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After being acquired by BandLab in 2018, the former Sonar, which previously belonged to Gibson, was replaced by "Cakewalk by BandLab", the new name for Sonar. And the good news: it was released for free!
In 2025, Cakewalk by BandLab gives way to its successor, which takes back its original name: Cakewalk Sonar. This new Sonar now comes in two versions: a paid subscription-based edition and a free edition with only a few non-essential features removed. However, these limitations may be frustrating enough for advanced users to push them toward choosing the paid subscription… or exploring other options.
Sonar remains my favorite DAW, although I also enjoy using Studio One, Cubase, and Reaper. But old habits die hard, and Sonar is still the one I use most willingly.
Reaper is interesting for several reasons: first, because it is very comprehensive and allows you to work just as effectively as with other leading DAWs on the market; second, because it has one of the most efficient input/output routing systems, its interface is fully customizable, it is updated very regularly, and above all, it is cheaper than its competitors: 60 dollars (about 45 euros), with no limitations. However, note that while Reaper does come with some plugins, it offers far fewer than what you get with the most complete versions of its competitors. Therefore, it’s more accurate to compare Reaper to the basic editions of other DAWs — usually priced around a hundred euros — rather than to the full-featured versions, which often approach 400 euros or more. Reaper remains a very compelling choice.
Of course, Reaper isn’t perfect, but it can do pretty much everything. After that, it’s a matter of habit. I’m used to Sonar, I like this DAW, and I don’t particularly want to switch and relearn on another one everything I already know how to do. That said, I’ve had the opportunity to try Reaper, and it’s clear that if I were starting out in computer-based music production today, I would start with Reaper. Inexpensive and highly capable... why hesitate? Moreover, it is available for Windows, Wine, and Mac OS X, and it’s compatible with VST, VSTi, DX, DXi, and AU plugins.
Reaper can be downloaded and used entirely for free, with no time limits. However, it is still a paid software, and it is your moral duty to purchase a license if you use it regularly. Its price-to-performance ratio is unbeatable, and for a regular user, the expense is completely justified.
Cubase is a digital audio workstation (DAW) developed by Steinberg, designed for recording, arranging, and editing music. The latest version is Cubase 14. Among its features are: a virtual drum instrument, a vocal editor with real-time pitch correction, VST expression tools for easily editing instrument articulations, improved data handling and automation, and a convolution reverb plugin.
Studio One is a digital audio workstation (DAW) developed by PreSonus, a brand that also designs audio interfaces, preamps, and mixing consoles. Although PreSonus is primarily known as a hardware manufacturer, their Studio One DAW is a solid alternative to sequencers from other brands. Studio One has its origins in the free Kristal sequencer, which has since been discontinued.
Studio One offers excellent ergonomics and also includes Melodyne, a plugin that allows easy audio correction (pitch shifting or time-stretching). However, it does not include a score editor and comes with relatively few virtual instruments.
Studio One is available in several editions with varying feature sets, and there is even a free version with no time limit. The downside is that this free version is not compatible with plugins (VST or others), which significantly reduces its usefulness. Nevertheless, it is a good opportunity to try the software without the usual limitations of demo versions.
Logic Pro is a 32/64 bit audio and midi D.A.W. for Mac OS X. it is part of Apple's profesional music software range. A light version, Logic Express with the same interface and the same audio engine but less options is also available at a lower price.
Pro Tools is widely used by professionals throughout the audio industries for recording and editing in music production, film scoring, film and television post production. Pro Tools has three types of systems; HD, LE, and M-powered. HD is the high-end package and is an integration of hardware and software. The hardware includes an external A/D converter and internal PCI or PCIe audio cards with onboard DSP. Fundamentally, Pro Tools, like all Digital Audio Workstation software, is similar to a multi-track tape recorder and mixer, with additional features that can only be performed in the digital domain. The high-end version supports sample rates of up to 192 kHz and bit depths of 16 and 24 bit, opens WAV, AIFF, mp3, SDII audio files and QuickTime video files. It features time code, tempo maps, automation and surround sound capabilities.
Ableton Live is a loop-based software music sequencer and DAW for Mac OS and Windows by Ableton. Live is a tool made for composing and arrangements, but its design and ergonomics are mostly live-oriented. The user interface was optimized for live performances. It is reduced to a minimum and is easily usable on a one-screen configuration. The absence of pop-up windows, its unique window divided into 5 categories makes it easy to use on laptop computers that may not be as powerful as their desktop counterparts. The different categories may be hidden or displayed with a simple click on the corresponding icon. The layout is then reorganized depending on the active categories. For live performances, you can display the loop points or the starting point of one or more clips, and they will remain in tempo with one another ("warp" feature you can trigger on the fly).
Acid comes in 2 ranges: Pro and Music Studio. The pro range has more features. Acid Music Studio costs about 50 euros, and the pro version about 150 euros.
Available for Mac first and now for Windows, Digital Performer includes many high-quality effects and an excellent score editor. Virtual instruments on the other hand are not numerous. 30-day limited demo versions are available on the official website if you want to give it a try.
This software is the descendant of Fruity Loops, which was perfectly suited for Electro or Hip Hop music. Nowadays, FL Studio makes it possible to record any genre, but the way it works makes it still not really suited for acoustic musics. It is based on a concept of patterns added to a playlist.
It used to be dedicated to MIDI recordings, but Reason now handles audio. Still, for historical reasons, many Propellerhead Reason users still produce electronic music. Reason has a very powerful routing system, through the used of virtual cables, which could discourage some people.
Unlike Reason, Samplitude was long limitied to audio management, and could not handle MIDI data. It's no longer the case. Samplitude is based on the concept of audio objects, where each audio clip has its own routing and automation capabilities. Samplitude includes many effects plugins and virtual instruments, as well as sound banks. More technical than other DAWs, the full version is also pretty expensive.
Tracktion is available for PC, Mac and Ubuntu. It costs 60 dollars for the base version, and up to 200 dollars in bundle with other in-house software (plugins and virtual instruments). That makes it one of the least expensive DAWs on the market. Users like the ergonomy of the software, but there seems to be a number of annoying bugs (rendering problems, unexpected crashes...), that will hopefully be fixed at some point.
EnergyXT has been created by Jorgen Aase. EnergyXT is compatible with the VST standard, the ASIO protocol and the REX2 format from Propellerhead Software. This DAW is compatible with 16, 24 or 32 bit files, mono or stereo. The user interface is organized around a menu bar, a tool bar, tabs, a navigation window and a main window which, by default, shows the sequencer, but can also display the "Mixer" and "Modular" parts thanks to the customizable tabs. It's well suited for live performance and small configurations, with a low price of about 40 euros. It's rather simple to use but remains somewhat less powerful than more complete (and more expensive) DAWs.
The company Zynewave has been created by Frits Nielsen, a software engineer, who developed the DAW Podium on his own. As it's a one-man company, Podium may not be as rich and complete as other major DAWs such as Sonar, Cubase or Logic, but it offers many of the features you might expect from a DAW. As a result, you may encounter compatibility issues with some hardware and plugins. Podium supports recording and editing of audio and MIDI, and hosts VST instrument and effect plugins. It is available for Windows as a 32 or 64-bit software and costs 50 dollars.
You will be glad to know that a free version is available. it's adequately called Podium Free, and it has pretty much the same capabilities as the paid-for version, minus a few limitations. The most severe limitation is that the plugin multiprocessing is disabled, which means you might experience processor overloading if you use too many plugins within a project. Yet, it's worth trying, because this free version is way more powerful than other free DAWs like Kristal (obsolete in so many ways) and Audacity (really inferior to all other DAWs).
Let's be honest, these free DAWs are no match for the retail DAWs.
Kristal is no longer developed and updated, so it may even be incompatible with recent plugins. But it gave birth to Studio One, a retail DAW from PreSonus.
As for Audacity, it's more an audio editor than a real DAW, even though you can use it as such, with severe limitations.
You'd rather use a DAW such as Reaper, which costs only 45 euros and is way more complete and modern than those free software
It's much more interesting to start using Reaper, which costs only 45 euros and is much more complet and modern than theses free software, or even the free version of Studio One, even though it's incompatible with plugins. I should also mention Podium Free, a very interesting free version of Podium (presented above) which also supports VST plugins with a few limitations.
Those DAWs are way more complex (just a question of habit...) but they are the real thing and will train newcomers about the logic behind DAWs. If you get hooked, then you may choose whatever DAW suits you best.
As a conclusion, free DAWs will help you out occasionally, but don't expect to make serious audio work with them in the long term.
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Moss
le 29/11/2014 à 09h04
Bravo, c'est clair et intelligent, sans les lieux communs habituels. Mais petite erreur sur la compression, ayant beaucoup travaillé sur le sujet : l'attack et le release commencent dès que le signal franchit le seuil, dans un sens ou dans l'autre. Il n'y a pas de temporisation mais un fade-in pour l'attaque et un fade-out pour le release, plus ou moins lents selon le réglage.
Neyutakim
le 21/10/2014 à 01h36
Super mon gars, et surtout un grand merci pour tout ce que tu fais !!! C`est vraiment cool !!! Vraiment !! Continue comme ça !!! merci.
SoloDuck
le 16/08/2014 à 14h11
Salut Grebz,
Nickel tes tutos, très très utile. Je suis assez fan des simu de LePou, juste un détail qui me chagrine, tu fournis les presets de tes démos .fxp, mais comment les charger dans les simu ? Je me ramasse une erreur "Metal - HyBrit.fxp This file is not a preset or bank for Poulin_HyBrit_Head_v1_1a." Y aurait-il des versions différentes ? A+ m/
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<em>Bonjour,
Après vérification, les presets fxp fonctionnent bien chez moi dans Sonar et dans Reaper, mais je ne dispose pas d'autres séquenceurs pour vérifier. Je suis en train de réaliser des captures d'écran de chacun des presets, afin que vous puissiez reproduire les réglages, même sans le fichier de preset.
Vous pouvez accéder aux captures d'écran avec un lien que j'ajoute en-dessous de chaque preset téléchargeable.
Grebz</em>
zimblot
le 08/07/2014 à 17h34
Bonjour,
En préambule, je tiens à vous féliciter pour votre site et l'altruïsme dont vous faites preuve. Merci. Ma question : J'ai téléchargé sur votre site, 5ORCERY. J'aimerais savoir (si c'est possible) à quels styles de morceaux correspondent chacun des presets de ce plugin. N'étant pas "un chat" dans la MAO, je les utilise à l'intuition et quand même un peu à l'écoute, mais c'est vraiment empirique. Si vous pouviez me guider je vous en serais très reconnaissant.
Merci d'avance.
Cordialement.
Jazzhands
le 07/06/2014 à 21h37
Another free DAW to add is <a href="http://lmms.sourceforge.net/home.php" target="_blank">LMMS</a>. I use the Windows version.
Traduction :
Autre séquenceur gratuit, <a href="http://lmms.sourceforge.net/home.php" target="_blank">LMMS</a>. J'utilise la version Windows.
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<em>Thanks for the tip, but LMMS doesn't allow for audio recording. You can process audio that you import into it (audio recorded through another recording software of your choice, or any audio files you have at your disposal), but it's too big a limitation for me to consider presenting it.
It is a major drawback in my opinion, for all the people who want to record vocals or instruments through a microphone, or by plugging it directly.
Of course, for anyone who only wants to use virtual instruments or existing audio files, LMMS will be an option. And it's free, as you mentioned.
Among great free software that compete with commercial software, you have GIMP (vs Photoshop), Blender (vs 3D Studio and Maya), Open Office and Libre Office (vs Microsoft Office), but I'm still waiting for a complete free D.A.W. that could rival with Sonar, Cubase or ProTools and such...
Reaper is what comes closest to that dream as it can be used for free without limitations, but it's not a freeware and you are supposed to pay for it if you use it.
Traduction :
Merci du tuyau, mais LMMS ne permet pas d'enregistrer de l'audio. On peut traiter de l'audio que l'on importe (enregistré avec un autre logiciel d'enregistrement de son choix, ou tout fichier audio à disposition), mais c'est une limitation trop important pour que j'envisage d'en faire une présentation.
C'est un inconvénient rédhibitoire à mes yeux pour tous ceux qui souhaitent enregistrer des voix ou des instruments via un micro ou en branchement direct.
Bien sûr, pour ceux qui se contentent d'utiliser des instruments virtuels ou des fichiers audio existants, LMMS est un choix possible. Et gratuit, comme vous l'avez dit.
Parmi les excellents logiciels gratuits susceptibles de rivaliser avec des logiciels payants, il y a GIMP (vs Photoshop), Blender (vs 3D Studio et Maya), Open Office et Libre Office (vs Microsoft Office), mais j'attends toujours l'arrivée d'un séquenceur gratuit capable de rivaliser avec Sonar, Cubase, ProTools et leurs équivalents...
Reaper est ce qui s'approche le plus de ce rêve puisqu'il est utilisable gratuitement sans limitations, mais ce n'est pas un logiciel gratuit pour autant et vous êtes censé le payer si vous vous en servez.
Grebz</em>