I decided to upgrade yesterday to a Sonar Professional. Paid around 119 CAD. I think it was on special. Got bunch of extra instruments including Addictive Drums and Melodyne. UAD doesn't need extra buffering now! So now the latency is set to 64 samples (128 samples round trip). I am impressed. They are coming along.
-Tom
Latest Sonar is an improvement
Re: Latest Sonar is an improvement
Definitely worth the upgrade for Sonar users. If others like their DAWs, more power to 'em. I'm a long time Sonar user and it is the most solid yet. The add-ons alone are worth the upgrade price of admission, and they keep adding new ones with each update.
"I’ve come to the conclusion that synths are like potatoes, they’re no good raw—you’ve got to cook ‘em, and I cooked these sounds for months before I got them to the point where they sounded musical to me." Lyle Mays
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Sounddesigner
- Posts: 1085
- Joined: Sat Jun 02, 2007 11:06 pm
Re: Latest Sonar is an improvement
I upgraded to Sonar Platinum a little short of 3 weeks ago and am satisfied so far. Not fully happy but still satisfied. I haven't migrated more than 1 project yet and have very little testing done on the new version of Sonar so my opinion is a bit premature. One of the main reasons I upgraded is because of MIDI bugs in the older Sonar X3 Producer where I'd get stuck notes and occasional random crashes using Piano Roll with my SCOPE synths. Cakewalk did a significant task by re-building the MIDI Engine to fix stuck notes and other weird problems and so far it's working fine. I'm sure rebuilding the MIDI Engine was a huge undertaking on their part and I'm glad their focused on major functionality like this cause this is the type of development that interests me the most. So far I am not having stuck notes or random crashes wich is a good sign. It's not perfect because it still ocassionally triggers a note when I press stop like it's trying to get stuck but good news is there is no sticking/hanging.
Sonar Platinum did crash from a VERY simple stress test tho. I can't load two instances of T-Racks 3 in the same Effects Bin without Sonar immediately crashing. I reported it to Cakewalk and it should be a bug that's extremely easy to reproduce, just run Sonar at 96khz and insert 2 instances of IK Multimedia's T-Racks 3 in the same bin, then a crash will occur. Thankfully T-Racks 3 is a all-in-one plugin shell so i'll never need to chain 2 instances since one instance can contain many plugins/modules inside it alone. There's no need to insert 2 instances of T-Racks shell in the same Bin in my Real-world projects cause large chaining of plugins/modules can be done in one single instance so it was just a stress-test. Although it was just a stress-test I was still a little disheartened at what I seen given Sonar's buggy history in my Studio.
I don't really care for all the newly added plugins or the older ones and probably won't ever use 95% of them due to SCOPE and 3rd party Native plugins I prefer. I do like several of them but the only one that's seriousely impressive to me is Addictive Drums 2. There's nothing seriously impressive about Session Drummer 3 but I've always liked and used it. There is a very small few that I like but aren't really anything special to me and have had no bearing on whether I bought Sonar or not, but I'm aware many other customers do love the new and old plugins and I'm sure they aid in Sonar being sold.
The MIDI Engine being re-built was a significant accomplishment for me and I applaud Cakewalk for doing it but also I'm hoping the Audio Engine is soon rebuilt to be Gapless and to have better multi-core load distribution at lower-latencies. Sonar has a problem because a single core does most of the work and gets overloaded easily while the other cores have very small loads and are mostly unused. This single core over-working problem is much worse in Sonar than other DAWs and it further worsens at 96khz and smaller buffer-sizes where running into the limits of a single core is easier. I do hope the Audio Engine is fixed soon; soundquality, workflow, low-latency performance, and longevetity are all correlated to CPU power and it's harnessing thus that Audio Engine being improved is important to me.
I initially wanted to wait until more rebuilding of Engines and more significant Editing features were implimented before I upgraded but I got fed up with the MIDI bugs in my older version of Sonar recently so I decided to upgrade. Plus I also wanted to support Cakewalk and give them a fair chance under their new ownership. Hopefully with enough support they'll address my many concerns and add more of the type of functionality I care about. I don't believe in just complaining while not giving financial support. I do believe companies have to be supported to get development done and that often constant complaining is counterproductive to developing ability. I do truly care so I support. I've always supported them and will continue to unless they give me significant reason to do otherwise (they have come very close to doing just that), and I do wish them well. Sonar is my DAW of choice so I want and need for Cakewalk to have success. Hopefully the new ownership, new sales policy and more rapid upgrades will bring about more success.
EDITED
Sonar Platinum did crash from a VERY simple stress test tho. I can't load two instances of T-Racks 3 in the same Effects Bin without Sonar immediately crashing. I reported it to Cakewalk and it should be a bug that's extremely easy to reproduce, just run Sonar at 96khz and insert 2 instances of IK Multimedia's T-Racks 3 in the same bin, then a crash will occur. Thankfully T-Racks 3 is a all-in-one plugin shell so i'll never need to chain 2 instances since one instance can contain many plugins/modules inside it alone. There's no need to insert 2 instances of T-Racks shell in the same Bin in my Real-world projects cause large chaining of plugins/modules can be done in one single instance so it was just a stress-test. Although it was just a stress-test I was still a little disheartened at what I seen given Sonar's buggy history in my Studio.
I don't really care for all the newly added plugins or the older ones and probably won't ever use 95% of them due to SCOPE and 3rd party Native plugins I prefer. I do like several of them but the only one that's seriousely impressive to me is Addictive Drums 2. There's nothing seriously impressive about Session Drummer 3 but I've always liked and used it. There is a very small few that I like but aren't really anything special to me and have had no bearing on whether I bought Sonar or not, but I'm aware many other customers do love the new and old plugins and I'm sure they aid in Sonar being sold.
The MIDI Engine being re-built was a significant accomplishment for me and I applaud Cakewalk for doing it but also I'm hoping the Audio Engine is soon rebuilt to be Gapless and to have better multi-core load distribution at lower-latencies. Sonar has a problem because a single core does most of the work and gets overloaded easily while the other cores have very small loads and are mostly unused. This single core over-working problem is much worse in Sonar than other DAWs and it further worsens at 96khz and smaller buffer-sizes where running into the limits of a single core is easier. I do hope the Audio Engine is fixed soon; soundquality, workflow, low-latency performance, and longevetity are all correlated to CPU power and it's harnessing thus that Audio Engine being improved is important to me.
I initially wanted to wait until more rebuilding of Engines and more significant Editing features were implimented before I upgraded but I got fed up with the MIDI bugs in my older version of Sonar recently so I decided to upgrade. Plus I also wanted to support Cakewalk and give them a fair chance under their new ownership. Hopefully with enough support they'll address my many concerns and add more of the type of functionality I care about. I don't believe in just complaining while not giving financial support. I do believe companies have to be supported to get development done and that often constant complaining is counterproductive to developing ability. I do truly care so I support. I've always supported them and will continue to unless they give me significant reason to do otherwise (they have come very close to doing just that), and I do wish them well. Sonar is my DAW of choice so I want and need for Cakewalk to have success. Hopefully the new ownership, new sales policy and more rapid upgrades will bring about more success.
EDITED