Cakewalk Sonar

Sonar-- I've had it for about a year. Before that I've had Cakewalk in its various incarnations. The programs are very difficult to use, they often crash and fail.

Sonar has some built in effects, which look very impressive in tryout, but in actual working situations they are miserable to work with.

The programs are skittish to say the least. Sound quality varies from minute to minute and can't be trusted to stay at any level.

I've given up on all Cakewalk products. They are hard to use, totally unsatisfying to work with and a genuine waste of time and money. I'm considering a class action legal suit against this company.

Cakewalk is hard to deal with. The manuals coast over any real problems one might encounter, get bogged down in the obvious and attempt to make gibberish out of that. There is no help line to call them on and dealing with their web site is just plain frustrating.

I've given up on Cakewalk. Cool edit pro special edition came with my soundcard for free. It's a much more straight forward program than any Cakewalk product. I'm also going back to hardware -- I have a Yamaha aw 4416 which works just fine.

I am using Win 2000 on a brand new DELL. I upgraded from Guitar studio2 to Sonar and it's a vaste difference. Their "scale velocity" function is a plus! Sonar is easy to use.

Not too happy with expressiveness, except the drum part which is really good. I wish the other sounds were more realistic. They need to make it sound very close to a real synth. Also, strangely, certain SONAR sound fonts (like "clean guitar") sounds much better on crappy sound cards which I used on laptops than on expenisve desktops. I programmed it on the crappy laptop and did an analog transfer(through the earphone sockets) to the desktop, so as to retain the sound I wanted.

Yes, very reliable.

They usually respond within 3 business days when ever I requested tech support by email.

Nice product. However I have not used other software to compare. I think I will stick with SONAR. I am quite happy with it.

Sonar is as easy to use as you would expect for something that has so many features. I've used Cubase, Logic, Vision, Pro Tools and have stuck with Cakewalk because it's just so much easier to do what you want than with the others. Having said that, the revamped Sonar interface is a little bit of a culture shock, looking partly like Logic. But it soon becomes second nature, and if I'd never used Cakewalk Pro Audio it wouldn't be an issue.

It's got everything except VST plug in support. Although Twelve Tone Systems claim that WDM drivers give better performance in Windows, there are plenty of VST plug ins that I would like to use. You can get VST-DX adapters, but most don't convert VST instruments unless you pay for them(!). At least Sonar should come with a basic adapter, at most VST support. Doesn't use ASIO, which, given the number of problems I and others I know have had, is probably a good thing. One cool feature is Midi plug in capability, allowing things like arpeggiators, timing and velocity variation, and all sorts of other oddities (how would you like automatic drum and guitar parts?). Sonar also has most of the looping features of ACID, and is very expandable. Audio editors such as Wavelab appear automatically on the Tools menu, and the midi side can be expanded to virtually anything using CAL, Sonar's built in programming language!

Sonar's recording quality is as good as the hardware you use to record.
It comes with the Virtual Sound Canvas. I wish my ACTUAL Sound Canvas (a Roland JV-50) sounded as good. I've never been impressed with Roland's acoustic drum sounds, but none of this really has anything to do with Sonar!

Doesn't crash as often as Cubase or even Pro Audio 9.

Never needed to use it.

Overall I really like Sonar, and would choose it first over any other sequencer. It comes with a good range of features out of the box at a good price. There is little that it doesn't do, and what it does, it does very well.

Version 1.3 is great. Puts Protools to shame. This is THE best program for midi and digital audio. Period. Follows standard windows conventions - It is a piece of piss to use.

All the features that you will ever need and more.128 audio tracks, gazillions of midi tracks and as much I/O as you can throw at it. In win2k, latency is about 10ms with most worthwhile hardware. However the bundled plugs are CRAP, but most of you out there will have a bunch of 3rd party plugs that you prefer anyway. Also it is worth noting that this program is optimised for Direct X and win2k, asio and VST isn't used. Sonar and 98 are a dog - on win2k - it ROCKS. You can't use VST plugs either but it is really easy to convert any plugs over to direct x with freely available shareware.

This program allows your ideas to flow from your brain to the ears of others with ease. The bundled soft synths, ACID style looping, soundfont support, and studioware make life very cruisy. Also the zoom feature is easy and not fiddly (Unlike the majority of audio programs). The sound quality is as good as you get with host-based recording. The better the Hardware you use, the better the recording. Sonar doesn't colour the sound.

Rock solid..... IF your S-card hardware has new win2k drivers AND you aren't using any cracked plugs.

pretty good. When contacting them via email they responded the next working day. It was a problem with my s-card and they contacted my manufacturer about the problem.

This program is excellent. It is the BEST program that I have ever used. Period. It's easy to use, full featured and very professional.