Not an answer, but adding one more voice to the chorus of "Boooos" for the trick that PreSonus has played on us. I was happy with V3 Artist, and was just starting to get into some small production projects for friends. S1 was a lot of fun, and I was discovering useful features all the time. Then came Melodyne. I never used it, but I was eager to try it out (I sing like like a gargling chicken, but I'd like to at least be an on-key gargling chicken). Ooops, can't load Melodyne trial version. (I must have activated my trial copy of Melodyne years ago when I first got S1 with my PreSonus AudioBox 96 interface.) Hmm, OK, I'll see what a Melodyne license costs. Oh look! I found an Melodyne Essential 5 license (that's the latest version of Melodyne) on EBay for not much money. I paid for the license, and downloaded/installed/activated Melodyne with no problem. I could run it standalone but I couldn't get S1 to load it as a plugin.
A couple of emails with PreSonus support later: "Sorry, Studio One 3 Artist doesn't support Melodyne Essential 5; it's too new. You can either try to find an older version of Melodyne, or upgrade S1 Artist from 3 to 5, only $50." Only $50? That doesn't sound too bad, and I've been enjoying the production experience so I went for it and installed the upgrade. Lo and behold, I now have Melodyne right there in Studio One 5. Victory!
Not so fast. My very first project with my sparkling new Studio One, and I was laying down the bass track. I usually ran my bass through Ampire, so I dropped the Ampire plugin on the track, and it sounded like you-know-what. I went looking for the bass setup that I tend to use, and only then discovered that you can no longer get there from here. Not only is the Artist version of Ampire stripped down to a useless piece of digital slag, you cannot even integrate someone else's perfectly good amplifier plugin (like Amplitube) into Studio One 5 So-Called-Artist. "Oh, but we have a solution: upgrade to Studio One 5 Pro for only $300, and you can have Ampire back, just like you had with the icky old Studio One 3. Too much money? OK, for only $60 you can have your old Ampire back as a plugin for Artist." Such a bargain. I feel like a kid whose lunch was stolen by a bully who's offering to give it back if I pay him a dollar.