Sonar is a very scalable DAW solution.
The young folks... who may be brilliant musicians... can afford to get started with lower end hardware.
And the pro can interface with the likes of Apogee/Benchmark/Mytek/etc.

As much as I love gear...
It's all to easy to start overthinking and overinflating its importance.
I know one particular "rock guitar hero" who was using a Digi 001 to record guitar overdubs.
Couldn't believe it... but he made it work. Had no affect on his record sales... ;-)

Understand that Sonar comes from and includes MIDI sequencing ability. It is a sequencer. PT is not. That is the why many of us use Sonar and not PT.

Pt will not support outboard MIDI hardware such as sound modules for example. PT would be a useless multi tracker on my comp because the things it can do are done very nicely in Sonar already.

Talk about Cubase or Logic and we will have a debate. PT is not in that group.

Do you get it now?

Best
John

ORIGINAL: Sonar71

Sonar is probably better than ProTools if not worse, but I wonder, which one is the best?

Obviously, ProTools has less users and is a relatively new package and quite frankly, I can't see this taking off.

Protools is older than Sonar, Protools comes from about the 1990s, Sonar was released almost 10 years later.

Why would a Quebase user go to ProTools without any functionality? How do you justify this?
In an ideal world, the choice would all be down to the fact that one is better than the other but this is not an ideal world. One of them is actually WORSE than the other but I don't know which.
The final decision has to be made the people who decide what they actually want from a computer.

At the end of the day its up to you. If it's not up to you it is probably up to someone else.

There are a great deal of things to consider. Some people just prefer a different piece of DAW software because it works for me. Me personally I love working in Project5, because it fits, yet the majority of people in this forum and especially in others will look upon it as a toy application. Some people love Ableton Live because of what it offers.

Best way of finding out , is to try the Demos of each for a few days and see what you prefer.

Also I am not sure I accept your premise. First some gear may be competing with other makers feature set. But they market a lot of stuff that there is really no other comparable alternatives to.

Further what is meant by "better"?

Nope. Not gonna go there. Nice try, you rascal.

ORIGINAL: hv

I've never used PT, but is it true that you can set up recording pools? Like specify more than one drive or directory for the recording cache so you can spread them across multiple drives without using raid? Somebody told me that, and the idea sounds so cool.

Yes Howard, it's true. They call it disc allocation. There's a way to "trick" Sonar to do that as well if you have a lot of tracks and one drive can't keep up.

ORIGINAL: D.Triny

Understand that Sonar comes from and includes MIDI sequence ring ability. It is a sequencer. PT is not. That is the why many of us use Sonar and not PT.

actually MIDI in PT 7.3.1. is not bad. As a matter of fact, for me personally SONAR handles audio better than PT and PT handles MIDI better than SONAR. It comes down to the way you want to work.

my experience is entirely the opposite ;-)

jeff

Jeff, glad you're back. do you think that PT HD would sound better than SONAR, even if SONAR was able to use the HD 192 front end?

In other words, everything else being equal, conversion, pres, clocks, etc., PT HD sounds better?

It dose not support hardware synths and modules though and that is a problem for me

are you sure about this? in the MIDI outs on the tracks I surely do see my MIDI out ports enumerated. Haven't tried them though since I use only virtual synths.

ORIGINAL: Jim Roseberry

ORIGINAL: stratton
As far as gear's importance, in my experience there has been a direct relationship to the amount of money I've spent on gear and the ease of use and sound quality. And, I haven't made a significant ($$) purchase in a couple of years. I have what I need and any defect in audio quality in my product is all ME, rather than the gear.

You do (usually) get what you pay for...
And I'm not promoting the idea of using subpar stuff. (I too have M-powered sitting dormant)
I like fine instruments/processors/converters as much as anyone... <g>
But (as you mention above) at some point, the gear's good enough. It may not be the absolute best... but we all have to live within some means (however great or small). A great tune/hook is SO much more important...

Yeah, finally I'm not distracted by the gear at all, and not too distracted by SONAR 6 to get work done so I can write and capture those hooks.

Come on 6.2.

are you sure about this? in the MIDI outs on the tracks I surely do see my MIDI out ports enumerated. Haven't tried them though since I use only virtual synths.

I have to remember that many here now do not know what I refer to when I say MIDI hardware support. Think instrument definition files for example.

Yes you can hook up all the hardware synths you want to protools and you will get a sound out of them. But do you really want to deal with MSB LSB data and Control 0 to change a patch? What if you are using a synth that has performance's how do deal with that?

This is only just the beginning. Do not forget that CW has been doing this for a very long time. It made one of the very first DOS MIDI sequencers called Cakewalk. The company was Twelve Tone Systems. We now call it Cakewalk.

Best
John

Good point
Listening to local bands doing original tunes is also an eye/ear opener.
Hmmm... maybe that's why we never play original tunes.

ORIGINAL: John

are you sure about this? in the MIDI outs on the tracks I surely do see my MIDI out ports enumerated. Haven't tried them though since I use only virtual synths.

I have to remember that many here now do not know what I refer to when I say MIDI hardware support. Think instrument definition files for example.

Yes you can hook up all the hardware synths you want to protools and you will get a sound out of them. But do you really want to deal with MSB LSB data and Control 0 to change a patch? What if you are using a synth that has performance's how do deal with that?

This is only just the beginning. Do not forget that CW has been doing this for a very long time. It made one of the very first DOS MIDI sequencers called Cakewalk. The company was Twelve Tone Systems. We now call it Cakewalk.

Best
John

Not trying to defend Protools LE here, but I really don't understand what you want to say.
Protools comes with patchlists for a large number of hardware synths. You simply click on a patchname and it will be selected. If your synth is not on the list, then you have to make your own patchlist (dealing with MSB and LSB). I don't see the difference to Sonar (or anything else) here.
Sonar has really a lot of cool things which are missing in Protools LE (PDC, unlimited tracks, freeze, etc), but regarding midi, to be honest I don't see a big difference compared to sonar. The only missing thing in Protools - compared to Sonar - is a dedicated drumeditor. Everything else is there. Some midifeatures were in Protools implemented even before sonar had it (input quantise, editing multiple midievents at once for example).

Feel free to discuss.

ORIGINAL: D.Triny

It dose not support hardware synths and modules though and that is a problem for me

are you sure about this? in the MIDI outs on the tracks I surely do see my MIDI out ports enumerated. Haven't tried them though since I use only virtual synths.

i ran PT midi out to my voyager yesterday and recorded the audio .. worked like a charm ;-)

jeff

ORIGINAL: stratton

ORIGINAL: Big Boss Man

ORIGINAL: sscannon
With that said, why doesn't Cakewalk bundle it's software with high-end custom hardware? That would be exceptional.

That is one of the top things I would like to see out of Cakewalk. Apple is teaming up with Apogee to deliver an interface with extremely low latency when used with Logic. Low latency is of the last remaining advantages of PTHD. If more of these software and hardware designers got together, they could crush PT.

Abso-frickinlutely.

I'm embarassed at the Cakewalk/Edirol joint effort. Yuck. I've got Neve, API, Lynx and Neumann and Eventide in my studio, and Cakewalk teams up with Edirol??

Why not Cakewalk and Lynx? SSL? Or Rupert Neve?

Or Creamware Scope. The most obvious and easy fit.

Or Creamware Scope. The most obvious and easy fit.

I've been meaning to look into them. Thanks for the reminder.

Or Creamware Scope. The most obvious and easy fit.