defected from Sonar

[hexman]

Hey jimsey - I defected from Sonar as well. Never got a song completed in sonar....

Every time I opened it up I just felt like I was using a spreadsheet or wordprocessor. Its not sonar - just my way of right/left brain-ness. I sometimes program VC++ and it reminds me of that type of brain activity: you jump around, different apps, have to keep in mind 10 different settings, code branches etc.

Tracktion feels "flat". There isnt much to distract me away from the music process. It gets the hell out of the way and I dont have to timeshare my brain with all the other little anoyances of 20 levels of information presentation.

Tracktion workflow and appearance (yes - it matters dammit!) just allows me to get it out of my brain and into the computer. That to me is HUGE. Plus it does look like its about 30 years ahead in visual appeal.

just my 0.02

[rivrock]

Hey jimsey

I was a diehard cakewalker (Guitar tracks pro), had fun with it at first, easy to use, and rock solid stable, but I went round in circles with it, trying to get a decent sound.

I initially got T to use just for midi and import the rendered wavs into GT Pro, but then decided to try a couple of acoustic guitar and vocal tracks in T,....wow! ....bye bye cakewalk, hello T

My laziness to learn another proram, instantly vanished

man...I gotta get some work done around here,....

[PaulG]

To the detractors, I think the point wasn't to be anti-Sonar, it was to expose the difficulties in workflow that some people experience. I have both Sonar 4 and T2, and while being as patient as I could be, I have spent more time learning and configuring Sonar in the past 2 months than actually using and I'm burned out. T2 was always the thing I opened up when I had to get an idea down quickly.

Sometimes a slew of features aren't as important as the important ones accessibility.

[bernhardtjeff]

well, cakewalk isn't unaware of people like us: http://www.kvraudio.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=93753

i switched over from sonar, too, not because it stumped me, but because i wanted a host that supported vst stuff natively (and didn't want to pay out the ass for cubase or sampleton) instead of through a directx wrapper, which i found gave certain plugins that require tempo sync problems. even configuring some plugins as synths or even with the latest cakewalk wrapper where you can choose "tempo sync" in the setup, i still found glitches. if i'm confident that sonar has this fixed, i'll probably think about moving back, possibly to one of the sonar home studios they've just released. one thing that sonar has that tracktion doesn't yet is assignable keyboard shortcuts, so, for instance, reversing a part of a waveform (i still like to do this manually quite a bit) in sonar can be accomplished by simply splitting it and pressing "r"; in tracktion, you have to go through 4 or 5 levels to do this, and even then you can only reverse the WHOLE waveform. sonar has much better waveform editor options that i miss a little in tracktion.

another thing is that tracktion is still young compared to sonar/cakewalk products, which means that even though there are smart people working on it, it still doesn't "walk right" all the time. a program like sonar is in it's 4th version (not to mention the various software cakewalk had around years before sonar), so more of the wrinkles have been ironed out.

however, something i really like about tracktion is being able to come here and talk to the people who are directly responsible for developing it. if this kind of community didn't exist, i might not have switched over full time to a still relatively young program. this makes the little things that tracktion's missing tolerable, since i know there's a good chance they'll be fixed in subsequent versions.

I did download the Sonar4 demo again... and just sat there for about 15 minutes... stumped!

pressing "f1" opens the help file (an excellent resource when you need HELP). also, you generally have to click on things (try using that right mouse button, too) and push buttons to get the program to respond. then, it's just a matter of reading the menus that pop up (yes, there's reading involved, too!) and guessing what the various options mean. i find that options generally do what they say. for instance, "insert new midi track" will usually insert a new midi track and not do something like render your project to a 60k mp3 file in a hidden temp directory. just sitting there for 15 minutes doesn't to do much, even in something as easy to use as tracktion.

[Frippertronix]

I just wanted to say thank you to the developers of T2! I've recently moved over from years of Cakewalk and Sonar and the experience has been like getting out of a rotten old car you have tried your best to maintain and then getting into a brand new sports car that almost drives itself.

My laptop now feels like a piece of advanced alien hardware that has accidentally fallen into the hands of a human. I'm suddenly more creative, wanting to spend more time at the machine and I am really really enjoying it. Isn't that what it is all about..?



James

We are all very proud of you and we understand that your life is much, much better now, so congratualtions!

[jimsey]

Wow, thanks so much everyone... it's great to be a part of this!

Hexman - I felt exactly the same way about Sonar. You don't realise how long the little things take you to do. Like opening and resizing windows, managing track inputs, assigning midi tracks to VSTi and managing automation. Even changing patches in a VSTi was a chore. These time consuming tasks just do not exist in T2.

bernhardtjeff - Yep, that Sonar DX wrapper is odd and I don't like it either. Even more odd is the fact that I had to run Sonar in ASIO mode (with asio4all), even with WHQL certified WDM drivers on my machine. Sonar started to strike me as a piece of legacy infested bloatware (apologies again to Sonar fans!). For instance, the Sonar piano roll is the same one from the Pro Audio days.

The T2 developers do seem to be active in this forum and they show a nice 'open source' community in their responses. They actually present possible solutions to the board before going away and coding them for the next release.

Sonar 4 was almost identical to Sonar 3 (only big change IMHO was track folders) and I feel that unless Cakewalk come out with something very good, then Tracktion is going to outpace them quickly. Especially from the good things I have seen of the product, the company and this forum!



James

[jalapeno]

Me too. Came to T via Voyetra (yes really), Logic 5 (PC version), Sonar 2. Found T2 from Propellerheads's website link to Raapie's review. Workflow and ease of config have been the best bits. Press record & play