The Channel Overview is a powerful and efficient new way to access key parameters in Studio Pro.

One of the most shocking new features in Fender Studio Pro 8 is the Channel Overview. Shocking, because of the dramatic way it asserts itself across the front of your DAW. Once you get over the shock of this unbending window, however, you’ll find that it’s actually very useful. It’s superb for giving you a clear overview of what plug‑ins are processing the chosen channel, and it’s also brilliant for giving you immediate access to the most important plug‑in controls without you having to open the whole plug‑in GUI. What’s perhaps less obvious is that it can be tailored to show whatever it is you want to see...

Channel Overview - Overview

The Channel Overview window can be accessed in a number of ways. You can double‑click a track header in the arrangement window, or a channel strip in the mixer console. There’s a dedicated button for it on the bottom right of the screen, next to where you find the Console, Browser and Editor buttons. Oddly, you can’t open it from the main View menu, which lists absolutely everything else that can be opened in the entire DAW.

I should also note that the precursor of the Channel Overview, the Channel Editor, is still available from the little icon that looks like a hand of playing cards on a channel strip. While the Channel Overview does a better job of giving you access to the loaded plug‑ins, the Channel Editor is still the only place where you can edit the signal routing between plug‑ins and create Macro controls over parameters.

While the Channel Overview does a better job of giving you access to the loaded plug‑ins, the Channel Editor is still the only place where you can edit the signal routing between plug‑ins and create Macro controls over parameters.

The Channel Overview window appears as a tall strip across the bottom of the screen in the same position as the Console and Editor. As with the other windows, it doesn’t have to stay there. If you click the little diagonal up arrow in the top left corner of the window, the Overview will detach and become a floating window. As a floater, it can be resized horizontally, but shows no interest in any vertical changes. You can return the floating window to its original position by clicking the diagonal down arrow on the top right of the detached window.

On the left side, you have a friendly arrangement of the channel strip. This includes the level fader with metering, mute and solo buttons, input gain and polarity, panning settings, input/output routing, track notes and a track icon. There’s also an icon next to the fader that looks like two playing cards, which brings up the insert, send and cue mix sections like you’d find in the Channel Editor.

Along the bottom, you get what looks like the very bottom part of the mixer console. The channel identifiers are clickable and work a bit like tabs, giving you quick navigation to the Channel Overview for each channel. To the left of the tabs are a couple of options. You can expand the bottom section to show the channel icons. You can add a little level meter to that if you wish. There are buttons to reveal the input and output channels, and you can bring up the Audio Setup window by clicking on the I/O button.

Main Window

The main section of the Channel Overview displays compact versions of the inserted plug‑ins. You can add plug‑ins in a number of ways. At the top left is an Inserts selection menu button. The little down arrow opens a list of channel presets covering all sorts of instrument and mixing scenarios. These will load up combinations of native Fender plug‑ins as effects chains. You can create and save your own preset effects chains using native and third‑party plug‑ins.

If you’d like to load plug‑ins individually, or access your library of third‑party plug‑ins, click the ‘+’ next to the down arrow to open a list of all the plug‑ins in your system. You may notice there’s a larger ‘+’ symbol in the middle of the main window. This does exactly the same thing; click on it to bring up a list of plug‑ins. Alternatively, you can drag plug‑ins into the main window from the Browser. If you do drag them in, you get the opportunity to decide where they go. You can drop them before or after existing plug‑ins, or they can replace what’s already there. With any other method, they will appear at the end of the effects chain. If you’d like to rearrange them after you’ve dropped them in, you can do so by clicking and dragging the name tags that appear in little bubbles along the top of the main window.

More often than not, you get what you need without having to open the full plug‑in editor window.

When you load a Fender native plug‑in, the Channel Overview presents it in a sort of simplified way. It pulls in any kind of helpful graphical part and a few key parameters. So, for instance, with the Pro EQ you get the graphical display where you can use your mouse to place the nodes. With the Compressor you get the visual display and nearly all the parameters on knobs. It varies depending on the plug‑in, but more often than not, you get what you need without having to open the full plug‑in editor window. However, it gets really interesting when you load a third‑party plug‑in.

Third Party

For their own plug‑ins, Fender have curated exactly what they want you to see, and it is fixed and unchangeable. With third‑party plug‑ins, Fender take the first eight parameters and throw them up onto a generic control panel. These are likely to be useful controls, but they’re not always going to be the right choices. Fortunately, we have a way to change this...

Plug‑ins in the Channel Overview have a little menu that lets you do a few things. You can access it by right‑clicking the plug‑in panel or by clicking the little down arrow that appears when you click the plug‑in’s tag bubble at the top of the Channel Overview. There are a number of options common to both native and third‑party plug‑ins. These include Edit, which brings up the main GUI; Rename, which lets you rename the plug‑in; Favourite, which adds a star to the plug‑in in the browser and lets you find it under the Favourites tag; Store Preset, which lets you create an effects chain preset; and finally Disable and Remove, which seem obvious enough.

Third‑party plug‑ins have another option, curiously called Setup Edit Parameters. This opens a window, similar to the Macro Control Editor, where you can choose which parameters to include in the compact plug‑in editor from a list of available parameters. You can add and remove whatever you like, and also drag them to rearrange their order. You can add more than eight controls, but only the first eight will be accessible, so there’s no reason to do that.

The changes stick around, and so the neat thing to realise is that by setting up your Edit Parameters you are creating a custom interface for your plug‑ins that will be there every time you load them up. This saves you clicks, GUI load times, and possibly even processing power.

Micro Edit Parameters

There’s another version of these custom parameters that already existed in Studio One, and that’s the Micro controls. These are found in the effects sections of the console channel strips, the Channel Editor, and the Inspector. It’s where your plug‑ins appear as a little stack of names. In previous versions, you could expand the native plug‑ins to show a stack of editable plug‑in parameters, known as Micro Controls. In Fender Studio Pro 8, the Micro Controls have been extended to third‑party plug‑ins and, as with the Channel Overview, the visible controls are editable in exactly the same way.

Unfortunately, the Edit Parameters customisation is not shared between the Channel Overview and Micro Controls, so you have to add them and edit them separately.

Routing & Splits

There are a couple of parameters that are only available in the Channel Editor but which also have an impact on the Channel Overview. We’re talking about the signal routing between plug‑ins. In the Channel Editor window, you can click on the little alien tripod icon at the top left to open the routing editor. In here, you can arrange your plug‑ins and create splits for parallel processing and explore new avenues of creative processing. The splits are reflected in the Channel Overview, but there’s no indication of how that’s actually working, or which plug‑ins are acting on which branch of a split, let alone a nested split. However, if you double‑click any of the Splitter panels, it will bring up the Channel Editor routing window and you can work it all out from there.

Going Forward

The Channel Overview came as quite a shock to my old Studio One workflow, but I’ve found it a really useful space to work with. It feels like there’s more development to come: deeper ways to connect it to the Channel Editor, and maybe the two windows can be merged into one Overview|Editor? It might also be useful to pull in a custom control panel for virtual instruments, or be able to show the Macro control panel. It could become a lot more versatile yet...