Fleer
Because of price? Yep, important part of my decision.
Studio One 3 Pro looks great and costs $125 (and no dongle).
 

Slap it one 5 machines and deactivate one if you get another machine. I always thought the layout was similar to Sonar plus they also have the extra function for mixing.  For a young DAW its come a long way. Plus they are far more aggressive in trying to get people to own a license.
 

subtlearts

azslow3
On-line authorization, forced included content, limited support for control surfaces. Doesn't that sound familiar?
 
Without me. And looking around, I do not see many choices. Fortunately, there is one...

I'm very curious, what are you going with? I'm still on the fence but am collecting options and, to an extent, opinions...

http://www.azslow.com/ind...8.msg2371.html#msg2371
 

On a side note, aside from NUENDO (The proverbial Rolls Royce of DAW's), all DAW's are pretty much relative in price and value for the buck (minus the sales going on).

I saw a no "clip gain" comment but was unclear which DAW that pertained to. Azslow can you clarify when convenient?

I don't do intensive midi editing. The midi editing features I have in Studio One are more than enough for me. 
I am being optimistic in thinking that Sonar will continue to work for quite some time making midi augmentation in Sonar possible if I decide in the future I need a more in depth midi editor.
 
Since I had recently upgraded to the most recent version of Studio One it was a no brainer for me. I'm glad I didn't jump into Cubase since it appears there are complications with the new release for a few and obtaining the dongle.
 
Not many daws offer the kind of possibilities there are in Studio One with respect to hardware line and the connection to Notion software. 
 
I also bought Mixcraft and I find it is fun to work in for quick arrangement ideas. I haven't been deep into that daw yet. My favored program as of now is Studio One if something happens to my Sonar. 
 
Three programs are enough for me right now.

I honestly don't get the argument that it's bad to have mature code.  In fact that's usually a good thing.
 
I've been impressed at the feature content of StudioOne for how relatively young of a product it is, but it's just lacking in feature set compared to Sonar and Cubase.  Some people don't need or don't care about that feature set, and if it works for you, you can do some really cool stuff with it.
 
But there are some functions that StudioOne is not even close to matching the functionality of Cubase.  Midi is only one area.  The time stretching algorithms and tempo track functions built into Cubase simply blow Studio One out of the water.  Even with the ARA integration and Melodyne you can't match some of those functions with the ease that you can in Cubase, and I'm only scratching the surface.  That comes with advanced coding that goes into Cubase, and from it's long history.
 
I'm not saying this is good or bad, Studio One is a good product for a huge number of people, but those thinking it will "catch up" with the big guys are not really looking at the differences in lifecycle development for these two products.  Studio One has 3 to 4 years in between major releases, where Cubase being a professional grade product is on a year to year development cycle.
 
I now have both products and  will continue to use Studio One for certain things.  I love the mastering functionality in it, and if you are trying to compile an album, it's the perfect tool and you'd spend another DAWs worth of money trying to get that same functionality.
 
However the lack of midi functionality and lack of a real built in channel strip makes me want to do my work elsewhere.  But for folks just getting into home recording, StudioOne would probably be my number one choice for them, as there's not a big learning curve.
 
I find both Studio One and Cubase really lacking at integrating with Windows 10, and have a very apple centric layout.  That does bug the heck out of me, and is probably the biggest thing I miss in Sonar.  There's no native full screen mode in Windows for either which sucks for laptop users, and the touch screen integration sucks on both for those using Surface tablets or other Windows 10 touch screen devices.  Sonar really had the best touch screen integration and they had it since X2.  Studio One's touch integration is slightly better than Cubase, but it's extremely buggy, but the project page navigation with touch screen is similar to what was in Sonar, just not as well implemented.  However both Studio One and Cubase are better than Sonar for having a dynamically adjusted throw on the faders.  This is extremely important if you want to do any sort of touch screen automation.  Sonar had a fixed length fader and the throw on the fader was really too small for working on surface tablets and such.  Studio One does have the iPad/Android control app as well, but there are other 3rd party control mobile apps that work with Cubase.
 
You can't go wrong with either, but find one that really fits your needs and budget.  As a general rule I have told people that if you work more with Midi, Cubase is the better route, if you work more with Audio clips you might find Studio One more appealing and easier to work with.

tenfoot
 
For me, SO3 is at the right age - new enough to be clean and fast, but far enough along in its development that I can do all I need to. 

Indeed, that was my thoughts, albeit 3 years or so ago (v3), and it's gotten better by leaps and bounds.

Bought Cubase 4 in 2006, used it for a couple of years, then said sayonara! Dongle wasn't a big deal, just leave it plugged in a slot on a USB splitter.  I think I bought Reason after that, which lasted only a couple of years. Then Reaper until I noticed the Sonar expansion.   Problem was a user unfriendly workflow and no support in forums, videos or literature.  I tried S13 for a few days, watched many videos, read lots of manuals and forum posts, then bought it.  Lots of positive comments in earlier posts that I agree with.  I just don't do much really technical stuff so a simpler interface is good.  Editing the band 8 track, making albums and songs with audio and midi... and the project editing feature for mastering is nice also.  
 
Like I said in another forum, buying this now means that something will happen with Sonar to resurrect it.  Anyway, price was alright so now I have an alternate instead of using Reaper.

NO! I like Studio 1 way better than Cubase. Not for price for the DAW