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The Sonar interface remains a little dreary and crowded.

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Fixes and tweaks

Some of Sonar 8's additions and enhancements finally bring it up to speed with its competitors. We've always wondered, for example, why you couldn't arm recording while the audio was playing or recording, allowing audio to be punched into a track on the fly? It saves disk space and helps keep the creative juices flowing. Tape decks and competing DAWs allow it and now, finally, Sonar does too.

Users of previous Sonars have also levelled complaints at Cakewalk's ASIO implementation. It used to be that ASIO devices were occasionally stopped and restarted upon engaging the transport. Thankfully, now that this problem has been remedied, ASIO devices are always running.

Happily, one of Sonar 7's most irritating issues has been resolved – the fact that the audio metronome would skip the first beat. This was due to the fact that the first ASIO buffer was inaudible, and at long last it's been rectified.

Some of Sonar 8's additions and enhancements finally bring it up to speed with its competitors.

Sonar users looking to integrate their DAW with external hardware will also be pleased to know that Sonar now enables the assignment of audio to mono outputs. This makes it a snap to apply a favourite vintage processor or mix tracks in a hardware mixer for some of that old time analogue mojo.

As if that wasn't enough, Sonar 8's new Clip Selection Groups function enables clips to be grouped together and edited as one. You can group selected clips or you can automatically group together any clips created by any multitrack recording.

When you're busy playing with your new Clip Selection Groups, you'll likely want to make use of the Aim Assist Cursor – a new visual guide for lining things up in the Clips pane. Activate the Aim Assist button in the Track view toolbar and you'll be able to avail yourself of the Aim Assist Line, now visible in the Clips pane.

Effects

Both Sonar 8 Studio and Producer Editions offer a wealth of high quality processors. All your old favourites are still here, but now the collection has been augmented with some serious axe-slinging firepower.

Included in the Producer Edition, a stripped-down 'LE' version of Native Instruments' Guitar Rig 3 offers a vast palette of guitar processing power, with three amps and cabinets, nearly a dozen effects, a built-in tuner and a slightly redundant metronome among the features included.

Additionally, the Producer Edition includes the TL-64 Tube Leveler, a fully automatable dynamics unit designed by Gallo Engineering, who are behind the Studio Devil guitar amp sims that have garnered much acclaim.

Cakewalk has utilised the linear-phase technology found in its LP-64 EQ and LP-64 Multiband plug-ins to fuel the new TS-64 Transient Shaper. This seemingly innocuous little delight gives you full control over the transients of the incoming signal. You can change the attack and shape characteristics with a few simple controls.

Finally, both packages include a brace of Channel Tools that provide control over the left/right channel placement, gain and phase. You can use them to decode mid-side recordings or narrow (or widen) the stereo field.