Sonar 4 Producer V.S. Sony Acid Pro 5.0

[daviencrow]

Ok , My Keyboarder Ark and myself have been talking about Sonar 4 Producer edition (which I own and use) and Acid Pro (which he owns and uses).

He doesn't see much use for Sonar after checking it out and from what he can tell Sonar has nothing (aside from plugins) that's a big deal more than Acid.

Can anyone help compare them. The pros and cons of both .. What you think is better .. And functions 1 has the other doesnt ?

The discussion has me very curious..

[Spe3D]

Ok , My Keyboarder Ark and myself have been talking about Sonar 4 Producer edition (which I own and use) and Acid Pro (which he owns and uses).

He doesn't see much use for Sonar after checking it out and from what he can tell Sonar has nothing (aside from plugins) that's a big deal more than Acid.

Can anyone help compare them. The pros and cons of both .. What you think is better .. And functions 1 has the other doesnt ?

The discussion has me very curious..

One is designed primarily for pre-made loops and the chopping and pasting of them (Acid)

The other is designed with the focus for creating original content from scratch (Sonar)

[daviencrow]

Well my point with him was why not just load Acid into Sonar as a rewire as well as other programs he uses (ie. Reason)

It would save the trouble of exporting content from each and loading it into another you know ?

[antardhyan]

SONAR has better midi implementation and certainly has better midi capabilities.
Sorry, cannot add more points for you. Did not play around long enough with SONAR demo but I love acid for sure.

[daviencrow]

Keep in mind , with his own project he makes the songs almost 100% in Acid Pro.

I dont use Acid Pro so I have no idea what it's capibilities are.

[daviencrow]

SONAR has better midi implementation and certainly has better midi capabilities.
Sorry, cannot add more points for you. Did not play around long enough with SONAR demo but I love acid for sure.

I was never too fond of Sonar's Piano roll and Looping functions. I use other program for midi composing unless it's 100% manually with a keyboard.

[Stupid American Pig]

UGH another Vs. thread. But I will play- heres where sonar shines IMO

- Multitrack recording, full gapless PDC engine very flexible routing options Pow-r dithering, stability, simple S/N copy protection, included plugins are outstanding, piano roll/midi editing recording is intuitive and easy and prolly 30 others that I will think of after I post this.

I have Acid pro 4, I know they did quite an update with 5, but after using pro 4, I dislike it because

- its clumsy, vst support is not so good, piano roll SUCKS!, single track recording only, it didnt get stable until rev f., and many more that I could elaborate on.

That said- I almost bought Acid 5 to rewire into Sonar 4, because I do like its remixing powers. Beat mapper is great, and the time stretch algo is slightly better than Sonars on some material. I decided not to though as I dont work with loops much anymore, and I hadnt really even fired up Acid in months. I think acid is a great idea, and works great as a remixers tool. For multitracking tho, it just isnt capable of things that I require, or they are too kludgy feeling for me.

[Van Greco]

Sonar and Acid are my two main pieces of software. I only have Acid 4 still because it it already does everything I wanted it to do so no need to upgrade. Plus I have heard some pretty negative things here at kvr and elsewhere about newer versions of Acid. I only use Acid for making drum parts. I could do this inside of Sonar itself, but I find that I get it done much faster with Acid. It's strongest point I think is it's ease of use. Acid is notorius for not playing well with some other plugins though. I also find it next to useless for trying to record audio. Sonar is really able to do just about anything I can throw at it and it gives me so much more versitility than Acid. Sometimes it can get complicated and I have to refer to the manual or forums for help. The help menu is actually pretty good though. I make mostly rock-based music so I use alot of live audio and Acid is just not up to the task for that kind of stuff. Hope this helps.

[daviencrow]

UGH another Vs. thread. But I will play

I didn't mean for the thread to be a which program is better , they're both great. This ones more of a friendly V.S. thread. if that makes sense lol

[Bassballjg]

Acid remains, in my opinion the best at what it does well, that is, its core mission of loading and arranging loops. Otherwise, I'd agree that Sonar is much better at handling softsynths and MIDI tracks. I don't use piano rolls or do any MIDI editing except quantizing, so I have no opinion about that aspect of any program. Sonar is absolutely necessary if you want to record more than one simultaneous track of audio.

So the big difference, if you're thinking about comparative use value, seems to me to be that Sonar is built to be a comprehensive studio and Acid is a loop composing application that has taken on basic MIDI and audio recording functions to be more useful and competitive. Acid can be all you need if that is all you do, which some folks do and create very good music. Acid rewired with Reason is cool because you handle the synths in Reason and audio in Acid, the same would hold true for Project 5 with even more flexibility. On the other hand, because Acid Pro 5 is now a rewire slave, you can use it as a loop arranger "instrument" along side MIDI and linear audio in Sonar, something I may go to version 5 to do because I prefer loop handling and arranging in Acid to Sonar, but Sonar or Reason for loop creation.

There are a lot of creative possibilities but no "right" answers here, and that is actually a good thing. But in the big picture, if you want to do more than totally loop-based music, I believe that Sonar is the far better value.

[CANE CREEK]

Acid PRO is a great product for the Beginner learning song structure and arrangement with its loop feature.

But thats where it ends , if you want to delve into the VST instrument world you really need hosts like Cubase and sonar which are far more stable and have better Midi editing functions , when i was using VST's in acid Pro 4 it just didn't handle them well at all eveytime i opened a track i'd been working on Acid would for some strange reason swap instruments in the midi track i found this very annoying.I upgraded to cubase sx and now using VST's is a breeze.

over time ive used Acid pro 2 , Acid pro 3 & Acid pro 4 then moved onto cubase sx which i do all my producing in now and ive just bought ableton live 5 for some future live Gigs.

I tried the demo of sonar and found i prefered cubase , just horses for courses i suppose.

I suppose if you take everything positive out of every top host on the market and put them together you end up with Ableton live 5.

[aafuss]

Acid is a loop based package, while Cakewalk products such as Sonar is better for creating oroginal music. I like ACID but prefer Cakewalk (I use less-featured, budget version called Music Creator) and Magix Music Studio (its MIDI sudio is based on Logic and it's butdget priced).

[databass]

Keep in mind , with his own project he makes the songs almost 100% in Acid Pro.

yeah, here is the same
Acid is not only good for 'pre-made loops'
i export new sounds out of it continously
cos i like to experiment with my softsynths

I have bought it @ version 3 because it had (then) a revolutionary system that automatically adapted tempo and tonality of samples and loops to the project in course
with a very convincing time-streatch algorithm (wich still remain one of the better to me)

i've always upraded since v3
the last release (5c build 345) is perhaps the most stable version from long time (at least with my system)
vsti and vst support works very well (many plugs in my system)
the automation envelope is so intuitive an precise

rewire host and slave!! .. you can plug it how best is for you

yes, as someone already pointed out Acid lack in the MIDI capabilities
this is the only cons to me
but .. the best way to judge is to try out yourself
and watch if can fit your workflow

i'm scoring a video with it right now

best luck

[sgx]

I use Acid as a host and rewire P5 and Reason into it. Bouncing portions of audio from P5 or Reason as a loop straight into the project is awesome and allows you to take advantage of Acid's awesome manipulation capabilities quickly and easily. I agree MIDI is horrible in Acid. That's what I have P5 for.