Very interesting and enlightening thread. Good work Jarsve and Sylvan.
This discussion has me rethinking some long held assumptions.
 
The Mixbus/Reaper vid was also a good share. Different discussion as Mixbus is MEANT to be different. And it is. No doubt there. I have it and may incorporate it more than I have.

Jeff Evans
I have also done some tests comparing summing in Studio One and Mixbus.  I tracked my son playing drums and did an 8 channel multitrack recording of the kit.  Used no plug-ins in Studio One.  Same deal, set channel faders to whole numbers and used LCR panning only. In Mixbus I also used no processing and removed all saturation.  Got identical sound from both and perfect null.  Mixbus is NOT adding any permanent special sauce in terms of some form of analog console emulation.  This put me off a bit actually.  It is not that different sound wise to any other DAW.  The Mixbus sound is coming form everything else.  Dynamics, that great 32C channel EQ and the buss and master EQ as well. Plus all their other plug-ins and some of them are great!
 
To those who think other DAW's sound better than Studio One.  Sorry you are simply wrong.  I have already proved this.  In total summing mode they are all the same.  What separates them is everything else such as stock plugin design etc. If you cannot get a great mix in Studio One the problem lies somewhere else. 

Jeff
I was an  electronics engineer earlier in life, and while I did analog, i studied computer architecture.  I agree with you - if two daws sum similarly and there are not phase issues (easy problems to fix) AND IF there are no plugins in the chain (eq, compression...), saying one DAW sounds different is saying you can hear the difference in
 
 

Anderton

armodeus
Just for a start it has no Dim Solo, seriously? I can't live without dim solo.

 
That is a major omission. There are several possible workarounds but any ones I've thought of so far are kludges.
 

And nothing like pro channel?

 
Actually there kind of is, you can click on a track and a ProChannel-like "sidebar" opens. It also has thumbnails for processors like EQ and compression.
 

Perhaps many people like s1 because it's simpler and easier to handle, that's what the new generations like, right?

 
People have asked me to compare SOP and SONAR over the years, and the answer really hasn't changed. SONAR is a deep program that's designed to handle pretty much anything you can throw at it, Studio One focuses on a specific workflow and nails it 100%. That's the same way I feel about Ableton Live. 
 
There are parts of Studio One that are genius, like the integration between the song and project pages. No other DAW has that. It also handles tempos and time-stretching in a much more straightforward way than SONAR. Overall, you win some, and you lose some.
 

The sidebar thing is still just an FX bin, and not having the track templates is a major pain, and the song templates really don't make up for it.  Again the fact that Sonar was emulating classic analog equipment through the pro channel was so overlooked.  I had a chance through a friend of mine who had the Slate digital stuff and we did side by side comparisons on the emulation and you'd be hard pressed to tell the difference, and you'd spend hundreds of dollars to get that.
 
As far as the tempos, yes S1 handles it more "straight forward" and that's my biggest drawback IMO.  In Sonar I found myself often times having to track to something that was pre-recorded either without a metronome or in some cases I'd track drums to a group doing a cover and they used the original recording as a guide track where the stuff was recorded on tape where the playback would speed up/slow down because the motors in the tape machines are not that precise.  In either case I would have to match the tempo track to the recording.
 
In sonar I would turn on the transients and in less that 5 minutes I could have the entire timeline lined up to the tempo track perfectly, and the click would follow.
 
In Studio One, I have to listen along and eyeball the transients and listen to where the tempo deviates and then use click and drag the tempo to get it to line up again.
 
I realize mine, might be a one off case, but does anyone realize what a pain in the rear end it is to have to work like that?
 
 

Maybe Cakewalk can develop one ooops!!!

Melodyne Essentials which comes with Studio One does all that.  (You have to install it)  It can analyse tempo, create a map, allow it to be dragged onto the Studio One tempo map.  Way faster.  Then all you have to do is amend a few tempo changes timeline time here and there etc.. Also can fix monophonic pitch issues easily too. 

One thing can be said of S1 vs SONAR, S1 uses CPU a lot more efficiently than SONAR. I am a musician, not a mathematician, or computer engineer and don't know why the same project in Sonar (number of tracks, plugins, and number of audio files) takes a lot more CPU than the project does in S1.
 
A side note:
 
I have caused S1 to crash one time so far by a drag and drop of an audio file to a non sensical place in S1.  This actually froze my computer and required a computer hard reboot to get back to work.
 
Sonar, on the other hand, handled these errors better and allowed us to END TASK and reload Sonar to keep going.... but like anything else, I experienced more of these odd SONAR errors than this ONE S1 error.

I really dont care about CPU use and RAM use. I have a Core i 7 with 6 cores and 12 threads and 32 GB of RAM. I rather want a DAW that uses all of that to sound great than less and inaccurate/noiseless/less musical sound.
 
For what I want real fast in S1
1. Regions as it is in Sonar. have them on the bar for all to see.
2. Keyboard shortcuts to jump back and forth to regions.
3. Keyboard shortcuts to Jump to next/later bar.
4. Keyboard shortcuts to jump to beginning and the end of the projects.
5. Busses in its own place so that they can always be shown.
6. Automated faders on Busses
7. ProChannel, with always available EG, Compressor and so on. Why do we have to look up this tools.
8. Picture Icons on the tracks.
9. Improve the automation of faders so that you, not only can type in level, but also the time code. And that it works more smother. Now it sound like an on of switch.
 
More to come.
 

Jeff. while you are here...
 
Can Studio One create MIDI notes from audio like SONAR? Just curious. 
 
I have feature requests too, but I will save that for the Studio One forum or wherever that would be appropriate. 
 
I can say that my Presonus Faderport is working fantastically in Studio One.

I normally record 16 tracks or more simultaneously, and I never had Sonar fail me one time in tracking.  The same cannot be said for Studio 1.  Same computer, same interface, same drivers for both.
 
As far as CPU efficiency, I found CPU usage very reasonable with Sonar using pro channel, which I did 90% of the time.  The only other plugins i would use were either the Blue Tubes for coloring, or for mastering I'd use the LP64 plugins.  I haven't done or seen any bench marking against the two, but it wouldn't surprise me that the S1 stuff is more efficient because it's built in and unlike most of the non pro channel plugins, cannot be used with other DAW's.  Having said that, the stock "ProEQ" just sounds so sterile to me, I never used it with S1.
 
The workflow in S1 is it's best asset and why so many people do use it.  Most of the folks that I know using S1 are using 3rd party plugins and I doubt there is any real difference CPU wise if you use 3rd party apps, although I've never seen or run any kind of benchmarking.

They say CPU efficiency is better than some but not quite as good as Reaper and Logic.  But they have improved it a lot. If you take the usual precautions of rendering here and there you can still comfortably run pretty massive session.
 
Check this video out for a blast!
 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5zhXijvtkNc&t=63s
 
Quantum is very good indeed. Focusrite over (Mac) thunderbolt is very similar. I am getting those sort of figures here too.
 
Jarsve your list looks promising. Yes it can do all of it except maybe the track icon thing though. With the track inspector open any selected audio event will have its information displayed including its start time. The format here mirrors the format set for the main time line display. Values can be entered here directly. e.g. timecode frames or bars/beats or time etc..
 
Sylvan yes I believe Melodyne Essentials does all that you see.  Not directly within Studio One itself as far as I can tell. It is not something I have tried or done so it might be worth a look into how Melodyne does it.  Melodyne can tempo map though and fix tuning errors of course.  It is surprising how powerful Meloodyne Essentials actually is.  It pays to get very familiar with it. 
 
I have done up to 32 channel tracking sessions and all without a hitch so in most cases that is all pretty rock solid and flawless.