Crossgrade to Samplitude?

I've been doing some research on editing/mastering software and it seems that samplitude is getting high marks in that area. I'm really happy with Sonar for tracking and mixing, but recently I've been approached with opportunities for some potential commercial success with my music and I need to be able to produce and more CD quality product. Samplitude seems to be the program that could help me out. Is this worth it? It appears to be pretty expensive and this crossgrade option may be worth checking out. Has anybody done that? It appears to get the crossgrade option, you need to jump through many hoops to get? I still don't know what the price would be. Are there other options out there that I'm missing? Thanks for your help.
Mitch

I don't know about Samplitude, but your music is good enough to go commercial. I wish you nothing but success Mitch. On the other hand, you may want to look at a mastering house. They will always kick the pants off anything you can do.

I used red roaster for a while a few years back along side of Pro Audio 6. RR was the 2 trk version of Samplitude. It was a great program then and has gotten even better with the 7.2 version. I have been a loyal cakewalk customer since the original dos version but I have to say that Sonar 3.1 is just not working for me. 2.2XL was much more stable for my needs on a 500mhz machine as opposed to 3.1.1 on my 3.0g P4. I typically run around 24 to 30 tracks, UAD-1, TC Powrecore, BFD drums and some native plugins and my system is sluggish, the automation has a mind of it's own (does what it wants, when it wants) and in general I'm just not productive. I spend too much time troubleshooting system glitches and having to redo my work. Sonar seems to be flawless when I have about 16 trks, only a few effects and 2 - 4 busses. I hate to walk away from such a great company like cakewalk but I'll be buying the Samplitude crossgrade this week. Maybe I will find a way to use both but my MIDI needs are very minor these days. If not, Sonar will going to sleep for a while as I look at the alternatives. IMHO Samplitude also has an excellent user interface and one of the highest rated audio engines out there.

Just don't do midi in samplitude yet.

Agreed.

I bought the Samplitude 7 crossgrade. Sam7 has a lot going for it. However, it is missing some essential things -- linked midi clips, for example --that I depend on. I generally do lots of midi/VSTi composition along with a few audio groove clips and a handful of recorded audio tracks. Sonar still has the advantage over Sam7 for that mix -- for me, at least.

Ok then,

For those who have purchased the cross-grade, do you think it was worth it? Looks like the new version has a lot of features. I don't want or intend to bash Cakewalk here because it has been a super product for me for many years. I kind of grew up with it since the beginning days of MIDI. Do you feel it is a replacement for Sonar or a worthwhile companion?

What is the crossgrade cost? I haven't seen anything posted or on the website.
Mitch

You could just use that money and get SoundForge for audio editing and "mastering" purposes. Integrates pretty smoothly into Sonar and has a wealth of great features for audio editing.

As much as anything is good to "master" in. Really, it's well covered ground that doing your own mastering is a stop-gap measure at best. Any acoustic problems that exist in your project studio will still be there when you "master" your mix. The whole idea of mastering is to turn the mix over to another set of ears, working in a professionally designed and treated acoustic space with a heap of really expensive audio equipment built for just that purpose. It's like if your a writer having a good editor.

But SoundForge is a top of the line audio editor, with a heap of dedicated tools that can be used for "mastering". It's also perfect for finely editing, mutating, mangling your audio files. One reason I have no vested interest in Sonar having more audio editing features than it presently has is because I use SF7 to do those chores for me.

80 bucks? Well, if you can find the full version for that I say snap it up. It actually lists for $400.

I agree. I use sound Forge 7 and with sonar 3....i use Izotope Ozone 2 for mastering and Waves plug ins....also Use T-Racks VSt plugs with DirectXer....I have fabulous results...yes it cost me for those but it was well worth it. Sonar (IMHO) sucks when it comes to track editing ...but sound forge shines there like no other. SO i have the best of both worlds. And i have used wavelab (which is excellant) but for me sound forge worked out better....so i use it.....If i didnt have SF then i would completely understand the audio issue. I love tracking in sonar but editing is seriously ****ed compared to SF....

IMHO

I don't have an example, but I just played the cheap guitars in Steinberg's hypersonic in samplitude all dry and they just immediately sounded clearer and fuller, more real than synthetic (compared to Sonar).

As far as jumping ship because Sonar isn't stable on your system, here's my prediction: Samplitude isn't going to be stable on your system either. I am running close to 40 tracks of audio in Sonar - reliably and completely glitch free.

krizrox
I would like to know the specs of your system that allows you to run that many tracks. I know my system is not that powerful, but I start having drop-outs when running around 10-12 audio tracks. I currently use: XP Home, 1.4 Ghz, 512MB on Dell's Inspiron 2650 (laptop).

Is there some special technique to get more track count on my system?

Krazylain

ORIGINAL: krazylain

krizrox
I would like to know the specs of your system that allows you to run that many tracks. I know my system is not that powerful, but I start having drop-outs when running around 10-12 audio tracks. I currently use: XP Home, 1.4 Ghz, 512MB on Dell's Inspiron 2650 (laptop).

Is there some special technique to get more track count on my system?

Krazylain

I don't know about a laptop. I would never use an off-the-shelf PC for serious audio work. Here is my system configuration:

Asus P4T533-C Motherboard
Intel 1.9GHz P4 processor (Type 478)
512MB RDRAM
2) 80GB Seagate Barracuda Drives
TDK VeloCD 24x CD burner
1) Creamware Pulsar 2 DSP soundcard
1) Creamware XTC soundcard
1) Creamware A16 Ultra AD/DA converter
Matrox Millenium G450 APG video card
Samsung Syncmaster 17" LCD display
Enermax 400w Whisper Power Supply
Win XP home version
Antec rackmount enclosure (black, because it looked cool)

I can record, reliably and without any dropouts, glitches or other strangeness, at least 20 tracks of audio at 16 bit, 44.1kHz. I could probably do more but I only have 20 channels of audio input to my soundcard so that's the max I can record at one time. I can edit at least 32 tracks of audio. I could probably do more but none of my clients has ever needed more than that so I can't say for sure where the brick wall is located.

I have done limited experiments at 24 bit and there is no reason to assume I wouldn't get similar results but I've never tried to actually work with that many tracks at 24 bit. I know I can do at least 16 because I have recorded 16 tracks of 24 bit audio.

I am using Sonar 3.1.1 - with full rendering of the audio waveforms during recording and editing. Nothing dumbed down. Nothing muted or turned off or anything like that.

I am using Pulsar's ASIO drivers.

Now, I will say something that has a bearing on all this: the Pulsar board is a DSP based product which means I do most of my mixing and mastering on Pulsar. I can load a significant number of Sonar effects however. But I prefer to use Pulsar effects, mixers, mastering, etc. since that frees up processor load.

Another comment: I have minimal OS tweaks. All this performance with very few tweaks. Some things are just plain necessary like turning off system sounds, turning off system restore, things like that. But I didn't mess with IRQ allocations, memory, graphics, etc. Everything else is stock and untouched. It seems stupid to me to have to "dumb-down" the OS like that. Pretty amazing that I'm getting this level of performance, I know. But it is possible! I'm living proof.

There may be better sounding programs out there but are they twice as good as Sonar? I doubt it. If you want my personal opinion, Sonar is one of the best "bang for the buck" recording apps on the market today. Noisemaker hit the nail on the head as far as I'm concerned. Compared to some of the crap coming out of local studios (my competition in the local area with a lot more equipment and resources than I have), I can say without hesitation that I am doing fantastic work with Sonar. It may have bugs but so do all the other apps.

Anyway, whatever you do, have fun!

I don't know. I have no experience with USB hard drives and even less with laptops. But I suspect that will not help you. I can not imagine that USB is fast enough to support serious audio work but I could be wrong about that.

I'm not even sure rotation speed is a good indicator of a drive's ultimate performance. There are other factors to consider as well. You really need to look at the drive's overall specs and compare. I chose the Barracudas because at the time, their specs were superior to many other brands and they ARE DEAD QUIET!!! No mechanical noise whatsoever! If it wasn't for a little bit of PS fan noise, I couldn't tell the PC was on. I'm not going to get into "my drive is better than yours" because everyone has their own personal fav.

Using DSP-based effects probably has a bearing on track count. But as I said before, I can load a healthy number of effects in Sonar. I've seen the CPU meter go as high as 50%.

Well, I don't know in reference to your hardware but I'm confident Sonar can handle more than 16 tracks of audio - if it is coupled up with the right choices in hardware. Any other comments out there?

ORIGINAL: krazylain

Thanks..Krisrox

I'm also using Sonar 3.1.1
For what I've seen from your specs, I realize that Pulsar DSP is doing wonders for you. also think I need to upgrade my harddrive...it's currently 5400rpm.
Do you think a faster external (probably firewire/USB 2.0) harddrive will improve my track count?

I would guess the slow (comparatively) hard drive is what's limiting you right now: have you checked (Device Manager) that it is definitely running in DMA mode?

Not familiar with the 1010 but my Lynx II and Layla24 get roughly the same performance in either app. Although the Lynx can get lower overall buffer sizes, down to .7ms.

It depends on your audio interface. Assuming you are using the same driver type (ASIO or WDM) Sonar and Samp will get their buffer/latency settings from the card. However, Samp has a few more latency and buffer settings for audio, disk, and plugins that can be tweaked inside the program.

The "norm" will depend on your processor and overall system performance, the faster your system the lower the latency you can sustain while tracking with fx.

Scott