Hi Everyone,
 
As powerful and easy to use as I find Sonar X1 when it is working, I find it exasperatingly cumbersome and unintuitive to set up and troubleshoot if you are unfamiliar with it. Despite having set it up partly before, I am really battling to get a few things working after a re-installation, so hoping the experts can assist.
 
My setup is as follows:

• Asus Xonar Sound Card
• Technics Electric Piano (Midi)
• USB Mixer
• Cakewalk Sonar X1 Producer

 
PC Sound Settings:

• My PC has the built in sound card disabled.
• Sound Recording is set to USB mic
• Sound Playback is set to Asus Sound card

 
Other hardware

• I have a mic running though the USB mixer
• I have my electric Piano running into the sound card through a midi adapter.

 
Issues:

• When in a midi track, I can see midi in/output, but can’t see it reflecting in a bus or master level mixer and can’t hear it. The metronome plays back perfectly. Is this some sort of bus routing issue?
• I have eventually got the mic input working through an audio track. The sound quality is atrocious though, the levels are all over the place, and there is something giving feedback.

 
 
Is there an easy step by step guide I can use to set up from scratch, and configure all in / outputs?
 
Thanks in advance!

Hi SkootaO my english is not the best but i'll try my best.
 
 
Let's start a small tutorial for your first issue.
 
Start a new project in X1 and chose Basic. In this project you got following chanels/tracks:
Tracks
- One audio track
- One midi track
 
Busses
- One master bus
- One metronome bus
- One preview bus
 
Main out
- One main out ( that's the output of your soundcard ).
 
At first load a synthesizer in your project. For example SI Electric Piano. A window will open and you can choose any options. We disable every option ( for more information of these options click on help of the right side or F1 on your keyboard ).
 
The Next go to your audio track and do following settings:
Input = Si Electric Piano - Primary Output Stereo
Output = Master
 
The Next go to your midi track and do following settings:
Input = Your midikeyboard or omni
output = Si Electric Piano
 
The Next go to your master bus and do following settings:
Output = Your soundcard
 
 
If you play now on you Midikeyboard you'll hear the Electric Piano.
 
 
Greetings Tomas
 
 

Midi is a series of instructions, not sound.  When you play your midi keyboard it is sending a load of messages to Sonar saying which notes you've pressed and how hard and when you released them.  This is the midi activity you can see.
In order to actually hear anything you need to send those instructions to an instrument which you place in an audio track.  Tomas' post above tells you how to do that.
 
Get this working and come back for more help on your mic issues...   (hint, USB mics are a bad idea...)

Not to be patronising, but I think your issue 1 (MIDI I/O) might be that you are not clear on what MIDI is about, so I suggest that you read up on MIDI in general first (either via the SONAR reference manual or via any number of on-line resources). My guess is that you will then be able to resolve this yourself. In essence, MIDI data does not result directly in any audio signal. On the positive side, it sounds like the MIDI from your keyboard is reaching Sonar just fine. You need to route it to a device (soft synth or back out to your hardware piano) that can interpret the MIDI data stream and make sound from it.
 
There is a series of ten-or-so tutorials that come with Sonar that you should work through and it will start to make sense. This will likely resolve your second issue, too.

P.S.:
It's true. I don't see the possibility to choose the Microsoft Synth. But you have the TTS1 Synth in X1. Exchange it with the the Electric Piano and you have a GM Soundmodule with 16 midiparts ( wich is called multitrimbal ) and 4 stereo outputs.
 
For each midipart you must load a extra miditrack and root the output allways to TTS1
In every track you got the option to select the midichanel. Here you can select the channel from 1 to 16.
 
For the 4 Stereo outs it is the same.
For every output of this synth you must load a extra audio track and root the inputs of the audio tracks to one of the 4 outputs of the TTS1. The outputs of all audio tracks root again to the master bus.
 
 
 

Tomas M.
Hi SkootaO my english is not the best but i'll try my best.
 
 
Let's start a small tutorial for your first issue.
 
Start a new project in X1 and chose Basic. In this project you got following chanels/tracks:
Tracks
- One audio track
- One midi track
 
Busses
- One master bus
- One metronome bus
- One preview bus
 
Main out
- One main out ( that's the output of your soundcard ).
 
At first load a synthesizer in your project. For example SI Electric Piano. A window will open and you can choose any options. We disable every option ( for more information of these options click on help of the right side or F1 on your keyboard ).
 
The Next go to your audio track and do following settings:
Input = Si Electric Piano - Primary Output Stereo
Output = Master
 
The Next go to your midi track and do following settings:
Input = Your midikeyboard or omni
output = Si Electric Piano
 
The Next go to your master bus and do following settings:
Output = Your soundcard
 
 
If you play now on you Midikeyboard you'll hear the Electric Piano.
 
 
Greetings Tomas
 
 

Hi Tomas, Your english is perfect, and many thanks for taking the time to reply! I will try this from the beginning and see if i can get progress, then let you know what happens!

Karyn
Midi is a series of instructions, not sound.  When you play your midi keyboard it is sending a load of messages to Sonar saying which notes you've pressed and how hard and when you released them.  This is the midi activity you can see.
In order to actually hear anything you need to send those instructions to an instrument which you place in an audio track.  Tomas' post above tells you how to do that.
 
Get this working and come back for more help on your mic issues...   (hint, USB mics are a bad idea...)

Thank Karyn, appreciated! I'm using a normal XLR mic, but the mixer has a USB connection. I can also send the mic through the mixer (unplugged from USB) straight in to the sound card, but haven't managed to get this right either...

ChristopherM
Not to be patronising, but I think your issue 1 (MIDI I/O) might be that you are not clear on what MIDI is about, so I suggest that you read up on MIDI in general first (either via the SONAR reference manual or via any number of on-line resources). My guess is that you will then be able to resolve this yourself. In essence, MIDI data does not result directly in any audio signal. On the positive side, it sounds like the MIDI from your keyboard is reaching Sonar just fine. You need to route it to a device (soft synth or back out to your hardware piano) that can interpret the MIDI data stream and make sound from it.
 
There is a series of ten-or-so tutorials that come with Sonar that you should work through and it will start to make sense. This will likely resolve your second issue, too.

Thanks! I think i understand how it should work, and indeed have figured it out previously. Somehow the way i am routing through the audio and synth has changed though and i'm back to square one.
 
Are you able to give me a link to the tutorial videos? This is exactly what i need. You can follow a link from the Sonar application but it just takes me to a troubleshooting page which I found impossible to navigate...
 
Thanks again everyone!

I can't give you a link to vids (in fact, I'm not even sure they are available that way, although there'd be no harm in googling for them). There is a Video Tutorials link on the Start Screen, but IIRC these are on quite specific topics, rather than a general primer. The tutorials that I'm thinking about are in a section of the PDF Reference Manual (installed with Sonar). The projects and files that allow you to work through them hands-on are also (optionally) installed with Sonar, so if you didn't install them in the first place, you can do so now via CCC or by downloading directly from your account.

You can't really use two USB soundcards at the same time. USB mics are basically useless because in order to use it you need to select it as your ASIO interface and that means not being able to use another ASIO interface for playback.
 
Use your Xonar soundcard, which has inputs and outputs. I'm not familiar with the brand, I hope it comes with a good ASIO driver.