Anybody doing cross-DAW collaborations with Cakewalk/Sonar?

[Brian Middleton]

A friend who is a Cakewalk guy wants to do a project where he's doing basic tracks at his place in Cakewalk and then bringing the files to my place to add tracks. Problem is, unlike DP where the audio files for each project live separately and portably in their own folder, apparently in Cakewalk all the audio files live in one humongous folder and when you want to transport a song to another studio, you have to create a bundle (.cwb) file which can only be opened by other Cakewalk users.

Is this really the case? If so, does that mean he's going to have to do some kind of bounce/export of each separate audio track in order to do any work in some other DAW? Is there a better way?

[mikebeckmotu]

Is this really the case? If so, does that mean he's going to have to do some kind of bounce/export of each separate audio track in order to do any work in some other DAW? Is there a better way?

I'd say this is the case, yes. I exchange tracks with Sonar users, and in each case, audio exports are the best bet. The project "document" will not open in another DAW.
When I send DP projects for use in Sonar, I export all tracks as audio from the start point of the song so that they can all be imported into Sonar without any worry of the tracks not lining up. I sometimes include virtual instrument MIDI, in case they want to import it and use it with their own instruments.
When they send me files, they do the same out of Sonar.
Solid State Logic has their utility for converting DAW files to other DAWs, but when I last looked, DP wasn't included.
It's been awhile since I used Sonar, but it may have a way to bounce all tracks at once to separate files. I haven't seen the latest version yet (version .

edit: that smiley was supposed to be the numeral eight, but I'm leaving it as is!

[bigdaddy]

I have a friend who has Sonar Home Studio Edition. We also want to exchange files and it *would* be easy, but the Home Studio Edition of Sonar does not support OMF Export like DP. If it did, or if you have a higher end version of Sonar, you should be able to do an OMF export from either app and it should load into either app.

I do this between DP and Logic and it works a treat!!

[panhead]

has this changed or isthis still the case?
someone ask about sending me a sonar project.
will DP open it?
tanks gays and gals pan

[HCMarkus]

I do it like MIke Beck... simple and straightforward.

One thing: make sure to set proper DP project tempo before importing OR turn off time stretch in DP before you import as you can get issues if project tempos do not match.

[panhead]

thats not the same as opening a sonar project.

i have a guy wanting to send me a sonar project not a bunch of wave files.
so i assume theres no way to open the sonar project in DP?

[bayswater]

Setting aside a few cases with PT, and the OMF/AFF format, which doesn't work well in many cases, I don't think any DAW can read any other's format.

But didn't Sonar go free when the company went under? Can't you get it and do whatever needs to be done?

[HCMarkus]

Setting aside a few cases with PT, and the OMF/AFF format, which doesn't work well in many cases, I don't think any DAW can read any other's format.

But didn't Sonar go free when the company went under? Can't you get it and do whatever needs to be done?

What bays says on both points... although it looks like the Free version may be Windows only.

EDIT: But then I found this: https://www.cakewalk.com/Products/SONAR-Mac-Prototype

Good Luck!

[panhead]

well i was hoping there was an option for him to save as a file i could open.
i am mac only so i dont think i can help him.
he does not want to save everything to a wave so i ended up just passing.

[mhschmieder]

Not sure about the current incarnation of Sonar as I haven't looked since it changed hands, but my main collaborator for several years was on Sonar (which I almost chose over DP when I finally got my first home computer around 2002 or 2003), and the main thing was that I had to get him in the habit of zeroing and consolidating his tracks.

He was too nervous about disc space and handled every track like it was a collection of infrequent tom hits, stripping all silence between. I could never get things to line up that way; the time markings in such files from Sonar were not reliable either.

Ultimately, we got to working strictly in consolidated, zeroed, BWAV files. But I guess it may have been a pain at his end that I wasn't aware of.