Woe betide me, I bought a Soundblaster Card on recommendation from a friend, back in the days when I knew nothing about Computer Music ! It came with a very cut-down version of Cubase, which didn't work - at all - with the Soundblaster card, because they were each set at different fixed sample rates !
I swapped the Sounblaster for a guitar, bought an Audiophile card (still serves me well)and started looking at different software, getting demos of Magix, Cakewalk etc. The Cakewalk stuff just worked, simple as that! The others had too many problems.
I bought an entry level Cakewalk product, I think it was called Plasma. I used this to upgrade to Sonar Studio 3. A few years on I now have Sonar 6 Producer and have ordered Sonar 7 Studio today!
The Audio recording works great in Sonar, the plug-ins have got better and better, I'm really happy with the audio side.
The MIDI proved harder to learn, when recently trying to get to grips with composing drum parts...frustrating switching between views, zoom levels, and getting the Snap Value set right (the all-important difference between 'Move To' and 'Move By' in the Snap settings, when you're trying to work with MIDI groove clips!)
The MIDI improvements and the 'Step-Sequencer' persuaded me to upgrade again..looking forward to getting a visit from the postman.

PS Personally, I love the Authorisation process here, hate Dongles (USB never seemed that reliable, my DAW wisely stays away from Internet, and I like to freshly install XP every so often if there's conflicts etc)...the customer support is also excellent in my experience. Hope this continues with the Roland alliance.

ive beenwith sonar since 3 pe came out and ive upgraded every time , im at 7 pe now and im still putting out beautiful audio,thanks cakewalk, http://www.myspace.com/downonthefarmproductions

I switched because of either the track or plugin limit in HS2005 or 2006 (? not sure). I like big projects I guess. Sonar simply fit my needs better.

Multiple personality disorder! ProTools by day. Sonar by night. Either I'm more talented at night, or Sonar sounds better than ProTools.
Must be the drugs :)
Eddie

Over the years, I primarily used PTLE in my home studio. Picked up Sonar 1 through a crossgrade offer but was so comfortable with PT, I continued to do most of my work on that platform. Recently, I upgraded to Sonar 6 because of the features that were added, i.e. audio snap, etc.. More importantly, I was not happy with the limitations of PTLE. The differences and added features were noticibly better with S6.

About that same time, I signed on for a major project that was being recorded in several locations and ultimately would be finalized and mixed in PT. For consistency and at the request of the folks involved, I reluctantly upgraded my ptle rig so that we could pass the project drive back and forth and it would not require and additional exporting and importing of files, etc. Got through the project, but regreted spending the money on a digi LE product. This month, I upgraded to Sonar 7 and there will be no looking back. The quality of the sound IS superior to PTLE. Whether it's the 64 bit mixing engine or the architecture of the program itself, Sonar sounds better. My mixes sound tighter and have much more clarity on things like reverb tails.

After working again in PTLE, I found a lot of things frustrating. One of the major considerations for me to permanently stay with Sonar is the automatic plugin delay compensation. This is a nightmare in PTLE as you're always nudging tracks and adding additional delay compensation plugins for UAD. Also, the limted # of tracks and limited # of inserts on each track in PTLE is ridiculous. I don't need 50 plugins on each channel, but if you automatically lose one insert for delay comp and then another for some eq tweaking, you're left with only a few inserts and I find that's limiting espcially on vocal tracks where I might insert an eq, comp, de-esser and maybe a tape sim.

The ability to import and export omf files in Sonar is a great feature that is standard. With PTLE, I need to spend another $500-$1200 just to get that functionality. To me, this is a huge ripoff. Same goes for the track limitations. Sonar has none (other than what your system can handle). PTLE has 32 voices (only 16 stereo tracks) and for me to go to 48 'tracks', I need to spend another $500.

For me, it was a no-brainer to stay with Sonar. The sound is better, it's stable and If I'm going to spend another $1700 for basic functionality on PTLE that I already have with Sonar, I'd much rather spend that $1700 on a nice mic or pre-amp or converters and make music that sounds that much better.

-rich


PS: the only thing I will truly miss are the McDSP plugins. Any chance y'all can convince them to port their products to VST?

I started on the late 80's with a Fostex X-26 4 track, to which I eventually added a little Yamaha QY-10 sequencer, recording instrumental tracks with my guitar and a Casio phase distortion synth.

Later on I bought my first computer, a Compaq Presario 486 at 66MHz, running Windows 3.11. I bought a copy of Passport Trax, and I was fine for some years more. Music is a hobby, and I was not spending that much time on it then.

Then on 1999 my house got broken into, and all my things got stolen, guitars, amp, pedals, both computers (I had a laptop, but the old 486 was still on duty running Passport trax), synth...and all my CD collection. Disaster.

So I fought the insurance company, and not that I won (you never do), but I did not lose, either, so I was able to look at buying shiny new things. Technology had leapt forward, and everybody here said "Cubase!". Well, Cubase looked good, featurewise, but I was working as ERP software consultant then, and I had come not to trust companies that seem more interested in establishing "industry standards" instead of keeping their installed base happy. I did some research and found that Cakewalk was closer to Microsoft, that the company seemed conservative and solid in its pace, and last but not least, my usual music shop had a discounted copy of Pro Audio 9!

I bought it, then I got Pro Suite, then Sonar 1XL, Sonar2XL... all bought online because shops around here do have Cubase/Logic in stock, but Cakewalk upgrades? Nah...then the Edirol agreement shut the online shop for us, and I skipped Sonar 3...by Sonar 4 I decided that it was enough and fought with Roland Iberia for my right to buy the Sonar 4 Producer upgrade (no kidding, really, emails spanned three continents...), in the end I got a Sonar 4 Studio upgrade, and was told to be happy with it because that was everything I was going to get Anyway, things got fixed shortly after, online shop was open again, and Roland Iberia went on with their hardware business and I went back to the online shop for Sonar 5 PE, and Sonar 6PE one year after...until now. I use to upgrade come May, when the days are longer, and the final bug fixes have bloomed...so Sonar 7PE is nearer...

I switched from Cubase 4 Studio to Sonar 7 Producer.
And after 5 weeks of working with Sonar , i realy like it alot! Midi editing is very fast done. The included plugins are awesome. I used Steinberg for 6 years . But there are some things which slow me down a bit . For example, i have not found out , how i can bounce softwaresynths , without recording a huge track which starts at the first beat and ends at almost the end of the project. I select a specific region in the trackwindow ,and then like in Cubase i would like to bounce JUST for example 8 bars (beats) of that softsynth track to another track. But when i select a region and solo the track which plays my softsynth,and then try to use the bounce to tracks function, then sonar tells me that i have no audio in this region selected?????( When i bounce AUDIO tracks ,this problem isnt a matter.Then Sonar generates just a small track which matches the selection i have made.) I dont get it. And when i have made NO selection then sonar would bounce it , BUT it bounces the whole lenght of the project ,which generates a very big file , in which i can only use this small 8 beats region. Sorry but this issue realy makes me a bit a hard time ,because i have to bounce softsynths very very often. PLease help me on this one because i have to work on my music every day .I produce FullonTrance music.
Thanks alot for Your Awesome Product!!
Sonar 7 SOUNDS much better to me then Cubase 4 ---- I listen on Dynaudio BM5As hooked to a SPL Volume 2 ,which gets the Signal from a RME ADI 2 converter.
Thanks!

Ex Cubase user here as well...

Fairly new to Sonar. Switched from Cubase to Sonar 6 Producer and, naturally, had to upgrade when v7 came out.

I've mainly been recording and mixing audio tracks, so I have yet a whole bunch of things to learn.

No worries, I'll try and keep the dumb questions to a minimum.

Mike

Hi! My name is Soundchaser, and I'm a soundaholic.

(everyone together): "Hi Soundchaser!"

I have been using Mackie Tracktion (v.2 and v.3) for about 9 months.

I was using an Atari 1040STE with Hybrid Arts SMPTE Track Platinum for my sequencer from about 1988 to 2006. I also had a Tascam 2488 hard disk recorder. The Hybrid Arts would slave to any multi track recorder using midi or smpte. The Atari died, and I was tired of spending $300 bucks a pop to keep it running. The Hybrid Arts program was absolutely rock freakin solid, it never wavered once, not for one second. Best sequencer the world ever saw, but it was so old it did not handle audio, only midi.

So I figured that was the time to abandon Atari and switch to a PC-based sequencer. I was looking only for a machine that would sequence midi and simultaneously could control the transport of the 2488 by using MMC. Tracktion was the only one I found that did that flawlessly and did it for less than $200 bucks. At first glance, Tracktion did everything that "those other $500 dollar sequencers" were doing, at least everything that I thought I would ever want to do.

It worked flawlessly at first, recording and mixing simple audio, 5 or 6 tracks at a time, maybe a couple of midi tracks, and some built in plugs for reverb. It also controlled the 2488 transport without a hitch. It worked so well that I thought this was the perfect excuse to get rid of the Tascam 2488. It had several issues of its own that I was not looking forward to dealing with, and it was proprietary hardware, never a good thing imo.

So I sold the 2488, I dove head first into Tracktion. As I acquired more plugs and started wondering what could possibly be the limits of this computer-based music engineering marvel, I decided to build a better computer. Hence the Core 2 Duo machine I run now. I had XP Pro for free from academic alliance, but I now have XP 64 bit on the way to my house. I started to buy third party plugs like Groove Agent, which I love as my drummer, and like Ozone, Sonic Maximizer, Sonik Synth, Pianoteq, and maybe a few others I cant think of right now. Tracktion worked great until I made a mistake with Groove Agent, which I documented. (I changed the Groove Agent drum kit while the Tracktion transport was running.....instant death and hard reset, Tracktion has not handled GA correctly since that moment) That's when the buzzing thing started, but it didn't stop me from working. Then this complete lockout issue happened Tuesday night and now I'm dead in the water. Best I can do right now is grab the raw wav files and save them for import later into another host.

I dropped my suspicions about Groove Agent after I realized that I can not even start a new project and save work. I cant even save one midi track or one second of audio in a brand new project. It wont even save a plugin added to a track. It gives me a Save button, but when I reopen the project there is nothing there, nothing gets saved. Existing projects lock up as soon as they open. Tracktion is just completely incapacitated at this point. I can open the program, and start a new project, but that's it. Cant save anything new and cant open anything previously saved without locking up.

All of my forum buddies are recommending Sonar 7 Producer. So here I am. S7 Producer is on its way to my house, and I will be installing it in XP Pro 64 bit. If I can load my existing material into Sonar, and use my existing plugs, all on XP 64, then I will be extremely happy a month or so from now!!
SC

Hello, this is my first post.
I´m really glad to be here and must admit - u at cakewalk did some really fine piece
of software !
I used cubase se 3 before and never will again.
somebody forgot to get cubase from the 80s to nowadays.
its so uneasy to use.
so i had a look around but no sequencer other then sonar offered what i was
looking for.
and : the really fair crossupgrade price finally made me buy it ( Sonar 7 Producer Edition for 279 € ).

thanks again for that useful software that doesnt kill my creativity like cubase did.
midi, fx, audio, session drummer - everything is so easy to understand and to use.

hope to have u develop sonar on a constant base and would therefore be a faithful customer
for years :D