Assorted bits of learnings (Remote/FireStudio/Sonar)

[ElectricPuppy]

Things I've recently discovered, for anyone searching.

 

There's a beta AutoMap Universal available that (*gasp*) let's me use it with Sonar 6! I'm psyched! I was so bummed after I bought the Remote that Sonar didn't want to play with it. I'm still getting used to using it, but I can control the transport from the Remote, the sliders control track faders, etc, etc. Neat! (Yes, I know about the generic surface support, I didn't want to have to deal with that.)

 

Also Remote related: I have complained in the past about the Remote's action. I had tried all 6 different velocity curves that it has, none seemed to help much. On a lark, I tried setting the velocity to a fixed value, something the Remote can do. Lo! I liked the feel a lot better! So, I've come to the conclusion that the Remote's poor "feel" is not due to the physical action, but due to the velocity curves. Unfortunately, the available velocity curves can't be editted, that I'm aware of. I'm going to ping Novation and find out if it's possible to do so in any way. Surely there must be a way to load a custom velocity table.

 

The FireStudio has a feature that I'm finding to be its saving grace, and that's its zero-latency monitoring ability. I was getting fed-up; It's still not entirely trustworthy on my Vista 32 PC. I get bluescreens if I don't follow a particular startup/shutdown sequence when I want to use it, and even then sometimes the audio will get finely chopped while monitoring. I was trying to monitor the audio from my hardware synth through Sonar while playing, and found that the doubled latency (5.7ms each way) was messing up my chops. BUT!! If I use the FireStudio's mixer for monitoring instead of monitoring through Sonar, real-time playing is much, much more enjoyable. I wait with bated breath for stable Vista drivers for this thing, though.

 

Thems my random mutterings for the day.