Sonar 7 Questions???

[psylevation]

OK I think you have now enough people who keep on helping. We are all actually saying the same tings in different ways. Sorry to confuse you, but Sonar users are just so helpfull.

It's good though, very nice to see so many different ways to do something. It means it can adapt to a way that works with me.

Honestly, I like the community alot better than the Cubase community. In the forums at Cubase.net there are always people complaining and irritated mods responding. It seems like steinberg never tells anybody anything and just leaves everybody in the dark. I own Cubase 4 but would be more than happy to switch to something that can do everything Cubase 4 can, or at least most of the things I like to use...

So anyway my point is that I appreciate the help, thanx

[kp]

I've just checked and split repeatedly only works at measure (or greater) boundaries. You could change tempo, split, then change back, but that's a little tedious.

And one (general) point - a lot of the time, you'll find that SONAR can do the same "thing" as Cubase (or vice versa), but the terminology or the steps are different, so don't expect it to work in exactly the same way!

[psylevation]

of course, thank you

[syrath]

The technique I described definitely works, ( I confirmed it before I posted), I discoutned the split at regular intervals, since this is deigned to work more on larger sections (IE, 2,4,8, 16 bar clips as an example).

[Stupid American Pig]

if you want to raise the volume of a clip (destructively) then select the clip go to Process/Audio/Gain. I think clip envelopes is a better way to do it though.

[kp]

of course, thank you

Didn't mean to imply you wouldn't think that, but I've seen some people who say "x is crap because it doesn't do z, but y does z" when it's a language/interface difference rather than a functionality one.

[Jace-BeOS]

i'm glad to see a Cubase user finding Sonar a good experience. i have all of the major DAW products except ProTools and i am exploring them all, but Sonar is my main tool and has been for years now. i just started with Cubase 4 a night ago and while the UI in general seems to have been prettied up, and that both Sonar and Cubase have been getting feature ideas from each other and ProTools, i am finding Cubase's overall architecture to be terribly frustrating. i could not find, in the getting started guide or the manual after some time searching the pages/index what i found via Google by asking my question and assuming someone else had already asked it. You know what that was? "Where do i set the VST folder path???" My next obstacle was getting a VSTi loaded since none of the Cubase 4 VSTi's showed in the VSTi "rack" (just my normal ones) and then, once i accidentally used the Browser to open a VSTi via accessing a patch, i had to stumble around to find a way to SHOW the VSTi GUI on screen (then the next task was to enable "Always On Top" which i took for granted as standard fare for hosts)!!

i know all this VST stuff came from Steinberg originally, but i am shocked to find that their flagship product seems so ... clumsy and the terminology is a bit... weird to me (especially the setup - i really do not like the bussing setup at all). i'm downloading the 4.1 update right this moment and would love to see the VST path settings integrated into the preferences window, where they could also put some other stuff that's out on the menus... and a cleaner and more straight forward bussing setup and more flexible Browser GUI (i swear the thing acts like a popup menu instead of a window).

Did you grow with Cubase and just have that be your learning curve playground? i've never felt so alienated by "big name" software in years. i grew with Cakewalk Pro Audio, then Sonar 2... Tracktion won me over almost instantly and makes sense UI-wise, though i still mostly just use it for the rack feature (i wish Tracktion would act as a ReWire Slave) and quick VST/VSTi testing. Live 6 looks to be needing me to adjust a lot of brain mapping, but it seems logical and somewhat similar to Cakewalk's Project5 (which i am slowly starting to get... and thinking of its GUI helps me with Cubase's left control strip craziness).

i know when i last felt this crippled: Computer Musys and its replacement CMusic (though i could find where to configure the VST path without much time clicking at all)! Not big name software but really frustrating. The big name software that turned me off was ProTools when they offered "ProTools Free." It's jumped way beyond that in GUI design ever since but that feeling stuck. i kept telling myself "This is the industry standard...??"

i have autism, so maybe i'm a bit extra "frustratable" with changing software packages, i know there's a lot of muscle memory involved, too... but wow. i'm no dummy and have become somewhat of a developer's aid in the whole GUI design end of software development... maybe that's my problem; expecting a logical and humane layout instead of a "Virtual Studio Technology" concept that never made the jump to not trying to be a physical studio in a computer GUI.

My goal in having Live, Sonar, Cubase, Tracktion and FL Studio is to see for myself which one does which thing best and have a selection of good tools to work with and be as versatile as possible like i am with computer tech support in general (from tinkering with anything i could get my hands on). Hopefully some day if i am not selling art, i can do tech support for studios instead of boring office environments.

i am impressed that you asked a specific question in a positive manner, got quick positive replies and were very positive about your Sonar experience when you were a Cubase user... seems almost unnatural on forums, like kp's post above me, in regards to expectations, suggests

cheers and sorry for rambling

[Omniphonix]

It's funny, I have been tinkering with Sonar for a bit after being a long-time Cubase user since SX 1 and I have the same awkwardness complaints about Sonar. What really scared me though was when a ton of freebie plugins that work just fine in Cubase didn't scan properly or at all in Sonar. I am not so sure their native VST implementation is quite where it should be yet. I think they are still a bit too married to Direct X. Also, why is it such a huge pain in the ass to switch to ASIO drivers and all that restarting of the application involved in doing so? When will Cakewalk learn that WDM is a joke and nowhere near worthy of use in a pro audio environment?

[tranceglobal]

It's funny, I have been tinkering with Sonar for a bit after being a long-time Cubase user since SX 1 and I have the same awkwardness complaints about Sonar. What really scared me though was when a ton of freebie plugins that work just fine in Cubase didn't scan properly or at all in Sonar. I am not so sure their native VST implementation is quite where it should be yet. I think they are still a bit too married to Direct X. Also, why is it such a huge pain in the ass to switch to ASIO drivers and all that restarting of the application involved in doing so? When will Cakewalk learn that WDM is a joke and nowhere near worthy of use in a pro audio environment?

Its awkward because its different, not inferior- just different to what you expect.

Freebie plugins that don't work in Sonar are likely to blame themselves, as Sonar strictly follows the latest VST standard and scans exactly as any other native VST host, without an external wrapper. For an example of the real problem, most Synthedit plugs have failures because Sonar has proper hyperthreading for plugins but there is a bug in the SynthEdit code itself. I have never seen energyXT reject badly coded plugins either, but I would rather use plugins that were responsibly and appropriately made.

Also, your assumption that WDM is a joke is elitist bullshit, and not based on any intelligence. WDM drivers from certain vendors provide equal or in some cases better driver performance than ASIO. Cakewalk are providing flexibility by providing the multiple driver format support.

Your post is clearly a thinly veiled "I don't like Sonar", which is fine. Next time just say it outright to save space. We all like the hosts we like, and I would rather hear your opinion rather than made up facts.

D.

[Omniphonix]

Its awkward because its different, not inferior- just different to what you expect.

Freebie plugins that don't work in Sonar are likely to blame themselves, as Sonar strictly follows the latest VST standard and scans exactly as any other native VST host, without an external wrapper. For an example of the real problem, most Synthedit plugs have failures because Sonar has proper hyperthreading for plugins but there is a bug in the SynthEdit code itself. I have never seen energyXT reject badly coded plugins either, but I would rather use plugins that were responsibly and appropriately made.

Also, your assumption that WDM is a joke is elitist bullshit, and not based on any intelligence. WDM drivers from certain vendors provide equal or in some cases better driver performance than ASIO. Cakewalk are providing flexibility by providing the multiple driver format support.

Your post is clearly a thinly veiled "I don't like Sonar", which is fine. Next time just say it outright to save space. We all like the hosts we like, and I would rather hear your opinion rather than made up facts.

D.

I don't blame Sonar for WDM's problems, I blame Microsoft. I just don't get why Cakewalk doesn't make it easier to switch the driver. In terms of technology though, I think its common knowledge that WDM is inferior to pretty much any competing driver framework (including Core Audio and ASIO). Why else do you think Vista is trying to transition things to the new Universal Audio Architecture framework?

No, I don't hate Sonar, as a long time Cubase user, I find it awkward compared to what I'm used to. The plugin compatability thing is what scared me because some plugins I depend on would not run in Sonar, rendering that host useless to me. One of my best friends uses Sonar exclusively, so I know proper work can be done with it, its just not for me.

[WillieJenkins]

What really scared me though was when a ton of freebie plugins that work just fine in Cubase didn't scan properly or at all in Sonar. I am not so sure their native VST implementation is quite where it should be yet. I think they are still a bit too married to Direct X.

Cake supported VST 2.3 before Cubase did.

Also, why is it such a huge pain in the ass to switch to ASIO drivers and all that restarting of the application involved in doing so? When will Cakewalk learn that WDM is a joke and nowhere near worthy of use in a pro audio environment?

If by "huge pain in the ass" you mean setting it once, and never touching it again, then I'm wondering how you found the energy to post on this forum, seeing as how doing that is more complicated then switching from WDM to ASIO in Sonar

The best point you made was that you find it awkward, which makes sense, seeing as how you've learned cubase.

Your post fails.

[koolkeys]

I do think it's awkward to have to restart to change drivers. It's not always a "set it once" kind of thing. I take my laptop to work and pretty much everywhere I go. I have ASIO4ALL installed. So I use that. But I have my Onyx Satellite which I use whenever I want to record some guitar or just have the interface connected, but that's usually when I'm at home. Anyways, I switch back and forth all the time between the two depending on where I'm at. And I have to reset the driver in Sonar and restart before I can use it.

It's more an annoyance than anything. But I do wish it was different.

Brent

[Jace-BeOS]

as Sonar is my primary tool, i also have to agree that restarting to change the driver model/mode (and some other settings) is awkward. i think they should be able to restart their audio engine without making the user click "OK" twice, close Sonar and start it again. i also do not like that you have to close a project in order for the audio cleanup tool to work (i know open files are nasty with reading them, but this is why the tool should be part of the main app so there is no access violation to begin with).

i know this because my transition to Vista has been utterly painful on my studio machine in regards to Sonar & my PCI audio card (but not my laptop with a USB2 i/o, go figure) and i've been trying WDM/KS (kernel streaming) and ASIO back and forth with no luck - getting worse, actually since Sonar 7/7.1 and the latest drivers for my Echo Mona, but i discovered that my main CPU was doing too much of the Aero work, or the bus was clogged with the GPU sending data around, and had to turn off Aero to get playback that was listenable. This was actually accidentally revealed by Cubase 4.0.2 because any window movement at the edges of the screen that would cause the window to be partially clipped or split across two monitors would make horrible stuttering noises in the audio (this did not happen in Sonar or i never experienced it). Without the motion along screen edges, this was not noticeable to me but there was a huge difference in performance in BOTH apps when i disabled Aero (which sucks because Aero's window drawing is far smoother and responsive than the old renderer on an aesthetic visual level).

Good news for me is that Echo Audio has just released WaveRT drivers for the 3G Echo products and my Mona is in the next lineup of products to get this update which should make both WDM and ASIO use more responsive and efficient because it uses Vista's Core Audio API as intended instead of the backwards compatibility mode you get (tried to play and DirectSound games on a Vista machine with soundcards that don't support OpenAL?? GRRR!).

As for Cakewalk paying too much attention to the WDM stuff, i don't know about that. Maybe they have, but i've tried to use it several times because of the "ONE Device Only" limit of ASIO (and ASIO4ALL does NOT like my mixture of devices so that didn't help), and i always end up running back to using one single audio device in ASIO mode because of stability and, with the latest versions, system freezes with ear piercing screeching while using WDM/KS mode (so much for Vista's claim that the audio system can't bring down the whole system and it's a Microsoft driver model that does it, too, not Steinberg's ASIO - even Echo Audio indicate with the new WaveRT driver that WDM mode might be less stable than ASIO mode). Funny thing is, i had JUST gotten around the web that WaveRT was of NO BENEFIT to devices that are not PCIe... hah... guess that's a misconception after all!

oh, and i didn't mean to start a flame war over the two products, i was more fascinated that there was good communication going on instead of what just erupted after my post! i'm really hoping that Cubase 4.1 update takes care of some of my experience issues with it so i can get on that road to becoming familiar with it because of how alienated i feel in it. i want to get beyond that, as i have with other tools.

cheers!

[Omniphonix]

oh, and i didn't mean to start a flame war over the two products, i was more fascinated that there was good communication going on instead of what just erupted after my post! i'm really hoping that Cubase 4.1 update takes care of some of my experience issues with it so i can get on that road to becoming familiar with it because of how alienated i feel in it. i want to get beyond that, as i have with other tools.

cheers!

I decided to ditch my Sonar experimentation after taking Cubase 4.1 for a spin last night. I guess I just need to face the fact that I can't upgrade to a next Cubase version until the following one is almost ready. I guess I will hold off on Cubase 5 until 6 is almost ready.

In response to Willie, according to everything I've read, Sonar has always handled VST in a wrapper until their attempt to support it native in Sonar 7. That does not constitute "support" in my opinion.

If you wanna go running your mouth about driver setup, go configure Cubase to use your A/D's specific ASIO drivers and turn off all but your used ins and outs then come tell me about how driver setup in Sonar is not a pain in the ass. What should have taken me 15 seconds took 10 minutes.

First I have to switch from WDM to ASIO, restart Sonar. It defaults to ASIO4ALL, switch to MOTU FW ASIO, restart Sonar. Comes up with all ins/outs enabled, trim down to used ins/outs, restart Sonar. Defaults to a buffer size that's too high, set it properly, restart Sonar. Call me crazy, but that looks like a pain in the ass to me.

[Brandon Ryan]

oh, and i didn't mean to start a flame war over the two products, i was more fascinated that there was good communication going on instead of what just erupted after my post! i'm really hoping that Cubase 4.1 update takes care of some of my experience issues with it so i can get on that road to becoming familiar with it because of how alienated i feel in it. i want to get beyond that, as i have with other tools.

cheers!

In response to Willie, according to everything I've read, Sonar has always handled VST in a wrapper until their attempt to support it native in Sonar 7. That does not constitute "support" in my opinion.

If you wanna go running your mouth about driver setup, go configure Cubase to use your A/D's specific ASIO drivers and turn off all but your used ins and outs then come tell me about how driver setup in Sonar is not a pain in the ass. What should have taken me 15 seconds took 10 minutes.

First I have to switch from WDM to ASIO, restart Sonar. It defaults to ASIO4ALL, switch to MOTU FW ASIO, restart Sonar. Comes up with all ins/outs enabled, trim down to used ins/outs, restart Sonar. Defaults to a buffer size that's too high, set it properly, restart Sonar. Call me crazy, but that looks like a pain in the ass to me.

For the record, SONAR has supported VST "natively" since version 6 - not version 7 - and I think calling it an "attempt" would do disservice to how well VST is supported in SONAR.

I won't argue that setting up drivers couldn't be made a little quicker, but c'mon - 10 minutes - really? Why would you restart SONAR when changing buffer sizes? This isn't necessary. For arguments sake I just went and changed devices in SONAR and set them up and even switched back again twice (to mimic the asio4all restart) and it took me less than one minute. As I said, sure it would be nice to be able to switch between ASIO and WDM w/o restarting SONAR (which takes only seconds BTW), but let's not overstate it - is it really an issue one would weight their choice of DAW with?