I've been on this forum for a few months now trying to research a "best fit" new home studio setup for my needs. I'm starting from scratch having been out of the music business professionally for many years (studio musician, orchestrator, composer). I've spec'd up a fair beast of a machine to run it (24Gb memory, three hard drives etc) and believe I have this covered.
I have no real loyalty to any particular DAW and, as you'd expect, each one has its pros and cons. My main use is to create instrumental music as an indie (piano, acoustic guitar, orchestral with electronic grooves), create TV/film music libraries, and arrange string quartet sheet music for sale (with awesome demo tracks). The only live instruments I'm likely to record are acoustic guitar and other stringed instruments one at a time. The rest will be VST instrument libraries with piano an important feature (EW, Trilian, Omnisphere, Ivory etc) . The "must" is that the end product sounds totally professional (yep, understand room treatment etc is a biggie).
I really want to focus on the music rather than the "tech" (this from an IT professional!) and will play most things in, particularly "real" instruments, from a written score but some sequencing required and obviously handy to have the midi tracks recorded so I can reassign the audio patch if I change my mind about the sound. I would prefer to work with just one DAW that can flow from midi/audio recording to mixing to mastering (OK pipedream?). Although I'll be using external VST's, a great sounding library of instruments out of the box would be useful.
In regard to various DAW choices and after some research I find myself, and perhaps a little surprisingly, on the Sonar forum for the following reasons:
1 Pro Tools - yes "industry standard" but I have some concerns about the large VST libraries I will be using. On the plus side I will use Sibelius and the Pro Tools integration has appeal. I had in mind to get the Mbox Pro 3 + PT9 bundle initially.
2 Cubase - good for midi/VSTs but mixing, mastering??
3 Reaper - yep, understand it's really good value and a great following but comprehensive enough as a one stop shop?
So, how does Sonar X1 Producer shape up here? The recent upgrade seems to have had great press and it seems to tick all the boxes. I also wonder about a good interface if I take this route (need 2 midi in, 2 mic in, 2 audio line in (L/R), 2 headphone, 3 monitor pairs out).
Thanks, the knowledge on this site has been incredibly useful so far!
Robert
I have no real loyalty to any particular DAW and, as you'd expect, each one has its pros and cons. My main use is to create instrumental music as an indie (piano, acoustic guitar, orchestral with electronic grooves), create TV/film music libraries, and arrange string quartet sheet music for sale (with awesome demo tracks). The only live instruments I'm likely to record are acoustic guitar and other stringed instruments one at a time. The rest will be VST instrument libraries with piano an important feature (EW, Trilian, Omnisphere, Ivory etc) . The "must" is that the end product sounds totally professional (yep, understand room treatment etc is a biggie).
I really want to focus on the music rather than the "tech" (this from an IT professional!) and will play most things in, particularly "real" instruments, from a written score but some sequencing required and obviously handy to have the midi tracks recorded so I can reassign the audio patch if I change my mind about the sound. I would prefer to work with just one DAW that can flow from midi/audio recording to mixing to mastering (OK pipedream?). Although I'll be using external VST's, a great sounding library of instruments out of the box would be useful.
In regard to various DAW choices and after some research I find myself, and perhaps a little surprisingly, on the Sonar forum for the following reasons:
1 Pro Tools - yes "industry standard" but I have some concerns about the large VST libraries I will be using. On the plus side I will use Sibelius and the Pro Tools integration has appeal. I had in mind to get the Mbox Pro 3 + PT9 bundle initially.
2 Cubase - good for midi/VSTs but mixing, mastering??
3 Reaper - yep, understand it's really good value and a great following but comprehensive enough as a one stop shop?
So, how does Sonar X1 Producer shape up here? The recent upgrade seems to have had great press and it seems to tick all the boxes. I also wonder about a good interface if I take this route (need 2 midi in, 2 mic in, 2 audio line in (L/R), 2 headphone, 3 monitor pairs out).
Thanks, the knowledge on this site has been incredibly useful so far!
Robert
... really don't want to learn 2 DAWs if I can avoid it.
. Pro Tools folk will say Sonar is a toy, Cubase folk will say Sonar is the poor-man's Cubase, but I don't think any of those on their own will allow me to record audio, manage large VST instruments libraries with heaving, mix, master then author/burn a CD end to end.