First of all (belatedly)
 
AAAARRRRGGGGHHHH!!!!!
 
Right, is there a consensus re the pros and cons of Sonar vs Studio One? Not just differences in functionality, but of opinion of those who have used both. SO does seem to be a good DAW to jump to atm, and also it can be closely linked with Notion, because I prefer to compose using musical notation.
 
Only recently come back to making music from a large break of years - once I had a Home Studio based around Notator on a trusty Atari STE 4Mb beast (as was then) - looks to me very much like bad timing 

I switched to Studio One and I'm going through the learning curve. I like it so far but my advice to you is download the demo and try it out yourself. 

sweetwater you can get it for 150.
i am learning it now and it sounds great
goodluck
 

Studio one 3 Pro is a great DAW. Used Sonar since Sonar 4 Producer all the way through to the current Platinum version. Started using Studio One 3 Pro about 7 months ago and to be honest I rarely open or use Sonar anymore, and when I do open it, it is just to grab song files to import into Studio One. As far as the Notion software, you would be better off to go over to their site on that one, although I am pretty sure they carry some type of Notion product in their store. So it's probably easily plays nice with Studio One.
Yes there is a learning curve with it, as would be with any new DAW once you are use to something else, but if you just set time apart to hunker down and dig in you will start to get it.

I highly suggest demoing it.  Needless to say, the demo time will likely not give you enough to do a full comparison with, but better than nothing. I started using earlier this year.  At first ito felt strange, but once I started doing real projects instead of tutorial type runthroughs.  I don't know if this makes sense, but I find that although i think Sonar is overall a better product (once you master workarounds), Stiudio One has a more intuitive workflow once you get Sonar mentality out of your head. I miss things like pro channel and quadcurve, but S1 makes up for it in other ways.

There are some nice Studio One features such as the Mix FX. The standard console emulator is great but you can expand it with the CTC-1 which is excellent.  They offer some nice stock plug-ins including the Fat Channel XT which many are not aware of yet.  It contains custom, vintage and passive type processors like nice EQ and dynamics. 
 
The standard Pro EQ is excellent and a great go to EQ for example.  You construct the Sonar pro channel environment and save it. You can have complex audio routings and parallel and series type signal paths going on all on one track or channel.  Those setups can be saved. You can build something like Pro Channel on the master buss.  And change the order of processing and alter it every time.  They assume you have some pretty cool and quality third party plugins which you can use and also build into your tracks/buses etc.. Very similar setups can be designed and created and saved.  As templates as well.  I bet some form of track template will be designed in the future. 
 
They have a very good system of feature requests and they are listening and implementing them all the time.  We have just had an update, 3.5.4 in fact!  Make sure if you are using Studio One you are on the very latest version. 

Studio One is pretty good. I picked it up on the deal but I would seriously check out the deal for Samplitude X3 Pro Suite with SpectrLayers Pro included all for $140 or so until December 6th (listed further down the threads). I picked that up too as it's a no-brainer deal. Samplitude is a very strong DAW with notation included, but for notation, I would also suggest you check out the thread further down this forum regarding Overture 5 for $50 using code sonar50.

I've been demoing both Cubase 9.5 and Studio One. One of those will be my choice if I move on to another DAW.
 
I haven't spent a lot of time on S1, but I really like its interface. It's much closer to that of Sonar than Cubase, which is a completely incomprehensible, cluttered, cludgy mess. 
 
The only thing holding me back from going for S1 is its lack of certain MIDI features I rely on in Sonar. For example, as far as I can tell S1 does not have an "Event List" or the ability to search and replace notes that Sonar has. I've always relied on this feature to fix mistakes and/or to instantly covert all notes values to something else on a particular track (very useful when using rhythm kits). S1's "event functionalty" is really the same as Sonar's piano roll, a feature I never used. S1 also doesn't have flexible MIDI effects and its quantization capabilities are pretty limited.
 
If anyone using S1 knows whether the features i need are somehow available but not readily evident please let me know. Compared to Cubase, I know that I could really get up to speed quickly in S1 if I need to switch. But to me having top-notch MIDI capabilities is the most important thing. 
 
 

raisindot
The only thing holding me back from going for S1 is its lack of certain MIDI features I rely on in Sonar. For example, as far as I can tell S1 does not have an "Event List" or the ability to search and replace notes that Sonar has. I've always relied on this feature to fix mistakes and/or to instantly covert all notes values to something else on a particular track (very useful when using rhythm kits). S1's "event functionalty" is really the same as Sonar's piano roll, a feature I never used. S1 also doesn't have flexible MIDI effects and its quantization capabilities are pretty limited.

In terms of converting all of a particular note to a different note, I always did that in the piano roll in Sonar by simply clicking on the required note on the piano keyboard (which selects instances of that note), then dragging them all to the new note together. The good thing about this method is that as you drag the notes, the notes you drag over will sound, which is great if for example you're trying to change one drum sound for another but you don't know which note the new drum is located at.

I should think this method is just as easy in S1, if there's nothing equivalent to the event list.

As far as midi event editing, that is the beauty of having more than one DAW.  I still have Sonar Producer 8.5 installed on another 32 bit machine. My computers are networked so I can boot up Sonar and it can open say a midi file. From my main machine without even moving it.  You can edit then using the event list.  Re-save under a new name and then open that file in your session.  I have used this especially for opening up commercial midi files and sometimes having to remove a series of un-needed events that are sometimes planted in the first one or two intro bars.  Which can cause grief.
 
There is plenty of midi expansion to come we think.  It is likely that in a major update e.g. Studio One V4 they will implement a host of midi features.
 
This where the thinking comes in too.  You should be able to do most editing things you do in the event list now by using the visual cues now e.g. the PRV. and learning how to use it.  It is possible now to microscopically edit parts of your midi event performances in Studio One.  You can also run Notion side by side and work with the score view if you are so inclined.  There is a level of deeper integration between Notion and Studio One. They talk to each other.