I bought S1 Artist when it was at a crazy 'show' price a few months ago and had a play around with it when I was feeling disillusioned about Sonar's new X1, which was badly flawed on launch and difficult to learn after their previous incarnations.

I've now upgraded to the new S1 Version 2 Pro 64 bit for one reason: Melodyne only works in my Sonar X1 as a plugin for about five minutes before freezing and crashing Sonar. I've failed to get any help at all from Celemony or Cakewalk so had no option but to do this so I can import a rough backing mix and a vocal track to work on the latter, then return that vocal track to Sonar.

Now that I'm a bit used to S1 my view is that is it NO way as comprehensive as Sonar, but is glitzy and smooth at what it does. If you're a heavy MIDI user, like me, you won't like it as it squarely aimed at the modern audio user. It would be a step up from RealBand except for the MIDI issue.


Songs web site
YouTube Channel
BIAB 2019
Cakewalk by BandLab
Studio One 4