Cakewalk Sonar X3

[auron]

Hi there is it possible to edit polyphonic audio material in the melodyne integration, similar to cubase 7, or is it restricted ?

if you have upgraded to/purchased Editor version then yes.

Ok thanks for the info. Actually Cubase 7 can't analyse polyphonic audio as well, it only can display/edit several monophonic audio tracks done with variaudio in one window.

So i think Melodyne Editor/SonarX3 is a better choice, although a little more expensive. Studio One would integrate Melodyne as well , but Sonar X3 has the Matrix Sequencer and Ableton won't let me upgrade from Ableton Live Lite to Intro. So SonarX3 is the winner

[sonicpowa]

So i think Melodyne Editor/SonarX3 is a better choice, although a little more expensive.

You can buy Studio or Producer version and you should get 50% off the Editor as an upgrade. Or buy X3 basic version + cheap Melodyne Essential from some sales and upgrade to Editor 50% discount from sale.

[auron]

Cool Thanks!

[SuperG]

I tried to resist writing this post here, but it's 4 A.M., and Sonar X3C has decimated my project. Pro-Channel EQ parameters have randomly switched around with no involvement on my part, at random times pro-channel modules mute their entire track - and that's just the intermittent glitches. Add on top the ridiculous automation writing, unpredictable clips selection in the track view, and a blame-the-user development culture, and you get one putrid piece of garbage.

Don't get me wrong, Sonar looks great on paper! It's richly featured, the multi-out synth support is very nicely designed, and the Pro-Channel strip promises a world of top-grade sound and convenience. It's only when you do a hardcore project that exercises all these and other features, that the demons emerge by the hundred.

The press will get around to Sonar soon enough, and I have no doubt that the reviewers, who will at best spend ten minutes glancing through all the billboard features, will give high marks. It's the users who'll be up at 4 am wondering why Sonar mangled their projects (not to mention parting with $150+) who'll get the real story.

Ah, the famous 'No, I won't contact support!' guy. Can't find anybody to wipe your bottom for you?

[yessongs]

Using Sonar x2 still and planning on getting x3 mainly for the melodyne, AAS discounts and Nomad stuff plus the complete version of addictive drums.

Juat the addictive drums alone is worth it and the other things are all bonuses that will get me discounted buys on the upgrades as well which melodyne is a must and AAS has gone to the top of my wishlist as well especially their complete modeling package. Basically I calculate I will save several hundred dollars for doing this so I am actually getting paid to upgrade. LOL.

AS far as bugs go I have a few minor ones I encounter but the workaround is simple enough and easy to find so no biggie. I will be eliminating a vast amount of free ware from my system very soon.

[icontakt]

I tried to resist writing this post here, but it's 4 A.M., and Sonar X3C has decimated my project. Pro-Channel EQ parameters have randomly switched around with no involvement on my part, at random times pro-channel modules mute their entire track - and that's just the intermittent glitches. Add on top the ridiculous automation writing, unpredictable clips selection in the track view, and a blame-the-user development culture, and you get one putrid piece of garbage.

Don't get me wrong, Sonar looks great on paper! It's richly featured, the multi-out synth support is very nicely designed, and the Pro-Channel strip promises a world of top-grade sound and convenience. It's only when you do a hardcore project that exercises all these and other features, that the demons emerge by the hundred.

The press will get around to Sonar soon enough, and I have no doubt that the reviewers, who will at best spend ten minutes glancing through all the billboard features, will give high marks. It's the users who'll be up at 4 am wondering why Sonar mangled their projects (not to mention parting with $150+) who'll get the real story.

Ah, the famous 'No, I won't contact support!' guy. Can't find anybody to wipe your bottom for you?

And he's just joined a Sonar bashing team in the Studio One forum. I wonder why he rushed to buy X3 and didn't wait till the demo comes out when X1/X2 have been known as an unstable, buggy daw for relatively many users (X1c/d and X2a worked fine on my system, with a number of minor bugs).

[satYatunes]

From that post it looks like some paranormal activity is going on there.. or may be he is too sleepy at 4AM and moving the wrong automation button..

[SuperG]

I tried to resist writing this post here, but it's 4 A.M., and Sonar X3C has decimated my project. Pro-Channel EQ parameters have randomly switched around with no involvement on my part, at random times pro-channel modules mute their entire track - and that's just the intermittent glitches. Add on top the ridiculous automation writing, unpredictable clips selection in the track view, and a blame-the-user development culture, and you get one putrid piece of garbage.

Don't get me wrong, Sonar looks great on paper! It's richly featured, the multi-out synth support is very nicely designed, and the Pro-Channel strip promises a world of top-grade sound and convenience. It's only when you do a hardcore project that exercises all these and other features, that the demons emerge by the hundred.

The press will get around to Sonar soon enough, and I have no doubt that the reviewers, who will at best spend ten minutes glancing through all the billboard features, will give high marks. It's the users who'll be up at 4 am wondering why Sonar mangled their projects (not to mention parting with $150+) who'll get the real story.

Ah, the famous 'No, I won't contact support!' guy. Can't find anybody to wipe your bottom for you?

And he's just joined a Sonar bashing team in the Studio One forum. I wonder why he rushed to buy X3 and didn't wait till the demo comes out when X1/X2 have been known as an unstable, buggy daw for relatively many users (X1c/d and X2a worked fine on my system, with a number of minor bugs).

Foolish to skip researching the field before you plunk down that cash. I wonder how he's doing with S one (did he even pay for it...)

Anyway, you can see his kind coming from a mile away.

[Jace-BeOS]

I thought about upgrading my X2 but I can't get back on the Cakewalk train any more. Sonar 8.5 was great. 8 was a nightmare. X1 was a nightmare. X2 was constant little things that were broken and destroyed my work flow. All reports are that X3 is stable but then X4 is all too likely to be the next nightmare.
Add that to the fact that Sonar will never have usable notation and I've just had it with that company. I've been with Cakewalk since 1992 and they finally drove me away. I boot up X2 and the now line disappears, I get crashes, tools don't work correctly... I boot up Cubase 7 and it just works. Cubase has has many updates since 7.0. Sonar X2 was abandoned. I need a company that stands behind their product.

You said: "All reports are that X3 is stable but then X4 is all too likely to be the next nightmare."

I guess since you can't criticize X3, you'll just take jabs at a product that hasn't even been released and won't be for a long time. Nice.

You seem to continue to not comprehend reputation earned.

[Jace-BeOS]

Andrew Rossa wrote on the Sonar forum: You abandoned X2. How can I be sure you won't abandon X4?

Excuse me, but why do you need to be sure about that? I thought you were very happy with Cubase 7. But if you miss something from Sonar or are still interested in the program, I'd say you wait for the X3 demo to come out. But nothing can make you sure about X4, I think.

History.

I don't understand. My question is why do you still care about Sonar when you've already found a satisfactory DAW to move on with?

I still use Sonar for some tasks and I have a long history with it.

Strange.  It must really irk you to use a product that annoys you to no end (Sonar) - and to have forked out for alternate product which doesn't fully meet your needs (Cubase).


It's more than obvious to most here that your expectations are in the wee minority - when the world around you is fairly satisfied, you need to question your beliefs.



 

Being well adjusted to a sick system is no measure of sane beliefs.

I'm in the same position. I have abandoned Sonar for new work, but I have a lot of projects and plugins trapped in Sonar/Windows, so I'm still forced to use both to port those projects elsewhere. This makes the current Sonar news and perception relevant to me.

And that's the thing. Perception. It may be a frustration to those who have positive opinions of Sonar and Cakewalk, and even more frustrating to Cakewalk employees, but there is a perception of Sonar as buggy and Cakewalk as not being responsible that was created by Cakewalk's own product and behavior. It matters. Disregarding it won't help anyone. Mocking users like us also does not help anyone, but I'm sure it bolsters some egos here and there.

Yes, this thread is about X3... But X3 has many predecessors that form a track record. That record matters in considering X3. It is unreasonable to demand that people just ignore any such legacy. The only thing that will undo it is to consistently behave opposite the legacy. If X5 rolls around and the users on this forum confirm that Cakewalk has consistently improved and demonstrated better treatment of users in comparison to X2 and earlier, then wonderful. I'd love to see it. That could only be good for everyone. Till then... the critical commentary and the doubt has been earned.

[Jace-BeOS]

Cakewalk has a history of abandoning products: Project 5, instrument development(what ever happened to Rene?), they had a sampler that they ditched, VS700...

FWIW, the only thing true in that statement is about P5. Every company brings product lifes to an end, but that does not take away that some of us were sorry that P5 was discontinued. Anyway, and back about Sonar, it does not look like changing version numbers of a software product and moving on instead of issuing new patches as infinitum is the same as discontinuing its development. On the contrary, Cakewalk's flagship DAW in its long line of versions is one of the audio software products in the market that has been under uninterrupted development for longest time.

Besides P5, the rest is just disinformed BS: Z3ta+2 was released well after Rene left the company. The (in)famous VSampler was never a Cakewalk product and it seems to be more or less alive (http://www.maz-sound.com/index.php?show=product&id=2). The Roland V-Studio 700 control surface seems to be still getting support from Cakewalk in spite of the fact that they are not Roland owned anymore. How long will this work out is out of Cakewalk's control, but it seems that calling VS700 "abandoned" by them is at least unfair.

No it's not uninformed BS. Because you're not aware of, or haven't been using, the things that were abandoned doesn't make them non-existant. Even though I didn't use it myself, finding out that a plugin was released in X2 and abandoned in X3 doesn't encourage my faith in anything presented in Sonar. Then there are the plugins that I HAVE used which were also abandoned. There are several. Some are third party and some are Cakewalk branded. This is part of Cakewalk history and company history is surely a sane place to look when considering buying new product from a company. History states that Sonar presents news plugins and then abandons them one or two versions later. It has repeatedly occurred. It is not "uninformed BS".

[Jace-BeOS]

Project 5 was not abandoned, it is incorporated into Sonar and has been since Sonar 8.

What was dropped was the stand alone program, I wish they would have left it alone but there it is.

Half alive and not quite dead.

Now THAT is uninformed nonsense. P5 was NOT incorporated into Sonar. Many of the plugins were, and were then also abandoned.

[Jace-BeOS]

I still use Sonar for some tasks and I have a long history with it.

Strange.  It must really irk you to use a product that annoys you to no end (Sonar) - and to have forked out for alternate product which doesn't fully meet your needs (Cubase).


It's more than obvious to most here that your expectations are in the wee minority - when the world around you is fairly satisfied, you need to question your beliefs.



 

Well you certainly are assuming a lot here. Cubase totally meets my needs but I have years of files that I still need to access and therefore will still need Sonar for. Is that OK with you?

It's totally OK with me because it's precisely my situation as well. I went back to work on an unfinished SONAR x2 project the other day, until it crashed when I tried to instantiate Orangetree Acoustic Guitar. So I exported the midi and imported to Cubase. I learned not to waste another moment, let alone 15 more years, with Cake. I've realized it's better to export all those projects to Cubase, which hasn't crashed once in the past few months I've been using it, no matter what vst I have run in it. I had plans to finish those SONAR projects, but I've now realized there's no point in using SONAR X2 to do it.

My situation exactly. Except I can't just port all my projects as midi. There are all these Sonar-only and Windows-only plugins. Some can be simulated by other plugins elsewhere. Some cannot. Some fx chains aren't really reproducible. Etc. very frustrating. The experience has taught me a hard lesson about first party, third party and platform dependent plugins. But the lesson ended up being "you're pretty much screwed no matter what". Exporting rendered audio stems isn't an ideal way of getting an in-progress project ported. The real lesson learned is: the total benefits of plugins and instant recall are nullified and the end result is that you're still better off abandoning such ideals and writing out audio of clean and effected pieces and just living with the consequences, rather than trying to preserve editability by being trapped in any one product.

[Jace-BeOS]

It's totally OK with me because it's precisely my situation as well. I went back to work on an unfinished SONAR x2 project the other day, until it crashed when I tried to instantiate Orangetree Acoustic Guitar. So I exported the midi and imported to Cubase. I learned not to waste another moment, let alone 15 more years, with Cake. I've realized it's better to export all those projects to Cubase, which hasn't crashed once in the past few months I've been using it, no matter what vst I have run in it. I had plans to finish those SONAR projects, but I've now realized there's no point in using SONAR X2 to do it.

I just have too many files and it would take too long to do it. I'm quite busy (fortunately). Cubase 7 is so much more reliable than Sonar ever was. X3 may be reliable but it really irks me that I would be forced to upgrade just to get a working version.

And this is my scenario too. Yet the Cakewalk guy posting here, and several other happy users, think we're unreasonable in our position. :-p

[SuperG]

Excuse me, but why do you need to be sure about that? I thought you were very happy with Cubase 7. But if you miss something from Sonar or are still interested in the program, I'd say you wait for the X3 demo to come out. But nothing can make you sure about X4, I think.

History.

I don't understand. My question is why do you still care about Sonar when you've already found a satisfactory DAW to move on with?

I still use Sonar for some tasks and I have a long history with it.

Strange.  It must really irk you to use a product that annoys you to no end (Sonar) - and to have forked out for alternate product which doesn't fully meet your needs (Cubase).


It's more than obvious to most here that your expectations are in the wee minority - when the world around you is fairly satisfied, you need to question your beliefs.




 

Being well adjusted to a sick system is no measure of sane beliefs.

I'm in the same position. I have abandoned Sonar for new work, but I have a lot of projects and plugins trapped in Sonar/Windows, so I'm still forced to use both to port those projects elsewhere. This makes the current Sonar news and perception relevant to me.

And that's the thing. Perception. It may be a frustration to those who have positive opinions of Sonar and Cakewalk, and even more frustrating to Cakewalk employees, but there is a perception of Sonar as buggy and Cakewalk as not being responsible that was created by Cakewalk's own product and behavior. It matters. Disregarding it won't help anyone. Mocking users like us also does not help anyone, but I'm sure it bolsters some egos here and there.

Yes, this thread is about X3... But X3 has many predecessors that form a track record. That record matters in considering X3. It is unreasonable to demand that people just ignore any such legacy. The only thing that will undo it is to consistently behave opposite the legacy. If X5 rolls around and the users on this forum confirm that Cakewalk has consistently improved and demonstrated better treatment of users in comparison to X2 and earlier, then wonderful. I'd love to see it. That could only be good for everyone. Till then... the critical commentary and the doubt has been earned.

Sick as compared to what? 

You bring up perception, and that's a good place to start. You forget that the perception you describe is your perception. Of course, there are other who share your perception, but context is everything. Your perception is a minority one and it is important to take that into consideration; however, noting the point does not diminish your right to express an opinion - it just provides proper perspective. This also applies to your perception of a 'track record' as well - I haven't had any major problems with Sonar since X1.

So, go ahead, complain. But expect rebuttal if straying from fact into hyperbole.