Sonar 5 has arrived...

[SonarP5]

So 3-D shadeing in the GUI make better songs, interesting.

[Brandon Ryan]

Brandon(Cakewalk) quote:
"Clip based effects and envelopes with full PDC. Again, quite useful. "

Are these clip based effects active only when the clip plays ( like in Samplitude) ??

If they are not, then the whole FX per clip would be useless due to CPU usage. I wouldn't want to have lots of clips with chains of FX clogging up the CPU. Freezing each in turn would also be a logistical nightmare. So...?

They work like effects on tracks. Properly implemented DX and VST effects should use less CPU when dormant than when audio is passing through them so CPU usage should be no higher and conceivable lower.

However, there is another important point to the clip FX. If you have a multi-lane track with say vocal takes. And you don't want to apply a delay or distortion for example to all clips (using the FX bin) then clip based effects are very useful because you can just apply that effect to the clip of choice and not the entire track. Not to mention you can draw effect clip automation and this automation (as well as the plug) will go wherever the clip goes allowing you freedom of arranging without having to worry about the effects and/or their automation. HTH

mr b, could you please shed some light on this for me ( a bit off topic). I have pe3.......some of the sonitus stuff is vst.....with of course 3 of the 4 good ones only being dx. Now, the site listed earlier in this thread had the sonitus stuff listed as vst........is there some way to get all as vst?

thanks.

maybe I'm not understanding...

The Sonitus stuff that ships with SONAR are DX. I believe (i could be wrong) that vst compatible .dll's are also installed. I'll check on this. Out of curiosity, why not just use the DX versions?

[hello1234]

edit, see a few posts down

[alvakorn]

Sascha Franck Wrote

As said, all those deeper functionalities *need* to be hidden IMO. And at the same time there needs to be an option to bring them up very fast, should you finally have to use them.

Another example: When I setup a multiout Battery instance in SX, the mixer will confront me with 16 new channels instantly. Even if I just don't even need them (at least not for now). I need to click EACH of those channels to hide them. Doesn't take a lifetime, but enough to allready distract me from inspiration.
In Logic I only have to setup those individual outs whenever I really need them. I certainly don't need them to mess up my workspace while composing and arranging. Yes, getting individual outs ready *does* take a tad longer. But at the stage when I finally need them, time is no critical issue as I don't need to worry about my inspiration getting lost anymore.

This is what most host companies apparently are getting wrong very often.
They are presenting you a SHITLOAD of information, buttons, popups and whatever, just when you really don't need them at all. All you want to do is to select some insrument (or audio source), arm a track and record away. After that you most likely want to move and copy tracks around, quantize them and probably add some quick n dirty FX. Oh, and you want to change levels and pannings quickly.
These are the things that have to be done in the most efficient way, without ANY clutter disturbing you, even if usually this would *only* be visual clutter. I don't need to see envelope, automation, clip editing or whatever things at that stage, NOT AT ALL.
It doesn't even exactly matter whether it takes a second or two more to get me to those more advanced features, because - as allready said - these are things I need during editing and mixing, a stage at which time shouldn't matter all that much anymore.

Sascha: I wish the "Big Boy" companies were listening to you. I feel the same way. I can deal with a bit of clutter because i'm a music-tech geek, but I have a couple of mates that I write tracks with, and they are not into the tech side of things at all. They just like to LAY TRACKS! These are the kind of people who never show up on the forums, so it is easy to forget that some people just like to lay tracks and that's it (and If one of them did show up here they would get ripped to shreds for asking stupid questions). Sometimes I try to steer people towards Tracktion for this reason (and Reason ). But I myself keep coming back to SX for it's all around solidness. (Although I really haven't given Sonar a fair shake since I ditched Cakewalk9 back in the day for not doing VSTI)

[WillieJenkins]

So 3-D shadeing in the GUI make better songs, interesting.

Yeah, this was the crux of why I initially posted. It was turning into a "it doesn't look cool enough" situation, at least thats what everyones arguments are as best I can tell.

I agree, Sonar's interface is the most drab of them all, probably because its focused on allowing the user to actually see whats going on and to simplify the process of actually making music

But its clear from some of these posts, thats not a priority for all

[Brother Greenmoon]

That's one thing I don't quite get - why wait until version 5 before adding native support for VSTs?

I'm sure there is some reason that must have been discussed at length on the forums here in the past though.

[Funkybot]

Ok, lemmie chime in here, but if your friends are just about laying tracks, then should they be using Sonar? I mean we wouldn't want them owning/working their own Pro-Tools HD system if they weren't about the technical side of things? I'm not trying to sound elitist but I have a bunch of friends in similar situations and when they ask me what to go for, I never point them towards Sonar. I tell them to start elsewhere, on a smaller more compact more newbie friendly sequencer, and then to move on to something bigger once/if they ever start to feel like they need more. And as for Sonar being cluttered, it's not, in fact the layout is quite great, you can easily mix right from the track view if you'd like without it taking up too much room if you don't want it to. The screenshot they showed of Sonar 5 was cluttered as hell but I think that was more about showing everything off than it was bloat as I remember the Sonar 4 screenshots looking similarly and Sonar 4 is by no means cluttered IMO. If Sonar's not for you though, and you can't get it to work for you the way you like, who cares, you're not forced to use it. I don't get Logic at all as it seems like it takes too long to get even simple tasks done, but I can get people who've spent the time with it to figure it out, and have it working for them.

[hello1234]

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[hello1234]

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[xylyx]

I'll copy my post from over on the Sonar forum:

So do you think that Cakewalk have actually coded VST support into Sonar from scratch? Or is it more likely that when you run Sonar, the VST adapter will run and scan for new plugins (hidden from the user, no doubt, so that the illusion of being native is maintained for the people who have complained about the adapter in the past)?

The main issues I see with this are that you are subjected to plugin scans every time you start the app...the current way, if you haven't installed new plugins, you don't run the adapter...it will mean slower start up times. The other one is that, as a P5 owner, whenever the adapter was updated in a Sonar update, I had the updated adapter available for P5...with it embedded into Sonar now (and no doubt the same will happen with P5), it will mean downloading an update for the P5 .exe as well, just to bring the P5 functionality in line with that of S5 whenever the vst support is upgraded...

[hello1234]

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[lanfear]

So do you think that Cakewalk have actually coded VST support into Sonar from scratch? Or is it more likely that when you run Sonar, the VST adapter will run and scan for new plugins (hidden from the user, no doubt, so that the illusion of being native is maintained for the people who have complained about the adapter in the past)?

But really, isn't that how all VST hosts work, scanning for new plugins at startup? The VST support might be a part of the main application binary or a separate (wrapper) application.

The real difference, as I see it, is whether the VST support in general is improved and whether it's seamless & invisible to me as a user.

[headquest]

...

Sonitus:fx isn't really the best example for making your point. The reason why the Sonitus bundle ended up in Cakewalk's hands is that Ultrafunk was essentially hanging up their hat for good and not interested in developing it any longer. They looked for prospective buyers and Cakewalk won the bid. I think Steinberg missed a great opportunity to bolster their arguably mediocre effects bundle, but then again, I'm glad that Cakewalk ended up with them because we might actually see further developments on it in the future. I suspect that Steinberg contracts a lot of those projects out and does very little inhouse development on things other than their core applications. Besides, it makes more sense. Ultrafunk has always been DX/VST PC *only* (and vehemently so ). If Steinberg were to have purchased the bundle, they would have had to port it over to the Mac to maintain dual-platform compatibility, which I seriously doubt they would commit to. Cakewalk was a much more natural fit, especially since Ultrafunk also fully supported DirectX.

-Tronam

Hi Tronam,

Yeah, I was probably overstating the case... I do that sometimes

But according to the advice I received regarding Sonar 4 & Sonitus:

1) The Sonitus plugs are included with S4 as DX plugins only (i.e. the VST .dll files are not included, so you can't also use them in other software you have - Ableton Live in my case)

2) Even the DX versions are locked to Sonar. When I ran the S4 demo, Adobe Audition (which I have, and which is both DX and VST host, but audio only) scanned and located the DX Sonitus plugs, but displayed a message to say they are only available in Sonar

3) The VST / DX versions are now available to USA customers (not european the last time I looked, but this may have changed?). However, the price for the bundle is nearly as much as the cost of Sonar SE, which now includes the DX versions anyway.

I personally think that is a shame, because the Sonitus effects are great, and were previously used very widely.

From the perspective of Ultrafunk, of course they sold to the highest bidder. So, I'm sure, did Emagic .

But I take your point, and yes I was overstating the case. However, I *do* think there are paralels. Forgive me if I'm wrong

EDIT: If the Sonitus Reverb was available on its own as a VST effect that I could use in all VST hosts - as it used to be! - then I would almost certainly buy it. It's one of the best software reverbs I have heard. But I don't want/need the rest of the bundle, as I already bought the Kjaerhus Golden plugs, which I personally prefer.

On another forum, somebody sent me a PM offering me a crack of the Sonitus stuff, which I declined! I don't use pirated software, nor am I about to!! However, I can understand why people do, given circumstances like this where outstanding software effectively becomes *unavailable*. Hence the rant...

[nommo]

VST and DX plug-in's differ in one important respect--one was intended for cross-platform use. DX plug-in's, by nature, make use of many Windows technologies, such as the registry. VST plug-in's can make use of the registry on Win32 systems, and the equivilent on OSX, but the behavior is not consistent. So whereas DX plug-in's on Windows make entries for themselves in the registry and Sonar is aware of them because of this, VST plug-in's, on the other hand, are placed into a common directory and it's necessary to scan for them. It's the weakness of having a common folder to store things in--the application (Sonar, Cubase, etc.) can make no assumptions about what's in it until it looks, physically. Until Steinberg creates a manifest that VST installers are required to update and it becomes standardized and is easily supported on all platforms VST is intended for, there's no way around a host scanning for VST plug-in's. So functionally, whether Cakewalk is wrapping VST plug-in's transparently or not, it's the nature of the beast for now.

[christianmusicmaker]

2) Even the DX versions are locked to Sonar. When I ran the S4 demo, Adobe Audition (which I have, and which is both DX and VST host, but audio only) scanned and located the DX Sonitus plugs, but displayed a message to say they are only available in Sonar

Hmmm, the DX version of the Sonitus plugs may not work in AA but they do work in other hosts...I have tried them in Logic5.5 and they work there.

I suppose having both VST and DX versions would be nice. Maybe Sonar 5 ships with both.