Hello Cakewalk users.
 
My impressions of Platinum.
 
I was caught up in the incredible announcement - Sonar Platinum for free.

My default DAW for about 10 years has been Reaper - and I love it, think very highly of it, fast, resource efficient, inexpensive.
 
Installed Sonar Platinum today, and fumbled around to get it to do some of the key things I do in Reaper - most of the time I listen to streaming audio, from Spotify/Deezer/Youtube and pass this through some analysis plugins, so I can "learn" a lot more from things like frequency analysis, stereo spread, etc visually as well as from my listening.
 
I also listen to tracks from some of my CD's which have been extracted to wav files.
 
Right from the 1st track I listened to - via one of my wav files, I could not believe what I was hearing, - using exactly the same file, same sampling rate, etc - ensuring that all the plugins such as the pro-channel were turned off, I got this distinct impression that there was an upfront clarity and truth to what I was hearing in Sonar Platinum - on the same sound card/interface and speakers.
 
At 1st I used the 32 bit Audio bit depth setting - yet the sound in Sonar was just richer in the mids and highs, - sharper, more upfront than Reaper.
 
To make things even more equal, I enabled the 64 bit Audio bit depth mixing engine, in both Reaper and Sonar Platinum.
 
It should not be possible but these DAW's do not sound the same, In my wildest imagination, I never thought such a distinct audible difference between DAW's was possible, but I am not imagining this - I can hear it. The bottom end is tighter in Sonar Platinum. Dare I say - the audio, no matter what  play is simply more dynamic in Sonar - things like drums are just that much punchier - that was my most argument free initial observation - drums - were simply punchier and more - in your face in Sonar.
 
Long was still to go - have to learn the whole of Sonar - never thought I would ever bother, but this difference in audio "clarity", if it turns out to be the truth, is a good enough reason to change DAW's, it's almost like getting a new pair of speakers.
 
It should not be so - in this age of digital audio - where bits are supposed to be bits. I am struggling to discern which version of the truth is the more true one - the Sonar or the Reaper version of the truth.
 
Strange but true.
 
Please chime in and let me know I am not hearing things - I hope. 
 
The music in so many tracks I have listened to just feels that bit more "alive" - like I am listening to a more accurate version of the truth in Sonar - synths, live voices, keyboards, - the comforting bottom end blanket of slight bloom in bass (in comparison) Reaper is gone - bass is definitely tighter - in Sonar. Words/diction is easier to hear in Sonar - this is impossible...! I am shocked.
 
Hey Sonar - could you do a live mixing product - using this your fabulous sounding engine?

I also prefer Cakewalk's audio engine to the rest.
Don't be surprised, though, that majority of DAW users don't hear any difference and will come up with scientific facts proving that nobody is able to hear any difference at all.

I am afraid you may be imagining it.  I have done the test with a super high quality multitrack session summed in 4 DAW's. (the session was also recorded independently of this test.) Just pan positions (and pan laws) and fader levels all set the same. The 4 DAW's in question were Sonar, ProTools, Logic and Studio One.  I was able to get perfect nulls with any 2 exports. Playing them back to some engineers in a controlled A/B blind test also revealed no one could pick anything at all.  (you would not have a hope in hell with a controlled A/B test where not even the switching of DAW's would be known either)
 
This was with no plugins or effects being on any DAW just the summing engine.  As mentioned before once you start using bundled plugins then things could and do change.  Third party plugins all sound the same in any DAW as well.  Although I did not test Reaper at the time I would assume it would also produce an identical sound too.
 
Some have said that Studio One actually sounds superior to Sonar as well but I still don't buy it either.  It may be what they call the placebo effect.  You are just biased.  I bet one was a little louder than the other as well.  Did you match levels within 0.1 dB which is also what you are supposed to do.
 
Sonar's audio engine on some levels is actually inferior to some other DAW's in fact. 
 
 
 

I've got to agree with the OP here - I've been going through my old Sonar projects and upgrading them to SPLAT. Almost all of them failed to load in SPLAT due to some issue with sysex banks, so I've been using Sonar X1 / X3 to do the initial upgrade and changing any old hardware based tracks to use sampled versions of the same sounds.
 
Before loading the new projects in SPLAT, I make sure everything is playing as expected in X1 or X3.
 
I then load it in SPLAT and quite often, it sounds very different... in a good way.
 
I don't know if it's to do with panning law differences, or the 64 bit engine, but there is a definite difference in sound with everything sounding much clearer.
 
M.

I heard a difference from 8.5, but that's probably not a surprise. But a pleasant non-surprise. It sounds smoother, more connected than 8.5. I was a fool for not upgrading years ago. sure, I saved money, but I worked for years with an inferior program. you get what you pay for, despite the rantings of some that are currently going on here.

I know that at least part of the explanation is to do with 'pan law' settings.

There really is no difference in how each DAW sounds, when you account for things like any channel processing enabled, pan laws etc. 
 
I have heard hundreds of people swear on their lives that they hear all kinds of differences between the basic summing engines of DAW'S (and even just playing a stereo file through the master bus). Typical differences include "more clarity," "wider soundstage," "more upfront," "deeper," "more 3 dimensional" etc. It's all poppycock. 
 
If it wasn't, then someone would have demonstrated these differences scientifically by now. And it's perfectly doable to compare two audio files, to the point of single 0's and 1's if necessary. No such demonstration has ever been made. 
 
Not only would someone have demonstrated it beyond doubt, but DAW manufacturers would have pounced upon this marketing angle. Observe however, that no DAW companies make such claims. They might use vague marketing terms like "pristine 64-bit sound engine," but these are just absolute statements which make no attempt to distinguish themselves from the sound of other DAW's. They know that should they make such a claim, they'd be a laughing stock, and rightly so. 
 
I've compared Reaper and Sonar quite intensely, from recreating Sonar projects side by side in Reaper from scratch (same tracks, same settings, same plugins), and I can absolutely say that the only thing which makes them sound different is the pan laws. 

sharke
There really is no difference in how each DAW sounds, when you account for things like any channel processing enabled, pan laws etc. 
 
I have heard hundreds of people swear on their lives that they hear all kinds of differences between the basic summing engines of DAW'S (and even just playing a stereo file through the master bus). Typical differences include "more clarity," "wider soundstage," "more upfront," "deeper," "more 3 dimensional" etc. It's all poppycock. 
 
If it wasn't, then someone would have demonstrated these differences scientifically by now. And it's perfectly doable to compare two audio files, to the point of single 0's and 1's if necessary. No such demonstration has ever been made. 
 
Not only would someone have demonstrated it beyond doubt, but DAW manufacturers would have pounced upon this marketing angle. Observe however, that no DAW companies make such claims. They might use vague marketing terms like "pristine 64-bit sound engine," but these are just absolute statements which make no attempt to distinguish themselves from the sound of other DAW's. They know that should they make such a claim, they'd be a laughing stock, and rightly so. 
 
I've compared Reaper and Sonar quite intensely, from recreating Sonar projects side by side in Reaper from scratch (same tracks, same settings, same plugins), and I can absolutely say that the only thing which makes them sound different is the pan laws. 

At last some sense!
 
In my test it was easy to deal with pan laws.  I set all the DAW's for -3dB centre.  I only panned stuff L, C or R. Nothing in between. That way you can very accurately control the results.  I also set faders only to whole values e.g. -3 db or -7 db or + 4db. No decimals in there either.  (e.g. -7.4 dB etc) Like I said if I put these guys in a room who even think they can hear stuff and did a controlled A/B test with someone else switching the DAW's seamlessly and every one being within 0.1 dB of each other level wise they would all be seriously lost!

msmcleod
I've got to agree with the OP here - I've been going through my old Sonar projects and upgrading them to SPLAT. Almost all of them failed to load in SPLAT due to some issue with sysex banks, so I've been using Sonar X1 / X3 to do the initial upgrade and changing any old hardware based tracks to use sampled versions of the same sounds.
 
Before loading the new projects in SPLAT, I make sure everything is playing as expected in X1 or X3.
 
I then load it in SPLAT and quite often, it sounds very different... in a good way.
 
I don't know if it's to do with panning law differences, or the 64 bit engine, but there is a definite difference in sound with everything sounding much clearer.
 
M.

michael diemer
I heard a difference from 8.5, but that's probably not a surprise. But a pleasant non-surprise. It sounds smoother, more connected than 8.5. I was a fool for not upgrading years ago. sure, I saved money, but I worked for years with an inferior program. you get what you pay for, despite the rantings of some that are currently going on here.

I am relieved, partly because I am thankfully not the only one hearing a difference, but because all audio - ALL - simply sounds easier to hear - - At this time most of my use of the DAW is for listening to audio produced by others : diction, distinguishing effects on mixes including commercial music, I can listen at a slightly lower volume, and the audio sounds more even as I move my head around the sweet spot of the monitors/speakers, and the electronic signature of synthetic sources, is so transparently apparent, reverb trails are tighter, drum kicks have a less bloom in the sustain portion, I hear the start and stop of sounds much easier, acoustic guitar transients - almost too real, and in general it just sounds like the audio is coming from a point in space - more pinpoint.
 
I did spot several possible causes of the difference, especially as the source material, - typically a stereo stream or a stereo file - of identical bit length, sample frequency, etc, to both SPLAT and Reaper and here are my thoughts explaining what I think is the difference. We are all human and we are all learning, I make no claim to know it all. I may be right or wrong. 
 
My Reaper version is 32 bit, SPLAT is 64 bit, however Reaper 32 bit claims to process all audio in 64 bit. When I played back just one audio  WAV file of a commercial track extracted from the CD (16 bit - 44Khz - converted to 16 bit 96Khz by SPLAT - and also imported - same upsample into Reaper  - so source audio is 100% identical). With absolutely no plugins - and same audio level - difference was clear. Sometime later I will find the time to check if the 64 bit version of Reaper makes any difference to the end result. In theory it should not, but the only reason I started this thread is cos the theory of identical digital summing seems to have a bit of a curve ball (see below).
 
I did no mixing, no rendering, just listening to the same single stereo file and SPLAT was tighter, more transient, with the edges of all I was hearing, more distinct - I describe it like being able to better see the shape of what you are listening to, in SPLAT.
 
Further investigation on the input side of things - using a Bit depth measurement plugin indicated that :

1. SPLAT - provides ASIO input(e.g. microphone or line inputs) as a full 64 bit stream to the 1st plugin in the effects rack, and keeps it at 64 bit thereafter, you can check this by moving the Bit depth plugin, to various points in the chain. The audio interface provides no more than 24 bits so there's some conversion taking place before the 1st plugin, to a 64 bit audio stream.

2. Reaper - provides no more than a 24 bit input stream, to the 1st plugin, and then up to 64 bit thereafter, beyond the 1st plugin in the chain.
 
In theory, this should not be the cause of any audio difference, since the bits beyond 24 are padded with 0's.
 

Jeff Evans
I am afraid you may be imagining it.  I have done the test with a super high quality multitrack session summed in 4 DAW's. (the session was also recorded independently of this test.) Just pan positions (and pan laws) and fader levels all set the same. The 4 DAW's in question were Sonar, ProTools, Logic and Studio One.  I was able to get perfect nulls with any 2 exports. Playing them back to some engineers in a controlled A/B blind test also revealed no one could pick anything at all.  (you would not have a hope in hell with a controlled A/B test where not even the switching of DAW's would be known either)
 
This was with no plugins or effects being on any DAW just the summing engine.  As mentioned before once you start using bundled plugins then things could and do change.  Third party plugins all sound the same in any DAW as well.  Although I did not test Reaper at the time I would assume it would also produce an identical sound too.
 
Some have said that Studio One actually sounds superior to Sonar as well but I still don't buy it either.  It may be what they call the placebo effect.  You are just biased.  I bet one was a little louder than the other as well.  Did you match levels within 0.1 dB which is also what you are supposed to do.
 
Sonar's audio engine on some levels is actually inferior to some other DAW's in fact. 
 
 
 

So what could be the cause of the difference - Pls note - I have no reason to doubt the equivalence of DAW summing, where using identical pan laws, levels, and sources yield absolutely no difference between DAW's. That is not in contention. The final summing may be identical, i,e the DAW's produce the same result - all things being equal.
 
What piqued my interest was the "not sounding the same" using identical inputs.
 
I have no proof or way of testing this with my limited equipment, but I suspect that in the same way that I have observed a difference in the way SPLAT and Reaper address the ASIO inputs, which is measurable and plugin tools easily demonstrated this difference (however innocuous - padded bits of zero beyond 24 bits), there could be a difference in how each DAW - addresses the outgoing audio on its way to the audio interface - i.e ASIO out.
 
While digitally they may render identical results, unless you have more tools than I have, in my case just ears, it is difficult to compare digitally, the output from the DAW to the ASIO out - ie the real time audio out. This is where I consider that DAW's may be doing something different Unfortunately I have no hint of how each DAW converts the 64 bit floating point audio stream to the 24 bit output, which it send to the Audio interface. This has got to be where the difference may be coming from, amongst other potential differences.
 
There are no settings in either DAW to make any changes to this crucial aspect - which is what we hear after all. Theory would indicate that they do this identically, but this may be the secret - they do not make any unique changes to the rendered file, but have a proprietary or distinct method for "truncating" to 24 bit audio interfaces, while the summing engine which may produce a final mix down file as accurate as up to 64 bit floating point, would yield an identical result in either case and when digitally compared - the rendered file is 100% identical with a total null.
 
I restate - the issue is not with the exactness of DAW summing - that's been thoroughly thrashed in web anecdotes as no longer an issue. I wish I had the tools and time to investigate the cause of this difference I am hearing - even on a single identical file, with absolutely no plugins whatsoever engaged, between the DAW's. Note on playback of the file, the bit depth plugin shows that both DAW's send a 16 bit audio stream to the 1st plugin (in this case an analysis plugin), which makes the audible difference I hear - the more puzzling.!!
 
That's about as far as I can go or devote to this comparison, unfortunately. I've switched almost all my listening to SPLAT and enjoying it. Definite improvement. User interface and workflow will take a while to get used to., Or I do a preliminary mix in Reaper where I am much faster an I prefer its user interface - less cluttered, and application response to user input is much faster than SPLAT (things like scanning for plugins is really slow in SPLAT). Guess this is a price to pay - for authentic, in my opinion, audio quality in SPLAT - change !.
 
Thanks everyone who has chimed in here.

One other thing that could be contributing to the difference: I've gone through most of my plugins and enabled the Upsample on Render / Upsample on Playback. This option is not available on X1 / X3, but can make a huge difference to the quality of some plugins.