Bakers, thank you for Sonar 8.5

 
First of, thank you bakers! A big thank you. Oh, and what took you so long?

As I've said before I moved to Live, but would 8.5 have come a year earlier, the things might have been different. I found Sonar 8.5 PE very much aligned to the way I like to work and, strangely, it feels good to do things in it. Below are tiny bit of specifics – the reasons, I am excited about it.

Step sequencer 2.0 – way easier to program drums than P5 pattern editor, mainly because velocity has dedicated pane and I do not have to hunt for the upper edge with the mouse or switch tools. For melodic patterns though, piano roll view is more appropriate, since you can only see velocity for a single line in step sequencer. By far my favorite addition.

Matrix view – I did not use P5 GM that much, but having spent time with Live, I am happy to see MV the way it is. Especially like the A/B triggers. Overall the MV feels more organic than GM, but there are some issues getting into a way of compositional experimentation. For example, if you drop a step sequencer clip into a MV cell, you can still edit the original clip, but if the cell in MV is playing, you won't hear your changes. To hear the changes, you need to retrigger the cell.

Session Drummer 3.0 – I liked SD 2.0 quite a bit (I know it is a matter of taste, since a lot of people preferred Velocity to SD, but I found Velocity's UI quite convoluted and unstructured). SD 3.0 is almost the same, except the mixer is more logical. The important news - out of the box content is more “P5 friendly”.

MIDI device hotswap – yes!!!

Arpeggiator – so that's where P5 arp went. The same good P5 arp and the potential to route midi from one arp to another (or a MIDI arp for that matter). To route between arps you need either a pass-through midi VSTi plugin, or a MIDI out VSTi synth.

Media browser – it feels very good. I think, it even comes a notch above P5 browser, IMO, of course.

I haven't gotten into typical Sonar goodies yet. Started checking the audiosnap 2.0, but got some inexplicable crashes, so I saved audiosnap for later.

Now the most interesting part – would I recommend P5 users getting 8.5 or not? It depends on how much it costs you:

1. If you own Sonar 8 PE, $99 is a no brainer. 8.5, IMO, warrants full version increment more than 8.0 had.
   
2. If you own Sonar 7 PE/8 Studio, $179/$199 is a really good deal.
   
3. If you own Sonar 7 Studio or Sonar 6, $229 is a good deal.
   
4. If you own Sonar 1-5, $249 is a fair deal.
   
5. If you own just P5 v2.0, then $349 is a bit much. For P5 v2.5 owners, who never paid $250 for v 2.0, $349 is a fair deal.
   

Here is my reasoning. For P5 user there are at least two good alternatives for pattern based DAWs – FL Studio and Live. FL Studio Producer clocks in at $199 and Live 8 upgrade from Live Lite, which comes bundled with various MIDI controllers and audio interfaces (everyone has at least one copy of it), costs $329 to download. Sonar 8.5 sits somewhere in the middle of the two, hence I would value it $249 as an upgrade.

Now, if bakers were listening, here are my 0.02 in your local currency – it would be fair to create an upgrade price option for P5 v2.0 (not 2.5) owners for $249. That would be at least more fair than $349. Otherwise at $329 Live is a better way to go.