Customer Reviews

Cakewalk Home Studio 7

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

 

 

I've been a long time Cakewalk customer, and have recently upgraded to Sonar Home Studio 7 (XL version, which comes with with a few free addons). I am not a happy customer.

First, I had a pre-purchase question that took Cakewalk customer service 6 days to answer by email. Not very responsive. I called their customer support phone number during the hours listed on the website, and twice got a recording that said to call during customer hours(!) I finally got through, and received an answer to my simple upgrade inquiry.

Before purchasing I gave the full Sonar Studio 8 trial version a test run, but -- oddly enough -- couldn't get it working on a lean mean computer that easily runs Reaper, FL Studio, Band-in-a-Box, EnergyXT2, Audacity, and numerous other music production programs. I might have put a bit more effort into trying to get the full Sonar program running, but in their wisdom, Cakewalk does not offer a PDF manual online (it must be top secret!) Needless to say, it is impossible to work from their scanty help files.

Instead, I settled on Home Studio, and purchased it with some confidence that it would run properly since earlier versions of that program have run just fine on my computer. I may never find out whether I was right.

It appears that the program disk is not shipped with any kind of serial number. Okay. So I check my purchase confirmation email, and it says that the number can be found on my Cakewalk account online. Then I look in the "Registrations" page online and interestingly, all of my previous purchases are listed, but no information on my newest purchase. Okay, so I check tech support. That page claims that the serial number was sent to me by email. Endless loop. Nice. I'm still waiting to use the program, trying to track down the serial number, and somehow suspicious whether it will even install properly.

Reaper is less expensive, has a great community of supporters, and you can test the full program and get a giant PDF manual. Avoid Cakewalk until they learn the value of customer service in an economic downturn.

I can't answer for the experience of the prior reviewer. I wonder, though, whether a free PDF manual would have mattered much. I ended up buying several large books, and even so I am still learning things that this package can do, well over a year after installing it.

I am not a typical ecstasy electronica slut, but an aging rocker, with about 40+ years of recording studio experience behind me. I don't like looped drums, and I don't write 2-chord songs. I tend to program my drum parts note-by-note, and don't play great keyboards, being primarily a guitar player, singer and songwriter.

I have managed to produce a handful of songs at a very relaxed tempo (the production, not the songs), and am happy with the results. It would be nice if Sonar were easier to use, but how could it be, and still have all the power and flexibility that it has? I accept that it can be overwhelming, just like my first time in a 24-track studio boggled my mind with all its patch bays, signal processor racks and entire closets full of microphones, stands and cables. But trading it all in for a simpler 4-track studio is not the answer, unless I want to turn back the clock to 1966, with two acoustic guitars, 3 voices and 2 microphones, recorded in live stereo.

So Sonar is a good fit for me. I can "play" virtual instruments with just my mouse and keyboard. I can overdub my own (real) guitars and voices, add effects and processing, with nothing but a couple of phantom-powered microphones, a baker's dozen guitars, one mic stand and a direct box. I don't often even need a guitar amp. My midi-compatible keyboard and midi interface mostly just sit and collect dust, as I don't need them. If I were a good keyboard player, the guitars would probably be gathering dust instead. The point is that I can use the provided midi soft-synths to supply the drums I lack, along with the bass guitars, oboes, french horns, vintage organ and other instruments that I don't physically own, and might not play well, even if I did.

I may upgrade to a newer version, perhaps the full "Studio" version. But since I realize that I am still learning new things about Sonar every day, it'll be quite some time before I've run out of experiments to try, techniques to refine, and art to create, even with this high-end amateur software. Hopefully Cakewalk will take the hint, and improve their documentation, even if only online. Until then, there's good third-party documentation out there, if you want it.

Obviously the numb skulls who created this program don't know how computer audio hardware works or for that matter how computers work. You don't create a program that employs digital audio inputs on analog hardware the idiots. I've used a many audio mixing programs in my day. Voyatra Turtle beach, Pro Tools, Yamaha Motif, Windows Window Audio Pro and many others all of which recognize and work perfectly with my computers audio hardware.

I bought Home Studio 7 because I want a more advance mixing program that could do just as good or a better job than the others. All I got was expensive box of garbage. The program is good for mixing audio files together you import, but trying to record audio from a mic or keyboard is a complete joke. The audio is completely choppy. It doesn't matter how you adjust the audio settings it simply doesn't work. The company is also dishonest about their product reviews. Rating this product much higher than the consumers have actually rated it.

Who wants to buy an expensive audio interface when you can use your computers built in audio to do just as professional of a job? Most Indie artists don't have that kind of money. The idea of this software is to give you the power of professional recording at an affordable price. Expensive audio interfaces are not affordable. Actually Cakewalk makes writing music discouraging because their software is so crappy. Do you know of one professional recording studio in the world that uses Cakewalk? No there's not one and there's a good reason for that too. They all use pro tools.

Get with the program Cakewalk and quit charging people high prices for garbage. Save your money and don't get mixed up with cakewalk.

My small setup is six microphones (five on drums, one on guitar amp) direct in to a MOTU 8pre (firewire to PC), three vocal mics mixed down to one 1/4" cable (into the MOTU), and bass head going direct in (D/I) to the MOTU, then SONAR Home Studio managing all tracks. It works way better than I would have imagined.

Cakewalk has always been about making pro-quality recording accessible to anyone. The software itself is fairly intuitive. The manual and help explain everything else. On top of that, there are tons of videos online, too.

If you're looking to polish up some simple, stereo WAV files, I recommend Audacity. If you're planning to connect microphones or amplifiers to your PC, or do any kind of multi-track work, I highly recommend Cakewalk SONAR Home Studio.

Decided to get Sonar 7 Home Studio and give it a try. Installing was very easy and figuring out how to get intrumentals uploaded was the same. The second I armed the microphone and hit record, problems started. The instrumentals started playing and they became choppy, I started vocals and the song dropped out. I looked at Sonar's help menu to try to figure it out. Yet, still nothing. I have a usb microphone and started searching the problem on a search engine.I've seen things that say could need a sound card to more memory to defraging the computer or too many programs running in the background. Basically if you dont know much and I mean much about computers, dont even think of Sonar, may cost you in the long run...