A (not so) Complete Beginner's Adventures With Sonar Platinum...

Hello, all. It has been a while since I posted one of these. The basic premise is I will be posting a real time review/report of what I'm doing and finding and observing as a new user of Sonar Platinum 2015 (Feb "Braintree" release as of the OP).
 
In the past I did these for various pieces of hardware I bought (unboxings) and programs (installs) with some impressions on whatever it was I was working on. Back then I had absolutely no idea what I was doing and I'm still a novice but I guess I can't call myself a beginner anymore (thus "not so" complete beginner).
 
This will likely not be of interest to pros but some folks seem to enjoy them and through the absolutely amazing support and generosity of the forum I am now a proud Sonar Platinum user. Thank you gswitz and all those who contributed and to the forum in general. It was a truly unbelievable act of kindness and really most of what I know has been acquired here. As awesome as Sonar is this forum is the most powerful tool at our disposal.
 
There were many comments implying that I need to be up to date so I can root around the program and continue contributing to the forum and of course, whether I updated now or later, that is what would have happened. I guess that will happen sooner. So instead of starting a ton long winded posts and/or threads as I poke around I figured I'd post this and just keep it all in one place.
 
It is good timing because I am in the middle of doing some final tracking on my current project and then some mixing so I'll be performing a bunch of general tasks which will allow me to give Platinum a bit of a utilitarian workout. The current project was created in X3 so hopefully it will remain stable. Usually I keep projects in the version they were created in but I'm hoping and anticipating this one will survive the transfer.
 
I am working on this so the posts will be sporadic and I'll post stuff as I notice stuff. I may run into problems I need help with. I may gush at things I think are cool. I may get peeved at any weirdness/bugs I find. That's the point of the real time review. I'm just a guy trying to get crap done with the software. Maybe it will be helpful, interesting or entertaining or maybe it will just be lame and annoying. Either way it's happening.
 
Cheers and again thanks to all you awesome doods and doodettes. Kindly excuse any typos and/or brainfarts throughout.
 
 

Beepster, I think you may have misinterpreted the events of yesterday. The vig is due next Saturday.

what's a vig?

 
:-/

Now the final thing I checked out yesterday before I went off to Beepster snoozerland was the one and only bug that had consistently been driving me nuts in X3. The following is a merged thread(s) of the reports I made here on the forum.
 
http://forum.cakewalk.com/Track-View-jumping-to-parent-track-when-selecting-Takes-m3047905.aspx
 
They had been confirmed but I foolishly had not made my own report (lazy, stoopid, busy). I was very worried it had not been fixed but Alex checked it out and said it had. Not that I didn't believe him but I had to check it out myself yesterday and lo and behold... no screen jumping when clicking/selecting between tracks.
 
The problem was I use/create many lanes for my guitar parts. I like to try out different performances as I work. I use dual inputs many times while recording or create doubles. This means going back and forth between two tracks with take lanes open to see how things sound together while I comp. What would happen is as soon as I moved to the second track's set of takes and clicked on something the screen would jump to the Parent Track. Then I would have to scroll back down to whatever I was looking at. Very annoying.
 
That seems to be gone now.
 
The point is I did not officially report that. It was only confirmed through the forum. I had never seen any other reports of this behavior (oddly enough because it seems like something that would make people angry).
 
So either it got fixed through a coincidence or someone else reported it or the Baker's are indeed keeping an eye on what we are all kvetching about here and doing something about it.
 
Whatever it was I am quite happy about this particular fix.
 
The only other bugs that used to kick my butt regularly were in X2 and were loooong gone by the time X3e released. Now I'll just have to see if any new weirdness has been introduced.
 
Other than that, as I said the project I will initially be working on in Platinum is something created in X3. I did a Save As so that I can revert back and finish it in X3 if need be but I'm hoping to finish this final tracking and then mixing in Platinum. This should be a good test of how complex projects transfer over.
 
Cheers.

As you so rightly point out the new Control Bar is a real inspired upgrade. It solves all the issues we had with the original. I have Platinum running on a laptop with a small display screen and I have the Control Bar working on it nearly as well as it is on my wide screen desktop display. 
 
I know you are a X1 user and never had the pre X series version but the customizable module is not a bone thrown to the older user but an enlightened approach to adding quick action to an already very quick interface.  
 
Sonar 8.5 never had a Save As button. Something I wanted for a long time. Nor did Sonar 8.5 have the ability to create your own buttons. In one big addition CW has given us all that and a great deal more. I don't know who is behind this but I suspect it could very well be Benstat that is behind  this.
 
 
He is the one that added toast to our beloved Sonar. 
  

I used Firefox to update my profile on their site and getvmy 3 Adpaks etc. Don't understand your problem ?

Cheers,
Jerry

I use Opera Developer. It works very well with this forum and I have no problems on sites like XLNs.  

Anyway, enough of that. I just got excited to check out the kits. It looks like the one kit I was logging in to snag anyway (the Fairfax Vol 1) was free ON TOP of the 3 adpaks so that just freed up a slot for another kit I wanted. Also there is the Addictive Keys Studio Grand for free. I had seen people talking about those with X3/AD2 but didn't think I qualified because I was on AD1. I guess maybe those have been sitting in there this whole time. lulz...
 
So now I have the main kit I wanted anyway AND a fancy piano AND still have my three AdPaks.
 
Annoying as the process is that's still pretty slick.
 
Edit: Scratch that. This is a severely crippled version of the Fairfax Kit. It is just a few pieces (kick, snare, crash, hats). Took a long time to download and the site was suggesting it was the full version but I guess not. AD2 at this point is looking like one huge advertisement as well. This is getting annoying. Off to download the REAL version I guess. Cripes. The kit peices it did load sounded amazing though so I guess I can't freak out too much.
 
This has prevented me from playing with Platinum which was my original goal today. Oh well. Sorry guys but I wanted this be real... and this is real.
 
 

I just snagged the Fairfax 1, Metal and Indie kits. Would have liked to have gotten the Jazz Brushes but they may not have been very practical. Gotta consider what's actually going to get some money flowing and that Indie kit sound seems to be what people want right now. I think I'd have to tune up those bloody toms though. They sounded really loose and floppy on the demo.
 
The Fairfax seems like it'll mix really well and the Metal one I can just toss in to my thrash stuff easily.
 
Now I have to figure out what MIDI packs and extra kit pieces to snag. I didn't realize that I got those on TOP of the kits. Kind of cool.
 
I remember a lot of people being really stoked about that Addictive Keys Grand too. Not sure if they were talking about the demo but I'm not sure really how crippled they could make a piano sound. I'm guessing maybe it's just mic options or something missing but that's fine. I have plenty of other tools to twist a good solid pianer sound to my will.
 
Won't be able to really try any of this out until tomorrow I think though.

Beepster

joakes
I used Firefox to update my profile on their site and getvmy 3 Adpaks etc. Don't understand your problem ?

Cheers,
Jerry

I'd like to know how you did that. The local client does not work with FF here and I had to contact XLN initially (after I got X3/AD1). It was the same issue and they said specifically I had to use IE and disable a bunch of crap to make their installer work.
 
I just got it to work anyway and yes I had to disable some security settings in IE again. So refer to this link to set unblock scripts if your XLN installer is crying about Javascript...
 
http://support.microsoft.com/gp/howtoscript
 
Anyway... I loathe IE so I do get a little pissy when I'm forced to use it. Sorry about that but a high tech company with high tech customers should know better.
 
This has nothing to do with Cakewalk or Platinum but it is a real time review and this is what is happening.
 
I'll be back later.

Just got up, i'm on the other side of the pond.

This is what i did : i openned up my XLN account/profile using Firefox and registered the code given by C3. That then gave me access to chose kits, midi etc which i did.

After that i closed it down and fired up the XLN installer and everything was ready to be downloaded.

HTH,

Cheers,
Jerry

PS : FWIW the only website i can't use with FF is that of Toontrack - there i have to use Opera (or IE).

Okay... so I'm back in front of the DAW (got a slow start today... wasn't feeling well this morning). I created a new project just goof around in. I wanted to try out my new AD kits with my padKontrol so inserted an instance using all stereo outputs.
 
Yesterday when I was saying that the AD GUI was HUGE I had been using the standalone so at least I could move it around and access any paramters off screen. Now that I have it inserted as a synth it is constrained inside a plugin window. Due to the resolution settings I have in Windows to accomodate my flatscreen (black bars on either side) I guess it only allows windows to be a max height width. Now the right hand side of the GUI is cut off and I can't scroll over or stretch the window horizontally to get at that stuff. Apparently this GUI is only designed to work on a widescreen monitor which is very unfortunate and kind of odd. I've never encountered this before.
 
So I may have to post a question in the Computers section or something to finally figure out how to force Windows to use the entire width of my monitor. Yes I have spent a lot of time trying to figure out my resolution/aspect ratio stuff but this monitor (which is actually a TV/monitor) is weird. Any time I get it set to take up the whole width of the screen it stretches things out horizontally. Good excuse to finally (hopefully) get that sorted out. Still kind of annoying.
 
I'm also having a bit of a hard time figuring out the new preset scheme in AD2 but I'll just have to read up a little more. It is quite different than AD1 (as far as I can tell).
 
The kits I got however sound AMAZING and will be very useful for my stuff. I was having a problem with the padKontrol's expression pedal triggering sensitivity. I am using a Korg padKontrol which is a rather nice, cost effective but older MPD device and you can assign a MIDI note to be triggered by an external foot control expression pedal which I set to trigger a kick sound so I can play it almost like a real kit. The problem was when I hit the expression pedal it would double/triple trigger the kick. Not ideal but I've had this problem before. In the past I was able to reign it in sheerly by adjusting my performance (I would still get a double trigger every now and again but if that happened while recording I would just edit out the extra notes). This time it was so extreme I thought all was lost and I wouldn't be able to use my exp pedal anymore but after a while it was working fine. I don't see how I could have adjusted my performance to the point of resolving the extra triggers so quickly (it was literally ten minutes of goofing around and I was getting single triggers again) so either I'm a better fake drummer than I thought or AD2/Sonar somehow compensated automagically for those wonky hits... if that is even possible.
 
Anyway... that's enough about AD2 for now but this experiment did prove some other things about Platinum itself.
 
My pK was already detected, enabled and following the existing mapping I had already done. Basically the MIDI device settings imported flawlessly and there was no difference in which kit pieces were being trigger than in AD1. My snare was where it was in AD1, My kick was where it was. Everything was where it was. I just set the pK to my usually scene for live drumming and it I was able to jam out. So that was cool.
 
Also something of interest to some may be... when I open Platinum the plugin scanner now shows 85 plugins as opposed to the previous 69. I have only installed the main Platinum installer as of this writing and AD2. Not sure exactly what extras were installed but that's a pretty good bump up. Maybe there is dupes or plugs updated to 64 bit or something causing the extra but yeah... 16 more plugs showing up and maybe more once I install the other content.
 
Opening/creating projects seems to be relatively snappy even with my AV on (Microsoft Security Essentials) which usually lead to lags and white outs in previous Sonar versions and is why I generally disable the AV when working. So that's nice and indicates some core efficiency improvements.
 
Aside from that I haven't done much but the look in general seems a little more modern than even X3 which was already pretty slick (especially after playing around with one of the competitors recently which was... well I don't care about looks but you really notice it when using other programs).
 
Gonna try to get to my main project now because I really should get this tracking finished up.
 
I'll post more when I've explored more.
 
Cheers.

I'm going to do some experiments on all that later to see if I can get it working on my own and/or make some notes for a proper query for everyone here. The only thing currently getting screwed up by it is AD2 so it's not an emergency. Just something I have to figure out at some point. More interested in doing some tracking right now.

I use two wide screen monitors and I couldn't do without them. 

You're not the first to notice a snappiness to Platinum. It is more solid. I thought X3 was the cats meow.  It is no where near Platinum. They did a lot under the hood. Would you check out something for me Beep? When playback in X3 stopped and replay was done often if not all the time a small buffer sound of the very last thing partial was sounded. A little sound that was very annoying. It seems gone in Platinum. Could you check this out?   

What I mean is a not fully empty buffer sounding when replay is started. Its at the very beginning. I suppose that if you have fade outs or a bit of time at the end of a song it may not sound when restarted. This was in all versions to a greater or lesser extent for me at least X3 seemed to be the biggest problem. There was no way to get rid of it either. Platinum is so far not troubled by it.