Jeff Evans

I also appreciate being able to talk to such a diverse group as this about something that I am excited about.

Hi Jeff.

That's always the fun of it, isn't it? It's exciting stuff.

You asked me earlier about my automation use. At the track and bus level especially, and especially once I've got a basic work mix (of whatever has already been tracked), I use envelopes almost as "conductors" -- this track up slowly over this period while that track is lowered over half that period, then back again, or whatever. It's nothing all that special. But what it is NOT is using envelopes instead of a (as someone said) "proper" performance, or to fix an imperfect performance. Automation is an element of the performance itself: The performance of the record, that is, the mix.

And I'm not talking about orchestral music, but separately-tracked layers of guitars and noise and vocals and synths and so on. It's still just pop/rock/whatever (in my case), but it's constructed/composed/sculpted/produced *as a recording*, more than it's recorded as a performance (or as overdubbed performances) to be mixed.

Automation becomes a performance gesture. That's why there's such demand for precise and easily manipulable envelope tools. It's recordmaking. Yeah, it's exciting stuff! 

<< How can we package such features as "sexy" >>
 
You're in the 4th hour of a 2 hour mix and something's futzed on the 1st fx return from the 3rd rhy gtr bus but you can't remember exactly which of your 73 tracks and 17 other buses is feeding it. Solution: Hover over the trim control or right-click anywhere in the strip and see a list of all channel inputs, click on the culprit, and tweak it out of your misery.
 
That's workflow.
 
That's not sexy enough?
 
 
eratu << I've mentioned ripple editing a few times on this forum, but I'll mention it again. Ripple editing. One more time. Ripple editing. :) >>
 
 
If ripple editing, especially when combined with Regions, were any sexier, you couldn't sell it to minors. Ditto easy-show-hide-resizeable per-control envelope lanes.
 
Who says 'workflow' isn't sexy?
 

Marah: I still have goosebumps from your descriptions... :)

Jeff,

I must apologize for the way I reacted to your post earlier.  You have proven me wrong about the kind of person I thought you were, which is a pleasant surprise.  As Eratu said, it takes a kind of person to change their point of view in the manner you have demonstrated in this thread, and for that you have earned my respect.  Not that you needed it, but I still wanted to let you know :-)  Hope you accept my apology, Jeff.

To continue with the discussion, I agree with Eratu that Cakewalk needs to stop introducing more plugins and consider enhancing what we already have.  The plugins are nice (especially the new PX-64 and VX-64), but if they want to work on plugins, then why not fix the ones that are already in existence?  For example, Rapture 64 bit has been crashing Sonar left and right for many people, to the point of literally being unusable.  You cannot use Rapture 64 bit, so this would be a good way to start.  Another example would be enhancing the Matrix View so that it can actually be useful to more users in ways other than triggering loops.  Like being able to actually drag and drop parts of a whole project and being able to trigger them individually without losing flexibility (keeping their multi-track nature).  Another thing they could do to the Matrix is add a volume control for each cell.  There are loops that may be louder than others, so this would be a good way to remedy that.  Even better if they could be grouped.  Yet another synth that has problems in Sonar 64 bit is Pentagon I.  I don't use this synth much because there are some patches that won't load for some reason.  It's almost as if they are corrupted, so you can't use them.  And how about porting the remaining 32 bit plugins into native 64 bit?  That right there would be like adding more plugins to our arsenal. 

The same thing applies to the current feature set when it comes to editing, as Eratu and others have already explained.  We need things like Audio Snap 2.0, which was supposed to be an improvement over the first iteration, to be further improved.  V-Vocal needs another revision as well.  Its audio to MIDI conversion is not very accurate and needs further development.  Not to mention the artifacts and phasing issues it sometimes produces.  Bus editing is inconsistent in that you cannot delete a group of Busses the same way you can delete tracks.  Busses have to be deleted one by one, and that can be time consuming.  There's no Mute automation in Busses.  You can't drag files/folders into the Media Browser (at least not that I know of - I've tried).  There should be a simpler way to change a project's sample rate without exiting Sonar.  One should be able to go into 'Tools::Change Audio Format' and have an option to change the Sample Rate as well.  This should be applied transparently without modifying anything within the project, except the sample rate of the files inside of it.  Another thing that bugs me is when I bounce layers and they end up moving to the top layer.  It would be nice if the Audio/MIDI clip would remain at its current layer after a bounce to clip process.  Etc, etc, etc.

So there are a lot of things to work on and bringing in new features slows the progression of current features from becoming fully integrated with the program and/or the user's workflow.  Like I said before, Sonar 9's theme should be "workflow".  Heck, they should continue that theme for at least 2 versions, similar to what they did with the multi-threading and audio engine improvements in Sonar 8.0 and 8.5.  But Cakewalk won't know how important these things are to us until WE do something about it.  So I'm with Eratu in that, if we really want Sonar to improve its workflow, then we need to take some action.  And it will require the cooperation of as many users as we can get.  We're talking about changing the course of Sonar's development here, so this has to make a BIG impact in order to be effective.  The question is, who is willing to spend a few minutes of their time to get something going here?  Maybe some kind of poll regarding the type of changes we would like to see in the next version of Sonar.  Just echoing the idea Eratu had as far as getting our voices heard in a way that's more significant than the current feature request method suggested by Cakewalk.

Who's in?  Any suggestions are welcome.

I don't know sonar well enough but if it doesn't have it what about a splitter that takes a single guitar input and splits it to 10 tracks instead of using busses.

If you did have a splitter I was thinking that using groups could be cooler if we could switch groups were I could have input echo inactive on 9 of those 10 tracks in one group with track 1 active then same thing and have track 2 active in another group etc.... then any act controller could use grouping to mute tracks and allow us to do the same thing as automating mutes in busses but you currently can't have input echo grouped in multiple groups and I'm not sure about whether or not a midi foot controller can be used to switch groups in act anyway. A super template then would allow us guitarists to load and use multiple amp sims and switch which one was being used and feeding into a bus with a reverb or delay.

You can do that in Sonar.

Just select the same Audio Input for all tracks and enable Input Echo in all of them.  Use the exclusive solo button so you can solo one track at a time.  Obviously, you'll have a different amp simulator inside each track's FX bin.  You'll need some type of control surface in order to be able so solo each track.  Something like the Frontier Design Tranzport comes to mind.  It is remote controlable, so you can be a few feet away from your DAW (not sure how far it goes though).


HTH

myconsumerclub


selling them on it might actually be the trick call them up and try to charge them for it then say ok tell you what if you give me some free software I'll tell you my ideas. Reverse psychology works sometimes.

Personally they need to to talk to guitar players. Pro tools is kicking their but selling to all my guitar friends. I play keys too so that is probably why I lean toward using sonar but I can see myself buying a pt system as well for ease of use in working with others. The thing is we need to be able to have live usage features in sonar that will enable us to make it a part of our guitar rigs. The guitarists of the world think diferently than the midi composers so they need to think like a guitar player to understand how this would make sonar more useful to guitarists so they can sell more and justify the expense in creating this. There are more guitar players than any other type of musician if I am not mistaken so the market for this is larger and would offer a bigger payback so come on CW. Get er done.

I think that guitar-oriented musicians (which includes me) who are just recently getting into recording (which does not include me) will have different expectations than the generation(s) of people who came to DAWs from either a studio enginerring pov or a MIDI-musician pov (EDIT: or just a pre-DAW musician's home studio pov.) They may not have many expectations or pre-conceived notions about how a DAW should work, or what is or isn't a critical MIDI editing feature. But they will have expectations of how sw should feel and look and let them move and work in a creative space (fast, with minimal thinking required.)

Also, I don't mean just guitar-oriented musicians, but anyone whose path to DAWdom did not pass through pre-DAW recording of any kind (or who don't let such bad education poison their minds. hahaha). That's the DAW market.

Post deleted:
In the time it took me to write my post it moved on in a completely different direction where my post lost its context.

Cool so that means I can use act to control the solo switch to turn a track on and off great I appreciate it big time it was really bugging me. Now how do i set it to were when I punch a foot switch like a rocktron patchmate and get just one track to be active. I need to use my feet when playing live and I need a single command to control turning on one track and silencing the other that was active before. Even if I use all ten switches to turn solo on and off then I need to turn one on and another off so that is 2 foot stomps. See what I'm talking about?

Jose7822


Guys check this out in case you have missed it:

http://forum.cakewalk.com/tm.aspx?m=1882622

There are so many annoyances that bug me in Sonar and not a single one was addressed in that huge laundry list.

Honestly, that list is scary.  I didn't even realize most of those problem existed.

dontletmedrown

Jose7822


Guys check this out in case you have missed it:

http://forum.cakewalk.com/tm.aspx?m=1882622

There are so many annoyances that bug me in Sonar and not a single one was addressed in that huge laundry list.

Honestly, that list is scary.  I didn't even realize most of those problem existed.

 
Yeap.  Most of those were documented in this thread:
 
http://forum.cakewalk.com/tm.aspx?m=1819849
 
 
 
 
 

I would love the ability to print out keybindings. I try to keep the standard keybindings but I have made some modifications. It could be much easier to find a keybinding then it is now. 

myconsumerclub


Cool so that means I can use act to control the solo switch to turn a track on and off great I appreciate it big time it was really bugging me. Now how do i set it to were when I punch a foot switch like a rocktron patchmate and get just one track to be active. I need to use my feet when playing live and I need a single command to control turning on one track and silencing the other that was active before. Even if I use all ten switches to turn solo on and off then I need to turn one on and another off so that is 2 foot stomps. See what I'm talking about?

Use exclusive solo but frankly, this is no the right thread to be asking all these question that are all answered in the manual. Please open a new thread to ask these questions.

Thanks,

UnderTow

UnderTow
 
Are you sure?

I'm pretty sure, but not 100% positive as I don't have a foot pedal to try this out.
 
I used my MIDI controller (the one in my signature) and programmed it using Note ON, Note ON/OFF and Controller messages (using the sustain pedal) and Exclusive Solo didn't work in either situation.  Only the normal solo button worked, and that requires 2 foot presses.  The only way I could do it with one button press was grouping the solo button, in opposite states, of two tracks.  IOW, while one was engaged the other was off, and vice-versa.  But you're limited to 2 tracks.
 
Well, I agree with you UnderTow about this not being the place to talk about this issue.  He needs to open a thread as this one is being hijacked.