Anderton

jpetersen
@Craig Anderton - it's quite possible that 5 times more interfaces are sold than DAWs. I find I am reluctant to re-learn a new DAW once I have one I am familiar with. But I am always looking out for better performance and more inputs from an interface.

I would guess few people buy a new interface every year.

Did I really buy one a year?
Sheesh. I guess I must've.

Steev
...the Tascam US 16x 8 a very impressive sounding extremely inexpensive value packed best bang for the buck audio interface I think I've ever seen and heard, it is also more than capable of out performing his poor little old computer's ability to record more than 4 tracks at once.

 
I actually do spec tests on interfaces. I won't mention the ones that don't fare so well, I'm a nice guy, but the TASCAM ones are excellent in terms of input noise, THD, IM, etc. The most surprising aspect to me was crosstalk. Most inexpensive interfaces have fairly major crosstalk at the highest frequencies, which I think may be why some people think digital audio "collapses the soundstage." The TASCAM 2x2 and 4x4 had much better crosstalk specs than other units I've tested in the same price range.
 
Too bad the Cakewalk blog doesn't exist anymore, I posted test results from audio analysis software. You can't argue with those kind of results.
 
 

GreenwoodStudios
In my ‘procrastination period’ I’d forgotten about it’s onboard DSP mixer, reverb and compressors on every channel.

Yes, but the compressors are post-A/D converters, so you can't use them to avoid clipping coming in from the outside world.
 

Craig like Cactus Music, I also thank you for your insight too.

In replying to your reply to my post I’ve never used hardware nor software compression in order to not clip an input. These days we have plenty of headroom in our rigs and s/n is lower than ever in DAWs, we are not trying yo push magnetic particles to +9 on two inch. Input clipping to me is someone not paying attention as they should. I do it by second nature as I been around since the days of Shure M67s, Tapcos and UniSync ~ hah! After that there was the time when you may have had a couple of channels worth of compression and had to decide what to used it on, the remainder of your inputs you had to ride if you wanted to run things really hot.

When channel strips started having comps on ever channel it was amazing, but people overdid it a bit because they had, it was there and damn it It’s better if you always use it. Nope, music and dynamics matter. Too much can be a bad thing. I listen to my inputs first as I always have, rather than look at a display first. These days I tell younger folks use your ears and trust them over what the latest app on your iPad says.

My point was comenting on yours was simply that the US20x20 unit as my i/o is great ~ because the way I see it the interaction between Cakewalk and Tascam (being part of Gibson) ‘might’ have meant that some knowledge was shared between the two and that I believe would create a better product and experience to the end user. That there is also a 20 channel digital mixer (with 4 band eq, verb and comps) designed into a 1ru unit is a nice layer of sweet icing on an already neat product.

I feel the same about Sonar and the time and effort put forth by Noel in conjunction with Intel to bring us a 64bit DAW IMHO means that Intel knows what our usage of the processors require as opposed to a word processor or graphics design program.

To me progress is great but even today people are still wanting to track to 2 inch if they can and have the cash. Those old huge machines are long out of production and still used if desired or needed.

I think the same of Sonar, if it works for you, does it matter if it’s no longer available? Not to me...

I’d like to say thanks to you and to Noel for posting on here, clearly it provides the collective ‘us’ with a feeling that people are still caring enough to get on here and type. While the bickering gets to be a bit much I also an thankful for Mr. CakeAlexSHere for his own views/input because without it perhaps you and Noel would not have chimed in. That some names ‘we’ have seen for years in communications from Cakewalk are now still being heard from is comforting. What I hope will happen is that everyone can chill and together via this forum we can learn and teach best use of the multitude of facets Sonar has become from the hard work for 30 years this software company put in even if it never transitions to whatever the ‘crystal ball’ holds.

Lastly I in the past month on here have blindly speculated that this shutdown could be an accountant firm’s plan of a write down tax wise and like GigaStudio just vanished one day so could Sonar or even this website. That Noel has suggested that might not be the case is awesome, we will obviously all wait and see. Cheers!