johndavidross
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Considering SONAR
I have been a Pro Tools user for 5 years now and longer if you count my time in other studios. I've never used SONAR but it seems like it is much more user friendly than what I'm used to with Pro Tools. I record acoustic music all the way up to some hard rock and I'm just an amateur when it comes to recording. I use a Focusrite 18i20 if that matters to anyone.
My question is this:
Is SONAR a good choice for someone that just dabbles in a home studio and wants to make solid demos?
Will I lose everything that I've already recorded in Pro Tools or can that somehow convert over to Sonar?
Is the SONAR software as easy to use as it looks?
I appreciate any feedback from anyone who has experience with either SONAR, Pro Tools or both.
Thanks everyone!
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John
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Re: Considering SONAR
2016/10/25 20:28:29
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I wouldn't answer with a very firm get it, you'll like it. Because you are use to PT and use it for recording I'm not sure. I think it would work just fine but its also a very deep and capable DAW that can do a lot more than just recording. First off its a full fledged MIDI sequencer plus it can handle audio looping too. There is very little it can't do well. Its audio recording is simple and very easy to use and understand. Much of Sonar is easy but I believe I am so use to it and know it well I'm not sure I'm the best person to comment on it. Clearly here on this forum you wont be on your own. Or have to face a problem by yourself. We will be with you all the way. I would think getting the demo and running it for awhile will speak more than anything I could say. If you have questions please ask.
post edited by John - 2016/10/28 11:35:12
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John
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Re: Considering SONAR
2016/10/25 20:44:43
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I forgot to discuss project compatibility. Sonar can import OMF if you can export that format. If not one can bounce the tracks in PT and import them into Sonar. Also stems can be imported.
Welcome to the forum.
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telecharge
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Re: Considering SONAR
2016/10/25 20:55:17
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johndavidross
Is SONAR a good choice for someone that just dabbles in a home studio and wants to make solid demos?
I have a few issues with Cakewalk, the company, but I have no reservations recommending Sonar to a Pro Tools refugee who "just dabbles in a home studio." johndavidross
Will I lose everything that I've already recorded in Pro Tools or can that somehow convert over to Sonar?
No, you shouldn't lose anything except what is unique to Pro Tools. There is no conversion or migration tool for your PT projects, but it shouldn't be too much of a hassle to export your tracks/stems, then bring them into Sonar. johndavidross
Is the SONAR software as easy to use as it looks?
You are wise to do your homework, but nothing beats getting your hands dirty. Try the demo. http://www.cakewalk.com/Products/SONAR/Try-SONAR#start
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Brian Walton
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Re: Considering SONAR
2016/10/25 21:14:00
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I think it is much more user friendly than ProTools, but if you are familiar with ProTools you will have a learning curve to make the switch. Grab the demo, and check out these videos (virtually all of it applies to the current version of Sonar) https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLKRYWdEpbc5PgUgvrNuSvVyfv5qkll0qj You might get even more specific direction if you post some areas you find cumbersome with ProTools since you have used it for a while.
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Anderton
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Re: Considering SONAR
2016/10/25 21:16:52
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☄ Helpfulby tlw 2016/10/26 14:40:37
telecharge
You are wise to do your homework, but nothing beats getting your hands dirty. Try the demo.
http://www.cakewalk.com/Products/SONAR/Try-SONAR#start
Agreed. "Ease of use" is subjective, and you need to find out if you "click" with the program. Having used Pro Tools and SONAR extensively, they have different workflows. Back when people were looking for an alternative to 2" 24-track, I always recommended Pro Tools because it was based on that paradigm. But for me the true value of a computer is non-linear recording and editing, so I prefer SONAR's approach.
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Brian Walton
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Re: Considering SONAR
2016/10/25 21:43:38
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Anderton
telecharge
You are wise to do your homework, but nothing beats getting your hands dirty. Try the demo.
http://www.cakewalk.com/Products/SONAR/Try-SONAR#start
Agreed. "Ease of use" is subjective, and you need to find out if you "click" with the program.
Having used Pro Tools and SONAR extensively, they have different workflows. Back when people were looking for an alternative to 2" 24-track, I always recommended Pro Tools because it was based on that paradigm. But for me the true value of a computer is non-linear recording and editing, so I prefer SONAR's approach.
For what it is worth, I love using the modern sonar as a 2" 24 track type of recorder. Setting up a dual monitor setup with one side as a track view, and using the other monitor for console view with the pro-channel. It just makes sense to me as a "tape + analog" style system.
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Anderton
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Re: Considering SONAR
2016/10/25 21:56:34
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Brian Walton
For what it is worth, I love using the modern sonar as a 2" 24 track type of recorder.
Setting up a dual monitor setup with one side as a track view, and using the other monitor for console view with the pro-channel. It just makes sense to me as a "tape + analog" style system.
Cool, sometimes I think there are as many ways to use SONAR as there are people who use it. 
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Sanderxpander
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Re: Considering SONAR
2016/10/25 22:52:23
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Do yourself a favor and watch a Sonar comping tutorial right away. Coming from the ProTools "playlist" paradigm you'll go nuts trying to understand how Sonar does it.
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Anderton
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Re: Considering SONAR
2016/10/26 08:30:05
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Sanderxpander
Do yourself a favor and watch a Sonar comping tutorial right away. Coming from the ProTools "playlist" paradigm you'll go nuts trying to understand how Sonar does it.
Good point. When it was introduced I couldn't make sense of it...until I read the documentation
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fireberd
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Re: Considering SONAR
2016/10/26 08:41:00
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I purchased PT9MP (I had an M-Audio interface at the time) as I wanted to see what most of my counterparts in Nashville used. It didn't seem to be as "Windows friendly" as Sonar. I even bought a 3rd party book on PT's and tried to understand it. Eventually I gave up and stayed exclusively Sonar. I use Sonar mainly as an "analog recorder" but a da**ed good "analog recorder".
"GCSG Productions" Franklin D-10 Pedal Steel Guitar (primary instrument). Nashville Telecaster, Bass, etc. ASUS ROG Maximus VIII Hero M/B, i7 6700K CPU, 16GB Ram, SSD and conventional hard drives, Win 10 Pro and Win 10 Pro Insider Pre-Release Sonar Platinum/CbB. MOTU 896MK3 Hybrid, Tranzport, X-Touch, JBL LSR308 Monitors, Ozone 5, Studio One 4.1 ISRC Registered Member of Nashville based R.O.P.E. Assn.
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musicjohnnie
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Re: Considering SONAR
2016/10/26 09:16:29
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☄ Helpfulby telecharge 2016/10/26 11:24:46
Good day all,
Just my 3 cents. I started with PT's long ago, also having m-audio gear (aarrrggghhhh). Really disliked the 'priority' way it was designed. I migrated away happily never looking back. Sonar has been there for all my needs, and in a way a player, not a techy, could understand. I've done sessions with PT tracks being brought to me on thumb drives. You just have to make sure Sonar starts transferring at the beginning. Tracks ended up loading at around 50-60 plus measures. Threw me for a second, until I was able to move all tracks to beginning of measures. Worked just fine. Like was stated, little specialtis that are unique to PT will not come across. Better to have pure tracks with no added flavors. Many times I've thought back and wondered why PT did "whatever" in such an odd way. As stated. Try it......you'll like it!😎
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SiberianKhatru59
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Re: Considering SONAR
2016/10/26 09:44:55
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I think it's good to remember that just because you start using SONAR going forward, your PT will not go away. I started in Propellerhead Reason and I have slowly but surely been moving towards SONAR. I still use Reason sometimes, but SONAR has a lot to offer IMHO for the home studio guys (like me) and with Lifetime updates for Platinum, it seems to me to be an excellent deal as well.
SONAR Platinum, Win7 Home Premium 64bit, Sweetwater Creation Station CS250v21 (Ivy Bridge Core i5 3.4Ghz CPU, 12GB DDR3/1600Mhz RAM, 500GB/1TB Seagate Barracuda system/audio drives, SATA 6.0, USB 3.0), M-Audio Fast Track Pro USB, 2x KRK Rokit 5's, Yamaha MO8
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JohnEgan
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Re: Considering SONAR
2016/10/26 09:55:21
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Funny, I was thinking of going the other way, so aside from the, costs; apparent steep learning curve and uncreative work flow mentioned;, the feeling of being assimilated by PT-Borgs (LOL); or perhaps what may be the clincher, when potential clients say "Ohhh, you don't use Pro-Tools?". (Its a somewhat expensive and time intensive proposition, but I may bite the bullet, just so I can honestly say to clients, "Yes, I have Pro-Tools", (but don't necessarily use it, unless forced into submission).
What else would anyone say to discourage me from, crossing over to the dark side and submitting to PT assimilation?
John Egan Sonar Platinum (2017-10),RME-UFX, PC-CPU - i7-5820, 3.3 GHz, 6 core, ASUS X99-AII, 16GB ram, GTX 960, 500 GB SSD, 2TB HDD x 2, Win7 Pro x64, O8N2 Advanced, Melodyne Studio,.... (2 cats :(, in the yard).
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telecharge
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Re: Considering SONAR
2016/10/26 11:32:01
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JohnEgan
What else would anyone say to discourage me from, crossing over to the dark side and submitting to PT assimilation?
I tried Pro Tools First (again) just a couple of months ago. It was the buggiest, crashiest DAW I have ever attempted to use. Just getting it installed was a huge PITA. The same system runs Sonar, Live, FL Studio, Samplitude, Tracktion, ACID, and others with no problems. Also, AVID support is notoriously awful. I used PT8 back in the day, and it worked fine for me.
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jude77
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Re: Considering SONAR
2016/10/26 12:26:27
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Hi JDR and welcome to the forum,
Like you, I dabble in music and record for my own entertainment. If I had to guess I'd say I use about 10-15% of SONAR's capacities. Because I don't get into SONAR as deep as others I find it's VERY easy to use. For example, if you want to record audio all you need to do is click two buttons and you're off and running. I'd say after I got my first version of SONAR, nearly 20 years ago, it probably took me about 30 minutes to figure out the basics of what I wanted to do. Like the others I'd encourage you to download the demo and work with it a few hours.
If you get stuck come back to this forum. These guys are all very helpful and friendly.
Best of luck with your music.
You haven't lived until you've taken the Rorschach. Windows 10 Home Edition 64-bit /6th Generation Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-6700 Processor (8M Cache, up to 4.0 GHz)/16GB (1x16GB) DDR4 2133MHz SDRAM Memory/ NVIDIA(R) GeForce(R) GT 730 with 2GB DDR3 Graphics Memory/ Dell KB216 Wired Multi-Media Keyboard English Black/ 802.11ac + Bluetooth 4.0/Integrated 7.1 with WAVE MAXXAudio Pro/Wireless 3165 driver
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Anderton
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Re: Considering SONAR
2016/10/26 12:29:13
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SiberianKhatru59
I started in Propellerhead Reason and I have slowly but surely been moving towards SONAR. I still use Reason sometimes, but SONAR has a lot to offer IMHO for the home studio guys (like me) and with Lifetime updates for Platinum, it seems to me to be an excellent deal as well.
And...you can rewire Reason into SONAR. It's a great way to get an additional "instrument rack."
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Sanderxpander
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Re: Considering SONAR
2016/10/26 12:32:48
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Oh and you probably know this, coming from ProTools, but you'll really make your life easier if you learn a few common shortcut keys for often-used operations like navigation, splitting clips etc.
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Anderton
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Re: Considering SONAR
2016/10/26 12:33:06
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JohnEgan
What else would anyone say to discourage me from, crossing over to the dark side and submitting to PT assimilation?
You can do what a lot of pros do. They track with Pro Tools so they can say to clients "Yes, I have a Pro Tools studio" but then they take the raw files out and edit them in SONAR. This is what I've always done with the classical projects I've engineered and/or produced, because it was too frustrating/time-consuming to use Pro Tools from start to finish.
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abacab
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Re: Considering SONAR
2016/10/26 12:50:00
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Time to come up with a Pro Tools skin for Sonar to fool those clients, LOL.
DAW: CbB; Sonar Platinum, and others ...
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Grave Protocol
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Re: Considering SONAR
2016/10/26 12:52:45
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I started with Reason and FL...then moved to Sonar for workflow reasons, and I loooove it. I thought once I should try Pro Tools to be more "industry standard," and it had a couple of features I wanted (like adding the same plugin to multiple tracks at once,) but found the workflow to be confusing, probably because I was so used to Sonar. Sonar has its learning curve for sure, but made more sense to me than PT's learning curve. And Sonar added the feature for adding a plugin to multiple tracks :) Sonar is also pretty awesome in that it seems to have multiple ways to get the same goal usually.
Pro Tools seemed to crash about as often as Sonar. So...even game there I suppose.
The community here is extremely helpful, that is a huge plus. Everyone is happy to share their experience to get problems worked out.
I say, definitely try a demo of Sonar.
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JohnEgan
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Re: Considering SONAR
2016/10/26 14:25:56
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Why do I have the feeling when in a crowd, assimilated people will point at me and scream when they recognize I'm not a Pro-tools user, (i.e. Invasion of the Body Snatchers).
LOL
John Egan Sonar Platinum (2017-10),RME-UFX, PC-CPU - i7-5820, 3.3 GHz, 6 core, ASUS X99-AII, 16GB ram, GTX 960, 500 GB SSD, 2TB HDD x 2, Win7 Pro x64, O8N2 Advanced, Melodyne Studio,.... (2 cats :(, in the yard).
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JohnEgan
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Re: Considering SONAR
2016/10/26 14:27:06
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abacab
Time to come up with a Pro Tools skin for Sonar to fool those clients, LOL.
Great idea LOL
John Egan Sonar Platinum (2017-10),RME-UFX, PC-CPU - i7-5820, 3.3 GHz, 6 core, ASUS X99-AII, 16GB ram, GTX 960, 500 GB SSD, 2TB HDD x 2, Win7 Pro x64, O8N2 Advanced, Melodyne Studio,.... (2 cats :(, in the yard).
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SiberianKhatru59
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Re: Considering SONAR
2016/10/26 14:28:01
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Anderton
SiberianKhatru59
I started in Propellerhead Reason and I have slowly but surely been moving towards SONAR. I still use Reason sometimes, but SONAR has a lot to offer IMHO for the home studio guys (like me) and with Lifetime updates for Platinum, it seems to me to be an excellent deal as well.
And...you can rewire Reason into SONAR. It's a great way to get an additional "instrument rack."
This is a great point!
SONAR Platinum, Win7 Home Premium 64bit, Sweetwater Creation Station CS250v21 (Ivy Bridge Core i5 3.4Ghz CPU, 12GB DDR3/1600Mhz RAM, 500GB/1TB Seagate Barracuda system/audio drives, SATA 6.0, USB 3.0), M-Audio Fast Track Pro USB, 2x KRK Rokit 5's, Yamaha MO8
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bigfrog
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Re: Considering SONAR
2016/10/26 17:03:36
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I'm at the tail end of a long breakup with Sonar and in the process to switching to Cubase (which so far I am liking a lot). I would recommend making a list of things that drive you nuts in Pro Tools and see if doing the same in Sonar is better to your liking. If so, then the two of you are a match.
These days you can download 30 day trials of all major DAWs and there are wonderful tutorials on Youtube for about everything, so you have a lot of options depending on the amount of time you want to invest.
Cakewalk 3.0, i386 33mHz 2MB RAM, two 20MB IDE hard drives, Win 3.11 over DOS 6.22, Pro Audio Studio 16 16-bit Soundblaster compatible sound card, MPU-401 ISA MIDI Card, Digitech GSP21, Hiren Roy sitar, cow in a can
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The Grim 
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Re: Considering SONAR
2016/10/26 17:33:41
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not sure what the op would expect posting a question like that on the very forum for the product he is thinking of moving to, not really going to get a very objective answer here, you might say that the sample group could be just a wee bit biased, the jury pool a little tainted. but the best advice that has been given here is to get yourself the demo and really give it a work out, make sure it suits you and what you want to do, also do yourself a great favor and also do the same with some competing products, give at least a couple a good and even try out. if it turns out sonar is what suits you that is all well and good, it is capable of getting the job done, although it is not my first or second choice, and would come in about forth on my recommendation list.
most important thing, don't worry about others opinions (remember what clint eastwood said about opinions) the only opinion that matters is your own, so give at least a couple of products a good honest demo and pick the one (or 2, or 3) that works best for you, works best on your hardware, the one which you you feel more comfortable with, don't just demo one product, try at least a couple.
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John
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Re: Considering SONAR
2016/10/26 19:01:54
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The Grim
not sure what the op would expect posting a question like that on the very forum for the product he is thinking of moving to, not really going to get a very objective answer here, you might say that the sample group could be just a wee bit biased, the jury pool a little tainted. but the best advice that has been given here is to get yourself the demo and really give it a work out, make sure it suits you and what you want to do, also do yourself a great favor and also do the same with some competing products, give at least a couple a good and even try out. if it turns out sonar is what suits you that is all well and good, it is capable of getting the job done, although it is not my first or second choice, and would come in about forth on my recommendation list.
most important thing, don't worry about others opinions (remember what clint eastwood said about opinions) the only opinion that matters is your own, so give at least a couple of products a good honest demo and pick the one (or 2, or 3) that works best for you, works best on your hardware, the one which you you feel more comfortable with, don't just demo one product, try at least a couple.
I think I gave a very unbiased response to the OP's questions. I also see the value in asking on the forum of the product one is inquiring about. The very fact you have a different view and that you feel free to post it speaks volumes. As to all opinions being equal or valid lets test that notion. Ask ten people randomly on the street what their opinion is of Sonar and see if their answers are as useful as ours. 
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The Grim
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Re: Considering SONAR
2016/10/26 19:11:43
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regardless of that waffle, my advice was to try out several and choose the on that you feel is the best for you, regardless of others opinions, and if you are trying to suggest that people here, or on any other products own forum would give unbiased opinions/answers, all i can say is 'waffle' maybe try a neutral forum like kvr or gearsluts. note i didn't mention or suggest another competing product, but just suggested to try at least a couple of products, of the op's choice waffle on
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johndavidross
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Re: Considering SONAR
2016/10/26 19:20:07
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I appreciate all the feedback very much! You have been more than helpful and I will definitely take advantage of the free trial. My choice is either upgrading my Pro Tools 9 or looking for a new DAW. Not sure if it is just my version but PT9 seems buggy as hell. It is slow and difficult to work with and I always intended on using it solely for tracking and then sending those tracks to a studio for mix/master. That has never happened and I've learned in the process that PT isn't as "industry standard" as I once thought. I went into a studio and they referred to it as Slow Tools. It seems that Cubase is really catching on in the industry and that they don't mind if you bring your PT project files because they will just export stuff into their DAW.
Thanks again everyone!
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John
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Re: Considering SONAR
2016/10/26 19:23:42
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