Notecrusher
 
Craig, Irvin is saying you introduced a strawman into the previous conversation and he used "eating a sandwich" as a metaphor. You are getting crazy tangled up in your anger at him and going off the deep end.[ Calm down. Sometimes you do get condescending in your responses. And you seem to think that putting a smiley washes it away. You get boatloads of praise here. You are going to get a little criticism too. 

I don't have a problem with criticism if it relates to something that actually exists. There have been justified criticisms of things I've said in the past and I have either acknowledged them, or apologized if that was appropriate. What I resent is him fabricating things i never said, then criticizing me for what he fabricated. 
 
If you look at the thread he referenced, all my responses were totally non-confrontational and related to how he could come close to doing what he wanted to do in SONAR. There was no condescension. I even closed by saying I could see the conditions under which I would find his flavor of pre-roll useful. Read the thread if you don't believe me. 
 
The accusation that "The conversation took a bizarre twist when you tried to justify not having the feature by claiming that you needed to have coffee or eat a sandwich before recording (like any of that had anything to do with Pre-roll Recording)" was not stated as a metaphor. He made a specific attribution to me that is fiction. None of what he said in that sentence is true.
 
I also have a problem with asking questions to try and understand something in the case of his metronome issue, and getting attacked for it. I went into that conversation hoping to learn something that could be used to improve SONAR. If I don't understand what someone says, I think it's reasonable to ask for clarification. I wanted to understand what was so valuable about the approach he advocated. He didn't answer and I still don't know. It's not reasonable to expect me to go to the Bakers and say "You should add a feature because it has the advantage of...well...actually, I don't know what the advantage is."
 
I go out of my way to try and be polite and helpful to those who are interested in a dialog, and i hold my tongue a lot. Perhaps he's frustrated that I don't understand what he's saying, but I think it would be a more constructive approach to help me understand what he's saying rather than making stuff up and attacking me for it.
 
This forum is dedicated to how to use SONAR. He comes in and makes a feature request. I try to help him with a solution/workaround that allows him to at least come close to what he wants in SONAR. He disparages it as a workaround (although I don't see a one-click way to enable a metronome in SONAR is a "workaround..."). Read the threads if you don't believe me.
 
I feel an obligation to admit to my mistakes. I also feel an obligation to correct statements that are factually wrong, particularly when they take the form of an attack on me or a fellow member of this community.
 

Still disappointed by Smart Screen.
It is not at top level.

thepianist53
Although I have used Cakewalk since 1995 (v. 3 for windows) and am currently using Platinum, my use cases are not very involved with sophisticated routing. I put my tracks in, mix, master (rinse-wash-repeat), done.  Therefore, I am really, really not quite getting the usefulness of this feature, or when/if I would use it. As far as my initial cursory look at the documention goes, it appears this is most useful to create different mixes/submixes, etc., or a way to use different effects on a track, but just part of the track-- I get the feeling it is so much more. I don't know if this is something I need/want, but can someone give me any testimonials or explain this to me like I'm a 5 year old?  I mostly write jazz and pop, and most of the time I'm using virtual instruments almost exclusively, and I strive for realism over using lots of synths or innovative effects, etc. I like doing my mixing/mastering using various plug ins like Izotope's suite of stuff, and most of this has served me well to release several albums, as well as some post-production work on field recordings and other folks' demos, etc. 
I'd like to take advantage of this feature once I more fully understand it, but my patience with routing is rather thin, for some reason (old age?). 
Thanks for tolerating such an open-ended and admittedly ignorant question. 

 

Hi,
Let me try and help out a bit. First thing to keep in mind: This is only a workflow/organization enhancement. I can't think of anything that we can do now that we couldn't before by using a combination of buses and sends. That said, essentially this update gives us two things:
 
1 - Basically, buses can now live in the track pane like other tracks and we can print them in place.
2 - Routing has gone from point-to-point to point-to-multipoint.
 
Here are a couple of examples of each of those concepts:
 
Buses as tracks:
 
Let's say I have a project with three acoustic guitars, each of which is multi-mic'd at body and neck, along with a full band (bass, e.git, drums and whatnot).
Old way of handling the acoustic guitars - Mix the two mics on the first guitar to taste. Route them to a bus called Ac.Git1 so I can deal with the summed mics as a single unit. Set the Ac.Git1 bus output to the Ac.Git.All bus so I can have one fader that controls ALL the acoustic guitars. Reapeat with acoustic guitar 2 and 3. This results in four buses (ac.git 1, 2, 3, and the group bus). Do the same process with each multi-mic'd instrument: snare, kick, maybe toms, and multi-mic'd guitar cabs. My bus pane is getting awfully crowded and now I'm doing most of my individual instrument mixing in the bus pane. This makes me sad.
 
New way - Instead of sending each Ac. Git to a bus and then to a group bus, I send them to an aux track that lives in the track pane, and then each aux track to it's instrument group bus. Now I have a track that represents each instrument, and a bus that represents each instrument group. Bus pane is no longer crowded, individual instruments are mixed in the track pane, and groups in the bus pane. The world is a good and happy place :)
 
 
Next change: routing has gone from point-to-point to point-to-multipoint:
 
The idea with this concept is that Sonar used to let us choose one, and only one, output for any track or send. Now we can have that track or send go to as many places as we want.
 
Let's say that I have a single kick drum track and I want to create a "thud" track and a "snap" track to go with it.
 
Old way - Duplicate the kick track twice, do my FX and whatnot, set the output of each track to a bus called "Kick.Combined", and route that bus to another bus called "Drums" (you could also do this with sends). This results in additional buses in the bus pane and duplicated tracks (assuming you're not doing this with sends).
 
New way - Since we can now route the ouptut of a track to multiple destinations, I route the kick track to a patch point and create three new tracks whose inputs are set to that patch point. Do your FX and whatnot on those Aux tracks, and then set the output of those Aux tracks to a patch point. Create another aux track called "kick combined" whose input is the patch point from your effected kick tracks and whose output is the drum bus. Hide the tracks feeding the kick combined track. Voila: one track that represents the combined kick drum instrument in the track pane, and one bus for the drums instrument group.
 
So, really it's just about organization and routing flexibility. Again, you could absolutely do all this stuff before with sends and buses, this way you just have more (and I think better) organizational capabilities.
 
Dean

thepianist53
Although I have used Cakewalk since 1995 (v. 3 for windows) and am currently using Platinum, my use cases are not very involved with sophisticated routing. I put my tracks in, mix, master (rinse-wash-repeat), done.  Therefore, I am really, really not quite getting the usefulness of this feature, or when/if I would use it. 

we can finally create group tracks, there is no VCA Group feature in Sonar so the volume faders on the standard buses and on the new aux tracks don't change the volume levels of the sent/wet signal together with the dry one ( http://forum.cakewalk.com/VCA-GroupMaster-in-X1-m2209910.aspx ) from now the dry-send/wet signals also can be routed to aux tracks and their faders(dry/sent singals) can be (quick) grouped so the dry/summed sent signal levels finally can be set together in the same time




dry A,B go AUX
wet/send A,B go Aux Sends,
Aux go to Some Group A,B (just for fun, practically aux also can be grouped with real buses too)
Aux Sends go to longVerb
 
both Aux/Aux Sends volume fader were grouped so they can be set in the same time (btw where is group automation from Sonar) so the automation still have to be copied from track to track
--
then both ones Some Group and lonVerg go to Master

Anderton
Add speaking of adding new functions to your repertoire..."Five Reasons Why Patch Points Rock" is now posted in the Cakewalk Blog. ...

Craig, thanks for shairing. I've lived a sheltered life and couldn't figure out what I could use Patch Points for. You're simple examples have made it very clear. Thanks again.
 
Walt
 

This might be a good opportunity to clarify something about the solutions I try to provide. The sense of some people that they're "condescending" might be because I often explain things on a much more basic level than the level an OP seems to have. This is because for every participant in a forum, there are dozens, if not hundreds, that read a thread but do not participate. The level of these people can vary from platinum record producers to those who bought SONAR Artist yesterday. Ideally, I would like to present something that is helpful to all. People who consider themselves above the level that I explain something should not take it personally.
 
I of all people am aware that you can't know everything, so I'm grateful when someone explains something on a very basic level because I'm always interested in learning. It's not necessary for people to make up fictional examples of my stupidity, here's a non-fictional one: I've been using SONAR since 2000, yet I always moved individual tracks into track folders and considered having to do that a SONAR annoyance. Turns out I didn't have to do that - someone here brought up the "right-click/choose Move to Folder" option, and my life has changed for the better since 
 
Also, whenever I correct something I said that was not accurate (which does happen), I include the phrase "I stand corrected" as a searchable tag. If anyone wants to find out whether I've updated any information I've provided, simply search on site:forum.cakewalk.com "I stand corrected" anderton. Of course that will also pull up lots of non-relevant posts as well, but that's a limitation of search functionality. 

Craig, also my thanks for http://blog.cakewalk.com/five-reasons-why-patch-points-rock/ being posted.

Thank you Craig. You are a true gentleman. Period.

FCCfirstclass
Craig, also my thanks for http://blog.cakewalk.com/five-reasons-why-patch-points-rock/ being posted.

Glad you enjoy them...of course, as soon as that was posted, I found another application that I wish had been included... 

Might be Friday's Tip of the Week