A complete solution for creating and sharing professional quality music.

Cakewalk SONAR Home Studio 7 XL software is a fun way to transform your PC into a completely developed music production studio. From start to finish, SONAR Home Studio 7 XL will help you harness your creativity, and, once polished, share it with the world.

With SONAR Home Studio 7 XL you can record live instruments, vocals, or any other audio source. You can also edit audio, MIDI, and music notation with the easy-to-use editing features. The updated Loop Explorer gives you the tools to build backing tracks faster than ever, and you can add real instrument sounds using the included virtual instruments suite. Bring your entire mix together with studio-quality audio effects and mixing tools. When you are finished putting all the finishing touches on your compositions, SONAR Home Studio XL 7 makes it easy to share your music on the web or burn it to CD for fans, friends, and family.

SONAR Home Studio 7 XL adds more value by giving you the tools you need to take your productions to the next level. Enhanced features include Cakewalk's acclaimed Step Sequencer, Studio Devil VGA+ Guitar Amp Simulator, Cakewalk Studio Instruments backing band, and Cakewalk Audio Creator LE featuring the Editor and Burner Modules.

Step Sequencer
New to Home Studio XL, the Step Sequencer allows you to easily create beats, synth parts, and more.

Studio Devil VGA+
Leave your amp at the practice space. Plug in your guitar or bass for direct recording and get amazing overdrive and distortion sounds.

Studio instruments
Home Studio 7 XL has everything you need for your a built-in backing band: drums, bass guitar, electric piano, and a string section with more drum kits, electric pianos, strings, and bass sounds.

Dimension LE
A special version of the acclaimed synth with over 400 sounds including real bass, organ, electric piano, cutting edge synths, rhythmic grooves, and more. It also includes the Garritan Pocket Orchestra.

Boost 11
Get more volume and punch from your final mix with this easy-to-use limiter/maximizer. Boost 11 gives you professional results through a simple interface.

Cakewalk SONAR Home Studio 7 XL Features:

• Get creative with 64 audio tracks and unlimited MIDI tracks
• Track and project templates do the set-up for you so you're making music fast
• Play and record MIDI parts in perfect time using Input Quantize
• Record your whole band at once using multi-input audio interfaces at up to 24-bit/192kHz quality
• Browse 2GB of loop and instrument content and preview audio and MIDI loops in time and key with your song to create backing tracks
• Create instrument parts using Dimension LE with Garritan Pocket Orchestra and Studio Instruments
• Expand your studio with VST, DX, and ReWire synths, effects, and applications, including Ableton Live and Reason
• Arrange and edit your project with an easy to understand user interface
• Recording, editing, and mixing tools are just a click away and always available
• Print music notation, lyrics, and lead sheets
• Keep projects organized with Track Folders and Track Icons
• Assemble the perfect takes with non-destructive crossfades and other editing tools
• Zero in on edits and navigate quickly with Fast Zoom
• Freeze instruments and effects to get the best performance out of your PC
• Score soundtracks to video in time with the action using the Video Track
• Mix like a pro using the new Console view with built-in Sonitus:fx EQ on every channel and polish with Boost 11
• New Send Assistant simplifies audio routing and effects busses
• Effortless mixing with powerful automation tools
• Sweeten your tracks with reverb, delay, dynamics, modulation, tape and amp simulation, and more
• Control your mix, effects, and instruments from external MIDI devices using Active Controller Technology (ACT)
• Burn your mixes directly to CD, or export your project to popular audio and video formats, including QuickTime
• Upload songs and create custom streaming music players for your website with Cakewalk Publisher

When it's time to make music, think SONAR Home Studio 7 XL. It's got it all. Order today.

Cakewalk SONAR Home Studio 7 XL Specifications:

• System Requirements
• (Minimum)
• Operating System: Windows XP/Vista (32 bit)/ Mac OS X with Boot Camp
• Processor Speed: Intel Pentium 4 1.3GHz, AMD Athlon XP 1500+ or higher
• RAM: 512MB
• Graphics: 1024 x 768, 16-bit color
• Hard disk space: 100MB program/application
• Hard disc type: Any
• MIDI interface: Windows-compatible, required to connect to external MIDI devices
• Audio interface: Windows-compatible for audio playback
• Media drive: DVD-ROM, DVD+/-R, or DVD +/- RW Drive
• Webserver access: None
  
  (Recommended)
• Operating System: Windows XP/Vista (32 bit)/ Mac OS X with Boot Camp
• Processor Speed: Intel Pentium 4 2.8GHz, AMD Athlon XP 2800+ or higher
• RAM: 1GB or higher
• Graphics: 1280 x 960, 24-bit color or higher
• Hard disk space: 6GB
• Hard disc type: EIDE / Ultra DMA (7200 RPM) or SATA
• MIDI interface: Windows-compatible, required to connect to external MIDI devices
• Audio interface: Windows-compatible for audio playback
• Media drive: DVD-ROM, DVD+/-R, or DVD +/- RW Drive
• Webserver access: Available web server space with FTP access privileges. An internet connection is required for music uploading (broadband recommended)
  
  Note: SONAR does not support Windows 95, 98, ME, 2000, or NT. QuickTime support requires QuickTime 6 or higher.

Cakewalk SONAR Home Studio 7 XL

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Average of 6 User Ratings

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Guess I got lucky???

Posted by Ike from Nashville, TN on Sep 16, 2009

Experience w/product: I own it

Reviewer's Background: Active musician, Engineer.

Reviewer's Play Style: Country, Blues, Pop

I have had a home studio for years, and recently decided to switch DAW's. I was familiar with Sonar and the price sold me on it.

I've read all the bad reviews and I have to say I think some problems people are having is just old fashioned lack of knowledge. I interface with this software using a Presonus FP10 and the computer I use is about 4 years old running XP. It has a 250gig SATA HD, 2GIGs Ram, 3.3GHZ CELERON without a hickup. I have never had a dropout due to lack of PC Power. I will say this PC is dedicated to music only with the bare min of XP components installed. I've ran up to 17 tracks with multiple effects unfrozen without any troubles. I will say computer based recording, is, was, and always will be a little tempermental. As for vista users...Everybody I know has had initial problems with their software before changing a lot of settings within their OS.

In closing...I would definitly recommend Sonar 7 Home XL. It's not perfect, but its well worth a buck fifty. So when you find the software that is perfect...Let me know cause I've tried nearly all of them.

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well, they said......

Posted by steve f'n brashear from your mothers on Aug 17, 2009

Experience w/product: I own it

Reviewer's Background: active musician, frequently ripped off

Reviewer's Play Style: acoustic banality

i told the good folks at my local music store that i needed something idiot proof and as plug and play as they come. i got this software alongside a m-audio fastrack usb interface. in my opinion, they're both pieces of ****. i've got 4gigs of ram and 2.1 dual core and all i can get this software to do consistently is dropout. hey, why not include an error statement that tells us whats causing the dropout..just saying. as far as the fastrack usb goes, not only is it a piece, but good luck getting anyone from m-audio to answer the phone or an email. i'm sure in the end they'll both blame vista, but, come on.

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Expected More

Posted by PianoKid from Sunny Florida on Aug 11, 2009

Experience w/product: I own it

Reviewer's Background: Active Musician

Reviewer's Play Style: Pop-Rock, Jazz/Blues, Instrumental

From reading the reviews for Sonar Home Studio XL written at the time I expected a little more than what I was given, especially from a name like Cakewalk. Most of it works alright for what I need: I haven't experienced too many dropouts myself, but I have a decent computer that I purchased mainly to record music. My biggest complaints are for the drum step sequencer and the staff views. I have used programs like FruityLoops and Finale, so both of these parts in Sonar HSXL are a very low quality and very difficult to work with (like trying to make Norman Rockwell with paint by number). The staff entry won't even input the note values I want! I choose eighth notes and it puts in quarter notes; I want a dotted quarter, and it won't put a dotted note in until I get frustrated and turn off the dotted button and move on. Very frustrating. I used Cool Edit Pro for the longest time and was happy... I work hard on my music and expect to make it with few takes and to be able to actually play it myself. This was part of my process this year of expanding into more modern territory and make things easier, but I would have saved a little longer I think for a higher end program.

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could be alot better

Posted by Anonymous Musician from l.a. on Jul 3, 2009

Experience w/product: I own it

Reviewer's Background: Musician for life

Reviewer's Play Style: rock.

Home studio 7Xl has alot of bugs. Check out the website before you buy this product and you will see all the problems that people are dealing with. XL has dropouts and pops during recording and play back. The drum map manager is a mess. Burning your projects to cd's waste alot of time and doesn't even work sometimes. I had to completely reformat my computer and still have issue's. My computer is only 7 months old and wasn't cheap. The Positive's for XL is that it is inexpensive. It is easy to start new projects when you get the urge just to jam something new. Layout is nice. The moral of the story...I would pay alot more to have something that was more dependable.

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Fail-Nuff said

Posted by J8zun09 from Alabama on Jun 11, 2009

Experience w/product: I own it

Reviewer's Background: Hobbyist

Reviewer's Play Style: Blues

I find that the description of this product(Cakewalk's Sonar Home Studio XL ver. 7) was misleading. As a graduate student tuition prices don't afford me too much flexibility in updating my musical equipment;therefore, the price appealed to me. I was led to believe all you need is a laptop and you are good to go. Actually, you need a audio interface, prolly a mixer, and my MXL 990 USB mic(that supposably plugs straight into your computer)requires phantom power. Also, I am not a recording studio engineer so this program was harder than it looked. It is a good program given that you do an exploratory study/do your homework before you buy because the description is very misleading ,and you wind up buying more than you bargained for.

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Cakewalk SONAR Home Studio 7 XL

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