Question

Hey guys! 

User since 2.0 here and Beta Tester for about the same amount of time. I really love studio one and have loved watching it progress over the past few years, which has seen Studio One become a very mature and professional piece of software. But there is one feature that I have never understood as to why it functions like the way that it currently does, or at least that it only offers one of two useful options. That feature is the Track Transform feature and why it does not offer a PRE fader transform option. 

Currently when you have an audio track that you would like to render that also includes Volume and Pan automation, that automation is also rendered and the fader/pan knobs are reset to zero. While this is useful if you want to "print" the track as if you were starting fresh. It doesn't offer the ability to essentially "Freeze" the track, take the processing off the CPU but still be able to automate/change panning of the track as before the render without first losing what you had prior to rendering and visa versa. It essentially kills the ability to mix a track if you ever have the intention of returning to the un-rendered state. 
NOTE: What is weird to me is that when you do this to an Instrument, the fader is zero'd but the pan setting remains intact. 

I propose that when you are transforming an audio track or instrument track that there be a "PRE fader OR Post fader option so that in the PRE Fader version of the render, the volume fader and pan knob are NOT changed and all automation of those two parameters remains intact so that jumping back and forth between rendered and un-rendered does not affect them. This would allow for much greater usability, especially in the mixing process as it would allow you to offload your processing but still have control over volume and pan adjustments. Currently once an audio track is transformed, all volume/pan adjustments made are lost when you convert back to an non rendered version of the track which I find to be counter intuitive, especially given the great ability to edit the audio itself while a track is rendered. This would enhance that even further. 

Currently there is a slight work around via clip FX. IE bouncing audio edits into one audio file, then copying moving all inserts onto the clip fx and rendering that. But in that situation all insert automation is lost and it is extremely cumbersome if you have multiple tracks you need to render. 

Thanks guys, keep up the amazing work on Studio One.

Answer 1

Second that 200%. Definitely needs this "essential" option to be useful with larger project workflows. Along with the absolute necessity of giving us the option to copy all automation-data/plugins to a newly created track. This is SOOO painful to have to do manually every time Especially with 4 or more lanes of automation. Please consider Presonus.

Answer 2

Thank you for the feature request. 

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Answer 3

I agree 100%

Answer 4

Currently, this is the only reason I'm still not using Studio One. Until Studio One gets a Pre-Fader freeze function, I'm of the opinion that it doesn't have a freeze function.

Answer 5

Badly needed features!
This transform function was abandoned uncompleted as soon as it was introduced.
Unfortunately this happens very often with Studio One features.

Answer 6

This would be a huge workflow improvement for projects with lots of tracks. The current workaround of sending each track to a bus in order to do the vol/pan there becomes an absolute chaotic mess.

The other pain point with this feature is that there's no visual indicator that a track is "frozen" and you can't lock it to prevent changes either. With many tracks, it becomes very easy to make a mistake and touch the track fader instead of the bus one when using the workaround. Anything that gets into a "frozen but restorable" state should lock the features it rendered. Maybe the user can unlock them if he wants / knows what he's doing, but currently, everyone found out about this by doing a mistake that ruined the mix.

Also, at its core (pre fader track transform) it sounds like a very easy feature to implement!!

Answer 7

I was shocked to find out that transforming to rendered audio did anything other than apply the effects.

Yes, please!