I was going to post a funny reply, but Jamester, you topped it! Very funny, bat-man!!! :)

BTW, I agree with all the positive posts above. Sonar is great, it's PC based (I dumped Logic for Sonar just before Logic dumped the PC), and the company is tremendous. Just look at this forum to see the kind of involvement Cakewalk has with its users.

I like what you're doing, Cakewalk. :)

ORIGINAL: jamester

....I use Sonar because, if I didn't, the enemy submarines might get me.

I use Sonar because I'm a bat.

A Charm City Bat, no less. :-)

By the way, my real answer is: in the early nineties, when I was a comp major in school, I was using Cakewalk as a compositional tool to write art songs (in general midi.... ack! I'd use the clarinet sound for the voice part because it was the least annoying. I ignored/didn't understand midi velocity, because it didn't seem to make any difference!) I remember liking everything about it except the fact that it picked the enharmonic spelling for you, and as a modern-sounding composer, that's a no-no.

So a few years back I was looking to revisit some of those old pieces, and could not find the old disk, so I logged onto Cake's server and bought Cakewalk Express as a download. When it came time to go for the big guns staying with concept and company I knew seemed the obvious choice.

It's funny but I almost gave up on Cakewalk a while ago. I bought my first box in 1995 and had Cakewalk (don't remember which version) when it only was a MIDI program. I upgraded as they said it would now, get this, record MIDI and audio and sync them together. When I upgraded they (techs and documentation) that it would work with my Ensoniq sound card. I purchased it and when I loaded it, nothing was working. When I called I was told that Ensoniq backed out of letting them incorporate the drivers into the program. Now I had spent my hard earned money for a program that wasn't working. I was livid but I let them know and they apologized. They never asked me if they could refund my money though which was a sore spot. One thing happened through all of this. There was always someone on the end of the phone in Massachusetts. I was in NY and felt that they were a small company that had great people working there. The next time I upgraded I made sure I found out what sound card to purchase, and made the plunge. I have been with them ever since and am a REGISTERED owner od Sonar 4 Producers and P5 V2. So it's the people behind the scenes that make it for me.

I started using it because I didn't have the budget for anything more expensive on top of the rest of my gear and just kinda got used to it. Having said that, I just recently got Nuendo and now I wouldn't look back, mainly for its film scoring abilities and general post production features. As well as that, I'm not a fan of Sonar's rewire. It only lets you use 16 channels per application and for orchestral work with GigaStudio (and it's 128 channels!) it's useles.

Having said that, If I'm trying to bash out a quick project which I don't need Goga for, I still use Sonar for the speed I can use it (being used to the platform) and also for when I'm finishing off/polishing up older Sonar pojects.

To be honest though, I preferred Sonar 2.2 to the current 4 Producer, even though the plugins on 4 are more superior.

Sonar is also better for smaller powered PCs. Nuendo takes a heck of a lot to run really efficiently - you're looking pretty much a 2GB Ram and then another macing for other apps.

So do all you Sonar users think us Guitar Tracks Pro 2 or 3 users are like Junior Vice Presidents? I have seen the newest Sonar on a demo and it looks so complicated. But there are a lot of similarities I see between GTP3 and Sonar. It's just that Sonar seems to have about 10 buttons for every 1 that GTP has. I always considered Sonar to be some big pro thing that I would never even get half its potential from. At the end of the day, Sonar is option and feature city, and I suppose GTP gives just the basics and perhaps a little more.

get's the job done.

I used to use ProTools in the studio, but couldn't afford it when I was setting up my home rig, and I went with Cubase/Nuendo. This was pre-Sonar, and cakewalk products had a bad rep among audio engineer-types as being a low-grade consumer toy-- I never even looked at them. When Sonar first came out, it was getting really good press, and I was becoming ever more frustrated with stability and workflow problems with Steinberg. I decided to try Sonar and loved it and have never looked back. Best sequencer I've ever used. I do wish it had support for side-chain, though.

Cheers.

Hi

Well I came to use Sonar XL 2.2 for gigs……….. I started with Cubase many years ago but found VST and SX to be unreliable so I needed a replacement.

I must say after all the negative comments on Cubase-net over the years about Cakewalk I was most surprised at the quality and reliability of Sonar, so much so that I’ve upgraded to 3 and now on 4PE.

I hardly use SX 2 now, but still have some projects that need finishing.

For me it was stability that won me over at first, then I discovered the great features and value for money is another big plus, the high quality plugins I have now courtesy of Cakewalk would have cost quite a bit on their own, a nice thick Manual to read at leisure, and then this great place where you Guys and the Mods are always on hand to help with queries and problems,……………… you just can’t put a price on that.

I've been so impresed with cakewalk (I guess I was used to being treated differently). I even went ahead and ordered Project 5 V2.

As a defector from PT, I gotta agree. One of the main reasons I've stuck with Sonar through what, for me, was a steep learning curve was A) how nice the company is to its customers, and B) how good these user forums are.

Frankly, the software still doesn't do all I'd like it to, and it get's glitchy from time to time (though methinks that's probably Windoze, not CW) but if they (and y'all) keep being so damn helpful, then I'm down for the long haul.

First, it's a damn good program. Specifically, things that set it apart for me are the flexibility of the mixer routing; the two-speed freeze function; the ease with which FX inserts can be reordered; the POW-r dithering. There's a lot more if I spent more time thinking...

But it all comes down to this. I'm a bit particular about who (whom?) I do business with, and who I rely upon for fixes, improvements, and support. Meaning Cakewalk and this group. Also, Cakewalk doesn't act like Mother Superior when dealing with their customers. They seem to grasp what seems to elude so many: what's good for the customer is good for business.

And, so far at least, no damn dongle or having to phone home to get permission to use your license everytime you reformat or change the wrong component.

Class act.

I started out using Home Studio 5. I eventually updated to Home Studio 2002. I needed more MIDI Sync capabilities than what HS offers, which is why I updated to SONAR.

I have used Cakewalk since version 8.0. I got it basically because I was familiar with the name Cakewalk. I waited a while to upgrade from Pro Audio 9 to Sonar, but did that two years ago and have been fairly pleased with it. Now I use Sonar 4.x Producer Edition.

I've basically been a recording hobbyist but it's definitely a very passionate hobby of mine. My day job has been web development and application programming. My major at college though was music composition. So, needless to say I've always wanted to make music my actual day job.

Recently, I got the chance to do a soundtrack for a pilot episode of a show that will hopefully end up on either the Discovery channel or TLC. It's an actual show! I was so excited when I got the opportunity that I actually had an epiphany of sorts and decided to quit my job, sell my house and live off of the profits until I could finally make a living at music.

This was a huge decision and while initially I was filled with piss and vinegar, I've also had my anxiety filled moments and fear of making a huge mistake.

This soundtrack was for 45 minutes worth of video which is by far the longest project I've tackled and given that I only had about 1 1/2 weeks to get it done, I was very stressed out.

What allowed me to get this done though was without a doubt, Sonar. Yes, I am not totally familiar with the other programs out there, but because of the knowledge I've garnered so far through 5 years of working with Pro Audio and Sonar, learning all the extra tricks to make the music flow out quickly and under a tight deadline was not painful at all.

the new things I had to learn were:
working with existing loops and creating my own loops, both audio and midi.
working with softsynths like the new Pentagon (I used this on about 50% of the music, it's awesome)
using the VSampler (from version 3)
importing and recording along side a video track
working with freezing tracks

to add to the learning curve, I also bought the RME Fireface to ensure that I was giving them "pro" audio sound instead of the Delta 66 $hit I had been using (huge difference)

To be perfectly honest, there were some road bumps along the way. However, I got it all done by the deadline. The production company was very happy with the final cut of the music and so were their clients. So it looks like I might actually be able to make a career out of this after all!!!

Basically, I think you need to make a choice and stick with something through thick and thin. Cakewalk's customer support has been great, so whatever bumps do come up, I know they will help to resolve them. And thanks to Sonar, I was able to produce my first "real" soundtrack and be totally proud of it. Some of my best stuff is in it, and that's because once the creative juices started to flow like a dam bursting, Sonar wasn't standing in the way, but helping. (end advertisement)

Because holding my breath and using binoculars to search for enemy submarines was getting old.

(Sorry - couldn't resist after seeing title.)

Here in Germany Sonar seems kind of exotic DAW. If you go into a shop, outing yourself as a Sonar user you will get questionmarks or slight smiles in their faces. Seems to me that I enter "Cubasia" and I have to show my passport.
But here in my musicschool we have licences for Sonar4 PE. It's a good programm, stable and good to handle.BTW the license bundle was much cheaper than that of cubase. The manual is not well interpreted to german, but we all here can understand english, so that's not the main problem. The forum is great, informative and mostly helpful. I don't know much about Cubase, but I know that this company is working in my place of birth and it's a pity that this small company is now going smaller because it was sold to pinnacle and now to Yamaha...to whom next? These things IMO don't improve the product.
But as you mentioned, we all have so many projects unfinshed everywhere and in Sonar, too. My problem is that I don't have time enough to learn all the features of S4 ....suddenly S5 appears!

The mystery man came over an' he said "I'm outta site".
He said for a nominal service ´charge I could reach ner-vonna tonite
If I was ready, willing and able to pay him his regular fee He would drop all the rest of his pressing affairs And devote his attention to me
But I said
Look here brother
WHO YOU JIVIN' WITH THAT COSMOC DEBRIS?
fRANK zAPPA

Cheers from europe