Sonar 6Either someone at American Musical Supply has some explaining to do, or Cakewalk has orchestrated a handy leak of the upcoming Sonar 6 release. In either case, it’s good because I was worried that the folks on the Cakewalk user forums were beginning to turn on each other.

So, assuming this is the complete feature list, what are we looking at?

For the most part it seems a huge chunk of resources went into improving the overall Sonar experience, and for that I say, Hell Yeah! For the interface there is a redesigned Console view, customizable user-interface, more advanced color management, and improvements to Zoom. It also seems that the timing engine got a good deal of attention, with Auto-snap tools, clip-stretching, MIDI from audio (I imagine it’s a sort of drum replacement feature, a la Drumagog), and improvements to the Groove Clip handling. Automation gets some new bells & whistles; so too the Synth Rack (I’m thinking it’s in the model of Kore). I’m personally very happy to see that we can now organize our plugins without having to hack the Adapter.

For new toys: Session Drummer hits version 2 (a rhythm track pattern sequencer) – I never really used the first version (too many more intuitive solutions) but I’m curious. There’s also what they’re calling the VC-64 Vintage Channel, which appears to be Vintage Warmer type solution. (There’s speculation that this was built, at least in part, by Voxengo, and if anyone knows about analog-style EQ & compression it is they; I have high hopes for this.) But that’s it; all the other included plugins have been around since the last version.

If I’ve learned anything from past Sonar updates, there will probably be a lot of under the hood improvements that aren’t so sexy they get their own bullet points. I’m curious to start uncovering these. But on the basis of this early peak, it looks like this is really going to make working with Sonar vastly better.

Plus, the new color scheme for the box is very pleasing.