Ship Date Sonar 8

Anyone here of when we can expect shipping?

So far away... I can't wait.

Go ask Oprah, I'm sure she knows.

Well, I'm gonna call Cakewalk tomorrow and see if they know the answer. I'd send an email to support but that seems to take a week to get a reply.

A year ago someone on this forum suggested setting your master fader to -6dB whenever you start a new project. I gather it gives you a bit more room to play around with when doing a final mix. Could anyone confirm this?
Cheers

ORIGINAL: Tané

A year ago someone on this forum suggested setting your master fader to -6dB whenever you start a new project. I gather it gives you a bit more room to play around with when doing a final mix. Could anyone confirm this?
Cheers

Er, well no. You want your final mix to come out around no more than -6 but many recommend, including yours truly, to work at
-12 in case of transients that the meters are not picking up. The master buss never gets touched and always remains at unity (0). If you lower the master buss, you have reduced your overall usable bits. Put your bitmeter in Sonar to the test here and see what happens.

As a framework, start with your kick and bass at -7 or -17 depending on where you want your overall track to end up. Then build your mix around that. I put a plug in meter on my master buss and just keep a visual on when the overall mix is approaching -12. I will back off the track volume and rebuild around lower volumes on kick and bass until it sounds right. At -12 you can build back volume with the mastering chain and have plenty of room to work. At -6 less so but fine if that works for you. Hope that was clear.

Nothings gonna blow up here so play with it and come to your own conclusions. The source of a lot of transients when you are working close to yellow are plug ins that are being overdriven so gain staging as you move closer to the top of the range i.e. 0, can be crucial .