Thread June 4, 2016 editorial: comments

Coming Soon to a Mac Near You

As a journalist covering the fields of recording and music production, I’ve followed the developments of Cakewalk’s Sonar DAW over the years, watching as it has grown into a powerful and comprehensive application. But because Sonar is a Windows-only application, and I’m a Mac user, I’ve never been able to try it myself except briefly many years ago, when I had a workplace-issued PC laptop. In the intervening time, Sonar has really upped its game, and I’ve watched enviously as more and more powerful features, such as vocal alignment, drum replacement, and Melodyne integration were added.

Not surprisingly, I was quite intrigued this week when Cakewalk announced that it was developing Sonar for the Mac, and plans to release a free alpha version soon. The press release and video were a little short on details, so I contacted Cakewalk to find out more. 

So what will this free alpha version be like? “At this point we are not positive on what edition of Sonar will be the release,” said my Cakewalk source. Sonar has three different versions, Artist, Professional and Platinum, with the latter having the most robust feature set. “Presently we have been testing Platinum to see what all works and does not work,” my source said, so hopefully, the Mac version will be closer to Platinum from a feature standpoint.

What we do know is that the alpha version of Sonar’s Mac release will offer unlimited track counts, and will be fully functional. You will be able to record and mix your projects from it with no limitations on bouncing and track rendering. When I asked which versions of OS X will be supported, the response was “We've been running Sonar and testing on Yosemite. We have not gotten into detail yet about specific version compatibility, but 10.8 Mountain Lion is working as well. As of right now we can say 10.8 or later.”

The biggest limitation of the alpha version of Sonar will be that it won’t support third-party plug-ins. According to Cakewalk, it will contain “a subset of Cakewalk plug-ins and ProChannel modules…support for third party plug-ins and video will be added later.” Cakewalk hasn’t specified which of its virtual instruments will be included, but since there’s no third-party plug-in support, I’m assuming that there will be a decent collection — otherwise, it would be pretty difficult to do any kind of MIDI production. Another limitation of the alpha version is that it will only support audio interfaces with Core Audio drivers, not those with custom ASIO drivers.

The free alpha version will be released later in the summer or in the early fall (a specific release date hasn’t been announced). Based on the response that it gets, Cakewalk will decide whether to move forward. If so, the next step would be a beta version, and then a full release. How long it would take to actually get a full commercial version of Sonar to the market is unknown, and I couldn’t get Cakewalk to give me an estimate. In any case, I’m intrigued at the possibility of Sonar joining the DAW competition on the Mac side, and I’m looking forward to checking out the alpha version.

Something else I’m looking forward to is your response to the article “If It Sounds Good, Do It!”, that we published this week. It’s an interview with Sylvia Massy, a producer and engineer who’s worked with Prince, Red Hot Chili Peppers, System of a Down and many others. Massy just published a book called Recording Unhinged, that’s full of non-standard recording and production techniques from her own experience and from a large group of production luminaries such as Jack Joseph Puig, Bob Clearmountain, Al Schmitt and many others. Massy’s willingness to deviate from “by the book” techniques is refreshing and shows that what matters in recording is the result, not the method you used to get there.