What I dislike about Sonar (any workarounds ?)

[superddman]

Not to change topic but I think I am giving in to Bones, I have stuck with Orion for some time and everything seems coming together. I would recommend that you try it out Soundpalace.

If you like pattern approach (the included drum step sampler is the best in the world imo), without all the routing mess like you have in FL (plus with ability to have multiple patterns per track, so beautiful!!!!), with a great mixer, with easy-on-the-eyes arrange window, and great automation, then Orion is for you. The only thing I would wish is for dockable event(automation) window below the arrange window, with a global zoom. Other then that it is a very nice host.

Once you check out the multiple-pattern-approach per track, you will see how easy it is to create variety in your songs, without taking up extra visual space. Kriminal: I now know your secret hehehe

[fgimian]

Yeah I had tried Orion, very neat program. I found the mixer wasn't quite as powerful as I would like due to the 2 inserts per track and 4 sends. And since it's mainly based on synths, I found the audio side wasn't too elaborate. But this was a long time ago, not sure if things have changed.

I'll give it another try sometime

Thanks for the info superddman
Fots

[headquest]

Craig is obviously a man to listen to. Indeed, before the SynthRack, one had to create a MIDI track & an Audio track, and drop the softsynth in the audio effect bin, then route the MIDI track to the synth. This still works, though you lose control of the synth in the synth rack (which may or may not be a problem).

Perhaps there's more to the synth rack than I have yet discovered - I thought it was basically there as a way to quickly see/freeze/etc the synths. How do you use this for "control" of the synth beyond that?

As for synths, I thought I may have just been remembering wrong. But I just checked it with Albino and my TriggerFinger and it worked fine through the SynthRack. What VST instruments are you specifically trying to control? Maybe I have it and can give it a look-see. But as near as I can tell, you shouldn't need to use a work-around to use the Ozone to control your softsynths.

Well what I have found is that some synths (e.g. TTS-1 and Pentagon I) respond to controller movements without any specific setup, although I am keen to know how I might reassign a specific slider to control a specific function on the synth.

Does this have to be set up using MIDI CC from the hardware controller itself? I believe that is possible and that I could set up some templates for the hardware unit to follow... is that what you do with Trigger FInger (?using M-Audio's "Enigma" utility?)

The confusion seems to be that in Ableton (for example) there is a simple MIDI learn on-screen in the sequencer which makes all this easier for a duffer like me to understand .

Something to keep in mind while working with MIDI tracks is the MIDI input echo button. If it's dark you need to have that track selected to pass MIDI through, including controller information. If you set it to "on" (neon green) and have the MIDI input configured to your controller than it doesn't matter what track you have highlighted.

Thanks, yes. I didn't understand that until I read the SONAR Power book. But this input echo control has some interesting and powerful uses - very good once you get the hang of it.

Imagine effect/track automation curves drawn, would these need to be displayed and turned on/off on these tracks as well? There's possibly a better way, but I don't think Sonar is far off from it at present.

I think I see your point - if there were track based envelopes (e.g. volume), MIDI input envelopes, Audio mixer envelopes, VST synth and effect envelopes all on one track it would look a mess, right?

The way this is handled in ABleton is that you only see one envelope displayed at a time on a track, and some envelopes are only displayed on clips (not the full track) which keeps it cleaner. But I'm not sure if/how something similiar could be applied within the SONAR environment.

The present system is certainly very flexible, which is great.

In my PuffTools setting (really, that's what I call it) I've toned down some of the pastel and bumped up the contrast on certain things. It's not perfect but by the time S6 arrives maybe it will be.

Any chance of sharing that skin?

For a while it may be helpful to keep a text file open that lists the keybindings you create, and to this list as well you can add the Sonar default bindings that you haven't modified. Print it out, keep it tacked to the wall beside you. Unless your memory isn't as crippled as mine.

That sounds like good advice. I'll be getting into this over the next while, and let the keybindings thing develop as an when I think of new shortcuts.

Cheers again for all the help.

[headquest]

I'll definitely head over to the P5 forum for some advice on that then, and seek out "b rock"s tips. Perhaps the presets just don't show it off very well. Knowing that Rene coded it I have been quite suprised by how little use I have so far found for it (basically just the occasional pad sound). Pentagon I is a fabulous synth, and I have/love z3ta+ as well. Perhaps I shoulod give PSYN II another chance!

Don't forget that if you right click on the volume control (at least, I think it's the volume control...been a while since I did this!) then there is an option to set PSYN to HQ mode...won't make a massive amount of difference, but any improvement is welcome...

I didn't know that. Thanks for the tip - I'll try it out and see if I can hear the difference

Cheers.