Sonar for electronic music production?

I am not a fultime pro. But have done a few tracks that are 100% electronic or softsynth based. Rapture, dim pro & zeta are very capable. But l would recommend you to upgrade zeta to zeta+2 and get some expansion packs for rapture and dim pro. You might also want to look into synthmaster, massive or sylenth. Geist would be great for electronic drums.

I've completed nearly 100 EDM (Electronic Dance Music) tracks using Sonar.   It really is as good as any other DAW for today's EDM and pop music.

I think there are other DAW's which are marketed more toward the electronic producer, but I don't really see how they're better than Sonar for this style. I think maybe they make it easier for a beginner to put beats together and do all sorts of prepackaged fancy stuff, but if you're the kind of person who likes to get deep into the MIDI on a note by note basis instead of having pattern generators churn out stuff automatically, then I don't see any advantage in any other DAW.

Reaktor is a good tool to have if you want to get into electronic styles. It comes with all sorts of interesting grooveboxes and sequencers and sample manipulators, and if you have the full version you have access to the user library which is chock full of thousands of weird and wonderful instruments.

I played mostly on track view. (I am a classically trained pianist) and edit at prv view. Pvr and smart tools are what I use the most more midi editing. Never use matrix. Use lots of automation.

Sonar allows me to loop midi drums easily. Groove quantize. Step sequencer for programming drum beats.

Occasionally I would use CAL for manipulation of midi data.

With x3 I am spoiled for choice in the effects department. All the reverbs included are excellent. With prochannel and it's pop up analyzer
I can get what I want very quickly. I find myself using concrete limiter (for and extra 80 bucks) very much.

Ok , I start to sound like a cw salesman. I should stop now.

The point is I am extremely happy with x3 and see very little incentive to buy ableton, fl or reason. I am sure they are all good and have plenty of fans.

That's my 2 cent.

I've been using Sonar for my EDM cover band backing tracks for around a year now with really excellent results. I've been able to pretty accurately duplicate a lot of Calvin Harris patches using Z3TA+. A lot of people use Abletron for EDM, but I don't think there is much there that Sonar can't do better. We cover the current Billboard electronic dance charts and Sonar has worked great for everything we've done. Here is a cover of Gareth Emery's Concrete Angel all done in Sonar. https://soundcloud.com/th.../concrete-angel-take-2
I've done Calvin Harris, David Guetta, Ellie Goulding, Armin van Buren, Rihanna, Krewella, Medina, Avicii, Daft Punk, you name it all in Sonar. I'd be lost on any other DAW.
Z3TA+ is great and it's my go to synth for just about everything mainly because I've learned how to use it but you might also want to check out Sylenth if you're doing EDM. Avicii uses Sylenth for most of his tracks. You'll probably want to use both, Z3TA+ does some stuff that Sylenth doesn't and vice versa.
Since most of the stuff I do has a time constraint (get it done for the next rehearsal/show) I haven't spent a lot of time playing with loops or grooves and pretty much stick to making the sounds myself.
 

Electronic is all I do and have done since 1982, and I've been using Cakewalk DAWs in all that time. Sonar is as adept at electronic music production as any other leading DAW.
 
KEv

Native instruments 'Maschine', traktor pro, and Sonar....together! ;)

I would just second the motion to try out Camel Audio's Alchemy. 
 

I'm pretty seasoned with edm . The tools set you get with sonar is more than you need .
For me , rob papen plugins ,sugar bytes, z8ta. Dune, Catanya , punch evolved , Valhalla room verb, zplane elastic pitch , and a ton of loops sound ex's and midi gear ,including NI machine and the komplete bundle . Kontak,mouth,grt 5, reactor ect. Is basicly all I need to make any edm track.

Thank you ALL for your excellent answers!
 
Is there a set of tutorials (paid is fine) or anything else that would help me learn more about the theory and practical side of creating EDM?
 
Gavin
 

I find a good resource for EDM production tips are forums that focus on individual genres. They can be a little fanatical but tend to be useful

Personally I find the matrix view is useless and it's not a magical solution to making edm .
The matrix view is very non intuitive . It's good just to launch loops and one hits.
sonar not being gapless really makes the matrix view useless compare to abelton live. I would never use sonar live. Ever!
But you can use the matrix view for stuff like crash cymbals , backing loops .Something you need to trigger loops with .
Personally I just add my stuff into the time line . The Matrix view is just a half baked idea such as beatscape.
Some people find a good use for it .but it's not a magical solution to making edm. It's just another tools set at your disposal ..

I make electro music and to be honest I've never even touched the Matrix. I have no idea how you'd make a decent track together with that, unless you just want to put together a mish mash of prepackaged loops. I can see how it would be useful in a live performance, but believe me there are no EDM producers out there arranging commercial music with the Matrix. Making electronic music is a very time consuming and intricate task which involves rolling up your sleeves and getting into the PRV on a note by note basis, not to mention the insane level of parameter automation going on. If you listen to a track like Red Knob by Siriusmo you can hear how much attention to detail some producers put into their music. Way above and beyond just triggering loops. 
 
Maybe I should have a play with it though, after all I have it!

dubdisciple
Although I am sure good results can be had with matrix, I would bet that most EDM creators opt for track or prv or even the step sequencer. EDM has a wide range from what sounds like blips and pops to complex orchestra sequences. The matrix seems to appeal to a small niche of creators that would use primarily loops. I would reccomend watching videos of people making edm in various software. Computer music magazine usually includes video tutorials (often done by some name figure) and is heavily geared towards edm. Although none of these tuts use Sonar, the techniques usually are applicable. Obviously the ableton ones will be hard to emulate but the tuts using logic cubase or reason will be pretty easy to transfer

+1 about the matrix. Actually, you can see that even most of the Ableton Live EDM production tutorials in YouTube are using the Arrange (i.e. track) view, not Session (matrix) view.