As a regular user of S1 I was wondering what people were thinking about the new version after a month of playing with it.
I do like a few of the new features like the chorder etc but I'm not feeling the new interface that much and also don't seem to have much luck with the scratch pad.

I'm hoping some of the bugs will be fixed as I've gone back to using the old version until the new one's up to speed

btw I contacted support about the higher cpu issue and they said it was because of the new interface being more demanding.

 

I can't say that it's non cpu friendly for me. I don't like mixer gui and border in vst wrapper. Borderless plugin windows much more beautiful. Hope they will remove it some day. It's already good daw. Of course it needs some little improvements like: extra inplace search option for plugins right in the mixer channel (like in cubase), and ability to draw long notes holding ctrl button (like in cubase), because current fast draw tool can't do that. And they need to fix latency problems in multi instrument. Sometimes it's annoying. And i will be happy. <3

 

Personally the 'improved UI' is quite crap for me... continuing to stay with LIVE.

 

I´m a visually sensible human being (Photoshop-, GIMP² design for over 16 years) and loved the simple, clear, bright GUI of Studio One 2 from the first moment on. What they did to V3 for me is a desaster: indifferent, boring, flat (skeuomorphic graphics to some degree have a positive effect for our brains), always dark (the skinning-mechnisms has to be a joke: contrast + loli-pop-colors for the toolbar?).

I tested V3 for five minutes, don´t care about all those supa-dupa-v3-pseudo-inventions like the scratch-pad, multi-instruments-thing etc. (which don´t make my songs better, make me compose with more love/compassion etc.), deleted it and will either continue using V2 as long as poxsible or completely change my DAW in the future (e.g. REAPER 5 with custom designed skins).

PreSonus, after delivering the great Studio One V2 some years ago, now seemingly want to compete against Image-Line/FLS and is following ("Follow the leader!") the "market-trend ("Everybody - Steinberg, Apple - is making dark GUIs! We have to be dark and flat too!")...

Maybe it´s just me, but I don´t like the direction software (Windows-8-flat & dark-GUI-trend) etc. is taking right now (partly). At the beginning (still some companies do it excessively) everybody wanted to emulate hardware incl. their design (=> skeuomorphic GUIs), now we are partly going in the oppositve direction (touch + flat³).

The "truth" lies somewhere in the middle... As always: Yin & Yang...

 

It's funny because the first thing i loved about S1 was the clear and nice GUI compared to other daws. Things in v2 was clear, just look at faders now are terrible. Presonus should leave the user to selector he want th old GUI back. Now everything is black wich makes things a little bit unclear.

Play overlapping audio now is a single rule, really don't get it. Why people don't want overlapping events?? Just resize thing. In in v2 was a general rule now it's a single track rule.

The inspector regions now are worse. Had to move them everytime to change settings, before I had my sweet spot.

Memory leaks are still there, wich is a pain in the a**

Changed stretching algorithms, now sounds worse.

There are still some imcompleted features: like track list, new effects routings needs dry/wet when summing stuff. Still not possible to write every automation on midi clips. It's not possible to link every parameter in the Macro like Live does. Macro commands aren't improve. Musicloop doesn't store routings and sends like Logic.
Plugins management still the same, no favorites list. And so on...

I think that Presonus did a ok job with V3 since the expectation were really high. But I'm not so happy with this update, I'm a little bit disappointed. Of course there are some nice features but nothing you can't live without.

The problem is that v2 sounds better that's why I'm sticking with it.
I should probably go back using Logic wich is a more mature daw, with more mature features and better plugins.

 

It lasted less than a week on my PC... I had no problems with it, but it is not my cup of tea.

no WOW factor... ugly flat GUI

 

I have a love hate relationship with S1. I only started using it after v3 came out.

I come from Ableton live.

- What I love: the mixer. For someone coming from Ableton live, I can't put into words how much better the mixer is. I can route every Kontakt output to a single audio ouput and nicely label it/color it.

Also I love the fact that I can hide things from the mixer. So i just have a clean mixer with my main busses. But if need be, I can display an individual instrument to add a vst effect to it, then hide it and keep things tidy. Also you can put groups inside groups inside groups etc. Makes organizing so much easier.

- What I hate: everything else . The native plugins aren't as good as Ableton live's in my opinion. The midi editing can be quite painful too. Many times i've scratched my head for 30 min trying to do something very basic. This never happened with live, even when I had just begon using the software.

Overall I think it's a very good software but I think it's only useful if you're doing projects with a lot tracks on your mixer and you want it nicely organized. That's where its strength lies in my opinion.

I also agree with some of the previous posters that some of the new "revolutionary" features are laughable. Scratch pad ? Really ???

 

I hope Presonus continues to support V2 for a long while because I see no need to upgrade to V3...I think they took a step backwards in many respects. My motto is if it don't make my music easier to make and/or sound better....don't fuck with it!!!

 

I think the thing to remember about the flat GUI is it was not intended to be cool i think it's more about being able to scale the apps size for future touch screen applications.

I firmly believe each DAW have their own philosophy and studio one is based on clutter free access to Modes, sounds and tools. The browser is a big part of s1v3's workflow. This clutter free access to things comes at a price (yin and yang), while setting up sounds is quick and easy tweaking sounds in chains feels a little uncomfortable, That said its ease of use extends nicely into how it handles its tracks as it allows you to also work with no distinction between audio and midi.

IMO If sound design while you are composing is your thing then this is not for you ie. Glitch, ambient, experimental, industrial eta..

If you come from more of a compositional work flow where the sounds within your genre are pretty the much standard then you will love this. ie trap, pop, singer, songwriting, dance hall, D&B

of course every thing is relative

 

It seems that peoples' opinions are largely based upon which DAW they've been using and have gotten used to. I am among the minority who prefer the darker GUI, since really bright GUIs hurt my eyes or cause them fatigue from paying attention to details. Light text on dark background is easier for me to read, too. The colors and contrast were customizable enough – not like Reaper's, but sufficient. I'm mainly using Logic Pro; I hated the contrastless military-gray theme when LPX was introduced - but I use GUI mods by F. Casoria, which render the GUI easier to read and to navigate. A GUI can make a crucial difference in a person's preference for any software. For example, I can't stand Live's GUI, which makes me disinclined to use it at all.

I liked Studio One 3's instrument sounds, though some of them were kinda cheesy. PreSonus plug-ins are good, but I tend to use my favorite third-party plug-ins, even in Logic. Whenever I try-out a DAW, I don't get too deep into the stock sounds and plug-ins, though there are some in each that I like and which are unique to each application. That was the case with Studio One 3. I also liked the ability to add effects and instruments by drag/drop – just a lot faster than the norm. I thought that the Scatch Pad was a good idea, because it's something I'd thought there should be years ago. I found the mixer to be kind of confusing, but maybe I just had a bad childhood or comes from a different ethnic background than I do.

After the demo expired, I discovered that Ardour is up to Version 4, and with this upgrade, the OSX version really works, this time (though MIDI set-up is confusing at first). It's made me forget about Studio One 3, frankly. I hope to wean myself off DAWs with lots of proprietary crapola (and some company's agenda) attached to them and use "neutral" DAWs, such as Reaper and Ardour, instead. Software developed by users for users is better (and cheaper), in the long run, than software developed by merchants for consumers.

 

Oh, Presonus released Ableton Live 7. Cool !

 

wow that is an interesting payment model

Level one: Cost $1, $4 or $10 /month
Level two: at least $1

Question the second option is it 1$ for life of is it a month?

 

1 : 1 to 10$ : you get upgrades as long as you pay.
2 : 1$ or more : you get the current version for life. But you won't get upgrades.

There's no copy protection on the software, you just pay to display the downloads links.

 

got to say I agree with everything that's been written so far, I think that there's definitely an element of 'if it isn't broke then...' about the whole thing.
I just caught up in the hype and am a bit annoyed with myself that I shelled out the money for the upgrade instead of trying the demo like I should have done.
I know v2 was not without it's quirks but I found it easy to use and enjoyed learning music making with it (I switched from fl studio)

A couple of minor gripes for me are that for some reason you can't move the impact mixer channels anymore, the (impact) stereo 1 channel always stays on the left hand side and you can't insert a bus anymore,( I've got in the habit of using mono kicks and like to have them first channel lhs) also renaming the first impact mixer channel (ie 'KICK') renames the header in the arrangement window (it replaces the name impact with 'kick' then any subsequent midi patterns until you change them)

I get crackles when using the new presence and mai tai

the horizontal automation guide lines seem to have disappeared and the timeline is almost invisible with certain colour schemes

and the flat gui is uninspiring to say the least

Overall I do feel a bit disappointed with v3 and it's kind of looking like it's not just me so maybe if enough people continue to use the older version presonus will continue to offer support for it.

that's my rant over so now I'm off to look at a picture of an otter in a bib to calm down

 

Totally happy with the new GUI and mixer here. I love to be able to color the Mixer channels andbeing able to like the mixer with groups. If they fix the Layer PDC and impove the performance of there internal instrumentsI am totally happy with it. (I sold Live 9)

 

My verdict:

 

Reaper has its own share of UI issues... It needs to be made 100% skinnable without the forced bright white windows for some areas.

 

The only two differences for me are the GUI which is nicer (I might be the only one to write this in the thread) and the audio engine which is more stable especially when the computer resumes from sleep.

 

I am really satisfied with S1 3.. there're many bugs but i'm sure they will fix them.. i really enjoy using the arranger track.. i've found the scratch pad a little unnecessary for me, it would be great if you can do different mixes also. Then i absolutely love "duplicate track ( complete )" .

 

Tried S1 V3 Out for a week after the release. Still a Solid DAW and the additions are nice, Unlike the Flat GUI as already mentioned. Am I dissapointed I moved to Cubase Pro 8? No, I am not!! even though S1 does do some things quicker I am really impressed with this version of Cubase. But please Steinberg....Just look at Studio One to see how to properly implement dockable windows!!!