Honestly I find
Studio One to be anything BUT clunky.
Press Play.
Drag the VI, drop it, record it.
Add an audio track.
Press record... record your take... stop the recording (keep the audio rolling).
Drag a plugin, drop it, tweak it.
Song Done. lol No
glitch in audio. No need to stop playback to do anything.
Messed up some notes on your take? Melodyne it.
There's some improvements it can make of course... but they're rolling things out in a systematic fasion to mesh it into the GUI and not screw up stability.
They also listen to their users very well also. I had an issue w/ Jbridged plugs. They asked me to email em, read my email, fixed it on the next update.
Really simple DAW.
I'm the type to create the beat and record the vocals all in one session.
I began DAWs w/ Sonar 4, just so I could add audio to
my Reason 3 setup, via Rewire. I got comfortable pretty quickly w/ editing audio I must say. But the moment I began craving VST's... ehh, all of the bugs started rearing their ugly heads. I eventually switched to Cubase. I liked Cubase a lot... but it was 1) really busy w/ the # of windows, 2) the layout was poor IMO... i had too difficult a time optimizing it for my dual screens, and 3) audio wasn't seamless when adding instruments. I just dealt w/ it though. I tried Reaper to allieve these minor issues... but I couldn't get into the layout of the program. Couldn't figure out where things were easy enough coming from Cubase and got frustrated. Didn't feel like re-learning an entire DAW. I'm sure it's a great program when u use it more though. I really hated picking VST's out of that large scrolling list. Felt very unorganized.
I landed on S1 b/c the audio engine didn't skip when adding instruments, i didn't feelike I was re-learning anything... i felt very natural, and it seemed like it had a huge fresh upside to it... which I feel I was right on after the v2 upgrades. I can only imagine what v3 will yield.
I would try Sonar again just out of curiousity, since it probably has every feature known to man... but i'm stuck on S1 now. The only thing is i just got some new hardware synths, and it's a pain in the ass using synths in S1 b/c you can't save the patches. You have to do the math (or write down the bank/program #'s) every single freakin time. Presonus didn't have hardware sound modules in mind when creating S1. I trust they will figure out a solution though, in due time. No reason for me to jump ship.