i was a longtime logic user on pc. when emagic went mac only, i stayed with 5.5 for the longest time. ummed and ahhed bout whether to go mac, but money constraints and a grudge against emagic for dropping loyal users like a ton of bricks meant that i stayed pc..
cubase seemed arcane to me and too expensive and clunky.
m powered pro tools set false restrictions in its software like finite track numbers and propietary plugs etc.
ableton was an option and i did end up getting it later, but its audio engine is nowhere near as good as cake's, and as a fully featured daw its now quite there yet.
these forums, cakewalks heavy marketing (in britain they were way behind steinberg in sales & profile- although thats changing) led me to sonar 5 when i upgraded my pc. it was almost half the price of cubase too, but was getting great reviews, and seemed at least its equal on most if not all fronts.
come january it will be 2 years since i started working with sonar, and i'm pretty happy with it although v6 doesn't seem as stable as 5 was, and audio artefacts crop up too often for my liking.
and i hate the midi implementation.
logic was the program i learned extensively so i think its taken me this long just to get out of thinking like a logic user; things like side-chaining for instance were there for a long time, and sonar still doesnt have it 5 years after the last version of logic came out on pc... this is frustrating.
i'd like to see a slick sampler in the next version, a 4*4 virtual drum machine (cyclone is so NEARLY there but not!), and improved midi features in general and better input quantise features: the way its implemented at the moment is clumsy and not what mpc lovers were looking for. actually skip the sampler; dimension pro is wicked! am now with cakewalk for the long haul: i have P5, dim pro and thinking of picking up rapture while the offer is on. and yes i know p5 has 2 drum samplers but they're both a bit long in the tooth, and uninspiring. session drummer 2 is okay but again is a little bit boring- an update of this could be what i'm looking for maybe.
groove clips need overhauling too; ableton live has a much smoother timestretching than even the radius algorhythms IMO. but there is no better daw forum than this one. every problem i've had, someone here has already had it, and got helpful answers from al, cj, modbod, badbib, b-rock, ognis etc, and its kept me from tearing out my hair a hundred times over! i think actually that this resource is cake's (and sonar's and p5's) biggest asset; steinberg have a long way to go to get the kind of loyalty that is here.
i expect cake to really come up with the goods at the end of this year and give us a STABLE sonar, overhauled midi implementation, cleverer input quantise, better act functionality and true side-chaining. and oh yeah a stable non glitchy sonar.
i still wonder sometimes if i made the right choice when things go wrong, but cake do try to help, and do seem to care, and that keeps me with em. i hope my loyalty will be rewarded in the near future with something that truly rivals logic as a complete working enviroment. forget the drum machine, i think i'm gonna get battery3; ogins' championing of it has finally brainwashed me!

I don't know if I can say I "switched" since there was an 8 year gap in music making between one system and the next. I did all my stuff on a Fostex 4-track cassette machine with an Alesis sequencer and later a Mac SE running Dr. T's Beyond. I ended up selling off all my gear one sad day and left the music world for a while.
Eight years later I had a PC and I found CW Home Studio and later upgraded to Sonar 2. I didn't own any of the other packages but I tried demos of (Emagic) Logic, Cubase, Protools Free... feh, didn't like any of them. The Sonar/Home Studio approach to things worked intuitively for me. I poked around in Logic for half an hour and couldn't figure out even where to begin. Cubase never ran without crashing. Pro Tools free was cripple-ware (and I wasn't about to spring for the real thing).
Anyway, there's some things that I wish Sonar did differently but they're minor. I've found it rock solid stable, intuitive, relatively inexpensive, and it just works for what I do.

--JD

For ages I was running a Behringer mixer into a tape deck then a CDR.

Eventually decided the future would be PC based, so bought Sonar XL (I think?) with an early Edirol USB hub... I hated it. Loads of clicks, drop-out etc despite altering the settings. I just wasn't happy so I sold it.

For the last few years I've used a staandalone Boss BR1180 and it's been fine.

Trouble is I wanted a bit more, so I tried the demo of Sonar 6... all worked spot on even with my basic sound card!

I now use Sonar 6 Studio with an Edirol FA-66... perfect from the word go.

I used an AtariST and Cubase when living in Germany and for 10 years before that had good experience with 2, 1, 1/2 and 1/4" tape formats and hardware MIDI sequencers. For my first proper DAW I bought Logic PC 2.6 when it was released with a Pentium120, 32RAM, Win95 and an Audiomedia III card with DAE Windows. It worked quite well. The AMIII was the first mistake I'd made in proprietary technology and got burned in between Emagic and Digi blaming each other. I had a lot of problems, errors with Logic through 4.8 as I upgraded it, computers and better interface but it was never Emagic's fault was it? Ring a bell? If you have ASIO errors then Steinberg must not be cooperating with Emagic with the SDK! Nevermind! Anyway it was a time of classic "all computer stuff - no music". I started a business, music went on the backburner, Apple bought Emagic and I missed the upgrade time limit. My G4 was too long in the tooth already for Logic 7 not mention new interfaces, etc. Here comes my mentor "Jeff" who's been into synths and audio since about 1970 and has used Cakewalk since day one. I extensively tested Sonar 3 and it worked well and now though still at v.5, I will be upgrading to 7 in October unless Cakewalk is going to do as Apple Computer does and not upgrade Sonar for 3 years while the loyal users frantically rationalize and rumourize about the next version!

In all honesty, I never took Cakewalk serious as a pro app though I knew all along they were good to their users but Sonar??? Sonar has been perfect for me and now I actually create music again! I love it!

Mark

I began playing back in the 70's (band class) and switched to guitar around 1980. In the early 90's I started working with the Voyetra MIDI sequencer for DOS. Later came Windows95 and my first copy of Cakewalk (with versions for 3.1 AND 95!!). Due to a really poor machine I ended up using Voyetra for most of my core work drawing MIDI notes. But, I did gain some experience with Cakewalk, so this is what I was looking for again recently. About a month ago I was playing with a demo of Sonar and also with Cubase LE. It was nearly a coin flip except for the included instruments and other features which finally pushed me to Sonar. Very glad I did so far. I am using it with my new Alesis IO/26 and M-Audio Axiom 61 with no problems other than some silly crashes with certain 3rd party freeware VST instruments. Load order matters here, and I can almost always get the group of VSTs together that I want. Once I am sure of what I am doing it will be time for some quality addons.

ORIGINAL: budweiser

But i had to go back to cubase (4) because of stability prolems and multiple crashes. I don't know for v vocal, but, for example, i still have very strange things with vst efx automation or the mute tool when enabling the loop mode. And crashes for this or that.

Hey budweiser!

How's Cubase 4 working? I know many people have had sooooo many problems and all. I'm building a new daw soon using the Intel Desktop Board D975XBX2 and the Core 2 Quad Q6600 processor. Currently running SX 3.1 (last version). I crossgraded to Samplitude Pro 9, but use it for mastering right now. Looking into Sonar 6 as a stable alternative.

Any insight would be great!

SEA

Hey space_cowboy!

I see you have a Quad core!

How is Sonar 6 running on it? Is it using all 4 cores?

SEA

sonar is really great...i switched from nuendo and cubase to Sonar 4 and now 6 producer editons...the sound quality is better I can use all my synths including NI b4 organ... and its not diffiecult one u get used to it...
thanks Cakewalk

hello, i am currently evaluating sonar 6, and i am seriously considering the switch from cubase 4 to it. i have been using the latter, along with tracktion, for quite some time, but i had actually started in the DOS days with cakewalk for DOS, which i adored. when sonar came out, i was first quite disappointed, i must say... thus switched to cubase and logic back then, later also to tracktion.
best regards and congratulations for your development efforts and success,
marco (switzerland)
ps i would still use cakepro for DOS for MIDI recording, if i could with the current equipment, because i LOVED the measures view and the overall UI speed!

Im thinking to switch to sonar after seeing the incredible support they have for all your users, specially the users of Cakewalk Music Creator. If you care about patch the bugs of your more cheap product and assist their users, how incredible will be to be an user of the more expensive one.

Had Sonoma Riffworks i really love that program even now

I just bought it and am loving it, too (I have Sonar 6.2 also). Riffworks is a different way of thinking about composing, and can't compete overall with Sonar. But for throwing ideas together, it's incredible. And it rewires, presumably into Sonar, so.. . . .

I switched ....... from Texture to Cakewalk 4.0 for DOS. Upgrades have gotten me to S6p.

As I've been a user of Acid Pro since version 2.0 (way back in the days of Sonic Foundry) I've been growing with the program in the pursuit if a Recording Arts degree. While Acid pro slowly exposed me to some of the industry's music production techniques, Acid allowed me to focus solely on music production.

In 2005 I graduated with my first AA in Humanities (Graphic Arts major), I immediately transfered to Los Medanos College in Pittsburg, CA to pursue a Recording Arts AA.

I learned all the essentials, from the fundamentals of sound and music, basic music theory, music business and the very wide range of jobs related to the industry (and what they're all about, and how they're all connected, especially in CA & NY) well amongst all that I also was growing rapidly beyond Acid's functionality, so I expanded to Sonar (one of my instructors at the school is a user of Sonar). The bulk of the Recording Arts classes revolved around the history and relevance to a lot of the software available now, understanding the fundamentals of pre-production, production, and post-produciton, and getting hands on experience with analog and digital gear to put the fundamentals to practice. I thank Rick Shiner for everyone he's taught me as I've come a long way from that highschool kid using Acid... Though I can't attribute Sonar to my first commercial release, the constraints I faced in Acid Pro 6 made me seek out Sonar to augment my production pipeline. While I'm using 5 Producer Edition, I'm currently looking to upgrade to 6 after I've built my new computer system.

What were my constraints? Well I'm still getting used to working in Sonar, as I work mostly with midi and virtual instruments and effects I was able to produce this album entirely with Acid Pro 6: Maestro's Project
To put this as vividly as possible, please listen to the 2nd track on the album - March of St. Michaels.

This orchestral piece Nick composed here at my house consisted of 4 midi performances that he arranged and edited. These performances were played like a pianist would, controlling several instruments at once. I added 8 midi tracks for the various percussion instruments. The end of the arrangement phase all the midi data controlled over 15 instrument sections and over 70 simultaneous audio tracks! The thing that Acid lacked was a virtual instrument freezing function or "bouncing to audio". I manually rendered each individual track and did my post-production from there. However, after I was done with the mix and was about to hop on to the next track in the album to prepare the master, he decided to change the arrangement. I luckily kept the midi tracks in a folder track and simply reconnected the VST's to the buses they needed to be in, and re-arranged; mixed down again, and mastered. 2 days later he had me come back to the arrangement and he performed a variation of the Cellos as he had a fight with an old band mate of his claiming copyright infringement (which held no truth). So, he performed the new part, dropped the vst's back in place and deleted the old audio replaced by the new midi data, re-rendered the Cellos' new tracks, and re-mixed the song, bounced my final stereo track, brought back up my album sequence project in my other acid project and worked on making the final master copy to be ready for pressing.

Thank you for putting up with me if you read through all of that babble, but I must say having the freeze function would have saved me a precious hour. While Acid remains a DAW that I use a lot, I'm quickly coming to grips with Sonar's more advanced functions for audio routing. I won't be giving up Acid anytime soon but Sonar is already a great asset in my home studio that has allowed me to augment my production pipeline. Anything that lets me save time working on audio to focus on the music is worth it!

Started with Porta-Studios and went to 16 track analog. This was synced with Atari/Cubase for MIDI. Worked good but was looking for non destructive recording and non linear editing for audio like I had for MIDI.

Tried the Cubase Audio stuff for a while but it was buggy and crashed far too often. The learning curve was steep and with my Cubase MIDI experience I felt that it shouldn't have been so difficult. Dongles Suck!

Took a chance on Home Studio XL 2004 and never looked back. I had a few problems at first and your tech support made the right suggestions and the problems were fixed. Upgraded to Sonar 4 Studio after the Web Trial and just ordered Sonar 6PE.

The web trial is a real plus, especially of your system is marginal and you want to test drive before you buy!

Jeff

(Edit) I was a member of this forum a couple of years ago but misplaced my password and my e-mail address changed, so back to the beginning!

I've been with Logic on the PC since, well since it came to the PC, and I was one of the disgruntled when Apple took Logic 'to the other side'. Funnily although I own a modern intel mac, I don't want to have to switch to the Mac for core music production duties. I've been constantly on the look out for a way out on the PC.

Cubase and Nuendo, although they have great VST and VSTi support, and decent audio engine performance, they've repeatedly scared me off due to the tragically bad midi timing that existed all the way back to Cubase on the Atari (I still have the working ST520 with Cubase in the loft, complete with it's Parkinsons-afflicted midi). It doesn't seem to matter how many versions those guys release, they haven't fixed the fact that neither sequencer plays in time.

Sonar on the other hand seems as rock solid as Logic in that regard and that's the reason I was happy to consider Sonar as my future DAW on the PC platform. Unfortunately after having a number of goes at Sonar from Version 3 up to the present, I can't get my flow with it purely because of the static nature of the application. I don't want to bog down this post with the details, I have posted separately under a 'Sonar and the stopping' thread, but basically I find the core nature of Sonar difficult to work with because of too much unnecessary stopping of the sequencer.

If this and a number of other minor issues were improved, Sonar would eat every other daw for breakfast. Until then, I'm chugging away with Logic 5.51, missing out on wonderful track freezing, audio console presets, dragging and dropping of plugins, multiple take audio lanes, Audiosnap, the great Mute tool, etc etc, but it's just barely worth it to be able to 'keep the music running' :(