Okay Presonus. First off we Love you, so please take this criticism with all of the utmost respect and thoughtful consideration that goes along with it.
You've got this post on your Studio One feature request channel that has nearly 500 upvotes and a slew of independent requests asking for surround sound mixing (that's several years old now.) One of those upvotes is obviously mine. That said, you just released a new flagship version of Studio One without any mention of surround mixing. Here's a slightly cynical question, you DO realize that it's 2020 right? You also realize that Dolby Surround 5.1 in particular has been a thing for over 20 years... actually more like 30 years... right?
You realize that nearly every modern car audio, home theater, and even many headsets at this point have 5.1+ (or emulation,) right? Do you realize that now many entertainment systems are now going beyond even 7.1 and including Dolby Atmos. On top of Blu-ray and other high def formats, we are also seeing the advent of new multi-channel (Atmos included) streaming services like Tidal, much less Youtube. Do you realize how large a swath of producers/engineers you're leaving out in the cold when it comes to surround sound?
My point is that high-def and surround sound are no longer the sole purview of audiofiles with loads of unspent cash. I'm a consumer of this low-barrier-to-entry market as well. I didn't have to spend $20k on an amp to accomplish 7.1 with atmos either. The consumer technology is here.
As such, the ability to produce content for these systems natively isn't just a nice-to-have anymore. This is the format that users are increasingly demanding content in, regardless of whether it's just listening to a tune in the car, watching a youtube video, or experiencing the score and sound effects in a full blown movie.
I'm going to assume there's a boat load of information that I DON'T know about why these types of features aren't currently built-in to Studio One. Just guessing, there may be licensing issues, there may be legal problems, there maybe technical problems... The problem is that we don't know why Presonus has passed over this feature functionality time and time again.
I think its fairly obvious how disappointed I am that I can do SO many things in studio one to deliver high quality content to my listeners, except publish a multi-channel format that they likely have in their car. Hopefully, I'm just ill-informed and there's a whole new suite of surround features waiting for me in Studio One 5.1? Are there partners that have plugins I can use effectively to achieve this? How would Presonus advise us to proceed on the surround sound front? If I'm missing something obvious, I'll promptly tear this post down.
Look at this sad, sad list -
https://vi-control.net/community/threads/a-definitive-topic-surround-sound-daw-comparison.51025/
0% guys!
Just so y'all know, I moved to Studio One from Nuendo (and Cubase before that,) so for some of the key developers you employ(ed,) I've been following the basis of this work for over 20 years now (ugh I sound old.) Please, please, please don't make me search for another DAW now, especially over multi-channel outputs. Please shed some light on this subject as I'm really debating whether to bother shelling out upgrade $ at this point.