CAKEWALK SONAR 5 PE (DAW software)

[RichardT]

Originally posted by Anderton Okay, I am NOT "Mr. Expert on Scoring," so I hope others can chime in. I work with a publishing company that does a lot of sheet music. They don't consider any of the DAWs as adequate, they use programs designed specifically for sheet music. I think that if you want engraving quality notation, you would need to do the export/import thang. Comments, anyone?

 

 

Thanks Craig, I can understand that - I guess you're talking about Sibelius etc - but I just something halfway decent to give to musicians! Looks like I'd have to go for import / export for now.

 

How would I submit a development request to Cakewalk ? I'd like to see what their thoughts are.

 

thanks

 

Rich

[doug osborne]

Cakewalk Feature Request

[RichardT]

Originally posted by doug osborne Cakewalk Feature Request

 

 

thanks Doug

[MoreGuitars]

I just purchased Sonar 5. Reading this review with he program open was a great way to get acquainted with it.

[Anderton]

Make sure you get the latest update. It fixes a lot of those "if you're using this software on a certain computer running a certain CPU on an even-numbered day of the month" problems, as well as fixing some envelope issues.

FYI I put Sonar through a real torture test developing the loops for my next live performance...at one point I had about 70 very short loops, all reading from an unfragmented disk and most with a bunch of effects. I also had IK Philharmonik and SampleTank, as well as East-West Colossus, RA, and Morphology loaded up...maybe a couple other soft synths, too.

Sonar held up really well CPU/latency-wise, although past a certain point, the disk gave up. I converted a bunch of the loops to groove clips to put them in RAM, which made the disk happier.

[MoreGuitars]

Originally posted by Anderton Make sure you get the latest update. It fixes a lot of those "if you're using this software on a certain computer running a certain CPU on an even-numbered day of the month" problems, as well as fixing some envelope issues. FYI I put Sonar through a real torture test developing the loops for my next live performance...at one point I had about 70 very short loops, all reading from an unfragmented disk and most with a bunch of effects. I also had IK Philharmonik and SampleTank, as well as East-West Colossus, RA, and Morphology loaded up...maybe a couple other soft synths, too. Sonar held up really well CPU/latency-wise, although past a certain point, the disk gave up. I converted a bunch of the loops to groove clips to put them in RAM, which made the disk happier.

 

 

Thanks for the heads up. One thing it did fix was my US-428 individual sliders were not controlling the volumes of he channels, now they do. This controller has never worked better.

 

I've also noted with the upgrade the CPU load meter is down.

[rasputin1963]

Originally posted by Anderton Okay, I am NOT "Mr. Expert on Scoring," so I hope others can chime in. I work with a publishing company that does a lot of sheet music. They don't consider any of the DAWs as adequate, they use programs designed specifically for sheet music. I think that if you want engraving quality notation, you would need to do the export/import thang. Comments, anyone?

 

 

Yes, Mr. Anderton, I agree... gotta use something like SIBELIUS or FINALE for truly publishing-worthy appearance sheet music. Best bet is to quantize your MIDI part(s) in SONAR (if not quantized, you'll have your work cut out for you later!), save them as MIDI files, then import them into SIBELIUS or FINALE where you can give your parts the thorough editing they need to be eminently handsome and playable. Especially true for piano/organ and other polyphonic or dual-staff instruments. Still, if you just had a monophonic riff you wanted to present to, say, a studio trumpeter or flautist, a printout from SONAR's Staff View will work fine (provided you've set up your Key and staff data there appropriately!).

 

I too agree that SONAR 5 is a MAJOR upgrade.... Just the recorded audio alone sounds better for reasons I can't quite put my finger on. The sound is just richer. Meatier. Solider. (Note: these are not real musical terms). It meshes beautifully and glitchlessly on an XP OS.

 

...and yes, V-VOCAL is da shiznit!!! Makes one's mind swim with possibilities. Kids, we've officially left auditory reality behind, and we've exited to the world of The Jetsons. LOL

 

What I love about V-VOCAL is the way it's so seamlessly integrated into SONAR... Little you do in the V-VOCAL console is going to upset SONAR or your CPU. What's cool is the ability to tweak all of V-VOCAL's maps on-the-fly, in real-time. For me, it's tempting to forgo subtlety altogether, and imbue even my lamest, most vanilla vocals with incredible punch, style and soulfulness. Heck, why not?

 

Almost makes ya want to go abduct some cute teenager (with a lacklustre voice) from a shopping mall and turn them overnight into An Instant Vocal Superstar American Idol Grammy Winner. LOL Let them jiggle on MTV; heck, you control their voice!

 

A neat way to make quick, tight harmony vocals: Duplicate your lead vocal two or three times, push your individual notes to their desired harmonies [note to an earlier post-er here: feel free to push your harmonies sharp or flat, with a dark or bright Formant, as desired. If your resulting harmonies exhibit a vibrato & tremolo that's too similar to your Lead, simply use your Timing tool to "push" and "pull" samples within your harmony clips, left and right, to vary the timings of the vibratos. Neat. A little reverb and pan-potting and you're good.

 

The only thing I haven't quite figured out yet with V-VOCAL, is how to turn only parts of a track into a V-VOCAL editing track...

Furthermore, I haven't figured out a way to "confirm my changes" permanently.... ie., return my V-VOCAL track into a regular audio track, but with the new changes permanently applied to it. Does one just leave one's V-VOCAL tracks in the V-VOCAL mode all the way into the final mixdown process? Just a minor thing.

 

PerfectSpace sounds gorgeous... it sounds...well... like an actual space, rather than a reverb applied after-the-fact... There are no nasty artifacts or ringings or phase anomalies or unnatural tails or deadnesses... it just sounds like Your Source Audio In A Room. Period. Very kewl. I've never used a reverb whose presets were instantly useable, with no tweaking! I even made an Impulse of my own living room (popping balloons hither and thither) and the result was pretty darn good. Though not as good, of course, as the incredible Impulses included with SONAR 5, [The Skillman Bible Church room will make you weep, it's so beautiful] and the ones available on the 'Net, (as these have been made by more sophisticated microphones and recording apparatus than my own).

 

I got so involved, having fun with this new SONAR, that I noticed only late, that nothing I did-- plugins, edits, recording, softsynths-- caused my CPU to go crazy or hiccup or cause SONAR to fail. This, in itself, is reason for celebration.

 

At present, the only things on my SONAR wishlist would be: A). an in-house 3D spectrum analyzer that has a BIG interface... a big pretty interactive waterfall that can be generated ultra-quickly, just from one selected portion of audio. B). Microtuning capabilities that are extensive and flexible, but which do not necessarily require you to have a PhD in Engineering and Music History to understand (á là the third-party program, SCALA. I'm sure SCALA is fab, but I can scarcely make head nor tail of it.)... C). It would be super-swell to be able to apply your VST/DX effects to your MIDI tracks just as easily as you do your audio tracks. I'm not sure how it could be arranged, but I'll bet it could!

 

Those three additions, and my fantasy DAW would be a reality. Honestly, I think extensive video editing and sheet music editing capabilities should probably still be left to other, specialty proggies.

 

Something I have not seen yet, but would like to, is a 3D spectrum analyzer in which you can actually reach into the "waterfall" with your cursor, and raise and lower only select frequencies, ad libidum, and hear the filtration result in realtime. Maybe a loop-type console in the fashion of V-VOCAL.

 

Does such a thing exist?

[Anderton]

>

The closest I've come to that is with the Har-Bal mastering program and with Audition's Frequency Space editing function, but neither is 3d.

[rasputin1963]

Very cool, Mr. Anderton, thanks.


ras

[vksf01]

Originally posted by rasputin1963 The only thing I haven't quite figured out yet with V-VOCAL, is how to turn only parts of a track into a V-VOCAL editing track... Furthermore, I haven't figured out a way to "confirm my changes" permanently.... ie., return my V-VOCAL track into a regular audio track, but with the new changes permanently applied to it. Does one just leave one's V-VOCAL tracks in the V-VOCAL mode all the way into the final mixdown process? Just a minor thing.

 

 

what i do is to split the track at the section that i want to v-vocal, apply trimming and then v-vocal it.

 

also, to "confirm changes" permanently, right click and select bounce to clip. s5 will create a new clip with your v-vocalled changes and also keep your original clip as a muted clip

[Will Chen]

This is a cross post, which could provide some insight for anyone interested in upgrading from Pro 9 to SONAR 5 Studio. Original post located here

 

Sonar 5 Studio...a Little Dissapointed

 

Well, the thread title is a little misleading. It is a highly functional application on which Mr. Anderton covered in depth not that long ago. Let me preface this with a little background.

 

I have been a Cakewalk user for a long time and stopped upgrading versions with Pro Audio 9. After recently obtaining a copy of CUBASE LE bundled with a Tascam 1082 purchase and seeing how functional this freebie was, I decided it was time to upgrade.

 

Overall I love the app and I'm sure as I learn the deeper functionality will love it even more. There is a ton of stuff which is a huge improvement of Pro 9. However, a few things were a little disappointing...

 

1) Extract Timing - This was a built in function in Pro 9 which was basically a gate which functioned as a midi trigger to a specified note. I used this function to create midi tracks for snare and kick enhancement/replacement all the time. I did not see it in SONAR 5 studio, perhaps it is part of the Producer edition. I know there are free plugs which do this now, it was just a nice built in feature that I enjoyed.

 

EDIT: This function is part of SONAR 5 Studio, I posted before fully examining the software, the menu location changed.

 

2) SONAR experienced a ton latency on softsynths when using WDM drivers. Switching to ASIO drivers significantly reduced the latency (which was confusing to me as I thought audio drivers wouldn't effect softsynth performance), however the app defaults to the WDM option. It took me a while to figure this out and I was about to pull my hair out thinking I wasted my money.

 

3) Speaking of softsynths, the bundled softsynths were a big disappointment...not that I was expecting much. However, since SONAR is in it's 5th incarnation of softsynth integration I kinda expected something more. Perhaps I'm missing something, but I didn't hear anything any more usable than the GM softsynth included with CUBASE LE.

 

On the up side - TASCAM 1082 integration was seamless and easily allows custom programming of special surface function controls, 'freeze' is a wonderfully time saving function, and the bundled plug in package is nice.

 

I guess I was just expecting SONAR 5 to include be Pro 9 X 5...

 

EDIT-Upon digging deeper, I really taken advantage of many of the more advanced features. For example the 'native'VST support is great. Using a wrapper in Pro 9 resulted in a loss of all presets, not so now.

[blue2blue]

Studio comes with these soft synths:

Roland® GrooveSynth™
TTS-1™ GM2 synth
Cyclone™ groove sampler
SFZ SoundFont sampler

[TTS-1 is a pretty useful and mostly quite musical GM2 synth, in my view. A good GM synth can be invaluable even if you never, ever use it in a finished work. (That said, it's got some pretty decent sounds.) And SFZ opens up the world of SoundFonts, where there are a huge number of cool free sample sets.]

And Pro adds:

RXP™ REX Player groove box
PSYN™ II subtractive synth
Pentagon™ I analog synth

_______________


As you've discovered the integrated VST handling also opens you up to a large variety of free (and not so) soft synths.

[Check out http://www.hammersound.net/ for free SoundFont sets and Synths, as well as demos and trials of payfors.]

[Reitzas]

Hi Craig,
I came across two questions today as I was helping a friend of mine on his Sonar 5 rig.

1) How can you"solo isolate" a track? Seems like a simple thing to do but I couldn't find it in our limited time.
2) What gates are available for Sonar that accept side chain inputs to a gate. I couldn't do it with the Sonitus Gate. It only has a side chain filter; not what I was looking for.

Thanks for helping.
Best,
Dave Reitzas
www.reitzas.com

[doug osborne]

Originally posted by Reitzas Hi Craig, I came across two questions today as I was helping a friend of mine on his Sonar 5 rig. 1) How can you"solo isolate" a track? Seems like a simple thing to do but I couldn't find it in our limited time. 2) What gates are available for Sonar that accept side chain inputs to a gate. I couldn't do it with the Sonitus Gate. It only has a side chain filter; not what I was looking for. Thanks for helping. Best, Dave Reitzas www.reitzas.com

(I'm not Craig...)

The best way to "solo isolate" is to assign the track to a Quick Group.

SONAR doesn't directly offer compressor sidechain (despite many feature requests). It can be done with creative bus assignements (put the compressor on a separate bus and send two mono channels to the buss hard panned left and right with the sidechain signal from a Send and the controlled signal from the channel out...), apparently something in the current VST spec makes this difficult.

The db-D Dynamics Processor plugin from db-audioware offers true sidechaining in SONAR.

[Anderton]

Hey Doug, you do a pretty good "Craig"

Not sure what you mean by "solo isolate" as opposed to just "solo." To create a quick group, you ctrl-click on the little triangle in the upper left of the track heading.

The sidechain thing is much harder to pull off because of the way plug-ins are handled on tracks. I've often wanted this so I could, for example, have one track provide amplitude control over a different track. Angus at FXpansion came up with a really clever workaround for his vocoder plug-in way back when: a plug-in that sends a track's signal to another plug-in. I think he's off on to other things now, though...I wish he'd revisit that concept.

[Reitzas]

Thanks for the replies.

What I mean by solo isolate is the ability to designate a track or an aux input to stay active and not mute when another track is solo'd. For example, In Pro Tools, holding command while clicking on a track's solo button isolates that channel and keeps it active regardless of any other track you solo. Very effective for reverbs and effects or especially aux inputs. Not sure how making a quick group would accomplish this.
Maybe the terminology is different and hopefully there is a simple explanation.

Regarding a side chain for a gate; I wanted to put a gate across a pad track and have the gate open by triggering it from the hi hat. Again, something that I'm very used to doing but seemed to be missing from the gate plug-ins on the system I used.



Dave Reitzas
www.reitzas.com

[Anderton]

>

Solos are additive in Sonar, so if something's soloed, soloing something else does not mute it. I've asked for a preferences where you could choose between additive solo or "radio button" solo, but apparently I'm the only one asking for this.

[doug osborne]

Originally posted by Anderton > Solos are additive in Sonar, so if something's soloed, soloing something else does not mute it. I've asked for a preferences where you could choose between additive solo or "radio button" solo, but apparently I'm the only one asking for this.

 

 

Yes. And if you add all channels to a Quick Group, Control Click on Solo will toggle that channel with all others soloed in that group.

 

The default behavior of SONAR 4.x and newer is to not Mute or Solo an Aux or Bus send when a track is Muted or Soloed. This can be changed with a text edit in the aud.ini file - I've feature requested a menu preference change for this. This is described in the aud.ini section of the manual (for once, I RTFM).

[Reitzas]

OK, there's definitely a difference in the terminology. Actually, in the Pro Tools environment it's referred to as solo safe. In the analog console world it's referred to as solo isolating a track.



From the Pro Tools manual;


Solo Safe Mode Pro Tools lets you solo safe a track. This prevents the track from being muted even if you solo other tracks. This feature is useful for tracks such as Auxiliary Inputs that are being used as a submix of audio tracks, or effects returns, allowing the audio or effects track to remain in a mix even when other tracks are soloed. It is also useful to solo safe MIDI tracks so that their playback is not affected when you solo audio tracks.

To solo safe a track: ■ Control-click (Windows) or Command-click (Macintosh) the Solo button on the track. This prevents the track from being muted even if you solo other tracks. The Solo button changes to a transparent color in Solo Safe mode.


From me:

Applying quick groups, let's say between midi tracks and their corresponding soft synths; or drums and it's submix, is a good way to operate- but I'm referring more to tracks that are universal, like reverbs or internal mix tracks.

Haven't been able to find an equivalent in Sonar, but I'll keep searching for an explanation.


Thanks,
Dave Reitzas
www.reitzas.com

[doug osborne]

Originally posted by Reitzas ... Haven't been able to find an equivalent in Sonar, ... www.reitzas.com

Yep, I don't think there is a direct equivalent.

The SONAR forum might be of some help.

[blue2blue]

I can second that the db-D Dynamics Processor plugin from db-audioware does sidechaining.

I demo'd it and it did precisely the typical sidechaining I needed. But I decided I didn't like how it worked out in my track and I didn't use it. Not a comment on the the performance of compressor: what I wanted to do just wasn't such a hot idea, after all.

But the compressor -- well, in this case sidechained gate -- did precisely what I asked. I didn't really use it for anything else so I can't weigh in on its overall performance or 'sound.' I would definitely buy it if I needed a sidechain.

http://www.db-audioware.com/dB-D-dynamics-processor-more.htm

[Reitzas]

Thanks B2B!
This is good news. I was under the assumption that side-chaining gates and compressors was a common procedure until I wasn't able to do it that day.
I will pass this info on to my friend.

Dave Reitzas
www.reitzas.com

[Picker]

anybody have Sonar 6 yet? Impressions?

[gtbaka]

I got it (SE) , I'm basically learning how to use it from the ground up. Since my upgrade is from Pro Audio 9, it'll probably be hard to get a gauge of it's improvements from 5, from me. It's a whole new environment for me... with all the softsynth, and plug-in heaven, bus routing, amidst a myriad of other features that wow me.


I'm using it with a Mackie 400F and I added Dimension Pro. The processor load is amazing, so I think an ADK computer is now on my "to-buy" list.

As far as impressions:
-initially scared, but that's because of the huge learning curve I had
-Softsynths are alright. The TTS is basically the Roland JV-1010 I've been using for the last few years. So I could phase that piece of hardware out. I do recommend getting Dimension Pro though, if you upgrade or buy Sonar 6, I think you can add on for just 99 bucks. Now that is an amazing synth... same goes for Raptor. You can get it for 140 dollars or something after buying S6.

-Plugins are amazing. I have major latency problems with Perfect Space, so I don't touch it... too bad. But the others are nice and clean. I have to say, the Vintage Channel 64 is awesome. If you want all kinds of colors for your sounds, or virtual tube dynamics processing, this thing is a beast. It looks like an Avalon pimped out in black. Sounds even better.

-Session Drummer two, is really sweet. It really feels like you have a live drummer around. Inspiration strikes and makes you want to play that rock or blues or jazz live sound.

-Rex Player. More inspiration. It does for Hip Hop, electronic music what Session Drummer does for live band music.

Interface- I suppose it should just take getting used to for me, but there shouldn't be much difference from 5, besides the new transport controls which is easy to get used to, and the left side that always shows all the information you need for the currently selected track. I'm still trying to figure out how to use the buses and stuff... along with 400F. I had a feedback problem trying to route an output on the 400F to an input. There also appeared to be sound going into another channel that had nothing plugged in, which seems related to the feedback problem. That's an issue I have to figure out, maybe resolve it with mackie.

In the end though Sonar 6 really contains a lot of things that inspire creativity, which foremost makes it a great buy. I guess once I get the workflow down, ideas should be no problem being recorded.

[gtbaka]

I forgot to add. The Alienware plugin sounds awesome too. I plugged in my cheap ES-335 Knock-off and this plug-in too inspires creativity.