BobF
 
  I'm considering Kontrol/Advance/Panorama for integrated solutions at this point.  I'm also considering Roland FA and blowing off the hardware/software/interop/quagmire altogether.
 
We'll see what happens over the coming season.  The only thing I'm certain of is being tired of half-ass solutions.

 
Agreed they all look great,  and I am a big fan of Kontakt so I am particularly drawn to Kontrol. Unfortunately I have a growing number of dusty keyboards from year's of overstated and under implemented integration by hardware manufacturers inexplicably ignoring Cakewalk, so I am trying to stick with my trusty Roland A-pro controller (which still seems to have the deepest integration out of the box of any controller) until someone finally nails Sonar control integration:)

Yeah good call, i think more than anything i just really wanted more inputs.....which simple sound cards seam to only have 2 inputs, and a 13 year old 8 track that also only had 2 inputs.........So yeah i could spend a lot of money......but really i just something portable to take to jams, and something that has enough inputs......and so with this zoom R24 thing,........i can record the full band live micing up the drums with 3 or 4 mics.........and then take it home and inport it all onto individual tracks in sonar............And it runs on AA batteries, so i can go camping and record camp fire jams........and yes i am crazy.......Ive bought a van, solar panels,a generator and Deep cycle batteries........just so i can take a drum kit, guitar amps and a pa into the forest and play and record music while looking up at the starts!!!!!!

paul jenkins
Yeah good call, i think more than anything i just really wanted more inputs.....which simple sound cards seam to only have 2 inputs, and a 13 year old 8 track that also only had 2 inputs.........So yeah i could spend a lot of money......but really i just something portable to take to jams, and something that has enough inputs......and so with this zoom R24 thing,........i can record the full band live micing up the drums with 3 or 4 mics.........and then take it home and inport it all onto individual tracks in sonar............And it runs on AA batteries, so i can go camping and record camp fire jams........and yes i am crazy.......Ive bought a van, solar panels,a generator and Deep cycle batteries........just so i can take a drum kit, guitar amps and a pa into the forest and play and record music while looking up at the starts!!!!!!

I went thru a period with a van, generator, deep cycle batteries and such, but it was so I could take a telescope to dark sites.  That sounds like fun.
 
FWIW, I dusted off my R24 yesterday after reading this thread.  The CS functionality works fine with a different interface selected.  As an interface, it was working fine live monitoring guitar @12ms RTL.  If that's too much latency, it has direct monitoring ability as well.
 
As an interface, the only real drawbacks for me is it only has 2 OUT and the level is -10. 
 
With the in-built drums and amp/fx models, you can very easily do some nice drum/guitar/bass tracks without a ton of gear.  It's a fun little box.
 
The track sequencer takes a little bit to get your head around, but once you get the hang of it, it is very slick.  It would be really cool if SONAR had a similar track sequencer to enable non-linear projects.
 
Anyway, good choice.  The R24 packs a lot of features/functionality.  Enjoy!!

Or is it just me using sonar step sequencer wrong???.....In fruity loops and on the R24 the sequencer has measures running from right to left horizontally, and then the tracks are from top to bottom......In sonar its like you build a beat using the step sequencer, but you to do a inversion of that loop you have to save it and then modify it, and then reload it on a new track as a new loop etc etc, it seems really inefficient..........i love how in fruity loops(for example)You can patterncreate a loop, and then copy paste onto a new loop pattern with slight variations etc etc easily.....and create 5 different loops with minor variations, and then just paste the chosen loop variation into the time line............fast an easy

Actually this is the 1st time ive really used a online forum scenario.......So please explain, how do i get to Andersons tip of the week thread?

Thanx for your help mate

paul jenkins
Or is it just me using sonar step sequencer wrong???.....In fruity loops and on the R24 the sequencer has measures running from right to left horizontally, and then the tracks are from top to bottom......In sonar its like you build a beat using the step sequencer, but you to do a inversion of that loop you have to save it and then modify it, and then reload it on a new track as a new loop etc etc, it seems really inefficient..........i love how in fruity loops(for example)You can patterncreate a loop, and then copy paste onto a new loop pattern with slight variations etc etc easily.....and create 5 different loops with minor variations, and then just paste the chosen loop variation into the time line............fast an easy

Sonar's step sequencer is in many ways an emulation of hardware step sequencers. It's not intended to handle audio loops at all, just MIDI. It's basically another way of using MIDI to control synths or samplers that has a few interesting tricks of its own. Like every row can send to a different instrument on a different MIDI channel, it can send all MIDI CCs, work with drum maps (which themselves can be used for more than just drums and more besides. It also has limitations, just like the hardware equivalent but those limitations can be a creative tool in their own right.

And within its' design parameters it's extremely easy to create different patterns on and no you don't need a new MIDI track for every pattern. In a DAW such as Sonar (or Logic, Cubase, etc) the entire application is itself a super-powered sequencer as far as MIDI (and audio) is concerned. Regard the step sequencer, piano roll view etc as sequencers running within a bigger sequencer.

To get back towards being on-topic, I suggest you spend more time with Sonar (or any other DAW or other software of a similar size) before deciding on hardware purchases and recording strategies beyond maybe a simple audio interface that can at least let you record a couple of tracks at a time and give usably low audio latency. As and when you firm up what you need you may well end up getting and using something else, but it never hurts to have a spare basic interface in reserve. And with audio interfaces what matters most is latency, the quality of the convertor chips (there are surprisingly few of them, but they can make a subtle difference), the quality of the electronics supporting the AD and DA chips, the noise floor of the analogue side of things such as the preamps and the quality of the drivers.

Another factor is the reputation of thr company for long-term support and how likely the whole thing is to be rendered useless by a Windows update. It's like printers, some manufacturers continue to update drivers for old products while others just tell you they've dropped support so please scrap your perfectly working two year old printer and buy a new one.

Ok im not big on midi anyway, as in im more of a guitarist,bassist,drummer,instrumentalist.........8 inputs is what i want for recording live band , and real drums................So my issue with the step sequencer in sonar is this.......i think you misunderstood me.........if i create a drum pattern and i have it from say bar 2 ,looped until bar 8 for example, but then i try to alter it slighly for bars 9 through to 13 for example, it will then change the loop in bars 2 till 8............you have to have a whole new track if you want a variation of the pattern.............So i found myself building a drum loop, saving it.......creating a new track opening a 2nd step sequencer, loading up the drum pattern that i just saved, and then modifying it.........Seems like a ridiculously long process..............And if its built as an old school step sequencer then they should have another beat building plugin that is more efficient
 

Ok so i just tried it in sonar, yes i was wrong, you can make the step sequencer go for as many steps as your song goes for.........Iguess i kind of want to be able to just work on a 4 bar loop and then do 5 variations of it to make up the whole song............Maybe you could help me with one small little thing i just got stuck on.............I made the step sequencer 60 steps long, ive filled in the steps 1 to 5......Now i cant get it to play from the start, it keeps starting at bar 5, even though its right back to zero in the track....and im clicking on the the counter window in the step sequencer window, and even clicked back and created a new beat on step one, press play and it starts from where im up to, not from the start........Please help.....I admit im really impatient with little things like this, frustrates me

Ah ha hammerhole freakoid........All good i figured out what i was doing wrong with step sequencer.......thanx for the discuission everyone........And yeah Mr Hammerhole, i plan on mixing it up, the mouse is good sometimes too...........Im happily programming a step sequence right now.......and so my plan is to mix real drums recorded on the Zoom R24 with a mix of R24 step sequenced beats, and Sonar built step sequenced beats..........Ive said enough, thanx everyone for your input, i am now a big fan of community forums!!!!
 

Please help......how do i select all the rows of a step sequence in sonar, so that it actually saves all the rows?

Paul, as you select each note, it should be inputting the results directly into a track, just save the project. You can still click on it like a normal mix and edit it again or anything else you want to do with it.

Yeah i could start a new thread but old mate here may have the answer, mate i saved the pattern but when i loaded it back up in a new step sequencer track, it had only saved one row.......and therefore only loaded one row back up.....So that can only be because not every row was selected when i saved.......I looked up the sonar documentation and it just says save pattern as?and yeah ive saved the song etc etc......although yes it has a limit of 64 steps....

I see lots of good advices in this thread, but I would like to know is there any better and more Serious control surface or mixer like Neve Or SSL or Avid that can work with sonar?
Always when I search in internet I see this units are working with PT and honestly have never them with sonar. I love sonar and it is about 15 years I am working with it and I should say as I said before sonar was always more beyond the technology compare to the other DAWs. I am not talking about stability, but just about what it always provides . For example adding an audio effect on clips is something that -as far as I know- PT recently announced it which we have had it long time ago. And lots of other interesting and useful features.
So I think it is the time for CAKEWALK now , specially after announcing for MAC version of SONAR, to co operate with the other companies and make this product more interesting in the professional market.
At this point when any of us want to spend more money for our studio , the best solution for CS is MCU. Why shouldn't be something else for example Duality from SSL? Any of the devices were named in this thread were not the best solution for Sonar even vs700 because you are lock with 8 faders and can extend more faders. I am not talking about fader bank, I mean actual faders. Like 16, 24, 32,64 faders. Always something is missing between our choices. one of them just supports 8 faders , the other one doesn't have transport keys, the other doesn't have jog wheel and ...... and eventually will end up to MCU :) but who ever seen in a really high end studio using sonar with MCU??? When the engineer pay $200.000 and buy a SSL console , defiantly he is looking for a DAW to be most integrated with the console and it certainly wouldn't be SONAR, which is so sad.
 
May be all of I said were wrong, Or may be lack of my knowledge, I would so happy if some one correct me. Or if I am right I hope CAKWALK do something in future.

Reza, do not know why sonar wouldn't work with most control surfaces, I do know why SSL and Neve would not though. They are proprietary and use there own storage system sort of like a full blown pro tools (I hate PT) and yes I did learn how to use long before DAWs became common place.
I have found sonar to be the easiest to set up a control surface with, I use an Alesis keyboard, the QX49 as my control surface and even set it up to control my synths and affects. I have the PT first system because they talked me into trying it out, it is the best of the Avid line but I still like sonar so much more and just do not use the PT. Yes 2000 plus pages of user manual is a lot and most people's eye's glaze when I tell them how big it is but it is worth the read and there are always the tut's on youtube or sonar university to help the visual folks lol.