If you are already using PC Expanded - give us your first impressions.

I am stuck at work until 5.30 Eastern - come on - what's it like?

Its good!
I opened a project i was working on all day yesterday in 8.5.3-- and somehow, everything seems easier, smoother.

Examples:
-Snap is finally working, somewhat as expected.
-Hitting near the end of a clip "knows" you want to trim the end of it.
-color schemes still suck!
-i might be imagining this, but timing seems tighter?

soundsubs

-Hitting near the end of a clip "knows" you want to trim the end of it.

Oh man, this was one of those little things that's been bothering me about X1 for a while. It makes basic editing such a hassle. This, plus the fact there's a ZETA 2 bundle (which I haven't grabbed yet) will probably push me over the edge to go ahead and buy this (though I'm still kinda skeptical of the update overall).


Hopefully there's other good fixes in here, and hopefully they release a free fix patch for those who don't want to shell out $$ for bug fixes :P

Too bad SoundCloud's under a DOS attack and has been since last night. I tried both the SoundCloud site on its own and through Producer Expanded, but no luck connecting.

John


 I don't have a project that could use it at present that I can recall.

Maybe if you posted some songs someone might suggest one that could use it.

John

bapu

John


I don't have a project that could use it at present that I can recall.

Maybe if you posted some songs someone might suggest one that could use it.

Oh I'm sure I can find something.

So then you'll post the before and after?

can you use the PC or PC modules in fx chains two-point-oh?

thx, but can i use the PC or PC modules in fx chains two-point-oh? as in, can i build my custom 2.0 effect using a mix of VSTs, DXs and PC mods?

Jonbouy

daryl1968


I am stuck at work until 5.30 Eastern - come on - what's it like?

Being stuck at work?

Ya I agree, it can be a bind.

(hang on a minute, I don't even have job)

What???!!!????

It's a good little update I feel. The softube sat. is pretty neat. The gate works as advertised. FX chains are just as good as reason combinators. Drag and drop replace synth is handy. It's a solid little upgrade which only a couple of weeks I ago I had said I would not take. 

Skyline_UK


Interesting some folks think some bugs have been fixed - on this thread Willy at CW says that isn't the case.  Must be a placebo effect!
http://forum.cakewalk.com/tm.aspx?m=2401791
A bit disappointing.

Too late, I already pulled the trigger! :)  Oh well, it was inevitable.


I'll investigate this "clip trimming" thing when I get home and see if it was actually improved. If not, then I'm highly disappointed in soundsubs for deceiving us all!

Well, I've been playing with it for a couple hours now and must say I am quite pleased with the improvements. The FX Chain 2.0 is probably my favourite - as is the one click-drag- and drop synth replacement. Dumping stuff into the browser will probably be usefull but as for now the FX Chain is the stuff! And the presets that Cake provides us with seem to be very well put together. Making your own presets is great fun! I hope they make a user library or something for UI backgrounds. 

A Modular PC will have a killer potential. The Softube Saturation Knob sounds deadly serious to me. It can't even be compared to the Tube module that we've had all along. That one is quite subtle, the Softube aint! It has a switch that lets it focus on either high or low frequencies as well as a Neutral setting. It works great and will be very usefull I expect. I got the Gate too. Sounds alright to me. Haven't tried it fully yet.

I purchased this with the z3ta+2 bundle and the z3ta+2 is absolutely great! And with the new synth replacement function I've been swaping it with other synts and quickly compared it to the others. Doing it on the fly seems quite stable but there's a slight audio dropout.

Everything seems to be automating as expected. No problems there, all the knobs and buttons on the FX Chain interface and everything in the PC is controllable through ACT.

It's a pretty cool addition to X1 and I'm liking it. And the entire software seems to be running as smooth as ever on my system. I still haven't tried it on an old project but I am about to do so

Just had a test with the MusicXML export. It sure beats exporting and importing MIDI into Sibelius. Sibelius makes the import procedure relatively nice. But this feature could be better. And being able to import MusicXML into Sonar after editing in Sibelius would be pretty awesome! But at least it's a step in the right direction - if they keep improving in it. It's nice to have.

Gregmang


PLEASE PLEASE add some real color options.

OR find a way to incorporate Panu's mods........

Has anyone loaded the upgrade into a Panu modded X1c?  Does it overwrite the Panu modded dll file with the stock X1c dll thus bringing you back to the "blah" color scheme of X1?  Or, heaven forbid, just crash?

I've only played around with it (I got the bundle with Z3TA+ 2.1 and the S-Type Expander/Gate module) for an hour or so, but here are my quick first impressions, in no particular order:

Replace Synth: This feature was my biggest reason for wanting X1 Expanded as it represents potential for significant productivity gains at the early stages of a project when experimenting with sounds and also in remix projects where one of the goals is upgrading or replacing the sounds.  I've wanted this feature ever since Project5 was introduced.  Finally!!!  There are three ways I've found, thus far anyway, to access it: 1) Drag a synth from the browser to a relevant track header (be careful you don't drag it to the FX bin, though, or it'll be inserted as an audio effect).  2) Right click on the instrument track icon in an instrument track and use the Replace Synth command from there.  3) Go to the Synth Rack and pull down the Synth menu and use the Replace Synth command from there.  I wish you could also just right click on a module in the Synth Rack and have it bring up the Replace Synth command there, but it doesn't.  That would have been more intuitive than the Synth Rack-wide Synth menu since it's more intuitive as to which synth you are replacing, rather than having to check to make sure the correct one is selected before using the rack-wide menu.  One other niggle is that replacing a synth doesn't pop up the synth's property page, which would be desirable a large percentage of the time since you'll also want to pick a sound or load a sample.
 
Pro Channel interface:  Having the vertical scrolling with the mouse wheel is nice.   Being able to collapse the individual modules to save space when not needing to adjust a specific module (or when not using one of the modules that can't be deleted) is even nicer.  Being able to drag modules to reorder them is also quite nice and makes the module chain order more intuitive.
 
SoftTube Saturation: This reminds me of my first time using the PSP MixPack plug-ins probably a decade ago, where turning them on often seemed to just magically make things sound better, but where you also had to be careful that it wasn't just the additional loudness that was influencing your impression.  Having the switch to have it affect the whole frequency spectrum or only the high or low end is also nice for sound options, while still keeping the interface simple.  I think I'm really going to like this module, but at the moment I may just be a little too much of a kid in a candy store with its instant gratification factor.  One immediate tip:  Try this behind Z3TA+ 2 for a really cool, or should I say "warm", sound enhancement.
 
S-Type Expander/Gate for Pro Channel: I didn't play with this much, but it worked like an expander/gate for the small amount of checking it out I did do.
 
MusicXML Export: I should first mention that notation enhancements have been among my main enhancement requests for SONAR for pretty much ever.  While the idea of this is nice as one piece, I'm decidedly underwhelmed after my first test with it.  In the first place, I was thinking I might be able to just export the main project file from a File/Export menu, but no go.  I had to actually look at the documentation to figure out where to find it, and it wasn't mentioned in the What's New section of that, so I had to search.  You have to select the tracks, then go to the notation view, then use File/Print.  That doesn't seem to make intuitive sense to me in that XML is a data format, not a display/output format.  I'll get used to finding it there, I guess.  However, then I imported the tracks I'd exported into Finale 2011, and they really looked pretty crappy, with notation that was much like SONAR's lousy notation.  Well, yeah, that made sense since SONAR is probably outputting what its Staff View displays.   I decided to compare just exporting a Type 1 MIDI file (quicker to do with File/Save As... anyway), then importing that into Finale.  The results were significantly better, apparently owing to Finale's doing a much better job in figuring out how to quantize the MIDI data to notation.  Perhaps there might be better results with other files, though the project I tried for this was pretty simple.  The bottom line is, I'm really not sure this buys anything since most notation programs can read MIDI and SONAR's notation capabilities are very limited.  We still need much better notation capabilities within SONAR.  I'm not looking for great quality output, but rather the ability to do arrangements in context using notation, especially for doing things like adding a string quartet in the context of a pop arrangement where I'll play the basic tracks live, but will want to arrange the string parts in notation (then probably print them out and play them manually).  I guess my bottom line reaction at this point is maybe it's at least encouraging that Cakewalk thought about notation enhancements and took one step, but I'm not sure the actual capability buys much of anything in practice.  Perhaps, though it may be a building block for some future enhancements that do bring practical value (e.g. if they can write XML, maybe a future version of SONAR will be able to read it and meaningfully import it?).
 
FX Chains 2.0: I mostly played around with the new presets.  Some of the ones I tried in the guitars section seemed quite nice.  It is also nice to have the skinnable interfaces to highlight the main things to tweak in the chain, keeping the UI simple, but still allowing some customizability without having to dive into the lower-level details (which you can do by bringing up the underlying effects).  I didn't actually try doing any FX chain skinning myself, but the video for it makes it look fairly straightforward.  One time when I inserted a specific FX chain ("Chicken Stickin", which is a nice country-style guitar patch, in the 2.0 - Retro Section) SONAR crashed on me, but inserting it again later worked fine, so I'm not sure what happened there.  (SONAR is usually very stable on my system.)
 
Z3TA+ 2.1: I can't say I've been a big Z3TA+ fan.  That is nothing against the synth itself, but more a reflection of a combination of the types of music I tend to make (where Z3TA+ tends not to be applicable all that often) and that the interface always felt a bit cold to me with its relatively text-heavy controls alongside the sliders (this part probably wasn't helped much by my not having actually used Z3TA+ all that much since I didn't spend enough time with it to get used to its interface and mainly just tried selecting presets).  Even just bringing Z3TA+ 2.1 up for the first time gave me a sense of improvement.  The interface just looks more intuitive, and the organization of patches into named groups even makes it easier to try out presets.  I'm sure it was a bonus that being able to put the SoftTube Saturation module behind it warmed it up considerably (Z3TA+ always felt a bit cold/digital to me, so I tended to stick PSP modules behind it to warm it up).  Unless I branch out in the types of music I'm making, I still probably won't be using it all that often, but I do have to say the new patch organization and more inviting interface makes me want to play with it more and see what uses I may find for it.  It's probably just new toy syndrome. :-)

I don't even have a SoundCloud account, and I suspect I'd be more likely to want to export files separately then upload them to wherever later anyway, so I didn't try the SoundCloud feature.  (From what I've read in other reports, SoundCloud might be having some issues today anyway?)
 
All in all, this seems like a worthwhile upgrade for both workflow (replace synth, Pro Channel interface enhancements) and sound possibilities (new Pro Channel modules).  So can SONAR X2 finally become the notation enhancement release?
 
Rick