jbraner
Point taken dub. It's just my paranoia about AA3 getting a little long in the tooth - and way beyond any kind of support. I'm waiting for some Windows 8 update to make it stop working ;-)

You can still buy the CS6 version of AA from Adobe, which should keep working for at least a few more OS upgrades.
I think the upgrade price is $79.
 
Dan 

Where do you get that Dan? The only thing I've seen recently is the "subscription" prices (which are ridiculous - for what I use the editor for). I've never seen a one time "upgrade" price. I'd go for $79...

It's tricky to find.   It's $149 from AA3.  I have CS5.5 AA which is $79 to upgrade.
 
https://www.adobe.com/products/catalog/cs6._sl_id-contentfilter_sl_catalog_sl_software_sl_creativesuite6.html?start=20
 
Dan

Pyro ??

Just curious, what can audacity do that Sonar x3 can't?

It's focus is purely on editing audio. Consequently it presents a very clean screen view of an audio file and you can easily drill down to the sample level for editing. Considering that it's open source and free, it has a very extensive palette of tools and proprietary plugins.

I generally use Sound Forge though for Mastering and any fine editing; but it can be integrated into Sonar's Utility menu allowing you to pass selected segments, clips and or complete tracks to SF for editing and then pass the processed audio back to your project from where it was taken. Very seamless.

The reasons are multiple.
It provides me a disconnect from my recording and mixing environment.
It works completely differently with different tools. It helps reinforce that I'm doing a different job.
It has batch processing tools that are excellent for repetitive tasks.

Hope that helps.

mudgel
It's focus is purely on editing audio. Consequently it presents a very clean screen view of an audio file and you can easily drill down to the sample level for editing. Considering that it's open source and free, it has a very extensive palette of tools and proprietary plugins.

I generally use Sound Forge though for Mastering and any fine editing; but it can be integrated into Sonar's Utility menu allowing you to pass selected segments, clips and or complete tracks to SF for editing and then pass the processed audio back to your project from where it was taken. Very seamless.

The reasons are multiple.
It provides me a disconnect from my recording and mixing environment.
It works completely differently with different tools. It helps reinforce that I'm doing a different job.
It has batch processing tools that are excellent for repetitive tasks.

Hope that helps.

Thanks Mike

musichoo
Just curious, what can audacity do that Sonar x3 can't?

I think this is a really good question.
 
I tied to use Sound Forge many years ago.
 
I didn't bond with it. It had control keys different from Cakewalk and it just made my life complex.
 
I failed to see the virtue and quit updating the license, and quit installing it on new computers. Another of countless unneeded software purchases.
 
I prefer to master in Sonar.
 
If I am going to make an album, I put each song in Sonar.
 
Then I can play each one very easily and compare the compression, the bass level, overall level, etc, and adjust the various mastering plug ins.
 
I can also change the order of the songs very easily.
 
I can of course save it as a project and come back to review it later.
 
When I am ready, I export each track individually by soloing it.
 
If you ever try this, you will find that your carefully placed song length will be ignored by Sonar and it will make all exports the length of the longest track. In order to deal with this you need to highlight the individual track up to it's ending. If I remember right, you will then get tracks exported at the proper length.
 
I hope someday the Cakewalk people will pickup on this and make the approach of mastering the whole album as one project a little more simple, but it works fine as is.
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

I agree generally that Mastering as described these days can be done in Sonar.
Mastering can however mean a good bit more than finalising a project from a sonic perspective. there is also preparing audio for Redbook masters which can't be done in Sonar. That's just one area though.
Seeing as I'd need some additional software for that, I might as well do it in SF.

Sonar doesn't have any batch processing facility either and while many don't need that function, I do. So seeing as I have SF and quite a few other wave editors I use SF for doing my masters.

I tried audacity but I REALLY don't like the interface(buttons are big and ugly as hell).
Since I own a licence of soundforge 6, my editor is soundforge.
I use it mainly for the pencil tool (being able to redraw the audio wave is great when getting strange electrical peaks)
 
My other choice is definitely wavosaur. Great free editor (very close to soundforge)