Cakewalk Sonar Home Studio 4 review

Home Studio is based on Cakewalk’s professional Sonar software, which has been one of the best sequencers on the PC platform for many years now.

It comes with a slightly trimmed-down features list in comparison to its illustrious sibling, and thankfully also a trimmed-down price tag.

Cakewalk and Steinberg have been battling it out for supremacy in the sequencer market for years, so it’s not surprising that both match each other blow for blow in terms of features, and that both packages share an awful lot in common.

For example, Home Studio has a similar arrange window to Steinberg's Cubase SE where you can record audio and Midi side by side.

Here you can spilt up longer tracks into shorter pieces and easily move them around on the timeline. But you can also perform other edits, including adding automation to create volume ramps and the like.

When it comes to more in-depth editing of Midi data, Cakewalk provides a wealth of different options spread across the three distinct Midi editors, but most people will end up sticking to the easy-to-use piano-roll editor for most tasks.

Home Studio 4 also provides good looping features. The Loop Explorer allows you to search through the audio files on your hard drive and audition loops at the same tempo as your current project.

Cakewalk has included its own loop library on the disc, but you can also quickly create your own loops out of mp3 and wav files from within the application.

The software comes with 15 audio effects plug-ins and a further nine effects that can be applied to Midi tracks.

You also get three software synths, including a virtual analogue synth and a Virtual Sound Canvas plug-in for more general sounds. On top of this, it supports DirectX and VST plug-ins, so you can add lots of extra effects and plug-ins later if you feel the need.

A welcome addition to this version is the Track Presets feature. This lets you set up a track’s inputs, outputs and effects and then save the whole lot as a preset to call up at a later date.

You could, for example, create a preset that you use for guitar tracks complete with effects and equalisation (EQ) settings and quickly recall it every time you start work on a new guitar project.

Mixing and mastering are also spot on as the mixer in Home Studio is cleanly laid out and clearly labelled, so it’s really easy to add both inserted and global effects. Naturally the automation of mixes is fully supported.

Of course, because this is essentially just a cut-down version of Sonar, there’s an upgrade path clearly laid out for you up to the professional package, but Home Studio also supports the Rewire protocol so you can also easily integrate other applications such as Reason or FL Studio into it and use their synths in your projects.

Sonar Music Studio is a great product that packs in lots of excellent features. But it is worth remembering that this is a serious music studio tool and is not aimed at absolute beginners.

It will take quite a while to learn how it all works and even longer to get the most out of it. However, those who do persevere will find themselves richly rewarded.

This article is part of a group test of budget audio-sequencing software. Others are:
Intro and Editor's Choice
Arturia Storm 3
Image Line FL Studio 6
Magix Music Studio 11 Deluxe
Steinberg Cubase SE 3
Setting up your home studio

See also:

Steinberg Cubase SE 3 review

A powerful package with a great range of features  25 Apr 2006

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