Agreed, right now I perceive Cakewalk is doing exactly the right thing. Make sure the core code as reliable as possible, and throw in essential workflow improvements that aren't headliners when it comes to marketing the product. We've yet to see many improvements to half baked UI functionality like take lanes, staff view, drum maps (audiosnap?) but that will hopefully be the next stage once the core is solid. For me that's when you can call it a Pro product.
 
Once that is done then the flashy new features get introduced...
 
Maybe it's wishful thinking, but that's what I'm perceiving and hoping....

SanderxpanderAlso, Windows has a really dumb 10 midi device limit which becomes really problematic if you switch ports or gear often.

That limit's already gone in Win8 I think.

Pretty sure it's not, though they go about it a slightly different way.

Well... I used to make money regularly playing live until play live no more could I... so in that sense I am/was a "professional". I've mostly been focusing on studying digital recording since then but the goal is to be able to make money doing session work, create scores/songs for sale, add an audio element to my guit lesson stuff and... well anything else that might make me a few bucks. I haven't fully launched all this yet but I did recently make a modest amount doing some session stuff... and guess what? I used Sonar. I'll continue to use Sonar. I like Sonar.
 
Now I guess I fall more under "pro" musician than "pro" studio but those lines are starting to get a little blurry.
 
Point is... there isn't much that isn't "pro" about Sonar and the whole Mac discussion is a bit of a red herring (seriously I would have to question the quality of a "pro" studio that did not have at least one PC around... I mean, c'mon. That's silly.)
 
Sonar does certainly seem to be more of a musician's type of tool but part of that is its nice mixing environment.
 
Now tracking? Yeah, it does what it needs to but I do think in a lot of ways if I ever did have a sound room again I might use CuBase to record (but more likely Reaper because really... why pay more just to track but I did like Nuendo and CuBase looks nice so who knows... but that's all hypotheticals and pipe dreams at this point). Why? Just seems like a better workflow for multimic routing, dealing with boards, whatever and those style DAWs are a alittle cleaner to look at.
 
Once I'm mixing though... frack those boring, stale arse tools and frack their boring arse cumbersome workflows. I'll take those tracks and get into my little mixing cockpit that is Sonar. Even editing is a lot better in Sonar now (I was going to use something else for editing because of major issues I USED to have but have been resolved since X3).
 
Still I have not tested these other DAWs, or Sonar, in a live room scenario so it is quite possible Sonar will be perfectly fine and I could save myself some file shuffling.
 
Either way... this is all pedantic semantics and froo froo frivolities. Use what you like and I'll use what I like. DAW dogma, like all dogma, is pointless and freaking ridiculous.

I though the 10 MIDI device limit died with XP?
 
Or perhaps that was about the 10 slots getting filled up then not releasing when new devices were added and there is now only a 10 devices at ONCE limit... which could be kind of limiting in a large studio.
 
Might have to read up on that.
 

Doktor Avalanche
Agreed, right now I perceive Cakewalk is doing exactly the right thing. Make sure the core code as reliable as possible, and throw in essential workflow improvements that aren't headliners when it comes to marketing the product. We've yet to see many improvements to half baked UI functionality like take lanes, staff view, drum maps (audiosnap?) but that will hopefully be the next stage once the core is solid. For me that's when you can call it a Pro product.
 
Once that is done then the flashy new features get introduced...
 
Maybe it's wishful thinking, but that's what I'm perceiving and hoping....

If to make major difference for somebody to choose Sonar, having ran other daws - it might not be enough.

Maybe do some improvement regarding exchanging projects with other daws would be a really good thing.
The OMF stuff take no midi - which means you loose an awful lot when half or more of projects are midi. A lot of extra fiddling.
 
There is this AATranslator: http://aatranslator.com.au/
 
But to/from Sonar is only OMF.
As I understand there is some SDK of some sort for Sonar - but have no idea what it incorporates.
 
If your friends/collaborators prefer something else, you can still select Sonar as your daw.
Even for professional use taking client that could happend then.
 
Somebody mentioned as I was having issues with Kontakt and import - NI bought code from an existing sample library converter(not so good, but anyway).
 
Cake could approach AAT guys with a proposition to at least import Cubase and some other stuff.
Cakewalk could even run a cloud collaboration service that incorporates this - you can upload Sonar projects and you can select to download in any other format. This for members of course, or even extra fees.

Larry Jones

tlw
To get it set up to handle audio with a stable round trip latency of around 6ms I had to do.... Nothing.

Purely anecdotal. Here's my anecdote: I bought a new PC, plugged it in, installed Sonar, and everything has been beautiful for three years now. Of course, this was a machine that I had specced just for audio/video recording/editing/mixing.

I've been building my own PC DAWs for 20 years. Built a few for other people as well.

Obviously "off the shelf" PCs from mass marketers tend to need quite a bit of tuning to get them to run efficiently at all. But even a carefully specced PC still needs some BIOS and OS tweaking to get it to perform well as a DAW and will need DPC issues dealing with as well if you're unlucky.

Nothing like as much as six years ago though, and as for the old days when you had to write config.sys and autoexec.bat files then be careful to choose the specific one to work with the software and hardware you wanted to use, enough said. I still don't quite understand how the PC defeated its technical superiors back in the 1990s. Other than the PC, with its 16 colours, lack of multi-tasking and inefficient hardware use happened to be the one chosen for business administration so it became "the computer on every desk" and people tend to buy what they are already familiar with. Kind of like Pro Tools in a way.

Macs are far from perfect. They're expensive, though nicely and solidly built. Upgrading them is pretty much impossible nowadays without spending lots more money on Thunderbolt2 drive cases, Thunderbolt2 PCI card adaptors and so on. Even their operating system has its flaws - it's fine using just the GUI but anything that needs to be done, or you want to do, that requires using the terminal plunges you straight into a bash shell on top of Unix and the associated learning curve.

And OS X is quite impressively able to scramble file permissions without any obvious reason why. Fortunately it also has the tool to fix permissions but it's surprising how often it's needed. It's the Mac equivalent of fixing a mysterious Windows problem by rebooting. Macs can also sulk at times, requiring a hard reboot. As for "never crashing", I've seen it happen on stage and through a big PA a Mac having a nervous breakdown is just as unpleasant as a PC in the same state.

One thing Macs, as tools for performers, do have as an advantage over laptop PCs is their fixed hardware. You can tell the tour promoter/venue that you require say, two Macbook Pros, spec as follows, with a clean OS X install and nothing else. Then all you need to take with you are a DVD drive, interface and disks with your software, samples etc. If you carry your own Mac and it fails or is stolen then you can pick up a replacement and have it up and running in a couple of hours and know it will work.

Beepster
I though the 10 MIDI device limit died with XP?
 
Or perhaps that was about the 10 slots getting filled up then not releasing when new devices were added and there is now only a 10 devices at ONCE limit... which could be kind of limiting in a large studio.
 
Might have to read up on that.
 

Nope. Windows will let you install a whole bunch but your software just doesn't find any beyond the first ten. Even dumber is that Windows sees the same device in a different port as a new device and starts installing the drivers all over again, creating new ports.

What I would like to see for live useage is some kind of ultra reliable, compact, streamline off the shelf PC to run guit sims, synths and sampling/playback stuff preferably in a Micro ATX or halfrack format (I have a full rack ATX case and it's a PIG) with all the necessary ports to make things happen. I'm sure someone somewhere builds those but honestly seems to me something like a MacMini would be a pretty ideal tool for that type of stuff. IDK though because I've never owned one (or anything Mac).
 
Also some simple interface and display that isn't a delicate PITA to hook up and deal with to wander around various programs within it. The type of thing that can be mapped before hand so you aren't looking at a full on display with HID set up. Just simple navigation with a micro trackball, arrow keys and enter/modifier buttons. That would likely require it's own code to bounce around within Windows and common programs without a full display.
 
Once set up everything is done from controllers.
 
Again... probably already been done but probably also ridonculously expensive and impractical.

Doktor Avalanche
Agreed, right now I perceive Cakewalk is doing exactly the right thing. Make sure the core code as reliable as possible, and throw in essential workflow improvements that aren't headliners when it comes to marketing the product. We've yet to see many improvements to half baked UI functionality like take lanes, staff view, drum maps (audiosnap?) but that will hopefully be the next stage once the core is solid. For me that's when you can call it a Pro product.
 
Once that is done then the flashy new features get introduced...
 
Maybe it's wishful thinking, but that's what I'm perceiving and hoping....

 

lfm
If to make major difference for somebody to choose Sonar, having ran other daws - it might not be enough.

Maybe do some improvement regarding exchanging projects with other daws would be a really good thing.
The OMF stuff take no midi - which means you loose an awful lot when half or more of projects are midi. A lot of extra fiddling.
 
There is this AATranslator: http://aatranslator.com.au/
 
But to/from Sonar is only OMF.
As I understand there is some SDK of some sort for Sonar - but have no idea what it incorporates.
 
If your friends/collaborators prefer something else, you can still select Sonar as your daw.
Even for professional use taking client that could happend then.
 
Somebody mentioned as I was having issues with Kontakt and import - NI bought code from an existing sample library converter(not so good, but anyway).
 
Cake could approach AAT guys with a proposition to at least import Cubase and some other stuff.
Cakewalk could even run a cloud collaboration service that incorporates this - you can upload Sonar projects and you can select to download in any other format. This for members of course, or even extra fees.

Slightly missing my point. Nothing wrong with that suggestion (it's a good one), but that sort of thing would come under the final point that I wrote above.

In order to introduce big new features like this you've got to improve the core first and exisiting functionality first (or scrap it), otherwise if you introduce even more features which may end up delivered half baked, it just makes the product look worse. In order for Sonar to progress further it needs to put out the current fires out first (and stop fire fighting!). Every new feature has the potential to start a new fire, allow the fires to be more controlled (there are only so many fire fighters to put out fires).