bartveld
Could we expand this thread to include all possible replacements? I've seen only one mention of Cubase, would like to hear more about it, especially as I, too, work a lot with midi in piano roll and staff view.
So far I've come up with Reaper, Studio One, Cubase, Mixcraft, Ableton. There's probably more. Anyone feel like making a beautiful chart with comparisons on hundreds of functions?
YES!! I was just going to post that I'm reading a bunch of bellyaching here (me included) but few solutions. So far I have narrowed my replacements down to Studio One and Mixcraft. I thought about Cubase but saw the word "dongle" and had a panic attack. I really like the Mixcraft guy's post about them being a software focused company and the fact he was a long-time Cakewalk employee. I'm going to download Mixcraft and Studio One tonight and test them both out.
The urgency for me is I don't want to miss out on Black Friday specials. BTW I use Reaper for making stems - I tediously bounce individual tracks from Sonar, drag into Reaper, make clicks/guides and boy does that thing do a great job of exporting. However I wouldn't be caught dead using it for actual composing or mixing - super clunky midi editing IMO. Mixcraft looks to have a terrific stem exporting feature according to a video on their youtube channel - they have lots of tutorial videos (forum won't let me post their youtube link, just search for mixcraft in youtube and you'll find the channel.)