GoKawiilis the Verge’s weekend editor. He’s covered the tech industry for over 18 years and knows a thing or two about synths.
Suno is releasing Studio 2.0 with significant upgrades that push it closer to an actual digital audio workstation (DAW), rather than a bare-bones audio editor with generative AI features. The biggest addition is undoubtedly MIDI support. Suno says that MIDI was its most requested feature, and it’s basically a prerequisite for any modern DAW. Unfortunately, Suno Studio doesn’t appear to support third-party plugins or VSTs yet, so you’re stuck using its proprietary built-in synth. That synth appears to be a basic two-oscillator wavetable plugin with three envelopes and four envelopes.
The point is less about using your favorite Arturia vintage synth emulation, though, and more about using that MIDI data as a prompt. You can play in some chords, then ask Suno to turn that MIDI into audio, extend a melody, or write a B-part based on what you played. Another standard DAW feature being added in Studio 2.0 is automation. So now you can pan or change the volume of individual tracks across the arrangement.
Suno is also adding a chatbot to the Studio interface so you can prompt it for lyrics or a new guitar line. This isn’t an isolated generator either, it is tied into the current session and pulls in the musical context of your current project. So you can tell it things like “make this vocal track sound better,” and it will add reverb, compression, and EQ. Oh, and yes, Suno Studio now has a suite of simple built-in effects, including distortion, delay, reverb, compression, and EQ.
The most interesting feature of the chat interface, however, is the ability to create custom effects plugins. These can be unique reverbs, brickwalled compression, or chorus effects, similar to Polyend’s Endless AI guitar pedal. These effects are saved to your account as well, so they can be reused at a later date.
Suno Studio 2.0 is a lot more feature-packed than version one, but the beta version of the chat leaves even less to do for the users. In the demo above, Suno’s Henry Phipps can be seen cleaning up some flubbed notes and quantizing MIDI, before saying he should be asking the chatbot to do all this for him. He also leaves deciding on a vocal chain up to the AI rather than selecting effects himself.
Suno Studio is starting to look more like an actual DAW. Image: Suno