So, I took the plunge and used a crossgrade option, to buy Sonar 7 Producer Edition. It’s an awesome package, and I fear I will suffer from sleep depravation for some time to come now, while learning to use it properly.

The idea is to use Ableton Live for song creation and live endeavours, but to shift environment to Sonar for mixing and mastering. Not that Live is weak in those areas, but rather that I want to keep these steps separate to avoid tampering too much with the song itself when doing a final mix of it.

Also, my strategy is to render as much as audio tracks as possible, as this has proved to be more future-proof than midi tracks. I have some songs that I would love to remix today, but only exist as a stereo track and some midi track from an obsolete sequencer lost ages ago.

Why Sonar? Well, it’s an impressive package today, with Z3ta+ and some really good mastering fx included, and it’s written for Windows. Logic was lost to the world of Mac OS years ago, and Cubase is not an option for me as I find it too cryptic.