Still using SONAR?

[Brian Johnston 1]

I have a question.  Sonar X3 takes up more room on my harddrive than the new Cakewalk.  Can I uninstall Sonar X3 without losing anything, including plug-ins, etc.?

[scook 2,624]

The regular uninstall process for SONAR or any Cakewalk DAW can remove files used by all other Cakewalk DAWs including Cakewalk by BandLab.

SONAR X3 included a lot more content and plug-ins which does not ship with CbB but may be used in both DAWs.

Here is a post I made some time ago http://forum.cakewalk.com/FindPost/3179366

IIRC, it was based on a full install of SONAR X3 Producer.

The upshot was manually deleting the X3 tutorials from "Cakewalk Content" returns a little more than 70% of the space used by X3. Leaving a functional X3 installation taking up around 300MB.

[Bill & Wendy Hester 0]

Hi All

Thanks for a very interesting and informative post. 

I am still using Sonar Platinum, and having read everything on here am considering downloading CbB to sit alongside the Sonar installation.  I guess I just have a couple of questions for those who have already walked this path:

1. I use Melodyne Studio, Waves, UAD plugs, Revoice Pro, Output suite, Stylus RMX to name a few.  Providing I replicate the plug in paths correctly, can I assume that everything will just work?

2. Will I be able to open in CbB a project that has been saved by Sonar, and just continue to work on it in CbB?  If that is then saved, could I re-open in Sonar at a later time if I wanted to?  In other words, are the projects just interchangeable (I guess in the same way that they were between older versions of Sonar)?

I guess if these are two 'yesses' then I can just press ahead and give it a go  Fingers crossed

Many thanks in advance of your help

Warm regards to all, Bill Hester

[Bruno de Souza Lino 283]

When you first run CbB or any other Sonar, it checks if there are other versions installed and asks if you want to import settings from that version.

[57Gregy 257]

6 hours ago, Bill & Wendy Hester said:

If that is then saved, could I re-open in Sonar at a later time if I wanted to?  In other words, are the projects just interchangeable (I guess in the same way that they were between older versions of Sonar)?

You can, although you may get a message that "this project was created in a newer version and some plug-ins may not be available" (or something like that), but that shouldn't be a problem since you will have all of the same plug-ins.
I have never had any problems going back and forth.
Welcome to the forum.

[scook 2,624]

42 minutes ago, 57Gregy said:

7 hours ago, Bill & Wendy Hester said:

If that is then saved, could I re-open in Sonar at a later time if I wanted to?  In other words, are the projects just interchangeable (I guess in the same way that they were between older versions of Sonar)?

You can, although you may get a message that "this project was created in a newer version and some plug-ins may not be available" (or something like that), but that shouldn't be a problem since you will have all of the same plug-ins.

This is generally true. There is one exception.

Attempting to open a project containing patch points or aux tracks will fail in all Cakewalk DAWs that do not support the feature. This includes SONAR Platinum/Professional older than Oct 2015 (the first release supporting the feature) and all other Cakewalk DAWs.

[Bill & Wendy Hester 0]

Thanks SO much guys!  Hugely appreciated your advice today.  I did d/l and install.... and everything worked pretty much as you predicted

One thing I couldn't quite get my head around - earlier in this thread I noticed some talk about super-low latency, and how CbB runs more efficiently than Sonar Platinum.  I have always thought ASIO was the professional standard, but I noticed that when I explored the driver settings I now have WASAPI drivers in there too.  At first I was thinking "aha I need to switch to WASAPI drivers to get the performance benefits" and in fact I tried.....however CbB didn't seem to like it very much.  Maybe because I'm running an RME 9632 audio interface, I don't know.  Anyway, I reverted to ASIO and all was well - but running at exactly the same latency as my Sonar.  

Which left me wondering....is the vaunted lower-latency performance actually achievable for someone like me, running an RME card (& Win 10)?

Thanks again for the wise words

Cheers, Bill

Edited January 12 by Bill & Wendy Hester

[Lord Tim 542]

For professional interfaces with good ASIO drivers, that's almost always going to be the best choice to use. On the other hand, if you're stuck with something like an inbuilt Realtek soundcard, the latency is now substantially better using WASAPI. There's been a lot of other optimisations with large projects and timeline scrolling too, so while the latency may not be better in your case, it'll generally feel snappier than SPlat I'd say.

[Glen 3]

First post here... I haven't actually used Sonar in years, but I am returning to Cakewalk.

I first started using Cakewalk around 25 years ago (Version 9 I think), then moved to Sonar 4 in the mid 00's. I then moved to Reaper as it gave me significantly improved latency and reliability. Also, as RAM was tight back then, the much smaller size of Reaper gave me quite a bit more room to load up sample libs which I make heavy use of for some of the music I do.

I downloaded Cakewalk yesterday and stayed up far too late just having fun. There's new stuff for sure and I know I've some learning to do, but so much was familiar that it felt like slipping on an old pair of comfortable slippers... Or rather a new pair of updated comfortable slippers! Well, maybe not slippers in my case, I'm more of a hiking boot kinda guy!

Stability so far seems rock solid, and the 32GB RAM I have and DFD sample streaming available now means I'm very unlikely to run into the same issues I used to, so I think I'll be sticking with it.

After more than 12 years away from it, it genuinely feels very nice to be back. Cheers to the folks at Bandlab for keeping it alive.

[Colin Nicholls 379]

Hi @Glen, you aren't GlennBo the drummer by any chance? Welcome back!

[Glen 3]

No @Colin Nicholls... I'm one of the worlds worst drummers! Not too bad at programming them though, and my brother is a pretty decent drummer should I need the real thing.

I'm an ex-small time session bassist with a passion for synths and sound design and can passably play quite a few instruments... It was mostly death, thrash and black metal I did as a studio session player as I can be ridiculously fast, but I've always loved a huge range of genres and play/write several of them... Particularly orchestral/classical and (dark) ambient/drone. I'm one of those people who'll genuinely listen to absolutely anything once and can jam along to almost anything as long as there's a bass in my hands. Although bass is 'my instrument' I spend much more time on keys/synths at home despite being a mediocre keys player at best.

And cheers, it's nice to be back! It's only three or four days since I downloaded it and I'm bowling along at quite a rate of knots already!