Studio One 3 - My new main DAW

[djpretzel]

Now that I've not only seen what S1V3 offers but actually gone ahead and upgraded, I can finally say that I'm ditching Cubase and going all-in.

 

PreSonus know what they're doing, they've made some amazing changes, added new features, and (most importantly) maintained the approachability and stability and workflow this DAW is known (and loved) for.

 

 

I'm super-psyched and I'm just sharing the news here in case someone else is looking to switch, or looking for their first DAW.

 

I'm now something of an S1 evangelist/fanboy, and while I still respect & love 'em all, S1 is my new best friend, and I look forward to a long relationship with it.

[AngelCityOutlaw]

That trailer = "I can't believe it's not Deus Ex"

 

Looks pretty sweet though. I like the "scratch pad" idea.

[Nabeel Ansari]

That about sums it up for me. Especially with how Image-Line basically demolished FL Studio with their latest update, not only creating a worse plug-in system but also making it completely and utterly unstable, I'm switching off for good now, unless they get their shit together. 

 

Studio One v3 is getting my purchase as soon as I get some $$$.

[zircon]

Out of studio for a few days... how does the MIDI editing work? I've heard it's bad. FL's MIDI editing is by far the best, and I've yet to see anything approach it, which is the only reason I haven't switched to another DAW. 

 

Like looking at this.. I think I'd sooner drink laundry detergent.

[Nabeel Ansari]

Out of studio for a few days... how does the MIDI editing work? I've heard it's bad. FL's MIDI editing is by far the best, and I've yet to see anything approach it, which is the only reason I haven't switched to another DAW. 

 

Like looking at this.. I think I'd sooner drink laundry detergent.

 

I don't know, man, watching people struggle to use their own DAW is not a good indicator of how the DAW works best.

 

I find Studio One's MIDI editing superior to FL's in almost every way. MIDI automation and such is much easier, since it's natively supported and doesn't require you to constantly search for parameters and create new clips. The only way it isn't is that the piano roll still has separate tools for pencil and erase; however, you can rebind these however you want (especially with the Nostromo I gave you), and just like FL, you can hold control for select. While you can't get it to behave exactly like FL... I use both DAW interchangeably and don't have an issue adjusting. Getting used to the different mouse tools is the basic entry challenge to any DAW really; but for what it's worth, as a long time FL user, I got used to it pretty quickly.

 

The piano roll started working for me a lot more because ghost notes aren't bound to isolated patterns, they're bound to all tracks in the song. Furthermore, you can select on the side the tracks to view and edit in the piano roll. That means I can edit my violins while viewing my violas, cellos, and double bass. Or if I want, enable them all for simultaneous editing. Or turn everything off and view a part in isolation (which is the default if you go to edit a MIDI clip). Or turn on the whole orchestra for simultaneous editing, or view the whole orchestra as ghost notes while editing all the strings simultaneously, etc. It's just like composing using different note colors in FL, except it's all managed for you and everything is still stored in separate tracks.

 

This offers the power to bring the entire song into one piano roll while still leaving everything separately organized in tracks in the arrangement view, something I think FL should take notes on.

 

I mean, I can't promise you that you'll love it the minute you load it up, but if you give it some time, I think you'd appreciate how down to earth it is compared to other DAW's. (The same way FL is)

 

The mixer is also a standard DAW mixer, so FL still wins in that department. For electronic stuff, I'm not sure it would cut it for you and your fancy processing methods. I'd recommend Live, maybe, or Bitwig. Also, Studio One 32bit can only load 32bit plugins, and 64bit can only load 64bit plugins. That's probably a dealbreaker for you.

[avaris]

Haven't used FL in awhile.  Used FL for prob 3-4 years in the past.  Used S1 for over 2 1/2 years now.  There is no advantage Live or Bitwig have when it comes to features that make it easier to make repeat pattern music.  S1 has the features to work fast in repeat pattern music the features just come in different flavors.  Now if you are performing live that is a different story.

 

IMO S1's piano roll strengths:

 

1. Ghost notes and ability to edit/view any channels you want on the fly.  S1 does this better than anyone else.  

 

2. Custom Macros.  Haven't gotten into this yet.  But there is some pretty cool stuff.

 

3. Basic editing and selecting can be about 90% the same.  In the piano sroll elect the Pencil as your default tool.  Then hold Command on a Mac (option on Windows?) to switch to the pointer tool.  

 

4. Groove quantize.  Easily rip grooves from any source and apply them at will.

 

5. Lock piano roll to specific scale.  This is really nice when working in a specific scale.  You do not have to worry about entering in the wrong note and just get on with music making.

 

6. Duplicate Shared (shift D)  Duplicate clips that share the same information.  Open any of these clips and make your edits.  These edits will then automatically be made across all of the duplicate shared clips.  This is similar to FL's old block style patterns and an essential tool for repeat pattern music.

[Nabeel Ansari]

I should add that unlike FL, S1 freely allows copying, pasting, cloning, selective deleting, etc. for all automation. It's amazing, I can make an CC1 automation curve for my violins then just highlight and copy and paste them to my other string lanes (same piano roll because of that awesome ghost note track selector), edit them individually or edit them all as the same curve, etc. So flexible. 

 

Instrument/MIDI tracks also natively supports MIDI (unlike FL), so if you're into recording automation as well, you can just highlight whatever tracks you want and it'll write the data for all of them simultaneously as you record. Doing MIDI learns and stuff actually works in plug-ins, and mapped CC values on your MIDI controller will just be passed to plugins without extra generic links or stuff like that.

 

Using all those features, I'll record automate all my string sections the same way (in one recording pass) and then make individualized tweaks after, and it'll just let me! With FL it requires tons of "Make Uniques" and "Link to Controllers" with manually writing automation clips or deal with having "edit events" stuff be tied to one pattern, never again to leave it because there's no copy paste support for that data. It might seem like nitpicking until you start to waste literally hours of your time trying to route controllers and cloning/slicing automation clips, compounding more and more hacks onto your project to try and get an end result that could have easily been done in one simple lane.

 

The strength of Studio One's MIDI editing can be summed up as: you can edit everything as together or separately, as patterned or unpatterned, as you want, and whatever method you choose does not destroy and mess up the visual organization of the song arrangement; this is opposed to FL, where your preferred workflow will directly impact the visual organization and in many cases render it cryptic and chaotic. In my latest FL mix, I had to orchestrate in one pattern to get all the ghost notes; however, since it's all one pattern, it's just a garbled mess of singular clip MIDI data in the arrangement timeline. Not great for organization. I also had lots of conflicting CC data between overlapping automation clips and edit events, and it's impossible to see what's going wrong unless I dug in to looking at my automation clip controller assignments. Not fun, not organized. I ended up leaving a lot of those CC tweaks unfinished because I didn't want to deal with weird automation hacks.

[Chimpazilla]

I ditched FL nearly two years ago and I don't miss it at all, for the reasons Neblix has been mentioning.  All those pattern names and "make uniques" and "link to controllers" etc. are terrible and I just prefer Cubase as the routing and track layout makes so much more sense and it's stable as can be.   FL still being a 32bit host is so obnoxious!  I hated having to adjust the buffer rate and fiddle with multithread processing etc. and my files still tended to stutter and crash, even on my super-upgraded computer.  Is FL12 at least 64bit?  You're telling me it's even MORE unstable than FL11?  Good riddance, I say!

 

I've been very happy with Cubase.  S1 looks good though.  So far I'm not motivated to switch as I feel like I'm still learning Cubase, but maybe one day I will.  Some of those features sound pretty neato.

[SnappleMan]

I've been using S1 for a while as a backup DAW. For the way I work it has a long way to go before it can compete with Cubase, but it's getting there. The MIDI editing in S1 is pretty good too, but once you really get to know the Cubase MIDI workflow nothing else comes close. And as far as MIDI routing/sends and MIDI insert effects I don't think anything will ever top Cubase.

 

When it comes to piano rolls though you are going to learn to write music based on the workflow of the DAW that you started on. What I mean is, the nature in which you enter notes and edit notes will evolve differently. I learned on Cakewalk and Cubase, which is tool-based, which is the best way for me to work. FL feels very clunky to me because I like to enter notes first and then go back and edit if I feel like it, so much clicking to do that.

 

Also Cubase is very much a two handed DAW, uses mouse+keyboard to do very powerful things very easily, I feel like S1 is trying to be somewhere in the middle with that (like the middle ground between Cubase and Reaper). For my tastes I think it needs to pick a side and focus on that before it can be something I would consider switching to.

[avaris]

 

Also Cubase is very much a two handed DAW, uses mouse+keyboard to do very powerful things very easily, I feel like S1 is trying to be somewhere in the middle with that (like the middle ground between Cubase and Reaper). For my tastes I think it needs to pick a side and focus on that before it can be something I would consider switching to.

 

Awesome observation of the usability paradigm employed the developers.  The only piano I have ever felt was truly terrible was Ableton Live's.  Each one takes time.

[djpretzel]

Out of studio for a few days... how does the MIDI editing work? I've heard it's bad. FL's MIDI editing is by far the best, and I've yet to see anything approach it, which is the only reason I haven't switched to another DAW. 

 

Like looking at this.. I think I'd sooner drink laundry detergent.

 

Uh... lolz? "I've heard it's bad" isn't particularly incisive critique, secondhand or otherwise... as Nabeel said, watching someone struggle with any DAW is going to make that DAW seem inelegant.

 

If your primary metric of evaluation when it comes to DAWs is "How closely does the MIDI editing resemble FL Studio??" then it stands to reason that the best DAW is always going to be, drumroll, FL Studio...

 

The mixer is also a standard DAW mixer, so FL still wins in that department. For electronic stuff, I'm not sure it would cut it for you and your fancy processing methods. I'd recommend Live, maybe, or Bitwig. Also, Studio One 32bit can only load 32bit plugins, and 64bit can only load 64bit plugins. That's probably a dealbreaker for you.

 

I'm genuinely curious about the limitations of a "standard DAW mixer" in this regard - with multi-instruments that have their own bussable FX and what not, can you give me a scenario/use case of something FL/Live/Bitwig can do from a routing/mixing perspective that S1 can't? I'm not skeptical, I just want examples... it's certainly true that those DAWs are more associated with EDM, but that in and of itself doesn't necessarily say much...

 

6. Duplicate Shared (shift D)  Duplicate clips that share the same information.  Open any of these clips and make your edits.  These edits will then automatically be made across all of the duplicate shared clips.  This is similar to FL's old block style patterns and an essential tool for repeat pattern music.

 

I just learned something - thanks

 

I ditched FL nearly two years ago and I don't miss it at all, for the reasons Neblix has been mentioning.  All those pattern names and "make uniques" and "link to controllers" etc. are terrible and I just prefer Cubase as the routing and track layout makes so much more sense and it's stable as can be.   FL still being a 32bit host is so obnoxious!  I hated having to adjust the buffer rate and fiddle with multithread processing etc. and my files still tended to stutter and crash, even on my super-upgraded computer.  Is FL12 at least 64bit?  You're telling me it's even MORE unstable than FL11?  Good riddance, I say!

 

I've been very happy with Cubase.  S1 looks good though.  So far I'm not motivated to switch as I feel like I'm still learning Cubase, but maybe one day I will.  Some of those features sound pretty neato.

 

I suppose I should be clear on my reasons for departing from Cubase:

• Hate dongles. Also feel that they contribute to overall instability. Cubase has been around for ages, but I'd STILL see crashes on exit, for instance, even with the latest & greatest. Or it would hang and sit there for a minute before closing.
• Multi-screen still feels lame, even after the improvements w/ 8.
• Feels a bit bloated. This is a criticism that PreSonus like to make, without naming names. It's pretty clear that they're talking about Cubase, when they do. Now SOME of that "bloat" is actually an advanced feature set that is very important to a niche group of power users. But there's so many things like that, it ends up feeling a bit clasutrophobic, to me. I suppose if I were one of those power users, I'd feel differently.
• Disappointing point releases. 6, 6.5, 7, 7.5, 8...I've been underwhelmed. I was actually super-excited about chord track, but while the concept is great, the implementation seems lame to me, primarily because of my main beef:
• Usability, or lack thereof. As the featureset has expanded, there hasn't been a clear & consistent effort to unify it all in a way that still makes sense and feels graceful. The power is definitely there, no doubt, and the core features are still quite usable, but the UX makes the newer stuff feel tacked-on, which it essentially is.

Still a great DAW, just should have moved away from dongles a long time ago & modernized their codebase and UI/UX. Seems like no one on their dev/management teams is willing to make that type of commitment, so they just keep on adding features and additional plugins, when the underlying engine is what needs streamlining. Just my two cents.

 

Awesome observation of the usability paradigm employed the developers.  The only piano I have ever felt was truly terrible was Ableton Live's.  Each one takes time.

 

Even with 9? It took them 9 versions, but it DOES seem better now...

 

As a sidenote to those interested in S1V3 who want to run it on multiple computers... recently learned that the Pro version comes with five activations that can be managed online, so with a single license you can run it on five of your own computers/laptops, mix of osx/windows not a problem. Love it.

[Nabeel Ansari]

 

I'm genuinely curious about the limitations of a "standard DAW mixer" in this regard - with multi-instruments that have their own bussable FX and what not, can you give me a scenario/use case of something FL/Live/Bitwig can do from a routing/mixing perspective that S1 can't? I'm not skeptical, I just want examples... it's certainly true that those DAWs are more associated with EDM, but that in and of itself doesn't necessarily say much...

 

Routing in a standard DAW mixer amounts to creating busses and submixes. Routing in FL Studio is much less formalized and simpler to engineer routing solutions because any track can be sent to any other track. There's no business with sends or busses or what have you.

 

Anything you can do in FL routing, you can do equivalently in a standard DAW routing if you work it out. The functionality is not different; it's the form that's what is important in this kind of thing. The point is that it's just slightly more fluid in FL, because instead of creating sends and going through dropdowns to pick outputs, all you have to do is select, say your kick track, move your mouse to the bottom of the, say, pad track, and click the little routing arrow and adjust the tiny send level that pops up. Voila; the kick will be sent post-fader to however many tracks I click like this.

 

It's not really different from sends in function, but if you do a *lot* of stuff like this, the time difference between doing it in Studio One and doing it in FL can start to become very significant. It's not about "can do", it's "how easy".

 

You are correct, though, that the multi-instruments and the Extended FX Chains and such are creating better ways to help complicated FX routing, so I would just instead revoke my statement about "standard DAW mixer", because it isn't really anymore.

 

From a UI perspective, though, I don't like how you need to click on a small arrow on a mixer track to bring up its effects; in FL, when you select a track, the effects will just be brought up on the side. I think there's room for improvement in being able to view mixer effects without so much clicking. I am aware you can stretch upward to place the tiny list of effects on top of the mixer tracks, but at least in V2, it was still kinda pathetic.

[avaris]

S1 v3 Tip:

 

Highlight multiple channels in the mixer.  Drag one plug-in to a channel.  Whammo that plugin just got loaded on every channel.  You can also clear out all plugins on multiple channels using the same method.

 

Placement of "Sends" getting out of hand on individual channels?  Shift Click on "Sends" header to reposition it vertically.

 

Obvious one, but super super nice.  Double click on any track in the arrange page to bring you to that track in the mixer.

 

Want to copy all of the inserts or sends from one channel to the next?  Hold Alt/Option and click and drag.

[zircon]

MIDI editing is a 100% dealbreaker for me. I need to be able to input notes exactly like in FL Studio, it's as simple as that. I've used tons of DAWs and none of them get MIDI editing as right as FL.

[AngelCityOutlaw]

MIDI editing is a 100% dealbreaker for me. I need to be able to input notes exactly like in FL Studio, it's as simple as that. I've used tons of DAWs and none of them get MIDI editing as right as FL.

 

I personally could live without the FL style piano roll, especially since it now has step-record, but it's the whole no cross-compatibility with 32/64 bit plugins. I have trust issues with third-party software that claims to bridge that gap. 

[timaeus222]

Some various things I like most about the FL piano roll (FL 11 ):

- Right-click-drag to edit multiple velocities at once along an interconnected slope. Similarly, you can do that with event edits (from left to right) and in the step sequencer. Helps with buildup patterns and note velocity "swells", when I don't want to adjust multiple velocities individually.

- Resize two connected notes by holding shift and click-dragging between them (Alt+Shift to temp-disable quantization). I often use this to adjust voice movement in my chords.

- Scale velocities using a specific multiplier setting with Alt+X (Scale Levels), or rescale velocities with Alt+Mouse-wheel-roll.

- Octave and semitone shifts with Ctrl+Up/Down and Shift+Up/Down respectively (might/should be common to other DAWs, but I think it helps you to not have to drag some notes manually and count half steps *as you're dragging* and hear the pitch change every step of the way).

- Ctrl+B to copy and paste chunks of previously-highlighted notes (haven't used it much but it can be helpful if you're writing repetitive patterns and you just want to hold down two keys to rapid-C+P)

- Ghost Notes (though I haven't really *needed* to use this feature as much these days)

[SnappleMan]

I suppose I should be clear on my reasons for departing from Cubase:

• Hate dongles. Also feel that they contribute to overall instability. Cubase has been around for ages, but I'd STILL see crashes on exit, for instance, even with the latest & greatest. Or it would hang and sit there for a minute before closing.
• Multi-screen still feels lame, even after the improvements w/ 8.
• Feels a bit bloated. This is a criticism that PreSonus like to make, without naming names. It's pretty clear that they're talking about Cubase, when they do. Now SOME of that "bloat" is actually an advanced feature set that is very important to a niche group of power users. But there's so many things like that, it ends up feeling a bit clasutrophobic, to me. I suppose if I were one of those power users, I'd feel differently.
• Disappointing point releases. 6, 6.5, 7, 7.5, 8...I've been underwhelmed. I was actually super-excited about chord track, but while the concept is great, the implementation seems lame to me, primarily because of my main beef:
• Usability, or lack thereof. As the featureset has expanded, there hasn't been a clear & consistent effort to unify it all in a way that still makes sense and feels graceful. The power is definitely there, no doubt, and the core features are still quite usable, but the UX makes the newer stuff feel tacked-on, which it essentially is.

Still a great DAW, just should have moved away from dongles a long time ago & modernized their codebase and UI/UX. Seems like no one on their dev/management teams is willing to make that type of commitment, so they just keep on adding features and additional plugins, when the underlying engine is what needs streamlining. Just my two cents.

 

 

Even with 9? It took them 9 versions, but it DOES seem better now...

 

As a sidenote to those interested in S1V3 who want to run it on multiple computers... recently learned that the Pro version comes with five activations that can be managed online, so with a single license you can run it on five of your own computers/laptops, mix of osx/windows not a problem. Love it.

 

 

This right here is a ton of completely valid reasoning.

- Dongles. I love dongles until I have to move to a mobile rig, or work on two machines simultaneously (which I do often), and I hate dongles until I have to register other pieces of software and run out of auths or am having connection problems etc etc. Reaper fixes the licensing and upgrade model, every other DAW has it wrong.

 

- Multi screen has always worked great with Cubase for users who learned early to use the "always on top" option. For those who never learned that trick it's a huge hassle. Even when you do set things up perfectly some minor things are still problematic (none of which have ever affected me so I lucked out). In Cubase 8 they "tried" to fix those problems (which the OSX versions never had), but they ended up with a very badly designed windows UI that's a huge failure in my eyes.

 

- It is definitely bloated, but only to those of us who have been at this game for a long while. I've been working with DAWs/sequencers since about 1996, almost 20 years now. I have accumulated tons of sample libraries and plugins, I do not need most of what's included in Cubase, but I assume that many users do.

 

- Disappointing point releases for sure. For me this is the single biggest flaw with Cubase. It uses the most outdated, insulting upgrade model. I've already spent over $1000 in Cuabse updates over the years. I see absolutely no way they will be able to compete with the new wave of rapidly rising DAWs unless they fix this. This is the single reason that I am looking at learning every other DAW there is, so when Cubase 7.5 is no longer viable for me I'll have an easier time migrating. (Since I don't see Steinberg ever getting with the times in terms of upgrades).

 

- Usability. I can do incredible things with Cubase in mere hours. Usability is the utmost for me, and the look/workflow of Cubase is second to none. Or at least that would have been my answer till Cubase 8. This latest release is extremely disjointed and does not at all feel like an upgrade to the extremely tight, stable, fast and powerful superdaw that is Cubase 7.5.

So yeah, S1 is getting better, Reaper is getting better. I am going to keep using these other DAWs till Cubase 7.5 gets way left behind, or the more unlikely scenario of Steinberg getting their shit together and actually upgrading Cubase instead of breaking it to shoehorn new "features" into a DAW that needs to be rebuilt to 2015 standards.

Much like Pro Tools, which Avid had to rebuild with a new audio engine (they've finally caught up with 2008!), I think the really great audio/MIDI/VST engines of Cubase are going to be obsolete in a few years, and then we will see that S1 and Reaper have overtaken it. S1 has a ton fo Cubase influence in the design, so it's the logical choice for me to upgrade to (if that ever is the case), but even then the more open ended nature of Reaper is most appealing. So I'm desperately hoping that Steinberg takes a chance and rebuilds Cubase from the ground up. They could and should keep it the same as it is, just clean up the fucking code.

That being said, among all my DAWs that I use regularly (Cubase, Pro Tools, Reaper, S1, Logic) Cubase is by far the most stable and most capable. When Reaper hit version 4 it overtook Cubase in terms of speed, though (at least on my system).

[Nabeel Ansari]

MIDI editing is a 100% dealbreaker for me. I need to be able to input notes exactly like in FL Studio, it's as simple as that. I've used tons of DAWs and none of them get MIDI editing as right as FL.

 

I find the note entry inconvenience insignificant compared to the other MIDI editing features that S1 has. It's one tiny thing you have to get used to (only once) as a price to pay for all the really nice things FL can never do because of its pattern system (which is starting to show its age). Patterns just downright aggravate me, especially because I've been trained to use it for so many years and find myself struggling to write basic linear music because I'm so accustomed to writing one clip and then just painting it across the timeline for repeats, which stifled my ability to learn how to write music for... 8 or 9 years since I started learning what notes and beats were?

 

You can get the same repeat change-persist (change it once, changes everywhere) behavior in S1 as patterns but without the restrictions, and without it being forced onto you. Ghost notes are more important to me than any other MIDI Editing feature, so I deal with the pencil/erase tools (and like I said earlier, you have to cram a bunch of instruments into one pattern for ghost notes in FL).

[Hayeser]

I bought S1 Artist as an 'entry' DAW about 4 years ago in order to better backseat drive on sessions with my band, and to be more informed while communicating with producers/engineers. I had all intentions of moving up to Pro Tools/Logic, since there aren't many (if any) studios here in NYC that use Presonus. I have long since upgraded to S1 Pro, and had such a positive experience that I've been able to take up producing on my own. The crew at Presonus seem bent on learning from other DAWs' shortcomings, and creating an environment conducive to fast, intuitive workflow.

 

I enjoy it for all of the aforementioned reasons; once you get intimately familiar with the shortcuts and true functionality, the workflow is damn near unparalleled. I haven't dug in to the macros, but there's a lot to choose from there, as well. Ableton is definitely the standard for EDM given its fast workflow with looping, but there are ways to get similar work done in S1 with the right layout/approach. 

 

I just starting toying around with the S1-3 demo; it seems absolutely next level, but it's taking some getting used to with the different UI, so I haven't dug too deep yet.

 

I can't speak for the FL midi roll, but I agree with all about S1 being a top contender in editing/functionality. Studio One wins my vote. I've also been integrating Presonus' Notion as my notation software. I think it gives Finale and Sibelius a run for their money.

[zircon]

To me it's a dealbreaker because having to switch tools, change note lengths, etc. in an inefficient way literally doubles, triples, or quadruples the time I spend on a track. It's non-negotiable. The main features I heavily rely on:

 

* No need to ever switch tools - left click to place note, right click to delete (right click can also delete multiple)
* Left click + drag while placing to move in ANY direction, not just up/down

* Drawing notes uses the length of the last-placed note

* Edit velocity with one click, edit multiple velocities with one click (drawing a line/slope for example)
* Very very easy and powerful quantize tools

[timaeus222]

Not to mention, if you watch the S1-2 piano roll video (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ASnbvqItIaA), besides the ghost-note-in-chosen-instruments thing, FL can do the two main things that are repeatedly performed in the video:

- 0:00:29 - The note was drawn and then extended. In FL, you can hold shift and do the same thing with left click + drag. If you hold Alt+Shift, you can temp-disable quantization.

- 0:00:43 - Duplicate note. Simple, just Shift+Left-click + drag.

 

And all without switching from the pencil tool. *shrug*

 

(Not to ding S1-3 or anything, but I still think it has room for improvement in the piano roll department)

[José the Bronx Rican]

My primary concern is probably similar to zircon's: ability to draw/edit/tweak as many notes as possible in a big fat hurry. I finally got around to building my own MIDI programming template in FL, because the "Scale Levels" function in their piano roll is indispensable to me, and I haven't found anything similar yet in other DAWs (it's a difficult thing to search for on the web). I should ask here to the experienced users: what does S1 offer that's similar, if anything, and do other DAWs have it? I expect Reaper has something.

[anterroir]

My primary concern is probably similar to zircon's: ability to draw/edit/tweak as many notes as possible in a big fat hurry. I finally got around to building my own MIDI programming template in FL, because the "Scale Levels" function in their piano roll is indispensable to me, and I haven't found anything similar yet in other DAWs (it's a difficult thing to search for on the web). I should ask here to the experienced users: what does S1 offer that's similar, if anything, and do other DAWs have it? I expect Reaper has something.

 

something like this ? -> 

[SnappleMan]

Cubase's velocity tools are the bestttttttt <3

[Nabeel Ansari]

Not to mention, if you watch the S1-3 piano roll video (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ASnbvqItIaA), besides the ghost-note-in-chosen-instruments thing, FL can do the two main things that are repeatedly performed in the video:

- 0:00:29 - The note was drawn and then extended. In FL, you can hold shift and do the same thing with left click + drag. If you hold Alt+Shift, you can temp-disable quantization.

- 0:00:43 - Duplicate note. Simple, just Shift+Left-click + drag.

 

And all without switching from the pencil tool. *shrug*

 

(Not to ding S1-3 or anything, but I still think it has room for improvement in the piano roll department)

 

Like I said, watching someone struggle with their DAW on a crappy screen recorder does not give you grounds to evaluate said DAW. Both actions you described are identically equivalent in FL and S1, "all without switching from the pencil tool".

 

By the way, that's an S1-2 video, not 3.