ORIGINAL: Healing Spirit

My Christmas project is to it down with Garrigus's Sonar 7 Power and explore the software fully, a challenge for me as I usually just dive into software and learn as I go along.

ORIGINAL: rlh1007@msn.com

I'm thinking of switching out of Sonar and into Logic 8. Even though I just bought a new PC DAW. If had seen Logic 8 45 days earlier I'd be a Mac owner and Logic 8 user now.

I haven't succeeded in ramping all the way up Sonar's learning curve; far from it. I may be an example of someone whose opinion you're not too concerned with; too green. And I believe, as many other posters here do, there certainly are more complex and less well supported products than Sonar. And the Forum community is an asset I'd hate to part with.

Logic 8 looks like an equally powerful, but MUCH MORE fun and easier to "drive" application than Sonar. Sonar is fabulously powerful, too, but it's delivered in something more like a box of parts that I need to learn to assemble in order to use it.

Thank God for RMX's video on using RMX with Sonar. Using only Sonar documentation, Scott Garrigus' book and the Sonar tutorial videos as aids for setting up the multiple tracks, inputs and outputs for RMX would have taken who knows how long. Same with Kontakt 3.

Sonar videos look as though they are meant as sales tools only. They too quickly hit sizzle points to be instructional. Which is OK, but I wish there were more step by step videos/tutorial tools which demonstrate in detail how to use particular features. Take a page out of RMX's marketing book.

I attended the Seattle Sonar Roadshow event at Guitar Center a couple months ago and it reminds me of the county fair watching the guys peddle veg-o-matics. Very impressive, very cool, but after you buy and go home to do it yourself, it's "now what did he do"?

Maybe if he handed out some tutorial info so we could go home and start doing ourselves what was demonstrated....

Open up Logic 8, load Ultrabeat and see your point of beginning for creating drum parts. Everything is onscreen immediately, dozens/hundreds of drum sets to work with and hundreds of patterns from many genres to load and start making music with INSTANTLY. And I can tweak every drum and setting, too, when I want to. Or start with an empty map, if that's what I want.

Now look at Sonar. Box of parts. Look at Garrigus' Sonar 7, page 220 where he starts on drum tracks and drum maps. It's like reading the Internal Revenue Code. It makes the argument for the TV ads between PC and Mac. It almost looks the guys who wrote the ads set this up; nobody could be this stupid, could they? The contrasts can't be more stark!

OK, you've got Session Drummer 2, which is OK. And certainly easier than one note at a time PRV programming. And the Pattern Brush Tool? Wow! What a dud. And no way to hear the sound before it goes in.

Apple reprogrammed Logic 7, which was clunkier and with a steeper ramp-up than Sonar, into a streamlined, cool, MUCH easier to use program than Sonar. They "Apple-ized" it, dropped the price and created, for this product segment, close to a "Killer App" that is going to sell a lot of Macs. At your expense.

I experienced Logic 8 because my brother bought it, after giving up on Home Studio (and maybe a couple of other Cakewalk products) because making music became almost impossible; he was too busy just trying to get the damn thing to work. Paid consultants and all. Finally gave up, bought a Mac, and boy is he happy. But he is not a techie, not "PC", like the guy in the ads, who likes to tinker with all the crap that doesn't work easily; seems to actually enjoy it.

I'm a fan of Cakewalk as a company and especially the Forums. Cakewalk supports their products well and listens to its customers. And maybe the PC/Apple mindset difference is one you, as a member of the PC product community, are content with. But if I were a Cakewalk executive, I'd be looking at retaining the under-the-hood horsepower of Sonar but make the product MUCH EASIER to start making music with right out of the box. Make Sonar 8 as significant a step as Logic 8.

I'd encourage you to examine Logic 8 and start the time honored method of stealing ideas from the competition. If you do so successfully you'll OWN the PC DAW market.