Are you using Matrix View?

If you are please tell me how you use it. 
 
I want to setup sonar for live performance.  I have an MPD18, Novation Remote SL, and Motif ES8 as controllers and I want to do club music with it.  Not DJ but original Club Music like dubstep stuff.  Matrix view looks like the only way to get to it.
 
Thanks
 
Jeff

I know HOW it works.  I am wondering if anyone is using it.

Craig's new video sure does make it look appealing. I have not used it but I have a LOT of old ACID and other loops and I had pretty much given up the idea of using them until I saw Craig's chapter on the Matrix view... and he said he just scratched the surface... I am interested too.

Julien

sykodelic


I would love to use the matrix view and have tried but it just doesn't work well.  I would definitely not trust it in a live situation.  

Nor would I. I do a live PA and as I produce my tracks in Sonar it would sure be nice to be able to perform live w/ Sonar. Cakewalk has never directed any attention toward Sonar as a live performance tool. You will be in for a world of frustration. Trust me. Don't go there. It is the wrong tool for the job.

Well - to be honest.. I have not used the matrix view until now..

The reason is.. I am using Project 5 v2 for exactly the stuff the matrix view is supposed to do, so I had no "drive" to delve a bit deeper in the matrix view. It is still on my "to do" list..

I will certainly take a look at the matrix view, but I wonder if it is just as flexible as Project 5. I understand the matrix view is "transplanted" from Project 5, and I wonder if the MIDI editing in cells is just as simple as it is when using Project 5.

Well - maybe time to take a better look now. The video is certainly inspiring. Still - I wonder if I will put Project 5 on the "obsolete shelves" soon. My guess is ... not yet.

I use the Matrix view just for songwriting.  If I used it live it would be ONLY with audio loops - no midi loops.  Audio loops trigger flawlessly and wouldn't create a problem...midi loops often miss the first note.

I don't recall the midi problem ever happening in P5 v2, which I have, and which is why the gentleman above probably still uses it.  P5 with all its bells and whistles is a killer program for softsynth stacking, playing and arranging.  A full integration of what that program did into Sonar would be preferable.

relpomiraculous


I use the Matrix view just for songwriting.  If I used it live it would be ONLY with audio loops - no midi loops.  Audio loops trigger flawlessly and wouldn't create a problem...midi loops often miss the first note.

I've had this issue as well, except I've noticed that the beginning of audio loops also gets cut off sometimes -- it's just less noticeable since you're clipping off a few samples vs dropping an entire note with MIDI.


It's definitely more of an arrangement toy rather than a live performance workhorse. Which is unfortunate, because with some engine polishing it could be usable. However, I've noticed the following things do help make the timing a bit better: 1) Turn your latency down (of course this makes it less stable unfortunately, but less of the clips gets cut off), 2) Put both audio and midi loops into the matrix, even if you're only using one kind (for some reason everything triggers better if there are both kinds of clips in there).

PenguiN42

relpomiraculous


I use the Matrix view just for songwriting.  If I used it live it would be ONLY with audio loops - no midi loops.  Audio loops trigger flawlessly and wouldn't create a problem...midi loops often miss the first note.

I've had this issue as well, except I've noticed that the beginning of audio loops also gets cut off sometimes -- it's just less noticeable since you're clipping off a few samples vs dropping an entire note with MIDI.


It's definitely more of an arrangement toy rather than a live performance workhorse. Which is unfortunate, because with some engine polishing it could be usable. However, I've noticed the following things do help make the timing a bit better: 1) Turn your latency down (of course this makes it less stable unfortunately, but less of the clips gets cut off), 2) Put both audio and midi loops into the matrix, even if you're only using one kind (for some reason everything triggers better if there are both kinds of clips in there).

I will definitely try that - I never would have thought of it.  Thanks much.

Notecrusher

ba_midi



To compare Sonar's Matrix view with Ableton Live's Session view is like apples and oranges.    Ableton's approach is light years ahead and has full and complete control over every cell in almost any imaginable way.

The Matrix view has NO per cell controls (no volume, nopan, nothing) other than triggers.

And I think it's important to state this so that those who don't know about the two don't get confused by a very small similarity.

Exactly. Live is on version 8 and the session view has been what Live is all about from the beginning. The matrix is very much a 1.0 feature. The more you use it the more you will encounter bugs and missing basic capabilities. I honestly don't know how people can get serious work done w/ the matrix view -- god knows I tried. And tried and tried and tried. I gave up in frustration and believe me I was extremely disappointed to do so -- it was the reason I bought S8.5. I had been waiting years for this feature. I'm not saying I expected the matrix view to do everything Live session view does - far from it, but the thing is not only bug infested, it is a total workflow killer. How do you explain that for a feature that is supposed to be ABOUT WORKFLOW? No track headers? Really??? They made a checkerboard and shipped it. So everything you want to do to a track, you have to trundle over to track view, locate which of your 60 tracks is the one that corresponds to the one in matrix view you're working with, make the adjustment, then go back to matrix view to continue your "work". At that point you can't even remember what the hell you were doing.

Well, while I was totally disappointed by the Matrix and don't use it (as hard as I tried), I can see how some can and do.   If the workflow is such that simply needs triggering / remote triggering, then it's doable.  Watching some of the marketing ... er tutorial videos shows that much.

It just doesn't go much beyond that.  However, the potential is there.   The question is (and always will be) will CW actually keep coming with updates or will it go the way of "Beatscape" which never even made it to a 2.0 yet was promoted as the sheeyazitz.

ba_midi


It just doesn't go much beyond that.  However, the potential is there.   The question is (and always will be) will CW actually keep coming with updates or will it go the way of "Beatscape" which never even made it to a 2.0 yet was promoted as the sheeyazitz.

You seem to be assuming Beatscape is dead or abandoned in some way... why would you assume that? It's only a couple of years old. Z3ta+ (for example) is over half a decade old, and that's getting updated.

Jackel


If you are please tell me how you use it. 
 
I want to setup sonar for live performance.  I have an MPD18, Novation Remote SL, and Motif ES8 as controllers and I want to do club music with it.  Not DJ but original Club Music like dubstep stuff.  Matrix view looks like the only way to get to it.
 
Thanks
 
Jeff

Although I haven't used it live, I often use Matrix view as the scratch pad for new productions. Like SONAR itself, Matrix view takes a bit of setup out of the box. However, once you spend the time to get it configured in a usable way, you'll be rewarded with a fast, intuitive tool that is a better compliment to SONAR than even Ableton Live. 


OTOH, Ableton Live isn't named 'Live' for nothing. It's audio engine is almost bulletproof and many pro DJ's and performance artists regularly use it onstage. I honestly don't know anyone that has ever admitted using SONAR during a live DJ set.


-e.B

If you expect the Matrix View to replace Live, you'll be disappointed. However, as someone who used to ReWire Live into Sonar, the Matrix View is pretty cool. When ReWiring Live, I used a fraction of its capabilities but they were the ones that were important for songwriting - throwing loops against each other, using the browser to evaluate which loops work well together, triggering scenes, and the like. The Matrix view lets me do that within Sonar, without having to ReWire, and with really simple transfer from improvisations to the linear tracks.

I see Live's Session View as a program unto itself, whereas I see the Matrix View as a different point of entry to Sonar's linear tracks. Sometimes the writing process goes faster if I stick with linear tracks, but for some types of material, Matrix View gets the process going faster. I know people have mentioned that Matrix View is buggy, but I really haven't found any show-stoppers in X1. However, at first there was quite a bit of pilot error because I automatically assumed what worked in Live would work in the Matrix View. There are some definite differences.

As to reliability in live performance, I only had problems with Live once, and I've been using it since 1.0. And it wasn't even a Live problem but a Windows/FireWire issue - with a laptop power plan where the CPU wasn't running with 100% power in max and min states, I got clicks when the processor changed states. I went over to a Mac running Live to do the performance (luckily, I found this out ahead of time!) and found out the real problem afterward. I created a "Live Performance" power plan for Windows and had no more problems.

However, I have to say that I use Sonar for seminars all the time. While there's not the same kind of pressure as a club performance or concert, the process still has to be seamless, and crashes are taboo. In all my years of using Sonar, it's never let me down even though I've had to do some fairly complex moves, have multiple windows open, and run it with controllers or video windows.

It's no accident that in the seminar I did at GearFest last month, the two programs I used were Sonar and Live - and it went off without a hitch.

I must admit I've never really got on with Live (I much prefer how Sonar does most things) but I have used it live running on a pretty basic laptop to drive my hardware synths.

Sending MIDI to external hardware would seem a pretty obvious and basic kind of requirement, but for some reason the Matrix view seems quite unable to manage to do it.