Thinking of buying Sonar 4 Studio.

[ceenda]

I've been happily using energyXT and FL Studio Producer Edition for a while now. I'm definately a hobbyist and do music for my own pleasure (and to compose for animations and movies related to artwork I do). However, I'm looking to get into more classical work which requires a bit more user friendliness when coming to arrangements and MIDI editing.

As much as I love FL Studio, I've never really clicked with the arrangement/playlist thing. I like to see all the notation previewed. EnergyXT is great for that, allowing you to move arrangements around, copy MIDI clips around, attach envelopes etc. but it currently lacks tempo automation and staff notation. Also, I like to have a main mixer area. At the moment I'm routing a multi-out eXT VST to fruity's own mixer. But even that's a big long-winded when you're in the mood to jot down ideas.

Sadly, because the demo for Sonar 4 doesn't contain the VST adapter, I have to ask some questions here.

cut to chase...

1 - How is the staff notation in Sonar, and do many of you Sonar users add stuff in there manually? Or do you work with the Piano Roll and then preview it in the Staff notation to make minor adjustments or print off scripts?

2 - Is the Cakewalk VST adapter really stable? I don't know much about it. I guess it works in a similar way to WINE on Linux, that is, it's a VST emulator. Are there any known problems with it?

3 - Can you have 1 VST, and multiple MIDI tracks which point to it? I'd miss the ability in eXT to be able to have multiple MIDI channels for 1 instrument. Especially a multi-out VST (e.g., GPO, Edirol Orchestra, sfz with 16 channels all pointing to differen presets).

Sorry for the spraff.

[haydxn]

i don't use sonar, but i've heard lots of good things about it.

the one thing i can say, however, is that you can at the very least use energyXT within sonar; if you like the way it works, then you don't need to miss out on its features when - as i hear- it wraps perfectly well.

sorry i can't be more directly useful tho! good luck

[johnmorales]

1 - How is the staff notation in Sonar, and do many of you Sonar users add stuff in there manually? Or do you work with the Piano Roll and then preview it in the Staff notation to make minor adjustments or print off scripts?

It's decent, you don't lose anything versus the alternatives

2 - Is the Cakewalk VST adapter really stable? I don't know much about it. I guess it works in a similar way to WINE on Linux, that is, it's a VST emulator. Are there any known problems with it?
It's stable but limited vs. other adapters, and some of the improvments are NOT as friendly to certain VSTs, but it all depends on which ones you use.

3 - Can you have 1 VST, and multiple MIDI tracks which point to it? I'd miss the ability in eXT to be able to have multiple MIDI channels for 1 instrument. Especially a multi-out VST (e.g., GPO, Edirol Orchestra, sfz with 16 channels all pointing to differen presets).
You can set that up yes. You can do pretty much anything with Sonar but you need to figure it out. It's a feature laden program, and things like this are not immediately obvious. Unless you have used programs like this before.

Finally, don't buy studio, but Producer. For the small increase in money you get a nice amount of effects.

[Stupid American Pig]

1 - How is the staff notation in Sonar, and do many of you Sonar users add stuff in there manually? Or do you work with the Piano Roll and then preview it in the Staff notation to make minor adjustments or print off scripts?

I have briefly used the staff editor in S4. Basically, from what I have heard, its not 100% complete, but everyone I have talked to that does scoring, has been able to find workarounds to anylimitations they have found. So you may not be able to score something 100% correctly, but you can score it in a different way that will sound the same. I dont know enough about scoring to really tell you what areas are limited though.

2 - Is the Cakewalk VST adapter really stable? I don't know much about it. I guess it works in a similar way to WINE on Linux, that is, it's a VST emulator. Are there any known problems with it?

Well its a shame that it is called a VST adapter, since that gives it the feeling that it is a band aid. I will say that the vst wrapper is for the most part very good- tehr are some plugins that may not work, but cakewalk has been updating it. In my case, some of my wrapped Vstis work better in Sonar than they do unwrapped in my other hosts like FL studio or Acid 4. Also keep in mind that even cakewalk's "native" Dxi format is "wrapped" internally by the audio engine, and I havent noticed any performance difference between dxi or vst. to summerize 99% of whats out there will work great in the vst adapter.

3 - Can you have 1 VST, and multiple MIDI tracks which point to it? I'd miss the ability in eXT to be able to have multiple MIDI channels for 1 instrument. Especially a multi-out VST (e.g., GPO, Edirol Orchestra, sfz with 16 channels all pointing to differen presets).

Sorry for the spraff.

AFAIK, yes- I have sonar 4 producer edition, and you can route any midi track to any device with a midi input. I would assume that studio works the same way but dont know for sure.

[Beardedone]

I love Sonar for it's audio and midi capabilities and would encourage you to go for it as it is IMO the best of the bunch for Windows. However I find the notation staff in Sonar to be unusable for anything more complex than simple lines It is clumsy to write notes and difficult to edit recorded material. I use Sonar 3 though I believe Sonar 4 is still lacking in this regard - check in the Sonar and the Northern sound source forums if you want more opinions though.

I have recently been using GPO which comes bundled with Overture SE vs 3.6. This scoring app has made me realize how easy it can be. If you really need to do scoring I would recommend getting a dedicated program like Overture, Sibelius or Finale. These are amazing programs and having learned to score with Overture has significantly enhanced the way I make music. If you can, plan to get Overture or Finale, if you want to do any scoring beyond a couple of parts. Best bet is to get GPO if you want good quality orchestral sounds that blend well and come in a full package with Overture and other goodies.

I have built some Symphonic scores in Overture using the GPO library with a couple of instances of Kontak hosted in Forte Ensemble. Exporting the finnished score as a midi file to Sonar yeilds results are very satisfying indeed. Thre is no way in a million years that I could have scored these pieces using Sonar staff view. All I need now are some films to work on.

[hdouble]

1. Staff view is okay. I use it occassionally, but for songwriting/production I spend most of the time in piano roll or event list view. It'd get more use if I had a printer, for printing out scores for other musicians etc.

2. Cakewalk VST adapter is great. The only issue I've found is that VST effects don't sync to host tempo properly so you have to enable the effect as a synth (it's an option in the adapter setup program) -- long story short it works perfectly, it just looks a little messy because the effect plugin shows up in your list of synths. Otherwise it handles automation etc. very nicely and no problems with latency and stability; in fact in some cases I prefer to run the VST version of a plug as opposed to the DXi native.

3. Yes, you can route as many tracks to/from a single plugin as you'd like. I regularly have 4-8 MIDI tracks going to a single DR-008 drum machine plugin which in turn is routed to 4-8 audio tracks.

[WillieJenkins]

hdouble,

point #2 is fixed in Sonar 4.01 BTW. There is a new tempo sync option, so you can keep your effects as effects.