Finally, I mixed the song down to two tracks and mastered it using Iztotope's Ozone mastering plug-in, all within Sonar.
As recording engineer Bill Park once told me:
Today's home musician has access to better technology in his basement than the Beatles, Pink Floyd, or Lynyrd Skynyrd had access to when they cut their best work. Traffic, Hendrix, and many others made records on equipment that was poor even for the standards of the day and somehow still managed to sell millions.Sonar 4 isn't the software for someone new to multitrack recording-I'd probably recommend a program like Sony's Music Studio, Steinberg's Studio Case, or Cakewalk's Home Studio, for someone who wanted to get his feet wet. And if you're making the jump from audiotape-based multitrack recording to its hard disk-based cousin, you'll still have a pretty healthy learning curve (as I found out around 2001 when I began to get involved in computer-based recording in earnest after a decade spent on four-track cassette from 1984 to about '94). But if you're looking for a program that can do it all-and do it extremely well-on your PC, Sonar 4 is pretty tough to beat.
If course, programs like Sonar can only do so much: I'd much rather have Roger Daltry singing on my tunes than my voice. Where'd I put his phone number?
Article comments
1 - Eric Olsen
fascinating and invaluable insight into the program Ed, very much appreciated!
2 - Vlachakis Costas
Im selling a Sonar 4 Producer Edition unopenned box. reasonalble price.
Thank you.
3 - Cliff Soon
I produced the song for the above video, "If I Fall (Military Cut)" using Sonar 2, using a Kord X5. It took me ... a while.
I'm wondering if it's really worth upgrading to Sonar 4. The only thing that might fit my needs is they claim that the workflow is better; is it really that much better?
4 - Cliff Soon
Oops, that's "Korg", of course ... and the video is at the above url.
5 - Ed Driscoll
Cliff,
For me, the best feature is the freeze function. As I mentioned in the review, I had gotten used to treating my lead tracks (vocals and solos) with Izotope's Ozone, but it's such a processor hog. The freeze function dropped the CPU usage considerably when plastering a track with multiple effects.
Ed