Sonar Producer Edition X1b Build 8

Sonar Producer Edition is a professional tool designed for audio creating, editing and mixing.

The user interface of the program is clean and easy to navigate through. The first thing you need to do is start a project and import your audio files (including instrument tracks, audio effects, lyrics and notation).

So, you can add loops to your project, start a recording session, manually enter MIDI notes, move, split and crop clips (don't worry, there's an Undo button), add effects (e.g. compressor/gate, equalizer, reverb, delay) and enable automation recording.

But Sonar Producer Edition also allows you to import video or only its audio stream, burn an audio CD, configure various playback settings in the "Mix" module, silence tracks, input echo, enable "Dim Solo" or "Exclusive Solo" mode, change audio track parameters, and more.

Furthermore, you can record music from a MIDI instrument, enable "Input Quantize", "Arpeggiator" and punch recording, use "Groove Clips", freeze tracks and synths, insert musical notes on a staff, use various tools (e.g. smart, freehand, line, pattern, scrub), configure “Snap to Grid” settings, and so on.

Sonar Producer Edition uses a high amount of system memory, comes with a detailed help file (contains tutorials and a glossary), sometimes it takes a while to apply changes, but we haven't encountered major problems. Too bad the trial version is limited. Since beginners would have a very difficult time getting accustomed to this complex software, we mainly recommend it to professionals.