Sonar 3 vs. Sonar 4 & who's got it?

[gullfo]

sonar 4 - track folders, freeze, and surround. even if you output stereo, having everything pumping through the surround mix gives you an incredible amount of latitude in your mix. track folders really make thing much easier to organize/mute/archive. freeze is good on softsynth but I tend to bounce midi to audio anyways and then archive the synth - but for audio tracks where I think I have the effects set, the freeze option is great. the comp'ing layer display is great! having the ability to put takes side-by-side and manipulate them really speeds things up tremendously.

work flow is really good. surround is amazing. freeeze is very useful. there is also an "overview" of the mix so you can see where you are relative to everything + click to move there... lot's of little features like that make it a much better environment. and if you already own sonar and can upgrade to $179, definitely do it.

 

[punkin]

S4 showed up yesterday...couldn't wait to get it installed. This is NICE...very smooth with organizing tracks. Very pleased for the upgrade price. Seems to take a little less CPU to run as well.

Thanks for the input everyone.

 

[kgbjamin]

S4

I wanna try it! Unfortunately I'm gonna have to wait until mid December cause I'm out to sea until then but I like what you guys are saying about it. Be honest though, is it really worth the$179 upgrade. Or can I continue to make music without it? Either way S3 is still the shiznik!

 

[punkin]

Well, I've had it for close to two weeks now. I'm liking it a lot. The EQ per track is very nice...some of the added track manipulation features are cool as well. Surround is something I'm still playing with but haven't really got a handle on it yet.

If I wasn't working a couple of large projects, the version 3 was just fine. Track folders is a great way to manage larger projects. My upgrade was from 3.x studio to 4.x Producer so I picked up a bunch of features I was missing in the previous version of Producer. I'm thinking it was a good buy but I didn't "need" it.

All in all I'm feeling good about the purchase.

 

[moskus]

Well, we could still use PA9 (or even older version). We don't need to upgrade, but do it for the sake of convenience...


Ah! The good old DOS-days!

 

[laptoppop]

What are you doing with your previous versions? Can these be sold "as is" and previously licenced? Of course the buyer would have to know that they're not intitled to tech support and upgrades but hey...just curious.

Sorry, its not legal to transfer them in any way -- especially after you've used them for an upgrade. The reason for the discounted price is that you own the previous product. If you no longer owned the product, you would no longer qualify to own the discounted upgrade.

-lee-

 

[James Argo]

14 votes a month? What is this? Cubase forum or something...? Vote baby... vote!

 

[tombuur]

14 votes a month?

Well, I have a feeling the cakewalk part of this forum has become a little tired and passive lately. Do the number of post confirm this?

 

[maestro040255]

Ya know, I'm a little miffed at Cakewalk these days. I had gotten the updates religiously since CW 9, and everything was great until I got Studio Ver 3 Sonar. Having great faith in the company, I saved my current projects in Ver 3 (this makes them incompatible with earlier versions, although I have CD-RW backups) and everything was great EXCEPT: I don't like the appearance, I get drop-outs and don't really find the "improved features" to be of much use over 2XL. Now it sounds to me, after reading responses to this thread, Sonar 4 does what Sonar 3 SHOULD have done...any concurrence here?

 

[James Argo]

Well, yeah...

I expected something that work like Sonar 4 when i upgrade from 2.2XL to 3 PE. For me, Sonar 3 relatively the most annoying Cakewalk product I've ever used. Salt and grain off course, I didn't feel something special unless sonitus plugins and VSampler3 in it. Bus routing is fine, but it's not realy work the way I expected. There's always "Hey, why don't..." thingee in my case.

Sonar 4 PE is just perfect. I couldn't imagine I would need anything beyond it's features for now.


Jaymz

 

[maestro040255]

So you're saying go ahead and get it?

 

[James Argo]

Yes! Don't forget to read the preview, list of features, etc. make sure you know where the money goes.


Jaymz

ps. Make sure to go back here and ask moskus for free t-shirt after upgrade...

 

[maestro040255]

Well, I guess that's good, cause I ordered it tonight. From what everyone says, I might not be disappointed like with Sonar 3. Maybe the dropouts I started having with Sonar 3 on my laptop will go away, too. Thanks for the advice, all. I'll put up a post when I get a chance to try it out.

 

[moskus]

Make sure to go back here and ask moskus for free t-shirt after upgrade...

I think I have to order some more, I'm starting to run out...

 

[manifold]

SONAR 4 Upgrade War Stories

I just encountered an interesting problem in upgrading from SONAR 3 to SONAR 4 (4.0.1, actually) that I wanted to share:

1. The program installed without any glitches
2. Upon first run, SONAR *CLAIMED* to read and match all my SONAR 3 settings
3. I was able open projects created in SONAR 3
4. Playing back audio tracks resulting in the output volme being almost zero (at first I thought I wasn't getting any audio at all)
5. Recording audio tracks - with all the same settings in mix and instrument volume - resulting in such a high gain (+40db) that the recorded audio was all clip.
6. I then beat my head against the computer for 2 hours (although satisfying, it didn't help) trying the troubleshoot the problem. I'll spare you the play by play...
7. Finally I noticed, when I had SONAR 3 and 4 up side by side, comparing settings, that there *WAS* (at least) one difference between the two:

Options -> Audio -> Driver Profiles -> Stream >16bit data as

In SONAR 3: 32bit-PCM, Left-justified
In SONAR 4: 32bit-PCM, Right-justified

Once I changed SONAR 4 (back?) to Left-justified, playing and recording levels returned to normal.

For the curious, I use an Aardvark DP2496, which I love (and hope to continue to love, so I wish Aardvark the best)

I certainly didn't fiddle with that setting on purpose. Has anyone else encountered this?

 

[maestro040255]

I just installed 4.00 last nite and got different settings myself. I had to re-profile my M-Audio delta 1010's (another story here) from 32bit right justified back to 3byte, but I also got 8mS latency vs 200+mS before! My old ears can't even hear that! Anyway, I think we will both be happy with what should have been done with Sonar 3.00. I am glad at this point I made the upgrade and I will try to get it installed in my laptop over the next day or two. Unfortunately, I also bought a second Delta 1010 "blem" from Musicians Friend and guess what? It doesn't work. It crashed my new system big time. I isolated it to the rack mount piece (D/A-A/D converter box) by switching out the cards, power supplies and cables. If I let it cool off, then try again, it works for about 30 seconds, then...CRASH again. I think it has a leaky cap in the voltage regulator section by the way it acts. WAH!

 

[moskus]

Am I the only one around there that thinks that this is not that bad?

Sonar 4 had some major upgrades, which means that the settings should not be used. A reprofile of your soundcard isn't a big deal, and it only takes 20 seconds (max). And if you use ASIO-drivers (like me) it isn't at all.

What is a bitch to do set up again is the directories (I think). Sonar copied those directly, no problem. And everything worked right away!

 

[manifold]

No - I think the effort involved here is definitely worth it. My point was simply to warn others about a potential glitch in the upgrade process. Note that I did reprofile my sound card in SONAR 4, and still ended up with a 'residual complication' that I had to fix manually.

I use MME drivers, and would welcome a discussion on the pros and cons betwen MME, ASIO, et al. Someday I may actually go so far as to search the BBS for threads - but at this moment (is there any other?): it ain't broke, so I'm not gonna try to fix it.

My focus is composition, not recording, mixing or live gigs (yet). I am a professonal computer geek, but a recording noob. From that POV, I'm the archetypical dumb user - far more interested in the product than the tool. If you use this in a gig scenario, yer gonna have a different focus...

 

[moskus]

I use MME drivers, and would welcome a discussion on the pros and cons betwen MME, ASIO, et al. Someday I may actually go so far as to search the BBS for threads - but at this moment (is there any other?): it ain't broke, so I'm not gonna try to fix it.

MME-drivers are old, and I would suggest you try ASIO or WDM. Soundquality (in some cases) and computer performance is an issue here (in almost every case). And ASIO/WDM offers much lower latency if you're playing around with softsynths or Input Monitoring.

MME is the old driver standard. ASIO was developed by Steinberg 'round 1997-9 (if I remember correctly?), WDM is developed by Microsoft and Cakewalk. The newest and theoretically most efficient is WDM, however this is dependant on how the drivers is written for your soundcard.

 

[manifold]

Excellent info, moskus - thanks. Maybe it's more broke than I realize...