Remember Mackie's Tracktion DAW? No? Perhaps that's because it was packaged with Mackie's less-than-impactful audio interfaces. A similar fate is most likely not in store for the new PreSonus Studio One DAW. See, PreSonus did the smart thing be establishing a commanding presence with a wide range of sucessful USB and Firewire interfaces before taking the DAW plunge. It's a strategy employed numerous times in history and literature (The Aeneid, The Manchurian Candidate, Invasion Of The Bodysnatchers).

But is the software any good? If the stability of PreSonus's interface drivers is any indication, they might have a winner on their hands. Plus, their description would lead one to believe that they've put efforts into crafting a professional multitrack recording program. Studio One is ASIO-, WindowsAudio- and CoreAudio-compliant, and switches between 32-bit and 64-bit floating-point processing on the fly. It will support ReWire, AU and VST plugins (even VST3 plugins) and of course will operate seamlessly with PreSonus's many audio interfaces and control surfaces, and will feature an intuitive MIDI-learn feature that seems similar to Ableton Live's.

While it doesn't appear to offer any truly ground-breaking features, it's functions do seem comparable to most high-end DAWs like Sonar or Logic. There's a multi-track arranger screen, a mixing window and a MIDI piano scroll editor all accessible through an inviting "Console" view. A Browser lets you easily drag-and-drop audio files, loops and plugins into the arranger window.

Studio One will come bundles with a bunch of plugin effects including compressors, EQs, distortion, delay effects, amp modeling, modulation effects, and reverbs, as well as virtual instruments like SampleOne, a virtual sampler. There's even a full-on mastering suite included, called Project Page, that lets you master, arrange tracks, and burn, all from within the DAW.

Here's a full list of the included plugins in the PreSonus Native Effects Suite Bundle:

• Ampire - Amplifier-Modeling Plug-in
• Analog Delay - Tape-Delay Emulation Plug-in
• Auto Filter - Envelope Filter Plug-in
• Beat Delay - Tempo-Synchronized Delay
• Binaural Pan - Stereo Panning Effect Plug-in
• Channel Strip - Dynamics Processing and Equalizer Plug-in
• Chorus - Mono/Stereo Chorus Plug-in
• Compressor - Mono/Stereo Variable Compressor Plug-in
• Expander - Mono/Stereo Expander Plug-in
• Flanger - Stereo/Mono Flanger Plug-in
• Gate - Noise Gate Plug-in
• Groove Delay - Multi-Tap and Tempo Synchronized Delay Plug-in
• Limiter - Mono/Stereo Limiter Plug-in
• Mixtool - Phase and MS Utility Plug-in
• MixVerb - Mono/Stereo Reverb Plug-in
• Multiband Dynamics - Mono/Stereo Multiband Compressor/Expander Plug-in
• Phase Meter - Phase Correlation Analysis Plug-in
• Phaser - Mono/Stereo Phaser Plug-in
• Pro EQ - Seven-Band Parametric EQ
• Red Light Distortion - Distortion Plug-in
• Room Reverb - Stereo/Mono Room Reverb Plug-in
• Spectrum Meter - Frequency Analysis Plug-in
• Tricomp - Three-band Compressor Plug-in
• Tuner - Instrument Tuning Plug-in
• X-Trem - Mono/Stereo Tremolo Plug-in
• Impact - Sample Trigger Virtual Instrument
• Presence - Sample Player Virtual Instrument
• SampleOne - Sampler Virtual Instrument

Studio One should be shipping "soon." Check back for an expected shipping date.