Sonar 4 - To upgrade or not to upgrade. That is the question.

Sonar 4: Upgrade or not?

  • Damn straight! Gimme the Producer Edition!

    Votes: 30 61.2%

  • Hmmm, I'll take Studio Edition thanks.

    Votes: 4 8.2%

  • Keep yer new fangled gadgets sonny, I'm happy here!

    Votes: 15 30.6%
  • Total voters
    49
tombuur said:
Could you imagine how that would work with copy protection schemes?
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If Cakewalk introduced a dongle or some sort of authorization code, I would seriously consider getting a cracked version. I've tried Nuendo, Cubase and Logic in studios. It's nothing but hazzle!

Got my copy of Sonar 4 Pro two days ago! IT ROCKS! IT FREEZES! I GOT EVEN MORE CPU POWER LEFT! Can't wait to get my Athlon64 (it's supposed to arrive tomorrow, but we'll see).

How can Cakewalk create a program that is superior to the earlier versions and still make it easier on the CPU? :confused:
 
I tell you what:

two days a go I went to a 2hr Sonar 4 "road show" and I thought Sonar rocks. However, last night I went to a Logic 7 road show and was amazed about Logic 7! It blows everything else on the market out of the water! They didn't even mention all the "new" features Sonar 4 has coz they are so standard in Logic 7! Logic is simply amazing.
 
Features at this time are meaningless, they are all starting to look and operate the same. The sound of the engine is everything.
 
Middleman said:
Features at this time are meaningless, they are all starting to look and operate the same. The sound of the engine is everything.
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That's what I would say too, but talking about my 19 year old Volvo. In fact, I am happy as long as I can hear the hum of the engine. :)
 
Middleman said:
Features at this time are meaningless, they are all starting to look and operate the same. The sound of the engine is everything.
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I think each of the top-end DAWs (like Sonar, Cubase, Logic & ProTools) sounds excellent. I believe no-one is able to hear any difference at all if we made a test here.

Its the features that separates them, or in other terms: given a certain CPU power, what you you do?

(example: in Logic you can hook up as many Macs as you want, and you can tell the software with one mouse click which tracks should be processed by which computer. That even makes sense for people like us who are on a small budget: hook your desktop up to the laptop and use the laptops processor, too, e.g. for convolution reverb; etc etc etc ...). I'm not here to promote anything, but I was just so blown away by Logic 7 that it was an eye-opener to me how different the DAWs are in fact. Some DAWs are lagging 2 years in development behind others.
 
That gives me an idea:

shall we open a new thread in order to compare how different software sounds like?? That would be very interesting! We could use one template WAV file and different people process that file with different DAWs. What do you think??
 
Giganova said:
I think each of the top-end DAWs (like Sonar, Cubase, Logic & ProTools) sounds excellent. I believe no-one is able to hear any difference at all if we made a test here.
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I can hear dramatic differences in the engines. I have dinked around with my drummer and his Cubas vs my Sonar, there are differences in upper end clarity, perceived 3D etc. Cubase sounds flat to my ears. Even Sonar has a different sound between versions. You need to step up in your convertors if you can't tell the difference.
 
Frankly, I was a little annoyed when the upgrade was announced. I'd always considered Cakewalk to be a straight up and fair company, and announcement of YET ANOTHER major version less than a year after Sonar 3 was a bone of contention for me. I thought, "What features could possibly justify an upgrade so quickly?" I didn't consider surround sound, by itself, to be a justifyable reason.

Yet once I got over myself, I went out and purchased the upgrade...and I've never looked back.

FOR ME, this was THE MOST improved update to date. Aside from all the new fangled gadgets and features, the team managed to improve a VERY IMPORTANT elemental aspect of the programming for my personal situation.

I know that Sonar 3 claimed to be multithreaded, but I run a dual rig and I saw only a modicum of improvement in CPU usage when converting up from Sonar 2.

Folks, the people at Cakewalk state that by clicking the option for multithreading in Sonar 4, significant improvements might be made in CPU usage. "Great", I thought to myself, "But what does significant actually mean?"

Well, I'm here to tell you that "significant" meant that my CPU load WAS CUT IN HALF. I'd never expected such a dramatic change. Suddenly, I can't load Sonar with enough plugins to make it crash...well, I suppose I could, but it hasn't happened yet.

This is not to say that it hasn't crashed on me...I had recorded some vocals on 5 separate tracks and I wanted to increase the audio volume by 3db. I highlighted the tracks and asked the program to do the increase...and I got a crash with the "Sonar failed to reference memory at xxxxxxxxxx" error. When that happens, the whole computer has to be restarted to reset the program.

Regardless, stability has improved to the point where the above situation is THE ONLY time things have crashed...although there was a peculiar side note to this situation. Since I couldn't do the function in Sonar, I tried to outsource it to Sound Forge. Upon doing so, the tracks kept loading over and over and over and got caught in an endless loop of loading. It was weird. I had to use task manager to kill Sonar to get it to stop.

But outside of that weirdness, it has become MORE (noticeably so) rock solid than before.

The new features are nice, but it is even more special when attention is given to the basic fundamentals. It's what users REALLY buy the program for...the MEAT, not the SIZZLE.

Best-

K-
 
I agree. Folders and freeze are great. And this weekend I have finally done some recording. My way is usually looping something like a guitar solo for 4-8 times, then listening to pick the best. This comping thing works excellently. All the takes are there, and I can quickly mute/unmute with a mouse in one hand and a "Q" in the other. For this I used to create "buffer tracks" and shuffle around with the clips. What a relief.
 
I don't know how I lived w/o folders before. I've gone back and reloaded projects JUST so I could rearrange them better.

Drum tracks go into the folder.

Guitar tracks go into the folder.

BGVs go into the folder.

Everything is SOOO much cleaner to work with...and fits in the space of my desktop infinitely better.

Like I said before, I've upgraded every time since Pro Audio 7...and THIS upgrade was the one I think I value the most.

Which is weird, because I started out kind of mad about it.

K-
 
K-dub said:
The new features are nice, but it is even more special when attention is given to the basic fundamentals. It's what users REALLY buy the program for...the MEAT, not the SIZZLE.
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I can already envision the marketing campaign:

Sonar 4! It finally works right.

or maybe:

Sonar 4! What you thought you were getting in 1, 2, and 3.


That oughta sell a gazillion copies. :D :D
 
:D

That's funny, but kind of true. Although 2 and 3 were better than their predecessors, I think 4 provides a rock solidness that wasn't always present before. Even though 3 (to my memory) had the audio engine upgrade (they converted Sonar to the same one created for Project 5), I think there were some bugs in the gravy.

4 is better.

Best-

K-
 
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