Pretty cool, Sonar, I've got to admit it.

[Larry Mal]

The 140-Track Cakewalk SONAR Session

I can't say I'm not a little jealous of Sonar's RAM limitation shattering possibilities shown here. I can't wait until this comes to a neighborhood near me, on a DAW that I actually own.

[Alndln]

Cakewalk has a significant head start in 64 bit land, at least by 2 years.

[Gordon]

Originally Posted by Alndln

Cakewalk has a significant head start in 64 bit land, at least by 2 years.

That said - with the exception of RAM utilization - my XP32 partition of SONAR 8.5 SMOKES my Windows 7 64-bit. I probably need to tweak the Windows 7 more as I've years experience making XP purr like a kitten and Windows 7 is still new.

[Gordon]

Originally Posted by m127

Could you guys point me to a 8.5 demo?

or maybe I should if there's any... can't find it

No 8.5 demo yet, sorry. Just take the plunge, I seem to remember you not being happy with Cubase

[Gordon]

Originally Posted by Gordon

That said - with the exception of RAM utilization - my XP32 partition of SONAR 8.5 SMOKES my Windows 7 64-bit. I probably need to tweak the Windows 7 more as I've years experience making XP purr like a kitten and Windows 7 is still new.

Quoting myself, I feel dirty . . .

What a HUGE difference turning off Windows Defender and Prefetch made. I'm slowly becomin a 64-bit fanboy. I've got 1 fricking plugin that I can't get working though because it's really old and I don't have a VST version of it. Anyone know of a good 64-bit Direct X wrapper?

[norbury brook]

I donwloaded the demo and made a real life test project, 100 audio tracks and a couple of VSTI's and sonar doesn't run as well as Cubendo or reaper on my Q6600/8 gig ram windows 7 64 machine here.





MC

[Paul Russell]

which VSTis?

[R3altruth]

Originally Posted by norbury brook

I donwloaded the demo and made a real life test project, 100 audio tracks and a couple of VSTI's and sonar doesn't run as well as Cubendo or reaper on my Q6600/8 gig ram windows 7 64 machine here.





MC

that could be a couple things... using the correct settings.... and having all of the updates... If I remember correctly, the demo is the full version of Sonar Producer... but just wont load after 30 days, right? Anyway, Sonar 8.0 was less efficient and kind of unstable and by update 8.3.1 (Which came out relatively fast) everything was fixed and Sonar was running like magic... or were you using an 8.5 demo????

[Paul Russell]

AFAIK the current demo is 8.3.1 so you wont see all the optimisations, especially in Bitbridge

[theblue1]

In at least one fairly thorough DAW stress load testing I've seen results of, Cubase and Reaper did, indeed, at the time appear to be more efficient and more easily capable of handling big plug in loads. I can't vouch for the methodology, and running mega projects isn't my thing, so I wasn't too concerned as a Sonar user; other things are more important to me. But if sheer load carrying ability is important to you, you might want to take a look at Reaper which, in the testing I'm referring to (wish I had the links), bested both the then current versions of Sonar and Cubase (with Cubase coming in somewhat closer to Reaper than it was to Sonar in the raw plug handling). Or perhaps Cubase might have a combination of features and performance that appeals to you.

Me, I like Sonar, but I think it makes a lot of sense to make sure you make the right choice, particularly if you're someone like me who picks up and sets aside probjects over time, and, so, is more tied to his format than others might be. That said, I'm definitely glad that, 13 years ago, I selected CW as my platform. I think it's done really well by me over the years, on the whole. Very few, mostly minor problems. Considering how much blood, sweat and maybe not tears but certainly some more blood and sweat that I've put in, it's been one of the most trouble-free softwares I've used. Everyone's mileage varies, of course, but it's worked well for me. (I'm currently on Sonar 6 Producer.)

[R3altruth]

Originally Posted by theblue1

In at least one fairly thorough DAW stress load testing I've seen results of, Cubase and Reaper did, indeed, at the time appear to be more efficient and more easily capable of handling big plug in loads. I can't vouch for the methodology, and running mega projects isn't my thing, so I wasn't too concerned as a Sonar user; other things are more important to me. But if sheer load carrying ability is important to you, you might want to take a look at Reaper which, in the testing I'm referring to (wish I had the links), bested both the then current versions of Sonar and Cubase (with Cubase coming in somewhat closer to Reaper than it was to Sonar in the raw plug handling). Or perhaps Cubase might have a combination of features and performance that appeals to you.

Me, I like Sonar, but I think it makes a lot of sense to make sure you make the right choice, particularly if you're someone like me who picks up and sets aside probjects over time, and, so, is more tied to his format than others might be. (That said, I'm definitely glad that, 13 years ago, I selected CW as my platform. I think it's done really well by me over the years, on the whole. Very few, mostly minor problems. Considering how much blood, sweat and maybe not tears but certainly some more blood and sweat that I've put in, it's been one of the most trouble-free software's I've used. Everyone's mileage varies, of course, but it's worked well for me.

my sentiments exactly

[Paul Russell]

+1

The biggest thing holding back Sonar x64 users is the tardiness of the plugin developers in bringing out native x64 VSTs and VSTis.

[R3altruth]

Originally Posted by Paul Russell

+1

The biggest thing holding back Sonar x64 users is the tardiness of the plugin developers in bringing out native x64 VSTs and VSTis.

Speaking of that... you know how long it took me when I was using the 32-bit version of sonar to realize that single lines under plugins (in the FX bin where the 1 single shows mono signal flow and 2 single lines show stereo signal flow) denote 32-bit and the double lines under the plug in name show plugs with 64-bit support

[LeMauce]

Where are those days that we had enough with 16/24/32 track tape machine. Great for producers and so.. but hell I can't mix this, I will completely lost my mind.

[R3altruth]

Originally Posted by LeMauce

Where are those days that we had enough with 16/24/32 track tape machine. Great for producers and so.. but hell I can't mix this, I will completely lost my mind.

Yea... but I like the new innovations... gone are the days where you had to put all lead vocals on one track.... from a mix standpoint it could cut down on the need for as much automation

[theblue1]

Most of my work in commercial studios was done on 16 tracks and sometimes those tracks got wildly overloaded. It wasn't totally uncommon to bounce three or four tracks down onto one and then have entirely different stuff in other sections. If you bounced a lot, you got into thinking of it as poor man's automation (not without its costs, of course, in terms of additional noise, diminished flexibility, etc)... but that also meant having to be fairly certain of some of your bounce levels or you could make your mixdown even more complicated.

Some of the track counts you hear about these days sound pretty nuts to us old tape guys -- but then if you look at the projects, aside from stacks and stacks of guitars and the like, you often see a whole lot of empty space, depending on the engineer's approach. Me, I like to ultimately combine related clips on the same track, assuming that the FX and levels are the same.

That's one of the places where the clip-oriented flexibility of Sonar comes in really handy, since you can have a set of plugs or some envelopes for individual clips, allowing for minor (or not so) adjusts from related clip to related clip.

Of course, the opposite can be plenty handy, too. It's just nice to not have to sweat out the limitations we used to have so many of. (Of course, limitations, as we all often hear, can be perversely productive, too.)

[R3altruth]

Originally Posted by theblue1

Most of my work in commercial studios was done on 16 tracks and sometimes those tracks got wildly overloaded. It wasn't totally uncommon to bounce three or four tracks down onto one and then have entirely different stuff in other sections. If you bounced a lot, you got into thinking of it as poor man's automation (not without its costs, of course, in terms of additional noise, diminished flexibility, etc)... but that also meant having to be fairly certain of some of your bounce levels or you could make your mixdown even more complicated.

Some of the track counts you hear about these days sound pretty nuts to us old tape guys -- but then if you look at the projects, aside from stacks and stacks of guitars and the like, you often see a whole lot of empty space, depending on the engineer's approach. Me, I like to ultimately combine related clips on the same track, assuming that the FX and levels are the same.

That's one of the places where the clip-oriented flexibility of Sonar comes in really handy, since you can have a set of plugs or some envelopes for individual clips, allowing for minor (or not so) adjusts from related clip to related clip.

Of course, the opposite can be plenty handy, too. It's just nice to not have to sweat out the limitations we used to have so many of. (Of course, limitations, as we all often hear, can be perversely productive, too.)

Yea.. there are some wild track counts... I think that is what makes track folders such a cool deal.....

[Jeezo]

just finshed a 800 tracks on sonar 8.3.1 on my laptop , freezed 400 hundred able to play 400 without a hik up 512 samples fireface 400 , started a thread in there when i started the project ....

400 Tracks on a laptop : yeah baby !!


gotta update this thread .....

tried every daw , sonar is still my right hand man !! so no need to talk more

[R3altruth]

Originally Posted by Jeezo

just finshed a 800 tracks on sonar 8.3.1 on my laptop , freezed 400 hundred able to play 400 without a hik up 512 samples fireface 400 , started a thread in there when i started the project ....

400 Tracks on a laptop : yeah baby !!


gotta update this thread .....

tried every daw , sonar is still my right hand man !! so no need to talk more

What kinds of HArd drives you working with?

[Jeezo]

only a WD scopio blue 5400 rpm 500gb in a icy box , usb 2

the key is low dpc latency and good souncard drivers !!

[Farshad]

Originally Posted by R3altruth

What kinds of HArd drives you working with?

What kind of project are you working on?