Any comments on Sonar Le for recording?

[GoldieLocks]

I just got a free copy of Sonar Le with my Allen & Heath board. Is this thing worth wasting time on or is it one step above a 4 track cassette recorder.

I have no experience computer recording so any comments are helpful.

[Ben Harmless]

Can't say I'm familiar with that version of Sonar, but all of my earliest recording experiments were with one of the full versions. It's a good program, but there are a few signal-routing limitations that I didn't dig. If you're interested in doing computer recording, it's absolutely worth playing around with. You can learn a lot, and depending on how you use it, it can be many, many steps above 4-track cassette recording, or you can get so caught up in the minutiae that you'd be better off with the 4-track.

Now, I use Reaper. I feel like it fits my style a little better. It's cheap too, and free to try, so if you get the bug, it's worth giving a shot.

I assume it came with your board because your board has a USB out or something. That's cool, and a good enough reason on its own to fool around with computer-based recording. If it's only got the 2-track out, you can just hard pan things left and right to stack up tracks.

Enjoy!

[woodman]

Goldie, it's a golden opportunity to start tinkering around and learning the ropes ... once you get the fundamentals of digital recording in Sonar, you can move on to another of the dozens of choices available. but you gotta start somewhere, and certain principles apply to all DAW's. it's like learning a language ... for instance, if you learn Spanish, it makes it a lot easier to learn Italian.

[beep.click]

I don't know if they still do this, but -- used to be, if you registered your cheap/free version of Cakewalk/Sonar, you would start getting emails for upgrades.

That's a GOOD thing, because the upgrade price was ridiculously cheap. Something around $170, for a program that normally costs $400-500.

I love Sonar, and nowadays use it almost exclusively. If you've never done computer recording, you owe it to yourself to give it a try. No turning back, for me!

[Andy R]

I use Sonar Producer 8, do a lot of work, it's a great program. All DAWs have plusses and minuses, they're all good and all compatible. There are a lot of engineers here in Nashville who like Sonar's sound quality best.

[GhostofJohnToad]

or get reaper and have many posssibilites, and when you want to buy you will be much happier for the price.

[GoldieLocks]

THis is one frustrating piece of gear.

But its only a beginner sample from what I gather. The instruction manual is one step up from being retarded. The sound quality is okay so far.

THis thing has many routing problems. You can only listen to incoming sounds if the echo button is on (the manual even says so!) very very strange. And tweaking the echo doesn't seem to be an option.
It is fun finely digging into computer recording...but I think there's probably easier to use programs. My wife has Garage band on her Mac. Maybe I should give that a try? Any comments?

I've had a few years experience with the roland/Boss br1600. Great manual, okay sound, very easy to use and pump out C.d.'s. (Bad reverbs and options. Very limited in routing using with a full band. But still fun). You can make good sounding Demo's, but thats about it.

[Professorbx]

I have said it before, and I will say it again-for someone starting out, Riffworks is the only game in town.

http://www.sonomawireworks.com/products.php

It really makes recording fun. I am a proud Pro Tools user, and I still use Riffworks for laying down quick tracks.