Fender Studio review: Easy-peasy play-along and recording for the guitar player in your life

Macworld

At a glanceExpert's Rating

Pros

Intuitive and easy to use

Doubles as both a 16-track recorder and guitar amp sim

Free and cross-platform (PCs, phones, and tablets)

Play along songs to practice with

Immediate record option

Cons

No loop recording or punch in/out

No MIDI or virtual instruments

Our Verdict
Fender’s cross-platform Studio is hyper-focused on easy recording and the guitarist via an integrated amp simulator. It’s a handy, albeit limited app for any of those pesky guit-fiddlers in your life.

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Fender Studio is a cross-platform (Android, iOS, Windows, macOS) combination 16-track audio recorder/guitar amplifier simulation app. Plug your guitar into your interface or device, fire up Studio, start a’pluckin and record the results. It’s very cool and rock-solid and useful for practice and capturing ideas. However, it’s missing quite a few features whose absence might have you looking to the company’s far more capable (and far more complex) Studio One.

What, an upsell app from a major vendor? Tell me it ain’t so. All joking aside, as a free amp sim that records, Fender Studio is fantastic.

Fender Studio supports recording and playing back up to 16 tracks of audio and includes a bunch of the company’s effects (FXs) to make it all sound good. Most saliently, there are what are known as amp sims, i.e. effects that simulate the sound of a real guitar amplifier.




The amp sim effect in the track inspector.

These effects, including the amp sims, can be applied to the input signal. You hear them as you play, though they aren’t printed to the track when you record. Most DAWs only apply or let you hear FX post recording.

FX being audible on input (with monitoring turned on) is what allows Studio to function as a Fender-centric amp sim (guitar and bass), that is, an app that turns your device into a digital guitar amp. Much like Native Instrument’s Guitar Rig, IK Multimedia’s Amplitude, Positive Grid’s BIAS, and a host of others.




The fine controls for the Fender ’65 Princeton amp. (I owned one of these, so I know how it sounds — this is darn close.)

As to the recording portion of the program, it features the aforementioned 16 audio tracks plus a surprisingly capable set of clip editing features: cut, paste, delete, split, start/end points, transpose, tempo, gain, and crossfades. These are non-destructive; the underlying audio material remains unchanged.

There’s no low level editing of audio such as transient quantizing, but you can split audio clips and drag them to the proper location/beat, with or without snap. Snap roughly follows the zoom level, though it’s more granular than the divisions on the time bar which max out at 1/16 notes.

Two very nice features are global transpose and global tempo. These let you shift the pitch of an entire project, as well as slow it down, or speed it up.

You can also decide tempo on a clip by clip basis which will follow the global settings, or, as noted, change their playback speed independently. If you import an audio file, you’ll need to define its tempo before it will follow the global one.




You can vary the speed and pitch of a song using the global functions, though the tempo did not work on MP3 files I dragged in.

One thing I really, really like about Fender Studio is that you never have to save. All changes are saved as a matter of course (as with most device apps). I was hoping for infinite undo or redo à la Universal Audio Luna, but undo/redo is limited to the current session like with most DAWs. Of course, this also means you can’t revert to a previously save version and there is an issue that I discovered the hard way.

If you remove Fender Studio using the macOS app store, it deletes all your sessions and data. This is an Apple thing and it could be a bummer if you’re caught unaware. If I were you, I’d regularly export projects to a safe location, and/or copy the contents of this folder: ~Library/Containers/Studio/Data/Studio/Documents/Sessions somewhere else before removing the program using the app store.

As for exporting, you can’t just select a clip–say that killer solo you just recorded–and export/share it, though you can access them manually in the folder listed above. You can, however, export both audio mixdowns and DAWproject files. The latter contain the stems, i.e. separate tracks, as well as audio files, plus a lot more that can be used to easily reconstruct a project in another DAW that supports the format.




DAWProject export is a nice feature, but only supported by a few DAWs. Including Studio One of course.

Unsurprisingly, DAWproject is supported by Fender’s own Studio One, as well as Steinberg Cubase 14, Cubasis 14, and Bitwig. S(adly, for me, not Ableton Live.) But Steinberg’s support often drags the rest of the industry with it, so there’s hope that other vendors will soon adopt this exceedingly useful format.

As to importing, you can drag and drop an audio file to a track to play along with it. I tried both wave and MP3 formats and they were imported successfully, as well as very quickly. Note that they are converted to FLAC and saved with the project. Nice. But again, you must define a tempo before its playback speed will change along with the other clips according to the global tempo.




Fender Studio’s jam tracks give you something to play along with to hone your guitar creativity.

Fender Studio offers Jam tracks, which are multi-track project files covering various musical styles that you can play along with. Being multi-track allows you to mute various instruments, though you can’t solo them. To focus on one instrument, you must manually mute all the others. Drudgery. On the other hand, they do respond to both global tempo and global transpose. Yay!




Multi-track Jam track. It would be nice if you could solo parts as well as mute them.

Another super nice touch in Fender Studio is the ability to get recording in a hurry. “Record” is one of the four choices on the home screen and it opens the program and starts recording immediately. Sweet.




If you want t0 start recording immediately, select the “Record” button.

Input 1 is selected by default, where I’d like to see all of them monitored, but it’s darn close to my dream of a program that optionally starts recording audio and MIDI on launch to capture those occasionally ephemeral inspirations. A lot closer than anything else I’ve seen. Good on ya’, Fender.

What’s missing from Fender Studio

If you browse DAW-user commentary online, it seems everyone and their mother has a must-have feature that the subject DAW lacks. And they’re hardly ever the same. Features whose absence might sour the deal for some are: loop recording, punch-in/out (there is a count-off), MIDI support, support for FX or virtual instrument plugins, easy clip/track export, tempo and time signature tracks, audio editing and quantization (there is that very granular clip split/snap), automation (other than gain settings and crossfades for clips) and folder tracks.

I’m sure there are others, but from my point of view, those are the biggies with loop recording/punch being the ones I think it really needs. Should Presonus/Fender listen to me, undo should erase only the last looped take–not all of them.

I’m also sure some will complain about there being “only” 16 tracks, but I engineered with only 16 for a decade. It’s certainly doable, though I do remember the jump to 24 being very liberating. Also, that’s a full 16 audio tracks. A lot of entry-level DAWs divvy 16 or less up between audio and MIDI.

Fender Studio interface and ease of use

I’m a huge fan of the Fender Studio interface. The more I used it, the more I liked it. I was sorry to leave it. No kidding. I think it’s brilliant. That will likely consternate Fender/Presonus a tad, as I’ve dinged Studio One for its interface (now much improved) in the past.

Part of the reason for that is that icons and labels are large and there aren’t a horde of them. I love this, but if you’re a fan of scads of tiny text labels and icons that take forever for your eye/brain to sort through, you’re out of luck.

The other reason is that it’s object rather than tool based, i.e., place the cursor and select “split” rather than select a knife tool and then split. The latter is better for repetitive actions, but the vast majority of my edits are one-offs.

The interface consists of a single main window with track headers to the left and the tracks/clips to the right. There’s also a project overview navigation bar and an optional “arranger” track at the top of the track section.

Create a section marker in the arranger, and you can move all the material within its borders around the timeline. Careful with this one as it automatically splits clips if needs be. I find now the arranger elegantly simple, but it did take a bit of getting used to.

At the top of the main window on the left is the Home page button. To the right are the undo and redo buttons, as well as buttons to show/hide the inspector, clip editor, and mixer. At the very far right is the standard horizontal bar icon that opens the settings/file menu.




From top to bottom: overview, timeline, clip/track area, track inspector, channel list/navigator, and controls bar.Jon L. Jacobi

You can navigate or zoom a project using the overview bar, or by dragging the timeline with the mouse. I found the latter too sensitive to zooming, so I opted for the mouse wheel, which scrolls the timeline vertically if needs be horizontally if you hold the shift key, zooms vertically using the command key, and zooms horizontally with shift + command.

The track inspector/FX editor, audio clip editor, and mixer swap out in a large panel near the bottom of main window. Next to the bottom of the main window is a horizontal track list/navigator, and at the very bottom is the playback/global control bar.

Controls on said bar include play/stop, return to zero, record, loop, time signature, tempo (BPM), metronome on/off, global key and transpose, and the location readout. Clean, simple, sweet.






There are four track “types” that may be added, although they’re actually all of the audio variety: Vocals, guitar, bass, and other. The difference is the effect chain that’s added by default.

Speaking of which, all the effects I tried (channel compression and EQ, global reverb and delay, etc.) were top notch. There are also pedal effects for the amp sim that maybe inserted pre- or post-sim. Presets make it a bit easier to get in the ballpark for the sound you want.

There are scads of keyboard shortcuts, though I didn’t take the time to learn all of them. I didn’t really find them necessary, but they always speed things up once you know them. The user’s guide may be found here.

All in all, Fender Studio is the easiest DAW I’ve used to set up a basic recording session that sounds good right off the bat. Indeed, though it’s aimed at guitarists, you could easily use the program to record an entire band with a capable enough audio interface. It recognized all 16 inputs on mine.

Note that I also tested the iOS version. It’s a slight variation on the macOS version I’m discussing here but functionally equivalent, as the other versions no doubt are.

Fender Studio: Price

Studio is free, gratis, up for grabs,. It’s basically a loss leader/gateway/tease to introduce users to the Fender brand and its products. Most especially Studio One. It does a pretty good job at all that, and of course, it’s available in your system’s app store. That includes x86/ARM Linux along with iOS, Android, Windows, and macOS.

Fender Studio performance

With the program employing the Studio One audio engine, I wasn’t expecting any low-level glitching, and I experienced none. I recorded a bunch of tracks with and without the input FX and there was nary a disturbance in the timing or signal quality. The interface as also extremely sprightly.

Note that I was using a rather capable M4 Max Studio with a Focusrite Scarlett 16i16 (Gen 4). As such, I didn’t experience a lot of latency with the guitar signal. I.e., when I picked a note there was no noticeable lag before the tone exited the speakers, with or without the amp sims in the circuit.






I did notice a couple of functional oddities with the interface before the 1.1 update that were signs that the entire tried-and-true Studio One audio engine is available under the hood. And that perhaps the interface folks (who’ve done a sterling job for the most part) might soon add some of the engine’s other features.

However, it might mean that Fender has decided not to grace Studio with too much functionality. After all, if Studio proves too capable, users might not want to upgrade to Studio One. Heaven forbid.

Personally, I’d love (and even pay for) a simple, easy-to-use program like Studio that includes MIDI and just a few more basic features. One that I could use to get projects started without wading through a ton of tools and options that I don’t need until the editing phase.

Back to the subject at hand. Fender Studio’s performance is rock solid and never came close to pegging anything on my admittedly awesome machine. I can’t vouch for the other platforms, but really, audio isn’t particularly taxing on any modern computer or device.

What’s Fender’s story?

You’ve probably heard of Fender guitars and basses, or at least model names such as Telecaster, Precision bass, Jazz bass and Stratocaster. Even if those names seem unfamiliar, assuming a life not spent inspecting the underside of a pebble, you’ve seen them used in concert or on video.

Fender started life as solely a guitar and guitar amplifier company, deriving its name from founder and incredibly talented product designer, Leo Fender. Fender is no longer Leo’s baby (since the mid 1960’s), it’s the Fender Musical Instruments Corporation with a much broader, but thankfully still musically-focused product lineup. But I play Strats and still think of them as Leo’s babies. What can I say?

Should I get Fender Studio?

Absolutely. A free amp sim from Fender that records and let’s you play along? Come on now. There are a couple of peccadillos and more than a few missing DAW features, but I truly enjoyed using Fender Studio and hope they at least flesh out the audio recording capabilities. Overall, it’s a nice freebie from the folks in Fullerton and Corona (Hamburg, Germany actually, but let’s pretend…). We’ll see where it goes. Fingers crossed.