I have used a demo of Studio One and it was a really good experience. Fluid is the word that springs to mind. I am waiting on some finances then I will be with Studio One oh most definitely. I came from Cubase I am not going back there and the other DAWS for Windows nahhhh forget it.

Who "freaked out"?  Did I miss something good? 

BMOG
As it stands now what is Plat missing or truly needing to be fixed? If I never get another update I am fine with that the software is solid and takes care of all my needs and then some. I downloaded the install files today so I feel much better about whatever comes of Plat. Not going anywhere been here to long to jump ship now

I said that before the polyphonic Melodyne came out....and drum replacer ...and the CA2A....and...
But although very robust, my SPlat will still crash on my StudioCat custom computer....WITHOUT 3rd party stuff except my audio interface.
That's the issue...if you're satisfied now... that's great.  If you're interested in new technology as it develops for DAW, that won't happen in Sonar anymore.

michaelhanson

mixmkr

dcumpian
My reasons for looking at other DAW's isn't that Sonar will break, it's that it is already broken and now will never get fixed. I've been using Cakewalk software since the early 90's, so everything I know about DAW's comes from that experience.
... 
This latest drama prompted me to take another look at Studio One, but this time, v3.5. Wow, how things have changed. After almost a week with it, I have not run into a single bug. Not one. For someone with limited time to be creative, that was an astonishing acknowledgement. Working with it was like a breath of fresh air. I wasn't saving every time I changed something for fear of the white screen of death. It worked the way I always hoped that, someday maybe, Sonar would.
 
I love Sonar and know it like the back of my hand, but it's done folks.
 
Regards,
Dan

I agree with this a lot.  Working on software that will never technically advance, in a rapidly changing tech world, bothers me as well.  Being satisfied now with Sonar and...STAYING satisfied  down the line is quite another topic.  Certainly isn't TECHNICALLY competitive for a commercial studio to be running software that is no longer updated and supported either.
After a week, I also have not had a single crash, except when I imported some Cakewalk VST into the project to see if they'd work.  Presonus on its' own has NOT crashed once.  I'd get about 1 crash every 10 hours with Sonar.  See my computer specs too.  Not some Best Buy Dell computer.

My plan is to take the Studio One offer, for the very reasons stated above. I know Sonar will most likely function for several years. That means that I am free to learn SO3 at my own pace and migrate when I feel comfortable. I have adopted the attitude that it surely won't hurt to be fluent in multiple Programs. I still have several projects working right now in Sonar and will finish those before I move onto an unfamiliar program. I will probably take those same tracks as wav file and import them into SO3, to use for my training, on the side. When I finally get to the right comfort level, I will make the final switch to SO3. However, that doesn't mean that I will remove Sonar from my machine or completely abandon it.

I am thinking pretty much along the same lines as the above on all counts. I'm currently waiting for JRR to send my SOP3 license info and looking forward to digging into it on a fresh set of projects.

Jeff Evans
 See it as healthy and a good thing to do.  Changes up all your perspectives.  Gets you thinking in a new and fresh way.  Your mixes can sound different in many ways as a result.  But you can also arrive at a similar mix from any starting point too.

Actually that has been happening as I am transitioning from Sonar to S1.  I am coming up with slightly different methods and the results has been better for it.  The Presonus plug-ins are not dumpster quality like some have said, but rather very good in my opinion.  But they're different.  The virtual instruments sound a tad dated to some extent, but the Mai Tai is smoking some of my old Korg Wavestation sounds.  Plus it's very easy to use.  It's new and fun.

However...... the fact that Sonar will never progress past its' last incarnation, is a very detrimental aspect of it to me.  As I stated earlier... There WILL be new things happening in the audio world, and there is a huge potential they won't be usable in Sonar.  Granted it's a great program NOW... but so are tape machines.  But I wouldn't touch a reel to reel and their headaches nowadays.  Not to get into the digital/analog debate, hopefully you see my point regarding the aspect of audio evolution.  Will Melodyne 6 function on SPlat with requirements of Win 12 and ARA 6.0 support?  Will VST 7's function in the FX bin?  Will even the faderport 32 (version 3) even hookup using USB 4?
See my point??

Jesse G
LBJ,
 
You have an excellent website man, best of luck to you and your group.
 

Thanks man - my band or my studio? Or... both, hopefully! :O)

If you're walking in never before seeing a Midas, Yamaha.... board or similar...you deserve the grief!!
That's where some experience makes a sharp learning curve.  Doing live sound was too stressful for me.  ...except for the fact that mistakes where gone in an instant.  Nowadays everything is recorded and preserved in all its' glory.  Think the VanHalen "Jump" screwup!!  

I've mentioned here as well as the FB group that while I have no intentions of leaving Sonar anytime soon, I do indeed need an exit strategy in the case that Cakewalk is indeed dead in the water; never to be revived again. Learning a new DAW inside and out is going to take time to where I'm comfortable making the switch for my daily workload. I'll stick with Sonar and spend a bit of time each week learning the in's and out's of my other options so that when the time comes, I can transition smoothly but here is why I need this:
 
1. Windows can indeed break your DAW. If we've learned anything from watching Windows or even OSX the past few years, it's that a single update can literally bugger everything depending on what exactly they change within the OS at that point in time. If that happens and we're not ready to make that transition, we're gonna have a bad time.
 
2. Sure, we can defer the update... till Microsoft decides that you've deferred it too long and you're getting it whether you like it or not regardless of how you may or may not have turned off the updates in registry. Probably won't break anything still but there is always the risk. Better to have that plan in place.
 
3. Well you can always just take it offline all together. Great, but then I have to deal with trying to install new plugins via a secondary machine which someone mentioned until Windows decides that the only way it's going to get that update is via networked computers over the LAN (which is a feature in Windows that you can turn off, but I've never tested it long term to see if it remains off).
 
4. So install it via offline installers. Not everything works with offline authentication and many plugins these days are requiring you to have a connection in order to authenticate.
 
5...6...7... there are many many other things. The bottom line is that you end up with a recording studio that is frozen in time while you hope and pray nothing happens to it, your install and that you are okay staying on the same computer for a few years at least. There comes a point where it becomes more of a pain in the ass than it's worth and at the end of the day, it's a DAW; one of many and eventually it's going to get left behind as it stagnates. The one benefit that Sonar carries is that many of it's features were ahead of it's time so it's going to be a while before others overtake it in many areas.
 
I'm not rushing my foot out the door; I'm being realistic and with that comes that understanding the only real option at this point is not to freak out, but to create a strategy for myself that enables quick and smooth migration. I believe that a lot of the people freaking out about this issue and who are already leaving Sonar behind cold turkey are not the professionals you're speaking of. Like any migration, it's something that is going to be a slow and long process.

TerraSin
1. Windows can indeed break your DAW. If we've learned anything from watching Windows or even OSX the past few years, it's that a single update can literally bugger everything depending on what exactly they change within the OS at that point in time.

When I first started thinking about this in earnest (see my thread on the topic) I wracked my brain trying to recall a single instance when a Windows update killed SONAR, but could not.
 
If you've got such an example, I'd like to research it to determine a) what the problem was, b) whether there was a workaround, and c) whether it's a potential showstopper today. Any links to forum conversations or, even better, MSDN articles would be greatly appreciated.

bitflipper, I have similar experience. Windows update never killed Sonar on my PC... The only difference was it was killed OS itself... Is it counting? ;)

I have no idea whether Windows 10 updates will or wont break SONAR, but 1 question I would have is this, if Windows 10 updates can be just brushed aside like they don't matter anymore, and have no baring on the situation, then why when people have come here with problems in the past is one of the first things they get asked is "is your Windows up to date?"  Now if your SONAR problems can be caused by Windows not being up to date, it stands to reason that as Windows keeps moving forward and SONAR remains stagnant, that peoples issues could also arise due to that? So when people come here from now on with issues, are things suddenly going to change, and instead of being asked 'is your Windows up to date?' are they now to be asked 'You haven't updated Windows have you?' . Me being me I am more inclined to think the main reason people with issues now and prior get asked 'is your Windows up to date?' is just to try and put the blame somewhere other than SONAR, because we all know SONAR has no issues but that's just me.
 
Myself I don't believe in the 'is your Windows up to date?" straw man, I have never kept Windows up to date and never had any issues, my current Windows 10 installations all have Windows update disabled (Pro and Home versions) are permanently connected to the net, and woefully out of date, and I have zero issues, and from my experience that isn't likely to change.
 
SONAR, is it possible that due to its stagnant nature it can be broken by Windows update? well if you all thought, as has been suggested here many many times, that not being up to date could be the root of any issues, then yes of course it could.

hmmm

I have no idea whether Windows 10 updates will or wont break SONAR, but 1 question I would have is this, if Windows 10 updates can be just brushed aside like they don't matter anymore, and have no baring on the situation, then why when people have come here with problems in the past is one of the first things they get asked is "is your Windows up to date?"  Now if your SONAR problems can be caused by Windows not being up to date, it stands to reason that as Windows keeps moving forward and SONAR remains stagnant, that peoples issues could also arise due to that? So when people come here from now on with issues, are things suddenly going to change, and instead of being asked 'is your Windows up to date?' are they now to be asked 'You haven't updated Windows have you?' . Me being me I am more inclined to think the main reason people with issues now and prior get asked 'is your Windows up to date?' is just to try and put the blame somewhere other than SONAR, because we all know SONAR has no issues but that's just me.
 
Myself I don't believe in the 'is your Windows up to date?" straw man, I have never kept Windows up to date and never had any issues, my current Windows 10 installations all have Windows update disabled (Pro and Home versions) are permanently connected to the net, and woefully out of date, and I have zero issues, and from my experience that isn't likely to change.
 
SONAR, is it possible that due to its stagnant nature it can be broken by Windows update? well if you all thought, as has been suggested here many many times, that not being up to date could be the root of any issues, then yes of course it could.
 
 

Matron Landslide
Me being me I am more inclined to think the main reason people with issues now and prior get asked 'is your Windows up to date?' is just to try and put the blame somewhere other than SONAR, because we all know SONAR has no issues but that's just me.

I think there are obvious cases where a windows update 'caused' an issue, like for example where a user's HDMI audio driver was re-enabled by an update despite the user's previous preference that it be disabled. Is it a Windows Update issue - not really. Has it created issues for users? Absolutely. http://forum.cakewalk.com/More-crashes-in-the-last-few-days-than-in-the-past-5-years-Solved-m3669151.aspx Though it is easy enough to look for and resolve by anyone who is familiar with the issue. Sometimes the update itself changes something - security updates, etc are another example - potentially good or bad. Another common one is where Windows changes a manufacturer specific driver for a generic system one. 
 
FWIW I just bought Studio One Pro 3 in a Black Friday sale, as the 'least less desirable alternative' available - and while I have come to like it over-all, it is far from bug / problem free. For a simple example, I have an issue where Studio 1 asks to be reactivated on each system restart. The Presonus tech support folk acknowledged that there is no current fix and that this occurs when the user has Win 10 1709 (Fall Creators Update) installed. 
 
IMO it's not reasonable to suggest either that only SONAR is affected by Windows updates - or that there is no potential for an adverse impact from an update - to any DAW.
Maybe SONAR was more sensitive to Windows updates than for example Studio One is - However it had/has a helluva lot more features and capabilities and was/is far more polished as a DAW. The Reaper guys always bring up how portable/small/solid Reaper is. If I ever need to run my DAW from a flash drive it'll be the first one I reach for.
 
 

bitflipper
Back when I worked for a computer manufacturer, one of my customers was a nuclear power plant. Talk about software you can't allow to fail - ever. The first time I spoke with them, I was surprised at how far out of date they were with the O/S. ...
That's when I first had the term "mission-critical" explained to me.

I had similar experiences, also working decades for a computer manufacturer.  These situations come up in hospitals and many other cases.  Large IT organizations, even ones that aren't involved in life-and-death matters, have rigorous change control policies.  (I suspect that is a discipline that was largely lost over the past 20 years as mainframes gave way to less professionally managed servers, but I expect that discipline is coming back.)
 
What you describe is always a difficult decision.  If you completely freeze systems, you cause other problems that can be as bad as not protecting systems.  I had some involvement wit the FAA, NASA, and USPS over the years.  There were some really archaic systems there for which you could no longer get parts or support.  Most organizations put their mission critical stuff on tight change control, but not complete freezes (although temporary freezes are common during heavy periods).
 

bitflipper
Ah, but what about Microsoft, you say? They could break us at any moment.
 
If you're a pro and that worries you, do what the nuclear power plant did. Take your DAW offline and freeze it in a stable state.

Absolutely.  Look at the absurdity of the Iranian nuclear program where their control systems were online and that allowed hackers (from the US and/or Israel) to destroy a bunch of centrifuges.
 
If a recording studio business is dependent on a DAW, that DAW should be disconnected.  If you need to get to the web, use another computer for any downloads or other access.  Plan brief periods of connectivity where you will apply patches to the OS and apps, then take them offline again.  And always save a complete system image before each one of those cycles.
 
If a person does that, they should be able to use the software another decade easily.