Probably a silly question but what does this button do?

It sounds like it adds clarity, treble, and a bit more volume, but is that literally what this does?

http://img685.imageshack....rszsonarscreenshot.jpg

I'm talking about the blue (turned on) power button at the bottom left of the picture to the right of the "Post" button. What does the post button and that blue power symbol button do in Sonar?

The power button turns the send on and off.
 
The "Post" button determines if the audio is sent before or after the fader.

Thanks :) So what exactly is the fader? I'm a bit new to Sonar. And by send, do you mean the main input?

Welcome to the forum, by the way.
 
I think it might be worth your running through the tutorials that come with Sonar.  There is a lot to learn, I'm afraid.  I will try to explain briefly, but I would also recommend watching the Videos on the Cakewalk site, and probably buying the Groove 3 or SWA X2 explained videos.  I think Karl's (fastbikerboy on here) videos would help you a lot.
 
Audio from a track in Sonar has to be routed out somehow.  In the console view (the part of Sonar that looks like a mixing desk) the signal (or sound) runs from top to bottom, just like a real desk, from the input to the output.  You can choose to "send" some of this signal elsewhere, e.g. to be processed by a reverb, whilst the rest of the signal continues to the channel's outputs.  That is what a send is.  It determines how much of the signal is sent elsewhere.
 
The fader is the slider at the bottom of the channel that increases or decreases gain (or volume) of the channel.
 
I have grossly oversimplified this, not to mention explained it badly, so I strongly suggest watching the above mentioned videos, and reading up on recording and mixing audio.
 
I can recommend some reading on the topic, if you want, but am off to bed now.
 
Good luck with your audio journey.

If you received the 30-day free access to Groove3.com, I suggest you take the Sonar X2 lessons. They are very comprehensive and cover from very basic setup to advanced topics. 

Yeah....What dave said. If you have Sonar Producer there's a 30 day groove 3 pass in your store account. The video on Sonar X2 is pretty awesome. There's also lots of videos on Cake TV.

Rocky

The pre/post is:

Pre - any effects in the PC (pro channel) and/or effects bin happen before the fader. The fader is the volume slider.

Post - any effects in the PC and/or the effects bin happen after the fader.

I believe, without checking, the effects bin happens after the PC. (clarify anyone?)

 Those buttons are part of a send thats been set up in an audio track. i.e. a send effects bus for reverb etc.. Pre is pre fader meaning the full signal will be sent to the bus without attenuation or boost from the channel fader. Post is post fader so the signal being sent to the bus will be affected by the channel fader. I hope this helps.

Rocky

Also read the Help file. There's a lot of good stuff in there that could answer probably 75% of the questions asked on this forum.
 
There's also a downloadable Help PDF that's 100s of pages long.
 
 
Steve

bluzdog


 Those buttons are part of a send thats been set up in an audio track. i.e. a send effects bus for reverb etc.. Pre is pre fader meaning the full signal will be sent to the bus without attenuation or boost from the channel fader. Post is post fader so the signal being sent to the bus will be affected by the channel fader. I hope this helps.

Rocky

Yes. In essence, if you have the send set to "Pre", then your Fx will not be attenuated when the track fader level is reduced in volume. In other words if you reduce all your track faders to -INF, you'll still hear the full Fx volume.

Although there are applications for this, for the vast majority of cases you want it set to "Post" so that as your track fader changes volume, the Fx change with it