If you cut your teeth on a portable digital multi-track recorder—or, and I'm dating myself here, a 4-track cassette studio—then prepare to be amazed. Cakewalk SONAR X3 ($149.99 list) may be the least expensive version of SONAR available, but it's no cut-rate digital audio workstation software. In doing this review, it would be easy to look at all the things taken out from the higher-end Studio and Producer versions of SONAR X3, and list them all as cons for this product. But that's irrelevant to someone who lacks the extra cash. More usefully, let's look at it from the other side: Does SONAR X3 offer everything you need to produce professional results, or do you really need to spend more than that? Thankfully, I can report the former is true. Cakewalk SONAR X3 is a seriously flexible program for the price.

Setup, Recording, and Interface

For this review, I tested SONAR X3c on a Core i5-powered Lenovo ThinkPad running 64-bit Windows 7. As with the Producer and Studio versions, there's no copy protection the way there is with Pro Tools and Cubase, which is a huge relief when using an ultrabook or other laptop with few USB ports. Installation is as easy as purchasing and downloading the software from Cakewalk's website, although you may find a better deal with a boxed version in a music store, depending on whether there are any sales at the time you're reading this.

For recording, what's great about SONAR X3 is that, unlike Avid Pro Tools Express, which comes bundled with audio interfaces like the Avid Mbox Mini and limits you to 16 audio tracks and just eight instrument tracks, Cakewalk's entry-level DAW version has no recording restrictions. You get unlimited audio, MIDI, instrument tracks, sends, and busses. You also get the same 64-bit audio engine and VST3 plug-in support from SONAR X3 Producer. SONAR X3's audio engine seems faster and smoother than before. I had noticed odd hesitations on occasion with SONAR X1, even when running on fast quad-core PCs, but I saw none of this behavior with SONAR X3.

The modular Skylight user interface is a gem, and one of the best things about the entire SONAR lineup. It manages to stay reasonably uncluttered and attractive, while simultaneously letting you do everything you need to do when recording, arranging, and mixing, depending on how you lay out the windows. The home screen lets you arrange just about any combination of the track view, track inspector, score view, piano roll, and event list, and lock it so that everything is on one screen, similar to the way Logic Pro works on the Mac. Four shortcut keys (C, D, B, and I) toggle the four main elements on the display on and off. As before, you can create extra screen sets, letting you arrange the various interface elements, windows, and plug-ins across multiple monitors, and then calling up each one with the corresponding numeric key.

Note: The slideshow below is of Cakewalk SONAR X3 Producer, which has the same interface but extra plug-ins not included with the base version.

This program begs for a 1080p (1,920-by-1080-pixel) touch screen or external monitor, either of which makes SONAR X3 downright pleasurable to work in. But it's a lot more cramped on, say, the ThinkPad's 1,366-by-768-pixel laptop display. All major DAWs, including Pro Tools, Logic, and Cubase, are easier to use at higher screen resolutions, but none seem to require one quite the way SONAR X3 does.

Editing Tools

As before, the Control Bar at the top contains oversized track control buttons and easy access to the metronome, recording resolution, tempo, and meter. You can expand the control bar to add sections for loop recording, editing, and other features; and you can set the bar to float as well as stay affixed to the top. You can drag and drop the various Control Bar sections around. Cakewalk also improved the Control Bar's Smart Tools; for example, you can highlight an audio clip, click near the top header, and drag it left or right—or down, in which case the system creates a new track automatically. You can hold down CTRL to double the clip as well.

One of the new signature features in SONAR X3 is the comping tool, which lets you assemble the perfect track from a series of take lanes. Each time you record, it creates a new lane. A special mode lets you quick comp without the mouse; just hit shift and the space bar and you can toggle between the various tracks using the arrow keys. Each time you hit Enter for each piece, it jumps to the top, so you can assemble the take very quickly without stopping the audio engine. This makes quick work of assembling lead and background vocals, and (arguably) can be even faster than it is in Pro Tools, assuming you take the time to learn SONAR X3's way of doing things.

The step sequencer and matrix view offer many possibilities for beat programming, and you still get SONAR's workable-if-not-class-leading notation view. Unfortunately, once you begin to dig deeper into the interface, and especially with regard to MIDI editing, MIDI plug-ins, quantizing, and hardware configuration pages, you'll see practically the same UI elements you would have seen in Cakewalk Pro Audio nearly 20 years ago. There's still way too much "Windows 95" underneath Skylight. It all works well enough, but it looks dated, complete with too many crowded dialog boxes and the old Windows system font.