(I can't handle da truth, but here's why I use SONAR :-)

1) Good ++ (and in some cases excellent) audio AND midi under one roof.
2) Flexibility, with softsynths, dxi, vst, rewire.
3) Extensive routing/bussing possibilities during mixing.
4) Sounds good.
5) Fairly easy to work with and relatively intuitive.
6) Cool stuff I don't use often but comes in handy from time to time (score view/printing).
7) Support a smaller, responsive, cool company whose business practices (licensing, upgrade pricing) I agree with.
8) Plays nice on laptops or desktops.

Steve E.

Because -

1 - I started using cakewalk products at pro audio 4. I needed something to learn from. I had been in studios from time to time and the writing was all over the walls, floors and outside of buildings that DAW was the new direction. MIDI was just a passing fad to me, audio recording was the bees knees. I needed to start someplace, and cakewalk was the one product I had read and heard about from a few folks.

2 - The updates have done exactly what they said they would do - plus the extra bennies in audio add ins were a welcome addition.

3 - I use pro tools in the pro studios and sonar at home. I don't feel I am missing out while at home or in the studio. I am not a power user on either system, but I can get around pretty well.

All in all - I can do the job I say I can do for myself and my clients - thats it. Dad taught me my word should be gold.

Best Regards,

Lance

I use Sonar because I couldn't work Cubase at all -- a slimmed down version came with a sound card.

I went to FL Studio, or Fruityloops as it was then. A great program for MIDI but not audio.

I got a version of GuitarTracks. Loved it. Bought Sonar 3 PE within a week.

Sonar is nice and intuitive. Not perfect, full of annoying little things (like the gradual increase in latency as you loop a couple of bars to do a recording). But at least I can work it, more or less.


Oli

I use Sonar becasue I have been there snce the GReg days in 89.......I bought an UG copy of Cubase before Sonar came out and quickly trashed it and went back to Cakewalk. Cubase at that time had no "ins" files. You had to write a program to change synth patches........I had 12 Sound Sources with seemingly thousands of sounds, banks and stuff....ran back to Cakewalk......I was seduced at NAMM by the Cubase graphics. Sonar 1 fixed all that and oit was worth the wait. Haven't "strayed" since.

Sonar 4PE, SOund Forge, Vegas 5, Acid matches made in Heaven....

I used PT for four years in a studio situation (90-94). I liked it for editing and it was very good for movie work (laying in dialogue, sound FX, music, etc.). The best thing about it was that it ran on a Mac. I still get choked when I think about the level of knowledge I am required to have to use Windoze.

At the time it was only four channel. I mostly used it in conjuction with Opcodes StudioVision software, which was an AWESOME MIDI enviroment. I miss it so.

Anyway, I stayed out of the game for a few years and then bought back in in 1999. Cakewalk PA8 was packaged with the Creamware Pulsar card that I had decided on. I've been upgrading ever since, currently at 3PE. to be honest I wasn't impressed right off the bat. I looked at everything else that was around at the time, and didn't like the other systems any better. I found the procedure for editing to be bizarrely complicated and clumsy after PT. Over the years I have adapted and Sonar has continually improved.

I work at a studio that uses Nuendo 2.x., so I have to know it. It does some things well and others...well...let's just say that I don't have a very Teutonic view of how things should work. The studio owner bought it for the surround sound support, which it does well, I'll have to wait and see how 4PE is in this regard.

I find Sonar to be a perfectly usaeable tool that allows me to record quickly and easily. I would not change for anything that is currently considered to be the "competition".

Oh, and there is no other forum out there like this one, for any product I have ever used.

R

I use Sonar Producer because it is the best price performance product on the market. If you don't believe me, check out this grid.

http://www.theaudiocave.com/dawchart.htm

I use sonar because at the time I was choosing my current DAW software sonar was the best bang/buck by far.

That was back at sonar 2 and the bangs keep getting bigger :)

Kind regards

Dave Rich.

works fine for midi but for audio not as good as protools.

i agree with you .. more investment improving audio editing features and
a bit more time improving envelope drawing/editing (and stability) and Sonar would clearly be
superior to PT in this area ... dang close though.

Yes but remember, U r comparing a Program that u can up-grade to for $150.00 and some hardware that might only cost u between $500.00 to $2,000.00 depending on what u decide on (which may also determine some of the advantages and disadvantages u may have with Sonar so chose wisely) to a Platform that will cost u at least from $10,000.00 to 50,000.00 just 2 equal the performance of Sonar with certain choice hardware. And forget about PT's LE editions. I would loss half my client base if I only had 32 track on the fly recording and limited I/O matrix systems. Way 2 limited 4 me. Remember, with PT u must buy their Hardware to get their Software and hardware is where all the money goes. By the way, so many things r going virtual today. What's 2 stop everyone from not investing in lots of hardware anymore when there r software consoles out there that can do just as good of a job as these glorified keyboard and mouse logic controllers.

Food 4 Thought:)
Z

I'm too lazy to learn any thing new. I started with Cakewalk 7. I have ACID, Ableton Live, and Protools as well, but I hardly use them

I got a new laptop, and a copy of Sonar 3 Studio, these were to be the heart of my new studio. My producer buddies kind of teased me... they are all Logic and ProTools. What sold me was the Acid file compatibility.

Same here, though this was the second time around. At first I was using Cool Edit and Pro Audio 9, ended up sticking with PA 9. Then I switched to a Mac. THEN I switched back, and with my new laptop I knew Sonar was going to be it. I was right.

This is re-confirmed every time I'm at a rehearsal and our bass player struggles with his Mac and Cubase rig. Things that are so involved - especially with loops - are so simple in Sonar. The ACID compatability was a big issue, although I thought the new SX now has this?

i have cubase, although it does kick ass, its not easy to use off the bat as cakewalk sonar 3, those ASIO drivers and input monitoring kick my butt every time, but i LOVE sonar

My first "real" soundcard was a Creative Labs AWE64Gold card. It came with a version of Cakewalk called Cakewalk Gold Express. It let me do audio and midi, which was cool, but being a Guitar player, I've always been more interested in the audio side. Cakewalk didn't really play well with my computer. An off the shelf Packard Bell DX66. So I started shopping for something that would.
I found magix midi studio @ Best Buy for like $70, and it just worked. After several computer upgrades, I kept up with Magix midi Studio, but I came across the need to record more than one physical input at a time. My Studio was growing, I had Drum Machines, Synths, and of course me on guitar. Now the folks at Magix would have liked for me to upgrade to Samplitude, but at the time, it was audio only, and I had gotten used to midi's flexibility. I actually depended on midi for non-guitar parts. So I chose to go with Logic 5.5(since Magix midi studio was more or less a repackaged simplified Logic). Let me tell you, I was in heaven. It had a lot more features than midi-studio, more instruments, and more effects. Well, you all know it was shortly after 5.5.2 that Apple aquired Mac, and I ain't buying a Mac(ain't gonna happen). So I was shopping again. I downloaded the demo of Soanr 1.1, and played with it. I didn't really care for it. If I remember right, I couldn't download a copy of SX. And what can you really tell from a trial version anyway, if you can't save anything. A big part of what I was doing, was recording riffs, and slapping drum and bass grooves on them, saving them, and coming back at a later time to see if they still inspired me.
Anyway, I was still using Logic/Win98SE for a couple more years. Acid had came out, and that intrigued me, but there was no midi, and you could only record a stereo pair, so I wasn't too interested. Acid loops interested me, but not Acid.
I read an review about Sonar where the guy talked about using Acid loops in his projects, and that's when I shnapped and made the decision to swap. However I think it was real close to the release of Sonar 2.0 or what ever, so I waited for it. After using Sonar, with Acid loops, my need to record more than a single audio pair has greatly been reduced. Since I'm using more loops, I'm using less midi.
Anyway, I did buy SX 1.0, I think. Just because. But I've never upgraded it, because I don't use it. Going from Logic 5.5.2, to Sonar 2.0 was easier than going to Cubase for me. It's not that it's difficult, I can figure out how to do what I want to do, but it just didn't make a lot of sense. Play, stop, return to beginning, record all those key commands in Cubase are the same as they are in Logic, & Reason which I liked. Sonar is the odd man out, but it wasn't difficult to make the change. Logic, Reason and Cubase will let you arm a track while your project plays, which I'm getting tired of waiting for Sonar to do. But I can obviously live with this limitation.
Logic & Cubase didn't support Acid loops, which was a big part of what I did/do. Creating tracks, busses, sends, adding effects, selecting regions, cutting tracks, cloning tracks, bouncing tracks, and just the way the program behaves when you click on a region, a tracks header, the transport, the effects box and a lot of little things where great timesavers when I switched from Logic to Sonar, and I don't want to give those up. Cubase handles many of the above items like Logic, which to me is a step backwards.
Cubase has that audio warp, which looks cool in the video demo, but takes like a million clicks to get it to do what you really want it to do. Sonar4's new stuff looks really good to me too. I like the way cake has implemented track folders, which again isn't the way Cubase/Logic does it. But Cakewalks way makes more sense. It's the way I would have done it. The mute tools, comping, slip editing, Loop Construction et. al in S4 are like spades to Cubase's Warp, and addition of Acidized loops.
I'm still on S3PE. waiting to see what happens with five. More than anything now, I'd like to arm/disarm that darn red button while the project plays. If it doesn't come in 5, I don't know what I'll do. I might get a mac, and go back to logic(picking up project 5 might be more likely though.)
Heck if Protools would just sell a card that will accept ADAT in, I'd be happy. I've already got a mixer I'd like to continue to use, I don't need all that DigiRack or Digi 002.
Magix midi studio now let's you record multiple ins, I might go that way. Samplitude is getting alot closer to what I want. But right now, Sonar is closest. More than likely, I'll eat some crow and get Sonar5. I really like what S4 brought to the table, and I'm fighting myself daily not to upgrade.

I´ve only used sonar for a couple of month, but have allready mixed and recorded around 25 tunes on it.

So far i´m VERY happy about it.

I also got a nuendo license, but had my dongle stolen, so i´m left with my old 1.6. (don´t you just hate dongles when that happen)
That was one of the reasons that i didn´t wan´t to buy that again.
NO more DONGLES for me.

Sonar feels like a very onest program to me, it does what it does, no OVERHYPED functions that actually don´t work because they shouldn´t been released until two years later.

LIKE: i prefer to stop the music to enable rec, and that the DAW stops if somethings wrong, if that means recording is safer that way.
Not like nuendo way, where i often was afraid wheter things were in sync when they were recorded. (It happened in nuendo 2.21, when you did a 24 track recording, if something wen´t wrong it always tried to continue, so you weren´t sure if it worked out okay. For instance if an overload or something happened, it kept recording but when you pressed stop, one of the tracks was shorter than the others).

-Sonar feels more happy about low latency, than nuendo did. I couldn´t even dream about having 24 track softmonitoring with effects at 1.5 ms, in nuendo. Sonar does this with a smile. (I can even back up my system while recording)
Don´t know abouts synths though, cause right now i´m mainly record other band, haven´t got time for my own stuff.

-I have worked alot in samplitude too. A great program, but i to often experienced using 20 min. looking for some function i used a month ago. there are simply to many functions and to many submenues in this program for me.

-One thing is miss thoung are some hotkeys for the mixer PLEASE. If you got 50 tracks in a tune, you really get tired scrolling a the bottombar all the time. I worked alot in logic before, and you could setup your mixer, so that 1-16 was on F6, 17-32 on F7, busses on F9 or whatever you like.

ANYWAY, i think i found my DAW. From 3 criterias:

- Sound.
- STABILITY.
- Workflow.

i saw CNN @ 1998, i was 15 years old lol, and they were talking about how revolutionary the world of home recording was... i was blown away with the concept and managed to get a copy of cakewalk HS 7 years later... i've been a cakewalk fan ever since... i jumped from there to Sonar 1, then to Sonar 2 XL, never tried Sonar 3...

Now I'm using Cakewalk Sonar 4 PE and i must say i love it...

I've tried Logic and Cubase and find Sonar to be much more intuitive than any other software around... i'm still very fond of Logic but since it is only for MAC computers... i guess Cakewalk and I still have a long way to go together...