Greetings!
First I want to thank all cakewalk team for their great job.
Long time ago I tried cubase 3x + reason(for drums) and found it very uncomfortable with my emu usb card, I had a dropout whenever my cpu loaded up to 30%.
Then I found Sonar which is IMHO best daw available now. I don't want to enumerate the box of its benefits because of laziness :) I just think that it is amazingly flexible for personalization and customization without loosing usability advantages which are very important for music making. You can create the whole "dimension" for yourself. Also bouncing, freezing, archiving for saving ram are great functions. The audio on\off button is great !!))) Everything is great - key bindings, menu layouts, plugin manager etc etc etc..
I tried the new daw Reaper recently - it's nice but Sonar better ). The main thing that pushes reaper is that the guys who are bosses there, have the same concept as web 2.0 startup has(the endless beta huh), hence the whole feel and look of that daw is like if it was a some kind of a web startup (as I know, it is even written on java) - light weight, pleasant colors, VERY USABLE AND INTUITIVE etc. I think that these merits are very important today and wish Cakewalk to implement them more even. With reaper I have the same count of dropouts as I had with cubase..
I also tried the recent version of fruity loops and found it also very nice fun and usable.
But IMHO Sonar is the best daw for now because of its reach functional advantages in split with total control over the menus, colors etc. It is mature and serious but not so much as cubase is(which feels like severe music production program). Its friendly, quite usable, quite simple, stable, very logic and supports hardware very well (I have no dropouts with my usb emu card anymore). It is exactly how the serious creative environment should be.
But there are still several things that want some more attention such as
- The envelopes editing should be much more smooth and obvious(simple).
- Something like reaper's fx chains.
- Some kind of mixer layout switcher window to select custom mixer layouts without any right clicking and ticking..
- To disable(maybe I didn't find how) the sounding when you draw things in piano roll view.
- To have several (e.g. 3) nested folders levels.
- there are some more, but I can't remember them right now :)
It appeared that I became not only Sonar fan, but also Cakewalk's musical instruments.. ))
I think that the concept behind the rapture and dimension pro (with modulations) is the smartest and the most usable, intuitive and powerful suggestion.
I found zeta+ the best synthesizer of any available. I also like psynII))). I love dropzone for its simplicity and endless possibilities. These instruments are not so "stupid" or "alien" or "strange" or "junk" as all the others (my strange associations))). I was very surprized and happy finding out that all cakewalk's instruments are skinnable ))))
I used tone2 firebird, vanguard, sienth1, blue and many others(up to 15-20 synths and samplers), but now I just have NI battery, rapture, dropzone, zeta+ and psynII =)) These five allow to get endless original electronic stuff which is my need. Love rapture because it is a type of "chameleon" that can be anything from analog synth to distorted drum sampler :)
Well this is all I wanted to say, thanx again to all cakewalk team and wish you to stay on top in future.
Btw my styles of music are rhythm'n'noise and dark electro