Sonar 5 has arrived...

[Stupid American Pig]

[Jaeson Merrill]

However, there's quite some good lookig features coming along with Sonar 5. I hope they made the interface a bit more appealing to my taste, I never liked the overall layout at all.

Ah, quite an understatement. While it *is* extremely useful, Sonar apparently continues to incrementally creep towards what seems to be an inevitable demise: death by bloating. The exponential increase in patched together features, and the outdated layers of dialogue-base UI with which they do it, are fearsome.

agreed.. theres so much bloat.. I hope that is improved.

[whyterabbyt]

I would like to see many of the functions that Live offers such as warping. A beatmapping and chopping feature designed in a similar way to ACID would be nice. I would like to be able to access all of this in the main window - not by opening other windows.

I'm not quite sure what warping does in Live, or the tools available to Acid. I've been used to doing these kind of things with plugins, though, and I'd personally prefer to stick with tools I can use inside other hosts as well (eg sub-hosted in eXT).

The other big advantage to Live and ACID is that softsynths have one track instead of two and audio effects (and midi effects in Live) can be automated in just one track all in the main window.

In comparison, I'd hate this. I consider it a major advantage that Sonar maintains a separation betwen MIDI tracks and audio tracks, and that any N MIDI tracks can feed one VST, which might have M different audio outputs on different tracks.

Sonar 5 will at last impliment in-place midi editing so it has evolved towards the direction of Live and ACID. I think my main issue is with how a host is designed.

Many of Sonars features would be great in Live and ACID so I don't think any host is perfect and I do make suggestions for improvements in their respective forums. Often comparing the benefits of Sonar to their hosts. I think host development is like a two way street.

I think basically, hosts are continuing to converge in terms of feature sets. There might be the odd new innovation, or 'maverick' design ethos (eg Live) but in the end these things converge, and the main difference is implementation and workflow philosophy...

That said, I would like to see something far more sophisticated in terms of scripting for Sonar, from the operations/UI point of view, tied to MIDI and/or keypress operations.

(A solid MFX-based replacement for CAL would be nice as well.)

[Jaeson Merrill]

They weren't in S4 (actually, you can hide different tracks in the track view and mixer views), but I can't see why you'd want differently ordered tracks in the track view and mixer unless you like confusing yourself. Linking? You mean selecting a track in track view and the same track is seleceted in the mixer? Except for scrolling it into view if you have oodles of track, it's a non-feature.

All windows are fully floatable outside the main window (except the track view, which *is* the main window).

Linking and being able to move tracks around are essential for me.

[Jaeson Merrill]

However, Sonar's gui is nowhere near as cluttered or annoying as sx's, or samplitude's for that mater. I don't find it that ugly.

samplitude? When i was posting about wanting Sonar to have a less complicated interface, was thinking about samplitude.. hehe.. its pretty simple to me.

[Jaeson Merrill]

I wonder how good the looping is in Sonar, anyone whos used ACID please reply...

is it as easy?> audio and midi looping?

[whyterabbyt]

where does it say NATIVE VST support?

I dont see it, and that would be an important feature for me.

I already asked that, then found it myself in the features list.

http://www.cakewalk.com/Products/sonar/Upgrade/new.asp

"Native VST support now built into SONAR 5"

[Jaeson Merrill]

ahhh, dang you for editing your post!!!

hehe

thanks... i read the whole thing, i dont understand why i didnt see it..

[kp]

They weren't in S4 (actually, you can hide different tracks in the track view and mixer views), but I can't see why you'd want differently ordered tracks in the track view and mixer unless you like confusing yourself. Linking? You mean selecting a track in track view and the same track is seleceted in the mixer? Except for scrolling it into view if you have oodles of track, it's a non-feature.

All windows are fully floatable outside the main window (except the track view, which *is* the main window).

Linking and being able to move tracks around are essential for me.

What do you mean by moving tracks around? What I'm saying (this is with SONAR 4 anyway) that the Track View is the main window that can't be floated. But it can be resized and moved around just like any other Windows application main window. All other windows can be floated outside the main window (which just happens to be the Track View) - I think that any application that supports floating has to have a main window (it doesn't make sense for there not to be one).

You can re-order FX though :-)

[aldred]

They weren't in S4 (actually, you can hide different tracks in the track view and mixer views), but I can't see why you'd want differently ordered tracks in the track view and mixer unless you like confusing yourself. Linking? You mean selecting a track in track view and the same track is seleceted in the mixer? Except for scrolling it into view if you have oodles of track, it's a non-feature.

All windows are fully floatable outside the main window (except the track view, which *is* the main window).

Linking and being able to move tracks around are essential for me.

What do you mean by moving tracks around? What I'm saying (this is with SONAR 4 anyway) that the Track View is the main window that can't be floated. But it can be resized and moved around just like any other Windows application main window. All other windows can be floated outside the main window (which just happens to be the Track View) - I think that any application that supports floating has to have a main window (it doesn't make sense for there not to be one).

You can re-order FX though

I might be mistaken, but I would have thought he means -- you've got two or more audio pieces on different tracks that you want related to each other - you move one, the other moves with it - you apply an effect to one, the effect is applied to the other - that kind of thing - like groups.

I'm not so fussed about audio, but I'd like to see piano rolls improved across the board. Linking midi phrases across tracks would be nice. I wonder if the new Sonar has it.


--

[lanfear]

agreed.. theres so much bloat.. I hope that is improved.

There seems to be an inflation in the using of the word "bloat" here - as soon as an application announces new features someone's dropping it. Hey, I've even seen it mentioned in some FL Studio-threads recently!

Now, I'm not saying that every new feature is necessary or even needed, and I agree that GUIs should be thoroughly designed with usability in focus. But if you don't need an advanced professional application with all the features that come with it, then there are many simpler & scaled-down alternatives on the market.

[WillieJenkins]

Alot of this talk about GUI clutter and messy interfaces
is right on point, the only problem is that it doesn't really apply to cakewalk

I suggest you guys download the demo and actually use the app before you think its a messy interface.

This may be different strokes for different folks, or American vs. European sensibility, but when I started comparing Sonar/Logic/Cubase when I got into sequencing a few years ago, the only app I could use with no problem was Sonar...

IMO the interface is what they do best......

Better yet, I'll post a screenshot of my starting template, and you guys can decide if its cluttered or not

[kp]

Probably like my starting template too...minimal I think is the best way of explaining it. Especially with SONAR 4's key bindings (which did need an update but it arrived), I really don't need most of the menus, toolbars (yuk - in any application) or widgets around anyway.

[WillieJenkins]

After taking screenshots, I have to agree with you guys! What was I thinking, look at these awful cluttered screens... I almost don't know where to begin!!

[Sascha Franck]

Err... so an empty song with nothing happening qualifies for an elegant userinterface?

Some people...