mixmkr
The flip side to this is someone who takes a program like Acid and makes stuff that their friends like and actually is listenable.  Fairly easy program to learn, if you've worked with computers.  Then...all of a sudden, they're a recording *musician*, yet their *hobby* is just 3 weeks old.  All of a sudden, they're able to play [guitar] much better because their recordings (samples/loops) have great fidelity, even though no one ever listens to it in a format other than a MP3 or on a phone or laptop speakers.
I see this A LOT.

Hey, more power to 'em! I can't tell you how many DJs I knew in the 90s who didn't like the bass loops they used or whatever, so they decided to learn an instrument and make their own loops. Then they got a laptop and a controller and started using MP3s...then creating their own music to mix...then getting into effects processing and MIDI...learning a DAW...programs like Acid are a gateway drug 

Yeah...more power to them.  Except the ones that get big headed and become rock star rappers after a 3 week honeymoon of having their friends ooh...and aah...over Sony Music created loops.

I'm not knocking the program or even the end result.  It's the "want it now" mentality that seems to surface.

Great post Craig! It sums up the experience perfectly. I bought Sonar 7 Pro Suite a short time after I bought Reason 4. Sonar seemed so overwhelming that I really didn't do anything with it for months. I concentrated on learning Reason, upgraded to version 5 then along came Propellerheads Record. I found Props gear to be extremely intuitive and now on version 7.1 is still a go to program to get ideas down quickly. Just before X1 came out I took up the deal to upgrade to 8.5 but Sonar still seemed too much to deal with. X1 seemed more user friendly and I started to get some use out of it from that point but still nowhere near it's potential. I didn't upgrade to X2 but now that I'm on X3 I have to say I am loving it! Sonar is now my main DAW and along with Reason as a ReWire slave I couldn't ask for much more............ 

Beepster
Having somewhat limited experience with other DAWs (and the previous one I used extensively was very old) I gotta ask the more seasoned/well rounded folks...
 
Am I mistaken in the impression that Sonar X series is a completely different animal compared to some of the other major players? Based on my limited experience and many video tuts that employed these other platforms they all seem to share some very similar themes and procedures.
 
I'm just wondering because I know when I first started with Sonar it seemed like everything was kind of strange and confusing until I learned my way around things. Personally I think once those growing pains are done with it's actually more intuitive, especially with X3, but I feel perhaps that is what trips a lot of newcomers up. I mean we even see a ton of pre X series users flipping out about how radically different things are until they figure things out and start singing it's praises.
 
I may have had a bit of an advantage in the sense that I was, for all real intents and purposes, a n00b so I wasn't breaking years or decades long habits when I made the switch. I think I would freak out much worse than an old timer engineer trying Sonar the first time if I was trying to do stuff on one of the more "traditional" DAWs. A perfect example is how busses are handle in some of those other programs. That crap just looks annoying as all heck.
 
Also Sonar users seem to have a MAJOR advantage as far as free learning resources. The company really does seem to provide what you'd have to spend thousands on college courses to learn about the other programs... and then there is this forum which is the fastest moving of all the company provided discussion boards.
 
Meh... just some thoughts and queries from a "n00b". I've only been at it two years and those two years have been filled with MASSIVE distractions which kept interrupting my studies but I really have no problems accomplishing anything with Sonar now. If I stumble I just do a google search. If that fails I annoy you guys. It always gets done though.

I really hope this doesn't sound like an old guy talking to the kid kinda post. BUT.  When I started out digital audio was new at least to most people. MIDI was out but it hadn't been around all that long a time either. Both seemed very difficult to understand. It took me awhile to get handle on just what they were.  The term DAW was for  dedicated hardware that could record and to some degree edit digital audio.  There were a handful of computer based programs that worked with audio. Some only worked with MIDI. What was best to use was mainly a question of what one could afford not which was easier to use. Pro Audio when it came out was $1200.  BTW Cakewalk the program was not all that user friendly and was MIDI only. It was the first DOS sequencer. 
 
All that as background sets the notion that it wasn't so much what was easier to use but rather what did the job. When CW brought MIDI and audio together they did their best to make the two work well together with the introduction of Pro Audio. Think about this for a moment Pro Audio and Sonar had the same key board shortcuts. When X1 appeared the way CW had developed Sonar changed for the second time but this everthing changed.The iconic button system of Pro Audio and Sonar and its keyboard shortcuts all were replaced with a totally new menu system. 
 
Its no wonder that many had a huge problem making the transition from Sonar to X1.  But the really important thing was that the fundamentals had not. MIDI was still MIDI and audio was still audio. Once you know what they are and how you go about accessing and editing them it becomes simple to adopt to a new way of doing things.
 
A new user coming to X3 for the first time without any MIDI or audio background is going to feel "overwhelmed". I think Craig got it right in his opening post making it clear that starting from scratch is tough but it is doable.
 
I recall you posting delightful chronicles on your experiences with learning X1. You knew what you wanted the software to do and why. You started with an idea about what could be done it was just a matter of figuring how it is done in X1. That is learning the language of the parts of the program and executing a workflow.        
 
 

In the 1960's I started out recording myself and my friends on quarter track tape machines, "overdubbing" using sound on sound, sometimes with a PA mixer for a front end. In the 1970's and 80's I engineered in "real" multitrack studios with 2-inch decks and room-sized consoles. I knew how to use the big stuff because I started on the little stuff and worked my way along little by little, learning what I needed to know to accomplish my immediate goal, whatever it happened to be at the time. It's actually the same stuff -- there's just more of it in a 48-channel board. Sometimes musicians would say something like "I don't know how you keep all this straight," and I would tell them that it's just the same few controls repeated 48 times (or 64, or 80...)
The way I read your excellent advice, Craig, is "...learn what you need to know to achieve your immediate goal." I don't know half of what's in X3, but I'm learning what I need to know as I go along, thanks to you and the many helpful contributors to this forum. I think if you do it this way -- and don't be too concerned about not knowing everything -- you'll be fine.
I have a friend who just bought his first DAW (X3!), and I will be forwarding your post to him.
 

As always Craig great post! you offer great insight.
I started recording with a Tascam cassette 4 track, ping ponging tracks and building up my recordings, then progressed to Guitar Tracks 2 on an old 486 with a whole 128 bytes of Ram and 40 meg of hard drive, another great Cakewalk product, then Sonar and the Pentium processors came out and I had to get my head around midi and a new keyboard, workstation all at the same time as a new operating system windows 95 then 98B.
Sonar has been my stable recording platform through all the computer and hardware changes until a power spike took out my both my MOTU 828 sound card interfaces and my Firewire and scsi card.
So now I use a Presonus 16.4.2 Digital mixer as my soundcard, still use firewire but now have 2 terabyte drives and 16 Gigabytes of RAM
So then came all the Versions of sonar between Sonar 1 up to Sonar X3 with each version it just kept getting better and more functional.
This home recording DAW is a complete non stop learning commitment, you owe it to yourself to put the time into learning and mastering it.
I am glad I stuck with cakewalk recording programs as I found them the easiest to get my limited brain power around.
Sonar X3 is packed with features beyond my wildest imaginations.
So far the Modern DAW and Sonar X3 WHEW... what a ride!!!
 
 

Hiya, John. Hope you've been well. I kind of miss writing up those diatribes but I haven't really purchased anything new and my travels throughout Sonar and my various experiments are more drips and drabs not worthy of detailed threads. I am contemplating digging into the Matrix for some sampling work and I'm getting a little more excited about the possibilities Melodyne is offering in X3 so maybe I'll do a "Complete Beginner's" entry on those. Maybe I can rip AD apart too. That's sounding good. I may have another shizstorm of meatworld mayhem coming down the pipe though so we'll see. I've also been poking around with my external hardware more now so that's been consuming much of my "engineering" brainspace. 
 
As far as the MIDI stuff... that was the hardest thing for me to learn about Sonar but that's only because I had never touched MIDI before in my LIFE. So not really a Sonar learning curve but a general MIDI learning curve. I look at some of the old screen grabs on how things used to be done and that crap looks like a damned spreadsheet... so no envy there. The only thing that still really messes me up a little is Channel stuff and controller management like the Drum Map manager thingie (I'm still manually setting up my padKontrol from the device itself so or using VST's internal mapping functions if they are too whack).
 
Another thing that I mostly understand but would always crap out on me is Audiosnap. I haven't tried it in X3 yet but have been told it is behaving better so maybe I'll do a thread on that. I still think we need a new version of audiosnap to be implemented in the next version or so of X series now that a lot of other quirks have been worked out.
 
Cheers.

John
You forgot to mention MIDI! Outstanding post Craig. 
 
 
Also I would add of all the DAWs out there I believe Sonar to be the easiest to figure out. In Cubase you don't record to a track you have to setup inputs and record to them.  Logic as I recall was all about the "environment". It was everything.  Don't understand that and you will be lost. Reaper is one big gigantic menu.
 
Sonar acts like a Windows program and is simple in how it has things organized.
 
 
 
 

Studio One is pretty easy to use...easier than Sonar I find...although some may say it's more a toy than a pro DAW. Not sure why you turned the opening post into a passive aggressive DAW showdown though. The theme of the opening post is about how daunting it is to have so much at your fingertips. In a breath, you've gone and embroiled Cubase, Logic and Reaper in a potential dick measuring competition when all you had to do was say...haha...yeah...it's a jungle out there in DAWland.

lawp
new users shouldn't be using sonar but something simpler like mc6

I respectfully disagree. I would not tell a person wishing to ride a motorcycle to start with a moped. The best way to learn X3 is adapt the understanding that no advanced program or process is going be learnd overnight. Even when one becomes an expert there are always ways to improve process. If the goal is to use an X3 like program there is no point in MC6 like programs for those who know they will be getting X3 unless it is a financial concern.

Oh and when I was talking about things being weird and foreign for me at first it was mostly the context menus and clip hotspots really. It was just a little hard to get used to as opposed to almost everything being in the global menus at the top or just simply non existent. There has even been a new learning curve with X3 in regards to clip hotspots but as I said... once it's understood it all make more sense. Even if I forget where something is I just poke around where it MIGHT be and usually it's there.