I have S1x3Pro and while it has a few things I wish sonar had, sonar overwhelmingly has more important things (to me) that Studio One doesn't...
 
Track templates is huge... Studio one is worthless in this regard...while there is a clugy work around that helps a bit with setups, Sonar's is soooo powerful, intuitive, complete and quick that this alone keeps my songwriting right here.  I have dozens of setups I can rapidly add in seconds when working on an idea... and every new setup or portion of one that I like is so easy to save as a template so I never again have to spend time manually redoing things.
 
I spent some time with S1 but found that every time I wanted to do something that is just quick and easy with SPlat I'd be totally lost and spent way too much time trying to figure out how I might be able to do it on Studio.
 
Thus, it sits on my rig...Sonar works with my brain...and my whole point is intuitive songwriting; S1 gets in the way of that.

Getting back on track here - I have Studio One 2 Pro after upgrading a few steps at a time from Artist that I got with my StudioLive 16.4.2 mixer.
 
I do believe that you can download a trial of their full version and see if you like it.
 
If you do mostly audio, it may be for you, as it boasts allowing you to get things done fairly quickly amid their 'no bloat' slogans.
 
But what ultimately sent me elsewhere was the lack of MIDI options and tools and even more so - their purposely ignoring the repeated requests of us MIDI users who were already in their loyal customer base.
A good number of us got fed up with waiting for them to listen to us and simply moved on after each update and version kept letting us down.
 
They didn't seem to care. At that time, they were doing really well, and a few 'drifters' didn't matter I guess.
 
I do a lot of MIDI and I find Cubase to suit me most. So I drifted away from both Sonar and Studio One and bought Cubase which, for me, has every possible thing I'll ever need in it - and more.
 
As for posting about another DAW here,
 
'Discussion focused on non-Cakewalk music software'
 
^^^^^ This is the subtitle of the section that you're in, so you can 'lift the lid, pop your head safely up and come out of the garbage can now'. 
 

I'm also still most familiar with Sonar and that seems to be my comfort zone but I wish it had the rock solid stable engines that Studio one has and some of the features like Scratch Pad and Arranger Track.
 
I notice less PluginDelay and midi timing issues in SO3 than I do in Sonar. Too bad it is such a pita to import recorded midi from SO3 directly into Sonar due to the midi implementation differences.

One area in which S1 excels is the built-in effects suite.  Sonar has some good stock plugins, no doubt, but S1's are way ahead IMHO, both in their consistently pleasant look & feel as well as sound quality.
 
If Cake ever comes out with channel strips as good as the new modeled ones available for S1 (VT1 and RC500, both given away recently in a PureMix promo), that'll attract some serious attention.  Those things are impressive.
 
Cheers,
Eddie

bitflipper

bapu
Except many (upstairs) gripe about workflow. Isn't that what ostensibly sets one DAW apart from the others (on an individual user basis)?

I never use the word "workflow". That makes it sound like some assembly line job where an efficiency expert stands over you with a stopwatch and a clipboard.

I have never really understood some of the workflow gripes like "it takes two clicks, it would be much faster with one." Maybe its just me but in most cases the extra time is insignificant when put up against the "thinking time".

jimusic
 
...If you do mostly audio, it may be for you, as it boasts allowing you to get things done fairly quickly amid their 'no bloat' slogans.
 
But what ultimately sent me elsewhere was the lack of MIDI options and tools and even more so - their purposely ignoring the repeated requests of us MIDI users who were already in their loyal customer base.
A good number of us got fed up with waiting for them to listen to us and simply moved on after each update and version kept letting us down.
 
They didn't seem to care. At that time, they were doing really well, and a few 'drifters' didn't matter I guess.
 

My feelings in a nutshell. 

Studio One v3 addresses a lot of the MIDI shortcomings of v2 (although neither Studio One nor Sonar yet has anything like Cubase's Input Transformer and Logical Editor, features which have been in-place since the 80's).  On the flip side, it seems to have joined the ranks of DAWs which appear to be converging towards some future singularity of infinite bundled loops and samples.  Initially, I wasn't all that keen on the new 'cool' interface (prefering v2's), but it's grown on me over time, like litchen perhaps.
 
I switched to Studio One from Sonar because it addressed all of the issues which were frustrating me and preventing me from enjoying Sonar.  Both are excellent programs and represent astounding value for money.  I personally find Studio One to be more stable and robust and prefer the more minimalist interface.  

Sounds interesting.

One of the things I find most interesting is how many people don't do mobile recording with Windows. Even veteran users of Sonar are avoiding it. I have to presume that the problem is stability in Windows for real-time low-latency work when it matters. I have had problems for years.

I think Sonar's biggest shortcoming is that it runs on Windows only. Microsoft is just not interested in making a decent OS for this market. I've been a loyal Sonar user for a long time, but I too avoid it when making mobile recordings.

I want to emphasize that I do mean Windows not Sonar. When making mobile recordings I use DigiCheck and TotalMix by RME.

Per Bit's post, I took a look at Traktion over the weekend, and it does some cool things in a very unique way. Automation seems to be its biggest weakness at this point, but who know what v7 will bring.
 
I demoed Reaper a year ago when I was having issues with Sonar, but failed to grok it's midi capabilities. Then Platinum was announced and I signed on for another year. I pulled Reaper back up over the weekend due to another round of simply annoying issues with Sonar and spent 8 hours reading and watching tutorials and really getting a handle on what it can do. I really think they've built something special. Out of the box, Reaper kind of blows, but once you configure the menus and toolbar and start customizing actions, you can get it to work like any DAW you want. And darned if it ain't stable...like a rock.
 
Dan

I bought Studio One 3 as an alternative to Cubase and the lack of a drum editor/drum maps is a non starter to me.  After using Cubase's Drum Editor since the Atari days, it is hard for me to work in Studio One with MIDI drums.