ASG
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Re:Is sonar X2 hard to use?
2013/01/12 15:18:10
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When you get a chance tell us a little more about the romplers and soft synths you're currently using or are soon to be using. I know romplers these days have some powerful processing on board, you may not even need a new daw? Or did we already discuss that part and I came into the thread late?
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Anderton
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Re:Is sonar X2 hard to use?
2013/01/12 15:36:12
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Let me throw something else into the discussion. Yes, all DAWs have a learning curve. But another consideration is once you know your way around a program, how fluid is it for you in terms of doing actual work? A lot of that depends on the type of work you do. If you mix a lot of different elements (loops, hard disk audio, MIDI, matrix view, etc.) Sonar is quite adept at switching among different modes of operation. That's one of the main reasons it's my primary DAW.
OTOH if you come from a tape and mixer background, Pro Tools is great because those basic functions are the core of the program. Digital Performer has what's probably the best-sounding collection of guitar processors...so much depends on how you plan to use the DAW.
I have scaled the learning curve for pretty much every DAW out there, so I knew their strengths and limitations. Sonar was the best match for the type of projects I do, but that's as subjective a choice as preferring the scale length of one guitar over another.
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godparticle 
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Re:Is sonar X2 hard to use?
2013/01/13 08:47:35
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To answer ASG (2 replies before this), i do not have any romplers at the moment and am dying to have the privilege of getting hold of one, which is part of the reason i want to leave my current DAW. I don't want to have to fork-out for third party stuff and go through the bother of installing and downloading gigabytes of data when i am on a very limited internet data plan. Having come from synth workstations where we took such things for granted, it seems like i am in the dark-age in comparison, but at the moment i have been improvising and using a few half-arsed (compressed OGG-VORBIS) loops which came included in my current DAW, and filling in the rest with softsynths at the moment. Seeing as i do make dance-music i have been able to get away with this scenario for a few months, but the time is fast approaching when i will need a good rompler with a good variety of sounds to make some POP-music tracks. Currently the softsynths i am using are 'Renegade' from G-Sonique; 'Gemini 2.0 from Audio-Oxygen'; P8 SuperWave; Trance-Pro; Nk 1001...i do have a few other very high-quality softsynths but there's no point listing them all here. Im using good quality software reverbs like (Lexicon) and good software compressors and eqs for tracking duties, and then resorting to Izotope Ozone 5 and some high-end third-party buss compressors for mastering duties. For vocals i use the USB BlueMic YETI; all running on an i7 Laptop with 8 gig ram and inbuilt soundcard (realtek and WaveRT driver) which happens to perform beautifully and gives superb low-latency performance under heavy loads. At this stage i am still torn between Sonar X2 and Studio One because a simple but proficient interface workflow is most important to me among other things. Looks like it's time for me to download the X2 demo and find out for myself. Thanks to everyone who took a sincere interest to help me and good luck with your music. Any subsequent comments about Studio One are still welcome, i'm always glad to hear what other people think. Cheers. PS: With dreams being free, how good would it be if the Studio One developers and Sonar X2 developers joined forces and simply combined everything that is good about the two and discarded the rest in terms of superfluous or cumbersome methodologies and focused on designing a 'Super-DAW' with the speed and stability of Studio One combined with the features and plugins of both all centered around a slick classy interface combining the most elegant parts from both.
post edited by godparticle - 2013/01/13 09:12:46
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Andrew Rossa
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Re:Is sonar X2 hard to use?
2013/01/13 14:21:47
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godparticle
To answer ASG (2 replies before this), i do not have any romplers at the moment and am dying to have the privilege of getting hold of one, which is part of the reason i want to leave my current DAW. I don't want to have to fork-out for third party stuff and go through the bother of installing and downloading gigabytes of data when i am on a very limited internet data plan.
Having come from synth workstations where we took such things for granted, it seems like i am in the dark-age in comparison, but at the moment i have been improvising and using a few half-arsed (compressed OGG-VORBIS) loops which came included in my current DAW, and filling in the rest with softsynths at the moment. Seeing as i do make dance-music i have been able to get away with this scenario for a few months, but the time is fast approaching when i will need a good rompler with a good variety of sounds to make some POP-music tracks.
Currently the softsynths i am using are 'Renegade' from G-Sonique; 'Gemini 2.0 from Audio-Oxygen'; P8 SuperWave; Trance-Pro; Nk 1001...i do have a few other very high-quality softsynths but there's no point listing them all here. Im using good quality software reverbs like (Lexicon) and good software compressors and eqs for tracking duties, and then resorting to Izotope Ozone 5 and some high-end third-party buss compressors for mastering duties. For vocals i use the USB BlueMic YETI; all running on an i7 Laptop with 8 gig ram and inbuilt soundcard (realtek and WaveRT driver) which happens to perform beautifully and gives superb low-latency performance under heavy loads.
At this stage i am still torn between Sonar X2 and Studio One because a simple but proficient interface workflow is most important to me among other things. Looks like it's time for me to download the X2 demo and find out for myself.
Thanks to everyone who took a sincere interest to help me and good luck with your music.
Any subsequent comments about Studio One are still welcome, i'm always glad to hear what other people think. Cheers.
PS: With dreams being free, how good would it be if the Studio One developers and Sonar X2 developers joined forces and simply combined everything that is good about the two and discarded the rest in terms of superfluous or cumbersome methodologies and focused on designing a 'Super-DAW' with the speed and stability of Studio One combined with the features and plugins of both all centered around a slick classy interface combining the most elegant parts from both.
Hi- I am probably bias so I won't give you my opinion :) But here are some free Get Started videos that show you some of the basics http://www.cakewalk.com/C...ONARU.aspx/Get-Started As mentioned too, this month we are offering a free Groove 3 video pass with the purchase of SONAR X2 Producer, which should certainly help you get top notch training once you have SONAR X2. Thanks, Andrew
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ASG
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Re:Is sonar X2 hard to use?
2013/01/13 14:21:55
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The reason that super daw is never gonna happen is because then we'd have all we need and would never need to buy another one of their products anymore :). Well you oughta check out the Yamaha mm6 (which I use) and the korg R3. That's about as cheap as you can get for top notch synth leads. They both have a decent amount of filtering and fx capability. And you can deal some real damage strapping ozone 5 (which I also have) on one of those bad boys. Check em out on YouTube!
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mondaydave
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Re:Is sonar X2 hard to use?
2013/01/13 16:44:06
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I have to disagree with a few people here that Sonar is difficult for a newbie, After wasting a few years fluting around with Cubase, Reason and Ableton and never really getting a handle on what I was doing I tried Sonar 8.5 a couple of years ago and found it to be the most intuitive DAW I have used.
I have upgraded to X2 and while the transition was difficult at first I now love the workflow of the program, The Sonar University/Cake TV are a great learning resource too.
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godparticle
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Re:Is sonar X2 hard to use?
2013/01/14 00:46:21
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I just need to ask one more thing. Is the demo version of sonar the latest X2 version with windows 8 compatibility, or is it just the initial demo that was made available before the X2 update. cheers.
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ASG
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Re:Is sonar X2 hard to use?
2013/01/14 01:05:49
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Not sure but if it does turn out that windows 8 requires the update, its on the homepage for free
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SGodfrey
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Re:Is sonar X2 hard to use?
2013/01/14 06:37:48
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I'd say download the demo anyway. If you look under Help -> About Sonar, and it says it's the X2a Build then it's fully compatible with Windows 8. If it doesn't say X2a, it'll probably run anyway ...
Cheers,
Simon
p.s. Without re-visiting the previous thread, please let me know what happens with the soundcard; I'm interested to know :)
Sonar Platinum x64 Cakewalk UA-25EX Asus X556UA-DM898T i7-7500U 8GB 1TB, Windows 10 Home Komplete 11 Ultimate, Kontrol S49, Maschine Jam, Mikro mk2, Arturia V Collection 4
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scook
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Re:Is sonar X2 hard to use?
2013/01/14 07:08:18
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IIRC the demo was based on build 308 - the original X2 with the quick fix. It does run on Win8 just like the original X2. The X2a patch just added more Win8 specific stuff.
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godparticle
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Re:Is sonar X2 hard to use?
2013/01/14 10:43:49
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Thanks scook. No problem SGodfrey. I'll be buying my new Laptop in three days. It's an HP Pavilion M6 (2.2ghz i7; 8 gig ram; 2gig graphics chip; Windows 8) I just hope to God that HP have provided a decent soundcard, or else i'm screwed; but actually i think most Laptop makers these days go with Realtek, and i'm sure Realtek are aware that Laptop manufacturers expect the latest standards and performance etc, so i'm guessing Realtek are aware of the need to continually upgrade converters and whatever else to offer increasingly better performance, so here's hoping. Yesteryear the inbuilt soundcards in Laptops were not known for professional performance, but i would hazard a guess to say that Laptop soundcards these days are being built with much better standards while getting cheaper as time goes by, as with everything; so if i use WaveRT drivers again, i'm expecting the same slick performance that i'm getting now. FYI the HP Laptop i'm buying has got a "Beats-Audio" logo on it, so hopefully that will bode well for a somewhat better driver or soundcard all-up. But i can only hope, because i don't really know what to expect until i get started. Cheers.
post edited by godparticle - 2013/01/14 10:53:38
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Bristol_Jonesey
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Re:Is sonar X2 hard to use?
2013/01/14 11:23:05
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The Realtek chip inside my Laptop is borderline junk!
No, I'll re-phrase that - it's total junk, and won't work with Sonar in any driver configuration.
If I were you, I would set some money aside for a decent interface
CbB, Platinum, 64 bit throughoutCustom built i7 3930, 32Gb RAM, 2 x 1Tb Internal HDD, 1 x 1TB system SSD (Win 7), 1 x 500Gb system SSD (Win 10), 2 x 1Tb External HDD's, Dual boot Win 7 & Win 10 64 Bit, Saffire Pro 26, ISA One, Adam P11A,
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godparticle
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Re:Is sonar X2 hard to use?
2013/01/14 15:20:57
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How old is your Laptop? What brand is it. I'm using a Realtek soundcard inside my current Laptop with WaveRT drivers and getting much better performance than ASIO on a dedicated third-party soundcard. I don't want to pay for a third-party audio-interface because i have no need for it; i make dance music which consists of all drum samples and softsynths and romplers, and thus i don't need to record acoustic instruments from outside. In my current DAW i have a song playing 17 different softsynths each on a different track, plus 18 tracks of audio, plus 124 real-time effects, and i can easily insert another softsynth and play it in real-time without any latency if i wish. None of this has been mixed-down yet, it's all playing in real-time direct from the cpu. I think this is all being dictated by the performance of the onboard soundcard and the driver, so using Sonar with this same set-up should be no different unless Sonar doesn't allow me to use WaveRT. Which reminds me, does anyone know if Sonar X2 will allow me to nominate WaveRT drivers in the audio preferences?
post edited by godparticle - 2013/01/14 15:27:06
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Beepster
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Re:Is sonar X2 hard to use?
2013/01/14 15:28:19
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You'll really want to use ASIO and a dedicated audio interface with Sonar.
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Kalle Rantaaho
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Re:Is sonar X2 hard to use?
2013/01/14 15:32:39
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godparticle
How old is your Laptop? What brand is it. I'm using a Realtek soundcard inside my current Laptop with WaveRT drivers and getting much better performance than ASIO on a dedicated third-party soundcard.
In my current DAW i have a song playing 17 different softsynths each on a different track, plus 18 tracks of audio, plus 124 real-time effects, and i can easily insert another softsynth and play it in real-time without any latency if i wish. None of this has been mixed-down yet, it's all playing in real-time direct from the cpu. I think this is all being dictated by the performance of the onboard soundcard and the driver, so using Sonar with this same set-up should be no different unless Sonar doesn't allow me to use WaveRT. Which reminds me, does anyone know if Sonar X2 will allow me to nominate WaveRT drivers in the audio preferences?
If you get that good results with the integrated chip, enjoy it. You're one in a million and the other forumites are not going to believe you :o) :o) Or are you the same guy they did not believe in another thread? If not, you're the second person ever I've heard being happy with the integrated chip. But if your success is reproducable by others with other VSTs, there really has been developement in the driver/chip-field.
SONAR PE 8.5.3, Asus P5B, 2,4 Ghz Dual Core, 4 Gb RAM, GF 7300, EMU 1820, Bluetube Pre - Kontakt4, Ozone, Addictive Drums, PSP Mixpack2, Melda Creative Pack, Melodyne Plugin etc. The benefit of being a middle aged amateur is the low number of years of frustration ahead of you.
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backwoods
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Re:Is sonar X2 hard to use?
2013/01/14 15:40:19
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ASG
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Re:Is sonar X2 hard to use?
2013/01/15 03:29:13
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since youre on pc i say focusrite saffire all the way. my 3rd interface, the only one i havent had any problems with.
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Anderton
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Re:Is sonar X2 hard to use?
2013/01/15 16:28:54
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since youre on pc i say focusrite saffire all the way. my 3rd interface, the only one i havent had any problems with. ASG
since youre on pc i say focusrite saffire all the way. my 3rd interface, the only one i havent had any problems with.
If anyone has problems with Focusrite interfaces, check your graphics card drivers. I've had a few Focusrite hiccups until I downloaded updated graphics drivers.
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