Shambler


Nothing to add except I applaud dubdisciple's excellent handling of replies he has received when some people would have blown a fuse by now
 
I know nothing about hip-hop production so am reading this thread with interest.

Swiller


An old akai sampler and maschine or similar controller are pretty essential items if you want to make authentic hip hop with a decent workflow. I dont think any daw can claim to make things sound authentically hip hop.

Hip hop was born out of looping disco/jazz records first on turntables, then on digital samplers. I dont think sonar is the issue here. Ease of use and what comes through the speakers are two very different things of course.....

The video posted was impressive in its ease of editing, but the drums still sounded dung to my ears after all that work. No where near how good and authentic that drumloop would sound thrown through an akai s1000 for example. 

I have a good friend who is a hobbyist hip hop producer. He picked up and old akai s2000 rack sampler for £45 quid and now throws all his drumloops through it like a drumloop pre amp. He calls it the best drumloop hardware plugin in the world.  His drums sound great and authentic. They have that digital crunchy sound. A big difference from these tweakeable software clones he was using.  He throws in loops via old vinyl from an sl1210 and it sounds hip hop because thats exactly how the genre has been doing it for decades. That is the sound.

Similarly, drumloops in hip hop originated from samples of acoustic drumkits from old 70s disco records or jazz records. (Funky drummer?)
..So dont discount using session drummer 3 and the 500mb acoustic kits for your base for drumloops. Try loading up the wet3 kit (amazing snare), loading up a hip hop midi part and throwing it through a compressor like roughrider 64bit, which is free. Try that compresor on NY compression setting and i reckon you will be nearer the hip hop sound than spending time chopping up samples like in the video.

Sonar x2 will host, sequence and add fx to the sounds/loops no problem at all.  If you expect to get that authentic sound from a daw alone, i think you will be disappointed, despite how easy it is to edit stuff.

perfectprint


i have been making hip hop for almost 8 years and used Sonar the entire time (Sonar 4 - X2). I have been through all manner of hardware and software and can tell you the best workflow, and most practical workflow, is to use either Maschine or an MPC Rennaisance (or MPC Studio). Dedicated hardware/software cannot be beat when it comes to loading samples, chopping or sequencing. Forget Battery, forget Geist or stylus rmx... even forget traditional MPC's or ASR's (the limited memory and zero instant recall isnt worth it), if you are serious about it drop some money on one of the above. EDIT: Little clarification... Maschine and the Rennaisance are standalone, but I am talking about using them in conjunction with Sonar. My default template is set up with all maschines 16 outs routed to 16 tracks.

• An old akai sampler (s01,s950,s1000,s2000) is a good start but as you know, they lack memory (can be upgraded) and can be a bit tedious to work with when having to load from floppies, unless you have a drive of sorts.
• MPC's are excellent and workflow on these is perfect for hip hop production....the machine of choice for most. (Can be used without need to turn on your daw!!)
• Maschine looks excellent but I would prefer and in the box solution, which is why the akai renaissance isn't for me. (needs daw)
• Ableton is great and has a similar workflow as the MPC with regards to pattern/arrangements, it also has many more (all daw) effects and can be used to produce some great stuff...but still, it ain't no MPC ;)