Third Take

It’s that time of year again. Summer has come and gone, hurricanes are pounding our coasts, and Sonar is ready for another upgrade. Cakewalk announced Sonar 8 last week while I was on vacation. At first glance, it doesn’t look like there is anything revolutionary, like AudioSnap or V-Vocal from previous releases. However, a myriad of enhancements, tweaks, and under-the-hood performance upgrades could spell monumental improvements in workflow and usability.

Performance Enhancements

Cakewalk claims performance enhancements and lower latency at high track counts and better Windows Vista audio support. For users who are using Vista, or otherwise trying to push the envelope, Sonar 8 could be the solution to their problems. Time will tell if Sonar 8 delivers on these promises, but Cakewalk has a good track record (pun intended) when it comes to performance.

Workflow

The new “Dedicated Instrument Track” for softsynths looks interesting - instead of having a track for MIDI and a separate track for a virtual instrument’s audio output, Sonar 8 will allow users to have a single track that does both. This should reduce track clutter and make working with softsynths more intuitive.

Editing enhancements like the “Aim Assist Cursor” and “Free Edit Tool” could make editing easier, especially when trying to line up multiple tracks for doubled vocals or guitar. Changes to the “Split and Mute” tools will hopefully make comping quick and easy. Editing in Sonar isn’t cumbersome, but anything that makes it faster is a welcome addition.

Sonar 8 also includes 400 “production ready” track and project templates. I’m a huge fan of templates, but I usually make my own to fit my ideas of project organization and my style of mixing. My experience with canned templates in any application is that they usually force me to do things the designers’ way, which doesn’t always make the most sense for my projects. Will these templates be practical for everyone? I guess we’ll wait and see.

Transport

Sonar 8 promises a new transport, with true Rewind, Fast Forward, and Pause buttons, a better Scrub tool, and enhancements for control surfaces. It sounds great, but I don’t know if this is something I need. The old transport has worked for me, but maybe this is one of those things that you don’t know you needed it until you have it.

Lots of Other Stuff

Of course there are also new effects and instruments, especially in the Producer version, inluding 64-bit dynamics processors (TS 64 Transient Shaper, and TL-64 Tube Leveler), Native Instruments Guitar Rig 3 LE, TruePianos Amber, and the full version of Dimension Pro. There is a new “Beatscape loop performance instrument” that sounds interesting for those using sonar for remixing or live performance.

Getting It

You can order Sonar 7 now, and get a free upgrade to Sonar 8 when it’s released on October 7.