Cakewalk Sonar Refuges: what's next?

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Sonar and FL Studio are among the hardest DAWs to switch from because they implement so many things backwards. You'll probably have trouble liking any other DAW if you don't make some effort to adapt to the way other DAWs do things.

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Romantique Tp wrote:Sonar and FL Studio are among the hardest DAWs to switch from because they implement so many things backwards. You'll probably have trouble liking any other DAW if you don't make some effort to adapt to the way other DAWs do things.
That's about the most ridiculous thing I've read about a DAW. What exactly is backwards? What standard is being referenced? geez.
If you have to ask, you can't afford the answer

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I remember reading that you've used both Sonar and Cubase, so I assume that you're familiar with Sonar's quirks. A lot of the differences between how things are done in Sonar and Cubase actually apply to most other DAWs, and from what I've seen this gives some people trouble switching because many workflows they came up with translate poorly to other DAWs. Perhaps the difference isn't as noticeable if you were a Sonar power user with a well optimized workflow.

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Romantique Tp wrote:I remember reading that you've used both Sonar and Cubase, so I assume that you're familiar with Sonar's quirks. A lot of the differences between how things are done in Sonar and Cubase actually apply to most other DAWs, and from what I've seen this gives some people trouble switching because many workflows they came up with translate poorly to other DAWs. Perhaps the difference isn't as noticeable if you were a Sonar power user with a well optimized workflow.
Doing things different is NOT doing things backwards. To be honest I found Sonar and Cubase to be damned near identical. FLStudio can be a mind bender for sure ... but not because it is backwards. Repear routing and monitoring is actually different and be confusing for people coming over ... but again not because it is backwards.
If you have to ask, you can't afford the answer

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Sorry for using a word that you didn't like.

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SJ_Digriz wrote:Repear
Almost backwards :hihi:
No band limits, aliasing is the noise of freedom!

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I'm guessing "backwards" was being used as a colloquialism indicating "different".

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jonljacobi wrote:I'm guessing "backwards" was being used as a colloquialism indicating "different".
One has a negative connotation, one does not. Also, the example is to Sonar which does it almost exactly how Cubase does it. Putting Sonar into a FLStudio group to compare to Cubase is crazy. Now, saying going from FLSTudio to Sonar or Cubase can be different/confusing/backwards or say from Sonar or Cubase to FLSTudio ... sure I can see that.
If you have to ask, you can't afford the answer

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jonljacobi wrote:Nearly all workflows will be a bit strange after Sonar. Cubase has some oddities, but is improving with every release. Live is different, but quite facile after you learn it. For my needs, it's the quickest. My biggest deal these days is that I won't use anything that doesn't scale. Can't squint anymore.

Really, you can get it done with anything. Try them all. There are a few sleepers out there.

You'll hear love/hate and a lot of noise about every DAW. It's all about your needs, what you find appealing, and what works for you.
I agree with some of this. But I have been trying to switch to Cubase for 3 years now because of Sonar bugs Cakewalk could not fix. I am a software programmer myself and I spend many extra hours trying to make the software user friendly to them. Not many software programmers do that, including the Steinberg programmers. They wrote to software for themselves and for sure none of them spent hours trying to make a music track. That is what made Cakewalk special. Their programmers actually used their own software.

I built my first desktop computer in 1977 and I got it to play a mono track of music that I programmed in. I have been doing this a long time. I was recording MIDI tracks on an Amiga computer in 1985 while mixing jazz musicians in real studios in Hollywood at the same time. I liked Cakewalk, I admit, because their mixer was familiar. It looked just like the mixers I had been using for all those years. But then it became more than that as I learned. How you route things was just like how you route things in a real studio.

Cubase, I can guarantee none of those programmers ever mixed a song in a real studio or if they did, they were not very good at it. If the mixer feel and sound were the only thing, I would say go Harrison Mixbus. That is the best mixer GUI feel and sound that I ever heard but they are just at the beginner stage of doing VST. So they were not an option for me. Now I respect EvilDragon as a programmer and I bought everything that he ever sold. I know Reaper is powerful, if you are a programmer type, but they skimped on the mixer. I think the power behind Reaper is all in a user's programming skills. I tried it for a week and I did not like it. This is all subjective, so sorry EvilDragon. I think that the Reaper GUI looks childlike and I am used to better with Cubase and Sonar. How the mixer looks is important to me so I can get into the professional studio frame of mind again.

I tried MOTU and their software has many new powerful features, but the base software is on the same level as Sonar 3 from over 10 years ago. They, like Cubase, require several steps to create a VST track. With Digital Performer, you have to create 2 tracks for every VST track ,just like Sonar 3. So if you have 20 VST tracks to record, there are 40 tracks in your mixer. Cubase does not display all of those but they make you create them in the background for each VST track that you create and then type in the routing for each track, for me about 10 steps per VST track. But oh the power that gives you, so think the Steinberg programmers.

FL studios was not even an option for me to try. It is EDM all the way and no way those programmers meant it to be serious film score software.

Seriously, we don't all know what will happen when they turn the Sonar Platinum servers off. The software may still work as is just there will be no updates.....forever! Or maybe it will stop working. For me Sonar X3 was not terrible and I can use it for a while.

There is one software that I tried that is just like Sonar. I promise, I have read every post here looking for an answer myself, but I downloaded all of the ones that I spoke of. This one software, Acoustica Mixcraft, I may switch to, although it takes me back to Sonar X3 days. I did buy Mixcraft for a 99 dollar crossgrade for three reasons.

1. They don't have the Omnisphrere and 8Dio bugs that Sonar had and could never fix
2. They will continue to advance and one day will be better than Sonar Platinum, with our help and input.
3. If I submitted a ticket to Cakewalk help desk for the last ten years, mostly I did not hear from them at all and if I did, it was 3 to 4 weeks. I had some VST loading problems with Mixcraft and their helpdesk replied right away to my issue and then again and again to my followup needs.

And Melodyne is integrated into Mixcraft. If you already have Melodyne Studio like me, you skip the install of the free Melodyne Essentials and it integrates your MD Studio. Example below.

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AtomsApple wrote: FL studios was not even an option for me to try. It is EDM all the way and no way those programmers meant it to be serious film score software.
BRSO plugin makes it quite fun
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6xW02Px3D80

worth to check the channel of Alex Moukala, https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC_CyR8 ... -CQ/videos
"Where we're workarounding, we don't NEED features." - powermat

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AtomsApple wrote:snip
TL;DR of this post: The Cubase programmers apparently don't make music with their own app because they didn't want to make the mixer a skeuomorphic clusterfuck. (???)

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Astralv wrote:I was interested in waveform because of Composers Tools. I actually just bought it the other week.

WARNING: Bad Idea!

First of all, I had issues with activation. While everything activated the way it intended, I keep getting constant beeps and I cant tell why (when playing the Demo song).

My VSTs did not show correctly. When I opened it first time, it said, "These VSTs failed..." and there was list of like 40 plugins. All native Instruments plugins failed and almost everything else.

The tracks in it are on the right and use of real estate is just weird. I could never figure out where is what and where I am. I have about 20 years of DAW expedience, and i was like, "What in the world is this?"

I contacted tech support via e-mail and told them about all the problems and that I need refund unless they have easy fix. I never heard back from them. I contacted them again and never heard back from them.

Awful.
I bought it a couple of weeks ago.. not a single issue experienced so far. Haven't had a single freeze, crash or bug, and no issues with any AU and VST plugin either. And it's probably the snappiest DAW I've ever used.

Experiences differ.
My other host is Bruce Forsyth

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I used to be a Sonar user, a long time ago.
All I remember is crash, problem, freeze, crash, problem, etc.

If you want to stick to the conventional linear paradigm, any of the competitors (Reaper, Cubase, Studio One, etc.) will do very well. Personally I would recommend Reaper.

However, these days, Ableton Live is as good in the conventional linear as any other, with the added bonus that almost everything in it is more fun and lends itself to creativity more than any other DAW.

And even though I have (and love Logic), my second recommendation would be Reason.
Anyone who says that Reason is a toy, or that it sounds bad, is a complete and utter incompetent moron.
My other host is Bruce Forsyth

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Tracktion Waveform is quite good, but I do still question whether it was worth the upgrade for me from T7. I don't use the Collective sampler instrument; I haven't needed the composer tools; I find the dedicated MIDI editor and mixer windows cumbersome to use, so I don't bother with them. Waves VSTi plugins (e.g. Clavinet, Bass Slapper, etc.) do not work in Waveform although they do work in T7. VST3 support in Tracktion DAWs is flawed (initialization from presets does not seem to work correctly).
[Core i7 8700 | 32GB DDR4 | Win11 x64 | Studio One 6 Pro | FL Studio ASIO/WASAPI ]

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Overloud are offering cheap crossgrades to some of their products and unlock codes for their plugins that came bundled with Sonar so theyll run in other hosts

https://www.overloud.com/news/overloud- ... -customers
Amazon: why not use an alternative

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