mike_mccue
I still think SONAR 8.5 Classic Edition was the best all arounder Audio and MIDI DAW ever.
Just a few little fixes that had been on the Cakewalk Do list for about 10 years and it would have been 99% there.
I used it for 8 hours yesterday and it still feels fresh. I had Fabfilter stuff on everything and it just works great for me.
Every time I look at SONAR X I think it looks like it was made to seem like Home Studio on steroids with an emphasis on drag and drop loop convenience.
It's hard to take Pro Channel seriously when you prefer to use top of the field dsp. The claim that independent efx gui windows is confusing cracks me up. Seriously. I think it's funny.
The audio tracking features have been downgraded with a clumsy use of display space. The elimination of layers and the crude adoption of lanes defied the acknowledgement that SONAR's layers were one of it's most powerful features... a feature that set it apart and above more popular DAWs like Pro Tools.
The friendly names audio input debacle is still a sad, sad joke. All the other DAWs do it the right way while SONAR users explain that never having "input 2" listed as "input 2" is not a big deal. Seriously. I think it's sad.
I think SONAR's drum maps are really sweet. I think they are the best, but I haven't tried Cubase in a while.
...
I still like to work in SONAR 8.5 Classic Edition because it has great MIDI tools and the audio works great but I've developed a plan to use less and less MIDI so as to make the most of Pro Tools audio production strengths because it feels like Cakewalk has simply abandoned any efforts to get to 99% and has decided to give away free stuff instead of servicing their top of the line product.
I agree with a lot of these points. 8.5 was the high water mark in Sonar's life cycle. Spending time fixing old bugs (corrupt projects, disk may be full errors, etc.), making some needed tweaks, building in true to VST support (it's still just the Fxpansion wrapper built-in and updated), would have been a worthwhile direction for Cakewalk. Some of the GUI ideas in the X series aren't bad, but they were poorly implemented (dockable console: good - giant, non-resizable console: bad), while a lot of the new features are just gimmicky (see Pro Channel), or poorly implemented (Take Layers).
Cakewalk should have built upon the strength of 8.5, and looked around at competing DAWs for what were fundamental features that Sonar was lacking, and added those, with more professional oriented "wow" features.
Imagine if Sonar X1 was a "super" version of 8.5 with:
1. Reaper's routing and Varispeed playback/recording,
2. Logic and Studio One's awesome plugin navigation system,
3. The Studio One plugin Browser,
4. Cubase's Notation (which isn't setting the world on fire but is a big improvement over what's Sonar's had for the last decade),
5. Pro Tools' pen and Beat Detective features,
6. True built-in VST2/3 support,
7. Bug fixes for all the old issues (Disk May Be Full error, Corrupt Project files, etc.)
Now, that would have been a Sonar X1 worth having!!! Hell, if it took them up to X2 to add those features, we as users, would still be in a much better place today. I'd trade-in every last bit of X2 for that.
Frankly, I'm not surprised at all the recent turnover at Cakewalk. It's quite possible that the powers-that-be weren't happy with the X1/X2 results, held those they viewed as responsible accountable, and are reorganizing to change directions. This would also explain the X2B silence. At least, from a customer-perspective, that would be the best possible scenario. The worst case scenario would be that they're letting the wrong people go for all the wrong reasons, and Sonar will continue to race towards the bottom of the barrel. With Roland being in charge, I wouldn't be surprised if it's the latter.