charlyg
All I'm saying is, with all of it's flexibility, comes a bit of confusion for some, not bad, not good, just is..
 
I tried to watch the University videos, but the guy's voice drives me crazy. He over accents every other word. NOw I remember why I bought the Groove 3 vids, I can handle the voice. I would rather listen to let's go ahead at every step(not that Groove 3 does that) then the up and down thingy. Not a big deal, but if I'm trying to learn, I don't need a voice that brings stress!

See now... this is where you lose me. As long as it's intelligible you kind of got put minor annoyances such as inflection and accents out of your mind for the sake of learning the material. The people putting together these vids are from all different parts of the world and have their own regional accents and of course we all have our own speaking tone. Some people say they enjoy my voice. I think it's a little nasally... but if someone wanted to learn something from me via video they'll have to deal with it. We aren't generally dealing with trained broadcast personalities who've gone through rigorous vocal coaching to acheive those bland generic speaking voices (no matter what the accent). They are teachers and geeks trying to convey information. Just like you can't ignore a college professor just because you don't like their voice. It's all about the material.
 
In a lot of ways I think the voiceovers on the Cake in house productions are some of the clearest around. I've seen some folks say Karl's voice distracts them but he's pretty clear and if you've ever watched the BBC or hung around with British people even a little it's all perfectly intelligible (much more than some British dialects I've heard like the hardcore Geordies... yikers!).
 
The only "official" vid I own where I have a hard time understanding what the guy says is a Rapture vid where the dude has an uuuuultra thick Scottish accent and since I don't understand synths as well as I'd like when he uses terms I am not familiar with it becomes a problem. Not being able to understand something is what annoys me. Someone with an odd voice... bah. Ain't no thing.
 
Some of the absolute best vid tuts I've seen are voiced over by guys with really strange ways of speaking. There are a bunch of mixing ones by that fellow from New York (Brooklyn I think) and the accent and mannerisms are sooo over the top that it can be a little distracting but the material is so good I just kind of giggle at it and try to pay attention.
 
So really the reason this thread kind of annoyed me is because I have twisted myself into a tightly wound ball of spazziness trying to learn this stuff. Amongst my old circle of friends/musicians I was used to being the guy who had all the answers now I come here and embarrass myself almost daily asking stuff that to most of these guys is old hat.
 
If you want to REALLY learn there is a bit of humbling that needs to be done. You can't expect every vid to show you EXACTLY what you SPECIFICALLY want to do or every tool/feature that gets released to apply DIRECTLY to the workflow you are trying to acheive.
 
As you said yourself... it is a complex program and indeed audio production is a complex subject. People spend their entire lives studying this stuff and even the gurus around here will tell you they are still constantly learning. Think of the tools and the educational materials as a mosaic of things you need to learn and study so that THEN you can combine all of it to do what YOU need out of it all.
 
As far as constructing drum loops from scratch without learning MIDI? Well honestly it can be done but it's not going to be as easy and likley won't get the same results. You would have to use one shot samples, manipulate them on the timeline to create your beat, make sure it's all level and sounding good them bounce it. Whereas with drum sequencers program via MIDI you just plug in your notes by all the various methods (Step Sequencer, PRV, controllers, midi extraction, or now the Drum Replacer (yes it can be used to create new loops if you learn how to use it... like you could turn a bass line or just wacking a mic/tapping on a table into a drum part rather easily) then letting the drum software do the heavy lifting for you.
 
The other thing though is if you are wanting to actually record your own drum loops with a live drummer... well all you have to do is record the drum performance and convert it into a Groove Clip. Making that happen takes NO time at all. You just trim it to fit beat/measure markers then convert the audio clip into a Groove Clip. Done. You can get way more in depth than that and totally manipulate it with stuff like audio snap/loop constructor/mess with the mix/replace hits with samples/whatever but really... track it or import it, snip, Groove Clip it and you have loop that you can drag out as lond as you want or change tempos or whatever.
 
Again I'll say perhaps the best vids for you are the SWA X2/X3 Complete and if you have a problem with Karl's voice... well just suck it up and try to focus on what is being shown/discussed. The alternative is unpleasant and time consuming and that would be reading the Reference Guide from start to finish. I made to almost page 800 a couple years ago and even I couldn't stay the course so the vids are great for me.
 
Also if you have not heard of them already there are the Sonar Power books by Scott Garrigus. Much easier and pleasurable than reading the manual but it does require you to sit down and read them and work through the lessons on the DAW. He also has a website digifreq.com (or something like that... google it) that has lots of online Sonar lessons/articles and vids that's worth checking out. There is also Craig Anderton's articles on SOS. He has large swaths of material and tips written for Sonar somehwere there is a compiled list of ALL the Sonar related articles he's published but I don't currently have that bookmarked on this computer.
 
Very little that's worth doing in this world is easy. It doesn't necessarily have to be torturous though if you can put yourself in the right headspace.
 
Now you have a pile of recommendations. Get to it.