Comments on: SONAR 8.5 / Intel Core I7 / Windows 7 X64 – a heavenly trilogy for DAW users

By: Brent

Brent — Wed, 23 Feb 2011 13:16:40 +0000

Just wanted to say thanks for documenting all of this. Are you running X1 now?

By: john murphy

john murphy — Wed, 24 Nov 2010 23:07:10 +0000

hi noel, i did similar upgrade this week! Big learning curve, sonar 8.5 studio/ intel i7 x58 chipset/6GB ram/ windows 7 64bit home premium, and my dream…..eastwest libraries, i put the samples on a western digital HD, sounds are awesome, yet, there are gremlins, i’ve come straight from xp/ pentium 4/ using soundfonts as my main midi source,
so i’ve lots to learn on all fronts, can you recommend any tweaks i can do in both win. 7 and sonar……..??

By: Noel

Noel — Sun, 07 Nov 2010 03:10:04 +0000

Wasn’t available at the time when I was shopping. I haven’t kept up with the recent boards but im sure there are many candidates with usb3.

By: Jonathan

Jonathan — Fri, 05 Nov 2010 13:42:59 +0000

Hi Noel,

First, extremely helpful article. I’m in the planning stages of my next upgrade and this clarify some questions I had.

You indicated in your article that you try to get the “maximum life out of your system.” Was there a specific reason why you didn’t choose a motherboard with USB 3? If the reason is because it wasn’t available at the time you purchased it, which MB would you recommend now?

Thanks again

By: Glen

Glen — Mon, 18 Oct 2010 05:12:58 +0000

I should add the O/S is Win 7 64bit and I have a I7 920 processor with 8gig ram.

By: Glen

Glen — Mon, 18 Oct 2010 05:11:31 +0000

Im using Sonar 8.5 and wish to use some .wav samples can u recommend a compatible sampler

By: Create Digital Music » The Most Out of Windows 7: Choosing and Optimizing Windows for Music

Wed, 04 Aug 2010 16:43:12 +0000

[...] for my studio which runs SONAR 8.5 on an Intel Core I7 950 with Windows 7 Professional X64. (See http://www.noelborthwick.com/minidump/2009/12/new-daw/ for specs) I can categorically say that the SONAR/Core I7/Windows 7 combination is a match made in [...]

By: walter

walter — Tue, 29 Jun 2010 21:55:41 +0000

Much appreciated!

By: Noel

Noel — Sun, 27 Jun 2010 03:09:48 +0000

SSD plus sata sounds ideal. I don’t do anything special – I have SONAR on the OS drive and the samples and data on a different disk.

By: walter

walter — Sat, 26 Jun 2010 20:57:47 +0000

Hi Noel, great article.

How many HD drives do you recommend? And where do you put your DAW, on the OS hard drive?

I was thinking about getting SSD drive for OS plus two SATA for apps and samples.
Thank you