I've owned Sonar since 8.5, but, as this is strictly a hobby for me and available time for composing and recording has been too short, I have never mastered much of the program, preferring to just play my keyboards and throw down a few tracks, haphazardly at best. Recently I upgraded to X2 just to keep it current. Over the past few days I have had more time available and decided to devote some hours to actually getting to know the program.  I carefully went through all of the getting started tutorials as well as a bunch of others that were linked inside the getting started pages. All I can say is "Time well spent!" The tutorials are simple, straight forward and they unveil a whole bunch of little things about how the interface works and how the logic of the program flows that will save me hours of frustration in the future (like Instrument tracks - I knew they were there but every time I tried to set them up I got an error about the audio track and midi needing to be assigned to the same instrument - even though I thought they were!- so I just stopped trying and instead set up a midi and audio track for every soft synth, often times getting the I/O assignments mixed up as the projects grew. Tedious! And totally unnecessary!)
 
I know that many will read this and just say "Duh, you're an idiot!", but there are no doubt many newbies and not-so newbies like me that have never done the tutorials and are just jumping into this complex program and getting lost and frustrated. To them I say DTFT (kinda like RTFM, but a lot easier!)
 
Brian

Its actually nice to hear someone approach the new version with optimism instead of the usual cynicism. You're time spent learning the new version will pay off for you. 

You have begun to take Sonar seriously.  Something I think is lacking in some. They often use this board to get them trough a problem that really isn't one and they would have known that if they had done what you did.

Sonar is cursed by being a very easy program to get to work and do a few things in. What many don't know is that Sonar is a very powerful program with tremendous possibilities. Your advice is highly welcomed and I hope it gets the viewing it should. 

I use to wonder why no one seemed to sit back and read the manual. This wouldn't happen if it was a program that their livelihood relied on. Unfortunately it seems that it really doesn't matter what is the motivation;whether its a hobbyist or whether its used to make money too many people think its a simple program. 

CW has made it as simple as they can but in order to give it the enormous power it has simple can only go so far. Its up to the user to do their own homework and read and view the materials provided. 

This place will help but its really cool to work with a user that has some idea what things are called.

Thanks for posting your experience for others to gain a little insight and good job. 

Now that you have gone through the tutorials maybe you should check out Sonar University.

http://cakewalk.com/CakeTV/SONARU.aspx 

work your way up all the way through to the master classes, but be careful. This Sonar bug bites hard. Symptoms of addiction are
1. the laundry piles up
2. you run out of milk
3. the house gets very messy
4. You run out of food an order Pizza for weeks on end.
5. All you seem to be able to do is record music and play with Sonar.

If you get any of the Sonar addiction symptoms just step away from your computer or join the rest of us on the forum.

Marcus Curtis


Now that you have gone through the tutorials maybe you should check out Sonar University.

http://cakewalk.com/CakeTV/SONARU.aspx 

work your way up all the way through to the master classes, but be careful. This Sonar bug bites hard. Symptoms of addiction are
1. the laundry piles up
2. you run out of milk
3. the house gets very messy
4. You run out of food an order Pizza for weeks on end.
5. All you seem to be able to do is record music and play with Sonar.

If you get any of the Sonar addiction symptoms just step away from your computer or join the rest of us on the forum.

 WELL SAID!!!

John writes :
 
"I use to wonder why no one seemed to sit back and read the manual. This wouldn't happen if it was a program that their livelihood relied on. Unfortunately it seems that it really doesn't matter what is the motivation;whether its a hobbyist or whether its used to make money too many people think its a simple program."
 
I'm new to Sonar and an avid manual reader.  I love reading manuals.  But X2's manual is not really all that accessible.  First off, there's no paper version that I'm aware of.  I'd gladly pay 100$ for a paper version (having a single copy printed would be what, 200$ or so ?).  Second, the manual is a single 2000 page pdf file.  The file is so big that the slightest movement of the scroll bar in Reader moves you back and forth by several pages, very frustrating.
 
I've taken to copying out pages I'm interested in, pasting them in Word and printing them from there.  I'll end up printing a large part of the manual, but at great cost.
 
Paper manuals can be read on the couch, lying in bed, waiting in a car, and other unmentionable places.  Books like Scott's are great introductions, but they leave out all the fine print.  When I bought X1 and the salesman in the store handed me this tiny little box it was a let down.  I was looking forward to reading the manual.
 

If you can hold out until February Scott Garrigus' "SONAR X2 Power!" will be out. It is being presold now. The Power series has been a great addition to the CW manuals.

Why use the scroll bar when reading a pdf? Just use the page up/down buttons, or the forward and backward buttons on your mouse. 

scook


If you can hold out until February Scott Garrigus' "SONAR X2 Power!" will be out. It is being presold now. The Power series has been a great addition to the CW manuals.

I've been reading Scott's X1 book daily for the last two months.  It's a great intro for someone like me who has never used Sonar before but it leaves out a lot of detail (it is 1400 pages shorter than the manual).
 
If I had a tablet pc, I'd probably be happy.
 

Thanks, Scook and Paul! Glad to hear you're enjoying the books. And thanks for the mention here.

The SONAR Power! books are designed to be used along with the manual. They're not meant to take the place of it entirely. The books are written to be read like books - from cover to cover - and then later to be used as a reference in conjunction with the manual or SONAR help. There are plenty of tips in the books not found in the manual and the books provide all the detail and info you need to use SONAR. The manual has extra sections on hardware and system setup, installation, etc. But that type of info isn't needed in the books... http://www.garrigus.com/powerbooks.asp

SONAR X2 Power! will be here soon. 

Thanks!
Scott

--
Scott R. Garrigus - http://garrigus.com
* Author of the Cakewalk Sonar and Sony Sound Forge Power book series: http://garrigus.com/?PowerBooks
* Author of the Cakewalk Sonar ProAudioTutor video tutorial series: http://garrigus.com/?ProAudioTutor
* Publisher of the DigiFreq free music technology newsletter: http://digifreq.com/?DigiFreq
* Publisher of the NewTechReview free consumer technology newsletter: http://newtechreview.com/?NewTechReview