Rapture LE is a special version of the award winning Rapture synthesizer. It includes over 200 programs & hundreds of oscillator shapes. Perfect for today's pop, dance, and electronic music.

Loop Explorer 2.0 lets you browse and preview audio and MIDI groove clips and patterns. Quickly build backing tracks for your song and preview MIDI with the virtual instrument of your choice.
TruePianos Amber is a VSTi that provides realistic piano sounds, superb playability, and acoustic-style responsiveness. Get brilliant sounds with low CPU usage for optimal performance.The Integrated Step Sequencer is the easiest way to create beats, grooves, and lines for all your instruments. Use your mouse or the included drum patterns to get a project started or to add new parts.

Record

SONAR 8 provides the most comprehensive recording features of any DAW on the market today. It's designed to meet the needs of even the most demanding professional—whether recording a solo performance, a band, or even an orchestra..
Unlimited tracks Recording without limits—unlimited tracks of audio and MIDI, unlimited simultaneous inputs, loop recording, and the ability to record for hours without stopping means you'll be able to capture all your ideas, no matter how big.

Session Drummer 2 is the fastest and most fun way to create realistic and vital drum tracks. It works great when you want the sound and feel of a real drummer to play along with.
Guitar Rig 3 LE allows you to plug-in to the latest award-winning guitar amp modeler from Native Instruments. It includes 3 amps & cabinets, 11 effects, tuner, metronome, and over 50 presets.

Track Templates make it easy to get your project started. SONAR includes a variety of templates for audio, virtual instrument tracks, and even entire projects. Save your own templates any recall them instantly any time you need that sound.
Stay inspired with a new Dynamic Transport offering true rewind, fast forward, and pause; improved jog, shuttle, and scrub; audition and anytime recording for on the fly arming/unarming of tracks. Pure power Pure power—SONAR pioneered support for multicore and multiprocessor computers, Windows Vista, and x64 processing, now in version 8 we've optimized for high track count/low latency performance and a more responsive user experience.

Edit

SONAR 8 offers precision editing tools you won't find in any other DAW. Whether you're editing audio or MIDI, it's easy to make pinpoint edits and fix issues you didn't think were possible. 

 AudioSnap allows you to non-destructively fix audio timing, make instant tempo changes to an entire project—even quantize audio like you would MIDI.

Roland V-Vocal editor lets you achieve perfect vocals tracks and is integrated right inside SONAR. It includes pitch correction, phrasing, dynamics, vibrato, and Pitch to MIDI conversion. Comping in SONAR is a breeze with powerful tools that take the headache out of getting the perfect take. Easily select the best performance from multiple takes and piece it together to sound like one flawless track.

Smart MIDI Tools revolutionize MIDI editing by providing you with a powerful and customizable workflow innovation. Three tools can each be configured to perform multiple operations, saving you valuable time. 

Control

SONAR 8 gives you deep control over virtual instruments, mixing, and more with innovative breakthroughs like Active Controller Technology.  Active Controller Technology—get total control of virtual instruments, effects, and mixing from your MIDI controllers and control surfaces. Now includes even more ACT mappings. Edirol PCR MIDI Controllers—easily add popular MIDI controllers including the Edirol PCR series for serious control of your virtual instruments. Even use ACT to mix your project via a MIDI controller.

Edirol M16-dx Control Surfaces—SONAR 8 supports popular control surfaces including those from Edirol, Mackie, Euphonix, and Frontier Design. Enjoy the best control surface support in the industry.

Synth Rack—SONAR 8 includes a Synth Rack for easy access to all the virtual instruments in your project. Easily manage all the instruments in your project through one simple view.

Mix

SONAR 8 offers the perfect mixing environment for any professional engineer. SONAR's industry-first, end-to-end, 64-bit double precision floating point mix engine allows you to mix with sonic clarity using a suite of versatile effects, powerful mixing tools, and endless routing possibilities. 
Configurable Console—control volume, EQ, sends, pan, and much more just like a hardware mixer. You can also easily integrate most popular Control Surfaces or MIDI controllers. 64-bit audio mix engine 64-bit audio mix engine means you are mixing with the best audio quality in the industry today. Best of all, you can take advantage of this audio engine on both 32-bit and 64-bit PCs.
Channel Tools Channel Tools provides easy and powerful zero-latency channel processing for adjusting L/R channel placement, gain, pan/width, and phase; and more.

 VC-64 Vintage Channel is a channel strip, dynamics processor, EQ, and De-Esser that's been called "the magic bullet for your tracks" by many engineers. It includes presets designed by professionals and can be side-chained.
External hardware support External hardware support allows you to use hardware gear right in SONAR. Tracks stay tight with automatic plug-in delay compensation for external and internal plug-ins. Perfect for outboard gear, stomp boxes, and more.


Transient Shaper Transient Shaper is a powerful tool for sculpting the transient dynamics of any percussive based source material. Great for drum loops and percussion, electric & acoustic guitars, and piano. 

Master

SONAR 8 allows you to deliver the final polish to your tracks with high-end effects that were designed specifically for the task of mastering. 

LP-64 EQ is a linear-phase Equalizer that puts a professional sheen on your final mix. Get accurate processing and eliminate phase distortion that is common with parametric EQ. 

LP-64 Multiband is a linear phase mastering compressor/limiter. It provides clean, clear non-smeared control over isolated bands for volume maximization or attenuation/limiting with superior linear phase technology. 

Boost 11 is a peak limiter that gives your final mix maximum volume and punch. With Boost 11's simple interface, you'll have your songs, radio- and duplication-ready in no time at all. TL-64 Tube Leveler is a line driver/ leveling processor with advanced analog vacuum-tube circuit modeling algorithm. Add the unique qualities of tube color and warmth found in classic recordings.

64-bit audio mix engine 64-bit Mastering is a reality in SONAR with end-to-end 64-bit audio from native 64-bit audio files, tracks, busses, mastering effect inserts, to file export, your audio always retains its sonic integrity.

Superior Final Rendering whether you're archiving a 64-bit floating point, 384 kHz final master, or exporting 16-bit/44.1 kHz audio for CD/MP3 through Windowed Sinc Sample Rate conversion and POW-r Dithering. 

Collaborate & Deliver

SONAR 8 offers various options for collaborating with other studios as well as delivering to virtually any format including CD, video, surround, and even the web. 

Flexible Import/Export—SONAR has you covered: AIF, Broadcast WAV, FLAC, SD2 (Sound Designer II), QuickTime video, and many other audio & video file formats.

Surround—SONAR 8 allows you to mix in over 30 different surround formats. When you're done, use the 14-day SurCode unlimited trial Dolby encoders for Dolby Digital and Dolby Pro Logic II. 

Collaborate with studios and musicians using DAWs like Pro Tools, Logic, Cubase, and more—regardless if they are using a PC or Mac. Simply export your project as an OMF or Broadcast WAV files.
Share your music Share your music—finish a project and immediately burn CDs or upload your music to the web. SONAR includes integrated CD ripping and burning, and Cakewalk Publisher to create streaming flash players to post on the Internet.

Included Instruments

SONAR 8 Producer includes the best collection of included virtual instruments found in any DAW. Whether you're looking for acoustic or electric instrument sounds, emulations of classic gear, modern synthesized tones, drums, or a groovebox, you need to look no further than SONAR 8. You may be surprised to find that some of these included plug-ins would cost hundreds of dollars if purchased separately.

Beatscape SONAR 8 Producer Exclusive - New to SONAR 8

* 16-pad looping/performance instrument
* Great for layering and triggering audio clips and creating beats and grooves
* 4 GB of custom-designed loop construction kits

Dimension Pro SONAR 8 Producer Exclusive - New to SONAR 8

* Wavetable based synthesizer
* Electric pianos, organs, basses, orchestral, strings, woodwinds, brass, ethnic, pads/layers, and other real-world instruments
* Over 1500 patch presets, 8 GB of content


TruePianos Amber SONAR 8 Producer Exclusive - New to SONAR 8

* Award-winning piano model designed to transparently integrate with your hands and playing style for even more realism
* 7 model variations
* Reverb and velocity controls
* SONAR customers are eligible for a 30% discount on 4Front TruePianos