Hi Clint, this is all doable in Sonar man. I run all my stuff live through it all the time. Even my patch changes for my guitar effects, hardware synths...you name it, it can be done and it works flawlessly. Here's how to do it.
The first thing to remember is, I doubt there will EVER be a "playlist" capability that will have a quick load time. There is so much going on man, it's just impossible especially if you have lots of different things going on within your projects. So we need to simplify all that so here's what we do.
You will need to create an entire show in one Sonar project. It's time consuming and tedious, but honest when I tell you, it works perfectly and has NEVER let me down.
The most important thing to keep in mind here is we need as little processing going on as possible to prevent any crashes that could come from this. What I do is convert all my softsynths to wave files so that the synth is no longer loaded up to possibly cause any issues. All plugins are frozen or "applied" to the tracks. At the end of the day, the only thing Sonar is being used for in this scenario is for playing the wave files inside it as well as controlling my midi patches to my guitar rig or any other hardware synths we are using. You can even fly in back up vocal tracks. I'll tell you how I go about creating all this stuff.
The first thing I do is record my band actually doing our show inside Sonar in one project and this acts like a template for me. Each song has it's own BPM and it's own click track so we are always where we need to be. From there I record scratch rhythm/lead guitar tracks in time with the click to each song and then I input my midi patch changes for my rhythm and lead sounds. The guitar tracks will all be deleted but the midi information for my patch changes will remain. So if I do this set, all my changes will be in the exact spots where I created them.
From there any softsynths or other added extras are added and then frozen or applied. Back up vocals, drum sequences, all that stuff can be implemented now. All effects plugs are frozen or applied...most times, applied because I don't want anything running in the background that could cause Sonar to make me look like a fool.
When this is all done, I have about 12 songs loaded in with click tracks and only we hear the click tracks in our in ear monitors when we play this stuff live. So think of Sonar as being a CD player playing your backing tracks only you have the ability to have patch changes inside as well. All this stuff is easy to control too as there are various way to start/stop the transport or heck, you just let someone you can trust control it and give them strict instructions on what to do.
In all my years of doing things like this, I have only had one Sonar crash and it was during rehearsal on a lappy that wasn't a fine tuned machine. I made a little video for one of the guitar players on here showing how he could control his guitar effects in real time using Sonar so he wouldn't be tied down to a pedal board. I could always send you a link for it if you're curious about it and you're a guitar player. The same principal would work for keyboards or even a bass processor. But the key to all this stuff is to have as little going on as possible within your tracks. Sonar will rarely crash from just playing audio with midi transmissions. The chance of a crash in this type of situation is slim to none and I've never had it happen to me. (Thank you God)
In your case, you'd only need a 2-4 count click track that probably wouldn't need to be there through out the song list. We use it due to the midi changes only and I haven't added additional back up vocals or synths other than when I have done the one-man-band show years ago and even then, all the stuff that played was bounced down audio which was quantized so I didn't need a click track other than to start me off. So give this some thought. It's definitely doable and completely reliable...you just have to be careful as to how much you have running in "real time". :)
post edited by Danny Danzi - 2011/05/17 16:13:33