Week 156: Let's Get Punchy! There are two ways to punch in Sonar: Auto-Punch, where recording occurs in a pre-defined region, or manual punching, which works like analog tape. Auto-Punch gets all the props and is probably what most SONARians use, but let’s talk about manual punching because you have different options that may be potentially more useful in some situations.
PUNCHING BASICS The recording metronome starts when you hit the Transport’s Record button. So during auto-punching (where you hit usually hit Record prior to reaching the punch region), you’ll hear the metronome. With manual punching, you’ll hear the metronome only when you punch in by enabling the Transport Record button.
There’s an alternate method for manual punching. In Preferences, you can specify Allow Arm Changes During Playback/Record. The default is to let you record-enable/disable a track via the track record button only when the Transport is stopped, but checking this preference allows punching out with the record-enable button, assuming you had initiated recording by clicking on the Transport’s Record button. You can also punch back in after punching out. Note that when punching in and out using the track’s record-enable button, if enabled for recording the metronome will always play back — even when not recording — because the Transport recording button will still be enabled.
The three punching modes have different results with Manual, Auto-Punch with Mute Previous Takes disabled, and Auto-Punch with Mute Previous Takes enabled. The following chart (I did the work so you don't have to
), which assumes Take Lanes are folded up while recording, summarizes what happens for the various modes. You can select the various modes, as well enable/disable the Auto-Punch options, through Preferences but it’s quicker to right-click on the Transport’s Recording button, which calls up the appropriate page from Preferences. So...punch away!
