Customer Reviews

Cakewalk Sonar 3 Producer Edition

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

 

 

I'm not sure about the previous reviewer, but he/she obviously didn't know much about this product. Sonar 3 does, indeed, support Creative Labs soundcards. I use it with an Audigy 2 and there are many who I know who are even using it happily with a Soundblaster Live!. A Live! may not be the ideal solution for a professional production product like this, but it will work despite what the previous reviewer said. As for the latency issues, it would appear to me that the previous reviewer was unaware of how to set the latency settings. As far as I know, Sonar 3 comes configured to a default latency of 100ms. That can be easily and successfuly changed in an options menu down to single digits.

Don't listen to the previous reviewer, it would appear they were misinformed and came to hasty conclusions. I can certainly recommend this product, and to my knowledge, it is by far the best sequencer available anywhere near the price range. I've heard good things about Reason (by Propellerhead) too, but it doesn't seem to be flexible and interoperable as Sonar 3 is.

To "armtuk":

I had experience simularly before even with SONAR 2.2! But I didn't considered giving that software up so easily like that. Why not buy MAudio Audiophile 24/96 sound card. It works so well on mine! Set it up to the lowest latency as you want and it will do very well. Mines is MAudio USB Quartro, yours is USB Duo. Both external audio/MIDI interface units are very good with other software programs like Steinberg Cubase, but does not work well with Cakewalk software at all. Even with the ASIO setup! You can also try Delta 66, Delta 1010, or Omni Studio audio interface unit. I think they can do well with SONAR. If you have a laptop, then you could try a firewire audio/MIDI interface other than USB Duo for Cakewalk. Even though I don't have SONAR 3, but I like to get the newest SONAR 4 in the future. So far, I have a collection of Cakewalk software including the latest Home Studio Version Two.

This is a nice looking audio package for Windows, it has a nice feature set, and some good plugins. It has several major drawbacks however. The biggest one is latency. I experienced as much as 100ms latency with this product using _all_ audio devices I have. I tried under WDM, ASIO and MME drivers - and it made little difference. This product was unusable for me. Not only that - if you are a consumer looking to experiment with home recording, this will not work with any Sound Blaster products. I purchased an M-Audio Duo box ($259), and it finaly recorded, but with 100ms latency, which was terrible. I tried it on two different computers both running windows 2000 and had the same results. Midi input isn't bad, but there is no good mapping file for Korg Triton.
I would recommend looking at Cubase SL/SX instead which I have purchased and am very happy with so far. It's a bit more fiddley than Sonar, but it actualy works, and they have a very nice effects mechanism which is easy to use. Latency practicaly went away when switching to this product. I give Cakewalk a big Thumbs Down - Unusable!