HOWTO: Sonar X1 with Digidesign Command|8
Due to a severe lack of publicly available information, for those looking for a way to use Digidesign Command|8 in Sonar X1, I am working on a tutorial showing how to make Command|8 work in "Standalone" mode with Sonar. I'm using Sonar X1 Producer 64-Bit install under Windows 7 64-Bit.
I'm not completely finished but I'm at the point where I feel comfortable getting some input on the missing parts. Below my comments are the basic steps I used to get it working. I will post the full tutorial with screenshots when it's done.
Before I give any instructions, a few points need to be made clear for those people who might want to try this:
SONAR X1 CAN NOT COMMUNICATE WITH THE COMMAND|8 NATIVELY. This product was designed to work in Pro-Tools. It will NOT work in Sonar X1 unless you use Stand Alone Mode!!!!
STAND ALONE MODE DISABLES A BUNCH OF BUTTONS. Specifically: The only buttons that work outside the fader/rotary area are the transport controls, which do not work with Sonar X1 correctly and the control-room/Headphone controls (assuming you are using the monitoring capabilities of the Command|8)
MAPPING CONTROLS USING 3RD PARTY MIDI-MAPPERS LIKE GENMCE/WINYOKE TO EMULATE Mackie Control IS POSSIBLE BUT VERY DIFFICULT TO MAKE WORK RELIABLY. Trust me on this, you don't want to try this in 64-bit mode. I'll post more notes on my experiences with this if anyone is interested in the technical aspects, but it was ridiculously difficult to figure out, and limited functionality to only 8 tracks.
HOW TO MAKE IT WORK:
(This instruction set assumes you are running Windows 7 64-bit, have correctly installed Sonar X1 64-bit and drivers for the Digidesign Command|8, and you are familiar with mapping devices, Control Surfaces and ACT functionality in Sonar X1)
1) Start Command|8 in Standalone Mode
2) Start Sonar X1 and add the input/output ports for the Command|8
3) In Sonar X1 Preferences, add 2 ACT controllers, both pointing to Command|8 input/output
4) Set the first ACT controller to work with Faders/Rotary for Channel 1/First 8 tracks by clicking on each parameter and wiggling the associated knob/fader. Choose to exclude all channel 2 data. Save preset!
5) Change Bank on the Command|8, then set the second ACT controller to work with Faders/Rotary for Channel 2/Tracks 9-16 Choose to exclude all channel 1 data. Save preset!
6) In Sonar X1, create a third Generic Control Surface, pointing to Command|8 input/output
7) Using MIDI Edit function on Command|8, set Select buttons for BOTH BANKS to use MIDI output. They do not transmit MIDI out by default in Standalone mode. I used Channels 1-16 and CC 72.
8) Set up buttons for Mute/Solo in Generic Control Surface for all 16 tracks using "learn". Each track must be set up individually. Save preset!
9) Use Right-Click/Remote Control/Learn to map your Command|8 "Select" buttons to Sonar X1 "Arm" function for your first 16 audio tracks.
10) In Track or Console view, drag your WAI (color strips) to the appropriate tracks (Have not figured out how to force ACT controller to start at Track 9-16 at program start).
11) Save project as Template.
MISSING INFO:
1) HOW TO MAKE COMMAND|8 TRANSPORT CONTROLS WORK IN SONAR X1.
Currently these controls do not work properly "out of the box": RTZ does not work at all. FFWD and RWD work for stepping through small project sections, but do not allow for long-press functionality. STOP restarts the track play from NOW time. PLAY does not work. RECORD does not work. Looks like I need to map SYSX values to make this happen, and I'm still banging my head against this issue. Any help would be appreciated!!!
2) HOW TO MAKE MOTORIZED FADERS MOVE WITH SONAR CONTROLS.
3) HOW TO SEND METER DATA AND TIME TO COMMAND|8
Paul Schopfer