This explains a lot about Cakewalk/Sonar

[Robert Randolph]

I'm not sure that Sonar is designed for non professionals.

have you seen the new "style dials"?

There are people that do things like jingles, scoring for cartoons and sitcoms, kiosk sound design etc...

They are professionals all the same.

Even if not, having features for hobbyist and features for "professionals" does not suddenly relegate the software to purely the hobbyist realm. That is quite a silly notion.

[jsp1979]

I'm not sure that Sonar is designed for non professionals.

have you seen the new "style dials"?

They pulled those over from their entry-level product, Music Creator, so clearly they weren't initially made for the flagship product. I suspect the idea is that they're hoping to upgrade those Music Creator customers to one of the more expensive products and so they decided to put in a feature they're familiar with already.

[pwal]

well exactly (in reply to robert)

[vintagevibe]

Of course professionals can use Sonar. It's just that the feature set and what is seen as important is guided by the main target market which is hobbyists. I think this is why they don't care about notation.

[jsp1979]

Of course professionals can use Sonar. It's just that the feature set and what is seen as important is guided by the main target market which is hobbyists. I think this is why they don't care about notation.

If developing notation is the criterion, then I guess Live, Bitwig, Studio One, and most other DAWs target hobbyists too.

What DAW's have notation? Cubase and Logic. Any others?

[vintagevibe]

Of course professionals can use Sonar. It's just that the feature set and what is seen as important is guided by the main target market which is hobbyists. I think this is why they don't care about notation.

If developing notation is the criterion, then I guess Live, Bitwig, Studio One, and most other DAWs target hobbyists too.

What DAW's have notation? Cubase and Logic. Any others?

Protools, Logic, Cubase, Performer, Sonar and Samplitude all have integrated notation. Reaper has a 3rd party notation plugin. Presonus bought Notion and is integrating it into Studio One. The only DAWS without notation, to my knowledge, are Live, Bitwig and Reason.

[beatmangler443]

Of course professionals can use Sonar. It's just that the feature set and what is seen as important is guided by the main target market which is hobbyists. I think this is why they don't care about notation.

If developing notation is the criterion, then I guess Live, Bitwig, Studio One, and most other DAWs target hobbyists too.

What DAW's have notation? Cubase and Logic. Any others?

Protools, Logic, Cubase, Performer, Sonar and Samplitude all have integrated notation. Reaper has a 3rd party notation plugin. Presonus bought Notion and is integrating it into Studio One. The only DAWS without notation, to my knowledge, are Live, Bitwig and Reason.

And soon down the line native instruments. It's going to be a point imo that they want komplete users to use maschine to sequence all their music in it and mixing including maybe. You can add them to list, as that is not their market. It's DJ's/Producers. Does FL Studio have a staff view?

[incubus]

Just picking out some general stuff...

How many people here are "professionals" ??? Though sonar isn't for me there is nothing pro/not pro about it (or any other daw for that example)

I like to chat too, but you have to ask yourself, where is something like "that" going? Some people are good at this, some aren't (I might be one of them ) but there is nothing less/more professional about one vs the other.

Other than BUGS that make things go crash all the time, you can do a "professional" song in anything if you are good enough

[_al_]

i lost over 2 years worth of music because of runtime errors that slowly crept in over 2 or 3 updates. cakewalk ignored my reports and emails the whole time. they did actually answer one email, but i think they were responding to a small unimportant point i made at the end of an email.

now, i always advise people to stay well away from that company's daw

recently i upgraded to zeta 2 though, and wish i'd followed my own advice a bit better. the waveshaper on that thing is unusable, its so buggy

[tooneba]

Years ago, I worked at Apple for a while, testing their new computers before they shipped. At that time, I remember we released one new machine with over 500 open bugs. This is something I like to bring up once in a while, because Apple is presumably such a wonderful and flawless company. Of course, this was ages ago, and in no way a reflection on the current state of that company, of which I have no inside knowledge. But my point is, every product has bugs and glitches and imperfections.

Now they changed completely and their OS deleted all data in the external drive "I'm proud to be gay" - Tim Cook

[sonicpowa]

i lost over 2 years worth of music --

Sorry to hear that, I guess taking backups once in 2 years is not enough..

[lfm]

i lost over 2 years worth of music because of runtime errors that slowly crept in over 2 or 3 updates. cakewalk ignored my reports and emails the whole time. they did actually answer one email, but i think they were responding to a small unimportant point i made at the end of an email.

now, i always advise people to stay well away from that company's daw

recently i upgraded to zeta 2 though, and wish i'd followed my own advice a bit better. the waveshaper on that thing is unusable, its so buggy

Fresh new major releases, installers and support never was Cakewalk's strongest game.

But you cannot seriously mean that Cakewalk Sonar deleted all your audio and midi clips from computer and all your backups as well - over 2 years?

Bugs are always horrible, and a waste of time for end users to track down, try and find workaround etc - but we cannot make ourselves vulnerable to a degree that all is lost by a failing hdd or crashing daw.

And we make ourselves even more vulnerable by using stock plugins and synths shipped with daws. If starting out or it's a hobby is one thing - but if musicmaking is more than that you have to be professional about how you work.

Surely you were able to grab midi clips and drag to desktop to move to another daw. Same with audio files on disk - or?


I still have ideas started as projects in Sonar 4 ten years ago - that I move around to continue work with the daw I use as main at the moment. And that has changed a couple of times each year the past five years.

I mean let's be fair - the only way to be safe it to have options.
Moving projects to another daw is second nature by now.
From/to Sonar various versions, Reaper 3/4, Cubase Elements 7/8, Studio One Producer 2.x, Mixcraft 7, Samp ProX2 and now CP8.
But all plugins are my 3rd party and the same all the time - my actuall tools that I know well - so I had those options with minimum effort.

Currently I record and mix in Sonar Artist, and use Cubase Pro 8 for notation(didn't cost more than a good notation software anyway with this 30% off recently).

But I think I am rather simple user - don't use the most advanced stuff like stretching, audio snap, vocal snap etc. Daw is just a holder of clips, plugins and automation.

But the more complicated projects gets, the more important to have options.
Don't have all eggs in the same basket. No daw is best at everything anyway.

[_al_]

i saved as cwb, so all the audio was actually saved with song file. and it got to the point that i could open a project and just let it sit there, and after 30 seconds or something, it would crash. i did manage to save some midi files from earlier versions and i have actually rebuilt a few, but im not going through 20+ files, trying to grab midi files.

and btw, i even reinstalled windows because of this, and it fixed nothing. believe me, i didnt give up on sonar easy, i spent months trying to fix the errors

and anyway, looking at the state of zeta 2, im never gonna be convinced that anything has changed with this company

[lfm]

i saved as cwb, so all the audio was actually saved with song file. and it got to the point that i could open a project and just let it sit there, and after 30 seconds or something, it would crash. i did manage to save some midi files from earlier versions and i have actually rebuilt a few, but im not going through 20+ files, trying to grab midi files.

and btw, i even reinstalled windows because of this, and it fixed nothing. believe me, i didnt give up on sonar easy, i spent months trying to fix the errors

and anyway, looking at the state of zeta 2, im never gonna be convinced that anything has changed with this company

Not fun if such things happen, I can see the agony.

But all audio files are separate from cwp-file, unless you save as OMF with embedded audio.
I think Cakewalk bundle files are excellent for backup, embedding too, not sure - but as I remember that is the idea, easy to upload somewhere as one unit.

When will there be a solution that midi stays on disk by default as audio, and also listed among project files etc. I was able to do that in Reaper though, change midi files to be referenced as files on disk, not embedded in project. But midi is neglected in all formats like OMF/AAF and such too, I wish that could change. Midi is such an obvious part of projects nowadays.

I've had strange issues with a number of daws on my computer coming back and daw crashed - doing nothing just sitting there idling. I located having to do with screensaver or power saving for monitor - and turning screensaver options off I never had it again. So it's on all the time, unless I just use power button on monitor manually instead. So it seemed to narrow it down for me at least. So never happend in the last two years now.

And once trialing Digital Performer, pretty much the same you had. I loaded a demo project, tracks loaded with clips and all - and after a few secs it just crashed. But only loading their demo/tut projects, never doing my own stuff. Sent some logs to MOTU, never knew if they looked into it.

[fmr]

Of course professionals can use Sonar. It's just that the feature set and what is seen as important is guided by the main target market which is hobbyists. I think this is why they don't care about notation.

If developing notation is the criterion, then I guess Live, Bitwig, Studio One, and most other DAWs target hobbyists too.

What DAW's have notation? Cubase and Logic. Any others?

Digital Performer. And, although limited, Sonar and Samplitude, although these are more "notation display windows" than "Notation".

EDIT: Oops, I just noticed this was already answered