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SONAR vs Reaper (as if I'm going to go there)
I'm reading threads on Cakewalk's beta group ranting about the lambasting they are getting on the Reaper forum. So I go to the reaper forum and holy shit they aren't kidding.
In the 9 years at Cakewalk I learned to have thicker skin about this stuff. It was still very hard and demoralizing at times to have just finished a very difficult release cycle, complete with the insane hours, last minute fires, deadlines and stress and then have the public forum focus on one or two things and rip the shit out of us and our excellent beta team. I like to think I toughened up a little more every release, but it's only human to not enjoy having your blood sweat and tears ripped on like that.
Here's the other part I find amusing: When SONAR version x hit the street, it invariably raised a chorus of "this is totally broken... how do I revert back to version x - 1?... why don't they test this?" And yet... not only am I already using this released version in my own studio on real client projects with no problem, but I'd been using the freeking untested daily builds for the last 3 months on real client projects! Completely broken... bullshit!
It's interesting being outside of it all now. Honestly I don't give a crap which daw anyone uses and I can't understand why anyone who doesn't work for a daw manufacturer should really care either. While at Cake, I was always mystified about how violent people would get about their daw allegiances. Now it seems completely pathological. These guys should stay away from my sister (and I don't even have a sister).
Look at the folks on KVR, Reaper, Steinberg and Cakewalk forums with over TEN freeking THOUSAND posts in their histories ranting about the other daw and anyone dumb enough to either use it or develop it. It strikes me that they are much more busy talking about daws than using them. Any slight workflow efficiency that one daw has over the other has got to be orders of magnitude smaller than the time spent writing these posts. As William Shatner said to the trekies on that famous SNL skit... "get a life!!".
Now that I've left Cakewalk, I can theoretically say about anything I want about the products. I know where the warts are. I know where the great parts are. I know very first hand on what went into building this stuff. Bragging or ripping on any of these things completely misses the point. I know how to use this software REALLY WELL and I bet there are plenty of people who know how to use brand x (or PT, R, etc) really well too. So let's just use our tools and make great work and brag about THAT if it's worthy. After all, would you buy a house from a builder who uses your favorite brand of bulldozer? Or would you buy from a builder who makes great houses? (I'm not even going to look but I bet there are idiots on diesel equipment forums bragging/ripping on CAT vs Kuboto - get a life!).
It seems to me that the daws are all converging in capability and this has been the case for some time. It's a beautiful thing for users. Maybe not so beautiful of a thing for manufacturers trying to stake out a unique niche. I'm sure I could do just about anything I do in daw x with daw y. X works for me, Y works for you, it's a beautiful world, shut up already.
Making a great daw is REALLY hard. I have great respect for anyone who actually does it. I happen to use one of them more than the others. But I sure don't have an ill word toward anyone involved in this work.
It's too bad these 10K+ posters don't put their energy elsewhere and do something about the real problems facing the music production world. Is it just me that finds it maddeningly insane that after all this evolution toward higher and higher quality and production capabilities that by far, the most common delivery of this audio is over... ear-buds and fucking mp3s? Now THAT gets me violent! Ah screw it - it's more fun to complain about which daw the other guy uses to make mp3s. Get a life.