The fourth full version update to PreSonus’ now well-established DAW for Mac and PC introduces an extensive list of new features and improvements based on user requests, and the developers’ own thought processes and realisations.

As with previous iterations, Studio One 5 comes in two versions: the top-tier Professional edition and the far cheaper, lower-spec Artist edition; but for this review, we’re only looking at Studio One 5 Professional – see the PreSonus website for more on its scaled-down sibling.

Before we crack on, we should also point out that you can buy Studio One 5 outright or as part of the new PreSonus Sphere subscription service, which gets you all the company’s software (Studio One Professional and all its plugins, Notion, and a ton of sample-based instruments and loops), and various collaborative and networking tools, for a monthly or annual fee.

For us, the new Studio One 5 feature we’re likely to get the most use out of is actually one of the more modest. Clip Gain Envelopes facilitate sample-accurate volume automation directly within individual audio regions, providing a far more targeted alternative to compression or regular volume fader automation.

Tick the Gain Envelope box in any audio clip’s right-click menu, then use breakpoints or the Paint tool to shape your gain changes on the clip itself, which are reflected in its waveform in real-time. It’s a brilliantly neat solution for making precise corrective and creative level adjustments over time, and we’d love to see an equivalent system for modulating pitch. One for v6 perhaps.

Moving on, Mixer Scenes enable snapshots of the entire Studio One mixer to be saved and recalled – including mutes, effects inserts and sends and routing – which is obviously hugely helpful when setting up channel groups for auditioning, and experimenting with mix variations.

A collection of filters let you decide which mix parameters you want to recall, so you can opt for the whole setup, or any combination of Visibility, Volume, Pan, Mute, Inserts, Sends, Cue Mix and Input Controls; and recall can even be restricted to selected channels only. It’s a solid, intuitive arrangement, and our only issues with it are that recall filter activation/deactivation is a tediously one-at-a-time process – an ‘Activate all’ button and ‘Deactivate all but this filter’ modifier key are called for – and the list of captured Scenes can’t be reordered.