I've been using Sonar 6 alot lately and am loving it. It's very good so far, but I'm not forsaking other hosts like T2, FL, phrazor, or Cantabile. I find that depending on what kind of mood I am in depends on which host I work with. The beautiful part is since they all communicate using WAV and MID files I dont have to worry so much about which or what. Every host I own can bounce to audio and every single one of them has certain strengths.
If you can spare a few minutes to read go ahead, if not, please don't flame me for posting, I'm actually trying to help people:
Sonar is awesome for doing some serious composing - ACT f**king rules full stop and is such a breath of fresh air in external controls -- I map once (that's right one time) any plug, and it remembers EVERY mapping forever until I unmap. Beautiful. The MIDI editing isn't an issue for me, I'm an iterative performance composer using the PR and PRV only when I have made mistakes or want to fine tune things. Sonar lets me do stuff with my Roland XP-60 that I can't do in other hosts as nicely or easily (aside from Cubase which I left in the dust), such as maintain a track -> track multitimbral mapping with full support for patch browsing and such. FL can do this too with a dashboard I built, but no sysx in fruity, so it's sonar for the interaction with the XP-60. The VC64, even though I don't know how to get SC worked out yet, and I'm not fully grasping how it works, f**king rules. It's really a wonderful gift and I'm seriously loving the great sound it has. Sonar also owns with track layer multitake performance recording. It's so freaking cool to sit there and just iteratively take after take after take let it build up layer after layer, and then take the best pieces and make the whole after. Layers on tracks are so great IMO because of the 'micro' flexibility they provide. Clip mutes and slicing and such let you combine your best takes into one uber-take. It rules. It can be done with other hosts like tracktion but IMO sonars implementation of this is better and just makes me smile (I'm a photoshopper remember and we love us some layers). The VST implementation is world class, and hands down, the best VST organization system I've ever used in a host. The customizability of Sonar is amazingly deep, you can pretyt much minimalize everything or tweak everything however you want. Incredibly cool color scheming too but it's not perfect there because you can't perfectly customize everything due to external bitmap dependencies. The tabbed support f**king owns. I now can put my synth rack, markers, loop explorer, and navigator in tabs right inside the bottom pane. So handy and nicely done. The console also rules in Sonar -- and it's something that T2 doesn't do so well at the moment (overview of all tracks -- yes the horizontal paradigm of T2 is great but it's got it's own problems as well - I love T2 so dont flame me for saying that I also like a vertical mixer). So sonar is becoming the host I use to quickly work and throw an idea together. It's not as pretty as Tracktion and it's not as minimal either by default but you can bend it to your will. I put sonar first in this list because it's the one I most recently have been using. To put a little salt in some wounds, the freeze in Sonar is great as well.
I also bought Project5 with Dimension Pro(a godly ROMpler massive props to Rene) bundle when I ordered my S6 upgrade. The reason I did was because P5 fills in some gaps in my toolbox -- it offers Ableton-Liveish arranging/experimentation. It's all about workflow, and MIDI and it's a damned fine product. I haven't become totally comfy in it yet but it's damned easy and pretty intuitive interface. I like the workflow of P5 and the simplicity and elegance of the way you compose in it. The strength of P5 is arrangement and creative possiblities. I love the arpegiator and the MIDI effects in P5. The wicked phrase sequencing abilities (by mapping keys to clips and junk) also make it a seriously fun tool to use. The downside is it's kind of weak with audio if you want to do some stuff (for instance you cannot change the start and end points in an audio clip -- something IMO totally basic, you can only change the end point WTF) so it's not so great for audio experiments and loop slicing and dicing and stuff like that but if you have finalized material (ie: starting and stopping where you want
) it is very cool to work in P5 and trigger your clips nicely however you like. It's very nice compliment to Sonar. The instruments and effects that come with it are pretty great for the money too. PSYN f**king owns. It's a great synth, very powerful and very lean. The other stuff that comes with is okay too but I haven't gotten much into it having my own tools to use in their place (they are a good package for a starting kit though for sure). All the DXi and DX effects that come with P5 can be used in Sonar as well, so it's a good way to supplement Sonar for MIDI and creative arranging. I like to use P5 right now to experiment with exported audio bits I create in the other hosts. The MIDI editing is plenty good enough in P5 but because it lacks ACT (and unfortunately mapping the controls in P5 aren't recalled like they are in S6 unless you create a big project template with all your mappings and save that as a template to start with) it's not as fun or turn-key to use. The wrapper P5 uses for VSTs has been okay too and I've had good luck using it. The organization system for plug-ins is interesting it doesn't use folders and all the goodies of the new Sonar 6 plug-in stuff but it does support some forms of organization by using the same first word for groups. Moving on to FL I use that for lots of different stuff; building quick drum beats in the SS, creative playlist arrangement like P5 (though it's not as immediately intuitive it can do almost the same exact thing P5 can do and record also the result using FL playlists live mode), the excellent automation and internal controllers to create whacked out instruments using layers and the internal controllers combined with other stuff like the mighty 3xOsc or simple primitive waveforms in sampler channels. I've built a dashboard for interaction with my Roland XP-60 and because it is designed from scratch and looks and acts exactly how I want it to, I like to use that for building multitimbral performances quickly (I imported the instrument definitions from my old Sonar 1.x before the v6 upgrade to do so), which really is alot of fun. FL is a great way to interact with my XP-60 because the FLP template has 16 different dashboards each mapped to their own channels (1-16) and thus I can sequence with style and power using FL's PR and playlist and such. It's my number one favorite way to interact with the XP-60 because of the way FL handles MIDI. Unfortunately no sysex support means I still have to use something else for this as well (and I do with Sonar as I mentioned) for doing stuff like dumps, embedding patches into MIDI files, etc. I also use FL as a rewire slave and as a VSTi and use some of the cool internal generators (and buzz adapters) that way that are exclusive to FL -- the FPC, 3osc, TS404, Wasp XT (when will this be VST?) etc. I really like using FPC kits I build with the SS with my guitar in hand to build simple and quick scratchpad drum beats to accompany my guitar playing.
I use eXT alot on my notebook. Because it is so lean and has such minimal requirements it serves as a great comprehensive scratchpad for that computer. I really like the eXT workflow as standalone because it's so keyboard oriented with moving/showing/hiding stuff (I am one of those people that prefers keyboard stuff over mouse stuff usually), and I have been using eXT and it's sequencer using Synth1 and LFX1310 (and when I get the money someday I intend to compliment those 2 with ravityS and ravityR) and nothing else. Boy can I tell you how fun it is to use only 2 things for scratchpad ideas? It's wonderful to rely on so little and come away with good results. On my main DAW I use eXT as a plugin chainer, though the more I have been doing scratchpadding on the notebook the more I love eXT as a primary composition tool. Once I skin eXT (I will when v2 comes out) I think I'm going to have a hard time finding myself using other hosts for linear composition. I haven't scratched even the surface I'm sure with eXT, but I'm having a blast learning it and it f**king rules to use it for chains. I have some bitchments with it though. Like setting up keyboard ranges, setting up phrase sequences, etc, that aren't as easy as I'd like. So right now eXT is serving me well as a lightweight scratchpad host, and a massively useful swiss-army-knife for plugin chains.
For the complex uber-instrument building stuff I've been using Phrazor. Phrazor is a great chainer for instruments that are complex. For instance if I want drumatic on C3 octave, and wasp on C4 octave, and say pro-53 on the top 3 octaves, (yes that's uber lazy but it's also uber fun try it sometime), phrazor makes doing this DEAD simple. The drums can be sequenced with it's built in PR, assign the beats to C3 octave, span wasp an octave for some bass goodies, and the lead on the right hand. It's quite fun. The latching for the key mappings is wicked too so you can say trigger a drumatic beat, then start bumping your bass with left hand and leads with right. You can spontaneously record and build patterns up and then assign to keys as you go more and more complex creating a wickedly cool song with key triggers. It's awesome. The drum map support in phrazor is pretty cool too and the way it supports velocity and stuff is pretty nice (visual bar-graph note things -- I just read that Sonar can be tweaked to have similar displays!). So phrazor is how I build massive complex instrument chains.
This leaves Tracktion. I love T2 but it has some bugs that bother me alot. Hopefully they will be fixed with T3. I've tweaked T2 out with my own colors and keyboard controls and MIDI mapped controls so it's almost turn-key. I open up T2 when I'm ready to take the other pieces made and exported from other hosts and turn them into a finalized idea. Tracktions drag and drop, mousewheel-centric, common-sense hotkey mapping, makes assembling the master idea a joy. Also FinalMix is Tracktion exclusive and it's an incredibly cool tool (which I've been learning to use more and more thanks to IIRs video) for doing all sorts of work, but I like to just throw on some basic preset and tweak it to get the right sound. Tracktion is great for mastering. I use it also for building a complex idea of effects and instrument interaction because you can just drag plugins and stuff before, after, down, up, and build up complex racks. I like tracktions take system, liked it alot in fact, until I started using Sonars track layers which no offense just beats the snot out of tracktions 'pick one take per clip' at a time. Sonar makes the workflow easier for multiple takes, Tracktion can do the same thing Sonar can but you have to set it up yourself manually. ie: Record a track, while looping for multiple takes, then when you stop, you have a pile of takes on top of each other. Then you have to create new tracks to sort them out (usually I only make one more since I only need to try out an A or B compare). Then you have to slice the clip on the parts you know are bad and pick from a dropdown list the parts you may think are good. Sonar does it automatically for you all you gotta do is decide which part of which takes, and it's all visual layed out for you if you want it to be, and able to be hidden and put away if you want with a single click. Tracktion is my favorite UI of any of them because it just makes sense (this is the best fit for me UI wise but not in all ways) and is so easy to just do what I want without even thinking about it, just doing it. It's like I have a symbiotic relationship between the computer and my brain when I'm using T2, and I can't say that is true for any other host.
There is only one more host that I use, and I use it a ton and that is Cantabile. I love this little host. It's so minimal and wonderful, and is such a sound-building, sound-organizing, sound-experimenting workflow tool it's indespensible to me. I use Cantabile more than any others because I often just load up an instrument, some effects, and play around. Yep, I don't sit down with a goal saying "today I will do ____" no, I find I am much more enjoying everything when I just play around. If I want to do some serious work, I will load a host that is more able to capture my ideas (and depending on what frame of mind I am in that depends too
I have lots of tools to choose from you see, it's great!). I love Cantabiles organization for plug-ins, I love it's bank manager, it's patch randomization, it's external controller support, it's chaining ability, it's drag-and-drop support, it's seriously a wonderful tool no audio geek should be without. I used to use Minihost for all of this stuff, but then when MH started crashing on me I gave up and started helping Brad by testing Cantabile betas and helped try to give good ideas. The end result is a wonderful very useful tool for lots of different things. And the best part is he said he'd eventually make it a plug-in. The greatness of Cantabile is in it's simple flexibility and it's powerful capturing system. It can iteratively record audio and MID outputs on the fly and name your files for you as it does so. I asked for a feature to name the files the name of a plugin and it's preset, and along with that feature and some toggles for auto-recording, auto starting a new file when presets are changed, and so on, you can point Cantabile at a roomy disk, hit record, and spend literally hours and hours just plonking away and capturing it all for later review preset by preset, instrument by instrument. It really rocks because you can then say WOW I love that sound, and simply save the patch you like for that given instrument to the "shared bank" which is a bank that is persistent for the instrument or effect for ALL instances (wicked cool). If you haven't tried Cantabile you owe it to yourself to try it!So you see there are so many hosts and so many tools that to choose only one I feel is really punishing myself. My workflow hasn't suffered at all, and because these hosts communicate using common protocols; WAV/MIDI/VST/Rewire, I can have the best of all worlds. YES it is expensive. I couldn't have bought Sonar 6 from scratch, I had been a devout cakewalkian since the old DOS days and only switched from Sonar2XL to Cubase SX (and from there to T2), so I had an upgrade path. Same was true for Cubase SX (I had VST5/32). eXT and Phrazor are gifts for the money you spend to buy them. T2 box was $150 and that is a damned steal for what you get and how great it is. Cantabile was free for me since I helped BETA but the price is VERY reasonable.
Oh and also I use miscellaneous trackers; Renoise, and MadTracker(this is great for rewire but I prefer Renoise) and since the latest Renoise beta I am really loving the old tracker again. It's been a blast to put on the old hat and use the evolved tools. Man has tracking come a long way... Renoise is the shit full stop. It has full VST support, with automation, a killer mixer, awesome sends and routing, and is so beautiful UI wise it gives me chills. Okay so how much of this is due to my oldschool ass not letting go of my roots? Quite a bit I'd bet.
So sorry for the length, but I think that it's necessary to wake some people up out of the matrix and pull the plug on their slave heads. You don't have to use just one tool, there are lots of them, use what you like of course, but don't be silly and force yourself to use ONLY one.
The best part, if anyone wants to hear the crap (literally) I've been doing with music, since time is totally not on my side anymore from starting a new full time gig, I actually have quite a bit to show thanks to all the tools being so much fun to use. However I have no full songs (yet).
Have fun and make some music!
Links for those who would want em:
Sonar 6 FL Studio 6 EnergyXT Tracktion 2 Phrazor Cantabile
I think you qualify as a geek, no offense intended. I wouldn't even use that many host if they were given to me. Hell, I just upgraded to Vegas 7...from 5 and I haven't even used it yet, I haven't even installed DVDA that came with it yet, because: a)I discovered that a plug-in I use a lot (Wax) doesn't seem to work so I would have to look into it and b) it's mostly the same as 5 but some things are different so I'm out of my "comfort zone" and I'm putting off having to learn the few things that did change.
Can't get angry at the truth. 