Customer Reviews

Cakewalk SONAR Home Studio 6 XL

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

The big news for this update is that it now uses the same sound engine found in the high-end professional versions (Studio and Producer). Includes well-chosen set of virtual instruments and effects, and be sure to search the net for the huge number of free VST and DXI effects out there that will add a lot of additional value to this product. See the Cakewalk site for details of this product, and be sure to watch the instructional videos even if you are a long-time Home Studio user (you can find them on Cakewalk's site too to have a preview of what you get). This is probably the most significant update of Home Studio ever, and well worth the money for the home studio musician... you can make very professional-sounding recordings with this product. Note you will also need a MIDI and audio interface to plug in your keyboard/microphone/guitar, etc. BTW I recommend the XL version even at the extra cost over the non-XL version, the extras are worth it.

Steep learning curve for a beginner. I was a beginner, and it took me 1-2 months to figure out what I was doing. Now I love it, and would highly recommend it. Many advanced features included, that are missing from other music creation software programs.

To the user complaining after an upgrade from "music creator" all i can say is "wow." I can't even imagine forgoing the extra functionality that ships with sonar home studio 6 xl compared with the regular home studio, let alone music creator!

I've used sonar LE and home studio 2004... and in my opinion this new version is well worth the upgrade from both. It is very powerful and really is a complete "home studio"(although I agree there is a definite learning curve involved). If anything, I am wishing i'd purchased sonar studio edition 7 for that added punch... but there's always next year.

This is the best DAW I have used for home studio use. I love the features it has and the online forums are very helpful. The only thing you will need with this is a lot of plug-ins, although it comes with some pretty goods ones. There are a lot of free ones online that are pretty good too. Enough said because their website has all the information you would need

With all of the soft synths added such as pocket orchestra and TTS, this is well worth the money you pay for it, just over a hundred bucks! All of your home recording needs are in this software, you won't be dissappointed!

I have had zero problems with this software. It works with Vista, it does what it promises and the instructional videos are actually helpful. I am satisfied.

Just a mess of gismos with minimal logic and too few quality features. Midi systems did not interface easily or as expected. Never did get around to my audio interface...frustrated. The help files seemed like they were written for some other program; probably put together by people who assume we understand the program as well as they do. The only good thing I can say about this waste of money is it convinced me to upgrade my Ableton software to the full version of Live 7.

Yikes!

I have used Cakewalk for years - my most recent product prior to Home Studio was Sonar 5.0 Producer Edition which I use for Audio recording and mixing. We haven't used MIDI. I bought Home Studio for two reasons: 1. It runs on Vista and seemed a reasonable alternative to upgrading Sonar to run on Vista. 2. After playing with Garage Band at an Apple store my son became interested in the "remix" type of capability building techno type of music numbers from built-in loops and effects. Based on the descriptions I was able to find on the web, I was hopeful that Home Studio might be good for this on a Windows system. Long story-short - it isn't. To be fair, there are undoubtedly some cognoscenti out there who know how to do it more satisfactorily, but from all I can tell it is nothing like Garage Band in this regard; Garage Band has a user-friendly interface directly supporting this capability, and Home Studio is limited also in the amount of pre-recorded loops available. Further complaints: 1. In (audio) play-back track view, the "Now-time" line position is only approximately correlated with the actual track position of the playing notes. I was not able to make any configuration changes to correct this. My system is a dual-core 2.2GHZ Pentium with 2GB memory, so I know no reason why the performance should be a problem, except that possibly Vista is a problem. I have not had this problem with other Cakewalk products running on XP. I need to install on XP to see if this improves. 2. The MIDI implementation - particularly the rendering of Midi into Audio which can be exported to a Wav or mp3 file - is either confusing or inoperational.

I have the Cakewalk Music Creator software and thought I'd "upgrade" to the Sonar 6 XL. What a mistake! The Music Creator program works just fine, while the Sonar 6 XL has fancy bells and whistles it's much harder to access the elements that make my Music Creator program (bought in 2003) so intuitive and easy to use. As with most software made these days the manual and online tutorials are convoluted and not at all user friendly. I uninstalled the Sonar 6 XL after several frustraing hours trying to get a handle on the program, and I am glad to be rid of it. I am not a Luddite by any means. But I have no use for "upgrades" that provide only frustration and no results when the older version of the software was just fine.