Best DAW

 This article did not put Sonar at the top of the list, but Sonar beat out Cubase and ProTools. Strangely, the number of stars given each DAW does not seem to match its relative position in the ranking. Example" Logic got 5 stars but was #3. FL was at #1 but only had four stars. http://www.musicradar.com...-world-today-238905/11

Thats all well and good but you have to ask yourself does it have a double click crash feature? If not it can't qualify as a proper DAW. Therefor all those so called DAWs are not true DAWs. I didn't opt for this optional feature in my version of X1. I feel so left out.

It's just a simple popularity contest based on user votes; popular isn't necessarily better. If you don't believe me then just turn on your local radio station.

Carey

That is pretty well it...not very important

I don't care what the poll says, Sonar X1 Studio is working fine for me.

I think most of the voters are Dance / techno / DJ / Gamers / Producers who are probably more inclined to use FL and Ableton coz there mates do!

In my attic, I have an 8-track Alesis hardware sequencer. I may vote for it in the next pole.

Glyn Barnes


The fact FL and Ableton came 1 and 2 say more about the demographic of the people voting than the DAWs.

Totally agree. I use Sonar X1 because I came from the old midi school in the early years of PCs. They have the best and most economical environment for midi. I use Protools because it's so straight forward and just has great audio tools. The winners in this shootout were software companies that focused on laptop music creation with loops and samples. Not that this is not a viable form of sound creation just not overwhelmingly the best DAWs for production.
 
Hey konradh, you've got kind of a CJ thing going there with the glasses. Awesome.

In my attic, I have an 8-track Alesis hardware sequencer. I may vote for it in the next pole.

 
... even more worrying, in mine I have an 8 track tape machine!
Rgds,
Toby

I noticed I wrote "pole" instead of "poll." A Freudian slip: there are too many nightclubs in the Dallas-Fort Worth area. Plus, I think "Alesis" is one of the dancers.

They're all good , they're all bad. At some point in the chain of what you want to do in the sequence of what you think should happen next. It's the main arguement of how it should work in several versions. It is an interpretation of how "music" and recording and therefore composition should work in the computer-digital realm. We have all had to adapt to systems that still fall short of the real thing-music which is a language that even the best are still trying to come to a consensus about. Whatever works for you is probably right on par with all the other systems-knowledge available. In one or several ways or another.

I dont know why, but the reggeaton and hipop musicians in Cuba(and beyond) love FL studio

The fact FL and Ableton came 1 and 2 say more about the demographic of the people voting than the DAWs.

 
+1
 
Computer Music is a very rudimentary magazine.
Not a lot of substance for the more "seasoned" reader...

carlosagm79


I dont know why, but the reggeaton and hipop musicians in Cuba(and beyond) love FL studio

Oh well, Im answering myself, yes I know why they love FL studio, the program(besides being a VST,DX,BUZZ,  REWIRE and more...host) have native sf2 support, midi out and panel edit, great sample browser,nice dark color,easy piano roll, arpeggiator, step sequencer, great own plugins, mixer , vocoder, and much much more, but the most important, its a beat machine!!, so you can save an FLP file just as a drum/percussion base pattern,share it and start new song from it, looks like its a nice concept for modern dance, hip hop, reggaeton, techno and other electronic music, an FLP can be a song, but can be just a dance loop, or multi-pattern percussion thing,or a guitar/synth groove, looks like its easy for them once you know it(I never tried FL studio deeply)but in Cuba they admire me because I knew how to work with Sonar and do same things they do with their pre made FL beats and patterns, ¨a much difficult and pro audio software¨  they obviously consider Sonar, because you have templates in Sonar,and  you can import amazing samples and loops, but you don't have a library of cwp files with pre-made/reusable arranged drum/synth/percussion beats , synth beats etc, the reusable concept! you can even find FLP files with reusable, reassignable sweep filters, effects buses and configurations, loaded plugins,arpeggios types  etc etc...TAKE NOTE CAKEWALK,sorry about my English.

Sonar does have lots of content that is imho underrated.  I  think part of the issue is how the content is presented and publicscized. Cakewalk just put a post on it's blog that should have been posted when Beatscape was introduced:   http://blog.cakewalk.com/create-unique-percussion-beats-with-the-beatscape-factory-content-in-sonar-x1-part-1/  I discovered this on my own, but after two years of ignoring Beatscape because it was very intuitive to me.

I don't think anyone questions the power of Sonar and i think the regular users know that if you dig deep enough it can pretty much do most of what most DAWs do and some things many cannot.  I think when you are talking about programs like FL or ableton, it becomes a matter of more how easily are these things implemented.  Honestly, no amount of digging deeper will make Sonar as simple when it comes to beat programming as FL, but that is not a knock on Sonar because FL basically started out as a glorified sample based drum machine. It SHOULD be better at beat programming.

Fl also does a better job at providing users and potential users with relevant examples of product in action. Every version seems to feature sample songs that showcase FL generated songs that resonate with the users.  i recall one versions default sample song was a full instrumental of the #1 on the billboard hot 100 at the time (Aaliyah's "Try Again"). Not saying Sonar should include a bunch of Justin Bieber or Rihanna songs.  Just stating the obvious that a young user who listens to pop and various dance music is going to connect more with the Deadmau5 sample and interviews than Javier Colon (who is very talented but simply not "the man" in his genre). Fl simply appeals to a different crowd than Sonar and that crowd happens to be a bigger chunk of the computer music mag demographic.