That's a really interesting discussion.
Studio One is great for creating orchestral arrangements. Since version 3.5 / 4.0 MIDI editing is really powerful (improved multi track MIDI editing, editor/arrangement sync mode, MIDI filter, legato/adjacent notes tool), disabling tracks, linking tracks and channels (e.g. for multitimbral instruments with multi outs like KONTAKT or HALion Sonic) musicloops/Instrument+FX presets/Song Data Import make it really comfortable to organize instrument templates (even with an instant audio preview if you use musicloops).
But - as jonathan described in his article and in this thread - you should choose the modular approach instead of hundreds / thousands of instrument tracks (at least until PreSonus improves handling this amount of tracks). I switched to this workflow (having a well organized library of instrument presets on my HDD) and I found there are hardly disavantages over the huge template approach. Now I enjoy it to have a song that is not bigger than I need it to be. And dragging a preset from the S1 browsers is not slower than enabling a disabled track.
And as I already said it's really nice to be able to store a short phrase within the instrument preset so if I'm not sure if the preset fits for my current song I just double-click the .musicloop file (which contains the preset, insert FX, a FLAC preview file etc.) to audition it before I even need to load it into the project.
Maybe I could do a video tutorial for all this stuff in the next time...
Hopefully Presonus will update it with more Scoring/Orchestral composer related features that will make it more efficient, productive, and suitable for this type of genre.
Could you list a few examples (without the articulation editor feature... we all know everybody is waiting for it
? If PreSonus reads this thread they can't put "Orchestral composer related features" into their ticket database
What I personally need most is easier handling of instrument presets like drag'n'drop in the browser (it's possible in the files tab but not in the instrument tab). To move a preset into another folder we currently have to go into the user folder in Explorer/Finder and move it manually. But almost all essential MIDI / composing features I missed in 2016 have been added to Studio One in the last three years.
And I really find it remarkable that I haven't had CPU problems with bigger orchestral projects in Studio One (~ 100 tracks with about 80 KONTAKT instances). And I'm running a i7 from 2011... :D
So I guess many of the users having problems with that haven't checked out the dual latency engine / dropout protection that was introduced in Studio One 3.5. Whenever my song playback starts to crackle I set the dropout protection to a higher value. And due to the dual latency engine you can record a VSTi with a really low latency / buffer size anytime.