Bought Sonar X1 and never even recorded a complete song with it. One of the reasons is sharing plugins between tracks (can't recall the correct terminology for this).
 
I've been using FL Studio (whatever version is current) and it's a great program. But wanted to try out Sonar X1. But guess I'm too familiar with FLS. All was fine while recording with X1 until the plugin issue mentioned above arose. With FLS I can put all my plugins that I want to use on a track, say guitar. Then if I record another track of guitar and want to use the same plugins on the original guitar track I can just push 'one' button on the latter guitar track (linking to the original guitar track) and it is linked to that track's plugins.
 
With Sonar X1 to accomplish the same thing I had to do this, do that, etc. and I got frustrated, called support and just didn't get the hang of it very quickly. I didn't want to spend all my time learning how to do this (wanted to record music) so I went back to FLS.
 
Took awhile to get to my question. But is my dilemma easier with Sonar X2? If not, hopefully they will remedy this with the next version. Thanks.

Hi Chas,

If I understand your question correctly, you are referring to what we use, a BUS for each group?. If so, that is the normal way of doing things in most DAWs. We create tracks, we then make a folder, in Sonar, and if want to use say multiple guitars(place in folder), send them to a bus. On that bus we then give it effects we want to share, then, send that BUS to the master out. At first it may seem complex, but the workflow of it works really well. And, I might add, it basically emulates real hardware AUX group setups on Mixers. SUB groups.

Having said all the above, you can just do individual, no folder stuff too, if you prefer. I can tell you though, grouping stuff of the same types in folders, make great workflow over bigger projects.

If I am on the wrong track, tell me more :)

Tony

Yes.  You could create a bus (at the bottom of the tracks) and add your effect.  Then change the output of each track you want that effect on to that bus.  I bet you can find tons of info on this online, as any full-fledged mixing software or console will be able to do this and it's a pretty common technique.  Here's an article we have on the topic: http://www.cakewalk.com/support/kb/reader.aspx/2007013219 - it uses SONAR 8 as an example, but it should give you some good tips.

Another option would be to duplicate the effect on each track FX Bin.  This can be done by holding CTRL and dragging an item from one track's FX Bin to another.  The plug-in and all of its settings will be copied. 

Thanks, guys for the replies. Yes, I'm aware that it's a common technique and I use it all the time in FLS (simple to do with one click) but in Sonar it just took too much of my time. Seems like I was doing multiple things in Sonar X1 to accomplish what I could do in FLS with one click. Felt this was just overkill to me. Was hoping they they might have simplified things in X2. Guess not. Thanks again. 
 
Oh and thanks for the links. I will look into this and see I might understand things a little better.

Create a template, spend some time on it to get everything in there, and voila, never need to set anything up ever again.

Stick your favorite setups into a track folder, select the folder and go file\export\track template, next time you need that setup load a track from the template.

After a while everything you use frequently is right there ready to use in seconds.

It never took me more than maybe 10 seconds to create a buss, add effect, add a send to the track sending it that buss, that's how every mixing console or DAW I've ever used works.

I don't see why that small amount of time should prevent you finishing a song?

You can always just CTL - click to copy and move any effect. Its one easy step. Also, buses are great for this as everyone said.

I have a feeling this is nt the reason why you cant complete a song, as even if there was no such thing as buses or copying and moving an effect to another track, It only takes a couple clicks to insert an effect and a few more to copy the settings.


Cj