Sonar X1 Comes With Several 3rd Party Audio Encoder Profiles (incl. MP3, FLAC & OGG)

[I was just replying to another thread, about how to install a 3rd party MP3 encoder (such as LAME) for use within Sonar X1, when it occurred to me that a lot of people might not know about this. I felt it deserved a new thread to highlight it, instead of just a post buried within another thread.]
 
There are several external audio encoder profiles supplied with X1, including for MP3, FLAC and OGG. You'll find them as part of the 02_SONAR_X1_Producer.part1.exe, and part 2, download files. Once they have been decompressed to a new folder, the audio profiles are here:

\SONAR X1 Setup Files\Utilities\External Encoder Profiles 

It includes files such as:

LAME MP3 Very High Quality Stereo.reg
LAME MP3 Medium Quality Joint Stereo.reg
FLAC High Quality.reg
Ogg Vorbis Standard Quality.reg
(and quite a few more)

There are no instructions as far as I can tell though! However, it's simple enough... 

For those who don't know, .reg files are simply text files that contain registry settings. To add them to your registry, all you have to do is double-click them in Windows Explorer. A quick look at any of the .reg files in Notepad tells you everything you need to know about installing them. For example, open the high quality LAME file in Notepad and you will see this:

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\CakewalkExtAudioEncoders\{AF1830F5-FD74-4AA3-8797-FE6B4A19350C}]
"Name"="LAME MP3 Very High Quality Stereo"
"Description"="LAME MP3 Very High Quality Stereo"
"Path"="C:\\Program Files\\Cakewalk\\Shared Utilities\\External audio Encoders\\LAME"
"Extension"=".mp3"
"CommandLine"="lame %I -b 128 -m s -h -c -V 1 -B 320 %O"
"InProcess"=dword:00000000
"KeepWaveFile"=dword:00000000

Clearly the 'Path' setting shows that you will also need to install LAME to the following folder before it will work:

C:\Program Files\Cakewalk\Shared Utilities\External audio Encoders\LAME

Of course, you could just edit the path in the .reg file (before double-clicking it to add it to your registry), if you want to install LAME somewhere else. Be sure to use double backslashes, as shown above, if you do edit the path though.

HTH.

nice!

Great.....thanks for the tip!


Cheers,

Billy Buck

benstad,

You ROCK...!!!

PS: do you really live in "Miseryville" ?

Fernando


benstad,

You ROCK...!!!

PS: do you really live in "Miseryville" ?

Only since I had kids.

Thanks so much for the info benstat, but are you saying that Sonar has included these audio encoders and no instructions on how to utilize them? That's pretty LAME.

I also have yet to find the .reg files you are referring to.

How do I 'decompress' an .exe file to a new folder?

Did you create directory\Sonar X1 Setup\? Or did the install decompress routine do it?

Thanks again

Is there a easy way do do this?I would hate to mess things up when everything is working great.

You must decompress the .rar file of X1 download part 2 in order to see the reg files.

Firstly, Sonar X1 does not come with the actual encoders. It's up to you to locate, download and install them (making sure you put them in the right folder as per my instructions above). I can recommend LAME (as have others here), but it's a bit tricky to locate on the web for some reason, and it comes compressed in the awkward .rar format instead of a .zip. If you prefer, PM me and I'll send it to you in .zip format (it's very small).

Also, you shouldn't need to manually decompress any Sonar files. If, like me, you downloaded X1, then the files are probably already there. Just look in the folder where you originally downloaded the X1 files to, and you will probably see a folder called 'SONAR X1 Setup Files'. The .reg files will be in there.

If not, just run '02_SONAR_X1_Producer.part1.exe', making sure that '02_SONAR_X1_Producer.part2.rar' is in the same folder. When it runs, it asks for a destination folder. Leave it set to the default value and then click 'Install'. The files will be automatically uncompressed for you, including everything in the part 2 .rar file. When that finishes, a second Sonar setup program starts up. Close that straight away, and voila, your 'SONAR X1 Setup Files' folder is there with all the .reg files within it.

If you didn't download, and have the DVD's, then just look on those - they'll be on there somewhere, already uncompressed.

Excellent!

Thank you!

I can recommend LAME (as have others here), but it's a bit tricky to locate on the web for some reason, and it comes compressed in the awkward .rar format instead of a .zip

It's a handy zip file here: http://www.rarewares.org/mp3-lame-bundle.php
This is where I get lame.

To get a higher quality conversion should I change the 128 in the command line to 192?  If so, does the 320 need to be changed?
 
Command line as imported:
lame %I -b 128 -m s -h -c -V 1 -B 320 %O
 

To clarify, according to many, the LAME encoder generates the highest-quality MP3s of any encoder.  It is developed in the open by the LAME Project at SourceForge and skirts MP3 patent licensing requirements by suggesting an "educational" use and by not offering any compiled software on its website, only binaries that you must compile on your own.  This explains the complexity of this operation (and lower cost of Sonar).  On the plus side, for your aggravation, you know you're getting the best encoder available and not a kludge.

Don't have a C++ Compiler on ya?  Anybody can download a compiled command-line LAME encoder at RAREWares.  Choose a package that is current (as of this writing, LAME 3.98.4) and appropriate for your OS (e.g., Windows 64-bit).  I've used them for a couple of years now and experienced no issues with their downloads.

The only trouble I've had with these LAME encoders relates to ID3 tagging.  A bug in the LAME encoder writes empty URL link frames (e.g., WCOM, WOAF) into the MP3 audio files.  This probably won't affect your use of LAME with Sonar but might cause confusion if you employ the command-line tool after-the-fact, to add extended copyright-related ID3 tags to your MP3 files before sharing and uploading to social networks.  To correct, you can use the ID3.EXE command-line MP3 tagger application.  [My link to this download is dead, so you'll have to Google it from a new source.  Sorry!]  There are also free Windows MP3 taggers available, like MP3Tag.  Unless you're batch-encoding at the command-line, this is the way to go.

I hope this is helpful and answers some questions.  Yes, it's a PIA, but worth it.

Dave

Skyline_UK


To get a higher quality conversion should I change the 128 in the command line to 192?  If so, does the 320 need to be changed?
 
Command line as imported:
lame %I -b 128 -m s -h -c -V 1 -B 320 %O
 

Yes to the first.  No to the second.  The -b option refers to the bitrate and can be safely set to 192, 256, 320, etc.  The -B option sets the maximum bitrate for variable bitrate (VBR) encoding and is entirely optional.  In fact, the -V and -B options may both be omitted.  I personally don't use VBR, being that VBR-encoded MP3s are incompatible with some players.  If you choose to use VBR, you'll probably also want to familiarize yourself with the additional -vbr-new and -vbr-old modes.

In case anybody is operating blind here, all of the command-line switches are documented here:  http://lame.cvs.sourceforge.net/viewvc/lame/lame/doc/html/switchs.html.

I hope this answers your question.

Dave

Many thanks Dave!

John

Thanks benstat, I gotta try this...

benstat


[I was just replying to another thread, about how to install a 3rd party MP3 encoder (such as LAME) for use within Sonar X1, when it occurred to me that a lot of people might not know about this. I felt it deserved a new thread to highlight it, instead of just a post buried within another thread.]
 
There are several external audio encoder profiles supplied with X1, including for MP3, FLAC and OGG. You'll find them as part of the 02_SONAR_X1_Producer.part1.exe, and part 2, download files. Once they have been decompressed to a new folder, the audio profiles are here:

\SONAR X1 Setup Files\Utilities\External Encoder Profiles 

It includes files such as:

LAME MP3 Very High Quality Stereo.reg
LAME MP3 Medium Quality Joint Stereo.reg
FLAC High Quality.reg
Ogg Vorbis Standard Quality.reg
(and quite a few more)

There are no instructions as far as I can tell though! However, it's simple enough... 

For those who don't know, .reg files are simply text files that contain registry settings. To add them to your registry, all you have to do is double-click them in Windows Explorer. A quick look at any of the .reg files in Notepad tells you everything you need to know about installing them. For example, open the high quality LAME file in Notepad and you will see this:

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\CakewalkExtAudioEncoders\{AF1830F5-FD74-4AA3-8797-FE6B4A19350C}]
"Name"="LAME MP3 Very High Quality Stereo"
"Description"="LAME MP3 Very High Quality Stereo"
"Path"="C:\\Program Files\\Cakewalk\\Shared Utilities\\External audio Encoders\\LAME"
"Extension"=".mp3"
"CommandLine"="lame %I -b 128 -m s -h -c -V 1 -B 320 %O"
"InProcess"=dword:00000000
"KeepWaveFile"=dword:00000000

Clearly the 'Path' setting shows that you will also need to install LAME to the following folder before it will work:

C:\Program Files\Cakewalk\Shared Utilities\External audio Encoders\LAME

Of course, you could just edit the path in the .reg file (before double-clicking it to add it to your registry), if you want to install LAME somewhere else. Be sure to use double backslashes, as shown above, if you do edit the path though.

HTH.

This was also available for Sonar 8 (and possibly even earlier versions)
I found that most of the encoder profiles worked well with 8.5 though one or two didn't quite work ..

argh

i wonder if i can get my money back fro the encoder i bought :(