Why did you leave Studio One?

[Crossinger]

Regarding stability on a Mac: I don't know what's the problem for others, but I cannot complain (running 4.6.2 on a MacBook Pro 16" with Catalina). Studio One is rock solid for me.

But I must admit: I mainly use Presonus stock plugins, supplemented by a very small number of handpicked 3rd party plugins. And the latter either freeware, or paid stuff with simple copy protection such as keyfile or serial number. I never used plugins with dedicated complex copy protection systems, e.g. iLok.

So I can't remember when it crashed last time, must have been over a year or so. And I never lost any data.

[fgimian]

Precisely, those people will no doubt have started with Live or FL. I can’t believe they would have ‘started’ with a linear DAW like S1 having never heard of Live or FL then discovered them and switched!

Why do you think so for electronic music???

I think you would be astonished how many leave the standard linear DAW way to find much more creative and flexible ways of working...

Both have their advantages and shortcomings but it would be wrong to rate one higher than the other... it´s just personal preference...

I tend to agree. It does seem younger producers who are starting out in recent years are typically going for Ableton Live in the EDM world. But there's many of us out there (me included) who just want a more traditional linear DAW for EDM production.

I own Ableton Live and honestly, after all these years, I just can't understand how anyone works in it. Huge respect if you do, obviously, but just saying that for me, it's bordering on unusable, especially the arrange page.

Some things that make Ableton Live hell for me:

* The fact I can't see my automation all the time (I really dislike the whole "automation mode" concept, we can have both!) S1 provides a nice compromise between the Cubase approach and the Logic/Live approach here
* The mixer is honestly the worst mixer of any DAW I've ever used, no way to type values (only on arrange page), it's so easy to change the volume of a track by mistake, sends only go to 0db, it's not possible to see inserts until you click on a track
* The general lack of pop-up windows (e.g. detached mixer or piano roll) is for me a huge problem, I realise many love this but I just can't understand how anyone works like this unless they have amazing eyesight and a very high res monitor
* The lack of tools in the arrange page and the way you move the play cursor just feels alien to me
* The track selection is not sycronised properly between arrange and mixer (e.g. on a large 40 track project, you are on track 1 and select track 40 in the arrange, switch to the mixer and the mixer has selected the track but not scrolled to it, so you must scroll manually to find it)

And that's just a tiny set of things I find frustrating in Live.

The main area I feel Ableton destroys all DAWs (except Logic) is included effects and instruments. Neither Cubase nor S1 come even close imho, but luckily I've spent the last 15 years building a great set of 3rd party plugins so it doesn't bother me. Ableton's Wavetable synth and effects are especially awesome, such that you wouldn't need much 3rd party stuff at all to produce music in Live imho. The other killer feature of Live has to be all of its creative possibilities with racks and Max for Live.

S1 in some respects offers a few of the creative workflow features I love in Ableton. The multi-instrument and effect chains are pretty damn close to what Racks offer in Live in the areas that matter. You can layer instruments, create macro knobs, create parallel effect chains, split by frequency .etc The sampler in S1 is also very good and imho easier to work with that the one in Live.

In many respects, I feel that S1 is one of the best "linear" DAWs for EDM production out there today, but sadly it's not widely adopted yet among people I find myself working with

[SLiC]

Precisely, those people will no doubt have started with Live or FL. I can’t believe they would have ‘started’ with a linear DAW like S1 having never heard of Live or FL then discovered them and switched!

Why do you think so for electronic music???

I think you would be astonished how many leave the standard linear DAW way to find much more creative and flexible ways of working...

Both have their advantages and shortcomings but it would be wrong to rate one higher than the other... it´s just personal preference...

But why 'leave'? Why not just use both types of DAW (depending on the project) and then you only have advantages (especially if you have already learnt how to use onew type)?

I have always used a combination (from 'Cubase and Live' to 'Studio One and Bitwig')...you don't have to leave one to be with another, you can be polygamous with DAWS

[chk071]

In many respects, I feel that S1 is one of the best "linear" DAWs for EDM production out there today, but sadly it's not widely adopted yet among people I find myself working with

My perception is that it caught up a lot though, in the past couple of years. Also, when I take a look at Presonus' website, it almost appears to me as if Studio One was their top product, at least it's very dominant on their site, so, I'd assume it's a winner for them really.

As I mentioned, what I dislike is that it mutated into one of those "1 major version every 2 years", almost subscription style softwares, gets more and more laden with features, and the high upgrade price for users of the former, even Pro versions. I always liked Studio One for it's rather simple approach, so, I'd guess that it'll be a long time until I upgraded, if I even do. As long as 4.5 keeps working for me, I really see no reason ATM. The problem is that Presonus stops to update the former versions as soon as a new major version is out, so, if it stops working at some point, which can always happen, I'm screwed, and have to upgrade, I guess...

You know... 1 major upgrade every 5 years would be plenty for me, but, I guess that that's a stupid idea if you can make much more money every 2 years, when the people are so trigger happy with their wallets these days.

[burkek]

I left Studio One because:

- no sysex support (I use a ton of external gear)
- no midi list edit support (like in Sonar)
- lame support for video
- a move towards performance features instead of supporting the above (I don't perform)

KEv

[Trancit]

I tend to agree. It does seem younger producers who are starting out in recent years are typically going for Ableton Live in the EDM world. But there's many of us out there (me included) who just want a more traditional linear DAW for EDM production.
...

I am with you... both worlds have their goodies and it´s up to every user to decide what fit´s him/her/it better...

I was just commenting the other posting, which try to state once you know a linear DAW there would be no way to like a nonlinear better and change from the classics to alternatives... and that´s plain wrong imho...

[Trancit]

But why 'leave'? Why not just use both types of DAW (depending on the project) and then you only have advantages (especially if you have already learnt how to use onew type)?

I just said leave as I saw many interviews with popular artists who left i.e. Logic or Cubase behind to continue their work with non linear DAWs...

For me it would be impossible to work with 2 DAWs at the same time as I find this way of working much to cumbersome compared to what I could gain (via Rewire would be an exception but then I would regard it more like DAW and Instrument than 2 DAWs)...

But again it´s personal preference... if you like it... go for it!!

[nIGhT-SoN]

I've been using Studio One for years, I think since version 1 or 1.5 so I've grew with it. From my experience, Studio One is rock solid. You get crashes only because of plugins. If you pick your plugins and keep them up to date, you should be good, as long as there isn't a hardware problem. I've used it on Windows all this time.

Before Studio One, I used Cubase SX 3 and I must say it was a difficult change, since v1 was really really spartan in terms of features compared to SO, but that made me more creative and I loved the way you can automate things, assign faders/knobs from your controller, made it a breeze.

PreSonus added so many features during the years and I must admit, version 5.0+5.1 didn't kept the trend, but I think it has to do with the pandemic, I'll give them that. What I love the most about Studio One is their protection, no dongles, no hassles it's straight forward and doesn't punish customers.

As it is right now, now that they've added retrospective recording, for me seems to be complete. Maybe add retrospective recording for audio too? I dunno, I can't see my self using that very much. Maybe what I would love is to have a way to jump fast from the mixer between song markers. In Pro Tools I think I've seen this feature, you can keep the mixer full screen and be able to jump and loop chorus, verse, any part of the song, without having to change to arrange view.

[tooneba]

Precisely, those people will no doubt have started with Live or FL. I can’t believe they would have ‘started’ with a linear DAW like S1 having never heard of Live or FL then discovered them and switched!

Why do you think so for electronic music???

I think you would be astonished how many leave the standard linear DAW way to find much more creative and flexible ways of working...

Both have their advantages and shortcomings but it would be wrong to rate one higher than the other... it´s just personal preference...

I tend to agree. It does seem younger producers who are starting out in recent years are typically going for Ableton Live in the EDM world. But there's many of us out there (me included) who just want a more traditional linear DAW for EDM production.
......

It is a simple question but what is linear DAW? I saw many ableton workflow but almost everybody is using in linearly for making song. I see no difference with that of Studio One, Logic, etc. I think assuming many people using Live because of not being linear daw is not accurate. It is popular for other reason.

By the way, I don't like automation mode on/off. I hit M and A to let automation showed everytime. You can type value in mixer if you reveal it by dragging the fader area expanded.

[antic604]

It is a simple question but what is linear DAW?

It's about how one STARTS a song. Clip launchers (Live, Bitwig, etc.) encourage building loose library of loops, sequences, riffs, one shots that you can then mix & match however you want irrespective of time but always in sync; to come up with an arrangement. Once you do, it obviously gets linear like in any other DAW - you just drag the clips & scenes to linear arrangement, or perform a rough version with Push, Launchpad, etc.

Linear DAWs tend to structure your process already in some manner, because very early on you have to commit to certain order of things. Obviously it's not set in stone, you can always move things around. And you can never touch a clip launcher in Live or Bitwig, either.

[starflakeprj]

No reason to leave Studio One, more reason to join Studio One I would say.

Anyway, I temporary leave Studio One for Reason, or Bitwig, or any of the other DAW's I own. But if I want to get something done, I'll use Studio One.

[Crossinger]

But if I want to get something done, I'll use Studio One.

Yep, exactly. But recently I had to edit a vocal track for a remix, and the integrated Melodyne Essential 5 was no fun to work with - cannot exactly say why. But I ended up using Reason 10 for this task and job was done in less than an hour.

[dastee9]

Nobody leaves Studio One, its where people end up....

Wouldn't say that. For modern music makers it's still either Fl Studio. Logic or Ableton. With projects mixed in Pro Tools.

Have to agree with this. I try so many daws and then end up just coming back to Logic and Ableton. FL Studio looks good if you have presonus equipment. Anybody left Studio One for Bitwig? And why? I still haven't tried it and wonder how it compares on the spectrum. Is it really more for EDM producers, or can it rock a lot of sampling and sample heavy VSTs like the toontracks stuff?

[BONES]

Honestly writing my post started to put it into perspective for me too, haha.

For me that is a big part of the value of participating around here. People ask questions or make statements that make you think about your own situation/tools/workflow/whatever. And then you have to put it into words, which tends to make things much clearer for you. It's a great process. I've talked myself into and out of things many, many times over the years here.

I think you would be astonished how many leave the standard linear DAW way to find much more creative and flexible ways of working...

What's not creative and flexible about linear sequencers? The tools are all there, you just have to use them creatively. Since moving from Orion's pattern-based approach, I have found linear sequencers to be both more flexible and more creative.

I never used plugins with dedicated complex copy protection systems, e.g. iLok.

Why not? They make life so much easier. you don't have to worry about storing all your serial numbers, they keep track of everything for you. I'm not a fan of dongles but things like software iLok are great.

But why 'leave'? Why not just use both types of DAW (depending on the project) and then you only have advantages

Except you also have the massive disadvantage of having different things on different hosts or having to go to the considerable effort of porting projects between them. It seems like a ridiculous trade-off to me.

I have always used a combination (from 'Cubase and Live' to 'Studio One and Bitwig')...you don't have to leave one to be with another, you can be polygamous with DAWS

So how does it work for you? Do you never move projects from one to another? If you do, then you can't use any native instruments or effects, which takes a huge chunk of great usability out of your workflow. e.g. Native effects in S1 have a GUI right in the mixer strip that shows you what's going on and allows you to play with the settings without having to open the effect, even some of the big effects, like their amp/cab sim. It's such a great time-saver that I would be very reluctant to give it up for some perceived advantage in another host that I only use part of the time.

Linear DAWs tend to structure your process already in some manner, because very early on you have to commit to certain order of things. Obviously it's not set in stone, you can always move things around.

Precisely, which means you start work with that in mind - a MIDI clip is just like a pattern and the advantage of a linear host is that you can also add and treat audio like a pattern. Arranger tracks also make it easy to move chunks around together with a lot of flexibility. I find working in a linear sequencer a lot more inspiring and creative, I think you just need to develop a workflow that allows it.

[apoclypse]

It seems to me the problem isn't the applications so much as the platform you run them on. If Apple can't make stable software for its own OS, then what hope is there? As I said above, I've had one crash in 3 months, but I didn't lose any work, and that was during my learning stage when I wasn't using it very well.

This statement make no sense imo. For one Logic is rock solid now. Secondly other software like Ableton/Bitwig run great with no major issues on Macs. S1 has been buggy on the Mac platform since release but now it's gotten ridiculous.

I do have a custom built PC that I have S1 and other music software on but I don't have access to the my TB audio interfaces among other things. Not to mention that I don't have time to deal with hi-dpi issues or issues with whether my ASIO drivers are multi-client or not. Both non-issues on Macs. I don't have to worry about hi-dpi settings and some plugins not displaying properly and I never have to worry that I can't have multiple DAWs open at a time which I do all the time. I personally don't find the experience on Windows to be all that great.

But that's neither here nor there as the discussion is about S1 and it's stability on Macs which compared to other DAWs is really bad imo and only getting worse.