• SONAR
  • Sonar features I have never used, and what am I missing ? (p.2)
2016/12/16 19:14:36
dcmg
I'm always looking for way to do things with fewer mouse moves or keystrokes, so Craig's tips really hit home there.
I've only recently started using "speed comping", which may really take some wear and tear off my mousing hand :)
bi-filter: recently used that and now REALLY love it. One of the first reached for when I want to get something sounding odd..quickly.
 
Step Sequencer: never been much into that way of doing drums, but played with it recently and it was a nice change...may just use that more often for the electro stuff.
 
Vocal Sync: Horrible early experiences with that, but recently tried it with pretty good results. Maybe I really can skip Vocalign :)
 
And the grand finale: Audio Snap.
Good Lord, I can not for the life of me get that function to ever create something better than I can do manually. Seems like a hot mess, and my ProTool friend just shrugs when we talk about it. I LOVE Sonar, but Elastic Audio is the only feature in PT that has ever made me consider switching. I'm sure it's pilot error, but everything I hear about EA is that it's fairly simple...and just works.
 
If they every got AS working like that, I would be thrilled :)
 
2016/12/16 19:58:18
jude77
The truth is I don't know enough about what I'm not using to even know it's there.  So I don't use it.  I'm hoping that  CW will make some videos aimed at intermediate users to cover some of the new things. 
 
On the other hand I absolutely LOVE SONAR.  I've tried ever other DAW out there and I keep coming home.  For me the basics of SONAR (record/edit/comp/add effects) are easy-peasy.  If you ever worked with tape you know how to work with the basics of SONAR. 
 
Anyway, knowledge is power, and I certainly wish I knew more because I'm sure there are easier ways to do some things, as well as ways to do somethings that seem impossible.
2016/12/16 23:16:56
Anderton
dcmg
And the grand finale: Audio Snap.
Good Lord, I can not for the life of me get that function to ever create something better than I can do manually. Seems like a hot mess, and my ProTool friend just shrugs when we talk about it. I LOVE Sonar, but Elastic Audio is the only feature in PT that has ever made me consider switching. I'm sure it's pilot error, but everything I hear about EA is that it's fairly simple...and just works.



The good news: The AudioSnap engine can give really excellent results.
The bad news: The results will depend on how well you prep the file. 
The good news: Prepping a file is easy if you know what will make for good results.
The bad news: If you don't know what will make for good results, you can't prep the file properly.
 
I could never get AudioSnap to work right but over the last year or so, I've really figured it out and now i use it quite a bit. Much of that involves knowing when to disable AudioSnap transients, and when to create ones that aren't there.
 
There are other programs that handle this kind of task better, however, with about 25% more effort you can get fine results with SONAR. I think the real issue is how often you need to use it. If you're going to quantize all your tracks all the time, it would be a PITA with AudioSnap. But if you need to fix some tracks in a project, AS does the job without having to leave SONAR. I use AS a lot on rhythm guitar parts whose intent is to be more percussive than anything else, and therefore, it they're offbeat compared to the drums they sound "wrong."
 
However part of why I get along with AudioSnap is I really know my way around creating Groove Loops and REX files, and that knowledge is key to getting AS to work effectively.
 
I really wish I had time to do more videos...if I could do a 20 minute video on AudioSnap (which would probably take me about 20 hours to produce), I bet it would make the whole topic a lot easier for people. I did do a couple AudioSnap tips in "The Big Book of SONAR Tips" but there's much more that could be said. 
 
 
 
 
2016/12/16 23:31:39
Anderton
Speed comping: You'll get best results by far if you enable snap. That's counter-intuitive because logically, it would make sense to separate phrases by splitting in the silent parts. Snapping means you'll sometimes end up missing the beginning or end of a phrase, but don't worry about it. You can always "heal" the split after the fact with the crossfade tool. By snapping, the phrases become much more like easy-to-manipulate Lego blocks.
 
VocalSync: The tool you love to hate. Sometimes it's just so perfect, sometimes it's dreadful, and you wonder why. The bottom line is the smaller the phrase you sync, the better. You also need to accept that VocalSync will work 80% of the time if you choose the right part of the phrase to sync, but that for the other 20%, manual stretching is indicated so you can apply value judgements.
 
Personal philosophy time here...we have a ton of "automatic" tools--VocalSync, AudioSnap, gates, compressors, noise reduction, normalizing, etc. They all work to some degree, but IMO nothing works better than putting a lot of time and effort into doing these operations manually. So are we doomed to devoting hours to deal with this stuff? No! Use the automatic tools. Listen to the results. Make note of the sections where it doesn't work, then undo. Fix the problematic sections manually, or by more finesse in use of the tool (e.g., applying VocalSync to a shorter phrase). Then apply the automatic tool again. Perfect...yes, you spent more time than if the automatic process worked perfectly, but a ton less than doing it manually.
 
There's pitch correction all over the vocals in my latest album, "Neo-." But I bet hardly anyone will notice where it's happening, because I'll apply it to a note here, a note there. 
 
2016/12/17 00:00:23
ArcRex
I would not worry about tools that you haven't used, rather be aware that they are there. When you run into an issue, think about the tools that may help.
 
I use the step sequencer as a click. I cannot seem to use the built in click, bu I just make a 1 measure loop and can
just  put in a simple bass/snare, and I can follow that.(You can also make quick changes, for instance making a 3/4 click)
 
I maybe slow, but I recently realized that I could use the Pro Channel Tube Saturator(w/o distortion) in front of my Amplitude sim to replace the guitar volume knob. I can then record dry with the guitar full up then when I mix, I can dial the tube saturator to get amp to growl like a proper guitarist, but in a controlled environment.
2016/12/17 01:23:39
Kamikaze
The Midi FX are pretty cool, I find the Chord Analyzer a bit sluggish at times in playing from the transport, but fine in real time 
 
The midi Echo is really flexible and allows this to note offset the each delay and choose chromatic or diatonic scales, you can swing them too. nice for creating runs. If you set the number of echoes to 3 and the delay to zero in milliseconds, the notes occur at once, creating a 4 note block chord from one note.
 
If you then add the Chord analyzer after the Echo, it will show you the notes created, the chords it has made. 
 
Transpose is pretty cool too, you can run you midi performance through it and see how it sounds in different keys or in different modes. Change you melody and chords from C Ionian to C Dorian for example.
 
Put in sequence, of Echo>Transpose>Analyzer will allow you to create block chords from one note, then fix it to a key, changing voice shapes as a result, then see what these chords are as a result. Seeing what interesting chord progression you make by accident. Playing into this is pretty fun (I use a windcontroller which is monophonic player only, so I can get pretty expressive chords from one note). After you have something, you can see what make minor changes to this the midi FX chain and stumble across interesting progressions, Open the voicing by playing with the pitch offset in Echo, adding more note extensions, changing the keys and modes in Transpose.
 
I've not used to Arpegiator that much, it's pretty cool though and nicely laid out. Add this to the end of the MIDi FX chain and from one notes on you keyboard you are creating interesting arpegiated patterns of interesting chords voicings and progression.
 
The midi event filter can help out too, when you get into difficulties. My windcontroller send pitchbend very easily, and when playing keys, it sounds wrong to modulate the pitch. Most time I can turn pitch modulation off in the synth and continue sending pitch bend, but when I can't, this comes to the recue.
 
I don't use the quantize, but someone recently asked about how to make straight drum hits sound more natural. I think this would be another good tool for that.  
 
It' a shame it's not been added too. A chord device, where instead of haphazardly like above, I can define the notes that will result when I play one note from the keyboard. And a midi voice splitter to allow notes to be output to different midi channels. Through ranges or intelligently assigning notes from a chord to different midi channels, based on their order. So bottom notes go to 1, the next note up to 2, and the next to 3, and so on. So a four note chord could be assigned to cello, Viola, Violins one and two, or baritone, Trombone, alto and trumpt 
2016/12/17 12:31:14
Kamikaze

2016/12/17 16:58:53
Afrodrum
Leee,
Bitflipper,
Wetdentist,
Chuckebaby
BobF,
Dcmg,
Jude77,
Craig,
ArcRex,
Kamikaze
 
Thank you !!!
 
 
2016/12/17 22:40:37
dcmg
Anderton
Speed comping: You'll get best results by far if you enable snap. That's counter-intuitive because logically, it would make sense to separate phrases by splitting in the silent parts. Snapping means you'll sometimes end up missing the beginning or end of a phrase, but don't worry about it. You can always "heal" the split after the fact with the crossfade tool. By snapping, the phrases become much more like easy-to-manipulate Lego blocks. 



There you go again..making my life easier....
I really think the speed comping tool is pretty brilliant...and I've been remiss in not using it. Better late...
 
Re: Audio Snap, to your point, it appears to be a tool that requires time when you're *not* concerned with being productive or fast so that you might fully learn its quirks. I just need to put in more time. 
After pitchy singers, acoustic guitarists with dicey timing is my most laborious and frequent editing scenario. I intend to keep plugging away at Audio Snap in the hopes that it becomes a time-saving tool in that scenario. As always, the real-world tips and shortcuts are mucho helpful :)
2016/12/18 05:13:50
Rob[at]Sound-Rehab
Anderton
dcmg
And the grand finale: Audio Snap.
Good Lord, I can not for the life of me get that function to ever create something better than I can do manually. Seems like a hot mess, and my ProTool friend just shrugs when we talk about it. I LOVE Sonar, but Elastic Audio is the only feature in PT that has ever made me consider switching. I'm sure it's pilot error, but everything I hear about EA is that it's fairly simple...and just works.



The good news: The AudioSnap engine can give really excellent results.
The bad news: The results will depend on how well you prep the file. 
The good news: Prepping a file is easy if you know what will make for good results.
The bad news: If you don't know what will make for good results, you can't prep the file properly.
 
I could never get AudioSnap to work right but over the last year or so, I've really figured it out and now i use it quite a bit. Much of that involves knowing when to disable AudioSnap transients, and when to create ones that aren't there.



admittedly, I have avoided using AudioSnap in the past - mainly because the way I thought it should work and hence tried to apply it, did not give me any usable results ... just lately I bothered to read up on it and first of all had to realize that there is quite a bit of documentation (which is not bad, just scattered across many help pages) ... and after being through all these pages about 3 times while giving it a go on a simpler task, I'm start to change my view on AudioSnap ... currently I believe the biggest problem with AudioSnap is it not being intuitive enough ...
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