Hi,
 
I'm new to Sonar X3 Studio. I am learning but keep bumping into things that I do not understand. Some I could find back on the forums some I could not. Most of them were problems with workarounds so I will not mention them in detail here. The mentioned issues (except issue 4) are only the ones I could not find an answer to. So far I am not realy enjoying the expierience. I have been recording one song and it seems the further I progress in the song the more questions are raised. I was hoping maybe someone could explain or help me with the following issues:
 
1) When I use loop recording (recording mode comping) all lanes get split on the time where I hit stop. That is not a good starting point. How can I prevent this from happening? When I stop I would expect the last lane to stop at the stop time and leave all earlier take lanes intact. Am I doing something wrong?
 
2) I use EZdrummer and set up a drum track with multiple outs assigned to tracks so I can easily mix and adjust each part of the drumkit seperately. Using the solo buttons works just fine at this point. When you hit the solo button the corresponding midi track allso engages solo. This is how it should work!
 
For editing in the drum editor I set up a drum map. I assigned this drummap to EZdrummer and the midi track is routed to that drum map. The drum track is now played back fine but..... Hitting the solo button now only engages the output but not the midi track. This way you will not hear anything. You have to select the midi track manually as well. Now when you want to hear the entire drumkit using the mixer you need to press all solo buttons manually. I read on this forum this is something not implemented. Totally not logical! Or am I wrong here. Can someone confirm this or help me to get it working correctly?
 
3) Selecting a part of a wavefrom and applying region fx for Melodyne works just fine. A few times I was experimenting and wanted to remove the region fx to start fresh all over again. Removing region fx however leaves a gap in the clip and does not restore the original material as i would expect. You need to do manual work to get that right again. Totally unlogical. Am I doing something wrong here?
 
Allso when you select an entire clip and create a region fx it will first bounce the entire clip and disconnect the real Original clip. If you remove the region fx the Original clip stays disconnected and the bounced version is used. I would expect the Original clip to remain as the leading one. When you clean up your audio files the Original clip will be deleted! This does not feel right to me. Is then the bounced version 100% identical to the Original clip. Does anyone know?
 
4) More to share experience... SI-Bass Guitar sounds good. I was using the Fingered clean preset and noticed a terrible lag om on some of the notes. Checked the midi source but that was fine. Then I checked the samples and it appears that some of them have a lag of 80 ms. This you will hear and makes the instrument unusable for my ears! So far I could not find any complaints about this on this forum. I edited all samples manually and they are nice now. I thought it was worth to mention here.
 
All feedback is highly appreciated. Please keep in mind that I am trying to learn the thing. I came from Cubase but found upgrading the Cubase Artist version too expensive. They now charge allmost double de price since last time! However... In all the years I used Cubase I only bumped into one issue that I did not use anyway. The program would crash while closing a project with a video open. So first close the video and then the project. And that's all.... I wish I had the same smooth experience with Sonar. Not to go into detail but I had hanging midi notes on DXi, crashes on using DX FX on freezing mono channels, TTS-1 Tone control not working, several unexplainable crashes while browsing and adding plugins, hanging presets in sonitus modulator etc...
 
Best regards,
 
Rinie

Sorry to hear you're having problems, but I think we'll be able to sort them out. I'm going to sleep now but if someone doesn't get to your questions before I do, we'll start in on comping and Melodyne. My head exploded when I started working with comping because it was so different than what I was used to, but once I figured it out it now makes total sense.

You should not be experiencing all these problems and the forum members will figure out solutions. I don't I think the problem is so much that you are doing things "wrong," but that the way to do things "right" isn't obvious yet. Hang in there, the bandleader for Public Enemy is a friend of mine and I helped him switch from Cubase to Sonar. He's much happier now and would never go back, but it took him a couple weeks to get comfortable.

I'm just waking up so this may be scattered and I'll try to attack the things I have ideas on in chunks...
 
For your first problem with Loop Recording... This is a result of the Comping Mode being engaged. It's a great feature but the fact it auto splits everything is a bit annoying (but necessary for the mode to wrok as advertised). I mostly do not use loop record so I don't encounter this problem BUT what I recommend is...
 
When using Loop Record switch to one of the other Record modes (specifically Sound On Sound, just right click the Record button in the Transport Module and the option is there). That will make it so the splits don't happen. Then switch it back when you are ready to edit. Also I'm not sure but you may have to select the option in your Record Preferences for "Mute Previous Take" which should be on the same page that pops up when you right click the Record button. I say this because I think recording in Comping Mode mutes previous material whether that option is engaged or not (but I could be wrong on that).
 
I'll be back.

It should be noted that using Sound On Sound is a more traditional record/editing mode. It's easier to use until you really learn the Comping Mode thoroughly. Comping Mode is great but they crammed a HECK of a lot of stuff in there so it takes some getting used to. I gave myself a crash course in that feature alone and made a cheat sheet to keep on my desk to reference as needed. It is awesome though once you figure it out.
 

I'm not well versed enough in the Region FX or Drum Maps features to comment on those but for your fourth question about the "lag" it just sounds like latency. Just increase your interface buffers to see if that helps. You could also try "Freezing" the track which will temporarily render the MIDI track to audio and disengage the synth. The Freeze button is the button on each track that looks like a snowflake. It can be used to freeze effects as well to save overhead or you can freeze synths right inside the Synth Rack. If you need to edit the midi data further just unfreeze the track or synth. Keep in mind though any edits you do to the audio (like splits, drag moves, fades, etc) will be lost when you unfreeze a frozen track.
 
Cheers.
 

Hi,
 
Craig... thanks very much for your reassuring words. I understand it takes time to learn and I see enough positive potential to put the effort in it. All help is highly appreciated.
 
Beep... thanks very much for you replies. I'm happy you take the time to help. I tried the sound on sound and when I use that it works as expected. This is one step closer :-).... It think comping should behave the same way. The only difference I can see is that when using the comping mode it mutes the clips on previous lanes except the last recording. Using the comping techniques it is then possible to mute and unmute the clips on the fly. Sound on sound simply does not mute previous recordings so you can hear all the takes. For now I could record in Sound on sound and mute the clips afterwards. Lets see where I get from here. Your reply is very helpfull but I still think the comping mode should not split all lanes. I sure would like to get this right.
 
The Region FX I need to sort out to be sure I will not loose my Original takes.
 
For the SI-Bass Guitar I think I did not explain correctly. It is not a latency thing. With the Quad-capture original drivers with the buffers set at 1024 for playback there should be no problem. I am only talking about playback here and not about recording. For recording I set the buffer to 96 which is absolutely terrific for recording live guitar and such.... Allmost no latency at all. I do love this Quad-capture. Simple, good and great sounding.
 
What I actually meant and did do was examine the Original wave files that are used by the Virtual Instrument. These are located in C:\Program Files (x86)\Cakewalk\Studio Instruments\SI-Bass Guitar\Multisamples\Bass Samples. When opening the G&L Fingered files or the Picked mute files in a wave editor it clearly shows that some of the samples do not start to realy sound before 50 of 80 ms. This varies from sample to sample. Some will start at 10 or 20 ms and others much later. I think this was done to preserve some real life feel by adding the light plectrum sounds that come before the actual tone. For me it did not feel tight so I edited all the wave files to make it tight with all the samples starting at about 10 to 15 ms. :-)... This for sure was an improvement. Sounds perfect to me now.
 
So thanks again for your help.
 
 
 
 

rinie.huigen@kpnmail.nl
 
 The Region FX I need to sort out to be sure I will not loose my Original takes.

Clone the track before you start and work on the clone. The original can be muted and hidden and will preserve your orignal takes.

No problem however in Sound On Sound mode you should be able to get the previous takes to mute automatically as I said from your Edit > Preferences > Record options (I'm not booted up so I forget the exact location but it's in there).
 
As far as the regionFX problem one thing you could do is simply clone the original track then do your Melodyne work in the clone (Right click on the track controls area and select Clone Track). Then you can archive the original track which will mute it and keep it from using resources when you play the project (the Archive function is engaged by clicking the button that has an "A" on it). Then you can hide the track in the Track Manager to get it out of the way.
 
Not sure what to tell you about the SIBass thing but I don't use that one. There is a patch in the Zeta+ patches called Alembic that I really like for realistic bass (but it may be in one of the additional banks I received with the production suite). Also Dim Pro has some bass sounds.
 
However within the SIBass program look to see if there is some kind of humanize knob or setting. Perhaps if you turned it down you would get things to be tighter. I have not used it though so I don't know if that control exists but many of those realistic emus do.
 
Hopefully someone else can help with the EZDrummer issue. Not sure why it would mute the MIDI track like that but I don't use drum maps.
 
Cheers.

You know... I'm not sure because again I never use this feature but the Solo Overide feature might be the solution to the MIDI track being muted. I think that's how that works but I'm not sure how to set it up. Maybe I should learn. lol

Well a brief Google only found the option for X2 but I'm assuming it's the same in X3. Just hold Shift then click the Solo button on the MIDI track. That SHOULD make it so it won't be silenced when you solo the individual audio tracks. However it will also make it so the MIDI track stays soloed when you solo other stuff (like your guitar) but I'm not sure that would matter because a MIDI track with it's audio output tracks muted shouldn't make any sound as far as I know.
 
http://www.cakewalk.com/Documentation?product=SONAR%20X2&language=3&help=Playback.17.html
 
There is mention of Exclusive Solo being involved somehow so if it doesn't work maybe you'll have to fiddle with that. Cheers.