Hello fellow Sonar 8.x users:  
 
using HW synth + sonar exclusively + some live audio drum looped tracks + vocal tracks.
 
for daily routine MIDI operations, been experiencing weird behavior related to the Searchback function, and this was never an issue in sonar2, but now is a serious problem in sonar8. after migrating my sonar2 projects to sonar8, I discover that sonar8 is suddendly sending incorrect (ie random program change msgs to my HW synths any MIDI track if I play the project) out the MIDI wire to my synths.
 
a SONAR CLIP by definition: indicated via GUI by a rectangle box in the CLIPs pane and it consists of the note start event up to the last note event. before the clip begins, u typically insert midi PCG msgs to instruct the associated SW/HW synth what sound to play.
 
when you stop PLAY in a middle of a MIDI clip, your NOW marker would be ~midway mark, and if you resume PLAY of the project, on that MIDI track, you expect to hear desired sound from ur synth based on your last inserted PCG change msg at beginning of the clip, thanks to Sonar  SEARCHBACK feature (enabled) - which will then look up the last PCG msg of the clip and send this msg to the synth so the synth can know what to patch to play.
 
This is basic trivial setup. this shoud not be an issue for Sonar8. but it is: it is not sending the LAST search pcg msg, but some random unwarranted PCG change message, mucking up song playback!
 
This random program change is the nastiest bug I've encounter in 20 years of using MIDI sequencers on a PC.
 
I discover the bug manifest itself quite easily in any track you create. You don't have to have a 100+ track, just TRY creating a single MIDI track, and the bug will show its ugly face!  
oh I went through all the project/global settings, and try to see if I am missing anything; but I am now stuck with this version of Sonar whose Searchback function appears to have seriously flawed logic. 
 
I definitely depend on SEARCHBACK function as I can have over 200+ MIDI clips arranged througout my song project at various measures, and I tend to audition each clip back and forth; so sonar8 telling the HW synth which patch to play based on my MIDI msg SHOULD be a trivial working feature but it is not apparently. 

Wow!
What about cutting 90% out of your post and sticking to the essential?  For one I don't have the energy to start analyzing a novel like that :o/

You are wrong. Sonar does not send random patch changes. The changes are either embeded in your MIDI file or you are not enabling searchback in your project. I too use hardware synths with Sonar and I've never seen any of that. You should also verify that your MASTER.INS file contains the proper settings for all of your synths. The settings should be based on the MIDI implentation chart for each synth.

Regards,
Dan

I stopped reading after the first run-on sentence

2 posts?

Sounds like a troll to me.

I will await clarification (or vilification - let's see which one happens first)

Me too, made it to second part and even though it's fairly well written it suffers from a lack of editing out 80% of content which is mostly opinions. 

First my friend you wasted your time posting in the old forum, if you are an X series user there is a much more active forum for you.
But your issue is universal to all the versions. Sonar PG changes can be viewed in the events list. Sometimes they do not show, this in a way is not so much a bug but overlooked peiece of program language. My solution is to slip edit the start of a track to the first note and the hidden PG event will not be triggered. 
I will also open the midi file in Cubase where those random PG events that do not show in Sonar will show.  

sorry about the overly long post and making u read my entire experience, but I've been a Cakewalk user for 20 odd years and this is my 2nd post in my life on forums. I don't go to forums often coz it takes time (and time is money) to read posts they remind me of BBS days in days of C64/Amiga/Atari where users post opinions/rants/rumours/flame wars and the like. let's be clear: we electronic musicians only have a certain amount of time slices in our working lifes to enjoy making music or go to forums and post long messages. and when we post a message it is usually coz we're stuck on a problem that cannot be resolved.
 
I just want to describe a typical HW synth + MIDI setup that is quite trivial - nothing hokey-pokey about the way I am routing via physical MIDI cables. I use a 360 systems 8x8 MIDI patch bay to route a input to multiple outs, but on the HW synths themselves, I program them to filter channels (ie. turn them off) so the events for other channels that are for other synths sent on the same wire are not going to trigger the internal tone generator in multi-timbral mode. etc.
 
This is the same configuration that I used in past 10 odd yeasr, it works; ie. set up correctly as far as routing and PCG/bank change filternig / Rx channel is concern on performance-part basis.
 
I never had this problem in Sonar2: was never an issue and right now this is a roadblock in Sonar8 that I can't resolve myself, which is why I am here. 
 
 
 
 
 
 

I am just like millions of amateur SONAR users out there, love music, have little time to create music, love exploring MIDI, chose a DAW (LOGIC vs. CuBase vs Sonar), made investments in HW gear, and now trying to extract their sonic potential, despite all these SW synths replacing hardware with more powerful CPU.
 
I program my custom sysex banks and send them for each sonar song project, a particularly defined bank sent to each synth at a particular MIDI channel mapped to a particular sonar MIDI track - at the start of each track to "initialize" the synth via MIDI wire;
 
ie. read sysex manual pages of much beloved (but now obsolete) for example Roland JV2080's MIDI implementation info (and I love Roland's comprehensive documentation of their MIDI implementation). if you don't believe me just go to Roland website, download JV2080 user manual, and flip to page 184 then you can see their BANK SELECT tables (controller 0, 32) and their MSB/LSB values to set the Patch/Performance banks etc, and this is what most sonar users refer to to program their master.ins to select the CORRECT bank as per these values this section and then select the patch from the desired bank.
 
thought migrating from sonar2 to sonar8 would = a smoother experience in creating songs ; I was looking forward to spending more time on creativity then technical issues ie. 'fighting stupid bugs and annoying intermitten glitches" - but apparently SONAR8 IS NOT utopia of MIDI as I had presumed.
 
I rather not de-install sonar8 to revert backwards to sonar2 coz most of my projects have been converted to sonar8 format and I don't think I want to lose the features of sonar8.
 
sonar8 seems like a huge improvement over sonar2, but I am barely tapping its full potential. I just can't believe this bug exist, and I wrote that post last night and I didn't have time to edit it.
 
also there is no special or unique about my setup: it is trivial, typical and not that complicated.
 
 
 
 
 

Sonar8 sends RANDOM program change events whenever you start playback in middle of a clip

No, it doesn't. 


Seriously, if it did I would surely have noticed by now. The only time SONAR will send MIDI data to a synth that isn't actually in the MIDI track is when you've specified a patch using the dropdown listboxes in the track header. It will then send a patch-change to the synth when playback starts. Other than that, it only transmits what's in the MIDI track.

BTW I, too, am a fan of hardware synths - as are many others here - and the Triton is one of the more popular models, along with various other Korg, Yamaha, Roland and Kurzweil synths. We're all happily sending (non-random) patch-change events to them from SONAR.

dcumpian


You are wrong. Sonar does not send random patch changes. The changes are either embeded in your MIDI file or you are not enabling searchback in your project. I too use hardware synths with Sonar and I've never seen any of that. You should also verify that your MASTER.INS file contains the proper settings for all of your synths. The settings should be based on the MIDI implentation chart for each synth.

Regards,
Dan

thanks Dan for your input:
 
1. I cannot live without SEARCHBACK enable and I have this option checked in PROJECT-->MIDI OUT settings. this is a configuration saved on a per-project basis. This is one feature that is a life-saver.
 
the thing is this: it really mucks up my Yammy EX5R coz of limited MFX DSP resource full in Performance mode, because in this mode, only a single part of 16 possible can be assigned a voice that uses the inserted MFX (gotta love 15-year old legacy Yamaha gear heh heh) and I get "DSP resource FULL ERROR" barfed out by EX5R when I start PLAY on SONAR - it is sending that unwarranted roque PCG on a 2nd EX5R MIDI track.
 
it fires this roque PCG change msg also to my FantomXR, Triton, JV2080, etc.
 
if I DISABLE this Searchback feature, I now have to manually update the patch change when I start PLAY on middle of CLIP, which is going to drive me nuts..... imagine having to do this for 100+ MIDI tracks...
 
2. pretty sure my MASTER.INS is perfect because I can do SHIFT-P on a particular Sonar MIDI track for a particular HW synth to bring up TRACK PROPERTY and select the patch for, say, Roland JV2080, then I can recall my fav patch on a fav bank. I can see the port mappings and the synth patch names correctly match the roland.
 
this instrumental definition has worked since I got the JV2080 and everytime I override a particular user bank patch: I would manually update the MASTER.INS roland jv2080 instrument to ensure that patch number 63 ==> 64 (MIDI index starts at 0) name is updated to latest patch name.
 
this never happens in sonar2 but in sonar8 so quite mind-boggling for such a trivial feature.
 
the SEARCHBACK function of sonar2 works like a charm, I never had an issue with it. so I concurr: the SEARCHBACK feature seemt ob e broken and does not work as intended.
 
 
 

bitflipper

Sonar8 sends RANDOM program change events whenever you start playback in middle of a clip

No, it doesn't. 


Seriously, if it did I would surely have noticed by now. The only time SONAR will send MIDI data to a synth that isn't actually in the MIDI track is when you've specified a patch using the dropdown listboxes in the track header. It will then send a patch-change to the synth when playback starts. Other than that, it only transmits what's in the MIDI track.

BTW I, too, am a fan of hardware synths - as are many others here - and the Triton is one of the more popular models, along with various other Korg, Yamaha, Roland and Kurzweil synths. We're all happily sending (non-random) patch-change events to them from SONAR.

=======================
 
I wish I can believe you, and that sonar8 works as per-design, but apparently I play my project from beginning to end, it works coz it is not searching backwards for the PCG change to fire it is PLAYING forward encountering PCG changes that I implanted on each track and it sends off 100's of these messages 100% flawlessly.
 
but the minute I stop playback on a particular measure, and start playing again it is playing some crap sound that was not intended - it is transmitting something that I DID NOT SPECIFY in the MIDI track.
 
on the LCD screen of my Triton or Fantom, I see the patch change in real-time when I playback midway of clip. bizarre.
 
I scan my MIDI events off the track using the MIDI LIST EDITOR but I don't see any rogue messages, so Sonar8 is sending them on the fly, and they are like "fantom events" that I cannot see via MIDI list EDITOR.
 
this is a good thing I don't rely on Sonar8 to make $$$ to make a living!! I wouldn't survive using Sonar8.
 
btw: like most, I was a big fan of the legendary best selling Korg M1, and I believe it got me hooked into this workstation-nirvana.
 
I believe KORG/YAMMY/ROLAND cranked out awesome made-in-Japan HW products but most are now legacy, but still offer great real-time response and real-time control knobs that make them more fun and authenticate then say, stupid mouse clicks to control SW faders or VCO/LFO freq's etc.
 
The S700 triple-strike vel-switched sample of the Yammy S90 was the sole reason why I plunked down $$$ for that board; and still my fav master controller keyboard, but the TRUE PIANO vst plugin of Sonar8 blows it away in terms of authenticy and resonance modelling and I can get as low as 4ms latency using WDM drivers, almost real-time performance.
 
the S90 hammer action feel + TruePiano VST plugin= not a bad compromise, but if I can only figure how to get Sonar8 to work propertly is another story....