Cakewalk Bandlab V Presonus Studio One

[gabgue]

Anyway, Artist won't match the full Sonar feature wise overall obviously, but $180 (Artist + VST Support) isn't really a horrible price for a decent daw. I'd have to look at what the $200 Cubase version or similar has or not to fairly compare them though.

Offer a VST addon for Studio One artist for $80 is simply crazy but Presonus sell hardware too then possibly dont matter that say people about their software prices.

[THE INTRANCER]

I was experimenting with the effect of dragging an instrument vst from the browser on top of another on the track. In studio one 3 / 3.5 a dialog box would pop up to give you the option to combine instruments. In Cake B, dragging another vst onto the track does nothing, however if you drag the vst from the browser on top of the name of the vst instrument on the track, the track in silenced and unable to be heard if triggered.

I don't know if this is a bug or if there is a function to enable the track to sound again. In the Inspector, it appears as if the instrument being added on top is added as an insert effect...so this is puzzling. I'm aware that you can create folder tracks to enable the combining of instruments just as Studio One has, before this process... but the way Cake B behaves otherwise is odd..I must be missing something here...

[LawrenceF]

Right... i just wonder why they didn't just sell it for $180 in the first place then, as i really can't imagine many use cases where VST support wouldn't be a thing. Especially when you have to pay $80 just for the VST support then, which is almost as much as Artist itself.

I suppose. No idea.

My personal shot in the dark random guess is that they probably didn't expect so many people to outright buy it alone given that you get it for free with hardware for the exact same price (I'm personally still baffled why anyone ever still does that, even if they don't need the $99 hardware) and they are, at end of the day, fundamentally a hardware company. It just is what's it's always been since 2009 and it doesn't look like it will ever change, Artist.

If another $80 is really that big of a deal for some who really want Artist, maybe just buy an AudioBox for $99, get Artist for free, sell the AudioBox and use that money to buy the add-on? Dunno. But there's lots of really inexpensive daws out there with VST support so I'm not sure why anyone ever stresses over it.

On topic, Sonar is free now so... another $0 choice?

[dellboy]

If another $80 is really that big of a deal for some who really want Artist,

Ableton have intro, Cakewalk had home studio, Cubase have etc....... for around that same price of $80.

They all have vst support but cut down on the tracks. This is the better way to do it.

It seems to me that Presonus have deliberately crippled Artist just so they can say they offer a daw in this catergory. In reality they really want people to fork out for the professional version as they know that $80 is not a viable proposition to add to an already cut down daw.

But now they may hopefully have a re-think because why would I pay out $80 to upgrade my Artist v3 when I can simply use the much better Cakewalk Bandlab for free ?

[CTStump]

If another $80 is really that big of a deal for some who really want Artist,

Ableton have intro, Cakewalk had home studio, Cubase have etc....... for around that same price of $80.

They all have vst support but cut down on the tracks. This is the better way to do it.

It seems to me that Presonus have deliberately crippled Artist just so they can say they offer a daw in this catergory. In reality they really want people to fork out for the professional version as they know that $80 is not a viable proposition to add to an already cut down daw.

But now they may hopefully have a re-think because why would I pay out $80 to upgrade my Artist v3 when I can simply use the much better Cakewalk Bandlab for free ?

The Presonus business model is hardware of which Artist was designed for to compliment not to keep up with full fledged DAW's.

It really should be left out of this comparison as Professional IS the full fledged DAW as marketed and NOT included with their hardware, free like Artist. What will make that free is all up to Presonus so maybe even that shouldn't be compared.

Cakewalk is by far a real value even without 3rd party content so this discussion is kinda moot. What I wonder is how this undercuts an already crowded and specialized market. The impact may cause more closings or BandLab may be forced back to paid subscriptions to keep people employed, develope and market instead of the "Tip Jar" they have now.

We all know how well that works for open source.....

[LawrenceF]

But now they may hopefully have a re-think because ...

I wouldn't count on it. As CTStump said, that is the business model and it appears to work for them and nothing else has made them change that yet, $60 Reaper, FL lifetime license, $1 a month Ardour, $40 Mixbus, etc, etc. I think as either users or casual observers we need to just let go of that expectation after 10 years.

[dellboy]

It really should be left out of this comparison as Professional IS the full fledged DAW as marketed and NOT included with their hardware, free like Artist. What will make that free is all up to Presonus so maybe even that shouldn't be compared.

I am not sure where you got your information from but I paid for my copy of Artist 3, and I do not own any Presonus hardware.

Also Presonus Studio One versus Cakewalk Bandlab is not a valid comaparison because Cakewalk bandlab is free software.

[dellboy]

But now they may hopefully have a re-think because ...

I wouldn't count on it. As CTStump said, that is the business model and it appears to work for them and nothing else has made them change that yet, $60 Reaper, FL lifetime license, $1 a month Ardour, $40 Mixbus, etc, etc. I think as either users or casual observers we need to just let go of that expectation after 10 years.

With all due respect to all the daws you mention, they do not begin to stack up with software that cost millions to develop and was 30 years in the making.

[LawrenceF]

Fair enough. Was only saying that this conversation about Artist and no VST support has been raging for almost 10 years and I don't see it changing just because of this. If it does, I'll do what few on the Internet ever do, return here and admit I was wrong.

We'll see. I doubt it, but nobody can predict the future.

Thanks man. I suppose we can revisit this in 2-3-5 years and see if anything changed.

[dellboy]

Fair enough. Was only saying that this conversation about Artist and no VST support has been raging for almost 10 years and I don't see it changing just because of this. If it does, I'll do what few on the Internet ever do, return here and admit I was wrong.

We'll see. I doubt it, but nobody can predict the future.

Thanks man. I suppose we can revisit this in 2-3-5 years and see if anything changed.

I am sure you are right that they wont change their policy.

I have just looked up the UK price and it is £69.77 for vst support, which is $98.62.

I missed out on the black friday sale which was something like a £100 upgrade for me. For me to pay for vst support for artist would be non sensical. As I rarely pay full price for software it will have to be a long wait until the next sale to get Studio One Professional.

I just think it would make more sense to have prime as there free daw and given away with hardware, and artist with vst support but limited to 16 tracks or something.

[JoseC.]

I was experimenting with the effect of dragging an instrument vst from the browser on top of another on the track. In studio one 3 / 3.5 a dialog box would pop up to give you the option to combine instruments. In Cake B, dragging another vst onto the track does nothing, however if you drag the vst from the browser on top of the name of the vst instrument on the track, the track in silenced and unable to be heard if triggered.

I don't know if this is a bug or if there is a function to enable the track to sound again. In the Inspector, it appears as if the instrument being added on top is added as an insert effect...so this is puzzling. I'm aware that you can create folder tracks to enable the combining of instruments just as Studio One has, before this process... but the way Cake B behaves otherwise is odd..I must be missing something here...

By dragging the synth from the browser on top of the track header you are just inserting it in the fx bin. In other words, that is pilot error. If the synth could pass through audio you probably could hear the other synth. You actually can route a midi track to that synth, and it will sound, so it is not that the track goes silent. The "function" to make it sound again is deleting the synth that you inserted in the fx bin while experimenting, or press CTL-Z. I don't get exactly what you mean by "combining" instruments, but whatever it is what you want to achieve, that is not the way to do it.

[THE INTRANCER]

I was experimenting with the effect of dragging an instrument vst from the browser on top of another on the track. In studio one 3 / 3.5 a dialog box would pop up to give you the option to combine instruments. In Cake B, dragging another vst onto the track does nothing, however if you drag the vst from the browser on top of the name of the vst instrument on the track, the track in silenced and unable to be heard if triggered.

I don't know if this is a bug or if there is a function to enable the track to sound again. In the Inspector, it appears as if the instrument being added on top is added as an insert effect...so this is puzzling. I'm aware that you can create folder tracks to enable the combining of instruments just as Studio One has, before this process... but the way Cake B behaves otherwise is odd..I must be missing something here...

By dragging the synth from the browser on top of the track header you are just inserting it in the fx bin. In other words, that is pilot error. If the synth could pass through audio you probably could hear the other synth. You actually can route a midi track to that synth, and it will sound, so it is not that the track goes silent. The "function" to make it sound again is deleting the synth that you inserted in the fx bin while experimenting, or press CTL-Z. I don't get exactly what you mean by "combining" instruments, but whatever it is what you want to achieve, that is not the way to do it.

In reference to the silencing of the track and noting where it landed in the FX Insert, I did figure out after.. what the intended functionality was, and was able to restore the sound by unlighting the FX.

Studio One 3, introduced Multi-Instruments, a way in which to combine instruments within a node system so one can layer instruments and add Note FX devices like arpeggiators, and repeaters in the chain. Dragging the same instrument from the browser onto one in the track provides the option to change the preset, or combine them so you have two instances. If it's a different instrument it will be replace or combine.

So essentially I was looking to discover if Cakewalk would provide an alternative way, perhaps through the rack list it has in combining instruments by linking them together. I've discovered that Cakewalk has similar functionality in terms of Note FX that's accessible vie the Inspector and provides arpeggiation to an instrument without an actual separate device like Studio One does...so exploring just how far that integration went vie combining instruments was something I was subsequently curious about.

[JoseC.]

I was experimenting with the effect of dragging an instrument vst from the browser on top of another on the track. In studio one 3 / 3.5 a dialog box would pop up to give you the option to combine instruments. In Cake B, dragging another vst onto the track does nothing, however if you drag the vst from the browser on top of the name of the vst instrument on the track, the track in silenced and unable to be heard if triggered.

I don't know if this is a bug or if there is a function to enable the track to sound again. In the Inspector, it appears as if the instrument being added on top is added as an insert effect...so this is puzzling. I'm aware that you can create folder tracks to enable the combining of instruments just as Studio One has, before this process... but the way Cake B behaves otherwise is odd..I must be missing something here...

By dragging the synth from the browser on top of the track header you are just inserting it in the fx bin. In other words, that is pilot error. If the synth could pass through audio you probably could hear the other synth. You actually can route a midi track to that synth, and it will sound, so it is not that the track goes silent. The "function" to make it sound again is deleting the synth that you inserted in the fx bin while experimenting, or press CTL-Z. I don't get exactly what you mean by "combining" instruments, but whatever it is what you want to achieve, that is not the way to do it.

In reference to the silencing of the track and noting where it landed in the FX Insert, I did figure out after.. what the intended functionality was, and was able to restore the sound by unlighting the FX.

Studio One 3, introduced Multi-Instruments, a way in which to combine instruments within a node system so one can layer instruments and add Note FX devices like arpeggiators, repeaters in the chain. Dragging the same instrument from the browser onto one in the track provides the option to change the preset, or combine them so you have two instances. If it's a different instrument it will be replace or combine.

So essentially I was looking to discover if Cakewalk would provide an alternative way, perhaps through the rack list it has in combining instruments by linking them together. I've discovered that Cakewalk has similar functionality in terms of Note FX that's accessible vie the Inspector and provides arpeggiation to an instrument without an actual separate device like Studio One does...so exploring just how far that integration went vie combining instruments was something I was subsequently curious about.

Replacing instruments in Sonar, or CbB, is done by rightclicking the track and selecting Replace Synth from the menu. There is no way that I know of for sending a single midi track to several software instruments or physical ports at once, so any layering would need the midi track with the data to be cloned. Not a big deal, IMO, and possibly more flexible, since besides a very comprehensive arpeggiator, each midi track has controls for Snap to Scale, Transpose and Time offset in the Inspector as you already found out.

[dellboy]

Last black Friday I missed out on purchasing the Studio One upgrade from Artist by a few hours.

I fully intended to upgrade at the next Presonus sale. But now, after using Cakewalk Bandlab for nearly a week and becoming familiar with it, I am starting to rethink whether I even need Studio One.

Cakewalk Bandlab is not as streamlined as Studio One, in fact, without switching a lot of stuff off it can at first seem cluttered. But once I had a default template installed that boots at startup this issue has largely disappeared.

It soon becomes obvious that this, like Studio One, is a serious professional quality daw that could be used to make commercial grade music.

Will it cut into Presonus sales ?

Quite probably, at least among the home studio hobby musicians.

[zzz00m]

Use both. It won't cost extra if you already have S1.