This explains a lot about Cakewalk/Sonar

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When it was still called Cakewalk it was a good product IMO. It went wrong when they switchend and started calling it Sonar. Sonar 7 was a complete disaster. I left the ship and am now a happy Logic user and will probably never look back unless for some legacy stuff.
Last edited by Dúnedain on Sun Aug 30, 2015 2:26 am, edited 2 times in total.
Dúnedain

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szurcio wrote:Question for someone familiar with both Sonar and Cubase in Windows: do you think Cubase is in general less buggy than Sonar and the users' problems/requests are addressed faster by its development team than those of Sonar? Or are they both on the same level of reliability and support?
I was planning to buy either one to complement my S1 Pro - I need SysEx support.

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JoseC. wrote: According to you, any DAW without a staff editor must be absolutely non pro. Funny, because that should make Sonar "more pro :roll:" than several other DAWs widely used by people making a living with them. Sonar has a staff editor, and Cakewalk keeps it updated although it has been made pretty clear that they will never make it a full scoring editor. That is much more than all those "unprofessional" DAWs mentioned above.
I didn't say that "any DAW without a staff editor must be absolutely non pro". You just made that up. But of course the DAWs most professionals use are: Protools, Cubase, Logic and Performer, all of which have notation capabilities far beyond that of Sonar.
JoseC. wrote: About dropped features, I cannot think of any disappearing functionality beyond workflow changes (oh, yes, Studioware panel design, although old panels are still supported). In fact, I believe that one of the reasons why some people think that Sonar is "bloated" is precisely because it maintains pretty much everything and it is a very deep program.
DS864 (sampler platform) - discontinued
Project 5 (synth workstation) - discontinued
Cakewalk Instruments Development department - created Rapture, Dimension Pro among others -"the guy left" so no new instruments in years and little work on existing instruments.
Session Drummer - orphaned and eventually replaced be Addictive Drums - this was actually a good move since AD is top notch but it still fits the pattern.
Matrix View - great idea - abandoned years ago
Staff View - virtually abandoned for the last 20 years. When Cakewalk for Windows 3.1 was introduced in the early to mid '90s it was the best notation on the Windows platform. Since then they added some convenient track controls which they then removed with the X series. Recently they fix a couple of bugs that had been there for decades. Virtually abandoned because as Crag Anderton explains it's not cost effective for their demographic.
I'm sure there are more that I have forgotten.
JoseC. wrote: Truth is, Sonar has become a very good program, and it is in no way "the least capable", whatever you might mean with that. Since the Gibson aquisition things are running more smoothly than ever, and it seems to translate into user satisfaction.
I wasn't implying Sonar was the least capable program. You misunderstood my statement.

Maybe Cakewalk will turn it around but they have a dismal history. Gibson has put them under Tascam which single handedly destroyed what was, at the time, the most powerful sampler ever created. So who knows.

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double post

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szurcio wrote:Question for someone familiar with both Sonar and Cubase in Windows: do you think Cubase is in general less buggy than Sonar and the users' problems/requests are addressed faster by its development team than those of Sonar? Or are they both on the same level of reliability and support?
I have Sonar X3e and Cubase Pro 8 in my system. I've had Cubase for a couple of years and have never had a major problem with it. It simply doesn't crash. Sonar version X1, X2 were a bug infested nightmare. By the time X3 came out many bugs were fixed but I still have to deal with a disappearing "now line" requiring that I restart Sonar (latest drivers yada yada yada ad infinitum). X3 crashes often as well.
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As far as support Cakewalk has a great advantage in that you can call them. The problem is I never talked to anyone that seemed to have much expertise or desire to help. Cubase requires email support but they have always worked hard to solve my problems.

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vintagevibe wrote:
szurcio wrote:Question for someone familiar with both Sonar and Cubase in Windows: do you think Cubase is in general less buggy than Sonar and the users' problems/requests are addressed faster by its development team than those of Sonar? Or are they both on the same level of reliability and support?
I have Sonar X3e and Cubase Pro 8 in my system. I've had Cubase for a couple of years and have never had a major problem with it. It simply doesn't crash. Sonar version X1, X2 were a bug infested nightmare. By the time X3 came out many bugs were fixed but I still have to deal with a disappearing "now line" requiring that I restart Sonar (latest drivers yada yada yada ad infinitum). X3 crashes often as well.
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As far as support Cakewalk has a great advantage in that you can call them. The problem is I never talked to anyone that seemed to have much expertise or desire to help. Cubase requires email support but they have always worked hard to solve my problems.
OK, thanks - that really helps.

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I think the recent dim pro/rapture flail demonstrates that they are issues with Cakewalk which persist beyond whoever happens to own the company at a given moment: there are real issues of know-how and technological expertise. There was a debate years ago where the CTO (who's still working at CW, btw) was arguing with members over the practicality of automation lanes (Sonar didn't have them at the time), when, in fact, it turned out he was unfamiliar with the way they worked in a very basic way. This spoke volumes to me.
vespesian (sean)

You're in an amazing state - so stay there.

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Sorry if I'm not following, but seems like a ton of info (and opinions) in a short period of time.

Sonar either works for you or it doesn't. It's an infuriating company for more reasons than I'll ever be able to explain, but many people use it and love it so those who have had issues are SOL.

The trolling on this site isn't any different than cakewalk as was mentioned in the OP. However, I've noticed a shift in the last year where even the biggest fanboys (or is it boi's? ) have backed off a bit. Really don't know why. Been a member of their forums for about 12 years now. Other than a couple of people I keep in touch with over PM's, I don't go there. 20-40% of the site is just ridiculous :D :D :D (not to mention I don't think one single person that used to be on the cake team is there anymore ....significant turnover of crew )

Feature wise, it's terrific. But even though I haven't used it since the much failed (and completely ignored) X2, I still see more people with stability issues with sonar than anything else.

Glad I've used something else for a long time and can actually make music.

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I used Sonar X1-3 and found that on my system it gave me no end of glitchiness. Most of it seemed due to the no gapless audio or GUI issues.

And, like Incubus, I notice that even those who were strong supporters of CW seem now to be kind of muted ..... makes me wonder what is going on now....
Barry
If a billion people believe a stupid thing it is still a stupid thing

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vintagevibe wrote:"Hoover cites the prosumer market as the biggest part of Cakewalk’s current business, which it serves with “professional products that are geared towards non-professionals who want the very best"

I've said before that Sonar is marketed and designed for non-professionals. Nothing wrong with that. I'm sure it's a huge market. They just have never admitted until know (to my knowledge). This explains things such as:

1) No interest in updating staff view to actually be useful.
2) Focus on "content" which mainly consists in-house stuff that is usually of little use to anyone who has any modern sample libraries or 3rd party FX. It's fine for a hobbyist who wants everything in one purchase.
3) Tendency to bounce around, discontinuing or never properly developing features that are then dropped.
4) The forum. I don't even know where to start. You either love Sonar or your a troll. The moderators are constantly getting into little spats with each other. Cakewalk basically took some people who use the Sonar forum as their social life and made them moderators. You can even find Craig Anderton calling people trolls and making fun of frustrated newbies.

Nothing wrong with being a hobbyist. It's good now that Cakewalk is forthcoming about their target demographic so professionals can better evaluate their product.

Yes, professional work can be done on the least capable DAW so let's get that out of the way.
Pro or not Pro?
If "Pro" means being treated like Avid do to their ProTools userbase - I don't care about being Pro anyway.

Our lack of self-esteem is heavily used for markering by marketing agencies building brands etc. Most markering is built on foundation of lack of self-esteem among targeted customer base - this is cool to use that is not etc.

It does not take much to shatter self-esteem either. After all major criticism on Avid's new policies and how ProTools work, one of moderators at DUC forum sensed the need to post a topic about how well PT worked for him. I mean a moderator is not any user, even if not Avid employee per se.

You numbered paragraphs:

1. True. A couple of things for improvements are among top voted FR's though, we have to see what happends with that.

Still I purchased Samp ProX2 to find that being toyish beyond anything I saw regarding notation. No lyrics support, no chord diagrams, not guitar tabs or fretboard entering of notes.

ProX2 abandoned(for many reasons), and bounced back to Sonar. As long as running 4/4 Sonar is ok for my needs, but anything with triplets not usable not supporting triplet rests. But Music Xml is there, so other notation can be be used with fair amount of extra work.

2. Running Sonar Artist is really good value for money, not close to as cut down as Cubase Elements compared to Cubase Pro.

But I keep it simple and use daw as tape recorder pretty much - for holding clips and plugins. Record everything is realtime, no editing apart from some cut/paste comping of takes, maybe removed some midi notes that I happend to touch two keys etc.

If needing stretching abilities, audio snap etc Sonar Pro might be the choice, still not paying for too much bling-bling if having what you need already.

3. Sonar pre-X series was heavily criticised for adding new features while so may bugs in old features were still there.

I guess it exist to some degree still, but improved immensely in later years. And current way with monthly uppdates is terrific in my view. Cakewalk work harder than anyone regarding this.

Where you pay for each upgrade, even updates fixing bugs are too far apart. Samp ProX2 saying to have VST3 support crash every time at exit if trying to use Waves VST3 stuff - not fixed in three months yet, such a major bug. Waves Element synth crashed if used in any form in ProX - and it took two years almost before they fixed that.

Steinberg are not much better either. I reported a bug in Cubase Element which was 4 month old at the time, and this was known since 7 months before the version I ran, when moderators gave me a link on Steinberg forum and it took them yet another 4 months before 7.08 fixed it.

So Cakewalk shines in how they work today, in my view.

4. Forum Hosts f**k up real bad in between putting their nose where it does not belong. They destroyed a top voted FR I have that got 40 votes in two months by merging with a 9 month older thread with very poor description and only 5 votes in this time - idiots. Nobody understand the FR by reading the OP of that FR anymore. So Forum Hosts can get lost, I don't post FR anything ever again.

Forum as such, I don't know if worse than any other regarding fanbois.

Overall at Cakewalk I feel that devs don't get enough time for finalize new features before releasing - possibly a downside on new update policy. But still regarding bug fixes leaders of the pack.

The since a couple of months announced improved start screen was released now, but just moving recently used projects on a flat list and ability to pin some projects you feel are to be on top - not bad, but still nothing compared to the topic on forum on this subject with all ideas. So new features are starters more or less, and they continue improve them as time goes.

The tendency is there regarding Rapture Pro as well, sooooo many things that could be done to more easily manage Rapture and Dimension presets/programs. And what they released was halfbaked compared to how competitors did it. And Rapture(or any plugin) is not part of monthly update stuff so worse in that sense that you release halfbaked products.

But anybody seing past the lack of self-esteem, products being widely used by pro's or not, Sonar is really good choice in my view - at least for recording/mixing.

When it comes to daw being creative tool might be a more personal preference what you need. What you already have as 3rd party VST/VSTi might also matter what you choose.

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In my experience, the new Sonar Platinum subscription had been the most solid version in years, and they're putting out new updates almost monthly. I was skeptical about that at first, as I was about the Gibson acquisition, but it seems to be working out well. If your last experience was with X3, you might want to consider giving the latest release a try.
Incomplete list of my gear: 1/8" audio input jack.

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I used Sonar since it's first release in 2000. I gave up 3-4 years ago after X2. I loved the Skylight interface - in fact it was so far ahead of the game at the time it's only now looking back you realise how well thought through it was. However I found the program to be glitchy, crash prone and bug ridden. Audio quantising with Audiosnap was a joke - a complex crashfest and difficult to use.

The abandoned X2 after only a couple of patch releases, despite it being half baked to start with, and then launched X3 - which was enough for me to jump ship to Cubase. I'd had enough. :cry:

Using Cubase (despite the clickathon and poor UI) was completely different experience. :party: it was stable, fully featured, and just worked. In more recent days I've started to use SO3 and flip flop between them as they are so excellent in their own different ways.

Despite the naysayers I think Tascam are going in the right direction with Sonar however they have a huge amount of catching up to do. Cubase was already light years ahead on functionality and the gap is increasing with every release.

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EnGee wrote: So, in the end Sonar is not for everyone. Dance crowd and Midi based composing should look somewhere else.
the pre X4(Platinum) ones were quite buggy ones (so I've skiped them) but I really like the current version, especially because its piano roll is quite similiar to the one in FL but its arrangment/mixer view has much more potential, Cubase it's too slow for using creative processes : yepp "clickathon and poor UI" the piano roll in S1 is ... so not too good for mouse based worfflow (I can play on piano but sometimes I'm working with mouse too)

Sonar is somewhere between FL and Cubase, has better/faster/more intuitive worflow than Cubase has, and has better mixing capabilities than FL (screensets/mixing states can be saved and recalled for example, and FL has an attack of the zillion windows syndrome)

in nutshell 10 minutes why I like Sonar

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6ZSnBx3KWv4

so it's definitely can be used for EDM too,

ps. folder track organizing is really great too

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XUk-fs83MgE
"Where we're workarounding, we don't NEED features." - powermat

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xbitz wrote:
EnGee wrote: So, in the end Sonar is not for everyone. Dance crowd and Midi based composing should look somewhere else.
the pre X4(Platinum) ones were quite buggy ones (so I've skiped them) but I really like the current version, especially because its piano roll is quite similiar to the one in FL but its arrangment/mixer view has much more potential,
What the differences from X3e piano roll? Did they fix the midi loop recording bug? In reality I felt the piano roll in X3e is way behind than other competitors!
Cubase it's too slow for using creative processes : yepp "clickathon and poor UI"
This is new for me :hihi: So, Sonar has a great workflow now?! Better than Cubase? I .... don't believe it!!
the piano roll in S1 is ... so not too good for mouse based worfflow (I can play on piano but sometimes I'm working with mouse too)
I don't understand this! What do you mean?
Sonar is somewhere between FL and Cubase, has better/faster/more intuitive worflow than Cubase has,
In your dreams :lol:
and has better mixing capabilities than FL
True :tu:

so it's definitely can be used for EDM too,
It can be used for anything really, but why use it for EDM if there are much better options for EDM?!

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i have been using Cakewalk for a long time, and sure, there have been some problems here and there. i remember a Rapture bug that caused some crashes several years ago, but i find myself loving Sonar Platinum more than i loved X3e. i wish Native Instruments could make their Maschine product be as worry-free for me as Sonar Platinum.
my newest sounds:
https://soundcloud.com/the-das-kaput

Cakewalk by BandLab, Komplete 13, Maschine 2 (MKI & Jam), Fathom Synth, Guitars, Jam Origin MIDI Guitar, EXH Superego+ etc

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