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The Sonar 6 Discussion Thread
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psylevation
IsraTrance Full Member
Started Topics :
52
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841
Posted : Sep 29, 2006 02:55
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On 2006-09-28 23:18, Dharma Lab wrote:
I was wondering if any of you sonar user's could offer any tips to 'tone down' the GUI interface on Sonar a little. One of the things that I don't care for as much, is that the tracks/main screen is a little busy for my taste. Perhaps I'm just used to Cubase, but Sonar seems a little more hectic.
I know you can remove the track icons, which helps a little. If anyone has any other ideas, I'd love to hear them....
Thanks!
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From what I can tell, you can remove any of the tool bars at the top, or reorganize them in any way you like. You can get rid of the "inspector" on the left side(not sure what its called in sonar, but just press "i" on the keyboard.
You can also change all the colors and adjust quite a bit with the interface, so you should be able to slim it down some. |
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UnderTow
Started Topics :
9
Posts :
1448
Posted : Sep 29, 2006 03:31
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On 2006-09-28 23:18, Dharma Lab wrote:
I was wondering if any of you sonar user's could offer any tips to 'tone down' the GUI interface on Sonar a little. One of the things that I don't care for as much, is that the tracks/main screen is a little busy for my taste. Perhaps I'm just used to Cubase, but Sonar seems a little more hectic.
I know you can remove the track icons, which helps a little. If anyone has any other ideas, I'd love to hear them....
Thanks!
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Which version do you have? There is some customisation possible in version 5 and before but v6 is much much more flexible. All the toolbars, menus, track strips etc are tweakable. So you can have as much or as little as you want visible. Also all the colours are tweakable including saturation, brightness and hue.
Two simple things: "I" will show/hide the track inspector. "D" will hide/show the navigator.
UnderTow |
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UnderTow
Started Topics :
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1448
Posted : Sep 29, 2006 03:44
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On 2006-09-29 02:52, psylevation wrote:
I've got a question for you Sonar guys as well. Is it not possible to draw empty clips in the sequencer? I'm trying out version 5 on my friends computer that I'm hanging on to for a few days. It just seems like it takes a hell of a lot longer to get notes in the sequencer and group them or "glue" parts together, does sonar even have these types of features, any tips on this? It just seems to take too long.
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Aha! The whole idea of needing a clip to be able to input notes is one of my gripes with Cubase. Just open a Piano Roll View (PRV) on any MIDI track and put in the notes that you want. The clips will be created automaticly. Also you can just scroll left and right in the PRV with no restriction at clip boundaries. The PRV opens the whole MIDI track and not a particular clip or anything as restricting as that. In other words, you don't need to create empty clips.
If you want to merge two or more clips into one clip, select them, right click and press B (or choose Bounce to clip). They will become one clip.
Also when copy/pasting clips etc, it is best to have "Move by" selected in the "Snap to grid" settings. A clip doesn't have to start on a bar or wherever to be able to move it arround and stay at the right place relative to bars and beats. That should be the default work mode for stuff like trance.
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Though I have to say I like the track eq's that it comes with better. Also it just seems like you get alot of high quality plugins with it in the first place with the producer edition.
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I've been playing with the Vintage Channel in V6 and it really rocks. The Sonitus stuff is OK but pales in comparison.
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Hmm, if I can just figure out how to move around in the sequencer faster, this could be a decent contender, especially with version 6 now.
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What is slowing you down? Some usefull key commands: CTRL-Left/Right is the horizontal zoom. (Equivalent to G/H in Cubase). Of course CTRL-TAB is usefull to quickly switch between windows (Not specific to Sonar but some people are not aware of this). In the PRV pressing T will allow you to select which tracks are visible. Pressing H will show/hide the right hand sidebar where you can select the active edit track and where you can hide some tracks etc.
If you have specific workflow questions (or anything else) feel free to ask. 
UnderTow
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psylevation
IsraTrance Full Member
Started Topics :
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841
Posted : Sep 29, 2006 04:11
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awesome, these were the kind of things I was looking for Undertow, thank you.
I do have a couple more questions, I hope you don't mind.
First, when recording midi while playing in loop mode, I only see two options, Sound on Sound and Overwrite. Is there anyway to keep recording what you are playing and either keep the last lap you play, or have it mute the previous lap while you are playing, so you can pick the best take without it layering them on top of each other, or overwriting each other?
The other, is there a shortcut for vertical zoom?
About the eq, it may not be great or whatever but it's definately better than the channel eq for Cubase (maybe the new one will be better) I'm defintely giving sonar a run this time. Didn't like version 4 very much, I do like 5 so far, so I'm sure 6 is going to be great.
Thanx for all your help Undertow  |
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psylevation
IsraTrance Full Member
Started Topics :
52
Posts :
841
Posted : Sep 29, 2006 04:15
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haha okay, so ctrl+ up or down is vertical zoom, should have figured that |
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UnderTow
Started Topics :
9
Posts :
1448
Posted : Sep 29, 2006 04:38
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Hehe. Yes CTRL-UP/DOWN As for the recording question you asked, there is a way but I can't remember off the top of my head. I'll dig in and check tommorow.
Btw, are you aware of the track layers in Sonar? Each track can have as many layers as you want. To make them visible as seperate layers, you click the third little icon from the right in the track label bar. (Or whatever thats called). Then you can select a layer (or any clip for that matter) and with Q you mute or unmute it.
You can also use the Mute tool. Click on the mute tool icon or press K. Now when you drag over the bottom half of a clip it will mute that section. The top half will unmute. In the little Mute tool menu you can select wether it mutes/unmutes by region or does the whole clip in one go.
Press T to go back to the select tool (or press the select icon in the toolbar).
UnderTow
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UnderTow
Started Topics :
9
Posts :
1448
Posted : Sep 29, 2006 04:40
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One more Zoom thing: CTRL-ALT-UP/DOWN will zoom the waveform within clips.
And as I am busy with modifiers, SHIFT-ALT-Mouse_drag will allow you to move the wavefrom within a clip. So the clip strays at the same spot with the same size but the waveform within moves.
UnderTow |
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psylevation
IsraTrance Full Member
Started Topics :
52
Posts :
841
Posted : Sep 29, 2006 05:50
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wow, that shift-alt mouse drag thing is very nice  . I'm going to produce a whole track in it while I have it and see if I like it by then.
If you do figure out that midi recording thing, pls let me know, it's a very important decision factor for me.
I seriously appreciate your help UnderTow, just want you to know that, you're being a big help to me, I hope I can repay the favor some day
You know this thread should help get some of other peoples questions regarding sonar out of the way as well. It seems like a very capable DAW, there are some features about it that I just really like alot |
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Kitnam
Mantik
Started Topics :
110
Posts :
1151
Posted : Sep 29, 2006 17:03
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undertow thank you!
about sonar. so far it looks all a bit more simple native and open. not as look-off designed as cubase, but it focuses on the important things: sound, configuration and workflow. i have to relearn many things from zero again, but its only a matter of time. i now nothing yet realy but what i have found out so far is realy an improvement to other daws.
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Freeflow
IsraTrance Full Member
Started Topics :
60
Posts :
3709
Posted : Sep 29, 2006 17:20
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UnderTow - thank you for explaining alot of stuff..
i have not yet given it a try but i will and then i will remember to check out what you said...
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PoM
IsraTrance Full Member
Started Topics :
162
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8087
Posted : Sep 29, 2006 21:15
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some plugins stop the audio engine,i have to bypass the plugs so it work again,Undertow do you think it s my cpu too light or maybe something i haven t set correctly in the sonar config. |
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psylevation
IsraTrance Full Member
Started Topics :
52
Posts :
841
Posted : Sep 29, 2006 23:14
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UnderTow = Isratrance/Sonar tech support & guide to the holy land of the Sonar guts! |
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UnderTow
Started Topics :
9
Posts :
1448
Posted : Sep 30, 2006 03:30
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On 2006-09-29 05:50, psylevation wrote:
wow, that shift-alt mouse drag thing is very nice . I'm going to produce a whole track in it while I have it and see if I like it by then.
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Cool. Tell us how it goes.
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If you do figure out that midi recording thing, pls let me know, it's a very important decision factor for me.
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It is a bit unintuitive so no wonder you couldn't find it (or I couldn't remember it). This is how to do it:
1) Set recording options to "Sound On Sound (Blend)" and "Store Takes in a Single track".
2) In the track you are recording to, open the layers (third icon from right in the Track label) and mute the top layer. (Those little M|S buttons on the divider between the tracks and the track labels).
Now when you loop record, you will hear what you play but it won't play back what you recorded in previous passes. Then you can mute/solo the individual layers to pick the best pass.
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I seriously appreciate your help UnderTow, just want you to know that, you're being a big help to me, I hope I can repay the favor some day
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No worry guys. I enjoy sharing my knowledge and I have alot of knowledge of Sonar.
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You know this thread should help get some of other peoples questions regarding sonar out of the way as well. It seems like a very capable DAW, there are some features about it that I just really like alot
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Yes. It rocks. I've been reading about C4 and it seems Steinberg will never learn to respect their customers. They just dropped DX support and didn't tell anyone ... there are some furious customers in Steinberg land ...
Sonar isn't perfect (nothing is) but Cakewalk truely respect their customers and listen to what we want and try and incorporate it. That for me is reason enough to stick with this product because I know that if they make a mistake (as any company does at some point), they will listen, be honest about it, admit their mistake and very often come with a fix pretty quickly.
Yeah I know I keep harking about Sonar but IMO people really need to know what a great product and company Sonar and Cakewalk are.
And Isratrance forum members even get free tech support.
UnderTow
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UnderTow
Started Topics :
9
Posts :
1448
Posted : Sep 30, 2006 03:39
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On 2006-09-29 21:15, PoM wrote:
some plugins stop the audio engine,i have to bypass the plugs so it work again,Undertow do you think it s my cpu too light or maybe something i haven t set correctly in the sonar config.
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What does the CPU meter show before it stops?
And what do the disk meters show? And does the red "Audio dropout" bar light-up at the bottom of the screen? (It isn't visible unless the engine drops out. Don't go looking for this unless your project just stopped playing ).
If it drops out, you can try increasing the audio latency either in the ASIO control panel of your sound card or in the audio options dialogue ("Buffer Size" slider) if your card uses WDM or MME drivers. This will decrease CPU usage even if you don't have drop-outs btw. It's very usefull when mixing and don't need ultra fast latency.
Also if you have a dual core or dual processor system, you can increase the audio buffers to 4 instead of 2.
Next step would be to increase the I/O buffers in the advanced tab of the audio options dialogue. You can also try "Enable Read/Write caching" if the disks meters are going high.
I hope this helps.
UnderTow
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PoM
IsraTrance Full Member
Started Topics :
162
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8087
Posted : Sep 30, 2006 14:04
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when i load the plugin, the bar light up and audio drop out,cpu 4% and disk 0% ,it happens with plugin who have lot of latency.incresing the buffer help ,thx man. |
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