The SONAR X Series is SO GOOD!

Hi all,  I just had to post on this board to say how inpressed I am with the Sonar X-Series DAW software. I have been composing and producing music for only five months, after a break of over fifteen years (!) and have found this DAW to be perfect for my home studio needs. Easy to learn and user friendly, I tried numerous demos before deciding on this one. I use it for all recording, mixing and exporting, ready for mastering. If you are looking for a quality DAW, then look no further (and no, I don't work for the company). If you want to hear what this DAW can do I have posted some tracks on reverbnation.com
Best wishes, Malcolm F Hill

The exuberance of youth :)
 
You will undoubtedly run into a few things along your path, but one of the most significant aspects to using Sonar is this user forum.  I am not saying this to be a naysayer, I just want to let you know that there will likely be some hopefully minor things that pop up, but that help is here for you.
 
There are quite a few REALLY good and helpful folks here, and if you have questions or problems, folks here will work hard to help you, and that's really a cool thing.
 
Sonar is not perfect, and no recording software is, but this forum goes a long way to getting the most out of what is a really good product - this release has a lot going for it.
 
I will also add that there have been several maintenance updates already to X3 - in fact they got X3a finished in time to actually be the first release - which was unexpected, but quite cool.  We are already on X3d, and if I am not mistaken, there will be at least one more such update at some point.
 
Lastly, even though this is a user forum, the Cakewalk folks DO read a lot of these posts, and DO post here - often at COMPLETELY unexpected times on weekends and in the middle of the night.
 
Bob Bone
 

Love is relative...

Guitarmech111
give it time...  ;)

 

Guitarmech111
Love is relative...

Please refrain from the trolling.

Been using Sonar since 2.0 XL back in '01 I think it was. Jumped to Ableton for awhile, Cubase, and a couple of others before returning back to Sonar at Sonar 4. I'm also very impressed with X3. Little bit of a learning curve to get through, but this is my DAW of choice for good. No more jumping around looking for greener pastures for me.

As to the OP, all DAWs these days are pretty good. They're also all flawed or have limitations, which is why there isn't just one DAW that everyone in the world uses. But I believe there are several reasons why so many people are simpatico with Sonar.
 
1. Windows can be a really iffy environment. Cakewalk works very hard to have Sonar be as compatible with as many different systems as possible. There will always be some people whose system won't be happy with some particular piece of software for some reason; a quick glance at any forum for any DAW or interface will confirm this. Unfortunately, the way technology works gives three main choices: those people need to find non-Sonar software that's compatible with their particular system, find a system that's more compatible with Sonar, or learn enough about their existing system to make their own fixes (the example I always like to use is graphics cards, because it seems so counter-intuitive that a graphics card can bring an audio system to its knees). Wishing that Sonar or the hardware on which it runs will magically change won't produce tangible results.
 
2. Sonar focuses on music creation. As that's the goal of many people (as opposed to something more esoteric), Sonar will take care of their needs better than software with a different focus.
 
3. The previous comment notwithstanding, Sonar does LOTS of different things well. If you look at what people do on this forum, it's everything from bands to songwriting to narration to audio-for-video to EDM to creating sample libraries. Not that many DAWs are as good at so many things.
 
4. Sonar has a personality. Its developers hang out on the forum. When you work with Sonar, it's not with some faceless corporation, but with Noel, Ryan, Seth, Andrew, etc.
 
5. This forum. Most of the people who inhabit this forum seem like the kind of people you wish were your neighbors.