As I have had Sonar 6 LE for a long time I have been given an offer to upgrade to Sonar X2 Studio and want to ask a few questions to make up my mind if it is for me.
 
To put everyone in the picture I do not record one thing at a time I go out record my band on a R16 or Yamaha AW1600 and come back with the recording with a maximum of about 9 tracks per song and dump them into a Daw (Cubase at the moment) as 9 separate monotracks to edit mix add fx etc.
 
Question 1/ on each recording there can be about 10-20 seconds of empty tracks or noise which is the time i start record and get through to the band room to start whatever song we are doing In Cubase when I have loaded the song to get rid of this unwanted begining I use the scissor tool to cut a few milliseconds before we start to play then the Audio to the Left of this mark I use the rubber tool to get rid of the unwanted section on each track then select all and drag all tracks to the beginning of the time line. Now I must be stupid or have a bit of lateral thinking but I have never found out how to do this in Sonar 6 LE but the question is can it be done or something very simular in X2 Studio?
 
Question 2/ Does X2 Studio have an audio to midi converter as I have a nightmare of a job recording my drummers toms as they all drone I get away with this by using the old studio trick of putting tea towels on the toms and to my ears and the rest of the bands this sounds better and does not rob the bass player of his frequencies but does not suit the drummer, so it would be nice to convert audio or pitch to midi and use EZ Drummer although he will probably moan at this too.
 
Question 3/ How hard is it to set up the Zoom R16 as an interface with X2 Studio.
 
Question 4/ Does Melodyne Plug in work with X2 Studio
 
 
Bob
 
 

 

I would download the demo first, the 30 day trial.
just so you know it works well on your computer.
remember it has to be run on either windows 7 or 8, XP and vista are no longer supported and will not even run it after the x2a update is installed.

if I suggest one thing, its get producer, studio is nice but for a few more bucks you get everything.
look at the comparison list in the cakewalk store.

there's just so much more.
you might say, I don't need it, well you will find with these extra things your song writing and production expands to newer better ideas because you have the producers copy.

they call it producer for a reason. 

Thanks Charlie,

Well the Producer version is £319 here in the UK so is a bit expensive for me they are offering X2 Studio to me for £79 so a bit more reasonable. I can not download the trial version as their web is broken or so it says they then sugest I contact their web team and when I do it will not accept my email address so I have given up at the moment. I am not a song writter or producer I just want to make a good quality CD of my band before I kick the bucket.

 the only reason I suggest this is because  downloading the trial gives ou a chance to make sureyour devices are going to work properly, like the zoom,exc.
this is the link to download the trial
http://www.cakewalk.com/products/sonar/web-trial.aspx

set yourself up a free yahoo email account and use it exclusively for sonar.

this should be a priority,
I wish you many pleasant hours of songwriting :)

Studio version is still quite good. It doesn't have some of the functions that many rave about, but personally, I don't find many of the Producer features as beneficial as I'd hoped. Best of luck!!

Thanks Charlie and Brian I managed to set up an other email address and managed to download X2. I asked for a full trial of Studio but the download was Producer so I will be no wiser with what one or the other will do apart from the fact that Producer is more expensive. I would have liked just Studio to see if I could live with within its limitations instead of searching out what producer does that Studio does not.

The first thing I tried was importing Audio from a project on my HD recorded on an R16 it was 5 mono tracks of audio now in Sonar 6 LE or Cubase this would have loaded up as 5 seperate tracks but for some reason X2 loaded all 5 mono wave files on one track so looks like its a search in the tutorials to see how I can do this.

I get the impression that most folk do not work like me that is go and record the whole band and maybe do some punch in/out or re record the whole song again if needed on a hardware recorder then come home dump the results on a HD and edit in Daw I also get the impression that X2 is more a loop editor that is folk make one loop at a time then add the various loops together to make a song but I still welcome feedback from users who have used Studio and can put me on the long and winding road to being a x2 studio user.

Sonar can do all the things you ask about. Though I do think in the end you will want the producer version. 

The tracks that piled up on the one track can be moved to another track one at a time. Just grab one and move it to another track. 

The way you are recording is not all that uncommon. Sonar can edit your recordings however you get them into your computer. By edit I mean mix. 

I think you will like the ease of use and how quick you can setup for recording. Cubase can do all the same things but no where as quickly.

The one thing you do get with Sonar is this forum and the knowledgeable people who are always here to help guide you through any brick walls that you run into.

There are no egos on here (well, maybe one or two ) and it's generally a friendly place with users from all over the planet

bigbob63


Thanks Charlie and Brian I managed to set up an other email address and managed to download X2. I asked for a full trial of Studio but the download was Producer so I will be no wiser with what one or the other will do apart from the fact that Producer is more expensive. I would have liked just Studio to see if I could live with within its limitations instead of searching out what producer does that Studio does not.

The first thing I tried was importing Audio from a project on my HD recorded on an R16 it was 5 mono tracks of audio now in Sonar 6 LE or Cubase this would have loaded up as 5 seperate tracks but for some reason X2 loaded all 5 mono wave files on one track so looks like its a search in the tutorials to see how I can do this.

I get the impression that most folk do not work like me that is go and record the whole band and maybe do some punch in/out or re record the whole song again if needed on a hardware recorder then come home dump the results on a HD and edit in Daw I also get the impression that X2 is more a loop editor that is folk make one loop at a time then add the various loops together to make a song but I still welcome feedback from users who have used Studio and can put me on the long and winding road to being a x2 studio user.

outlines the differences http://www.cakewalk.com/products/SONAR/SONAR-X2-comp-chart.pdf

bigbob63


Thanks Charlie and Brian I managed to set up an other email address and managed to download X2. I asked for a full trial of Studio but the download was Producer so I will be no wiser with what one or the other will do apart from the fact that Producer is more expensive. I would have liked just Studio to see if I could live with within its limitations instead of searching out what producer does that Studio does not.

The first thing I tried was importing Audio from a project on my HD recorded on an R16 it was 5 mono tracks of audio now in Sonar 6 LE or Cubase this would have loaded up as 5 seperate tracks but for some reason X2 loaded all 5 mono wave files on one track so looks like its a search in the tutorials to see how I can do this.

I get the impression that most folk do not work like me that is go and record the whole band and maybe do some punch in/out or re record the whole song again if needed on a hardware recorder then come home dump the results on a HD and edit in Daw I also get the impression that X2 is more a loop editor that is folk make one loop at a time then add the various loops together to make a song but I still welcome feedback from users who have used Studio and can put me on the long and winding road to being a x2 studio user.

sonar should import 5 separate tracks like this I believe.
just try going to file/import/audio
select all the tracks by holding down CNTR+mouse click.
I could have sworn this works.. no ?