From PCPro Magazine-04-13-2011
Some software is so mature and refined that it's difficult for developers to convince its users to upgrade. Not so for music-production software, though. Recording musicians and engineers seem to have an insatiable desire for high-tech tools that push their productions into new territory.
Cakewalk Sonar has often risen to this challenge, but as the features mounted, so too have the number of buttons, menus and right-click commands. The result is that Sonar had a steeper learning curve than its rivals.
Sonar X1 aims to address this with a new interface, dubbed Skylight. Its tabbed panels make more efficient use of the screen than the floating windows of old, and much of the onscreen clutter has been reworked into a more approachable Control Bar. The transport controls and tools palette appear here too, and a new Smart Tool uses context-sensitive commands to reduce the amount of tool switching required. We like the Command Bar's use of big buttons, but it's a shame it doesn’t fit on a Full HD screen; we had to hide some modules to see what had fallen off its right edge.
The revised Browser window is docked on the right and gives access to media, along with plugins that are available or in use. We appreciate the ability to jump directly to the various bundled media libraries, and also to audition REX loops at the project tempo – although this audition feature was initially routed no go nowhere, resulting in silence. Drag and drop is more comprehensive, but it still can't match the intelligence of Ableton Live for anticipating users' intentions.
A MultiDock window at the bottom houses the mixer and the various audio and MIDI editors. It certainly makes Sonar look tidier than before, but it's a shame these haven't been optimised to fit into a narrow strip along the bottom of the screen. At least it's quick to switch to a more spacious MultiDock window using the Screensets feature, or to undock any of the panels and arrange them over multiple monitors.
The Inspector panel on the left reveals not just the selected track's mixer channel but also the bus channels it's routed to. It also houses another impressive new feature in Sonar X1: the ProChannel. This is essentially just a combination of compression, EQ and tube saturation effects, but the quality of each one is a step up from the effects bundled with competing packages.
The compressor has two modes. One is modelled on the classic Urei 1176 hardware compressor with its distinctive presence and gutsy punch; the other is based on an SSL 4000 Series bus compressor with a smoother response that's better suited to treating submixes. The six-band EQ has three modes - Pure, Vintage and Smooth - but they share the same controls, making it easy to switch between them and assess their subtly different tones.
It's not just the rich, musical sound quality of the ProChannel effects that make it so welcome. It's also the fact that it's plumbed into every channel in the mixer by default, significantly speeding up the time it takes to get a mix up and running. Our one quibble is that it can only be positioned before or after other effects in a chain and not in the middle. Having an option to load it as a normal plugin would make it more versatile.
It’s not easy reinventing a user interface without alienating existing users, but once they’ve re-learned a few tasks there's still a lot here that should feel familiar. In fact, we'd argue there's a little too much. Despite the raft of interface changes, we still encountered various niggling issues.
Mix automation is generally well implemented but there's no way to automate the bypass switches for the bundled Sonitus effects plugins. Opening a MIDI piano roll editor usually just revealed blank space, leaving us to scroll around to find the notes. Preset management for the supplied virtual instruments is untidy, with various redundant controls that suggest there are no presets available at all. The metronome can also only be toggled on and off when playback is stopped, which we found seriously frustrating. Long-standing Sonar users may be immune to these issues but they reveal a lack of attention to detail next to Steinberg Cubase or Ableton Live.
Where Sonar wins hands down, however, is value. The flagship X1 Producer costs around £150 less than Cubase 6, and yet the quality and quantity of its bundled effects and instruments are notably superior. Ableton Live costs £300 inc VAT, but a fairer comparison is Ableton Suite with its bundled instruments, which costs £500. Finally, those who don't need Sonar's extensive plugin bundle should consider X1 Studio, which costs just £169. (The full comparison chart is here.)
All-in-all, we still prefer Cubase 6 for its more elegant editing tools, but Sonar X1 Producer is a viable alternative for those who need a cost-effective package they're unlikely to grow out of.
