sonar5pe or cubase sx3 which and why?

[kp]

Hmm - dunno then. Sorry.

[grymmjack]

I thought I had fixed this. Argh. Spoke too soon. Same problem

[grymmjack]

Try installing MIDI-OX, and using it to monitor the traffic on your MIDI port to the XP60. That way you'll at least get an idea what specific MIDI messages are being sent. If need be, you could prehaps MIDI-OX itself to filter them out.

I can see MIDIOx receiving messages for the output, but it does not see the messages sonar is generating. How is that possible?

[l33troll]

Contrary to what has been claimed, it's Cakewalk who don't care about it's users. It shunned Asio and VST because those breakthroughs came from the competition. It stuck with 'DXi' or 'WDM', anything but the de facto standards, no matter that a lot of nice freeware used VST. They should be out of business! (IMO)

[keyman_sam]

Bullshit. Your name says it all.

[l33troll]

Bullshit. Your name says it all.

No.

You use bad words. You get personal.
You say nothing intelligent.
I report the truth (IMO).

What a contrast!!!!

[kevink]

Contrary to what has been claimed, it's Cakewalk who don't care about it's users. It shunned Asio and VST because those breakthroughs came from the competition. It stuck with 'DXi' or 'WDM', anything but the de facto standards, no matter that a lot of nice freeware used VST. They should be out of business! (IMO)

Let me tell you a little story about Cakewalk. When Sonar 3 came bout, they bundled an OEM version of VSampler 3 with the package - an excellent little "plus". The authors of VSampler had integrated a form of challenge/response registration for the plugin. Cakewalk has been great about not imposing obnoxious copy protection schemes on their customers, and when S3 came out with VS3, there was a bit of an uproar in the Sonar forums. So, despite the product being out and the deal being done, Cakewalk leaned on the owners of VSampler, and within a few weeks, there was a patch available that softened the copy protection scheme to a registered-user-password scheme. I've never heard of Steinberg, or any other host vendor for that matter, going that extra mile for their customers.

If you read the Cakewalk forums in the weeks and months following each major release, you'll see that bugs are discussed, acknowledged, and (usually) fixed in prompt patch releases. From what I've seen and heard, Steinberg isn't nearly as responsive.

Which brings us to the VST issue, which is a real one. As you may or may not be aware, to get access to the VST technical documentation and SDK, one has to sign binding legal agreements with Steinberg regarding the use of the technology. Nothing that a small independent developer like me would find onerous, but the sort of thing that the lawyers for any American corporation in competition with Steinberg would tend to be dead-set against signing. DXi and WDM/KS aren't things that Cakewalk cooked up out of thin air, they are extensions to Microsoft technology that were developed in cooperation with Microsoft, and they have some technical advantages over the Steinberg proprietary system. So they *ought* to have been competitive. But Microsoft didn't put any real weight behind them, and, like the Betamax vs. VHS wars, the technically superior solution didn't necessarily win in the marketplace. Cakewalk needs to deal with this, and as Ron Kuper of Cakewalk reported to this forum recently (how often does the CTO of Steinberg come to KVR Audio, by the way?), they're finally doing so in a serious way. And of course, Sonar has supported ASIO drivers since version 2.2.

So, by all means, stay with Cubase or whatever other host you like if you find the difference in VST support to be significant for your style of working. I would quite understand. But attributing Cakewalk's weak VST support to bad attitude towards their customers is to display a considerable ignorance of history and technology.

[grymmjack]

Contrary to what has been claimed, it's Cakewalk who don't care about it's users. It shunned Asio and VST because those breakthroughs came from the competition. It stuck with 'DXi' or 'WDM', anything but the de facto standards, no matter that a lot of nice freeware used VST. They should be out of business! (IMO)

Let me tell you a little story about Cakewalk. When Sonar 3 came bout, they bundled an OEM version of VSampler 3 with the package - an excellent little "plus". The authors of VSampler had integrated a form of challenge/response registration for the plugin. Cakewalk has been great about not imposing obnoxious copy protection schemes on their customers, and when S3 came out with VS3, there was a bit of an uproar in the Sonar forums. So, despite the product being out and the deal being done, Cakewalk leaned on the owners of VSampler, and within a few weeks, there was a patch available that softened the copy protection scheme to a registered-user-password scheme. I've never heard of Steinberg, or any other host vendor for that matter, going that extra mile for their customers.

If you read the Cakewalk forums in the weeks and months following each major release, you'll see that bugs are discussed, acknowledged, and (usually) fixed in prompt patch releases. From what I've seen and heard, Steinberg isn't nearly as responsive.

Which brings us to the VST issue, which is a real one. As you may or may not be aware, to get access to the VST technical documentation and SDK, one has to sign binding legal agreements with Steinberg regarding the use of the technology. Nothing that a small independent developer like me would find onerous, but the sort of thing that the lawyers for any American corporation in competition with Steinberg would tend to be dead-set against signing. DXi and WDM/KS aren't things that Cakewalk cooked up out of thin air, they are extensions to Microsoft technology that were developed in cooperation with Microsoft, and they have some technical advantages over the Steinberg proprietary system. So they *ought* to have been competitive. But Microsoft didn't put any real weight behind them, and, like the Betamax vs. VHS wars, the technically superior solution didn't necessarily win in the marketplace. Cakewalk needs to deal with this, and as Ron Kuper of Cakewalk reported to this forum recently (how often does the CTO of Steinberg come to KVR Audio, by the way?), they're finally doing so in a serious way. And of course, Sonar has supported ASIO drivers since version 2.2.

So, by all means, stay with Cubase or whatever other host you like if you find the difference in VST support to be significant for your style of working. I would quite understand. But attributing Cakewalk's weak VST support to bad attitude towards their customers is to display a considerable ignorance of history and technology.

Well formed post. Indeed, I concur and most of my posts were regarding an older version of Sonar and my last experience with the old adapter. Also I am pleased to announce that the setup issue I was having with my XP-60 is fixed, and it WAS a user error (I had to read 40 pages of the manual and fine print to eventually find a setting which I will never forget now); since playing with it in Sonar 1 XL, I must have done a factory reset which resets the "Performance Ctrl Ch" to use channel 16 instead of off. This setting acts as a performance patch change and because of the way I had setup the track template, channels 1-16, on channel 16 setting the default user patch on them all save for track 10 for a drum patch, it was telling the synth "change to user performance 1". Since I found that and have disabled it, everything is funkengrooven. Of course.

And you are sadly correct about the upper echelon of steinberg practically ignoring user complaints. Actually it's much worse sometimes as the Nuendo (the flagship product which sells for thousands and none of us small guys can afford) products users receive much more attention and while they have paid for this in a sense as nuendo's license fee is much much higher, it is horrible politics to play favorites for a developer. So yes, in some regard, cubase is feature subset of nuendo without the support and it is shown over and over again the priorities steinberg has about the two; cubase always gets patched AFTER nuendo. This is a huge issue for people in the cubase forums, and rightfully so. So unless there is some secret steinberg society of users (aside from their closed beta team), cakewalk definitely wins in the support category.

[woc53]

Be careful what you wish for. The Nuendo 3.2 update deactivated several top menu items and broke the "delete silence" function. True, the control room functions are a great addition for lot of users, but they really should have fixed what they broke by now, IMO.

[fandango]

Out of interest, what does the "Integrated VST" feature mean in Sonar 5?

It seems identical to previous versions with regard to the VST adapter etc.

Does it simply mean that you can make changes to plugin specifics without restarting sonar?

[kevink]

The "Integrated VST" feature just means that Sonar 5 checks to see if your VST directory has changed since the last time you ran Sonar, and and if it has, it automatically fires up the Cakewalk/FXpansion adapter in update mode, so that you get to use your new VSTs without having to go through the hassle of explicitly running the adapter and re-starting Sonar. It's an improvement, but not a very big one, at least not for me.

[Jason Brian Merrill]

integrated vst in sonar? lol.

[Jason Brian Merrill]

Ok I tried the demo.

Issues: ASIO driver -- cannot even select my delta66, it's grayed out once I switch to ASIO mode.

If you change modes, you need to relaunch Sonar.

notice... you dont need to do this with any other program.

(FLstudio, samplitude, Cubase, Audition, etc...)

one of the annoyances of Sonar 5...

too bad, cause otherwise, its probably the best host out there. Actually, it probably still is... all around.

[whyterabbyt]

notice... you dont need to do this with any other program.

(FLstudio, samplitude, Cubase, Audition, etc...)

one of the annoyances of Sonar 5...

And how bloody often does the average user change from ASIO to WDM? You're just looking for the stupidest shite to whine about.

[l33troll]

...
If you read the Cakewalk forums in the weeks and months following each major release, you'll see that bugs are discussed, acknowledged, and (usually) fixed in prompt patch releases. From what I've seen and heard, Steinberg isn't nearly as responsive.
...

No question about that, and God bless you, but that's support, I was talking important features. When VST proved the format of choice for freeware, everyone wanted VST support, but for the reason I stated (IMO), Cakewalk didn't implement it. I doubt it's because of the evil Steinberg who wanted to steal their secrets or whatever.

...and as Ron Kuper of Cakewalk reported to this forum recently (how often does the CTO of Steinberg come to KVR Audio, by the way?), they're finally doing so in a serious way.

Let's hope it, because that's what the users have been wanting for so long.

But attributing Cakewalk's weak VST support to bad attitude towards their customers is to display a considerable ignorance of history and technology.

While I don't exclude my considerable ignorance as a factor in my opinions, I still attribute Cakewalk's weak VST support to bad attitude towards their customers. I've always seen it as a standard war, waged by only one side.