Gibson's news will have many Sonar users shopping for alternative DAWs, whether sooner or later. I hope every user with professional experience on other DAWs will share their recommendations. I'll begin with Cubase. I encourage anyone with Cubase experience to augment my list of pros and cons below. And if you have experience with another DAW, I hope you'll launch a similar discussion in its own thread.
For perspective, I'm a lifetime Sonar subscriber who's used it since Cakewalk Pro Audio. Nonetheless, I jumped to Cubase Pro a year ago as I began working heavily in surround. [Sonar wouldn't load Altiverb XL, for starters.] After some research, I chose Cubase over the rest for its robust MIDI implementation, including full support for poly AT and release velocity. I have used Cubase Pro 8.5 and 9. Some of the features I mention will be available in Cubase Pro but not lesser versions.
The Good:- Strong MIDI support. Cubase began as a MIDI sequencer in the 80s and, consequently, has thorough MIDI support. If you're old-school, like me, with racks of vintage hardware synths, Cubase is a strong option. The MIDI Editor is feature-rich and reliable. Unlike Sonar, it supports polyphonic aftertouch and release velocity. The program also features many MIDI "inserts" that can generate LFOs, arpeggios, patterns, etc. I find them useful and inspiring. And a lot of fun. Mine is a fair sized rig, with three MOTO MIDI Timepiece AV interfaces (24 total MIDI ins and outs). Setting up MIDI devices that aren't pre-defined by Steinberg is a chore but I've otherwise had no real problems between Cubase and my rig. It's reliable.
- Reliable automation. In my experience, Cubase's automation curves are easier to manage and more reliable than Sonar's. As of Cubase 9.5 (released just a week ago), automation now supports bezier curves - a long-requested feature.
- Control Room. The Control Room affords convenient monitor switching and cue management as would be found on a traditional mixing console. If you're in a professional studio environment, you might really like this.
- Feature rich. Many features you'd pay extra for in other DAWs (e.g., pitch correction, beat slicing, sample editing) are built into Cubase Pro. And, to be clear, these are fully functional and integrated features - not afterthoughts or LE versions of third-party tools. I was expecting these features to be mere gimmicks, compared to Melodyne, for example, but have used the tempo matching feature quite a bit now and have no complaints. The results are absolutely professional.
- Excellent multi-monitor support. I've got three ultra-wide monitors and Cubase does a nice job of putting what I want where I want it and remembering it.
- Excellent control surface support. I'm using an Avid Artist Transport and Artist Control. Integration is intuitive and seamless. Unfortunately, my experience with a Mackie Control and C4 were no better than on Sonar. In particular, the C4 has virtually no support in either DAW.
- Good surround support.
- Reliability. In a year, I've experienced one or two outright crashes. With auto backups enabled, I've only lost a few minutes of work. On Windows 10 64-bit, it's pretty reliable. If memory serves, I had quite a bit more crashes in Sonar, though it's unclear how many were recent vs. ten years ago, for example.
- Live video chats. There's little mention (and broken links) of these on Steinberg's website, but once you find them on YouTube, Greg Ondo's bi-weekly video chats are a good educational resource. So far, I've asked a half-dozen questions and received immediate answers to all but one of them. When I emailed him, he emailed me the answer back the same day. These are archived on YouTube. Coincidentally, last week's chat was titled "Cubase Migration from Another DAW." I only stuck around for the first 15 minutes and saw no discussion of the lead topic, but you might want to check it out.
- Lots more. There's a ton of additional features I simply haven't used. The program is deep. I hope other Cubase users will mention their favorites below.
The Bad:- Steinberg isn't a big fan of UI standards. In some cases, the ingenuity improves efficiency. In others, you'll be hard pressed to figure out a feature without a trip to the discussion forums. As a new user, I found the interface quite aggravating. [Maybe I'm just getting too old for "change."] Locating a feature in the menus or buried in the various button bars, etc., is a hurdle. Furthermore, as if the developers are still using single-screen 4:3 setups, many UI elements are quite small, in an apparent effort to squeeze as much of everything in as possible. The result is buttons and sliders that are difficult to click without focused effort.
- Cubase's MixConsole is flexible but pretty ugly when compared to Sonar's elegant Console View.
- Simple tasks are sometimes unnecessarily complex. On the bright side, I haven't found any brick walls in Cubase - anything critical I've needed to do, I've eventually found a solution for. [There's often multiple ways to achieve the same result (for better and worse).] In this regard, it's a professional-grade tool. But, as stated above (and below), finding the solution often involves a scavenger hunt.
- Take Kontakt for example: Sonar can route all outputs from a Kontakt instrument (e.g., drum kit) to individual channels without any special effort and regardless of Kontakt's default output config. It's automatic. Cubase, on the other hand, cannot add/remove VST outputs on the fly when you change instruments and, if your Kontakt instrument contains a combination of mono and stereo outs, it will require dozens of hidden audio channels to route, pan, and combine the Kontakt outputs to the desired layout of audio channels. Once you get it right, be sure to save your tracks to a "Track Archive" for easy recall.
- Here's another example: Audio takes. By default, overlapping audio takes in a single Cubase track mask previous takes. By contrast, Sonar will play overlapping takes. To correct this in Cubase, one must draw crossfades on each take. This is tedious. If you're already in the habit of trimming/fading the tops and tails of your takes so they'll blend seamlessly wherever you put them, it's a huge nuissance.
- The 1,300-page Operation Manual reads like a patent application. "Component A contains a Switch (B) with three positions...." In other words, it's a lot of dry feature lists without much discussion of application or theory. Searching the docs for desired features will often return no results unless you hit upon the proper keywords. Furthermore, some features are implemented as "plug-ins" and relegated to a separate manual altogether. Unfortunately, third-party Cubase books dried up a few years ago. [CORRECTION: See "The Complete Guide to Music Technology Using Cubase 9."] For example, the latest "Power!" book covers Cubase 6. [Still, it has quite a bit of relevant info, just FYI.] On the other hand, Lynda.com has some courses that are current and quite useful - I strongly recommend them. You can get to Lynda.com freely with a public library card in many cases. Otherwise, a one-month membership is cheap. Also, YouTube is full of Cubase videos, FWIW.
- The Steinberg forums don't hold a Christmas candle to Cakewalk's. In the Cakewalk forums, discussions are typically productive and respectful. By contrast, Steinberg's forums have too many fanboys and too little oversight. Commonly, your thoughtfully worded questions will be sabotaged by dopes with no interest in helping you. In fact, I've become so frustrated with the knee-jerk "it's not Cubase - it's you" responses, that I've taken to adding video demonstrations to my posts. Amazingly, I still get responses from folks who clearly didn't pay any attention to what was said or shown. To be fair, it's an active community - you will get prompt responses - and I've received a lot of good help there.
- Until Cubase 9.5, I haven't seen much evidence that Steinberg reads their forums. The forums are littered with unresolved discussions that repeat year after year. With 9.5 several highly-visible discussions were addressed, including a few I was personally involved in. So, things might be looking up.
- No CAL. To its credit, Cubase supports an enormous list of keyboard shortcuts and user-defined macros. However, it lacks a versatile programming language. The Transformer can do some things programmatically, but it's quite limited and documentation is poor. Prepare to invest lots of time in trial-and-error.
- No Surround Bridge. Most of you won't care, but Sonar's Surround Bridge allows users to operate multiple instances of stereo plugins as a virtual surround plugin. Very powerful and cost-effective. No such thing exists in Cubase.
- In my experience, Cubase upgrades aren't reliable. Expect to see your preferences wiped clean from one version to the next. This is a well-documented bug that has gone unfixed for years and affects some but not all users.
- File management. Cubase leaves files on your hard drive, even if you've deleted the clips from your project. There is no preference setting to change this. Once you've finished your overdubs and topped and tailed your clips, you'll want to delete the trimmings via Cubase's dedicated Media Pool to free up the disk space. I'm not aware of any tools to perform such clean up duties en masse, so you'll have to do this per project.
- No MIDI VST support. For everything your DAW can't do with MIDI natively, there are many plug-ins that will. Unfortunately, Cubase's MIDI Inserts only support Steinberg's proprietary modules. [CORRECTION: Cubase's MIDI Inserts only support VST-MA formatted plug-ins. While the VST-MA format isn't proprietary, only a fraction of the freely and commercially available MIDI VST plugins currently support it.]
- Other quirks. I am constantly discovering little quirks in Cubase - too many to list here. These aren't deal-breakers and can usually be worked around but it's frustrating and sloppy. It has the feel of a product that was released too soon. The company and its software would benefit from some quality management, IMHO. This is evident in its other products too - I also use WaveLab. [Again, it's a useful tool, but talk about a bizarre UI!]
- Here's an example: Cubase's Auto LFO MIDI Insert is a useful tool for generating LFOs to CCs, but they cycle every 239 ticks per beat rather than 240. Huh?! Consequently, if you're modulating a filter on your synth, it'll slowly go out of sync with your project. This might not be bad with a subtle sine wave, but a square wave that's supposed to follow the beat? Nope. The workaround is to record a cycle of the MIDI data and, as necessary, nudge things into place after the fact. Copy. Paste. Grrrr. The point is, you'll find minor aggravations like this throughout Cubase.
- When installing Cubase and prompted to install the "Generic ASIO Driver," don't (unless you're certain you need it). This can mess up audio in other programs - particularly Sonar - and is difficult to remove, requiring manual edits to your Windows registry. [CORRECTION: It can also be disabled rather than uninstalled. It's a workaround that requires manually renaming some files (and restoring them during Cubase updates or you might see problems). I haven't done it and don't know the details but, for most users, this will be preferable to editing the registry.]
To summarize, it's worth repeating: I have yet to discover any brick wall limitations - any "deal breakers" - in Cubase. Lots of quirks. Quirks that should've been ironed out many versions ago. It's slow to learn - you will scream. But, after a few months of hands-on learning, I'm back to the grind and getting serious work done. The key, in my experience, is to figure out what works for your routine and automate the drudgery out of it, either through templates or Track Archives, for example.
I hope this is helpful.