Mostly just out of curiosity, I went to Reddit and did a search for "cakewalk".
 
I came up with this:
https://www.reddit.com/r/Cakewalk/
 
A 3 year old Reddit community with 286 subscribers and 2 moderators ...

abacab
Mostly just out of curiosity, I went to Reddit and did a search for "cakewalk".
 
I came up with this:
https://www.reddit.com/r/Cakewalk/
 
A 3 year old Reddit community with 286 subscribers and 2 moderators ...

I didn't know that many toddlers used Sonar.

Noel Borthwick [Cakewalk]
Just wanted to report that I contacted the developer and the issue with Waldorf Nave crashing on insertion has been addressed by them. The problem was on the plugin side. 
They sent us a beta and we were able to validate the fix. Hopefully the fix should be available shortly from them.
 

Most kick ass post of this thread, no contest. Way to go, Noel!

gprokap
The "industry standard" is Pro Tools.
 
Pro Tools is garbage.
 
Don't take it as in insult.

When I got back into music big time after retiring, I spent a lot of time researching the various DAWS. I was coming from Bars & Pipes on an Amiga back in the 80s! :-). Money was not a factor since the cost of a DAW is insignificant compared to the what I spent on my "PlayPen". 
 
I can't remember exactly why I selected Sonar, but after it using almost daily for the past few years, I have not regretted my decision!
 
Walt

THambrecht
We digitaze and restore thousands of tapes, vinyl and other recordings for customers. Therefore we need a lot of restauration tools.
Almost no one uses for this purpose a MAC, ProTools or any other "Standard" DAW.
Rather Steinberg Wavelab or Adobe Audition is used.
We use SONAR.
 

What restoration programs or plugins do you use with SONAR for restoration work?

Bill

vladasyn
So it is the Microsoft to blame for losing the battle to Apple for being industry standard?
I build computers and I love Windows 10 on the latest hardware. I do not use Xeons processors, but Intel i7 is plenty for good performance. I don't see how Apple holds the monopoly so strong with the prices they have.
 
But I am thinking- is the ProTools that much better than Sonar? The ProTools is industry standard- PC or Mac, right, or just on Mac? I have been looking in to it and considering to install it and see if it really that much better.

No if you actually did your homework you would know that MAcs were the early leaders in the studio. All the big studios used macs because "AT THAT TIME" windows was no match for macs in the area of music and graphics. That changed a long time a go. So all the studios were invested big time in macs and weren't about to change. $$$ is your answer. IMHO that was a really childish reply to your question from Waldorf. Both platforms have their plus and minus's. It's a personal choice whichever you use. I am an old retired Tech...long time. 
I got tired of the mac vs PC BS a long time ago. Make music, isn't that the idea. 

I may be repeating something here, but here's a perspective, which not only applies to Macs, but also ProTools, and even Adobe products. My dad bought a Macintosh in 1986, which had the little 9(?) inch screen, and only Black & White. He didn't really maximize its use until PhotoShop version 1 was released around 1989. Then, color monitors were available to him at great expense. Now, my dad has made over $1m in his career from Photoshop alone. It was a professional program. It quickly became the industry standard. But why did it take so long to port to Windows?
 
Back then, Windows was not really seen as a professional OS. If I recall, Apple prioritized software and hardware to be used in the Visual world, such as in publications, illustrations, etc. and not so much in games or home use, as once advertised--too expensive. It was also not designed for commercial applications, such as running a logistics or inventory management system/database. In many of those cases, Unix was still very likely used--or flavors of that. BAAN was a system I used in the '90's, which was mostly green-screen.
 
Macs came into my view as a publication computer, one used for high-end graphics and fonts. Sun Systems were used for CAD type programs and many Telecommunications advancements, where Windows was only used as an end-user system.
 
As the industry grew in the publication/photo world, with Photoshop, QuarkExpress, and CorelDraw, etc. being the front runners before Microsoft could conceivably catch up, they because the industry standard. Adobe was not exactly willing to dive into the Windows world until users demanded it and were seeking alternatives (since Macs were expensive). The industry finally demanded it. The drawback? These programs were mostly ported over to Windows, and what intuitive functions Windows users knew from Microsoft products did not comply with how drastically different these ported programs were for Windows users new to this software. These ported programs weren't intuitive. However, Adobe and others couldn't simply just change all that without alienating their already lucrative user-base. Their customer base were so used to the way things worked on the Mac that they really had to be the same (or very close) inside Windows.

With more people moving to cheaper Windows machines, these programs had to be more friendly to Windows users or lose market-share to those alternatives that really weren't that good at the time. ProTools went through this, as well. They had their way on the Mac, but in Windows, good luck making it easy! You were better off growing up with ProTools on the Mac first.

So, why did these companies start on the Mac, when Windows could have sufficed? The hardware. When you're pioneering software for a still young computer industry, making the software stable and efficient alone is challenging enough. Trying to make it work well with disparate hardware in the Windows world, where users can just use whatever hardware they want, makes refining the software that much more difficult. Plus, only the professionals who could afford the Macs were buying the software to actually make money with. Not every home needed PhotoShop or ProTools, and most home users wouldn't have the first clue how to use these programs.
 
Today is entirely different. With the industry stuck in the Mac world, and props to Steve Jobs and Apple for keeping that way, Windows still suffers from outrageously varying hardware, but it's so easy to buy a Windows machine cheap and piecemeal upgrade it as you need. To build a machine to perform as an equivalent Mac Pro might cost you half as much, but software manufacturers may not have certified the software to match. Studios don't want that. They want totally reliable and tried-and-true solutions that not only will stay strong and steady throughout a session recording a spoiled, impatient big name artist, but will always be able to open sessions recorded at other studios.

We're still struggling with that. the industry simply won't let up, and many of them simply scoff at Windows. I don't blame them. Windows has enough to gripe about, and even though their stability is getting better and better, they want more from users. And you can't pirate it as easily now. Hmmmm....

Windows was, at the time, end-user-friendly, and easy to get, Microsoft really gained benefit from piracy because all the theft resulted in more users learning Windows. Where they lost money before, they can make it up now. In theory.
 
Return to the Mac.

• Predictable results
• Free OS updates forever
• Certified hardware with software
• Industry already accepts them

This is my observation as to why the older industry standard and widely used tools (ProTools) may not be as easy to use, frequently chosen, or nearly as intuitive and friendly as Sonar that we love. It's also why Sonar wasn't in the list. Soon, it very well should be!

With Macs still boasting a huge chunk of the industry and artists using their hardware, it makes sense that Sonar was left behind on that survey. Again, though, this is about to change, and I think we're about to witness that.

JohnEgan
Some of us want something better than the "industry standard", hopefully Sonar doesn't lower itself to that level.  

I feel like a total misanthrope, or perhaps an misappleogist or something, but for the past three weeks I've been gathering FB snippets of friends and acquiantances freaking out about something on their Mac breaking or crashing or whatever. Just because it annoys me so much when Mac users forget about all those things and pretend they never crash or break. Literally the same people will turn around and say "get a Mac, I never have problems!"

All computers suck. End of story.

sharke
I frequent a few music production subReddits and one of the most common questions newbies ask is "which is the right DAW for me?" Sometimes they list a few DAW's they've been pondering over and invariably people chime in with their suggestions.

Nobody ever mentions Sonar. I throw it into the mix and the response is usually "oh I've heard of that, is it any good?" or "never heard of that one, will check it out."

Bear in mind that Reddit has a notoriously young user base. What I get from this is that Sonar is not doing so well in terms of visibility among the young crowd and Cakewalk really need to fix this problem as part of their long term strategy, and I'm sure they are talking about it. That's going to mean catering a little more for the electronic/EDM crowd than they are now, by borrowing/expanding upon some of the features that other DAW's have implemented for that crowd. Things like the global modulation sources of Bitwig, or the drum rack of Ableton, more features geared toward pattern based arrangement and better automation capabilities. Sonar has a solid user base of older muso's who use the program almost as a tape machine to record more traditional forms of music, but it's not really doing as well as it should among younger users who, regardless of the genre they play, are incorporating synth and EDM type elements into their modern productions.

Well said.

Logic X was rife with bugs and crashes when it came out. It's better now, thankfully. And CoreAudio is a good protocol but no guarantee for well working stuff. An entire series of Macs has had hardware issues with USB audio, El Capitan has caused trouble for plenty of people with lots of software packages, and I've personally had to rescue friends with a MOTU card and an MBox that mysteriously stopped working.

All computers suck. Stop pretending yours doesn't because you paid more.

I had a chuckle at this video: https://youtu.be/VfUGYLvsqtg
 
The fact that Dave Pensado is excited about 32bit/64bit wrappers in Pro Tools, in 2016, made me laugh. And reminded me just how far ahead Sonar has always been.

How do the ASIO drivers I use with SONAR on my PC for connecting to the audio interface compare to Apple's Core Audio and MIDI interfaces? I know one of the limitations of the Firewire and USB interfaces I use is that only one interface can be connected to SONAR at a time using ASIO. That limitation may go away if I were using one of the new much more expensive AVB Ethernet interfaces.
 
With respect to SONAR vs other DAW's I have no experience; but in reading reviews and following SONAR for over a decade, I've come to believe that Cakewalk has kept SONAR at or near the front of the pack on Windows taking full advantage of Windows improvements more quickly that competitors. Also, I think SONAR offers the most flexible workflow with the least restrictions. I also think that Cakewalk has been really innovative, with ARA and ProChannel being excellent examples of technologies that aren't available for other DAWs to my knowledge.
 
I also like Cakewalk's practice of bundling 3rd-Party plugins to provide core functionality rather than investing development resources into me too plugins that don't really add anything. However, I think Cakewalk could further improve SONAR by adding plugin functionality that is bundled with other DAWs but isn't available in SONAR. I read a lot of recording and mixing tutorials and learn about plugins that are included with other DAWs such as Cubase and Logic that aren't available with SONAR. One example I just ran across looking for ideas for processing acoustic guitar DI inputs is Logic's Match EQ which can apparently model one signal (in my case an acoustic guitar DI) to match the audio signature of a reference signal (in my case a target acoustic guitar recording). I know that there are workarounds available in SONAR, but the added functionality would be nice.
 
Bill

denverdrummer
OSX CoreAudio does some cool stuff, but it does come with significant overhead compared to ASIO.  The advantage is you can do some cool routing with multiple interfaces and even your onboard mic and headphone jack, where ASIO is more of the "one at a time" approach.  The big drawback to CoreAudio (and my information is a few years old so they may have updated some of this) is that performance goes to crap when using smaller sample sizes where Windows with ASIO drivers is more consistent performance regardless of samples.
 
This info is a few years old but will give you an idea:
 
http://www.dawbench.com/win7-v-osx-4.htm
 
 Thanks. That's very useful.
 
Bill