I suspect sales numbers are heavily fudged by all parties.  I also suspect that FL is more heavily pirated than Sonar  despite having the friendlier upgrade policy. Keep in mind that my comments were mostly referring to the Computer Music mag  audience.  I pick it up maybe once a year and it is usually because they are offering some kickass freebie that makes the high price of the mag worthwhile.  The articles, tutorials and software make it very clear that the audience is very techno,DNB,dubstep, and whatever flavor of the month dance music sub-genre you can think of  oriented.  Nothing wrong with that. i find much of the content useless because so much of it is so specifically product oriented.  In their defense they usually claim the tips translate easily to other software and IMHO that is partially true or moot.  Example: i think if someone understood programming enough to apply tips for NI's FM8 to create the same patch in Z3ta, they probably don't need the tutorial to begin with.  CM tends to give favorable reviews to Cakewalk products, yet very rarely feature Cakewalk products outside of Z3ta.  I'm guessing it's a combo of knowing their audience and relationships with software companies since you can bet every month there will be a Massive tutorial or two.

mattox82


There are hundereds of beats, synth loops and reuseable content in Sonar.

I think FL is so popular because at first look it doesnt look crazy complex; big mixers and 'pro channels' everywhere can be super confusing to someone new to music. FL opens up with a step sequencer as the main focal point and you an tinker around without actually knowing anything & make a beat. Dig a little deeper and you find that it's as powerful as anthing else out there.

I'm a huge FL Studio fan & Gol is by far one of the best musical software devs out there.

I'm actually pretty sure you can open projects within projects in sonar. The track template system is as powerful as you want it to be.

You did not understand that I'm not talking about the sample content, which in any case FL also support, its about beat machine concept/step sequencer and the FLP file itself, a FLP file can be even zipped and be a self container of sequenced and sample data, its just like a MIDI file without the complexity of port routing, complex controller, external MIDI synth, its like a Reason file somehow(but including the samples) and a step sequencer as a ¨block/pattern¨ for arranging.

I have to say that FL, for the traditional user of sequencer like Cakewalk, looks ¨crazy complex¨ at first, but yeah its all about the step sequencer approach maybe, what I still believe is that kind of programs are more oriented to electronic music  ,they are not best choices when managing acoustic,real band materials and other music that is too ¨humanized¨and its not just about¨Building blocks¨.