As a longtime Cakewalk User, I feel that Sonar 8 Producer is the best offering yet but as you've certainly seen, there are a number of issues that layed cause for the immediate, ".01" Release. Undoubtedly there will be a very expedited, ".02" Release to calm the myriad of, "Technical Quandries" that are going to happen as the, "DAW" market is moving in, 'Hyperspace" with Competition at an all time high.... I know through experience that the Cakewalk Team will iron out the bugs in a very timely fassion as they have always proved to be a true, "Customer Concerned Developer"....
I believe your review is a fine review & not everyone is experiencing the, "Technical Glitches" that are cluttering the forum. Overall it is indeed the best Sonar yet.... Sincerely, Gregg Robert Carlson....Keys, Harp, Sax, Drums, Bass, & Guitar.....

By Gregg Robert Carlson.."THE HIGH NOTE STUDIO" on  Friday, October 31, 2008 1:49 PM

Anal rape? Really?

By Greg Amato on  Saturday, November 01, 2008 11:35 AM

Greg, you and your witty comments.

By Adam Nobumoto on  Saturday, November 01, 2008 10:41 PM

I upgraded to Sonar 8 and haven't hit a snag yet. I love it!

By Tom Richards on  Monday, November 03, 2008 6:10 PM

I agree with the review, and would like to add a very important (to me at least) comment. Sonar 6 & 7 would crash after I would play my Yamaha WX-7 Breath controller into it for a minute of two. This never made sense to me as I had no trouble at all in 1993 when I used Cakewalk's sequencer like a midi tape recorder to produce the Stanley Jordan album "Bolero" and many other projects. The otherwisr fine tech's at Cakewalk could never come uyp with a way to make this stop happening in 6 or 7, and i was at the point of trying to figure out a way to hook up the old Cakewalk midi sequencer as a rewire device when everything changed. Thank God (and Cakewalk) for Sonar 8. Sonar 8 has given back to me , for the first time since the old days, the ability to play into the DAW expressive midi information for as long as I want to wthout any trouble at all. To me this is heaven as I have made my career in NYC as a studio musician playing the WX-7 and I've had to play around this limitation for the past two years while using Sonar. Now look out world I'm goona blow the roof off the sucker.

By Rob Zantay on  Wednesday, November 05, 2008 6:17 PM

So far Sonar 8 is rock solid. I still use it on my XP Pro machine even though Producer 7 ran fine in Vista 64 bit—but other software I use simply is dysfunctional in Vista 64 on many levels—except for good old PG Music stuff that runs just fine.
I do not experience a lot of softsynth issues because I tend to lay tracks and clips using a hardware synth (Roland 8820). It gives me a decent track and even works better with a Roland GI-20 midi guitar input. Once in the softsynths games begin—MIDI is just data, not sound anyway. So the combined audio/midi track for direct softsynth recording did not do much for me but I know others that use softsynths exclusively and it saves the bounce step.
I did get occasional crashes with 7 Producer—especially using some of the more complex Native Instrument synths—but never with Rapture or Dimension. And so far none with complex NI synths like Reaktor or Kontakt or Battery.
I have Project 5//2.5 so Beatscape does not appear so awesome. I have not tried what appear to be Reason type loop files but that would add another dimension. I probably have over 10,000 loops, mostly audio but a lot of MIDI-because simply it is more flexible than audio.
I still use ACID but it would be nice if Sonar could simply do the same things and one less program to upgrade but the Explorer page still needs some work.
I did not find it was any more friendly to using my Edirol PCR control surface—but frankly, I think they are oversold a bit—I can go much faster with a mouse and keyboard.
Dimension Pro is a nice touch if you do not have Dimension already. But Rapture is a must if you do not have it. It is in a class all by itself for manipulating sound.
Sonar 8 is a good upgrade. The stability alone is worth the upgrade.
For Windows people—why would you use anything else?
By the way, if you have Windows XP Media Edition, trash it and get XP Pro--media edition is a nightmare with any DAW or softsynth.

By JB_maddox//MaddArt Studios on  Thursday, November 06, 2008 9:13 AM

I don't agree at all regarding Sonar 8's stability. I have not been able to keep Sonar 8 PE from "locking up" and causing my Tascam FW-1082 to emit a nasty noise when I try to use the loop function. There are apparently some serious bugs in this release. FWIW, I have been with Cakewalk since version 5 and Sonar since version 2.

By Greg on  Thursday, November 06, 2008 3:32 PM

SONAR 8 ..cool.

By ADYCN on  Sunday, November 09, 2008 7:37 AM

Great... I`ve enjoyed all the informative and not so-informative comment`s !

By Roy on  Monday, November 10, 2008 10:05 PM

I got lots of information about Sonar 8. I also like Guitar Rig LE. I'll surely install it in my pc.

By Guitarinstructor on  Monday, November 24, 2008 12:20 AM

My 30 day trial version of Sonar 8 is crashing at various times on my AMD based system. However, I'm beginning to think that the problem is perhaps more related to the ASIO drivers for my Line6 USB audio interface. I will uninstall the Line6 drivers, and then use Line6 "monkey" to download and install the latest ones.

I'm really glad that Cakewalk provides the 30 day trial versions. Because I won't spend a dime until I'm sure that I can resolve all these issues. And 30 days is really plenty of time for me to find out for sure. Strangely enough, I was having no issues at all running Sonar 7 with an AMD processor and a Line6 audio interface.

By David Roth on  Monday, December 29, 2008 4:51 PM

Sonar 8 crash a lot!!!! It has a white screen with fatal eror message all the time .
I'm also using line 6 toneport with latest drivers and i'm using windows xp 64 bit with 8GB ram, quardcore intel etc.
In my latest project i tryed to record my vocals within a project with a lot of guitar, drum piano tracks , but it failed to work properly, i had to mixdown the tracks to wave and then import the wave into a new project and from there on record my vocals.
What a waste of time, Sonar has to make a proper DWA and not saying that they make improvements cause they didn't!!!!

By Paul white on  Sunday, January 11, 2009 2:39 AM

To Paul White^^^^

My guess as to why Sonar 8 crashes a lot is because you are using windows XP 64 bit. Here is a direct quote from the system requirements section on cakewalks website:

"SONAR does not support Windows 95, 98, ME, NT, 2000 or XP x64 "

By Bryan on  Tuesday, January 20, 2009 3:56 AM

I too have been with sonar since 2.2 version.. and I never had more stupid issues with a version until now version 8 with a brand new quad core pc 3.0 gig hz with 4 gb ram ddr3 you got to be kidding me with all these annoying issues...well that made me finally switch to logic 8 with a new mac, let me tell you it works plain and simple.. best move i ever made...

By john on  Tuesday, January 27, 2009 11:24 PM

After my umpteenth Sonar 8 crash I started googling around to see if others are experiencing what I am. I have engineered and produced 15 albums on Sonar 5 and 6. My co-producer and I would utter the phrase "I love Sonar" multiples times during any given session. This has stopped since we both upgraded to 8.01.310. We're both on XP (NOT 64 bit), dual core machines. His is a Intel based and mine an AMD. They've both been ROCK solid for three years. But the same machines with Sonar 8 are driving us both insane. There's lots of crashes (today I've had Bounce To Clips crash on me twice), and some oddities. I do a lot of copy/paste and nudge clips by measures and I'm finding once in a while that I cannot trust nudge to actually nudge an exact measure. I used to trust this feature completely. Now I don't. There's other things like this driving me nuts - things that used to work smoothly under Sonar 6.

I see there's an update to something like 8.2.x available. Does anyone know if this update is supposed to be more solid? I hate to mess with my installation (buggy as it is) in the middle of a time critical project. If the upgrade doesn't help, I'll tempted to take all the nice new plug ins Sonar 8 installed and go back to using Sonar 6.

I really don't want to trash Cakewalk's name out here on the 'net because their products have served us SO well the past few years. I just want the stability back and I still have faith they'll fix some of these things.

By Tom Roper on  Friday, February 27, 2009 6:23 PM

CAN SONAR 8 OPEN A .PTF FILE PRO TOOLS FILE?

By meme on  Sunday, March 22, 2009 5:56 PM

Sonar rocks but crashes so much... i had sonar 7 and it rocked and my xp pc crashed rebuilt it with vista 64 and put sonar 8 on it half the pluggins dont work i had... not big deal... but i cant even open some of my old songs with out it crashing, if i do i take all the old pluggins out and do a save but it still crashes half the time.. i have noticed if I make a new song the crashes are less. but it be fair i am using a hacked version and cant call support.. but it could be my computer maybe but i doubt it but to be fair i am using a hacked version of vista 64... and all my pluggins are hacked... except the mp3 coder i bought for sonar 7 and it doesnt install right...

By daniel on  Monday, March 30, 2009 1:40 PM

Before reading further, let me just say I have never owned Sonar before. But upon seeing the quote from the Mac user I was inspired to write something. I have been a PC user for years because they are HALF the price of an apple machine AND do the job they are required to do (I really couldn't care about flashy widgets and graphic-hungry prettiness) and recently have been looking around for a decent piece of recording software. I was tempted by Logic and had once heard that it was available to PC and Mac. I look on the internet and what do I find? Apple bought out the company that made it and cut the wire to all the dedicated PC customers. I find this an utterly disgusting tactic, especially considering this isn't the first time apple have tried to FORCE people to buy their overpriced hardware. This portion of PC users amounted to 35% of Logic's customer base. Nice one, Apple.

My sister has a high-end Macbook Pro and it has not only crashed countless times, the hard drive has failed twice, and the battery has died (which, by the way, is a total pain to replace because Apple don't let other companies sell their stuff, and it costs a lot if not under warranty). About as portable as a desktop if the battery doesn't work. Needless to say, her next machine will be a PC. So I think supporting products like Sonar is the right thing to do because they offer a reasonably priced solution, and by the sounds of it it's highly reliable.

Unlike many of our Mac friends (not all, I want to add) I don't believe in blind faith and an elitist attitude. I was once tempted by the 'cool-ness' of Macs until I realised how extortionate their prices are. Something which essentially does the same things as a PC and costs an arm and a leg more is clearly not worth it.

I will be buying Sonar, and I won't conform to Apple's strangulation tactics, just like I suspect most people won't. Sorry for the rant all! I'm sure some people will agree.

By Mark Holland on  Monday, April 20, 2009 10:17 AM

I have an HP Pavilion 8120 Quad Core with Sonar 6 Producer. A few months ago I was playing around with the Session Drummer 2 and couldn't get a track to work with it. The next time I tried to record a guitar and vocal track, I got instant dropout. When I arm a track and hit record, a second later it gets dropout. When I arm a track and just hit play, it gets dropout. My microphone doesn't even show up on the main VU meter. Does this sound like an easy fix or not. I've been recording on my old pc with windows 98 and cakewalk Home Studio 9 and copying it to my Sonar 6 for effects and mixing only. Any ideas?

By Jim on  Monday, June 01, 2009 8:31 PM

i recently downloaded sonar 8
and it wont even detect my microphone, and i cant find a way to fix that obstacle...
anybody know whats wrong ?

By Eric on  Saturday, July 25, 2009 12:53 PM

This might help with the Sonar 7 or 8 producr dropouts If you go to Control Panel/Display, then
the Settings tab, press the Advanced button and go to the Troubleshoot tab.
Clear the "Enable Write Combining" checkbox, then press the "OK" button.

By Ra on  Friday, July 31, 2009 1:52 PM

Also In Sound and Audio Settings, go to Hardware, select your soundcard, choose Properties, and make sure you choose the “Do not map through this device” option.And try going into audio options in Sonar and try to find the right playback and recording buffer sizes and increase or decrease your latency setting under audio options and Asio Settings or the latency slider if it is another driver...hope this helps.

By Ra on  Friday, July 31, 2009 2:10 PM

After seeing Mark's Mac comments I had to comment myself. I was a pc user for most of my life-translation-I've lost tons of pics, info, and music to catastrophic computer failures. I upgraded (I do not use this term lightly) to a Mac 5 years ago. It and the other two I've bought since are amazing. I had one battery die and went to an apple store to purchase one. It was amazingly easy. Now as far as apple making Logic for only a Mac it is because it is a much more stable environment. What I find most interesting is your complaining about that but then buying a product (Sonar) that has excluded all Mac users. Very interesting. I recorded on Sonar on those pc's i mentioned earlier for years and never enjoyed the weekly crashes. Logic on a Mac is wonderful to use. It is simple while giving you amazing sound. Well worth all the investment.

By rob on  Tuesday, September 01, 2009 4:44 AM

Which do you think is cheaper/wiser, in PC enviroment to change to Sonar from Logic or to go to Mac from PC? I started with Atari early -80's with Sealab Notator (Logic) switched into PC and Logic in 90's and grew up into 2000. Then gradually updated it to Logic Platinum 5.5. When Logic was sold to Mac and development for PC's stopped I used that still couple years. I finally bought Sonar. My musician frend changed from Atari to Mac/Logic at the first place in -90'.

Logic is good software can't argue with that. During this last decade updating our home studio systems is 6-0 to my advantage. Why? At the moment I have as fast PC (QuadCore/16g ram) than my friends proMac is. He had also upgraded his Mac and softwares regularly as I have my PC & Softwares. Mac is a religion to him but more expensive one. We do basicly same things and both ways runs well, Mac and PC. It's true that my Sonar 8 PE crashes sometimes but happen to know that the same thing happens with Macs too. With Logic and ProTools. Ive seen that in my own eyes. As often or as rare if you prefer.

The common way to think is -> PC-Average / Mac-Elite. It's unfair to make any generalisations on the basis of above mentioned. What you get done makes you pro not what systems you run with.

Mac has gone for Intel and in some point I hoped that Lengeling and others realize that there are golden markets waiting with PC users but not anymore. AV-things gets well done with other softwares too. To me the reasons to stay in PC enviroment are practical and economical. And I'd like to think myself not to be prejudiced by nature.

By Tim O on  Monday, September 21, 2009 3:35 PM

i need a real help ... which is better sonar or cubase or nuendo??????? why??????

By Salem Salem on  Tuesday, September 22, 2009 7:55 PM

I read all of the great, positive news about improved stability and responsiveness and went for Sonar 8 over Cubase. What a terrible mistake...

I used Sonar (8.3) extensively this summer on my new i7 PC and have encountered so many bugs, dropouts, and crash issues that I'm seriously regretting my decision. Here's one stupidly simple bug: drawing in MIDI note velocities sometimes stops working and then restarts working by itself. What?! you say. Tell me about it. This type of simple functionality was de facto solid back before Pro Audio 1.0 came out! Now it's broken. Another annoying bug: I had one project file with multiple MIDI tracks, and for some unknown reason, they could be muted individually, but unmuting one of them unmuted all of them! All the time! Just super annoying things like this you will NOT hear about in magazine or pumping website reviews such as this one... you sadly find out and suffer these types of bugs after you get the software installed and you're in the middle of a project...

However, my main beef with Sonar 8 is that it's incredibly UNSTABLE at high CPU loads. I've experienced almost nonstop crashes with the first CPU thread on my PC hovering near the redline. And I am running 102 tracks in my current project. I noticed crashes became more frequent as I transcended around 50 tracks.

I'm heading for more of the same types of projects in the coming months. Now I'm faced with shelling out for Cubase and essentially taking a loss on Sonar. Take my experience as a word of caution for those of you in a similar situation.

Intel i7 2.66GHz, Gigabyte UD4P, 6GB RAM, 500GB SATA HD, XP Pro 32-bit with an M-Audio Delta 1010 (possibly a part of the problem as well). All legitimate commercial plug-ins. No internet or apps other than music/audio for the PC.

And this is coming from someone who really, really wants to be an ardent Cakewalk supporter and use their products (and I have shelled out quite a bit of money on their software over the years). But I just can't sit around here any longer trying to work around crashes, larger-than expected ASIO VST/VSTi latency, and the aforementioned bugs. Sorry, but Sonar 8 is a clunker. That's the truth from my perspective.

By Scott on  Tuesday, September 22, 2009 9:32 PM

Scott to be honest what comes to Sonar 8 it has been a sort of disappointment since there is one bug bothering me also. PC halts after adding a nod/nodes to an vol enveloupe. Haven't have a responce from Cakewalk yet.

Noticed you have 6Gb ram. As far as I know XP 32b can only recognize 3Gb. Other thing is that quite many pros are heading for 64bit systems just because of its benefits of handling bigger waws and samples.

With your specs 102 tracks in Sonar PE 8.3 is okay if they were midi tracks and you had external sound modules but using samplesofts like Kontakt 3 or VSL works just in your dreams

By Tim O on  Wednesday, September 30, 2009 6:25 AM

Scott to be honest what comes to Sonar 8 it has been a sort of disappointment since there is one bug bothering me also. PC halts after adding a nod/nodes to an vol enveloupe. Haven't have a responce from Cakewalk yet.

Noticed you have 6Gb ram. As far as I know XP 32b can only recognize 3Gb. Other thing is that quite many pros are heading for 64bit systems just because of its benefits of handling bigger waws and samples.

With your specs 102 tracks in Sonar PE 8.3 is okay if they were midi tracks and you had external sound modules but using samplesofts like Kontakt 3 or VSL works just in your dreams

By Tim O on  Wednesday, September 30, 2009 6:26 AM

There was SONAR Producer 8.5.1 Matrix View Update available. Seems it correct the bug I mentioned earlier. My system is
> Computer : PC
> Operating System: Vista 64 Business
> Motherboard : Asus P5Q Pro
> Processor : Intel Core 2 Quad 9550S
> Memory : 16 Gb
> Soundcard : RME Fireface 800
> Synthesizer : Roland SonicCell
> Hard disks : 3 x Seagate Barracuda 500Gb/ 32Mb cache / Raid
> Softs: Sonar 8.51 PE, Soundforge 10, Acid Pro7, Finale 2010, different sample libraries (Kontakt 2, 3, GPO4, EWQL Symphonic Choir etc...)

Regards, - Tim O

By Tim O on  Wednesday, September 30, 2009 6:18 PM

I'm new to Sonar, and computer recording software in general. I feared being overwhelmed by all of the features in the 8 producer, but found them very user friendly. I had trouble setting up the audio, and tascam 144 interface, but was able to resolve it after about 20 minutes on the phone with support. The one and only complaint is the latency. I'm sure this is either related to my computer power, or the 144 interface, but it's annoying. I'm considering getting a stand alone 8 track, and importing the files into sonar, especially for recording multiple insturments at the same time. The effects are OUTSTANDING, and I am still amazed by the vocal effects and ease of use. The software is well worth the money in my opinion.

By Larry on  Wednesday, October 07, 2009 8:47 PM