Why is Sonar popular with guitarists?

I have read that both here and elsewhere. Is there anything about Sonar that benefits guitarists more than other DAWs?

I like Guitar rig which comes with Sonar.
Craig Anderton wrote a book about Guitarists guide to sonar.

It's simple?  No, that would be for bassists.

I would venture it is for a couple of combing reasons.  One, it is PC.  No need for a special, expensive Mac.  If you have an internet laptop Cake will work.   And it was pretty cheap to get into back when. In 2003 I got a free copy of Plasma w/ computer music. So the cost for getting into was cheap if you had a home computer and wanted to do some recording.  A couple of hundred bucks and you had a better system than several thousand could have bought in the analog days - you needed to spend about two grand each on a reel to reel and board to get into consumer sound.

And Cake/SONAR is a pretty simple DAW - it was easy enough for me to switch from a Yamaha CX5M and its basic sequencer program in the days of yore. 

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And Cake/SONAR is a pretty simple DAW - it was easy enough for me to switch from a Yamaha CX5M and its basic sequencer program in the days of yore. 

I only got into using DAWs relatively recently. Before that, the last computer music making I did was using OctaMED on the Amiga (which looks pretty similar to the original DOS Cakewalk...columns of numbers etc). I was actually pretty shocked at how much more there was to it when I hooked up with Pro Tools years later. Especially on the mixing and automation side. I think I'd probably find Sonar quite complicated if it was the first modern DAW I'd used....but after having been immersed in Pro Tools for a while, I'm finding the learning curve to be quite shallow (i.e. was making music with it after a couple of hours). Mastering a DAW, however, is another matter entirely. 

I'm not a guitarist (I can play guitar, but don't consider myself a *guitarist*) and I've noticed this since the old Cakewalk Pro Audio days. First of all, it's a cultural factor. Sonar is the only major American-made sequencer DAW (Pro Tools, though also American-made, doesn't count, since MIDI sequencing was added on as an afterthought later on, and Apple's Logic was originally made by German company Emagic), and Americans, generally speaking are more into guitars and rock & roll (and country too), whereas the Europeans are more into electronic/dance music, and thusly gave the world Cubase, (the original) Logic, Reason and Ableton Live. Second of all, mainly because of those cultural reasons, it was heavily marketed towards guitar players (take a look at most of the advertisements for Sonar; nearly all of them depict guitar players). As an electronic musician in the '90s, though I was a devoted CWPA/Sonar user, the lack of certain features at the time was sort of frustrating, but I learned to work around those limitations. Eventually Sonar caught up, though maybe too late for most electronic musicians/producers, especially on the other side of the Atlantic, to take notice. Third, it's got a guitar tuner built in for goodness sakes!

As a complete newbie to sequencing, Midi, and computer music generally back in 2007, after doing a bit of research I was completely torn 50/50 between Sonar & Cubase.

PT was prohibitively expensive, and at the time was Mac only, which was a non-starter seeing I've been a pc guy since forever. This also ruled out Logic & DP. The other packages at the time seemed a little low on feature count.

So I then did a LOT of research into the 2 packages and, believe it or not, the deciding factor came down to the existence of this very forum, unlike Cubase which as we all know, is a bit of a minefield at best.

I think I made the right choice 

because they dont need notation also djs......

As a guitarist all I can say is I bought it because it touted full audio recording capabilities, really good mixing/mastering options with a hefty dose of MIDI stuff and SD3 to round out my tunes. I looked at pretty much everything currently out there and Sonar was the one for me. I could essentially produce an entire album with just my guitar/bass (and with the MIDI bass options the bass isn't necessary), an interface and a couple of mics for vocals. No fuss, no muss. Also it was WAY cheaper than anything else out there that does the same thing. Ableton? That ain't for rock dinosaurs. Reaper? Cheaper but weird and extremely basic. PT? I hate everything about PT based on principal. Nuendo? Can't afford it. Logic, Reason, Cubase? Well I don't have a Mac and the others just didn't crink my crank and didn't offer as much for the same price. YMMV.

I'm a guitarist, but I got bored with that and seen other artists producing music that was selling well using sound samples and synths. So I ventured into the world of midi with Opcode's Vision program. Once Opcode shut down,  I came to Guitar Pro, then later to Sonar because of it's midi capabilities and have not been disappointed. For a while Cool Edit/Audition was my music production tool but it didn't have midi capabilities. Adobe tried adding midi to AA3 but it didn't work out well and they dropped it, now calling themselves a editing only program. Sonar is a full fledged music production program that works for me and doesn't cost $600. Plus it comes with loads of bells and whistles which make it a great bang for the buck program. There's plenty of dirt cheap alternatives out there, but I feel it's worth paying a fair price for quality program. You get a lot for your money.

Cakewalk + PC offered one of the least expensive ways to get into audio-based hard disk recording back in the day. Some other DAWs had really great MIDI implementations, which was fine for keyboard players, but not so much for guitarists.

When I was writing "The Guitarist's Guide to Sonar" I was struck my how many "guitaristic" things there were that I'd sort of taken for granted. The Sonitus modulation effect is a great guitar effect, and being able to derive envelopes using the Analyzer is really helpful for filters and such. Being able to restrict highs in the Sonitus Delay's feedback loop makes it easier to get more of a "Memory Man" type of sound. Also I can get a great wah sound through the parallel parametric/"throw one out of phase" trick.

I will say PT with an Eleven Rack is pretty cool because you can edit Eleven Rack within PT, but no other DAW. However, Eleven Rack works great with Sonar, and once I have a preset the way I like, I can do any tweaks I want from the front panel. I wrote an article for Harmony Central  about how to use Eleven Rack with just about every program except Pro Tools

candlesayshi


I play guitar, but do electronic music. I feel so lost! 

I hear ya....born and raised on Frank Zappa, Little Feat, Steely Dan, the Mahavhishnu Orchestra etc, played guitar obsessively for most of my life, love the feel of "real" music played by real musicians, but when it comes to making music with a DAW I have always been drawn to the electronic/sequnced side. I think it's the ultimate marriage of my two main obsessions....computers and music. I am, however, forever looking ways to shoehorn guitar parts into my tracks!

Rain hit it on the head first.. its not Sonar, nor guitarists, but statistics...

Sonar runs on the PC
The majority segment of personal computer owners own a PC
The majority segment of musical instrument players play a guitar
Therefore it is a reasonable conclusion that the largest segment of musical instrument players using Sonar are guitarists.

I use it coz it's left-handed.

sharke

I think it's the ultimate marriage of my two main obsessions....computers and music. I am, however, forever looking ways to shoehorn guitar parts into my tracks! 

That's been my modus operandi lately. I've been blending guitar sounds into my electronic stuff with some pretty good success. Thinking of my guitar as merely a "thing that makes noise". So, I've been doing a lot of stuff with it to work it in and get some really interesting textures.

Bub


I've noticed that Guitar Rig sounds better with humbuckers driving it rather than single coil strat style pickups. Can't give a logical explanation why, but that's how I hear it on my system. I use GR on vocals a lot as well.

You could be right. Plus any preset that has a lot of gain just gives me ridiculous buzzing. I guess that's pretty much Telecasters through and through though, they're not at their best in extremely distorted situations! I use GR on pretty much anything. You can get some wild sounds going on there.