Routing a clean AD2 Drumset through Sonar's Console.

EDIT: Before reading my post, it may be worth seeing ABACAB's reply
http://forum.cakewalk.com/FindPost/3585199
 
‘How do you route you AD2 in Sonar’ seems to come up fairly regularly. I’ve intended to document my approach, in case it was of help for anyone, and maybe some can point out some shortcuts to the way I’ve been doing it.
 
I don’t use AD2 mixer at all, and I like to start with a clean kit, with everything outputted to the console in mono, except for overheads and room mics. I don’t use the bus or master outs
 
Starting with a blank project, I insert soft synth (Mine just called ‘Drums’ as I only have AD2 installed)

 
I set everything to mono, and include the midi and a folder.
 
Minimise the folder and press F to get everything to fit.
The stereo Overheads and Room are created as 2 monos, so I delete the right track for both, also I don’t want the Master and bus outs. I CTRL and select these tracks, right click and delete 6 tracks.
 
The inputs from both Overheads (11)  and Room (12) need to be changed from Mono to Stereo.
 
The track names are too long for the field, so I edit them.
 
I want everything on a drum bus, so Insert Stereo bus, rename ‘Drums’

 
Select all 12 audio tracks, right click the output, press CTRL (to change all selected tracks) and select ‘Drums’ to route to this bus.

Open Console View
Set the interleave on the two stereo tracks to ‘Stereo’ from ‘mono’(I’m not sure why this doesn’t happen automatically when you change the input).
 
I don’t need to see all the toms and Flexi options. But I do want to them controlled by a fader and a pan pot. I drag over the 4 toms to select and right clock the fader., and choose Group> New. And name it ‘Toms Fader’.
  
I create a little stereo spread on the pan pots and group and name ‘Toms Pan’.
 
I repeat with the three Flexi faders and pan pots (without the stereo spread), but give them a different colour.
 
I just need to see one Tom fader and pan, and one Flex fader and pan to control them all.   (If I use more than one flexi option, then I’ll come back and un-group them). I don’t use the midi fader on the console view, so I had these. Press H to hide, and uncheck the faders I don’t want. (Press H if you want to come back and un-hide later)

I find this view a lot more manageable on my HD screen with much more room, and the essentials available.

 
Now I need to configure AD2 as a Vanilla kit. I don’t think you can start a kit from blank, so you need to modify an existing.
Open AD2, choose a kit, and Select ‘KIT’ from the top menu.
I not using the mixer in AD2, so I need to set all the outs to ‘Separate out’ and I want Pre Fader, so the faders are not affecting Sonar.  Right click the down arrows for only the tracks that have been added to Sonar, and choose ‘Separate out (pre Fader)’. They turn yellow. (I think you have to do this one at a time, you can’t select them all in one go).
 
I put all the faders to Unity, so when it’s playing, I can see what s playing in AD2, and this helps me trouble shoot, if something is not sounding, or if something is bleeding when I thought It was turned off. CTRL + Right click sets each fader exactly. I also do this for all the pans (but more for OCD).
 
And I uncheck the send options.
 
The bus sends are hidden behind the pan controls and are pale blue instead of orange. Select the Bus, and CTRL+Right click to set them to zero.
 
The next stage I turn off all the extra processing on every fader and the overheads (These are accessed only from the Kitpeice Select Area, not just the Overheads Fader). The quickest way to turn these off is with the pale blue buttons. The yellow buttons and a sub group of the blue.
I also on the screen want to make sure the Overhead and Room levels are set to centre for all everything and this is on the same KIT screen with a CTRL+Right click.
If I want the Rides and Crashes to be on their own on the OverHeads Stero fader, with no bleed from the Kick, Snare, Hats, Toms and Flexi, then ‘Overheadz should be set to zero’.  
 
 
This is repeated for every fader, SEND FX, Rides and Cymbals, leaving the screen looking blank and centred.

 
It’s also worth checking the gain is set to unity for each Kit piece, with a CTRL+Right cick

Now to test, play and Beat and check the meters in AD2, the Bus and Master should be dead, and the master fader does nothing.
 
And only the corresponding faders in the Console view should be lighting up.
Save and name the Kit

Select the Track Folder, and Export as a Track Template (so you don’t have to do it a bloody gain).
 
Track Templates don’t carry the hidden tracks or groupings.  So these need to be reset.
 
 

That's very useful info, so I have bookmarked it, thanks!
 
Up to now I have only been using the shortcut method outlined here, with this AD2 drum map & track template setup:
https://www.cakewalk.com/Support/Knowledge-Base/2007013364/Setting-up-a-Drum-Map-for-Addictive-Drums-2-in-SONAR
 
"Track 15 is your MIDI track, which you can use to input the MIDI data for Addictive Drums 2. You can also insert any beat directly from Addictive Drums 2 onto track 15 by clicking the “Beats” tab in the upper-right corner of Addictive Drums 2, highlighting any beat and dragging it to Track 15.
 
The first track is a Master Track, which outputs all the sound from Addictive Drums 2 onto one stereo track. Most of the subsequent tracks are mono outputs for each individual drum from Addictive Drums 2, allowing you to process the audio from each drum kit piece individually. For convenience, the Overhead, Room, and Bus tracks are all formatted as stereo as well (as indicated by (ST) on the respective tracks. Note that processing in SONAR on any of these tracks will not affect how the AD2 Master (ST) track will sound; only processing within Addictive Drums 2 will affect the way this track sounds. This provides for lots of versatility, as you can use this track for things like parallel processing, having a dry track to compare to, or even having it muted altogether so you can monitor the individual kit pieces only."

abacab
That's very useful info, so I have bookmarked it, thanks!
 
Up to now I have only been using the shortcut method outlined here, with this AD2 drum map & track template setup:
https://www.cakewalk.com/Support/Knowledge-Base/2007013364/Setting-up-a-Drum-Map-for-Addictive-Drums-2-in-SONAR

That's useful. I wasn't aware they had created a template with Mono and Stereos. I'm guessing they had a lot of feedback with confusion how to do it.

All this is great!  So in setting up like this, how do I use the AD2 drum map in the piano roll view?
 
thanks, b

When I click on the link https://www.cakewalk.com/...ctive-Drums-2-in-SONAR, the browser is taken to www.cakewalk.com opening page.  Even right clicking on this and saving the link, still gets : https://www.cakewalk.com/...ctive-Drums-2-in-SONAR.  I don't think my computer is correctly interpreting the '...ctive-Drums-2-in-SONAR reference.'
 
Thanks for your clarification on which direction I should be heading with the above link.
 
-b
 

Ahh... I see what was going on now.  Opening the Drum Map Manager in Preferences, Sonar created the DM1-AD2 standard map.  First time I didn't see that the 'Output' on the preset was set to my MCU-PRO.  So, of course, nothing in the MIDI track for AD2 was actually going to AD2.  Second time I did see this, and switched each note to go to Addictive Drums.  Great.  It worked as it should.  Then as I opened a different project and added the track template for AD2, no sound.  Eventually I did remember to check the output in the Drum Map Manager preset. Of course, it was back to the MCU!  So I switched them all again, and then actually remember to save the changes to the pre-set.  Dah!!
 
So it does work as it should. 
 
This maybe one more step Kamikaze may want to put into their tutorial.  Oh, and the reset to UNITY on the sliders in AD2 appears to be Ctrl-left click on my machine.  Thank you all!