Sonar 8 Producer [Extended] User review

[Monarch]

Loop Explorer 2.0

IIRC you could always see a midi clip in the LEV but not preview it. This always baffled me as I was never sure if it was a bug or just a feature that just fell short of its real potential.

A Synth pane has been added to mirror the synth rack view. You even have mute and solo buttons for each synth. Midi files can be previewed through any synth now. Audio of course as before can be previewed in the LEV. Midi file preview is long awaited I can tell you...but I am glad it is here. Project 5 has had this for years.

[Monarch]

Insert Send Assistant

Nice idea. It was easy enough to add sends before S8, but the new Send assistant works well. I immediately thought after using it what about a detailed track assistant as well? Why only for sends?

[Monarch]

Arm Tracks during playback and Recording

A puzzling omission for years if you ask me. Easily one the highlights in Sonar 8 IMO. You must be able to let a creative idea flow and being able to switch recording on and off during playback is essential for this. I am very happy to see this in Sonar 8 as without a doubt it was one of my biggest frustrations with previous versions of Sonar.

[Monarch]

Exclusive Solo

Could not get my head around this initially. Why another mode for solo? There are two new modes in Sonar 8. This one allows you to solo one track at a time..just one. With this mode switched off you can solo more than one track at a time.

This feature can save time though...you may have other tracks soloed in a project using this new feature if you then solo another track you want to hear in isolation all other soloed tracks will be unsoloed automatically. No need to manually unsolo every other soloed track first. Big time saver. There are more scenarios as well where this feature will have some bearing on other tracks it just depends how you work.

[Monarch]

Solo Override

From being a little underwhelmed by the new solo features I have grown to really like them. I guess as with most things in life one needs to spend time getting to understand it better before the benefit is more obvious. This feature will stop a track from ever being muted as a result of soloing any track or bus.

Very useful if you have say a vocal track you always want to hear in your project while you solo other tracks. Maybe a drum track would be your choice for this or any other instrument. Small feature, very useful.

[Monarch]

Live input bounce

A big deal here. It allows you to record *any* live audio input in a bounce.

One very good example I can give is you can use this feature to record your clicking of pads in Beatscape for instance in real time into Sonars arrange view. So if you use Ableton Live and like to experiment with the Session view then record into Lives Arrange view, then you will understand the advantage of Live input. Project 5 users will also quickly see the use of it.

You can of course record a Groove Matrix performance straight into Project 5's arrange page but to have this kind of functionality in Sonar is a pretty wild.

It expands Sonar's flexibility in terms of workflows substantially to say the least. Of course the example I gave above is just one example.

[Monarch]

Edit tool Enhancements

This is related to Clip selection groups. The split and Mute tool can now work on multiple clips simultaneously.

[Monarch]

Clip selection groups

In a nutshell clips that are grouped this way can be edited by having just one clip in the group edited. The changes to one clip will be mirrored on other clips in a clip group.

[Monarch]

Free Edit tool

This allows for time and clip based selection. Any clip in Free Edit mode will have three zones. To select a clip click on the top area of the clip. If you move the middle area of the clip you can perform a time based selection by drag selecting using the visible I-beam cursor that will blink to indicate the beginning of a time selection. It obeys snap values. Useful but a minor addition IMO.

[Monarch]

New Quick group feature

Quick groups have always been a feature I like, this new feature is very slick. You can quick group all tracks that belong to a bus (Vocals or drums for instance) just by holding down the ALT key and clicking on a bus' Strip selector in the track view or console view.

Once you have done this all tracks that are assigned to that bus now belong to the same quick group. All tracks with similar controls in this quick group can now be moved synchronously. Slick.

[Monarch]

Audio Option config additions

I am very pleased with this. From time to time on Cakewalks public forum suggestions are made to change certain values in Cakewalks Aud.ini file. Before you had to dig a bit to find it but now very conveniently it is radically easier to access. Just go to Options > Audio > Advanced and click on the Edit config file.

One must exercise care though when making changes there. It might be best left alone if you are not sure what changes to make. Definitely not for experimentation.

Reload Config Settings and Reset Config to Defaults... options also appear under a Configuration Settings header.

[Monarch]

Select all Audio Snap/Slip stretched clips

This is a new command to allow one to very quickly selected all stretched audio clips before you use the Edit > Bounce to Clip(s) command. Minor workflow addition but welcome.

[Monarch]

Surcode Dolby Surround Encoders

Cakewalk have included 14 day trial versions of some of surcodes very expensive encoders. Personally I would prefer to not have any 14 day trial version of any software with a full product. Le versions are at least not going to time out. But I appreciate this is a teaser for the real thing only. Still an LE version would be my preference.

[Monarch]

Transport additions

Well well well...we now have dedicated buttons on Sonars transport for Pause, Rewind, Fast Forward and Audition.

The Audition button is just as useful as the other new additions but maybe less obvious in terms of its actual use in Sonar. You can audition multiple clips across several tracks. When you use this feature only the selected tracks for audition will play back.

The new Transport additions add a really nice workflow to Sonar. You can really zip around the arrange view now. Brilliant. One the highlights of Sonar 8 for me. Vegas has a similar transport that works very well indeed so I am very pleased to see this in Sonar with a Cakewalk take on the idea.

[Monarch]

Control surface enhancements

Control surface synchronisation
Not an area of great interest to me really but if you make heavy usage of control surfaces then this should interest you. Control surfaces used with Sonar can now display all channel strips that are visible in the Track view or Console view. On paper that is actually, pretty neat <g> I probably should try it. I generally do not work with control surfaces though.

Control surfaces now keep their MIDI port assignments
Almost sounds like a bug fix unless such a feature is not standard elsewhere. Adding or removing devices will not stop control surfaces from retaining their MIDI port assignments.

Logical VST parameter values
Much more useful and Logical parameter values can now be displayed by Sonar for VST plugins. ACT surface and property pages are one example of this.