Product Description

Bring the professional power of SONAR to your home PC with new SONAR Home Studio Version 4. There is no better software for musicians taking the first step into digital recording. The newest member of the SONAR family comes with a comprehensive feature set that turns your computer into a multitrack recording studio, giving you everything you need to take your music from inspiration to finished CD. SONAR Home Studio is built with the same core features as Cakewalk SONAR 4. Its intuitive tools make it easy to record, edit, mix, and arrange professional-quality music. It includes powerful tools; built-in instruments and effects; support for DirectX, VST, ReWire, and MFX instruments and effects; support for ACID format loops; and much more. Add sounds from additional DXi and VSTi soft synths Never miss a take again with Confidence Recording Keep perfect time with a built-in audio metronome Use included ACID-format library to create backing tracks Arrange & Edit Powerful editing - multi-clip edits, loop-rolling, fade drawing, more Frequently used controls are right at your fingertips Precise waveform display for detailed editing Unlimited undo/redo with edit history Navigator Pane to get a bird's eye view of your entire project Tweak pitch, pan, and gain of slices in any ACID-format loop to make them your own Paint MIDI drum tracks with rhythmic pattern brush Edit and print music notation Mix & Share Responsive mixing with a 32-bit floating point audio engine All the effects you need - 15 audio effects, and 9 MIDI MFX Add VST and DirectX effects with full plug-in delay compensation Customizable Track Icons for easy organizing and mixing of projects Control surface support Export your mix - WAV, ACID-format WAV, AVI, MIDI, MP3*, Real Audio G2, Windows Media Audio (WMA), and Windows Media Video (WMV) Burn your mixes to CD with included Pyro Express CD maker (

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #5858 in Software
• Brand: Cakewalk
• Model: 10-CWHS4.00-10C
• Released on: 2005-07-29
• Platforms: Windows 2000, Windows XP
• Format: CD-ROM
• Dimensions: 3.00 pounds

Features

• Professional power of SONAR for musicians new to digital recording
• Record, edit, arrange, and mix 64 audio tracks and unlimited MIDI tracks
• 24-bit, 192 kHz audio engine; 32-bit floating point audio engine
• Dynamic Console view; master control toolbar; track presets and track icons
• Navigator view; project navigator; enhanced loop construction toolset; and more

From the Manufacturer
Based on SONAR 4 technology, SONAR Home Studio brings the professional power of SONAR to musicians looking to take the first step into digital recording. SONAR Home Studio provides everything needed to take music from inspiration to finished CD.

Features:

• Record, edit, arrange, and mix 64 audio tracks and unlimited MIDI tracks
• 24-bit, 192 kHz audio engine
• 32-bit floating point audio engine
• Dynamic Console view
• Master control toolbar
• Track presets and track icons
• Navigator view
• Track inspector
• Project navigator
• Enhanced loop construction toolset
• Universal bus architecture (up to 16 busses simultaneously)
• Advanced MIDI routing and synth layering
• Audio metronome
• Confidence recording of audio, MIDI, and automation
• Music notation
• PowerStrip multi-effects
• Cakewalk Audio FX1 and Audio FX2 effects suites
• Virtual Sound Canvas DXi
• Dreamstation DXi
• SFZ SoundFont player
• ASIO, WDM, DirectX, DXi, VST, ReWire support
• Hundreds of megabytes of ACID-format loops
• CD burning with included Pyro Express

Customer Reviews

Works Great!!
Great software at a great price! It is as functional as Cakewalk Pro Audio 7 was (I used to use that). The 64 audio track limit is not a problem, I have never even got close to that many audio tracks. There are a lot of free MIDI effects and VST effects and instruments available for free online if you need anything this program doesn't offer....

If you can't get sound look under OPTIONS->AUDIO->ADVANCED and try a different driver (ASIO, MME, etc...). ASIO is best (update soundcard drivers or look for ASIO4ALL). Also don't forget to pick MIDI devices (OPTIONS->MIDI DEVICES) or you'll get no MIDI playback either.....

Very Good Entry level software
I bought Sonar Home Studio to essentially expand on the sequencer of Reason 3.0, as well as to use Reason simultaneously with Reaktor 5. I have a lot of synth and effect plugin power, so I was looking for a basic, reasonably full featured, inexpensive sequencer to use with those two programs. Sonar Home Studio has fit that bill almost perfectly. As a previous reviewer noted, this is not a "play and hear immediately" sequencer. It has a truly excellent feature set for the money, and thus has a learning curve that is "somewhat" steep. I found Sonar HS to be refreshingly stable, and had just what I needed. Rewiring Reason into Sonar HS has been a breeze, with very few problems. It should be noted though, that propellerheads rewire update has introduced some problems. If you use Reason with this, save all of your parameters before shutting down Reason, as it sometimes shuts down Sonar along with it, (I suspect that this is an issue with Reason, not Sonar)! Another issue is VSTi plugins. They are run through a wrapper rather than directly. Still, I had no serious problems with my VSTi plugins. The wrapper functioned as promised, the only issues that I had were some strange rendering issues with Reaktor in it's VSTi version, but those problems at all weren't serious, and I found the VSTi versions of that program to actually be more stable! All of the rest of my VSTi's have worked perfectly. When using the wrapper however, do note to set the rendering size large enough to draw the plugins, as the wrapper itself has very little documentation about this. Documentation for the rest of the program was rather sparce, but enough to get one up and running, if one has basic knowledge of digital audio workstations.

This program has some stability issues with EMU's pro series cards as well, such as the 1212m. I wound up ditching their drivers, (which weren't very good anyway), and using ASIO4ALL drivers, which have given me rock solid stability and latencies down to 5 ms without a hiccup. If you don't know what latency is however, I would recommend Easy Music Creator to cut one's chops on. It's dirt cheap, and very educational.

The bottomline:

Sonar Home Studio is an excellent DAW for persons working with softsynths. With the right drivers, it's both stable, and does what it says it will do. I found the workflow to be very good, (but in all fairness, that is somewhat of a personal preference), and I also found that it was very good at syncing everything up, (I tested that extensively), where entry level DAW's frequently have trouble with that sort of thing. All in all, problems were found to be solvable with a little research and patience. If you are a band that is doing hard disk recording however, and are light on high level effects and mastering tools, you may want to go with Sonar 5 studio, which comes with superior effects plugins. If you have a ton of good plugins though, and are looking for a low cost sequencer, Sonar Home Studio may just fill the bill for you, and do it at an excellent price!

Entry-level SERIOUS multitrack software
To clarify complaints by a previous reviewer. If you read the product description nowhere does it promise to be easy to use or that you will be "recording your music and listening to it right away". It says it is entry-level software for musicians. "Musicians"...not casual users looking for a toy to play with. If you read the description of its capabilities and all of those features are going over your head common sense should tell you this may not be the software for you. Cakewalk offers a more entry-level program called "Easy Music Creator"...that may be the product for you. Sonar Home Studio is extremely powerful for what it costs but it has a steep learning curve. It is the first step into serious pro-level recording software.

The complaint about the helpfile is valid. Also, this product can at times have stability and driver issues, especially with built-in soundcards not intended for use with recording software. But all-in-all it is a great product when used with a pro-sumer or professional grade interface.