Sonar Upgrade?

[bigjoe10p]

this should go in another folder, but since youre here: I'm thinking about upgrading from Sonar home studio 4 to Sonar 7 studio edition. Do you have any opinions/experience with either software?

[brandondrury]

Sorry dude, I'm on the Cubase side of the fence. I've never even touched Sonar.

However, there are a few fundamental issues here that maybe I can help with.

Why are you upgrading? Do you feel limited? Are you having any issues with reliability (or otherwise)?

Brandon

[bigjoe10p]

Why am I considering an upgrade? I think one of the main reasons is that sonar offers an edition that comes bundled with some pretty good vst plugins on top of a lot more useful features that I don't have as of yet like integrated CD burning. What I'm looking for as a novice is a straight forward program that would allow me to record, mix and master without having to use multiple programs and export formats. For instance, I can't export a mix as an .mp3 anymore. I guess sonar included a demo version of an mp3 encoder, and now that it has expired, have to export as .wav, then convert it to an mp3 to load onto myspace, etc.

A couple of reasons as to why I am thinking about sticking with sonar are: Price. Since I'm already a sonar HS4 owner, I can upgrade to a newer version for nearly half the price. Familiarity: My Firepod came with Cubase LE, which I thought was a very user friendly program, but I decided to buy a sonar product as an upgrade (probably because of a "know it all" Guitar Center salesman's advice). As a result, Sonar has become pretty second nature to me, and quite frankly, I don't feel like spending a lot of time learning a new program.

On the other hand, I haven't talked to anyone who has thoroughly worked with Cubase, so I'm open to suggestion. Why are you loyal to Cubase?

[brandondrury]

I don't feel like spending a lot of time learning a new program.

Price.

These are 2 good reason to stay with your current software as well (and not upgrade at all). Are the plugins THAT good in Sonar 7? How much is an upgrade? I'm guessing it's in the $300-400 region. You can get some very nice plugins for that kind of money that I would expect to smoke anything that comes bundled with any software. 3rd party plugins tend to be better almost every time.

I guess sonar included a demo version of an mp3 encoder

I've never rendered to mp3. I just use Razorlame. It's free, sounds pretty good, and can do batch conversions.

Why are you loyal to Cubase?

Well, I'm not trying to change your mind about Sonar. I'm just answering your question.

#1 I'm not loyal. I use the best tools I can afford. PERIOD. If something was out there that made my music more effective, I'd say goodbye to Cubase immediately. So far, Cubase does everything I need.

• Great routing options
• Very reliable
• Equally good for metal, folk, or techno
• The more I use it, the more I realize just how well thought EVERYTHING is
• Easy to use

I have one complaint about Cubase. When I want to route one bus into another bus, I have to create the busses in order. In other words, if I decide that I want to add a parallel compression bus after my drums are rocking, I have to take 30 seconds to reroute the drums to the newer bus. It's a TINY problem.

Brandon

[bradlee]

Big Joe - I have Sonar Home Studio 6 and can't figure out how to edit and mix with it the way I could when I used Audacity a year ago. Certainly that free software wouldn't trump Sonar. Maybe I'm missing something, but I can't find any help in the tutorials. I want to be able to pinpoint mistakes and clean them up (punchy vocals, inadvertent background noise, etc.). Any ideas? Thx ~ B