You probably weren’t expecting a fresh new DAW to come from a hardware company. But we have been creating digital audio interfaces and bundling third-party software with them for years. We have spent a lot of time thinking about how hardware and software should work together. Almost everyone in PreSonus is a musician, and we have tested our hardware with as many software applications as possible. And we weren’t entirely happy with any of the choices. Most DAWs, in our opinion, are so cluttered with features that only a handful of people actually use that it’s difficult to access the tools you use constantly. We decided to provide PreSonus customers with software that is powerful and easy to use, integrates tightly with our hardware, and works well with competing hardware that supports Core Audio or ASIO.

At the same time, we were developing our StudioLive 16.4.2 digital mixer, and we needed a really simple but great-sounding recording application that would integrate with it. We found great partners in Wolfgang Kundrus and Matthias Juwan of KristalLabs in Hamburg, Germany, who had previously worked on such Steinberg mainstays as Nuendo and Cubase. So we teamed with them to develop Capture, the StudioLive 16.4.2’s software mate, and we started working together on Studio One at the same time.