Sonar X1 - worth it?

[amphibian]

So I am unfortunately having to move away from my macbook for production (cry) - and moving to PC. Which is fine - as I've been playing with Ableton live for a while now (but really going to miss logic, especially it's plugins *sniff*), so I had a few questions:

1. Sonar X1 - anyone had a play with this and what is your take on it as a DAW - what kind of built-in effects/instruments does it have and are they any good?
2. One of the plugins I'll miss most from logic is the Ringshifter. Is anyone able to give me a clue as to how the f*ck that thing works and if there's anything else like it (preferably free), that I can use on the PC?
3. Best reverb plugin? I'm going to miss the reverb designer in logic

[nowaysj]

I am curious about sonar. I'm looking for a more audio capable daw than fruity. I've tried reaper and cubase. Both of which have their strengths, but both of which are unusable in my opinion.

Unfortunately I haven't tried sonar since it was just called cakewalk.

I asked a q about sonar in the friendly daw wars thread, and didn't hear a peep. I mean, is there no dubstepper using sonar? I can't imagine why not.

Don't forget about Studio One. I tried a demo of it way back when, but they saw fit to not include vst support in the demo (GENIUS). I'm interested in these newer daws (reaper, studio one) because they don't have 18 trillion lines of antique code at their heart (and all of the ancient daw paradigms from, literally, the last millennium) bogging down workflow and limiting flexibility.

Ableton is a trip. I tried it out, think I would have busted a nut with it if I had an apc or launch pad. It was pretty f'ing dope. Just kind of difficult to work with audio, it doesn't even have an audio editor... just love that session view, though.

==

I vaguely remember the ring shifter from old school logic. It is just a ring shifter with a couple of extra quirks? In vst land, there must be quite a few free ringshifters. Maybe not as elegant as your favored beauty.

Reverb - I don't know man, there is that Lexicon reverb bundle. I don't know how good it is. That seems to be a kind of like "high end" thing, for those high end (and totally irrelevant) rock people.

Aether - http://www.2caudio.com/products/aether/index.html was a very highly tauted reverb when it was released. I tried it, I wasn't too impressed, but I didn't really know how to work it. It's ui design didn't help matters. Beyond that, it looked like a pile of dog shit with knobs stuck on. Not joking on that one... but I just checked their website, and it looks like the ui has been redesigned, which just from a design perspective, thank god.

Personally, my favorite reverb, bar far, is 112 db's redline reverb. http://www.112db.com/redline/reverb/ Some users have reported extremely buggy ui performance. I don't know if this is limited to certain hosts or what. I wouldn't consider this a realistic type of reverb, maybe you can do that kind of stuff with it, but when I demo'ed it, I used it more as a reverb "effect" kind of thing, if you know what I'm saying. This reverb literally tickled my neck while listening to it. Like vodka laced breathy whispers on the back of your ear from a really hot chick who you know will be bouncing up and down on your c0ck for the first time in just a couple of hours.

Anyway, bro, cheerio.

[gravity]

i had a spell of using sonar when cubase refused to work on the studio pc for a while. i gotta say i though it was rubbish.

i mean it could do everything you need it to, dont get me wrong, but it was just like a much more irritating cubase, and was slower and clunkier to operate. the midi implementation was fucking gash as well, and audio editing was a pain in the ass. i do remember there were a couple of cool little features, but not enough to warrant it. to be fair i think i was on version 8 then, but i expect that its pretty similar.

if you want a ringmod (i assume thats what ringshifter is) i think ohmforce have a cut down version of quadfrohmage which is free, which has a ring mod.

and as for reverb, 2c aether is good on certain things - and they have a new one out now which is supposed to be similar but less intense, or something like altiverb is incredible (but will terrorize your computer)

[nowaysj]

it was just like a much more irritating cubase

This made my asshole pinch a bit. Shit scares me.

[cloak and dagger]

Supposedly Sonar's made leaps and bounds in the past few versions, so I wouldn't judge it based on something from a few years ago.

I've also heard that Sonar has the best plugin set outside of Logic. I haven't used it, but looking at it on their website I can say it's definitely better than what comes with Cubase...pretty impressive. z3ta+ itself has to be the best DAW-bundled synth in existence.

as for reverb, I would try a bunch of free ones and see what you can do with them. I must have half a dozen good free ones that together can pretty much do anything I want. for non-free ones, I agree that Lexicon and Redline Reverb are the best out there. I've admittedly never used Lexicon but know enough people who have, and Redline is just really effective and easy to use for me, probably because I learned on the Reason advanced reverb, and this has a somewhat similar sound and interface from my experience.

[amphibian]

Yeah - that's why I was asking specifically about X1 - because it's been completely revamped and tbh - its interface looks similar to Logic. I was trying to find a demo but couldn't find one? =\

In any case, if that doesn't work out well I'll continue using ableton live. Not sure what you're saying about audio nowaysj - Ableton Live's audio editing capabilities are the best I've seen (outside of kontakt).

[nowaysj]

Maybe audio manipulation, but not editing.

[paravrais]

I was interested in Sonar recently but ultimately decided I wasn't going to buy something that they didn't offer a trial of. In my quest to find a new DAW I did try a lot of things though and from what I've heard/seen/experienced if you can afford it presonus studio one is essentially like Sonar but better. They also offer a trial so check it out. Personally I couldn't bring myself to make the switch because at the end of the day I'm too used to how Ableton works and I didn't want to reprogram my brain. Plus it's a hella expensive and I could upgrade to live 8 for a much cheaper cost so I just upgraded Ableton but for you I think this might be a good way to go.

http://www.presonus.com/products/Softwa ... twareId=11

[paravrais]

WHY THE FUCK DID IT DOUBLE POST I ONLY CLICKED ONCE?!?!?!

EDIT: may as well make this post worthy too. In regards to reverb I wouldn't spend money on it unless you have enough to buy a TOP of the line reverb. Cos those things you can really tell the difference. But short of that I'd just use whichever DAW your ins stock one because they tend to be pretty good in my experience. Still haven't found a freeware reverb I like more than Abletons stock unit.

[upstateface]

Maybe audio manipulation, but not editing.

huh? ableton editing is sick, and theres a setting to assign an external wav editor at the click of a mouse.

[nowaysj]

There is no audio editor in ableton. You need to use an external.

[upstateface]

There is no audio editor in ableton. You need to use an external.

Yeah but you can just consolidate stuff/bounce, once you get the hang of it it's very fast (Were you just playing in session view? Arrangement view is amazing for audio editing)

[nowaysj]

(Were you just playing in session view...)

I take offense.

Yeah, I spent 98% of my time in the session view. Did not like the arrange page very much at all. Imo, far inferior to just about any other daw out there, maybe except reaper. Again, just my opinion.

[paravrais]

nowaysj is right, Abletons audio editing is shiiit. It's impossible to simply chop audio, you have to copy a clip then resize to cut bit's out which is a fucking pain and if you export to Audacity you have to save the files then re-import them into ableton. I wanna just be able to select a certain tool and then start cutting. Even Reason has this option ffs.

[amphibian]

nowaysj is right, Abletons audio editing is shiiit. It's impossible to simply chop audio, you have to copy a clip then resize to cut bit's out which is a fucking pain and if you export to Audacity you have to save the files then re-import them into ableton. I wanna just be able to select a certain tool and then start cutting. Even Reason has this option ffs.

haha yeah, that bothered me when trying to get vocals timed properly. lol

[upstateface]

nowaysj is right, Abletons audio editing is shiiit. It's impossible to simply chop audio, you have to copy a clip then resize to cut bit's out which is a fucking pain and if you export to Audacity you have to save the files then re-import them into ableton. I wanna just be able to select a certain tool and then start cutting. Even Reason has this option ffs.

Warp, right click chop to (1/8,1/4,1/16,etc)

[paravrais]

nowaysj is right, Abletons audio editing is shiiit. It's impossible to simply chop audio, you have to copy a clip then resize to cut bit's out which is a fucking pain and if you export to Audacity you have to save the files then re-import them into ableton. I wanna just be able to select a certain tool and then start cutting. Even Reason has this option ffs.

Warp, right click chop to (1/8,1/4,1/16,etc)

Do you mean slice to midi? Cos that's even more hassle than the way I normally go about things. I want to literally be able to take an audio clip and cut it in half to form two audio clips, like a worm.

EDIT: Aaaaaah, just discovered that ctrl + E does it!! joy

[upstateface]

nowaysj is right, Abletons audio editing is shiiit. It's impossible to simply chop audio, you have to copy a clip then resize to cut bit's out which is a fucking pain and if you export to Audacity you have to save the files then re-import them into ableton. I wanna just be able to select a certain tool and then start cutting. Even Reason has this option ffs.

Warp, right click chop to (1/8,1/4,1/16,etc)

Do you mean slice to midi? Cos that's even more hassle than the way I normally go about things. I want to literally be able to take an audio clip and cut it in half to form two audio clips, like a worm.

highlight audio,Ctrl+x,Ctrl+V

[flex vector]

nowaysj is right, Abletons audio editing is shiiit. It's impossible to simply chop audio, you have to copy a clip then resize to cut bit's out which is a fucking pain and if you export to Audacity you have to save the files then re-import them into ableton. I wanna just be able to select a certain tool and then start cutting. Even Reason has this option ffs.

Are you working in the session or arrange view? In arrange view you can just click anywhere in a clip and press ctrl-e to split it at that point. What's even better is you can just highlight a section of an audio clip and click + drag on the top colored bar of the clip and it will automatically cut it right out for you. You can also ctrl + click + drag if you want to copy the selection while leaving the original clip intact.

If you are working in session, then yeah, you have to crop clips around the sections you want or drag the clip over to arrange, chop it, and then drag it back to session. If you are looking to make a bunch of slices the easiest thing to do is just slice the clip to a midi track.

I thought the audio editing in Live was weird until I learned all the little shortcuts. Now I love how fast and easy it is to chop and rearrange audio.

Also, if you edit an audio file by launching an external editor from within Live, the sample is automatically saved and the new version is imported into your project.

[paravrais]

Thanks for all the tips guys! Guess I should really get around to reading the hefty manual I've been putting off for ages.

Never use the session view by the way, very quickly realised it wasn't for me. Don't see the point in it to be honest. Unless your making techno and want to put together a live set where you essentially play variations on one tune for an hour..