Making the switch from Cubase

Hello, up until now I was a Cubase user and made the switch to Sonar 8.5 not long ago.
So far looks good - but I still have some very basic interface questions.

1. Is there an audio editor? In cubase if you would double click an audio click an audio editor would open where you can edit the audio - pencil, reverse, fade in and outs, copy cut paste whatever. In Sonar all I get is a window where I can't do anything (or can I? nothing happens if I click on stuff).
2. Took me a while how to glue midi clips together (seems it's called bounce, not glue). How do I do the same with audio clips? Let's say I have a few drum hits which I want to glue together to one big clip of audio. Not bounce it! Just make a clip combined of other clips. How do I do it?
3. Sampler? What's the sampler for drums? Is it beatscape or session or what?

As I advance more I will probably have more questions so this thread will be alive for some time I guess.

edit:
4. I used to use a lot of "Shift-G" in cubase. What it would do is set the currently selected clip on loop, and start to play it from the start. I know there is "set loop markets to selection" (or something like that) button in the toolbar, but this Shift-G thing made the loop, rewinded to the beginning of the loop and started playing.
5. I figured out how to make vertical lines in the track view, but the problem is that they show only on measures (which is Sonarish for "bars" I guess). How do I change it? What if I want to see vertical lines every beat? Every 1/32?

Thanks again!

garrigus


2. Yes, use Bounce To Clip(s). That's how you combine audio or MIDI clips.


But when I bounce to audio - I can't edit the specific components. Once bounced it's just one long audio clip. Anything about question 5 above?

To do a loop Bounce to clip-groove the clip. Take the edge of the clip with the mouse and drag the loop!

Another question -
Where's the MIDI gate?
I guess it's somehow related to compressor/gate plugin, and the helpfile says I need to set it on manual to trigger the gate.
Where do I trigger it?
Couldn't find it.

By MIDI gate I mean I have an audio track running (for example a pad track) and I want to turn it on and off using a midi note sent from a midi track.
What I used while back in Cubase was this: http://destroyfx.smartelectronix.com/extras/ but I was wondering if there's a native Sonar plugin to do it. Like I said, the compressor/gate plugin should be able to do it according to the help file but I just couldn't figure out how to make it work.

Sounds like something you should be able to do. Which plug did you try, the gate plug from your previous post?

My guess is that you'll ave to go into the plug properties (via plug manager, for example), force the plug to behave as a synth (it may be categorized as an audio FX, not synth), insert the plug into the FX bin of the target audio track, and route a MIDI track to the synth instance (in the audio FX bin). Sonar lets you drop a synth into the FX bin of audio tracks, but getting the plug to accept MIDI may require you to force SONAR to see the plug as a synth. Does that make sense?

If you let me know which gate plug you used, I can try this myself a bit later... 

keith


Sounds like something you should be able to do. Which plug did you try, the gate plug from your previous post?

My guess is that you'll ave to go into the plug properties (via plug manager, for example), force the plug to behave as a synth (it may be categorized as an audio FX, not synth), insert the plug into the FX bin of the target audio track, and route a MIDI track to the synth instance (in the audio FX bin). Sonar lets you drop a synth into the FX bin of audio tracks, but getting the plug to accept MIDI may require you to force SONAR to see the plug as a synth. Does that make sense?

If you let me know which gate plug you used, I can try this myself a bit later... 

One of the plugins I used was the MIDI Gater from here:
http://destroyfx.smartelectronix.com/extras/
I enabled it as a synth and it works in accepting MIDI notes and gating. The problem is that I can't seem to be able to control the parameters with automation. It writes automation, but doesn't read it. It also happened with other 32 bit plugins.

Lowline


Something which will achieve the same thing would be to put the sonitus gate on your audio track and trigger it by sending an insert from the midi track to it's sidechain input.  The gate will then open and close etc. for the duration of the midi note.

Actually I did the same thing, but with an audio signal. Fired up PSYN with a simple saw wave (no envelopes) and used this as the signal for the gate. I'll try the MIDI method as well.

Already did it as an instrument track.
Just seems stupid to waste CPU power (although minimal) for an extra soft synth to trigger this, when there are dozens of plugins out there which use plain midi notes - but unfortunately are not available for automation in Sonar. I still didn't understand if it's a bug or an unimplemented feature.

The One big feature missing from Sonar is, as you say, the one click audio editing that Cubase does. I went nuts at first but if you own Wave Lab and it is installed you can have the best of both programs. By highlighting the track or clip and use  "tools" Wave lab should be a choice.
Once you do your edit in Wave Lab save it and when you return to the Sonar screen it will ask you if you wish to re-load and keep the changes.

manenbu


Ok, the trigger is the button itself which needs automation. This is very unconvenient.
I tried using the VST plugins but apparently I can only write automation for them and not read as they are 32bit (bug or feature?).

So - to put it short, is there a way I can use midi notes on one track to turn audio on and off on another track? Or an easy way to achieve the same effect?

If you wanted to use a gate effect on the audio, then you'd need to drive an audio signal (e.g. a bass drum for tight/pulsed gating or a sine wave for on/off gating) and route that audio to the sidechain of the gate.  A lightweight (free) VST would be a good choice (low resource use).

Other possible ways...use MIDI (automation or 'learned' parameters) to control one of:

o the track's MUTE
o the softsynth's volume control (e.g. MIDI CC #11 - expression)
o the track's volume level

Alternatively, a lot of softsynths have built-in step generators and/or very flexible modulation routing which could achieve the same effect.  e.g. in Rapture's global page there are independant L/R step generators whose task is to control the output of the synth's left and right channels.

(I don't know why you can't read the automation back, presumably you have the read automation button enabled?)

Cheers johnnyv. 

I didn't check last night, but if there's no means to explicitly point Sonar at an external audio editor then I doubt it'll show up as a) it's very old and b) it doesn't 'install' itself; you just unpack the archive and run the executable!  None of this Windows registry nonsense :-D

I guess it's worth checking to see if Sonar correctly picks up on changes to audio files made externally to the application...

Free download, but staggeringly expensive

Cool Edit Pro is still available, but that's also surprisingly costly.

Both probably very bloaty too.

I think I'll stick with TWE!  Super-fast sample accurate editing packed with features all in less than a meg.