Sonar Upgrade...Already!?!?!

OK, just to set the record straight, Sonar and Cubase are basicly Twin's as far as audio quality goes. Now take this with a grain of salt though. Cubase has for year's been far ahead of CakeWalk and now Sonar because of their built in processer's, which indeed did make it a much superior product as far as finished audio without adding expensive pluggin's. (Remember though that Cubase was also twice the price of any CakeWalk product)

Well if you don't mind the dongle and the mess it can make of your parallel port and other com-port's as well. I broke down last year, paid the big buck's and installed it and it never did play nice with my system except maybe for a little while. Yes I did like the built in processing and all the pretty VST stuff, but the headache of the mess it made was not worth the trouble.

Well low and behold, Sonar XL V2.0 come along and they have stepped up to the plate with a major upgrade as far as their built in's go. They are now competing on the same level as Cubase. I am not happy with the cost of an upgrade in less then one year, ($169.00) but I will upgrade Sonar before I will spend ($249.00) for the upgrade to Cubase which I also upgraded to 5.0 less then a year ago.

I am going to send a letter to CakeWalk and ask them if they really feel they should be charging that kind of money to customer's like myself that have used their product's from the beginning of time, (and I have the floppy disk's from the very first product they put out to prove it). I do have to admit I will probably also upgrade Cubase eventually, but I will need to be prodded heavily to do it, as I am much happier with the smooth install's and no bull*#it with Sonar or any CakeWalk products.

I guess in the long run, if you want the app's that are on the pro level, you will pay the price, I just hope that it is worth it. I will pre-order like a good CakeWalk follower and hope they give me a good reason to pay that price, which I guess I have faith they will. From what I have seen of the upgrade so far, they have dealt with some major issue's and added some major processing goodie's, soft synth upgrade's and mastering quality DSP that has long been needed to make them competative with the big-gun's. Now don't get me wrong here, because to some this may sound like a contradiction. I will also be upgrading Wavelab, (which is from Steinberg, who makes Cubase) and I know that it will cost a bundle to do so. But, again you get what you pay for, and Wavelab is by far the best application out there to do the job it was intended for, to track final mastering. I also use it for wacking my sample's and loop's all to major (h e double toothpick's).

Again I am not happy about the price I will pay for the upgrade, but again, if you want to play in the big leagues and have the stuff that work's the best, you will in the end pay the price. I guess in the long run they will both pay for themselves, but I still don't have to be happy being bent over a barrel and spanked relentlessly until I give in and buy their stuff.

Thanx for listening and remember, you don't have to spend this kind of money to start with. Only spend it if you are truly going to use the product to it's fullest.

Peace, and May the Noize B with U