temped by the dark side

minofifa

minofifa

New member
hey fellas,

I was reading a post about.... something, when somebody mentioned checking out ntrack studio. I've read that suggestion a million times, but this time i was trying to kill time at work so i checked it out. I must say i'm impressed. i remember using ntrack back in the day, and it was alright. Now they seem to support everything cakewalk supports for a fraction of the price. VST, VSTi, DX, DXi, rewire, ASIO and WDM, unlimited MIDI and audio tracks, non-destructive editing. I was having a hard time thinking of a function my sonar 3 can do that ntrack couldn't.

I guess i'll wait till sonar 5 comes out, and that better have something to wow me. The upgrade price from S3 to S4 right now is 180 bucks, that's 3 times as much as ntrack. I would only guess that an upgrade from S3 to S5 will be massive (maybe 250 or something).

One other thing i like about ntrack, is the developer seems to be prety proactive. lots of version revisions and stuff.
 
minofifa said:
The upgrade price from S3 to S4 right now is 180 bucks, that's 3 times as much as ntrack. I would only guess that an upgrade from S3 to S5 will be massive (maybe 250 or something).
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If ntracks doesn't handle surround, then it is really more equivalent to Sonar Studio. The upgrade price to Studio is $99 ($79 if you hold your breath for the next *special*).


minofifa said:
I was having a hard time thinking of a function my sonar 3 can do that ntrack couldn't.
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Does it do universal bus routing and automated FX?
 
automated fx, yes i think it does as far as i can tell. I'm not even sure i know what universal bus routing is so i can't comment on that. It does support 32 aux buses though if that's what you are getting at. I don't even own surround sound speakers so that feature isn't too important for me.

Perhaps sonar producer is just too sophisticated for me right now. Insted of using software with every feature under the sun, i could try one that only has the features I need, and as a result would be more streamlined and less bloated. I'm gonna wait until S5 comes out and look at the studio version and see how it stacks up against the version of ntracks at the time.
 
minofifa said:
I'm not even sure i know what universal bus routing is so i can't comment on that.
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Essentially it's the ability to route any track to any bus, and any bus to any other bus.

The benefit of it is that it allows you to create submixes. IOW, route all your drum tracks to a Bus called Drums. This will give you a master control over the *entire* drum kit as a whole - for volume control or effects. Then you route this "sub" bus to a Master Bus.

This and the VST wrapper were the primary reasons I bothered to upgrade from ver 2 to 3.
 
oh ok, i actually use that feature all the time, it is very handy. I didn't know it was called that though. It's not the features of sonar i dislke, as they are awsome. I find that it is hard to get the right view i want in sonar, especially in the mixer view. I dislike how wide the channel strips are. I remember the mixer in cool edit, and it was pretty sweet. The strips were small so you could see a lot of them in one window, that was key.
 
dachay2tnr said:
Essentially it's the ability to route any track to any bus, and any bus to any other bus.

The benefit of it is that it allows you to create submixes. IOW, route all your drum tracks to a Bus called Drums. This will give you a master control over the *entire* drum kit as a whole - for volume control or effects. Then you route this "sub" bus to a Master Bus.
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This is called "groups" in NTrack.
 
Monkey Allen said:
Sonar 4 PE doesn't 'wow' you?
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to be honest, not really. maybe if i was just starting out and hadn't used anything yet, but as an upgrade from PE3, it definately is not worth 180 US dollars + shipping + tax.... eww makes me sick thinking of it. Two of my favorite features of S3 were the sonitus FX suite and Vsampler. Since then i have gotten used to Reason/rewire (which prety much makes vsampler useless). I was thinking of trying a UAD-1 for efects to take some load off of my CPU. I'm more interested in getting stuff done quickly and efficiently, that's what i'm searching for in my next DAW software buy.
 
minofifa said:
... I find that it is hard to get the right view i want in sonar, especially in the mixer view.
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Wow. Mixer view. I guess I made the transition with out even noticing.. forgot about that one. :) :D
Peace
Wayne
 
i tried the demo of ntrack out last night, and it is not as slick as the website made it sound. there is a LOT of clutter that i need to sort out. i wanna make sure i give it a fair chance but it seems slow for me right now.
 
minofifa said:
i tried the demo of ntrack out last night, and it is not as slick as the website made it sound. there is a LOT of clutter that i need to sort out. i wanna make sure i give it a fair chance but it seems slow for me right now.
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Yeah, when I used NTrack it took a long time to get it setup the way I wanted and every time it crashed, or I updated it the program forgot how I had it set up and I had to go through that all over again.
 
not lacking anything feature wise, i've just always found that sonar doesn't use its available space as good as it could. i find that mixer strip are too big, and just contain empty space. because of this i have to scroll left and right to see more than 8tracks or so, kindof annoying. The track view could be revamped as well. like i said, i tried ntrack and it was cluttered and not what i expected. i hope sonar 5 is even more customizable and has better views.
 
indeed, i've just got some dual monitor action going in my room right now. the major problem is that it's aboue 34oC (thats hot for you clowns not on the metric system), and my two monitors and computer pump out some serious heat in my tiny room. Is it wrong to mix in one's underwear? well even if it is, i like the workout :)
 
minofifa said:
not lacking anything feature wise, i've just always found that sonar doesn't use its available space as good as it could. i find that mixer strip are too big, and just contain empty space. because of this i have to scroll left and right to see more than 8tracks or so, kindof annoying. The track view could be revamped as well. like i said, i tried ntrack and it was cluttered and not what i expected. i hope sonar 5 is even more customizable and has better views.
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WOW, Only 8 tracks What, I can get 13-14 with the "narrow strip view" that's with 2 aux busses and the master buss, but I so have a 21" monitor and the resolution set pretty high.
 
i think i've found a fix to my problem. got a grant from school andi'm gonna get a 24'' widescreen LCD from Dell. i think its the 2405FPS. I'm pumped. It even has 3 usb 2.0 ports on it, now i won't have crap wires coming out of my rack.

I did try jacking the resolution up on my monitor but i find it hard to read when its too high.
 
minofifa said:
i think i've found a fix to my problem. got a grant from school andi'm gonna get a 24'' widescreen LCD from Dell. i think its the 2405FPS. I'm pumped. It even has 3 usb 2.0 ports on it, now i won't have crap wires coming out of my rack.

I did try jacking the resolution up on my monitor but i find it hard to read when its too high.
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Also, a dual screen setup is handy.
 
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