I'm reminded again of Cakewalk - Sonar. They went under despite having a good DAW.
PreSonus Audio Electronics, Inc.- Founded 1995. Studio One DAW was released in 2009.

What one would need to know are the actual costs and profits of the Presonus DAW to get a clear picture. Unfortunately, these are all trade secrets; we really don't know anything. Were they already operating at a loss when they bought Fender?

 

Last edited: Jan 14, 2026 at 3:44 PM

As of Cubase, it seems like the closest option to Studio One (at least on Windows).[/QUOTE]
Unless you use sound variations!

 

@tvandlover, that's because two developers from Cubase developed Studio One, which has a better workflow!

In 2006, KristalLabs Software Ltd., a start-up in Hamburg founded by former Steinberg developers Wolfgang Kundrus and Matthias Juwan, began working on the Studio One DAW and on the Capture live-recording software in cooperation with PreSonus. KristalLabs subsequently became part of PreSonus when the company acquired all of their assets in 2009 (leading to the creation of the new entity PreSonus Software Limited).

 

Fender, (Servco Pacific), has owned Presonus for quite some time:

So initially, for the last several years, the Presonus brand was maintained as a separate brand under the Servco/Fender umbrella. Much like the way inMusic handles the brands they engulf and devour. The writing has been on the wall for some time. When Fender's CEO spouted this garbage.....I knew the axe was soon to fall.

 

"The simplest version of Studio One right now has a 150-page owner's manual, which I have said to the team is 149 pages too many,” he says. “Because you should be able to get out of the box, press one button and you're off to the races. So that's, again, a very easy brief, but very difficult to execute. But there has been a gravitational pull by aficionados to just keep jamming more and more features into DAWS when, in fact, I think you need to take away more features, make it simpler and more intuitive and less expensive." -Andrew P. Mooney, CEO Fender Musical Instruments inc., former chairman of Disney Consumer Products (DCP)

-Andrew P. Mooney, CEO Fender Musical Instruments inc., former chairman of Disney Consumer Products (DCP)

Hey Andrew, stay away from drugs! You're just talking nonsense!
You probably never learned to play guitar yourself, but you're still the CEO of Fender.
It takes approximately 9 years to master playing the guitar perfectly!

Creative musicians meet CEOs who are far removed from reality....!

 

i have both cubase and studio one. both are great.. cubases workflow is very slow compared to studio one. if i do something in cubase it takes 5 minutes. in studio one 10 seconds. i also like the interface of studio one its easy to work, the tools are great and the stock plugins are also very good. cubases stock plugins are also very good.. however cubase has way more options and functions.. both are installed here on my computer.
studio one is also great for mastering and wavelab is also great for mastering.. my choice is studio one right now.. and been like this since 2012.. i like studio one.. however this new release looks way messed up the new plugin re design isnt better

 

Couldn't agree more. Clearly this bozo knows as much about guitars and music software as Trump knows about running Venezuela......LOL!!

Also in complete agreement. I started with Cubendo and used various flavors of both for years before adopting Studio One.
I also still use both. Cubase remains my go to for projects that are more MIDI intensive and complex. But, for simple straight up audio projects with simple MIDI requirements Studio One can't be beat. But when Fender began pushing it's agenda...even before the re-branding....I got off the upgrade train. I own a license for 6.6.4 it does everything I need it to and I don't see myself "upgrading" to any Fender branded DAW anytime soon.

 

Last edited: Jan 14, 2026 at 4:43 PM

I don't think the guy is particularly wrong, you can see that exact philosophy applied to the new jam feature they added in this version. What he probably means is that a DAW is too complicated for someone who wants to record (good) music, and that it should also appeal to people that don't want to learn the ins and outs of the software.

Here is a different take on it: if all you want is to remove your brand new fleshlight from a photo you took, you probably don't want to learn all of Photoshop, or at least you have the expectation that you can find what you want to do and it happens easily. It's just what software people call "friction".

A lot of times, the program gets dumbed down for everyone, but I don't see that happening on Studio One (I mean, Studio Pro) because they've been supporting very niche features such as the mastering page for a LONG time. They have a good track record of not removing things from the software.

 

I was responding the the parts where Sniv was detailing the facts that most new features on DAWS are just fiddling at the edges.
You've just demonstrated why I'm glad I'm a generation older than you.

 

What qualifications does this guy even have as a CEO, marketing expert, or business administrator?
Help! This man has absolutely no idea about music; he's an accountant. Save us!

What is the educational background of Andrew P. Mooney, CEO of Fender?

His formal training as an accountant allowed him to enter the business world early on: He began his career as an accountant before later advancing to marketing and management positions, including CFO at Nike UK, Chief Marketing Officer at Nike in the USA, and finally, senior roles at Disney Consumer Products.

Before his appointment as CEO of Fender in 2015, he already had over 30 years of experience in the global management of major brands. In short: Andy Mooney does not have a traditional university education, but rather acquired his qualifications through vocational accounting training and extensive practical management experience.

Most of our fellow citizens have spent nine years in school, can read, write, and do arithmetic, and are perfectly capable of reading and understanding a manual and, of course, using a DAW effectively. It used to be so easy to make music. You don't even need to sit down and learn an instrument.

We don't want super-simple programs that only spit out super-simple music; we want people who have actually studied music to be able to conduct an orchestra so that we can hear high-quality music in the future. We need more talent development.

 

Last edited: Jan 14, 2026 at 6:03 PM

So far IMHO we're speculating in the wrong direction.
"They are gonna ruin it". Ruin what?

Reality is Studio One, Studio Pro or whatever you like to call it is the same buggy mess for manny many years.
It just gets more and more and more bloated as time goes by.
It still has the same outdated, xml backbone it has since version one.
It's still very, very crashy. Freezes ALL THE TIME. Seriously, it probably crashes on me 5 times a day.
Turn off a controler? Freeze. Close the DAW? Freeze. Sometimes it freezes on its own, with no plugins loaded. Sometimes it stays on for 24 hours with 100gb projects loaded. Unpredictable.
You still cant make a proper crossfade, all these years later.
Every time let's say I favorite a plugin, the DAW unloads the config file, my controllers go offline, re-writes the config file, re-loads it and the controllers flash back on.
And it's a good chance it will crash on exit and not save anything - loads the previous cfg file.

And I could go on and on.
The codebase needs to be fixed in order to handle large sessions and become a professional tool.
Instead, it's becoming a subscription based bloated mess, aimed at the masses.

And, for the love of god, please don't recommend reaper.

The good news: for me it was a free update. 5 activations.
I rather like the new ableton-style channel overview.
I like that steps were made on improving the GUI, althrough pretty minimal.
Maybe Fender will hire more coding talent and play to the DAWs strengths, instead of trying to be every other daw, master of none.
One can only hope. :0
The good news: version 8 was a FREE update for me.