Taking advantage of the summer sale I just got my first version of Kontakt. I'm using the opportunity to revisit my work flow. I do orchestral arrangements, and I want to get a template set up to reflect the seating arrangement of various sections of the orchestra. I'm looking for advice on whether to set panning and depth on my Sonar tracks or to do it in my Kontakt instances. To this point using GPO4 I have set panning and field depth in the ARIA player and left my Sonar tracks centered. Should I do the same in Kontakt?

Set the pan in SONAR X1 or use the included Channel Tools from X1 to set placement of the different Orchestral instruments.
Violins Leftside and so on. Here you have Classic placement of the Orchestra to follow.

This is a great thread. I'm going to bookmark this one. I have Kontakt as well and will chip in when I have appropriate comments. Sonar X1 is awesome, and it's a pleasure to have Kontakt as a resource.

You should get Vienna Ensemble Pro 5/MIR PRO. I use it within Sonar and you can even run your Kontakt inside. Nothing better for orchestral mixing. Perfect when arranged like above. :) Great job!

I recently got Kontakt 5 and have not used it much yet...and then I figured out much after my post..............love it.

sorry about the off topic post but,
I was also wondering what people think of the Alicia keys piano as compared with others mentioned on this fourm? The piano on my Yamaha S90 and kurzweil micro piano sound good to me...I question weather software sounds better then these.

Traditional Orchestras have the Basses placed to the right [Looking at the stage]
But not always a good Idea with Midi Orchestrations.
You might need to experiment with the Bass placement side of things.


Garry

lowdown


Traditional Orchestras have the Basses placed to the right [Looking at the stage]
But not always a good Idea with Midi Orchestrations. 

Why is that?

Well your mix might sound a bit lop sided.
Like I said above - You might need to experiment.


Garry