Well, call me a convert!

[Phil Macino]

My band has been piecing together our demo for the last couple of weeks and we decided to be dorks and do it ourselves. Which translates into "Phil is doing the production and engineering" in this effort. :p

So, we started out using Sonar Producer 3.1 as I really had some problems with Cubase 1.X a while ago and swore it off. Maybe it was my lack of pro production audio production experience (this was most likely the case). For example I "loved" the fact that you could add plugins to individual tracks in Sonar via right clicking on the track and access a drop down menu. I felt like it was a natural work flow (coming from the PC side though). Who knew in the real world that effects went into these things called inserts etc? :p

Well the honeymoon was short lived as reliability issues between Sonar and my Motu 828mkII started taking there toll on "good takes". I literally wanted to throw the thing across the room, as I had eliminated any question regarding the hardware.

At wits end, I decided to try the software that I swore off not more than a couple of years ago. Mid Project!!!!! Holy Smokes! What a difference a couple of years makes. It probably doesn't hurt that I decided to RTFM. :D

I have to say 5 sessions with it and not even a hiccup. What got me the most was that Sonar botched the recording of our Guitar and Drums. Knowing this I bought Cubase SX 2.0 on a Thursday afternoon, configured it to work with the Motu, re-tracked the guitars on Friday and tracked the vocalist on Saturday!

Anybody else digging SX 2.0?

[Quinny]

I'm not a Cubase fan Phil, haven't used it in years, but a lot of friends have been saying similar things about SX2.0. I've used Logic (currently on Plat 6.3.3) pretty much since I first started my own production and have NEVER had a single problem. The only problem I've ever had was the Mac upgrade from Jag.6 to Jag.8, knocked out my MIDI comms entirely. But plain sailing apart from that.

It's really good to have a stable and reliable system, have fun putting it to some serious use!!!

Q.

[Hard2Hear]

Phil-

Thats wierd cause I run Sonar3 Producer with a MOTU 828mkII on a Toshiba P25 laptop with an external usb2 7200rpm HD. It runs like a champ for me and I've never had a single issue with it. I have heard other people talking about problems with Sonar, so I guess I'm a lucky one. I used to use Sonar1 with a Delta card and it was great for me, too.

The two studios I work in most use Pro Tools and Digital Performer, but everyone likes my portable setup for writing and location recording. I've done about a 32 track mix without any problems. I'm using the waves platinum bundle with it, too.

Mike

[Supasso]

Sonar 3 runs perfectly fine on my system. (P4 4Ghz + M-Audio 1010)

[jas]

Aren't you on a Mac, Phil?

I use Sonar 3.? and 828 mkii on Win XP with good luck.

I did have one problem that I haven't looked into yet. When I recorded the rest of the band using analog input but my guitar on digital input (via the BOSS GS-10), the guitar track was delayed by a few fractions of a second.

But overall it works well for me.

-John

[Phil Macino]

Actually, PC (DT: 3.2 GHz P4 with 2 GB Mushkin RAM "DDR-400" and 10k SATA drives, WinXP SP1, then SP2 optimized for DAW)(LT: 1.8Ghz P4m 1GB, 5400 rpm drive and 160GB 7200 rpm FW drive with 8 MB cache.)

The majority of the problems happened while multi-tracking (Many sources at once) 10 tracks or more regardless of the computer. I really think it has to do with the driver stack.

John, what you experienced was monitoring latency you can alter this in the driver setup, but this does put more stress on the CPU and can affect reliability. If you are just tracking yourself, you should be okay. Sonar's latancy is kind of an Achilles' Heal.

[jas]

Thanks, Phil.

I'll check into the latency settings some rainy day. Meanwhile, I'll just use analog ins. It only matters if you're recording more than one track for an obvious reason that I'll leave unstated. :o

-John

[Scott Peterson]

Phil,

I have been running Cubase SX 2 and it rocks. I swore off Cubase VST 5.0 a few years ago and ran with Samplitude Pro for a while; Cubase SX won me back.

It is a KILLER app.. It sounds as good as Samplitude (wickedly good audio engine) and for me, that was that.

Mine has been rock solid for a long time now. Done lots of work with it. Highly recommend it.

[Phil Macino]

You know it's funny what can happen in a month! I still think the Cubase SX 2.0 is a great App on the PC Platform. Personally I did have a couple of issues with it that ended the honeymoon after we got the majority of the project completed.

The biggest issue I had with it was after bouncing tracks down and exporting... the final output levels were different from what I was hearing while monitoring and mixing. It drove me nuts to have to remaster/finalize a final master to get the levels back up!

Couple that with a couple of issues with Motu, Steinberg support, and "pro houses" asking me if I "did it on Pro Tools" when shopping for mastering, and you have a recipe for change!

Having said that, I had caught wind of some news regarding Avid/Digi and PCs and decided to check out Pro Tools LE 6.4/Digi002R after mulling over it for a while. All I can say is "Wow".....

It *really* smokes on PC and has less latency than Cubase SX with plugin automation enabled. It blew me away and the learning curve was far less cumbersome than SX, maybe that's because SX prepped me for that with what I would consider a steep learning curve...And with +12dB faders in 6.4 and the new 002 firmware, PT/Digi002 has a ton of headroom. I can't say the same for MBOX (USB) but, the Firewire (002) flavors are indeed blistering quick and rock solid...no configuration quarrels, it just worked straight "out of the box". It took me less than an hour from opening the box to bouncing multitrack material with aux sends etc...Most importantly, what I heard before rendering was what came out after!

It was enough to not even think twice about switching...keep in mind I absolutely *hated* PT 6.2 on PC. It was slow, and buggy as the South in June. :p

Heck, Pro Tools now natively exports to Windows Media Pro, and Windows Media Lossless! (along with all of the other standard export options) With Digidesign's purchase of M-Audio last week and the rumors of Apple building DAW hardware, I would expect to see deeper Pro Tools integration with Windows in the future.

Just my 2¢...after going through some pains in a relatively short amount of time.

[Scott Peterson]

It doesn't matter now, but MOTU + WinXP = Pfft. Death knell in my book. MOTU does not do Windows; and I took a slamming on resale on a 828mkii. Never worked for one second, drivers that were promised by MOTU "next week" never showed up after 3 months (!).

I have no issues exporting at all. And just to note - I run at 3ms latency here. I monitor direct from the Lynx L2 soundcard I use; zero latency.

No problem though Phil - not trying to change your mind at all; just offering my experiences for the record.

I have so much invested in VST and DX plugs I could not even consider going to PT. That's all.

[Phil Macino]

It doesn't matter now, but MOTU + WinXP = Pfft. Death knell in my book. MOTU does not do Windows; and I took a slamming on resale on a 828mkii. Never worked for one second, drivers that were promised by MOTU "next week" never showed up after 3 months (!).

I have no issues exporting at all. And just to note - I run at 3ms latency here. I monitor direct from the Lynx L2 soundcard I use; zero latency.

No problem though Phil - not trying to change your mind at all; just offering my experiences for the record.

I have so much invested in VST and DX plugs I could not even consider going to PT. That's all.
You know that's interesting, I never really had issues with the MOTU.

I think what is wrong with the PC DAW market is that there are too many options and none of them have been done right. Just in audio drivers alone there are ASIO, ASIO/2, MME, WDM, DX, mLAN, and soon to be UAA.Those examples don't even include the device class drivers needed for the hardware! That is too many development projects for both hardware and software vendors to work on independantly when stability is paramount. UAA (Universal Audio Architecture) is a move in the right direction to alleviate this problem.

http://www.microsoft.com/whdc/device/audio/uaa.mspx

It's very conceivable that a company like Steinberg is going to put all of their efforts into ASIO variants, while doing WDM "out of necessity". This doesn't doesn't mean that the WDM efforts are going to receive as much attention in dev...This happens all of the time. Then likewise, what if MOTU spends more time and money developing WDM, instead of ASIO? I'm just throwing out hypothetical scenarios here.

I usually do the same as you, monitor direct through hardware and insert plugins after tracking. But, for the occasional time where you want to do it (running a plugin while tracking) I have yet to beat the latency of the PT solution straight out of the box. This just really surprised me because in the past, my PT/PC experiences were about the same as your MOTU/PC ones!

I know that Digi is making significant strides in working with Microsoft and their recent purchase of M-Audio (single handedly the largest manufacturer of PC Pro Audio interfaces), only strengthens their potential sphere of influence in the PC market. What this means for Steinberg and Magix is yet to be determined. It will be interesting to see what unfolds.

Hopefully the biggest winner will be the consumer! I know that Steinberg is already shipping a E2E (end to end) solution in their "System 4" and has announced partnering with Yamaha on mLAN technologies. They are also competing across platforms with Apple's Logic Pro 6 bundle with a software bundle set for release this fall.

And I hear you on the plugins! I am looking very carefully right now to seee which ones are going to do the best job. Right now there are more plugins being developed than ever. Although Waves is good, there appears to be other companies (Universal Audio, Focusrite, Sony Oxford, URS) that are making a serious run at delivering some serious power. Unfortunately, as you know that power will cost you!