Questions & Answers

Tempo Detection and Mapping Feature Request

+192 votes
asked Nov 19, 2015 in Studio One Feature Requests by jpettit (11,480 points)

Tempo mapping is an important and  major advancement in most modern DAWs that dramatically opens the door for freely recorded music (not strictly recorded/quantized to a tick/grid) to be [u]both enhance with loop based sounds and quantization[/u]. 

The problem
It takes depending on the song anywhere from 5-20 minutes to map a song manually in Studio One. Unfortunately, this is too big of a hurdle and learning curve for most of your customers. 

Competitive analysis
Although Studio One has made good advancements in transient capabilities, you are behind your competitors in tempo capabilities. ProTools, Logic, Cubase and Sonar can (and have been for several releases) detect tempo changes for an entire song to a least a beat level. Thus there is a real market for this capability for tempo tools. Please see the video for examples of the competition.


1.    By improving your tempo detection capability you will attract more ProTools, Cubase and Sonar customers that heavily rely on this capability.
2.    Many more existing customers that have never attempted tempo mapping due to the difficulty and time required to make it work will get more value from your product.
3.    You will greatly improve work flow of existing customers that already attempt to tempo map with existing capabilities. 

Feature Request 1: Tempo detection algorithm for an area or event.
1.    It should have a dialogue box to set resolution to beat or bar. 
2.    It should transients threshold adjustability
3.    It should be able to handle different meters ( although not necessarily changes in meter with in an event, none of the competition can do this either) 
4.    It should be able to detect beat one. 
5.    (Suggest adding it to the existing bend marker view)

[b]Feature Request 2: Manually/visually align beats to transients. [/b]
1.    It should support drag and drop grid beat lines to actual transients to allow for quickly beat to transient visual alignment.
2.    Note: Yes I know that it can be done by manually inserting tempo marks and then dragging tempo marks. (Please see my Audio timing video if needed). The point here is Presonus is well known for its superior ease of work flow. At a minimum it should work as easy as or easier than for example Logics approach to dragging the time line marks to a transient.
[b]Feature Request 2a[/b]: 
[b]The new cross hair alignment capability [/b]should extend the cross hairs across the tempo track and audio/MIDI tracks. It currently only work exclusively in one or the other making it [u]useless for manual tempo alignments[/u]

I know it has been requested many times in the past but please seriously consider this request.

9 Answers

+4 votes
answered Nov 20, 2015 by matthewgorman (51,480 points)
I like it, and am typing the rest to meet the 12 character minimum.
+1 vote
answered Jan 6, 2016 by ralfwottrich (580 points)
Automatic tempo detection & mapping for sure I miss most in Studio One and it should be a great benefit for everyone who records or imports live tracks for edits into Studio One. The FR from jpettit is perfectly elaborated and I like it in every detail.
+4 votes
answered Feb 24, 2016 by jpettit (11,480 points)
This has pretty much been answered by Celemony, although it requires Editor or greater to edit the map.

Improvement to the tempo track such as an automation style line would make it look cleaner and perhaps easier to add user defined ramps to the tempo map.
+2 votes
answered Jan 20, 2017 by sukhmeetkhalar (190 points)
This is really only thing missing from Studio One to make it top DAW period.

They should take a page right out of Ableton's book, and have tempo detection, warping, and editing right in the editor.
+4 votes
answered Apr 10, 2017 by AlexTinsley (745,630 points)
selected May 30, 2017 by AlexTinsley
Best answer

Thank you for the feature request. 


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0 votes
answered May 24, 2017 by johnyezeguielian (250 points)
I'm dealing with a problem like this right now.  I've got a song with a steady tempo for the first 2/3... and then I slow it down.. But I don't know exactly what I slowed it down to, just that the beats aren't matching up anymore.  (Don't lecture about how I should have played to the click track, doesn't apply to this nor how I should have figured it out ahead of time, that ship has sailed.  Next time.  But for now I've got all this recorded and I'm not just gonna dump it.  The temporary fix is to manually trigger them on the beats of the guitar part, but it'd be much better to do a tempo change so things fit properly.  But at what tempo?  I could be guestimating wrong by a small margin and have it off by a much larger one very quickly.
DP has had something like this for a LONG time, as I recall.  Do I really need to take that track to some other app to determine the tempo?  (Even if I did, there's a period where it'd slowing progressively.  HELP?!
0 votes
answered Jan 31, 2018 by neiljordan1 (15,680 points)
edited Mar 1, 2018 by neiljordan1

Completely agree!

Melodyne has great features for this (including the ability to copy the resulting tempo map back into Studio One), but only in the Editor edition or better, which don't come with Studio One (even Pro). Essential can automatically detect the tempo & copy it to the timeline, but provides no means to make any corrections when the algorithm gets things wrong (a key aspect of the process).

As a result, this solution needs Melodyne Editor or above (a $399 upgrade cost) in order to be viable.

Given that, this feature can't really be considered implemented, especially given that other DAWs provide it out-of-the-box. Really hope that PreSonus aren't considering this fully delivered, simply because some extra-cost versions of Melodyne can handle it.

The methods your describing here sound like exactly what's needed.

0 votes
answered Jan 30 by christophbaeurle (150 points)
Well, obviously there is little (or zero) progress detectable since 2015. The small number of votes tells me a lot about the users that are currently owning Studio One. In the meantime the bigger competitors (Steinberg, Apple) have improved their tempo detecting and automatic mapping features a lot. This feature is so well explained by Jeff! Still Presonus doesn't see the need to implement it. What a pity.
0 votes
answered Feb 4 by hitwriter (510 points)
Yes and more yes... plus the quick ability to select any range... section... bar and calculate BPM for the afore said selection!