wcreed51 wrote:I've owned Sonar for a number of years for the purpose of tweaking playback after a piece is complete. The truth is, I rarely have time to use it. I've looked at the StudioOne demo a couple of times over the past few years, but don't really see much difference between it and Sonar.
If someone has used both, and feels so inclined, could you point out things that I'm missing? Why would I choose StudioOne over Sonar?
Thanks!
With the caveat the I do everything on the Mac, when one considers (a) that you already have Sonar X2 (Cakewalk), (b) that you are doing digital music production in the Windows universe, and (c) that Cakewalk currently has the upgrade to Sonar X3 priced at $49, I think that sticking with Sonar makes sense for you . . .
Sonar X3 does ReWire 2 (32-bit and 64-bit), and it supports VST3, which is nice, and it runs in Windows 7 and Windows 8 . . .
THOUGHTSHowever, for those folks who do their digital music production on the Mac,
Sonar is useless, since Sonar only runs on Windows machines; and for those folk who have not yet committed to a Digital Audio Workstation (DAW) application or have committed but are using a low-end DAW application and are not happy campers, this is an excellent opportunity to get a professional DAW application at an affordable price, as well as a very nice set of virtual instruments (approximately 8GB) and Native Instruments Komplete Elements (approximately 3.4GB), where specifically the strategy is to get Studio One 2.6.1 Producer (PreSonus), since it does ReWire 2 and supports VST3 virtual instruments . . .
Getting Studio One 2.6.1 Professional is another option, and it has more virtual instruments and integrated Melodyne (Celemony) pitch correction, which is useful for fine-tuning and transforming recorded audio (instruments and vocals) . . .
[
NOTE: The Producer and Professional versions do ReWire 2, so for doing ReWire 2 you need either the Producer or Professional version. From my perspective, if you do not have the Melodyne Editor (Celemony), then it probably makes sense to get Studio One 2.6.1 Professional, but otherwise I prefer the Producer version, which is the version I got when PreSonus and NOTION joined forces. Studio One 2.6.1 Producer does ReWire 2 very nicely, and it also records MIDI. You can play the Studio One virtual instruments from NOTION 4 using External MIDI staves and a "virtual MIDI cable" on the Mac via the Mac OS X IAC Driver, which you configure in Audio MIDI Setup, and there are other interesting things you can do. Everything works nicely on the Mac, and I have tested and verified it. For Windows users, all I can do is guess, but perhaps someone else can provide information on how Studio One works with Windows, although it is useful to know that as best as I can determine from browsing posts in the PreSonus FORUM, there are a lot more Windows users than Mac users . . . ]
For those folks who are using NOTION 3, this is an excellent time to get NOTION 4 at a 50 percent discount . . .
And the 50 percent discount promotion also applies to NOTION Expansion Sounds, which is fabulous . . .
Fabulous! 
P. S. Considering that Musician's Friend had Studio One 2 Producer for $69.99 (US) for one day as a Cyber Monday Early Preview special last week, it might make a bit of sense to wait until later in the week or perhaps Monday December 2, 2013 and to check what Musician's Friend is doing, since if Musician's Friend repeats the super discount, you could use the extra $30 to get a NOTION Expansion Sounds pack or a case of Van Camp's Beanee Weenees (
a personal favorite), but since I have no actual information on what Musician's Friend is planning, all I can do is guess . . .
Posted: Mon Nov 18, 2013 4:04 pm