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Is there something to take away from the recent closure of the Studio One forum?

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I regularly visited the old forum to get a vibe of how things were going in the Studio One world... I'm always sad when a forum with years of tips/advice/solutions is deleted, but I'm grateful for those who have created this new forum. Made a small donation to help with the cause: I hope this forum continues to grow.
 
I think another reason was general negativity outside of the studio one centric areas. I tried to help out on the quantum sub, but it was mostly people asking why they couldn’t get drivers to work and how nobody from Presonus could help them. It just worked on my Mac, but sometimes it just…wouldn’t for other people’s Macs. Those questions just sat on the forums lingering. Complaints about lack of product development filled the Digimax and Atom subs. Those with ADLs or R5s or OG Faderports longed for replies that would certainly never arrive. The products that Presonus abandoned were just hanging around, gathering dust, and were mostly filled with unanswered complaints. Doesn’t look good to prospective customers or shareholders.
 
A thing which interests me also is what happened to the Sphere Expert Chat. This thing was amazing. Extremely friendly people, good knowledge and so on. Loved this a lot. Hope that this wasn't closed because people was as rude and disrespectful as in many forum discussions. It's okay to dislike things and to discuss them but it's not okay to be unfair.
 
A thing which interests me also is what happened to the Sphere Expert Chat. This thing was amazing. Extremely friendly people, good knowledge and so on. Loved this a lot. Hope that this wasn't closed because people was as rude and disrespectful as in many forum discussions. It's okay to dislike things and to discuss them but it's not okay to be unfair.
I can't comment on the reasoning behind the discontinuation of Sphere (/ Studio One+) Expert Chat, as it was not my decision, nor am I allowed to give official statements. What I can say is that most users who participated were very friendly and engaging, and we had many great conversations. However, the service was underutilized, which may have been a factor in the decision.

The good news is that all core team members of the former Expert Chat are also active here in the forum 😉
 
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I can't comment on the reasoning behind the discontinuation of Sphere (/ Studio One+) Expert Chat, as it was not my decision, nor am I allowed to give official statements. What I can say is that most users who participated were very friendly and engaging, and we had many great conversations. However, the service was underutilized, which may have been a factor in the decision.

The good news is that all core team members of the former Expert Chat are also active here in the forum 😉
Thanks for a little bit of insights. :) My personal opinion was, that this was a very smart feature and an argument for the subscription model. Because additional support beyond a standard support ticket, which is mainly used for technical issues, has a lot of value. I used this quite often, sometimes if I needed an opinion for a smarter way to get something done and sometimes to pre check if something is really a "bug", or if I am too stupid to use someting right. :) I miss it but now this forum is alive, that's great too. :D
 
Because additional support beyond a standard support ticket, which is mainly used for technical issues, has a lot of value. I used this quite often, sometimes if I needed an opinion for a smarter way to get something done and sometimes to pre check if something is really a "bug", or if I am too stupid to use someting right. :)
This is what I hope this forum will be helpful for.
 
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but the Forum is gone, no read only version.
years of user contributed data gone.
that's the sadness.

and I never heard of Expert Chat
 
Expert chat was so lovely. Everyone there was so helpful and kind.
 
Cute. The melody is from "Carry On, from the Crosby, Stills, Nash, & Young album "Deja Vu" (or 4 Way Street, if referring to the live album). About all I'll add to the subject. : )
 
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If Presonus/Fender didn't want an online forum, fine. It's their business. But they missed an opportunity in not marking the whole thing "read only" and leaving it in place for users to refer to. There were a lot of "solved" problems on that forum, and unless they are going to re-code Studio One from the ground up (they're not), many of the solutions will be relevant to the issues lots of users will be experiencing going forward. It's great that some generous unofficial experts are here trying to help me and others, but the hundreds of resolved problems on the old forum are gone now, and that's too bad.
EDITED TO ADD: Looks like I didn't read enough posts here before I wrote this one. 🙃
 
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The forum was useful for quicker responses and answers and felt like an official channel. Tech Support are always as helpful as they can be albeit with a delay in response (sometimes days) - but if the support ticket related to any improvement required they say it's not us and should be passed to the Development team or raised as a Feature Request.

As most of us know the Feature Request seems to be geared to insiders with very technical demands which the general user never uses. I have been asking for years for a simple request to give you the option to keep Autoscroll on at all times (which it doesn't at the moment if you "edit" on the Arrange window when playing back - "edit" seems to include just mouse clicking on the Arrange window somewhere and then switches off Autoscroll). I have made Feature Requests which garner some support but are so low in response compared with other stuff and therefore whether a good idea or not they get forgotten or discarded. It's simple stuff (Cubase gives you the choice). But nothing changes.

So no official channel to keep raising these issues to put pressure on Presonus - and another reason for them to get rid of the forums.

Yes there are Facebook groups but you will often get the usual pile on from some people who are unbelievably hostile, nasty, sarcastic and unhelpful. And if too much like a complaint is made, the Presonus moderators jump in and remove your comments or shut the thread down.

Therefore this new forum is all we now have - unless you are one of the clique insiders who have Presonus's ear. For ordinary, non-corporate, users, this is what we now have - thanks for setting this up.
 
Yes there are Facebook groups but you will often get the usual pile on from some people who are unbelievably hostile, nasty, sarcastic and unhelpful. And if too much like a complaint is made, the Presonus moderators jump in and remove your comments or shut the thread down.
Some thoughts on this:

The Facebook group isn't an official PreSonus group - it's run and moderated by volunteers, much like this forum.

I really don't agree with the claim that moderators just delete or close comments unfairly. It’s not easy to moderate a group with 45,000 members, especially when so many people don't put much effort into their posts. Plus, it's a support group, not a casual hangout. The goal is to help people with questions and issues, not to let everything turn into a random chatter or off-topic discussions.

Facebook groups are also terrible as a replacement for proper forums. There are virtually no tools to highlight correct answers, making it difficult to manage the inevitable chaos. That's one of the reasons I felt it was so important to re-establish a dedicated forum like this one.

From what I’ve seen, posts only get removed if they break the rules - like self-promotion, off-topic stuff, bad language, or trolling. The problem is that many people don’t read the rules and then get upset when their posts are deleted. But if every random studio picture or personal rant stayed up, actual support posts would get buried.

Sometimes comments get turned off, for example, during big announcements like Studio One Pro 7, when 100 people initiate the same discussion. In this case, moderators try to keep things organized by redirecting those to one thread.

As for complaints being deleted: That's not true from what I've seen. Posts aren't removed just because someone criticizes something about the program. But if someone includes offensive language or personal attacks in their post, it might get deleted because it violates the rules.

Moderating a group like this is a tough job, and I think the volunteers deserve a bit more understanding.
 
To anyone, I'd probably advise not resorting to FB for forum-like usage. It's so watered down, and unless someone has the exact same issue to address, and with enough background to make points worthy is just not going to be common. It's largely very "flighty" on subject matter.

I'm sort of skimming around this threads main discussion because the subject is water under the bridge (passed). Fortunately, the moderators that were there are here and as users. They were very fair, polite, and professional. Also, people like Lukas, Ari, and others make this a great resource.
I'm good, going forward. Also, kudos to almost having 400 members here now. Very cool, indeed. 😎
 
The Facebook group isn't an official PreSonus group - it's run and moderated by volunteers, much like this forum.
Hmm.... yes but it seems to be overseen by some Presonus employees who often interject with the Presonus point of view and get the thread shut down (which in effect is the same as deleting those posts). You think it's because of the rules, but the impression I get is because the viewpoint is not liked by Presonus and they want to control the debate. I thought it was a private group but have been dismayed to see Presonus piping up in a way that seems aggressive - it was meant to be private but clearly Presonus feel the need to get involved . I guess it is all about the perception of what is happening - one main perception is the forum is shut down to limit criticism, and the rest follows from there.
 
Hmm.... yes but it seems to be overseen by some Presonus employees who often interject with the Presonus point of view and get the thread shut down (which in effect is the same as deleting those posts). You think it's because of the rules, but the impression I get is because the viewpoint is not liked by Presonus and they want to control the debate.
They’re not trying to control the conversation. If someone from the company engages with these platforms, it’s purely on a personal, volunteer basis and not something coordinated or controlled by PreSonus.

I guess it is all about the perception of what is happening - one main perception is the forum is shut down to limit criticism, and the rest follows from there.
I strongly believe this isn’t the reason behind their decisions. There are plenty of other reasons to retire forum software that’s over a decade old. Personally, I think having a forum is important, which is why this one exists now.
 
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but the Forum is gone, no read only version.
years of user contributed data gone.
that's the sadness.

and I never heard of Expert Chat

So this touches on a larger, more insidious issue, which is only going to get worse in the coming years unless we stand up and fight (like we did by relocating to this forum!).

I know I/we have harped on this already, but it bears repeating:

In times past, it was not so easy to destroy the conversations of other people. In virtually all forms of Western jurisprudence that I'm aware (particularly in the US due to the 1st amendment), the personal conversations of others have been/are assumed to be the property of the parties involved -- not some company or corporate entity who merely hosts the data -- and thus censorship or sabotage of said conversations were prohibited by the legal protections enjoyed by those parties.

With technological power comes great responsibility however, and due to the advent of digital conversation, a single corporate muppet now has power to 'flick a switch' and effectively drop a nuclear bomb on the civil rights and freedoms of thousands of people, erasing their conversations from recorded history -- without warning, approval, reprimand, or liability.

Burning down a public library, for instance, comes with certain disadvantages, namely the collective hatreds and ridicule of society at large, arson/assorted felony charges, prison time, etc...

Nuking a niche forum, however, entails very little risk, as there is little public awareness and thus minimal outcry (even though I personally 'cried out' plenty) even if the discourse contained in that forum was just as important to the individuals involved as the information held within that library was to society at large; i.e., our voices were essentially 'drowned' in the void.

What we have just witnessed with our humble community is an acute case of an abuse of that power. A decade of not merely conversations, but wisdom, has been lost. Answers that dug deep into the underlying architecture of Studio One (and often DAWs/recording in general) are completely and utterly Thanos'd away into cybernetic oblivion, in the snap of a finger.

I still often get search results when googling very difficult/technical S1 questions, which now point to dead links on the old forum -- and which are only answered by the aforementioned detailed posts on that forum, and nowhere else... it hits hard indeed, and there's a sadness there, as you said.

deb8d030-d4b1-4cbd-a9d9-61456f56354a_text.gif


What I have learned, then, in hindsight from all this, is that just because digitized assets are 'eternal' in theory, in practice they are extraordinarily perishable and fragile, since the speed of a host deciding to 'unhost' everything means that you can lose virtually everything overnight... and be suddenly silenced.

In actual fact, we have lost an incredible amount of 'digital history', and will continue to lose it, until people are made fully aware of just how important it is to have backups of the backups of your backups.

So all this to say, back up all your important stuff. These threads contain more than just conversations for those of us that use S1 regularly (and certainly for a living as I do), and especially those trying to learn the DAW (as we ALL once did), they are often a beacon of illumination for our very livelihood, saving countless hours of time and searching, and in many cases even unlocking secrets/power features you would have never discovered otherwise.

In short, within the digital world that we inhabit, our personal rights and (sub)culture are entirely meaningless to corporate overlords;
If we do not take the matter of its preservation into our own hands, then no one will.


Seasons Greetings and Merry Christmas,
JB
 
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Lets please backup a little here.

With all respect, I would keep such conversations and opinions to a minimum. This forum wasn't some form of rebellion as much as a life raft, so let's enjoy and savor it as much.

This wasn't any national or public library turned off. It's company dealings, so let's not pretend it's anything else. If Presonus saw fit to close their forum, stop Studio One altogether (like we know who did), or turn their Studio Live mixers into movie-theater popcorn machines, we have no say. That's up to the corporate side of things, their shareholders, and their investors. So let's avoid the Constitutional rights end of this (in all fairness). Trust me, I can get into the Constitution, Bill of Rights, and justice for all, as much as the next person, only it has no place here. Period.

Look around, this forum has no disgruntled users, or trolls bad rapping the product. It's really a refreshing entity, so I'll simply end my points here and be thankful.

I wasn't going to join this "guess" why the Presonus forum ended, and I still won't. To anyone wishing to do so, write a song about it. Anything, but making points about what rights are who's.
It's over folks. Time to move on.

I hope I didn't raise the bar of anyones feeling concerned about what happened with the old forum, or get in anyones face. Truly. I won't add anymore to this topic.
We are amongst good folks here.

Enjoy the production, art, and music Ya'll.
...and even talk shop.
 
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Lets please backup a little here.

With all respect, I would keep such conversations and opinions to a minimum. This forum wasn't some form of rebellion as much as a life raft, so let's enjoy and savor it as much.

This wasn't any national or public library turned off. It's company dealings, so let's not pretend it's anything else. If Presonus saw fit to close their forum, stop Studio One altogether (like we know who did), or turn their Studio Live mixers into movie-theater popcorn machines, we have no say. That's up to the corporate side of things, their shareholders, and their investors. So let's avoid the Constitutional rights end of this (in all fairness). Trust me, I can get into the Constitution, Bill of Rights, and justice for all, as much as the next person, only it has no place here. Period.

Look around, this forum has no disgruntled users, or trolls bad rapping the product. It's really a refreshing entity, so I'll simply end my points here and be thankful.

I wasn't going to join this "guess" why the Presonus forum ended, and I still won't. To anyone wishing to do so, write a song about it. Anything, but making points about what rights are who's.
It's over folks. Time to move on.

I hope I didn't raise the bar of anyones feeling concerned about what happened with the old forum, or get in anyones face. Truly. I won't add anymore to this topic.
We are amongst good folks here.

Enjoy the production, art, and music Ya'll.
...and even talk shop.


With all due respect Lokey, I'm not talking about the administrators of THIS forum, but rather the (likely single marketing entity) that deleted the old one, and you're kind of putting words into my mouth on that particular chestnut; you seem to be inferring that I am conflating the admins/mods of the old forum that relocated to this board with the folks who put the 'kibosh' on the old stomping grounds, and nothing could be further from the truth.

I'm very grateful to all the associated acts that made this happen, and honored to have been able to play a (small) part in it.

This wasn't any national or public library turned off. It's company dealings, so let's not pretend it's anything else.

Now hold on a second though, you say that, but how was that knowledgebase any less invaluable to many of us than a library is to the general public? RobWJ above would certainly seem to concur (don't mean to speak for ya, Rob!). We are many of us working and/or aspiring professionals, in need of highly specific advice and information. Functionally I see no difference between a nuked forum and a closed/burned library in that example; the information is literally irretrievable unless rehosted and formatted. I've said it before and I'll say it again, I would have been lost without that place on my S1 journey, many times over, and that realization spurred me to act on all this (has it been over a month already?? Geez).

I do feel like you're downplaying just how toxic 'corporate culture' is/can be vis a vis our fundamental access to free speech, but hey, I respect you enough to not preach to you about your take, so I'd appreciate if you'd take a bit less of a patronizing and dismissive tone towards mine. We can just leave all that right where it is, and I'm totally fine with that. Agree to disagree, wholeheartedly.

But moving past the whole rights aspect, my entire conclusion was about the critical nature of backing up our online experiences, and taking their custody and preservation into our own hands — which we successfully did do by the creation of this board — and yes, which is in a certain sense, an act of resistance against corporate overreach... I'm kinda curious why you had no thoughts whatever on that aspect of my post, alongside all your grievances with it?

Anyway, to shed some more light on that whole 'data custody/preservation' point (and maybe help you understand why I'm so wound up about it), so all that stuff was not based on some abstract theological position, but rather my firsthand-experience with this whole fiasco, which cost me no trivial amount of time and stress: I spent a good 4-5 days eating into virtually all my freetime struggling like hell — hunting down and talking with archivists, sending out DMs like crazy, making posts on VIC to raise awareness, etc. — to find a way to preserve the decade-old knowledgebase from the old board... but ultimately, to no end;

The 'robots.txt' file of the old site apparently did allow crawling, but no matter who I contacted, and regardless of which software we used, every one of us ended up getting rate-limited and only able to make archives of very small portions of the repository, and with each passing day it became more clear that the old knowledgebase would eventually just be gone and irretrievable.

The only apparent solution would have been to instantiate different 'instances' of archiving efforts each masked with different VPNs (to trick the ISP into tolerating the server load), but this was something that would have been both an incredibly tedious technical task (even for an expert I was informed), and virtually impossible to pull off in the 3-4 days we had left before the closure deadline.

So that said, yeah, I've had a lot of skin in this game recently and I'll reiterate my MAIN point once again: Back up your data! Conversations included. ESPECIALLY conversations of a technical/work-critical nature. Literally can't overstate this, and I want to emphasize this being the main point/conclusion to this whole shitshow, which I hope we all never have to endure again. The more custody we have over this kind of stuff as a community, the better. The less dependent we are upon corporate and/or tech-giant run platforms, the better. We are safer, more robust, and I believe ultimately better off because of it, and for that stance I make no apology.

So there you have it. I can appreciate that you feel rather detached from some of the points I made, but I've simply been very close to this whole affair and came to a lot of these conclusions 'in the heat of combat' so to speak, so I felt the need to unburden myself and hopefully share an informed take with the good people here at the same time.

Also despite the fact that this is the lounge area and not the support section, I do wholeheartedly agree that the main point is indeed shop-talking, of which I am as active a proponent as anyone.

So you and I do find some common ground, as usual 😌

Thanks,
JB
 
I miss Expert Chat, too. But here I am :)
 
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