Nice.  I have not really messed with the global settings much.  I'll check them out.

Glad to help. You mentioned having to slip edit your clips. You should be doing this anyway especially when using high gain settings. It just makes the end results much cleaner sounding. There are other ways to approach this though. You can use volume automation or use a setting in Sonar that completely cuts any signal below a certain level however that last one can lead to things being cut that you don't intend to or make the start/ends of the clips sound weird. I ALWAYS slip edit and create fades on my tracks. It takes a bit of time but IMO is totally worth it and it gets you right into the mix with your ears and mind. I was however having some problems in X2 with other random clips being selected other than the one I was working on. Some kind of weird bug. I solved it by using the Clip Lock feature on all the other tracks which does exactly what the name implies. Locks them so the can't be move, deleted, edited, etc... To do this "Select" the track by clicking the track number so it turns blue (you can group select to lock multiple tracks and lock them all at once) then press I on your keyboard to open the Inspector, click the "Clips" tab at the top of the inspector to open the Properties section. Then click the dropdown beside "Lock" and select "Pos/Data" and it will lock all the clips in the track.

More info than was requested but I'm bored. Cheers.

sven450


I figured as much on the "authenticity" bit, but I have become pretty spoiled with nice silent emulations.  Wanted to make sure it wasn't something on my end.  I'll suffer through some noise gating to get those tones though.  

Thanks for the confirmation.

what should a "silent emulation" be?
a distortion pedal by nature and function also generates noise - its not a bug . its reality 


i guess that those plugs you name silent are plugs that have a gate somwhere where you didnt realize it - cos adding a strong denoiser in a distortion would not be a good idea - would loose the sparkle 


btw...obviously you should insert the gate BEFORE distorting - lol

rmix has a cool noise reduction feature that I used on real life amp noise, and it worked well. I also used it to fox a female vocal track where the vocalist was blowing on the microphone. it didn't work when there was only noise.