Quantized chord - select one note, it's velocity will be selected as well and should be displayed in a different color.

EDIT - I'm still using 1.x. Hopefully, this is still relevant with 2.
  

Yep, still there - Also click the mouse wheel and a tool bar editor pops up.

Garry
 

With regard to midi instrument definitions, many synths have many libraries so I could see why they may not have got involved with it. It also brings closer the concept of are virtual instruments as good as hardware and for someone like me who has a deep connection with synth hardware, I say yes they can. Once you let go of hanging on to the ideas of hardware and accept the virtual synths sound as great as they do then this problem seriously goes away.

But even as a VST lover I still have 2 Kurzweil K2000's, 2 top line Emulators, Yamaha A4000 and a Korg M1 in my setup. (And lately an Alesis Quadrasynth on loan and it sounds bloody excellent!, Anyone know anything about that one?)

And for these hardware devices I have largre libraries all around. I don't have any problem talking to these machines (from one main controller) and finding any patches within them. Many sounds are either within the machines memory and you can easily locate them that way and others may be on CD Rom. I can quickly browse a CD Rom, load the required bank and go the necessary patch. You don't need Instrument definitions to get your hardware synths to work great direct to Studio One. Instead of getting your software to access patches, you work directly with the synths involved. Operate each one individually. Search the memorry, locate sounds, set them up for receiving and sequencing. Alter a patch if you want. I admit I do have all these devices directly in front of me and they are all easy to reach from the main seating position. Also there has been some serious advances in the S1 browser and there may be a way to browse patches after all.  You can name the track the patch name and some of my hardware units have editor/librarian programs that run perfectly inside the DAW and you can browse thousands of patches and send them to the synths.
 
The physical outputs from my hardware instruments in my case go dircet to a digital mixer and hence all that is taken care of there, the best place for it. Gain and panning and processing can be handled there. Its great the virtual mixer is not cluttered up with the external midi instruments as well. You can still automate them directly from their midi tracks.

Studio one is not weak in the area of sequencing external midi devices, in fact it is powerful and very capable. There are other areas like nicer midi timing, gapless behaviour, switching tracks while in record which are handled better.

I agree the lack of event list can be an issue but it has not stopped me making music and doing fine editing on it as such.

Who do you think has a better chance of surviving a depression? Roland or Presonus? Place your bets accordingly.

 
Or AVID?
 
J

I'm demoing the Studio One 2 product and I kind of like it so far.   I could see myself purchasing the program but lack of Alphatrack support forced me to slam on the brakes.

It's a fun program to work.  A lot more similar to Reaper 4 than SONAR to me.  I definitely like the SO2 mixer better than SONAR.  More sends are visible.  Reaper 4 is a better program but this program intrigues me and the Melodyne integration is very nice.  That's a real selling feature.
 
I can really feel myself starting to distance myself from SONAR X1.

I came in at Sonar 7 and I did a lot of research on competing products and Sonar was head and shoulders above anything else at that time as far as functionality vs price went.

The audio engine came of age during v8's teething troubles culminating at v8.5, aside from that many annoying bugs have remained throughout that period, X1 provided, for better or worse, an undoubtedly extensive shake-down of the user interface but at most very little improvement to any core functionality.

Serious competition has arrived from 2 competitors, that weren't even in the frame 3 or 4 years ago.  The program I was using merely as my main VSTi via Rewire Reason, has already taken over from Sonar for tracking duties and handles some seriously useful audio timestretching flawlessly.

Both Reaper and Studio One will cost me less than an existing user upgrade to X1, already offer the capability of being 64 bit rewire hosts and allow me to deal with stereo inputs via rewire at the tracking stage, with Sonar I have to route them further down the line to a bus.  Both have better ways of tracking and comping compared to Sonar's temperamental 'layers' and the gapless audio when looping multiple takes over a section makes tracking fun again instead of the chore I'd got used to.  Being able to 'play' your DAW in real-time this way makes for much more creativity on the fly rather than killing off any likelihood of getting into the flow.

I can see Sonar has now settled down after a massive and painful GUI change in X1 and WILL be in a good position to compete with some real functional and useful improvements that have been made by other DAW vendors moving on.  But, and it is a big but, Sonar has some serious work to do on a new version in terms of adding real tangible improvements (vs marketing double speak) to it's core functionality to even be in the race now with some of it's competitors that have turned up in the last few years.

I'm thinking the few specialist reasons I am ever likely to continue to use Sonar are already contained in what I have in v8.5.3.  That would be a shame because after all she is the lady that brought me to the dance, but having got here I can plainly see some of the younger ladies are sweeter, hotter and fitter.

Another feature missing from Studio One is track templates.  Those are handy to have around.

A plus for Studio One is that there is a way to set up friendly names for mono inputs.  One of my most requested things for SONAR.

Studio One's audio transit detection is probably as weak as every other DAW that I have seen.  That said, it is easy to manually insert transient markers and then snap it to the quantize grid.  The resulting sound is very good.  Probably better that Audiosnap.

I tried it and you can get it work in HUI mode, but you can't move between channels

gs

Jeff Evans


Another feature missing from Studio One is track templates. Yes it does. It is just called a Song Template. You can completely configure a start up project.

And Jonbouy I read somewhere that you may have thought that changing your DAW is difficult and like your amusing analogy of turning up to the dance with the lady, well you can change your DAW and changing to Studio One is a breeze. (much easier than changing your lady!)

You will be fully operational on it within a few days and totaly forget Sonar all together after a short time so no it is not hard at all. How easy that process is depends on the software you are going to and with S1 it is easy.

Er... a song template has NOTHING to do with track templates...??? Sonar also has 'song templates'...

And changing isn't a 'breeze' imho: you have to learn a lot completely from scratch again. You will be missing features. Of course you well discover new ones. (Then again, you still might not now all Sonar features...! ) Ok, you will be able to record something within a few minutes. But it will take quite some time before you can finish a complete project with all bells and whistles within the same time frame as you could do it in Sonar.

Apart from that: some people have more problems with getting used to new software then others. S1 is indeed quite accessible but being fully operational within a few days after using Sonar for years...? I don't know. You WILL be missing features, I am sure. Can S1 glue midi notes...? I couldn't find the option and I just that one a lot.

So in the end it all depends on what you: if you only record audio and mix it a little: hey, you will be fully operational within an hour. But if you edit a lot of midi and audio and use a lot of hardware, it's another story.

Yeah Track Templates are good for sure but it is no biggie either. S1 handles that quite well too. If you create one track how long does it take to set up its parameters, not long really. And if you create a group of tracks you can group them and apply several things to all. eg Output assignments etc. Some things you still need to do individually but it is no problem. I actually prefer having control over input source and a few other things for each track. And the real time consuming issue would be effects/chains but S1 had that first and you can drag them either way to and from the browser.
It has hidden features, lots of automatic functions which can make it seem it is lacking in features or other ways of doing things not immediately apparent with short use.

It is still easier than you think to get up to speed and produce music with lots of detail in midi and audio editing and complex mixes etc all pretty fast. (in any DAW) Because you don't waste any time trying to get things working or sitting through reboots etc it all adds to the time making music and learning faster. The human brain is pretty incredible.

Some say it is the fastest DAW for getting ideas down and making music.

I do agree that some midi features are lacking but mainly for those who are doing a lot of detailed editing of midi data. If you are someone who can play and get the right stuff down quickly then there is more than enough midi editing availablity. It is geared a bit more towards that type of player I think.

Look at the latest update, a lot of new features. Who says midi features have stopped where they are right now. The editing capabilities on Instrument tracks might take a huge leap in a future update. But they are OK for now for me anyway.

Sonar has a vast feature set- S1 is bare bones. 

If you want a cool alternative try the 400 hour Nuendo demo...

Another feature missing from Studio One is track templates. Yes it does. It is just called a Song Template. You can completely configure a start up project.

What if I'm in the middle of a song and I want to quickly add three tracks for another guitar part.  I need a track for the SM57, a track for the Fathead ribbon mic and a room mic.  Can I call a template up that I have saved to insert all of those tracks configured for input and in record mode ready to go with a DnD or a couple of mouse clicks?  Reaper 4 and SONAR can do this.

Hey ModBod- do you think it will stay that way? They'll just keeping make it more and more cpu efficient as computers get stronger and stronger? Or will they bundle more and more 3rd party VSTs  As Jeff Evans pointed out- they have history with Steinberg- isn't that company famous for producing bloated DAWs?

What do you think of their marketing efforts? 

No Event List. 
No Selection Filter.

I really don't consider myself an advanced MIDI guy. I'm not into creating orchestral pieces with tons of complicated articulations, huge polyphonic instruments and all. And I'm not using external hardware synths.

It's all just notes, velocity, maybe a bit of modulation and such. But a Selection Filter is something I'm constantly using, and the Event List is also one of my best friends when it comes to locating and fixing little issues in a busy part.

These are the two that strike me as missing at the moment because they're the ones I bumped into. 

I feel like this shows that you don't really have to be an advanced user to run into certain specific limitations sometimes. We all work differently, and as I mentioned in somewhere else, someone like me could sometime be using most of the features to 10% or 20% of their capacities while an advanced user will be using fewer features but to their full capacity.

Anyone try a Frontier Tranzport with Studio One yet?