I have Sonar 3.1 which has a VST to DX wrapper and synth rack. Would I have any reason to still get Chainer. If so, how does Chainer work within a VST to DX wrapper? or in Sonar, generally? Thanks!

Oh yeah-I use Chainer inside Sonar all the time.
There's a couple good reasons why-Chainer will handle plugs that the VST wrapper will choke on.Every once in a while when you run the scan for the wrapper,it'll choke on some plug,or when you load the plug into Sonar,you'll get an incompatibility error message..If the plug will crash Chainer,it'll crash anything.
Another nice point-if you have Chainer scanned and in your synth list in Sonar,you can just have Chainer scan your plugs and use them from there.No more rescanning with the wrapper every time you add another VST plug.Of course,then they won't appear in Sonar's synth list,but your list in Sonar will be much shorter.
ew

I am thinking of just using Chainer within Sonar because I sick of putting my plugins in tidy groups only for it to be a mess again after rescanning for new plug. However, I have a Powercore and UAD which need to use Plugin Delay Compensation, therefore if I tick the PDC box on the cakewalk VST adapter will the PDC work on Chainer within plugins from Powercore and UAD.

Thanks ew and baggio...precisely the information I was looking for. And -yeah- I'm getting sick of the VST to DXi wrapper - it's wonderful to be able to use the VSTs out there but I keep encountering strange little things that make me want to tear my hair...the choking on a program for one, the constant re-scanning for another and finally, if it rejects a program, damned if I can figure out a way to accept it later without changing it's name.

One more question - are Chainer and EnergyXT essentially comparable in terms of what they do? I'll be doing my own due diligence but was wondering what people thought...is it one or the other or do they compliment each other ("You're looking right smart this morning, Mr. Chainer" "I was just going to say the same to you Mr. EnergyXT.").

I use them both.Chainer's more tolerant about the plugs you put into it,while EnergyXT has all the cool add-on features(and is VERY actively developed and improved,unlike Chainer )
ew

Thanks, ew...helpful information as per usual.

I wrap Chainer using the Cakewalk/Fxpansion wrapper. It's the only VSTi that I wrap. Then, when I want to use any VSTi in Sonar, I first make an instance of Chainer. Then I load the desired VSTi (unwrapped) into Chainer. As mentioned above, this obviates the need for wrapping VSTi's for use in Sonar. And, as mentioned above also, Chainer often handles VSTi's better than wrappers.

But wait, there's more:

When you use a VSTi inside Chainer inside Sonar you can resize the VSTi GUI if the VSTi supports that. EnergyXT is one example where that is *really* important. (IOW, I load EnergyXT inside Chainer inside Sonar rather than wrapping EnergyXT).

Also, Chainer lets you load multiple VSTi's so that you can do layering in Sonar very easily. Without Chainer, layering in Sonar can be a real pain.

Also, when you load multiple VSTi's into Chainer you can easily mute one or more so that you can do A/B comparisons for a given track in Sonar. Such A/B testing can be a total pain without Chainer.

Related to the above, you can easily decide to switch from one VSTi to another for a given track without having to make any routing changes if you use Chainer to do the loading.

Also, you can use Chainer's transpose, volume, and pan controls to give you extra control over your VSTi without changing any settings for the corresponding midi track in Sonar.

Also, you can use Chainer's midi learn for any loaded VSTi so that you don't have to worry about whether or not a given VSTi implements midi learn. You get it for free using Chainer.

I've used Sonar (and Pro Audio before that) for several years. A year or so ago I switch over to the "use Chainer to load any and all VSTi's" approach. I haven't looked back. It just adds a whole 'nother level of useability to Sonar.

In fact, I use the same strategy -- load all VSTi's in Chainer -- even when using Cubase SX2 for all of the same reasons mentioned above.