Opinions about Sonar XL 2

[Chad Seiter]

Hello everybody,

I currently use Cakewalk Pro Audio 9.0, and I really like it. However, I\'ve been hearing all this talk about Sonar and how good it is. I had a chance to use Sonar a few weeks ago, and I thought it was poorly organized compared to Cakewalk 9.0, plus it was harder to read, since it didn\'t have clear separators for the tracks.

Anyway though, I was wondering what you all thought. I want to get some valid opinions before I invest in Cakewalk Sonar XL 2.0, what do you all think? Of course I use it for gigastudio and other live recordings, amongst other things, so pretty much I\'m using it the same way you all would.

Thanks,
Chad

[Haydn]

I\'ve been using Sonar for about the past 6 months. It did take me a little longer to get used to the main view. I prefer the straighter PA 9.0 track view for straight MIDI recordings but the Sonar view is much better for mixed MIDI and audio recordings. I have never ran into issues not being able to tell the tracks apart. There is great flexibility on setting up the views to your liking although I wish they gave the option of using the classic PA 9.0 track view.

I\'ve been running it in Win XP and have yet to have a crash in 6 months use. There has been some users who have experienced MIDI latency getting worse over time - they have to restart Sonar to fix the issue. I\'ve had it happen to me just once.

I find the addition of DXI plugins to be nice addition. Sonar 2.0 has better .wav project management which is quite important to me for backup purposes.

I would recommend upgrading but you may just want the normal version unless you need the extra options the XL version offers. Hope this helps your decision.

[Lucas]

I agree, I had a little trouble getting used to the new track view in Sonar, but after using it for a while I find the flexibility is very handy. Plus, gotta have the new file system available in Sonar 2.0.