Corling
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Why Doesn't Sonar Allow VST FX In A Chain To Be Individually Attenuated like FL Studio????
It's the most basic ability imaginable . . .
. . . The ability to put eight VST FX in a chain and use 10% of one, 24% of the next, 70% of the next. FL Studio, Reaper, and many other DAWs allow this to be done.
In Sonar, there is no way to attenuate individual FX while they are in a track or clip's FX chain. You have to make a generic FX bus, route the track's audio to it and then route that to the the master bus. This is cumbersome, inflexible, does not allow you to easily attenuate individual FX in a "stack" unless you make a series of FX busses. I can not understand why Cakewalk doesn't just allow FX to be attenuated while stacked in a track or clip's FX chain.
This single shortcoming is such a horrible curse on my workflow that I am seriously considering changing DAWs. This is sad because I really do want Cakewalk to be successful and help Roland break the ProTools mafia. Why Cakewalk? WHYYY?
post edited by Corling - 2011/05/19 12:55:22
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Re:Why Doesn't Sonar Allow VST FX In A Chain To Be Individually Attenuated like FL Studio?
2011/05/19 12:57:09
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...wicked
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Re:Why Doesn't Sonar Allow VST FX In A Chain To Be Individually Attenuated like FL Studio?
2011/05/19 13:17:39
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Most plugins allow this from their own UI, I would think you would dial it in that way.
I'll have to take a look at Reaper again to get a better grasp of what you're talking about tho, you mean the control of level as the signal passes through each plugin in the stack, right?
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Corling
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Re:Why Doesn't Sonar Allow VST FX In A Chain To Be Individually Attenuated like FL Studio?
2011/05/19 13:23:28
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...wicked
you mean the control of level as the signal passes through each plugin in the stack, right?
YES! Isn't it wonderful to be able to do that without opening the plugin window!? Especially when dialing in choruses and other stereo FX that you want just a pinch-of *while* monitoring the entire mix.
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Corling
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Re:Why Doesn't Sonar Allow VST FX In A Chain To Be Individually Attenuated like FL Studio?
2011/05/19 13:28:12
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Willy Jones [Cakewalk
]
Probably because nobody asked us to, large bold text won't make it happen but submitting a feature request might: http://www.cakewalk.com/s...ct/featurerequest.aspx
Thank you for your swift response Willy. I am quite sure that I submitted this feature request at least four months ago but am happy to submit it again. Because the feature is easy to implement from a coding standpoint and a GUI standpoint, I assumed the request was rejected. Maybe I will make a thread with a template description of the feature request and invite everybody to copy/paste it in the feature request form en masse :-)
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Re:Why Doesn't Sonar Allow VST FX In A Chain To Be Individually Attenuated like FL Studio?
2011/05/19 13:48:08
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Because the feature is easy to implement from a coding standpoint and a GUI standpoint This actually might not be true at all, it might be very difficult to implement - but it is a great idea please submit it if you have not already.
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SteveGriffiths
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Re:Why Doesn't Sonar Allow VST FX In A Chain To Be Individually Attenuated like FL Studio?
2011/05/19 14:11:05
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I am only replying because I was so impressed with the big bold letters..... Can't you set this up in the synth rack - assignable knobs? Cheers..Grif Corling
It's the most basic ability imaginable . . .
. . . The ability to put eight VST FX in a chain and use 10% of one, 24% of the next, 70% of the next. FL Studio, Reaper, and many other DAWs allow this to be done.
In Sonar, there is no way to attenuate individual FX while they are in a track or clip's FX chain. You have to make a generic FX bus, route the track's audio to it and then route that to the the master bus. This is cumbersome, inflexible, does not allow you to easily attenuate individual FX in a "stack" unless you make a series of FX busses. I can not understand why Cakewalk doesn't just allow FX to be attenuated while stacked in a track or clip's FX chain.
This single shortcoming is such a horrible curse on my workflow that I am seriously considering changing DAWs. This is sad because I really do want Cakewalk to be successful and help Roland break the ProTools mafia.
Why Cakewalk? WHYYY?
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Noel Borthwick [Cakewalk]
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Re:Why Doesn't Sonar Allow VST FX In A Chain To Be Individually Attenuated like FL Studio?
2011/05/19 14:19:34
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Because most plugins already have either an input or output gain or both. There are a million features that we could implement but we have to set priorities.
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Corling
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Re:Why Doesn't Sonar Allow VST FX In A Chain To Be Individually Attenuated like FL Studio?
2011/05/19 14:20:17
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SteveGriffiths
I am only replying because I was so impressed with the big bold letters.....
Can't you set this up in the synth rack - assignable knobs?
Cheers..Grif
I am quite sure that Sonar's synth rack, which to my understanding addresses instruments, does not relate to the feature-set of Sonar's FX stacks, which are effects.
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Corling
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Re:Why Doesn't Sonar Allow VST FX In A Chain To Be Individually Attenuated like FL Studio?
2011/05/19 14:32:52
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Noel Borthwick [Cakewalk
]
Because most plugins already have either an input or output gain or both. There are a million features that we could implement but we have to set priorities.
I am impressed that you take the time to reply -- All I will say Noel is that when you are mixing a project. . . When you are looping a section over and over . . . When you have three compressors, one doubler, one stereo chorus, one reverb and autotune (that's 7 FX plugins) on an instrument or voice . . . . When you are deciding with your *ears,* NOT your *eyes* whether this track is big, money, success, whatever your dreams are . . . and the most minor, repeated, intuitive tweaks of the role each FX has in the chain decide whether that dream becomes real . . . . It is gosh darned inconvenient to open each of those seven VST FX to make the minor volume changes that let your ears, not your eyes determine what is right. These are the moments Noel -- looping project with a stack of VST FX, using your ears to make dozens of fine adjustments per minute -- how much of the each compressor, how much doubler, chorus, reverb, autotune . . . when having to open each plugin window is a bad interface. FL Studio and Reaper cater to these moments Noel. Sonar can and should. Edit: It doesn't have to be the default interface. But at least give it a checkbox in global preferences. Many would gladly give up five pixels of vertical screen real-estate on each FX stack listing to allow for a rotary percentage-gain knob next to the FX. I would not invest two-thousand personnel hours coding it, but if you can put someone on it and make it happen reasonably, it would cover a major operational dynamic that your competitors are encroaching on.
post edited by Corling - 2011/05/19 14:45:29
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bitflipper
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Re:Why Doesn't Sonar Allow VST FX In A Chain To Be Individually Attenuated like FL Studio?
2011/05/19 15:21:38
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Good idea, Corling. It would be handy for plugins that lack a wet/dry mix control and might occasionally save having to bus an effect for parallel processing.
But lack of it is hardly a showstopper, or even a significant inconvenience. I could easily list a dozen other mixing and editing workflow enhancements that I'd rather have under development.
 All else is in doubt, so this is the truth I cling to. My Stuff
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Beagle
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Re:Why Doesn't Sonar Allow VST FX In A Chain To Be Individually Attenuated like FL Studio?
2011/05/19 15:33:02
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meh. we all have different workflows. what's important to someone else is not important to others (obviously). this feature request would probably never be used by me if it were implemented unless there's something else it does other than attenuate the plugin. I'd rather control that from the plugin GUI myself.
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Corling
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Re:Why Doesn't Sonar Allow VST FX In A Chain To Be Individually Attenuated like FL Studio?
2011/05/19 15:34:33
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bitflipper
I could easily list a dozen other mixing and editing workflow enhancements that I'd rather have under development.
Really? Entertain me.
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SteveGriffiths
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Re:Why Doesn't Sonar Allow VST FX In A Chain To Be Individually Attenuated like FL Studio?
2011/05/19 16:29:17
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Corling
Noel Borthwick [Cakewalk
]
When you are looping a section over and over . . . When you have three compressors, one doubler, one stereo chorus, one reverb and autotune (that's 7 FX plugins) on an instrument or voice . . . . First off I would have reverbs chorus etc on a buss - they are free after all. Wet dry solved. If I had 3 comps on a single input I would be looking for something other than a wet / dry knob. Are you suggesting you you would blend corrected tuning with the original source? I'm with Bitflipper on this one. Personally I am still waiting for the neurolink so that X1 just knows what I want and does it without my having to actually do anything. Cheers..Grif (Cranky today - not Sonar related)
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Corling
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Re:Why Doesn't Sonar Allow VST FX In A Chain To Be Individually Attenuated like FL Studio?
2011/05/19 16:48:41
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SteveGriffiths
Corling
Noel Borthwick [Cakewalk
]
When you are looping a section over and over . . . When you have three compressors, one doubler, one stereo chorus, one reverb and autotune (that's 7 FX plugins) on an instrument or voice . . . . First off I would have reverbs chorus etc on a buss - they are free after all. Wet dry solved. If I had 3 comps on a single input I would be looking for something other than a wet / dry knob. Are you suggesting you you would blend corrected tuning with the original source?
I'm with Bitflipper on this one. Personally I am still waiting for the neurolink so that X1 just knows what I want and does it without my having to actually do anything.
Cheers..Grif (Cranky today - not Sonar related)
SteveGriffiths *The GOAL* is to control each individual VST FX's level output to the *master bus* on a per track basis. Your arrangement can not do this. If you have forty different instrument and vocal tracks that you want forty different reverb and chorus levels on -- a COMMON situation -- using bus sends is inflexible because you can only output from the track one-way into each bus send, and then each bus send only has one level output to the master bus -- how can you possibly have forty different tracks constrained by the single output volume variable of one reverb and one chorus FX bus to the master bus? It would be nuts to do it that way and I doubt anybody has managed anything of note or success with such an arrangement. Yes, you can make eighty chorus and reverb FX busses to control the chorus and reverb FX outputs to the master bus on forty tracks on a per-track basis, but instead of doing that why not add a percentage gain knob to each FX on the FX rack like I suggest?
post edited by Corling - 2011/05/19 16:49:48
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Noel Borthwick [Cakewalk]
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Re:Why Doesn't Sonar Allow VST FX In A Chain To Be Individually Attenuated like FL Studio?
2011/05/19 17:07:09
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I would not invest two-thousand personnel hours coding it, but if you can put someone on it and make it happen reasonably, it would cover a major operational dynamic that your competitors are encroaching on. I agree that it would be useful. However it doesn't necessarily qualifiy as a "major" in comparison to many other workflow related features. Putting an extra per effect gainstage plus the UI work to implement it is not huge but certainly non trivial to do right.
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AT
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Re:Why Doesn't Sonar Allow VST FX In A Chain To Be Individually Attenuated like FL Studio?
2011/05/19 17:49:33
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I wouldn't say 40 different reverbs/delays is common, but each to his own workflow.
It does seem useful for some, but hardly a major problem for most.
Sometimes I wonder how anything got recorded without 120 tracks, each with three comps and two effects.
@
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...wicked
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Re:Why Doesn't Sonar Allow VST FX In A Chain To Be Individually Attenuated like FL Studio?
2011/05/19 17:54:35
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I'm having a hard time seeing how adjusting the gain of a plugin within an fx-bin stack would "add a pinch". It effects the entire signal going through to the next plugin, and would just lower the gain of the affected signal accordingly.
This metaphor is more appropriate in a traditional send/return scenario, because the send level acts more like a wet/dry, which is what this sounds more like to me.
I don't recall if Reaper's insert effects actually work like in-track send-returns, which I guess would be kinda cool...but I'm not losing sleep over it.
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Corling
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Re:Why Doesn't Sonar Allow VST FX In A Chain To Be Individually Attenuated like FL Studio?
2011/05/19 18:09:02
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Noel Borthwick [Cakewalk
]
I would not invest two-thousand personnel hours coding it, but if you can put someone on it and make it happen reasonably, it would cover a major operational dynamic that your competitors are encroaching on.
I agree that it would be useful. However it doesn't necessarily qualifiy as a "major" in comparison to many other workflow related features. Putting an extra per effect gainstage plus the UI work to implement it is not huge but certainly non trivial to do right.
For me, rapidly adjusting FX gain to the master mix on a per-track per-effect basis probably is "major" in comparison to other workflow related features -- but who knows if my needs are average or niche? I will say that this exact issue is one reason Sonar is more popular for acoustic and orchestral recording (e.g. video games, film scores, acoustic rock) whereas FL Studio and Reaper dominate music genres like pop, dance, and Europop -- because contemporary pop, dance, trance and FX-heavy music enormously benefits from this seemingly innocuous (or "low priority" depending on who your prototype user is) workflow feature.
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BEATZM1D10T
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Re:Why Doesn't Sonar Allow VST FX In A Chain To Be Individually Attenuated like FL Studio?
2011/05/19 18:38:46
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I don't see how this is any benefit unless the FX bin was running everything in parallel. Then again, you can just use bus routing for this. If you change the gain into one FX you're going to change everything down the line. All the other FX are going to sound different. Unless there is some sort of automatic gain adjustment...but that would be a major annoyance. I don't get it. DAW's are like tools. Each one is a bit different and they each accomplish a different task better than others. If SONAR doesn't work for you use something else. It's no use demanding a change or threatening to leave when your idea wouldn't even impact the 'protools mafia'. If you want that to happen SONAR needs better video and comping/layer support, plus they need to buy out practically every school audio department that is entrenched with PT. Not per FX gain control outside of the plug-in itself.
post edited by BEATZM1D10T - 2011/05/19 18:40:52
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keith
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Re:Why Doesn't Sonar Allow VST FX In A Chain To Be Individually Attenuated like FL Studio?
2011/05/19 18:51:54
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Corling
bitflipper
I could easily list a dozen other mixing and editing workflow enhancements that I'd rather have under development.
Really? Entertain me.
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keith
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Re:Why Doesn't Sonar Allow VST FX In A Chain To Be Individually Attenuated like FL Studio?
2011/05/19 19:09:29
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BEATZM1D10T
I don't see how this is any benefit unless the FX bin was running everything in parallel. Then again, you can just use bus routing for this.
If you change the gain into one FX you're going to change everything down the line. All the other FX are going to sound different. Unless there is some sort of automatic gain adjustment...but that would be a major annoyance.
I think this is what some people are missing on this feature request: it's a wet/dry mix as bitflipper said... so the atten direct X% of the signal into the plug with the remaining Y% unaffected by that plug. On Reaper there's a little "100% wet" text next to the FX engage checkbox... clicking the text enables a dial thingy to control wet/dry for that FX. Can't remember what FL does, but it must be the same in terms of wet/dry mix. Controlling total output volume of each FX in the chain would make no sense. Now, of course, you could mix yourself into a real mess if you're not careful, esp. with things like compression and other nonlinear stuff. In those cases I would imagine it's better to leave wet/dry up to the individual plug's implementation (if available), cuz presumably only that plug knows how or if wet/dry should even be mixed. Remember, you're not controlling the % of that particular FX that gets sent to the main... you're controlling the wet/dry mix of that FX as it gets sent along the chain to the next plug in the chain. Hmmm, complicated, unless you're talking about wet/dry of something like a delay or verb at the end of a chain. Personally, I think thinking in terms of aux sends for mixing in %'s of individual FX combined along parallel audio pipelines, rather than simple chains of wet/dry mixes, is much easier to visualize and produce intended results. Not that having the feature is a bad idea, only that the only time I think of wet/dry on a per plug basis is when it's actually a feature of the plug to be taken advantage of, and not something that I might apply arbitrarily on any given plug.
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keith
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Re:Why Doesn't Sonar Allow VST FX In A Chain To Be Individually Attenuated like FL Studio?
2011/05/19 19:14:12
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Corling
SteveGriffiths *The GOAL* is to control each individual VST FX's level output to the *master bus* on a per track basis. Your arrangement can not do this.
What you're describing is not controlling FX level output to the master bus -- it's wet/dry mix as sent to the next FX in that chain. Big difference. The only thing (ultimately) sent to the master bus from a FX chain is the output of the last FX in the chain, special plug routing configs notwithstanding.
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...wicked
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Re:Why Doesn't Sonar Allow VST FX In A Chain To Be Individually Attenuated like FL Studio?
2011/05/19 19:21:05
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Ohhhhh, I see it now (in Reaper). That's pretty clever.
Oddly, I decided to dial in 2 effects so I could test how this worked on the stream and Reaper crashed. Fer realz.
Anyhow, yes it IS a wet/dry for any effect in the effects bin, which more or less allows send/returns within one track.
I could see this getting very messy on large mixes, producing quite a few "where the hell is that sound coming from?!" moments. But I suppose in a pinch it's a useful way to tweak something.
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SteveGriffiths
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Re:Why Doesn't Sonar Allow VST FX In A Chain To Be Individually Attenuated like FL Studio?
2011/05/19 19:35:53
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AT
I wouldn't say 40 different reverbs/delays is common, but each to his own workflow.
It does seem useful for some, but hardly a major problem for most.
Sometimes I wonder how anything got recorded without 120 tracks, each with three comps and two effects.
@
At Eel Pie Studios (Yes this is one of those "back in the day" stories) reverb control was done by having the carpet laid in strips over hardwood. Also had panels with fabric over fiberglass one side, tile on the other. Setting the room was a matter of which panels, and how much carpet to roll up. Now *that* is wet / dry control. If I need 3 compressors on a single vocal I might have the singer step back from the mic a bit. Cheers..Grif
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AT
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Re:Why Doesn't Sonar Allow VST FX In A Chain To Be Individually Attenuated like FL Studio?
2011/05/19 20:15:16
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Yea, I had the tough choice of spring reverb or roland chorus echo. decisions, decisions....
@
https://soundcloud.com/a-pleasure-dome
http://www.bnoir-film.com/ there came forth little children out of the city, and mocked him, and said unto him, Go up, thou bald head; go up, thou bald head. 24 And he turned back, and looked on them, and cursed them in the name of the Lord. And there came forth two she bears out of the wood, and tare forty and two children of them.
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