Nah - I still prefer to think of you as an utter twat so no apology !

I have no problem with twat!

Holy smokes guys, give Steve Austin a break. Yes, it is odd that he announce on a Sonar forum that he finds it bad and all but why are there so many Mac haters out there? I own a Mac Mini 2.0 ghz (mostly for video editing) but I also got the Logic Express 8 upgrade and find it not too bad. Mind you my main system is PC with Sonar 7 which works equally nice and I really prefer the Cakewalk VIs like Dimension Pro (awesome), Rapture and z3ta to the Jam Packs that I once found unbeatable. Personally, Session Drummer 2 has awesome kits with some great subtelties. I also like Sonar's interface a bit better. THE ONLY thing I still really dislike about Sonar is the notation editing window. Logic's I find to be the best of any DAW. I studied orchestral composition in university for a few years so notation is the area I'm most comfortable in, and I dislike how you cannot simply click on the note head and hear the tone or else drag it up and down on the staff chromatically with note audition. I do fell the boys at Cakewalk need to address this. Other than that, Sonar 7 is frankly quite astonishing. I enjoy making music on it.

However, Mac's do not suck. I hope Steve is still perusing this thread however since I want to tell him to check out the Apple Help forums under Logic and see how many users have the same issues/problems/questions as onces voiced on this forum. There is no getting around the fact that sometimes technology gets in the way. I personally had tons of issues building my last PC and Vista 64. Neither of my vid cards worked (ATI RAdeon X1550 and Gforce 6200) nor my wireless D-link adpater (kinda important when authorizing my NI plug-ins). But then again, my Intel Mac won't even load my EWQL Symphonic Choirs so that Kontakt 2 can recognize the samples.

As for the price- well, yeah a Mac Mini will run you under $1000, but you have to add 2 gigs of RAM (which is the max on it), buy Logic Express ($299) or Pro ($499), a soundcard (Firewire is optimal) which could cost anywhere between $250 to $1000. If you want to regress to a G5 Power PC tower, than you are looking at $1500 and up. And most of them need more RAM. And storage. It will be a costly thing. If you already have a PC, than you're okay to go with Sonar because you can download Asio4All to run off your built-in soundcard (I find the WDM drivers wonky personally).

Anyhow, best of luck Steve. If Logic/Apple gets to make good music and easier than Sonar, go for it. Me, well I honestly boot up my Mac 25% of the time while Sonar on my PC gets most of the attention.

-Dave

ORIGINAL: vomit2

But I don't know if she's telling me the truth or not, she doesn't have a lot of exsprance!

That's funny as hell .

Wow, some serious angst against the Mac ... what is up with that? I can understand a lack of interest, given you are working fine with what you have but ... wow ... wow

Unfortunately Vista is pretty much a dud, its driver support is non-existent and its performance lacking. Unfortunately, it appears to be the horse that Cakewalk has decided to ride and this means that Windows problems are Cakewalk's problems.

I personally like the Sonar interface better than Logic's but I have clearly had less trouble on the Mac than Windows ... by a long and I mean long shot. You have insurmountable problems with Vista64 and mixing 32 with 64 is a really bad idea. Nothing is perfect but your odds of success are much higher on the Mac. If you have no tolerance for dicking around with the technology, then Windows is not the place to be and you will like the Mac. I would normally add that you can build your Frankenstein in the PC world but ... Apple's Mac Pro has been coming out with the fastest processor technology available before anyone else. Dare we say FrankenMac!!!! :)

I tried out Bootcamp the other day and have come to the realization that with my Mac I have can my Cake, Logic and Final Cut too! Can't see a downside in that.

RnR

RnR, I do agree with you. When I first went back to PC land before Sonar 7 came out, I had nothing but problems tweaking this, adjusting that, not actually writing any music! Now my PC runs very smoothly but now so does my Mac Mini. like I said before, I like the interface of Sonar better than Logic but I agree that there is much too much negativity towards Macs here. Which I suppose is natural. In any case, Cakewalk rules!

While I thought most of the answers here were hilarious, what ever happened to "Don't feed the trolls??"

Thanks David_C and RockinRoll for your levelheaded comments and realistic insights gained from experience, half of these guys in here seem to have their head up their backside, as if the PC is the be all and end all when we know for a fact it is not, and they seem very defensive(even worse than Mac users) despite the fact that they know very well that the PC DAW world has very real and ongoing problems running Sonar under Vista64
.
LogicPro8 can expect to be practically "bug free" within one or two updates because currently intel users are nothing but praising Logic8 for its stability and new streamlined interface as well as being optimised for quad core processors etc.
the amount of problems PC users have to deal with when starting out with a new PC are not what i want to run into, because some users in here have taken months and even years to get things running properly and then they lock their setup out of any more updates to avoid the inevitable problems an update brings.

But as i understand it, the LogicPro8 has been largely if not totally rewritten for the new Leopard 64bit OS because they needed to get rid of some of the old bugbears and code that was causing some problems in the past, but i have come to the conclusion that anyone starting out in the DAW world would be much better off with a brand new intel Mac and simply wait for the LogicPro8.1 update and Leopard 10.5.1 and then there will be minimal problems if at all.
Logic is also about to be upgraded to 64 bit and i anticipate it to be running smoothly on Leopard with very real performance and efficiency gains, unlike the hyperbole stated by cakewalk regarding Sonars use inside vista64.
The advantage of LogicPro is that it is owned by the people who develop the OS so the programmers of the OS pass on inside knowledge and secrets to the LogicPro8 developers for maximum stability programming with minimal performance hiccups.And the OS is also developed with the LogicPro8 application in mind so that can only be a real plus for stability and efficiency.
My opening post did state that i wanted to buy Sonar7 and jump on board but i anticipate nothing but problems, going by most of the posts in here. It is a pity because i would have loved to use the Z3TA+,PSYNII,Pentagon, and V-vocal but i just ain't prepared to deal with the issues Sonar is having with windows.

ORIGINAL: David_C
Holy smokes guys, give Steve Austin a break.

Stone Col' Steve is getting what is coming to him. Not that he cares. If he actually intended to carry on a debate as to the suitability and stability of SONAR7 then he could have done so. There are many people on this board that use many products, many hardware platforms, and can carry on meaningful discussions on the benefits of one over the other -- from features to price to just about anything meaningful one would want to discuss.

Instead, "steve" was interested in lobbing a forum hand grenade and ducking for cover. "steve" wants to get cute with his little Mac/Logic religious crusade, so "steve" gets what's coming to him. I hope he got paid for his little free advertisement/disinformation post, 'cuz otherwise that's just pathetic. No, "steve" doesn't get a break... "steve" wants to get cute... and "steve" can go fnck himself. Oops, typo! I meant: "steve" can go f*ck himself.

Yes, it is odd that he announce on a Sonar forum that he finds it bad and all

Actually, no, I don't agree. This forum is a perfectly fine place to post educated opinions on and criticisms of SONAR. There's lots of that floating around. There's a good balance of fanboyism/fangirlism and relatively unbiased and practical knowledge and experience. There have been and continue to be many posts about disappointments with bugs, feature sets, upgrade prices, GUI button outline pixel widths, and on and on.

In fact, this is the perfect forum to voice criticisms of the products and of the company itself. Constructive criticism usually ends up in fruitful discussions on features and other things. When SONAR3 came out, one lengthy and heated bug discussion concluded with Ron Kuper admitting that Cake had limited time/resources to devote to bug fixing a product beyond a certain point after release. The whole discussion, all 10 or so pages of it, ended with Ron committing to changing Cake's dev process (to the extent possible) to devote more resources to patch release well into product lifecycles. And we all are getting the benefits of that, getting dot releases loaded with enhancements and patch releases well into the dev cycle of the next version.


Let me reiterate the content of "steve's" post. First, the title "Sonar7 just not good enough [...]". Really? How would he know? He doesn't own SONAR. I can tell you with no uncertainty that he has not demoed SONAR7, because no such demo is available. And even if his friend gave him a copy of SONAR7 to try on his own PC, he would have a hard time doing so because apparently he doesn't own a PC either. Or a Mac for that matter. After all, he's a "hardware musician", right? Or did he lie about that, too? He's so sneaky, that "steve"... he's like Jason Bourne... except different.

Then we have this in the first couple of sentences:

all i see in this forum is nothing but problems problems problems with Sonar7 not to mention Vista.
how dare cakewalk advertise S7 as the ducks nuts and 64bit and all that crap when it is far from being stable and efficient

Dave, considering that according to the content of his own post "steve" owns none of the following items -- a PC, a Mac, a copy of windows XP, a copy of windows Vista, a copy of OSX, a copy of SONAR7, a copy of Logic Pro8 -- do you think what I quoted above represents a legitimate criticism of SONAR7 on a PC, or is it flame bait from a two-bit troll?

If "steve" wants to post a damning critique of SONAR features/workflow/stability based on hands-on experience, and make a valid argument for using some other app and/or platform based on more than just a.) "somebody told me ...", b.) "I've read advertising copy in the latest Macworld that says ...", or c.) "Steve Jobs paid me to say ...", then I say let's have it! Unfortunately, "steve" isn't up to the task, nor is that his objective.

but why are there so many Mac haters out there?

I think there are more Mac fans around here than one would think. I'm always seeing posts from people running SONAR on MBPs and such. The caustic responses are less anti-Mac and more about "steve" making laughable, a S s c L o w n posts about Macs and Logic Pro. Seriously, I wonder if there is a clandestine group within Apple that conducts these sad commando raids on competitors' forums? I wonder if people like "steve austin" and "AXE" get a paycheck from Steve Jobs, like some sort of Blackwater soldier of fortune... And if so, I wonder if the money comes from some untraceable offshore account...

Here ya go, you do the math:

http://forum.cakewalk.com/tm.asp?m=634966&mpage=1
http://forum.cakewalk.com/tm.asp?m=633489&mpage=1#633522
http://forum.cakewalk.com/tm.asp?m=120110&mpage=1

Then there's this little time capsule from our own SteveJL: http://forum.cakewalk.com/tm.asp?m=164528&mpage=20#184308

He tried to warn us... we didn't listen. All our base are belong to SteveJL.

ORIGINAL: steve austin

LogicPro8 can expect to be practically "bug free" within one or two updates because currently intel users are nothing but praising Logic8 for its stability and new streamlined interface as well as being optimised for quad core processors etc.

Nothing is bug free, not even a Mac. ;)

the amount of problems PC users have to deal with when starting out with a new PC are not what i want to run into, because some users in here have taken months and even years to get things running properly and then they lock their setup out of any more updates to avoid the inevitable problems an update brings.

Locking out updates is wise on any platform, even the Mac if you depend on your machine.

There are clearly advantages to providing the hardware, operating system and software and one major benefit is the ability to quickly diagnose and resolve problems.

We are seeing change and Apple is clearly "out innovating" Windows. This was not always true and the Mac has just recently taken the performance edge and added than to its stability and ease of use edge. One thing that I find amazing is that with Leopard you will see increased performance from Tiger. This is in stark contrast to a performace decrease that you will see moving your PC to Vista.

Where Apple's success is going to have little impact on Windows sales, I believe it will have a much greater impact on Cakewalk's sales. Of course there are plenty that are buying Macs to run Windows on them, especially the Macbook and Macbook Pro.

With the Mac you cannot lose as it provides every possible OS support and hence all applications along with top end hardware performance that cannot even be found in competitors.

This Christmas is going to be interesting.

steve austin = David_C = RockinRoll

Too easy.

Mac haters ? No. Dork haters ? I think so.