Sonar 5 has arrived...

[bmanic]

I demoed sonar 2 quite thoroughly and didn't like it at all, mainly because of the gui. I've also logged a few hours on sonar 4 and still couldn't tolerate the way it's gui presents information.

There's not enough contrast,depth, 3d feel or whatever you want to call it, to separate gui elements from eachother. It's just all one big mess. Especially all the 'per track' options like panning, volume, mute, solo etc. buttons/sliders are just insanely bad looking. Download the energy XT demo and all the skins that have been made for it and see how much a good vs bad skin can do. Some are cluttered looking because of bad colour/depth feel and some are elegant and simple to quickly see what is going on.

What sonar needs IMHO is a bit of 'polish' to make different elements fit together more logically in 'colour groups' or something. As it is now it's just like somebody took a bag full of colours and icons and just threw them around. It actually reminds me very much of the mess Cubase VST was and the old Logic 3.xx (anybody remeber those horrible gui's?? talk about torture!). The cakewalk mixer isn't too bad but suffers from the same lack of 'depth' and 'separation' of elements as the rest of the program.

The default EnergyXT gui shows some excellent '3D'ish shading for nearly all important elements (mute,solo buttons, menu tabs etc) which makes them stand out just a little in a pleasing, not over done, way. This is what I think sonar is missing the most.

- bManic

[Brandon Ryan]

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 The exponential increase in patched together features, and the outdated layers of dialogue-base UI with which they do it, are fearsome.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.

buuuuuuuuuuuuurrrrrp! Please pass the tums extra super-strength........

this is probably the thing that turns me off the most. The "aw hell, just throw another coat of paint and some freshener on" approach.

It seems like a very minor update imho compared to the "omg buy now it'll be the greatest update ever" bs..........sonar 4 was actually a huge step, but not this incarnation.

The 64 bit stuff could be useful about a year from now when vista has been out for a while and dev's have the right drivers.

Native vst support. Very important, but so many others have it already.......way behind. You watch, put this in the bank and collect interest on it though.....it'll be the vst wrapper (the worst one ever!) disguiused as native..........

The verb sounds cool, but this voxengo yanking it so suddenly, and now we know why "thing" is a bit un-nerving to me. Seems wierd.

........yeah i'm babbling...........

Why would someone have to wait for Vista to use 64-bit? I'm finding it useful right now.

I'll tell you some things that would make me upgrade if I were a paying user :

Track Presets - they remember EVERYTHING and I've already made a ton of them to make my life easier.

Bus waveform preview and peak/clip markers - it may sound like someting to gloss over, but think about it...they are extremely useful. You KNOW where your tracks peaked and/or went over. You can visually see where to adjust envelopes on your busses based on the preview waveform. I think this is the kinda thing you gotta see to understand.

V-Vocal - It's super powerful and no it's not like using a plugin. It's like using the loop construction view for loops. Dynamics, Formant, pitch, timing - all can be tweaked graphically and in realtime. It can do some stuff automatically and let's you tweak until your heart's content. Now that I've learned to use it completely I can think of a million uses for it...and it sounds really really good.

Track Icons - you can make your own

I'm not much of a MIDI editor personally, but the way controllers are viewed now is really nice, although I'm sure everyone has their favorites as far as piano rolls go. Also, the new constrain to scales and the scale manager are quite cool.

Tempo synced automation shapes - again way cool. I was playing with these on guitar tracks with filters. Fun.

Clip based effects and envelopes with full PDC. Again, quite useful.

Multi-Lane enhancements - Mute and solo on each lane and the ability to have overlapping crossfaded clips for each lane. Handy...not to mention coupled with the slip edit tool and samrt mute tool. Also showing layers can be toggled with a button on each track.

Nice being able to dock BFD or the tempo view, etc in the buss pane with a tabbed interface.

An end to end 64-bit double precision floating point signal path....and keep in mind this works on 32-bit systems.

Yes other programs do it but I like being able to mix bit depths and render at 32-bit.

These are just a few things off the top of my head that I've found to be quite powerful and welcome enhancements to me personally. YMMV.

[womoma]

As it is now it's just like somebody took a bag full of colours and icons and just threw them around.

While the default colour scheme lacks taste, its very easy to quickly edit/change colour scheme and make it look beautifull. Sonar is an excellent product.

[Brandon Ryan]

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.

I associate "bloat" with a program that adds needless features that get in the way of existing features and make the program sluggish in performance. I feel this is definitely not the case here as, if anything, things are more streamlined than ever and I find the audio engine more responsive and efficient than ever.

[Brandon Ryan]

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

if the interface hasnt changed since sonar 2, which is the one a friend of mine had, then its still cluttered. already tried.

FWIW - It has changed rather drastically from version 2.

[Jaeson Merrill]

well, i will definetly try it according to your thoughts...

[Forever Sun]

Brandon(Cakewalk) quote:
"Clip based effects and envelopes with full PDC. Again, quite useful. "

Are these clip based effects active only when the clip plays ( like in Samplitude) ??

If they are not, then the whole FX per clip would be useless due to CPU usage. I wouldn't want to have lots of clips with chains of FX clogging up the CPU. Freezing each in turn would also be a logistical nightmare. So...?

[Jaeson Merrill]

i would hope that were the case, or else, yeah it would hardly be as useful.

[hello1234]

Are these clip based effects active only when the clip plays ( like in Samplitude) ??

Is that like tracktion also?

[AD80]

Are these clip based effects active only when the clip plays ( like in Samplitude) ??

Is that like tracktion also?

Yeah tracktion effects only take up CPU when they're active.

[Jaeson Merrill]

is that on tracks or clips?

cause most track effects are always active

[AD80]

is that on tracks or clips?

cause most track effects are always active

Both. I just loaded 50 Ambiences at 100% quality as track inserts with hardly any CPU load.
Too bad they werent processing any audio

Thats something that always bugged me about SX. Effects take CPU even when not in use. Very annoying.

[3*s]

Wow...
Piano Roll viewable from track view ala traction, auto envelope shapes with nodes quantized to a certain note length, native VSTs.

And all that other stuff.



Quite a step up from my humble little Sonar 2 where I started with cake products.

Go cakewalk!

[Brandon Ryan]

Brandon(Cakewalk) quote:
"Clip based effects and envelopes with full PDC. Again, quite useful. "

Are these clip based effects active only when the clip plays ( like in Samplitude) ??

If they are not, then the whole FX per clip would be useless due to CPU usage. I wouldn't want to have lots of clips with chains of FX clogging up the CPU. Freezing each in turn would also be a logistical nightmare. So...?

They work like effects on tracks. Properly implemented DX and VST effects should use less CPU when dormant than when audio is passing through them so CPU usage should be no higher and conceivably lower.

However, there is another important point to the clip FX. If you have a multi-lane track with say vocal takes. And you don't want to apply a delay or distortion for example to all clips (using the FX bin) then clip based effects are very useful because you can just apply that effect to the clip of choice and not the entire track. Not to mention you can draw effect clip automation and this automation (as well as the plug) will go wherever the clip goes allowing you freedom of arranging without having to worry about the effects and/or their automation. HTH

[hello1234]

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