Ableton Live - Presonus Studio One

Not looking for any flames, heated arguments or other. I am a loyal Cake user dating back to DOS Cake 3.0. 

But the way Live works seems quite different.  I downloaded a trial version and it seems counter intuitive, but more in line with my work flow.  I tend to compose a whole song, but track and build sections out a verse or a chorus at a time.  

Presonus just seems simpler than the stuff out there.

My style (if you want to call it that) is 
1) Build a song structure out with a boom chick click track, markers, yada yada
2) Record a set of instruments for Verse then for chorus then for bridge
3) copy and paste the structure of the song together
4) come back and re-record all the parts so there is nothing actually copy and paste.

But I will spend 30-40 minutes on a verse working up the guitars, the bass, the drums, the keys.... maybe much more.  So I tend to start the recording process 16 or 8 bars at a time.  

I have tried the new loopy thing in Sonar that looks like live/p5 but i do not totally get it. Maybe I should put more time in.

Presonus just seems to be a very clean uncluttered interface, though the feature set seems big.  

Any experience with either? 

I noticed you were interested in Cubase.  I think you will find many of us are ex Cubase users for a reason.  And VST3 - I do not see the value in it.  Too many of the VSTs are produced by small companies and even getting to x64 has been a challenge.  

Cubase - not so stable. Read their forums.  I was a Cubase user for maybe 4-5 years and I pledge to never ever go back.  Ever.  I have no idea what the real benefits of VST 3 are. I do not think that Universal Audio (best signal processors) or Native Instruments (one of biggest soft synth cos) have embraced it.  But if it takes off, everyone will have it in their next generation.  

Sonar is rock solid for most of us.  Then again, you have to take the time to set it up.  

This past January I sat down for a proper demo of Presonus One to see what the fuss was about. (Their booth was right next to Cakewalk's, so I felt just a little traitorous sitting there - and a little conspicuous with my "V-Studio" T-shirt.)

Of course, a demo given by an expert user always makes any product look easy to use and full-featured. The presenter knows how to use it, which makes it look easy. And of course, he is careful not to expose any limitations, which makes it look as though it does everything. Still, at the end of the demo I had a better understanding of what it is people like about the product and a generally positive impression.

In a word, its allure is its simplicity. The 1.0 version I saw had a very clean, streamlined user interface. Everything seemed laid out in a logical and consistent manner, so that new users should easily figure stuff out. Anyone with previous DAW experience should be able to get up and running on it quickly.

But it also struck me as a somewhat primitive, despite the elegant UI. That was because that first version lacked a lot of features that one expects from a "full-featured" DAW.

There was no video support at that time, and although it's been added since it's still Quicktime only. There was no surround support, either, but that may be in the current version now as well.  Also no freeze function, no pitch-correction.

They also didn't have much in the way of bundled instruments, but I don't consider that a showstopper. (They apparently have a "lite" version of EZDrummer bundled, but I did not see it demonstrated.)

Given time, it will be a very nice product.

hey space cowboy, not a hijack, but what is that pic in your avatar from?
I have seen the show buy can't place it.
Thanks

Supercomposer

space_cowboy


I noticed you were interested in Cubase.  I think you will find many of us are ex Cubase users for a reason.  And VST3 - I do not see the value in it.  Too many of the VSTs are produced by small companies and even getting to x64 has been a challenge.  

I found Presonus Studio One x64 has also VST3 support like Cubase/Nuendo although I do not know what the real advantage is?
I also like Cubase, very much - for me most important to compare is stability, reliabilty and interface -> workflow
 
I see Studio One is awesome, convincing demo version - bad thing I could not get Sonar demonstrativ version to run smooth on the workstation, still audio clicks and somteimes midi events are stalled, then released.. I do not know but it feels like tehre are some bugs in the demon

"bugs in the demon"--typo or Freudian slip?
Seriously, though...I don't know about the demo being buggy or not, since I've been a Sonar user for quite some time and simply bought the upgrade version. But with a system like yours you might want to have a look at this thread. It describes settings and BIOS tweaks that can affect stability in any DAW software. If your system was built by someone who builds especially for audio/video use these settings may have been optimized already; in any event, the information might be useful to you.

space_cowboy


Cubase - not so stable. Read their forums.  I was a Cubase user for maybe 4-5 years and I pledge to never ever go back.  Ever.  I have no idea what the real benefits of VST 3 are.

you are joking right? I have now stopped testing Sonar 8 honestly it seems extremely bug infected, not working as advertised on pro machines which run every other DAW out of the box,  take a look at THIS start page of the sonar forum people reporting the wierdest bugs, compare this to the Cubase forums there is nothing of that kind going on in the Cubase forums, except some people not being able to read the manual and asking silly questions. also here stop complaint about the SB bitbridge not working perfectly on the last version, when there was a cheap tool to fix the problem (jBridge) also there is 5.5 coming out next week with bitbridge compeltly redesigned. And why are Sonar people obviously also working with jBridge if the Sonar bridge would be that perfect?? I also read hear people using it, so why??

I run Cubase x64 with no problems what so ever. Sonar crashed the machines about 5 times in a test week also with the strangest behaviours with plugins and VSTi
 
also you write not knowing what the benefits of VST3 are ?? you post DISQUALIFIED already for such sentence
""
1. VST3 supports multiple MIDI ports as opposed to VST2 and AU which support only one MIDI port at a time. This is especially handy if you're trying to offload some of the instruments you might be using to program such as Vienna Ensemble Pro.

2. VST3 is surround capable.  When you insert a VST3 effect on a track - you get an effect for every channel (6 effects for 5.1 surround, 2 for Stereo, 1 for MONO).

3. VST3 goes offline if you have no audio going through it. If you have 100 tracks, with 100 effects, but only 15 play at a time, then your CPU only computes those 15 effects that are being utilized at a particular moment. ""
here even more info on Steinberg VST3
http://www.steinberg.net/en/company/technologies/vst3.html
 
 
We have purchased the Fabfilter VST3 version, which I highly recommend 

double post