Studio One 6 was released a couple of days ago. I’ve made an “expectations” Bingo card a few days before the announcement and now that I played with version 6, I can conclude that a few things from my card have materialized but most of them didn’t. At the same time there were several unexpected yet useful additions.

Here’s my video review of Studio One 6 consisting of 6 improvements I really like and also my top 6 missed opportunities in this release:

And here’s a TL;DW list:

6 Highlights

1. Track presets
2. UI customization and scrollbars in inspector
3. Instrument sidechain and overall sidechaining improvements
4. Track/channel icons
5. Popup faders on sends/pan
6. Sends on FX Channels

6 Omissions

1. No VSTs as NoteFX
2. No ATOM SQ/ATOM integration improvements
3. No Impact XT improvements
4. No smarter arranger track
5. No scale highlighting in piano roll
6. No public scripting API

My “tiny goody” Playlist Sorter for Spotify just got an update letting you compare two playlists.

Go into the details of one playlist, click on the “Compare to…” button and then select a second playlist and you will get a list of common tracks between the two (if any). Then you can remove the duplicates from one of the playlists.

As most things with Playlist Sorter, the feature was driven by my personal need. But hopefully you will find it useful as well. If you do, please consider buying me a coffee. Thanks❣️

Studio One 5.5 added a feature that lets you convert “straight” chords into strums easily. Just select your chord and start dragging a note in it and then (and it’s important to start dragging first which is awkward, but you get used to it) press ctrl+alt (Windows) or cmd+option (Mac).

And that’s a great workflow improvement. But apparently, it doesn’t take how real guitarist strum into account. This short tip shows you how to take this feature to its natural conclusion:

TL;DW: just move the strums to end on the beat, not start.

About a month ago I bought both ATOM SQ and the “classic” ATOM with the intent of keeping just one. I gave myself a month to get acquainted and here’s my review. I also decided to give my ATOM (the non-SQ one) away to one of you. Watch the review for details.

And here’s my TL;DW summary:

• if you use Impact XT and patterns — buy it
• if you don’t have any controllers and don’t play piano — maybe
• if you have a decent controller with endless encoders, etc. — skip it

And if you decide to buy one, you can use one of the links below and I will get a little “kickback” while you pay nothing extra:

Thomann:

• ATOM SQ
• ATOM

Amazon:

• ATOM SQ
• ATOM