Clone track/duplicate softsynth possible?

Hey everyone,

I clone tracks all the time but almost always they're simple audio tracks. Yesterday I had a softsynth part that I wanted to double up on and maybe tweak the sound a little from the original part. Without thinking about it much I cloned the track. Somehow I assumed Sonar would create a new softsynth for that track with identical settings, the same as what happens with all your fx plugins if you clone an audio track.

What happened instead, of course, was that Sonar created another simple instrument track that pointed to the same softsynth.

It occurred to me that this is not necessarily the most logical behavior (especially not with simple instrument tracks). I also couldn't find a quick way to duplicate the synth sound, other than saving it as a new preset, inserting a new synth and loading the preset. All in all it seemed to me a workflow enhancement would be welcome.

How do you guys usually deal with this?

No, your question is clear.
 
I don't think there's a simple way to do what you want.
You will have to launch another instance of the same synth, load the relevant patch,  then Ctrl + Shift + Drag your existing Midi track to the new one.
You can then easily group the 2 Midi tracks so that any note adjustments you make in 1 will be reflected in them both.

I doubt many people want two synths with the same setting playing the same thing.
What you could do is save the synth settings to a preset, open a 2nd instance of the synth, and set it to that preset.
Then cloning the MIDI track, and pointing it to the new synth, should do what you need.

I think i didn't finish my post.   After loading the preset synth and cloned MIDI, you could then fine-tune the settings or MIDI programming to suit what you wanted.
Honestly, i don't know how much the bakers would invest in this - i think yours is the first request i've seen for an Synth-clone feature.

Did you even bother to read my post Craig?! I get so tired of these workarounds for real issues...
Actually I'm just messing with you, that sounds like a really nice solution. By FX rack do you mean that track's FX bin or some other new feature that I've missed?
Having separate midi for each synth is actually preferable to me so that's not a problem.

I've never run an actual synth from an audio track fx bin (if that's what this is) unless it was a synth that had a function for that specifically (like Z3TA+ FX or Reaktor). Is there any reason why this might be a problem? Will it still show up in the synth rack (which I never use btw) or is it now completely tied to the fx bin? And can I simply select it as a target for my midi tracks or do I need to tick some boxes?

In any case, thanks! I still feel it would be more "elegant" if this worked directly on simple instrument tracks (because the assumption is that you clone the instrument track, not a bunch of references to an external synth) but from Sonar's logic I understand why it's not the case and this sounds like a really good solution!

Now be honest, did you think for about five seconds that you got shot down again? ;)

Sanderxpander
Did you even bother to read my post Craig?! I get so tired of these workarounds for real issues...
Actually I'm just messing with you, that sounds like a really nice solution. By FX rack do you mean that track's FX bin or some other new feature that I've missed?
Having separate midi for each synth is actually preferable to me so that's not a problem.

I've never run an actual synth from an audio track fx bin (if that's what this is) unless it was a synth that had a function for that specifically (like Z3TA+ FX or Reaktor). Is there any reason why this might be a problem? Will it still show up in the synth rack (which I never use btw) or is it now completely tied to the fx bin? And can I simply select it as a target for my midi tracks or do I need to tick some boxes?

In any case, thanks! I still feel it would be more "elegant" if this worked directly on simple instrument tracks (because the assumption is that you clone the instrument track, not a bunch of references to an external synth) but from Sonar's logic I understand why it's not the case and this sounds like a really good solution!

Now be honest, did you think for about five seconds that you got shot down again? ;)

Actually for about 1 second, but then even before hitting the next sentence, remembered your sense of humor was not surgically removed at birth  
 
I'm getting used to it. Some people just like to spin things in as negative a way as possible. Although I would think they want to change, they apparently don't, and there's nothing I can do about it. So, I'll communicate with those who like to communicate, and let others project on me the faults they see in themselves. Anyway, to your questions...
 
it used to be called the FX Bin, now it's called the FX Rack, probably because it looks more like a rack these days. Sorta. Or maybe "bin" sounds too much like trash bin. 
 
I thought no way it would show up in the synth rack, but I tried it and...whoa!! It shows up in the synth rack.
 
There are no known issues with doing this. This was the way it was always done but people found it confusing, so Cakewalk created the instrument track thang.
 
You can select it as a MIDI input for a MIDI track's output.

Hi Craig,
 
Sorry for not getting back to you earlier about this but at the time I was otherwise occupied and I only just ran into a similar situation where I wanted to clone a synth. I tried your instructions but I couldn't drag the synth to the fx bin. In fact it doesn't seem I can drag it anywhere at all. I'm confused as to how you're managing it. The synth rack doesn't give any cloning options either unfortunately.

Oh right from the browser. So I would need to do that from the start, no way to "clone" an existing synth in the rack. I feel a feature request bubbling up :)