And not to split hairs, but The Wizard of OZ was more than just a "television show". The first true color movie, the dawn of Judy Garland's career, and a classic for both gay and straight people everywheres.

But sheesh man, how DO you record a bus in real-time?

ORIGINAL: Noel Borthwick [Cakewalk]

Right. You can however do this via a control surface with ACT during a realtime bounce.

Errr... didn't Bob Damiano somewhere say that ACT translates the controller messages into host automation? So, parameters that the plug-in doesn't expose to the host, can't be accessed through ACT, or can they? Which is why I wrote: "Some synths have parameters that cannot be automated..."

So, that still leaves me with the only (ok, not quite true: there's also Tape-It - but that's a clunky workaround) option: route through the soundcard mixer (24bit). Which forces me to take care of the levels - which can be tricky when tweaking synths in realtime. It's all too easy to clip heavily - after all, the aspect of unpredictability is the whole point of doing such stuff in the first place. Hope you get the point.

werner

ORIGINAL: Lanceindastudio

We dont need "busses". Just make tracks capable of buss duties and make them all able to be sent to each other with full flexibility.

BINGO!

ORIGINAL: Noel Borthwick [Cakewalk]

You can print the output of multiple buses to a single track in SONAR very easily. Just solo the buses you want and do a bounce to track with the default options. No realtime bounce is required.

ORIGINAL: dontletmedrown


Thank you. That definitely helps. I would like to see bus recording implemented the way tomflair speaks of. This is how it's done in Pro Tools and it's very helpful because it allows you to record from several different busses at the same time very quickly.

I appreciate your input Noel. I'd find it very helpful if you could also reply to the following thread:

http://forum.cakewalk.com/tm.asp?m=1617645

Ok, Noel. I'm trying hard to be polite here, but it seems like you don't understand what REALTIME BOUNCE means. It means: Record the bus just like an incoming audio track where I see the waveform and everything. It apparently is NOT already a feature.

Ok, let me give you a quick example of how Autotune "graphical mode" is used in a typical Pro Tools studio.

-Audio Track 1: Autotune in FX bin, Send to BUS 1
-Audio Track 2: Set to record FROM BUS 1
-Highlight first vocal phrase and hit "Track Pitch"
-Make adjustments, then record the single phrase onto track two: TUNED VOCAL IS NOW PRINTED WITH ORIGINAL LEFT UN-ALTERED
-move on to the 2nd voc phrase and go back to step one

Can you imagine how tedious this is for someone coming into Sonar from Pro Tools and having to a jump through hoops? Autotune is the perfect example since it's processing is not so extreme when it is only managing one phrase at a time instead of trying to track the pitch of the entire track. When we can record buses in REALTIME, the routing possibilities are endless. I would imagine that people migrating from Pro Tools would be your #1 target audience. I have to wonder why it would be so hard to implement this?

One more question: Noel, have you EVER used Pro Tools in a real life recording situation? I kinda think if you have, my suggestions would not seem so strange.

Dave, I'm not inclined to get into an argument splitting hairs about your definition of "realtime bounce".

Have you tried what I suggested earlier? My point is that based on what you are trying to do it is easy to achieve the same end result in SONAR (even more efficiently than the method you quoted). Its not clear why you would want to wait for a realtime operation when the same operation can be performed instantly in a few moments using fast bounce.

I would argue that bounce is far more flexible in SONAR as compared to protools once you understand SONAR's workflow.
I see that you use the terminology "record from a bus". Protools is a hardware solution - unlike SONAR a bus is hardware therefore it is more natural in ProTools to capture the output of a bus using the same mechanics that they use for recording, i.e. in realtime. In SONAR buses are software objects that use host CPU to mix not hardware DSP so we have no good reason to capture the output of a bus using recording or in realtime for that matter. The ONLY reason we implemented realtime bounce was to capture LIVE inputs - i.e. inputs from hardware sources such as hardware synths (like our VS-700) or audio inputs. All other operations can be performed using the much quicker fast bounce mechanism that can capture the output of any tracks or buses in SONAR.

In your example here are the my proposed operations to do the same in SONAR. There may be other ways of doing it too.

-Audio Track 1: Autotune in FX bin, Send to BUS 1
-Audio Track 2: This is an empty track
- Tweak autotune until you hear what you want
- When ready, select the clip for the phrase you want to print - (make sure that this is the only object selected).
- Edit Bounce to Tracks
- Select track 2 as the target
- Set source category to buses.
- Select ONLY the effects bus
- bounce

This will bounce the effects bus to track 2 FASTER than realtime, giving you exactly what you got in Protools with the "record from Bus".

Noel

PS: Regarding your other link - I don't have any further information to add at this time besides what I was already quoted saying.

ORIGINAL: Noel Borthwick [Cakewalk]


In your example here are the my proposed operations to do the same in SONAR. There may be other ways of doing it too.

-Audio Track 1: Autotune in FX bin, Send to BUS 1
-Audio Track 2: This is an empty track
- Tweak autotune until you hear what you want
- When ready, select the clip for the phrase you want to print - (make sure that this is the only object selected).
- Edit Bounce to Tracks
- Select track 2 as the target
- Set source category to buses.
- Select ONLY the effects bus
- bounce

This will bounce the effects bus to track 2 FASTER than realtime, giving you exactly what you got in Protools with the "record from Bus".

Noel

PS: Regarding your other link - I don't have any further information to add at this time besides what I was already quoted saying.

Thank you for answering both of my questions. The only problem I can see with your Autotune workaround is that the resulting file will always be a stereo file, correct? Of course, I always record vocals as mono files. I'll try it when I get home. If I can use "Bounce to Tracks" and get a mono file that should work for me. I'll post again after I can try it out.

Thanks again,

Yeah, I guess a better way to explain my Autotune process (well, at least, the way I was taught in PT) is that I want to tune and print one phase at a time, but still have the original vocal comp left untuned. Thanks for trying to help me get this ironed out.

Got it. Another possible workflow in SONAR would be to use per clip effects (as long as you have enough memory to patch muliple instances of autotune. Split each phrase into a clip and patch autotune onto each clip.
This way you can tune each phrase independently. When you are done simply freeze the entire track. This will print it to the same track AND retain both the original track data as well as the autotune settings on each clip. All the autotune instances will be released from memory after the freeze.
The advantage here is that at any time you can quick unfreeze the track and get back all your original autotune settings and data.

ORIGINAL: dontletmedrown

Yeah, I guess a better way to explain my Autotune process (well, at least, the way I was taught in PT) is that I want to tune and print one phase at a time, but still have the original vocal comp left untuned. Thanks for trying to help me get this ironed out.

I'm aware of the issue where some plugins dont expose every param as automation. I wasn't suggesting using ACT as the ultimate solution for this. Ideally you would want to use the plugin GUI while doing a live bounce - we don't allow that yet.

Regarding routing a bus to the input of a track - I've seen requests for this but we've yet to see one concrete reason to do this that shows a viable and common use case that cannot be achieved with normal bussing.
Of course its possible to implement but please understand that we have to weigh requests like this alongside hundreds of other requests for potentially more pressing features. I can guarantee you that routing tracks to other tracks is not something 90% oif our users want to do.

ORIGINAL: Noel Borthwick [Cakewalk]

I'm aware of the issue where some plugins dont expose every param as automation. I wasn't suggesting using ACT as the ultimate solution for this.

With respect, Noel - seems to me that you did exactly that in your reply to my post. Although I was specifically talking about such synths, you told me I could do this "via a control surface with ACT". Maybe you just didn't read what I wrote then? And just to add: among those synths is Absynth, which exposes only its macro controls. And even Omnisphere, with its over 14,000(!) automatable parameters, omits a few. Sure, that's not Sonar's fault - though with the addition of a simple straightforward feature, that's been asked for many times, you could make a lot of your users very happy.

ORIGINAL: UnderTow

If we could route the output of a bus to the input of a track, we could do all the things requested in this thread.

Exactly!

werner