What's your impression on S1 4 as a composer's toolbox?

[trtzbass]

Hey everyone, just thought I'd tap into the forum's collective mind.

I have a little collection of DAWs but in the past couple years I've found myself using S1 more and more. I just finished a Synthwave album and the workflow saved me so much time.
Now.
I started doing scoring to video and since I didn't seem to be able to find a good flow in S1, I turned to good 'ol Cubase and remembered why they call it the king of MIDI. I find that, as bloated as it is, its offer of music making tools and options is unrivalled; also, it has a much better way of handling videos (but for some reasons it now doesn't offer a way to output a clip with a soundtrack since a couple years ago).
I briefly tried Pro Tools, just to decide that the money they ask for it is not proportional to the capabilities of the DAW; interestingly enough I found Sonar has quite a nice way to handle videos. But I digress.
I guess my question is, am I expecting S1 to be something it's not? I love the workfow, I love the looks, I love some of the plugins but I find it lacks serious editing power when it comes to doing very advanced stuff (and it doesn't have a score editor too!).
I'm interested in your experiences so I can make an informed decision. As much as I enjoy using different DAWs, I find it would be much more productive to stick to one format alone,
Many thanks

[THE INTRANCER]

Hey everyone, just thought I'd tap into the forum's collective mind.

I have a little collection of DAWs but in the past couple years I've found myself using S1 more and more. I just finished a Synthwave album and the workflow saved me so much time.
Now.
I started doing scoring to video and since I didn't seem to be able to find a good flow in S1, I turned to good 'ol Cubase and remembered why they call it the king of MIDI. I find that, as bloated as it is, its offer of music making tools and options is unrivalled; also, it has a much better way of handling videos (but for some reasons it now doesn't offer a way to output a clip with a soundtrack since a couple years ago).
I briefly tried Pro Tools, just to decide that the money they ask for it is not proportional to the capabilities of the DAW; interestingly enough I found Sonar has quite a nice way to handle videos. But I digress.
I guess my question is, am I expecting S1 to be something it's not? I love the workfow, I love the looks, I love some of the plugins but I find it lacks serious editing power when it comes to doing very advanced stuff (and it doesn't have a score editor too!).
I'm interested in your experiences so I can make an informed decision. As much as I enjoy using different DAWs, I find it would be much more productive to stick to one format alone,
Many thanks

Well what's not advanced to you, might be more than advanced enough for someone else, when it comes to DAW's...everyone is different and have different requirements. Without knowing what you know or have discovered in your use of Studio One, advanced stuff could relate to anything regarding the editing features it has. For me, the note and audio editing features it provides, are more than enough for my needs, there's many editing tools I rarely if ever use from the Actions drop down menu of the notes editor. Editing of clips/events and..wave editing does what I expect and need also...

Studio One, is a relatively young DAW, a huge tool box of tools to try and cover every possible user it isn't, but what is though is a swiss army knife of tools and features which fits the vast majority of users in what ever type of music they create, whilst conscientiously being developed in a way to be streamlined and easy to learn and use for producing with. There's always something to learn in Studio One... as with many other DAW's. Scoring to video and those type of features associated to it are among many of the feature requests that have been requested, (It does have a video basic player in the Pro version however in which you can extract the audio to the track from any video).

Notation wise, you have it's separate sister application 'Notion' which has a semi connection to Studio One, I don't have it because I don't need it... Is it any good ? Really.... I can't really say for sure... there is a forum for it on their website..

https://www.presonus.com/products/Notion

[jancivil]

It would be a good second choice to Cubendo, now that they've adopted the time warp functionality.

I don't love the interface, I demoed S1 3 for a month, late 2016. I'm rather set in my ways. I got on ok with it; but Time Warp is how I deal with tempo, period, end of story.

[Winstontaneous]

Use what feels good for you and don't overthink it. If that's Studio One, great. The best tool is one you know well and enjoy using. Sounds like Cubase fills in the gaps for you where S1 falls short - wonderful.
People here and elsewhere (mistakenly IMO) often equate "more features" with "better product" and go to great lengths trying to convince people why their preferred tool is superior. I think that's a waste of time, would rather be making music or hanging out with friends than arguing about tools with strangers on the internet.

I have a 13 song album coming out on iTunes very soon, I completed 12 of the tracks in Ableton Live. People often say "you can't do big projects with many tracks and complex automation in Ableton's Arrangement view" but I did a few songs with 50+ tracks and it worked just fine for me. Live currently lacks track comping and vocal fixing tools so I rewired Reason and voila, problem solved. The one song I completed in Apple Logic Pro X I really struggled with. Logic has way more features but for me the layout and behavior of the program tend to be frustrating.

[don1thedon]

I've moved between Studio One & Cubase a lot over the last few years but have pretty much settled with S1 for the last 18 months now. There are a few advanced midi features that I prefer in Cubase but have to say that I find S1 is now much more likely to move me toward finished tracks than "exploring" advanced DAW & midi functionality. The balance of functionality & usability in S1 continues to improve & is just right for my creative needs.
Good luck with your decision!

[nIGhT-SoN]

I've been using Studio One since version 1. I've seen it grow, initially was pretty bare bone but what I loved about it was its user interface. Everything was pretty logical to me and where I expected it to be there it was. Looking at version 4 now it has kept that feeling for me and has improved A LOT! I can't write ideas a lot easier and also mix faster. For me it's the best and most of the time, with every new release, I feel like PreSonus is reading my mind and implements what I wished it had.

I feel so nostalgic watching this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QrUHV2ExJBs

[alonl6]

Just make music and use what feels right for you. Stop searching for things that does not exist. Its a mental problem. We all have it in the age of too much information.

[Zexila]

Just make music and use what feels right for you.

Exactly, so what if you are going to use few DAW's, not a big deal, plenty of folks do that, use whatever delivers.

[AdvancedFollower]

It might just be that Studio One isn't ideal for scoring, notation or very advanced MIDI editing, but is more geared towards producing pop music.

I use SO 100% of the time, but I'm not an advanced composer/songwriter. I just noodle around until I've got a few mildly interesting loops and then arrange them into some kind of coherent song structure. The MIDI editor allows me to record/paint in notes, move them around and quantize and automate parameters, which is about as deep as I go in terms of MIDI. Haven't used the Chord features much, I prefer Scaler and Captain Chords for that.

Like most DAWs, SO allows you to see the notes of other tracks while you're editing MIDI, which is useful. The arranger track is also insanely useful for me, and has really helped me to, if not cure, at least manage my chronic Loopitis.

[THE INTRANCER]

It might just be that Studio One isn't ideal for scoring.

You can produce music scores with practically any DAW, however producing stuff like big film scores for example with Presonus Studio One, is something it is more than capable of and is ideally suited for because of the design of the interface and improved CPU handling optimisations introduced in the past year and a bit.

Scoring was the number one reason for my switch, many years go now.

[AdvancedFollower]

It might just be that Studio One isn't ideal for scoring.

You can produce music scores with practically any DAW, however producing stuff like big film scores for example with Presonus Studio One, is something it is more than capable of and is ideally suited for because of the design of the interface and improved CPU handling optimisations introduced in the past year and a bit.

Scoring was the number one reason for my switch, many years go now.

You're right of course, you can use any DAW for big film scoring or any other purpose, whether that be Studio One, FL Studio, Logic, etc. They're all very capable these days.

Unless it's just marketing hype and hearsay, I think products like Digital Performer and Pro Tools have more features specifically aimed at film scoring and they seem to be the "standard" in such areas. That's what I've read anyway. But like I said, I'm not into that kind of stuff, so I might just be falling for their marketing and talking out of my posterior. I mainly make synthwave and italo/90's dance which aren't very heavy on composition...

[trtzbass]

Hey all, thanks for your kind input.
Of course you can make any kind of music on basically any DAW, although when you are working on a fast turnaround and with a very tight schedule it't the little things that save you precious minutes.
I have Notion too and it's a lovely little program that I like because of the way articulation switches are implemented, but it has basically no true integration with S1, so there is no real advantage in using it; you end up having to do do loads of operations twice (if you for example move around chunks of composition you have to do the same in Notion and then all it takes is a mismatched time sig to have the whole thing run out of sync).
The reason why I asked my question is because I have invested in S1 ever since its first version (and loved and supported it) but now I'm starting to see its limitations when doing large arrangements / scoring to movie more and more, so I was interested in your opinions in order to make an informed choice on whether to still invest in it or not.
I want to make it clear that, of course, I look at all this through the lens of my own taste and that I understand everyone has their own workflows and preferences.

[beatmangler443]

I think your overthinking it. You need to use the DAW that has the features you need to get your work done. If your trying to use Studio One for a strength it doesn't have it will be frustrating. But if you feel like you can do scores in Studio One then I'm sure what the issue is? Just continue to use it. Also, if you have too many DAW's you probably are just using one by one and then moving on to the next one without fully learning it.

[InLight-Tone]

I wholeheartedly agree that focusing on one DAW is the way to go, well maybe 2 throwing in something completely different to mix things up like Ableton.

Studio One is a good DAW especially version 4+. It's not nearly as advanced as Cubase but like others said, you not not need nor miss any of that advanced functionality.

Where Cubase shines, is when doing Media or Production music. Studio One cannot handle large templates whatsoever. Once the VSTi track count gets high, say around 100 instances of Kontakt disabled or not it falls apart. It's Visibility system is also weak for handling large track counts.

Cubase is used by top film composers for a reason, because of it's advanced scripting/Logical Editor commands and macros, as well as it's ability to easily navigate, show/hide huge amounts of tracks. You can build a multi-thousand disabled Kontakt template and it will load/save it in seconds. You can easily focus on just your STRINGS or whatever with macro commands or just show the tracks that have midi information on them and hide the rest.

Top that of with Expression maps for managing articulations and a robust score editor and that's why many choose Cubase despite it's age and bloated codebase.

Again none of the above may be useful to you and only you can decide where you're trying to evolve to as a composer...

[sqigls]

I've moved between Studio One & Cubase a lot over the last few years but have pretty much settled with S1 for the last 18 months now. There are a few advanced midi features that I prefer in Cubase but have to say that I find S1 is now much more likely to move me toward finished tracks than "exploring" advanced DAW & midi functionality. The balance of functionality & usability in S1 continues to improve & is just right for my creative needs.
Good luck with your decision!

the MIDI editing is why i went from Cubase to Studio One and back to Cubase again.
and the docked window thing just doesn't do it for me. I doubt i'll ever update Cubase 6.5, it has everything I need, that's for sure. Happy as a pig in shit.