Komplete is good advice. Some would also say look at Spectrasonics, but the price of entry is higher and the range is not as wide as Komplete.

I now want Komplete. It looks powerful!

Do you think I could get by with Sonar Home Studio 6 XL and Komplete for a while? I'm a personal musician doing it for fun at the moment. I'm not sure what the future holds in terms of further projects.

What I desire are professional sounds and if Komplete can give me that over Sonar X1 producer than I'd like to take advantage of it. But I wouldn't mind having both Komplete and Sonar X1.

Do you run into things you can't do in the version you are using? If not why switch? MAybe when you hit a wall there then look for a new DAW, but IMO Komplete will give you a lot to work with in many different areas and probably is a better investment than any particular DAW.

I don't have Komplete but if I had the option of buying it or a new DAW I definitely would get it, only cost gets in my way.

I haven't used the program enough to know if I can't do some things I want to do. I don't know for sure, but I'm concerned that being able to master and get my track to sound louder might be an issue unless I have plugins or features similar to what Sonar X1 has. Maybe you or someone else can correct me if I'm off here.

What I was trying to say was you could consider that host that starts with a r and get komplete and you'd have all the instruments you could possibly need and a stable reliable host that is cpu efficient. Nothing more.

I can only go based on my experiences.

"The host that shall not be named"

Well, people seem to give others a hard time about it. Plus, like I said, give them a shot. Demos, and those vids. Other than that there is only so much that can be said.

Yep, I definitely agree. I would also ask about the free-ware compressor and limiter options, that and his current host with some new plugins (Komplete or whatever) may get him everything he needs. I think before I shop it is important though to know what my necessities are. All the hosts are different takes on the same basic concept and they seem to me to lend themselves to certain things, with certain limitations. Its definitely best to know what tools you are going to need before spending money on anything.

BTW, one of the things that comes up with sonar allot is the "comp/eq" section.

I think this one thing I likes LEAST in sonar. a) the eq. The window is too small, the mousewheel did NOT control the parameters last time I tried it and it's nothing special compared to say that eq that we won't mention that comes FREE with the host we won't mention b ) compressor. Is this supposed to be something special?

Takes up allot of real estate in the mixer and isn't what it's cracked up to be imho. Alloy is totally superior to me. Yep, that's more money but again.....mho.

I think that there's a tendency to feel that whatever you're doing is deficient in some way and then you start to think that it's because you don't have x,y,z, and that the next version up of the software has all that. Moreover, they love to sell it like that. Big splashy screens of the sexy mastering/maximum loudness/this and that or whatever.

There are things that limit you, and then, there are things that you imagine limit you but really don't. I've found that the things that limited me were specific limitations such as "the number of allowed effects." With Live, for example, you just don't realize how well it works until you can stack up multiple effects on every track. Having to count the effects and tracks you use causes you to think in an old-school way like you have a hardware studio with an 8-track and two sends. Fine to record your singer/songwriter number, but a royal pain for dance music.

On the other hand, I don't think that there's any magic effect that comes with any daw that you can't come close enough to with a free variant. If I were you, I'd buy a copy of CM magazine and start making music. Until you know what you actually need I think you'll do like many of us already have, and that is waste money on buying the wrong things.

All great advice.

Yes, I think you should stick with what you've got for now and either try out all the great freeware as suggested first, or if you really want to spend some cash, go for Komplete instead of a new DAW.

The only vst I use more than Kontakt is Spectrasonics Stylus RMX. Love that thing, and it compliments Komplete's percussion well.

I use X1 Studio and I like it. I do have some issues with it but that is mostly pertaining to rewire since I do use Reason a lot in my music. However I haven't had many issues when using 3rd party plug ins or their own in the software. Not everything works as advertised though. But I personally wouldn't buy a DAW simply based on its included plug ins especially if you already have Home Studio. I have Home Studio and used it for a while and only upgraded because Reason went 64 bit and I needed Sonar to be 64 bit with it not realizing that on the newer versions of Sonar rewire doesn't work right.

That reminds me, midi learn doesn't work very well for effects in SONAR. If you set them up as instruments ahead of time, run both a midi and audio track as you would a hardware instrument, you can make it work, but it ain't easy

I heard you have to change Reason to 32-bit to get it to work. I read something about this earlier today.

How do you like X1 Studio compared to Home Studio? What are the biggest improvements for you?

anyways I appreciate everyone's advice!