i was a longtime logic user on pc. when emagic went mac only, i stayed with 5.5 for the longest time. ummed and ahhed bout whether to go mac, but money constraints and a grudge against emagic for dropping loyal users like a ton of bricks meant that i stayed pc..
cubase seemed arcane to me and too expensive and clunky.
m powered pro tools set false restrictions in its software like finite track numbers and propietary plugs etc.
ableton was an option and i did end up getting it later, but its audio engine is nowhere near as good as cake's, and as a fully featured daw its now quite there yet.
these forums, cakewalks heavy marketing (in britain they were way behind steinberg in sales & profile- although thats changing) led me to sonar 5 when i upgraded my pc. it was almost half the price of cubase too, but was getting great reviews, and seemed at least its equal on most if not all fronts.
come january it will be 2 years since i started working with sonar, and i'm pretty happy with it although v6 doesn't seem as stable as 5 was, and audio artefacts crop up too often for my liking.
and i hate the midi implementation.
logic was the program i learned extensively so i think its taken me this long just to get out of thinking like a logic user; things like side-chaining for instance were there for a long time, and sonar still doesnt have it 5 years after the last version of logic came out on pc... this is frustrating.
i'd like to see a slick sampler in the next version, a 4*4 virtual drum machine (cyclone is so NEARLY there but not!), and improved midi features in general and better input quantise features: the way its implemented at the moment is clumsy and not what mpc lovers were looking for. actually skip the sampler; dimension pro is wicked! am now with cakewalk for the long haul: i have P5, dim pro and thinking of picking up rapture while the offer is on. and yes i know p5 has 2 drum samplers but they're both a bit long in the tooth, and uninspiring. session drummer 2 is okay but again is a little bit boring- an update of this could be what i'm looking for maybe.
groove clips need overhauling too; ableton live has a much smoother timestretching than even the radius algorhythms IMO. but there is no better daw forum than this one. every problem i've had, someone here has already had it, and got helpful answers from al, cj, modbod, badbib, b-rock, ognis etc, and its kept me from tearing out my hair a hundred times over! i think actually that this resource is cake's (and sonar's and p5's) biggest asset; steinberg have a long way to go to get the kind of loyalty that is here.
i expect cake to really come up with the goods at the end of this year and give us a STABLE sonar, overhauled midi implementation, cleverer input quantise, better act functionality and true side-chaining. and oh yeah a stable non glitchy sonar.
i still wonder sometimes if i made the right choice when things go wrong, but cake do try to help, and do seem to care, and that keeps me with em. i hope my loyalty will be rewarded in the near future with something that truly rivals logic as a complete working enviroment. forget the drum machine, i think i'm gonna get battery3; ogins' championing of it has finally brainwashed me!

I originally started out using a program called TripleDAT by Creamware. That was the first DAW I had ever used. Creamware abandonded the program in the late 90's to focus on their Pulsar/Scope DSP product line. I guess there was no money to be made in developing recording applications so they turned their focus to other things. I had spent close to $2K on that software and decided to hang in there with it until I could make an informed cross-grade decision. By today's standards, it was a pretty lame-o program but back in the early-mid 90's when it first came out, it was actually kind of unique. It was one of the first recording apps to offer real-time effects processing and built-in CD authoring/burning. And it came bundled with a really nice soundcard. It had no MIDI functionality (only digital audio) which suited me perfectly.

I always knew about Cakewalk but until Sonar hit the market, no one (that I knew of) really took that product seriously unless you were into all the MIDI stuff. When it became obvious that I needed something better than TripleDAT, I started looking at all the options. Unfortunately, at that point in time (somewhere around the V2/3 timeframe) DAW companies were dying off or being swallowed up by bigger fish and I decided to wait out the storm to see which way the wind was blowing. I didn't want to make another $2K mistake. Most people in the Creamware camp were using Logic and Cubase/Nuendo (all German companies). Logic (as we all know) became a Mac-only product and Cubase (at the time) wasn't considered a serious studio product. Nuendo looked promising but like I said, that $2K price tag scared me a bit. Pro Tools was way too expensive an option for me.

Around that time I was able to get a hands-on demonstration of Sonar 2 from a friend of mine. I was impressed with it and decided to make the plunge for three reasons: 1) the price was right, 2) the company was still solvent and 3) it worked and sounded a whole lot better than TripleDAT. I know I made the right decision.

I don't know if I can say I "switched" since there was an 8 year gap in music making between one system and the next. I did all my stuff on a Fostex 4-track cassette machine with an Alesis sequencer and later a Mac SE running Dr. T's Beyond. I ended up selling off all my gear one sad day and left the music world for a while.
Eight years later I had a PC and I found CW Home Studio and later upgraded to Sonar 2. I didn't own any of the other packages but I tried demos of (Emagic) Logic, Cubase, Protools Free... feh, didn't like any of them. The Sonar/Home Studio approach to things worked intuitively for me. I poked around in Logic for half an hour and couldn't figure out even where to begin. Cubase never ran without crashing. Pro Tools free was cripple-ware (and I wasn't about to spring for the real thing).
Anyway, there's some things that I wish Sonar did differently but they're minor. I've found it rock solid stable, intuitive, relatively inexpensive, and it just works for what I do.

--JD

I've gone from an expensive tascam 4 track w/ cakewalk 7 pro(I think...twas a long time ago) to the Roland Vs-880 to cakewalk 5 then 6.
can't even contimplate going back to a hardware solution anymore.

For ages I was running a Behringer mixer into a tape deck then a CDR.

Eventually decided the future would be PC based, so bought Sonar XL (I think?) with an early Edirol USB hub... I hated it. Loads of clicks, drop-out etc despite altering the settings. I just wasn't happy so I sold it.

For the last few years I've used a staandalone Boss BR1180 and it's been fine.

Trouble is I wanted a bit more, so I tried the demo of Sonar 6... all worked spot on even with my basic sound card!

I now use Sonar 6 Studio with an Edirol FA-66... perfect from the word go.

I went from Performer 3.5 MIDI only sequencer which I used for years alongside of an Otari MX70/MTR12-2C/Tac Scorpion24 x 16 console to Pro Audio 9 when that was just coming out. I had sold all of the analog gear over time, and left the recording thing alone for a few years before starting on Windows 98SE/CakePA9. Coming from the Mac OS to 98 SE was a big step backwards in stability and I was real sorry I did not go to Digital Performer/Mac until the advent of XP Pro. From then on I never regretted it a single bit and now with Sonar 6, I am again a happy camper with the 64 bit engine. Oh yes, Nice quality.

I used an AtariST and Cubase when living in Germany and for 10 years before that had good experience with 2, 1, 1/2 and 1/4" tape formats and hardware MIDI sequencers. For my first proper DAW I bought Logic PC 2.6 when it was released with a Pentium120, 32RAM, Win95 and an Audiomedia III card with DAE Windows. It worked quite well. The AMIII was the first mistake I'd made in proprietary technology and got burned in between Emagic and Digi blaming each other. I had a lot of problems, errors with Logic through 4.8 as I upgraded it, computers and better interface but it was never Emagic's fault was it? Ring a bell? If you have ASIO errors then Steinberg must not be cooperating with Emagic with the SDK! Nevermind! Anyway it was a time of classic "all computer stuff - no music". I started a business, music went on the backburner, Apple bought Emagic and I missed the upgrade time limit. My G4 was too long in the tooth already for Logic 7 not mention new interfaces, etc. Here comes my mentor "Jeff" who's been into synths and audio since about 1970 and has used Cakewalk since day one. I extensively tested Sonar 3 and it worked well and now though still at v.5, I will be upgrading to 7 in October unless Cakewalk is going to do as Apple Computer does and not upgrade Sonar for 3 years while the loyal users frantically rationalize and rumourize about the next version!

In all honesty, I never took Cakewalk serious as a pro app though I knew all along they were good to their users but Sonar??? Sonar has been perfect for me and now I actually create music again! I love it!

Mark

Tascam 4-track
Roland VS-1680
Roland Vs-2480
Went to a Namm and saw Sonar.
Bought Sonar 2.2 XL.
Wow! This is recording!
Friend talked me into Pro Tools LE.
Over the next few years, I upgraded to Sonar 3 Producer, still using Pro Tools though.
Upgrade to Sonar 5 Producer, still using Pro Tools.
Upgrade to Sonar 6 Producer, sold Pro Tools, and haven't looked back since.
Sonar 6 is, in my opinion, the best recording software out today.

Jason Coleman
www.myspace.com/beautifulnoisestudio

I began playing back in the 70's (band class) and switched to guitar around 1980. In the early 90's I started working with the Voyetra MIDI sequencer for DOS. Later came Windows95 and my first copy of Cakewalk (with versions for 3.1 AND 95!!). Due to a really poor machine I ended up using Voyetra for most of my core work drawing MIDI notes. But, I did gain some experience with Cakewalk, so this is what I was looking for again recently. About a month ago I was playing with a demo of Sonar and also with Cubase LE. It was nearly a coin flip except for the included instruments and other features which finally pushed me to Sonar. Very glad I did so far. I am using it with my new Alesis IO/26 and M-Audio Axiom 61 with no problems other than some silly crashes with certain 3rd party freeware VST instruments. Load order matters here, and I can almost always get the group of VSTs together that I want. Once I am sure of what I am doing it will be time for some quality addons.

What we are interested in knowing is:

1. What application you switched from and which version of SONAR you switched to.
2. Your specific reasons for switching to SONAR (specific features in SONAR, specific problems with other aps, customer service, etc.)

Thanks for your support of SONAR and thanks in advance for your help.

1. I switched from a VS series machine to Sonar 3.1. I could have purchased PRO TOOLS but prayed about what application to purchase. God impressed on me to wait, and I saw advertisement for Cakewalks Sonar. I purchased it. I want to eventually open a school of production for kids to learn about music and production. I would like to use Sonar for this endeavour.

2. I stayed with Sonar because of the Customer Service, ease of operation of the product, its functions and especially because of THIS FORUM!! Thanks