Well last year it was definitely the new Zplane’s élastique stretch software which brought great improvements to the tempo variation and sound quality of the stretch.

2012 has three major improvements to the quality of the sound.
1) The direct guitar/bass was a great idea! Now electric guitar and basses sound more clear and have more attack and movement as a results of the live amp/effects
2) The VST for each track is great for improving the synths sounds and trying out different sounds before dragging into a DAW.
3) The ability to easily use parts from other styles makes it much easier to add strings and Synth sounds to the real track combos, thus augmenting the real styles.

To top it off the new Band Style button makes it easy to have my favorite styles one click away.

If I had one wish for improved sound it would be Multi-track drums. Either via mirror MIDI drums tracks for each Real Drum, or via multi-track real tracks.

Thanks!

Studio One (latest version), Win 11 23H2 , i9 -10940X 3.3 GHz, 32GB Mem, a 4K 40" monitor, PreSonus Studio Live III Console as interface/controller. secondarily test on Reaper, Cakewalk, and S1 on Surface Pro 3 Win 10 (latest versions).