In my opinion, there isn't a single controller under $1000 that will be better than the A-500 PRO for Sonar X1. It intergrates absolutly perfectly.
A lot of people would have already read this, but here's some features you can use with the A-PRO inside Sonar X1. I'm not going to list obvious things, such as play/stop, etc...
You have 4 buttons on the A-PRO labeled B1-B4. You can select a preset to make B1 control the tracks inside Sonar. So if you press B1, and then move slider number 1, track number 1 will change volume. If you press shift and the foward button at the same time (on the A-PRO) then those same 8 sliders now control the next 8 tracks - so pressing B1, then shift and the foward button, and then moving slider 1, track number 9 will change volume. (I hope that makes sense.)
B2 controls synths (or effects, i can't remember which off the top of my head.) B3 controls the other option (synth or effect). And finally, B4 controlls the Pro channel.
If you'd prefer to simply click on whatever you want to control, you can do that aswell (with a different preset) but i find using the B buttons to 'focus' is so much better because i don't have to use my mouse.
Other useful features include being able to use the drum pads as control buttons. You can set them to do absolutly anything that Sonar can do. You can also have different setting for each B option - which is what i do. So you can have 32 different functions for the drum pads.
Finally, using ACT with the A-PRO is just simple. All you have to do is press the act learn button (on the synth or effect) move a parameter on the synth (or effect) such as finter cutoff, for example, and then move a knob (or slider) on your A-PRO. You don't have to do them one at a time either. If you wanted to set up an ADSR envelope to use slider numbers 1-4, simply press the act button (on the synth) move the A, D, S then R parameter on the synth, move sliders 1-4, and finally press the ACT button again.
There's probabaly some more things i've missed, but let me now balance it....
The aftertouch on this keyboard is very very poor. It's usable, but very annoying, and whilst you can choose from 4 different sensitivity and response settings, none of them seem to work perfectly.
Apart from the aftertouch i cannot fault this keyboard. I brought the A-300 last year and i wouldn't swap it for anything under $1000 (i'm talking about the Mackie MCU, or Mackie Universal Pro.)
I wrote a set-up guide for the A-pro for Sonar 8 and 8.5. You can find it here -
http://forum.cakewalk.com/tm.aspx?m=2077977 It's also worth checking out this guide aswell -
http://forum.cakewalk.com/tm.aspx?m=2181430 it's a lot more indepth than mine though so it might be worth getting used to the A-PRO first.
Finally, i'm going to write up a new tutorial explaining how to set up the A-PRO for Sonar X1, and how to use all of the different functions (such as the B 'focus' buttons, setting up the drum pads to act as control buttons instead of notes, and so on... So keep checking this section of the forum because i'm hoping to have it on here within the next couple of days...
It's probabaly worth pointing out that i am no way connected to Cakewalk or Roland - i just absolutly love the A-PRO inside Sonar because it is a million times better than my old controller - which was an M-Audio Oxygen 49.
post edited by S.Wallis - 2011/06/09 11:55:59