Users of Both Sonar X3 Producer & Studio One 2 Professional

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LawrenceF wrote:......But hey, a good KVR pummeling is always entertaining so ... :hihi: ... get the torches and pitchforks out. :lol: Bitwig is still in the E.R. so they're not ready for round two yet. :lol:
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dsan

:hihi:
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LawrenceF wrote:
lfm wrote:...and use of multiout VST instruments are a bit cumbersome since you only get anything above first stereo pair in mixer view(unless going through even more tedious operation loading separate tracks in arrange view).
I agree with you tbh, for purposes of this comparison, but (additionally) you can gain direct control over any audio channel of any multi-out VSTI in the mixer from arrange, in the inspector, without loading a lot of arrange automation tracks just for that.

You can switch that directly. Not saying it's better than Sonar in that regard, just pointing out that small bit, that the Inspector channel (any inspector channel for that instrument in arrange) can always be any mixer channel for a multi-out instrument.

I mean, if you have AD or something running and you have a "drums" midi track in arrange, you can switch the inspector to control any of it's outputs and fx chains and sends and all that, to mix those from arrange, from the single midi track.

Just mouse wheel over the "Audio" section there above the fader to cycle through the channels.
Thanks - but still you got these orphans of multiouts in mixer view - and you want these to a bus, you have to start working from mixer view as a base, selecting which tracks to route to a bus etc.

They made some funny decisions while doing this.

The last I tried to report to them as bug - was working with external synths and found the following:

a) Unless having monitor on midi track - no midi cc data get recorded, just note on/off.
b) Unless having a destination port/instrument with the valid midi cc activated - no midi cc gets recorded.

They overdo so simple things - I get very frustrated. I spent hours tracking the above down - where the hell is midi cc????????

And then I got the sad reply - I see you are not a us citizen, you have to contact your local dealer/store about this. Cakewalk got a proper bug reporter - and they improved a lot the last years with this - and you get notified when it's brought up etc - you've got a channel to report to the heart of development, I like that feeling. Report a bug to local store on a product - yeah, good luck with that.

Also midi monitor on in S1 send every midi channel through no matter what setting you have on midi track. I had to use midi plugins before synth to filter out stuff - so there goes another set of tracks to route through midi plugins.

In Sonar I never had to think about this, not in Reaper, not in Samplitude - just arm for record and everything midi coming in is recorded(some exception in global settings like aftertouch, sysex etc).

And in Sonar you've got proper event view to see what is there in midi. You have to guess around, and use midi monitor etc in S1 in realtime to see what happends. I did a lot of that to figure out the midi cc filtering above. You are kept in the dark in S1 that way, I feel.

But the immediate midi cc lanes you get in Studio One are nice.

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I hear you. I was only responding to the one small paragraph I quoted about accessing multi-outs in arrange view, providing a tip.

All the other stuff about midi channels and cc's and bug reporters and international tech support and all the rest is (while noted) something else entirely, not really involving me here.

No need to convince me personally that Sonar is better for you. I believe you.

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LawrenceF wrote: No need to convince me personally that Sonar is better for you. I believe you.
Well, it was for all the Presonus fanbois, why Studio One became abandonware for me - don't take it personally.

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I don't anyways. S1 works well for me.

It's amazing how different people are in the problems they have. I can't get over how something that is disasterware for me is someone else's jewel or the other way around :?

I just want people to be able to use their hosts :shrug:

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I use both. Quick comparisons:

Sonar X3E Producer:
* Much better performance on Windows
* Much richer set of included effects (including very respectible 1176 and SSL 4000 bus compressor emulations, and once you start using NomadFactory's widening plugin, good luck trying to stop).
* An audio engine may not magically make your mixes sound better, but the built-in console emulation, when used as directed, really can!
* Much better at softsynths with multiple outs
* Does not insist on automatically hiding plugin UIs when you select a different track.
* Includes POW-R1, POW-R2, POW-R3 dithering. See Bob Katz' "Mastering Audio" for explanation.
* Infinitely faster project loading.
* Lightning-fast autosave that does not lock out your control of the product.
* Supports non-linear automation curves.

Studio One 2.6.2. Professional
* Non-destructive rendering of clip effects (using Melodyne is a heinous pain without this feature)
* Much better comping. The more Cakewalk tries to improve comping, the worse it becomes. Sonar does not put the selected clip on top in the parent track (so you often can't edit the clip you select with the comp tool without expanding the take lanes).
* Allows effect and group channels to appear next to track audio channels. In Sonar, all "busses" appear in a separate view, so if you want to send your vocal track to a "Vocal Reverb" effect channel, the two channels cannot appear next to each other.
* Can use the gate plugin to trigger MIDI events on another track (drum replacement)
* Uses the Elastique pro time stretching algorithm. Sonar uses Izotope Radius, and it doesn't come close.
* Transform to Audio Tracks works much better than Sonar's Freeze.
* Much better at configuring and working with control surfaces.
* With the exception of live drums (Sonar has Addictive Drums), includes a much better set of stock sounds.

Now that Cakewalk have fixed the worst of the bugs that shipped in the original release (up to X3D, X3 was a nightmare), Sonar seems much better suited for any projects that do not require large amounts of comping. Sonar is still medieval when it comes to audio routing and comping (behind every other DAW on the market), but, aside from offering a much richer feature set, wins overwhelmingly in performance and responsiveness.

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I'm glad to hear that they have ironed out a bunch of bugs. They abandoned X2 which really ticked me off. I'm also glad you mentioned comping. S1 is just a joy to use in this area.

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cryophonik wrote:I've used every version of Sonar since v5 and I'm currently using X3 not to mention that I love Cakewalk/Sonar's step sequencer for drums. YMMV.
this shit drives me fing apeshit to no end. there is NO drum sequncer/nostep step sequencer. tomorrow im going to install the new sonar cause this bullshit pisses me off. you want to know why studio one is so damn clean. because its has zero features vs sonar. sonar is full featured bloat and studio one is immature code takes your pick because you cant have it both ways :roll:

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@yevster
Thanks for the detailed comparison.

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lfm wrote:
LawrenceF wrote: No need to convince me personally that Sonar is better for you. I believe you.
Well, it was for all the Presonus fanbois, why Studio One became abandonware for me - don't take it personally.
I didn't, thanks. It's just software. :wink:

I did read, and understand, everything you wrote. I replied being polite but I also wanted to be clear that I actually wasn't and hadn't disagreed with you about anything and didn't want to get into listing my personal perceptions of all of those list items there. Our initial short chat was about the one thing, and i didn't want to appear rude by not discussing the other 7-8 things you additionally talked about later in your subsequent reply.

Anyway, this has been a good thread for the most part, imo. Not sure anyone involved is a fanboi. Seems to me it's just what it always is, perceptions and tastes varying.

Thanks LFM.

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AstralExistence wrote:this shit drives me fing apeshit to no end. there is NO drum sequncer/nostep step sequencer. tomorrow im going to install the new sonar cause this bullshit pisses me off. you want to know why studio one is so damn clean. because its has zero features vs sonar. sonar is full featured bloat and studio one is immature code takes your pick because you cant have it both ways :roll:
^^^ For sake of discussion, let's assume I fully agree with everything you say above. ^^^

What regularly puzzles me personally is why people buy things like that, assuming you bought it, I mean, I assume you'd only be pissed if you paid for it. It puzzles me why anyone does that, buys a thing and then learns later that it's shit. :)

Seems to me a much better path would be to find that out before buying it, and not torture yourself, make yourself pissed and angry. :hihi: I'm sure it had a feature list published all along.

You honestly didn't know, before buying it, that it didn't have a drum editor and step sequencer? If not, why not?

I have tried many DAWs and some (who shall remain unnamed to avoid drama) were, to me, subjectively, not very good to me. None of them made me angry or pissed though because I didn't actually buy any of them.

:lol:

From your stated needs, maybe you should have bought Cubase?

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In my opinion it's great to see people gripe about Studio One, means it's making some headway in the KVR DAW wars. :D

All kidding aside, I think think as Studio One gets older things like MIDI sequencing and Pattern launching will show up. One thing for sure it won't be top loaded with extra content the way Sonar is which makes it the reason a lot people like Sonar. The philosophy at Presonus has been and probably always be if it can be done right(by themselves or anyone else) that will be the way to do it.

It would be great if the GUI could be tweaked(color wise) and MFX could be loaded directly on an Instrument also...

well we all have our own personal gripes. :dog:

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CTStump wrote: It would be great if the GUI could be tweaked(color wise) and MFX could be loaded directly on an Instrument also...
One thing that would be swell would be to be able to load VST midi effects in MFX bay as well.

I don't see why not, you can load DX and VST effects mixed in effects bay.

It's odd that Sonar does not do that for midi effects as well - mfx is just DX technology with only midi in and out.

I do that in Metaplugin, but still.

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lfm wrote:One thing that would be swell would be to be able to load VST midi effects ..
Bingo. :)

I usually bite my lip when the choruses start for ... well... "everything Cubase has midi wise because we all need it really bad and nobody can make music without it" ... :hihi:... because (as you suggest) the solution to that is midi plugin inserts, which (afaict, anyway) most of those cool things in Cubase actually are, midi plugins. Beat Designer and all that other stuff.

It's - imo, mmv as usual - easily the single biggest midi omission in Studio One, but it rarely makes the hit list, midi plugins.

Even better if it's an open API so the midi dev people (not me) can code their own and see the available collection quickly swell.

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yevster wrote:I use both. Quick comparisons:

Sonar X3E Producer:
* Much better performance on Windows
My experience also.

yevster wrote:* Much richer set of included effects (including very respectible 1176 and SSL 4000 bus compressor emulations, and once you start using NomadFactory's widening plugin, good luck trying to stop).
They're ok to good, but there's better stuff out there. I also refuse to use any plugin that can't be used in another DAW (not a fan of closed formats).

yevster wrote: * An audio engine may not magically make your mixes sound better, but the built-in console emulation, when used as directed, really can!
Again, much better options out there, but great if you're just starting out, or don't necessarily need the best of everything to get work done.

yevster wrote:* Much better at softsynths with multiple outs
Disagree 100% here. Sonar is horrible at softsynth with multiple outs IMO. Studio One you open the synth, then just check boxes next to each output you want. In Sonar, the options are First Output, All Stereo (only), or All Mono (only), or All. Not very efficient when using things like BFD3.

yevster wrote:* Does not insist on automatically hiding plugin UIs when you select a different track.
In Studio One, you just have to click the "pin" icon to keep a UI open. But yeah, it took some adjusting.

yevster wrote:* Includes POW-R1, POW-R2, POW-R3 dithering. See Bob Katz' "Mastering Audio" for explanation.
I honestly never heard the difference.
yevster wrote:* Infinitely faster project loading.
Project loading times are about equal here, but the overall application startup time is much, much faster in Sonar.
yevster wrote:* Lightning-fast autosave that does not lock out your control of the product.
The problem here is that so many people have had corrupt projects as a result of something going wrong during an autosave (I'm one of them), that hardcore users on their own forums (i.e. the fanboys) will often say, "disable autosave."
yevster wrote:* Supports non-linear automation curves.
True.

I'll post a similar comparison in my next post. Note: this is all our subjective opinions, how we use a DAW, and our experiences. I'm not trying to say my opinion is more valid than yours, just adding my voice to the choir.
Last edited by Funkybot's Evil Twin on Sat Mar 29, 2014 8:26 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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