n-track or Cakewalk?

[dawilco]

Hi all - I've been poking around the Home Recording website for a few years but am new to the boards.
Question: I record tunes for CD distribution on my own label - acoustic stuff, usually 6 - 8 tracks per song.
I've been using an old Cakewalk program, Guitar Tracks, for tracking and CoolEdit 2000 for post work.
Are there any advantages to using the basic n-track program or am I best to stay with what I know?
Thanks!

 

[fraserhutch]

Cross-posting is a no-no, which you should know, as you've been poking around here for a few years.

 

[MadAudio]

Cross-posting is a no-no, which you should know, as you've been poking around here for a few years.

A join date of July 2005 counts as a few years? Time warp!

And to be fair, I think this is an example of an acceptable cross-post. The two are in the appropriate forums.

I can't answer - I use Vegas!

 

[Paul881]

Hi all - I've been poking around the Home Recording website for a few years but am new to the boards.
Question: I record tunes for CD distribution on my own label - acoustic stuff, usually 6 - 8 tracks per song.
I've been using an old Cakewalk program, Guitar Tracks, for tracking and CoolEdit 2000 for post work.
Are there any advantages to using the basic n-track program or am I best to stay with what I know?
Thanks!

It depends on what your ambitions are, the type of music you want to make and how much money you have to spend

If you can use guitar tracks then you will certainly understand the basics of Sonar HS 4 and get going quite quickly. The beauty of staying with the Cakewalk product groups is that you don't have to learn a completely new operating function set. As a registered user of cakewalk products, that entitles you to significant upgrade discounts too. There are no advantages of n-tracks over Sonar HS that I can see, looking at the web-site.

 

[TexasMusicForge]

n-Track is a good program for as inexpensive as it is. It has good sonic qualities, good built-in effects, passable MIDI and accepts both DX and VST. For extremely simple (i.e. guitar and voice) recordings, it will do fine. That said, it tends to be somewhat buggy and CPU intensive in my several years of using it.

I got a good deal on purchasing Cakewalk HS and found it to be much more stable, although not quite as intuitive to use, as n-Track v. 3.3 was. The sound was good and there were more tools to use as my studio skills grew. I've started getting in some film and video scoring gigs and relatively recently upgraded to Sonar 4 PE and am very glad I did. The earlier poster's remark about not having to learn new sets of skills each time you upgrade within the Cakewalk family are an excellent point and true to my own experience.

If all you will ever do is voice and acoustic guitar recordings or relatively simple mixes, n-Track is a lot of studio for the money. If, however, you expect your skills, $ and professional needs to grow and expect to someday record more instruments, more tracks, take the plunge into MIDI, produce music for video/film/TV or generally expand out into new directions, buy into Cakewalk. As someone told me when I was contemplating the upgrade to Sonar 4, "it's good to have the tools in the toolbox *before* you suddenly find you need them" - especially so in a fluid environment like music.

Best regards,

Tio Ed
Austin, Texas

 

[Autist]

I have used N-Track, Cakewalk Home Studio 2 XL (before the little icons were added), Cakewalk Plasma, Tracktion, that PG Music thing and Fruity Loops in my quest for the best software for me.

I now use Cakewalk Sonar 4 Producer edition for tracking and mixing and Sound Forge for other stuff (I will spare you the details).

N-Track is OK, but I had difficulties when trying to do certain things in it that were very easy to do in Home Studio. I got Tracktion 1 for free and liked it fine, except I am used to mixing with a mixer interface where I can just jump from one fader to the next - Tracktion currently lacks that feature, as far as I know. It also lacks DirectX support and I use quite a few DX plug-ins. On the other hand Tracktion sounds pretty good. For various reasons I was not impressed with Fruity Loops, or that PG Music thing.

Home Studio was my favorite for a while, until I needed more plug-ins than it would allow me to use, which is why I went to N-Track for mixing. This was a real pain. Tracking in Home Studio, bouncing down to audio and importing the audio into N-Track to mix just wasn't working efficiently for me. So, after that project, which was never released, I decided to try Sonar 4 Producer for the next one.

Sonar allows me to do everything I need to do in one setting. It makes organization of tracks much easier, has far more features than any of the others I have tried and simply sounds better. The Sonitus effects simply put any of the ones that come with N-Track to shame. If I want to work with video, or surround sound, I have that capability now. However, Sonar is way more expensive.

If you got Home Studio, you would have the option to upgrade to Sonar later if you wanted/needed to for a cheaper price. If you forsee yourself needing to use lots of plug-ins, N-Track has the advantage over HS, but it is just not as stable of a product. N-Track also took longer for me to setup the interface the way I needed it for certain tasks and it often forgot the settings. Cakewalk is far simpler in that respect (althjough I have not tried the newer version of HS - with the silly icons). For MIDI work, Cakewalk is hard to beat. I never was able to get N-Track to do certain things that were very easy with Sonar and HS, like interfacing with certain pieces of hardware. Once I had tried the trial version of Sonar 4 without any difficulties, I was sold and I was very comfortable with both HS and Sonar in a very short period of time, whereas I never quite got used to N-Track.

Some say that Tracktion is far simpler than anything else, but having done most of my work in large and small analogue studios until the early 90s, I found Tracktion to be contrary to the traditional methods I am familiar with, which made it harder to get used to.

I am a firm believer in "doing it right the first time." Not only is it easier (trust me, I tried it the hard way), but it saves money later. My suggestion would be to not rule out Sonar 4, because the studio version is not as expensive as Producer and does all of the same things, it just doesn't include the Sonitus effects, or surround sound capabilities. You would be less limited than with HS and have a pleasant software environment to work in from the start. You would also not have to upgrade for a while, unless you really wanted a newer version of Sonar. If you got HS and reached its limits (you need just one more track, or effect and it won't allow it) you may end up spending more on an upgrade to something else.