click gave you the micro view, which I’ve never found useful.
Fender Studio 8 reversed this. Now it’s single-click to open, double-click for micro view.
Logically? This is better. It’s how it should have been from the start. But after programming my muscle memory for years, I’m constantly double-clicking and triggering the micro view by accident. It’s going to take time to unlearn.
And here’s my real frustration: with all the inspector customization work they did (which I’ll get to), why can’t we just disable micro view entirely? Give us the option. Some people use it—great, keep it for them. But for those of us who don’t, let us turn it off.
What Actually Impressed Me
Inspector Customization Is Excellent
This is where Fender Studio 8 really shines for my workflow.
I work with the inspector visible at all times—clicking through tracks, adjusting sends, tweaking plugin parameters, managing the fader. The new customization options let you tailor exactly what appears in that space.
Right-click any track → Customize, and you get granular control over what displays:
- Audio events
- Instrument tracks
- Groups
- Layers
- Event effects
If you’re strictly a mixing engineer like me, you can strip out all the production-focused elements you never touch. If you’re a producer, you can keep everything visible. The flexibility is genuinely useful, Industry Insightsand it’s something I’ve wanted for a long time.
The toolbar customization is equally helpful. I immediately removed the launcher, scratch pad, and video player—features I never use. Cleaner workspace, faster workflow.
Channel Overview: Interesting, But Not for Me
The new Channel Overview panel is clearly inspired by Ableton’s approach—everything in one consolidated view.
For producers working across multiple instruments and synths, I can see the appeal. Close the inspector, open the channel overview, and manipulate everything from one screen.
For mixing? It’s less compelling.
The plugin controls are limited. For example, FabFilter Pro-Q 4 only exposes Band 1 controls in this view. You can customize which parameters appear, but you’re still working blind without the full plugin interface.
Maybe that’s a feature, not a bug. There’s an argument that not seeing the full plugin interface forces you to use your ears instead of your eyes. But it’s not how I work.
One thing I do appreciate: clicking a plugin in the list automatically brings it into view. If you have a channel with a dozen plugins stacked, that’s a nice quality-of-life improvement.
For now, this isn’t a workflow I see myself adopting. But I respect what they’re trying to do.
The Standout Feature: Audio to Note
This is the feature that genuinely excited me.
Right-click any audio file → Audio → Extract Note, and Studio Pro generates a MIDI track from your audio.
I tested it on a snare drum. About a minute later, I had a perfectly usable MIDI file. I’ve been using Steven Slate’s Trigger 2 for drum replacement, but this is a completely integrated solution—no third-party plugin required.
Even better: it works on tonal material. I extracted MIDI from a piano part, swapped the instrument to strings, and the results were shockingly accurate. The musical phrasing, dynamics, timing—all preserved.
Practical applications:
- Drum replacement without additional plugins
- Layering textures (adding strings under piano, for example)
- Sound design experimentation (converting any audio into MIDI and triggering it with different instruments)
There’s also an “Extract Drums” option for full kit recordings. I haven’t tested it yet, but if it successfully splits a stereo drum mix into individual MIDI notes per drum, that would be remarkable.
This feature alone changes workflows. For mixing and production, it’s a legitimately powerful tool.
The Fender Plugins: A Double-Edged Sword
Studio 8 includes new stock plugins, and here’s where the Fender branding actually makes sense.
Studio Verb: A solid reverb. I have plenty of reverb plugins already, so I’m not particularly excited, but it sounds good and it’s a nice inclusion.
Rumble Native (Fender Super Bassman): This is where things get interesting. A fully modeled Fender bass amp with a comprehensive pedalboard.
Mustang Native (Fender Twin): Same concept, guitar-focused.
Both sound excellent. I’ve already been using Rumble Native on bass tracks in mixes, and the tone is impressive. The pedalboard has an absurd number of effects—delays, reverbs, distortions, flangers, you name it.
As a mixing engineer, I love experimenting with guitar pedals on non-guitar sources. Having this library built into the DAW opens up creative possibilities.
But here’s the concern: this is exactly the kind of Fender-specific feature bloat I was worried about.
Don’t get me wrong—these plugins are genuinely useful. But if the roadmap becomes “cram more Fender gear into the DAW” instead of “make the core mixing and editing tools better,” we’re heading in the wrong direction.
Is It Worth the Upgrade?
I paid $100 for this update. Was it worth it?
Honestly? I’m not sure.
The audio-to-note feature is legitimately cool. The inspector customization improves my workflow. The Fender amp plugins are useful.
But could I have stayed on Studio One 7? Absolutely. I would’ve been fine.
This feels like a 7.5 update branded as 8 to coincide with the Fender rebrand. If you’ve followed PreSonus over the years, right around now is when we typically would’ve gotten a 7.5 release. The timing is suspicious.
There are other improvements—updates to Impact, Sample One, and various production tools—but I don’t use those regularly, so I can’t speak to their value.
Final Thoughts: Cautious Optimism
Fender Studio 8 is a solid update. The features are useful, the development team is intact, and the software still works the way I need it to.
But the rebrand is unnecessary and confusing. The long-term direction is uncertain. And Fender’s history with acquisitions doesn’t inspire confidence.
For now, I’m cautiously optimistic. The software is still good. The team is still capable. The features are moving in a reasonable direction.
But I’ll be watching closely. The moment this starts feeling like “Fender’s Guitar DAW with some mixing features on the side,” that’s when I’ll start exploring alternatives.
What are your thoughts? If you’re a Studio One user, how are you feeling about the rebrand? Drop your take in the comments—I’d love to hear from other engineers and producers navigating this transition.
I’m a mixing engineer who’s been working in Studio One for years. This review is based on real-world use in active mix projects, not a feature list walkthrough. If you want someone to tell you everything is great, this isn’t that review. If you want an honest assessment from someone in the trenches, you’re in the right place.