David Baay

Conflict with Melodyne or other Region FX...? ARA takes over control of clip levels, but output volume automation at the track level should still work.

I'm pretty sure that option is enabled by default in all of the bundled templates. And the fact that it wasn't in this case was inherited from a custom template or a workspace.

Uncheck "Disable Input Monitoring During Playback' in Preferences > Audio Playback and Recording. This is not enabled by default.

'Show Vertical Gridlines' is unchecked so you're only getting the default beat lines. PRV View settings are per project/template.

I can relate. Sonar is much sharper on monitors of all sizes.

Most MIDI events include channel as a parameter of the message ("Embedded" channel is my terminology). The channel of a recorded event is determined by the keyboard/controller/VST that generates it. In the absence of an assigned Input channel, notes with any channel can be recorded in a track. The Input assignment acts as a filter to restrict only events with a matching channel being recorded. but does not re-write the embedded channel of incoming notes. The Output channel assignment, on the other hand, non-destuctively re-writes the embedded channel of events as they are sent to a synth in real time. (Optionally, you can also have events destructively re-written with the forced Output channel by Bounce to Clips.) Back when we were all using multitimbral hardware synths and/or daisy-chaining them in series on a single hardware port, and sequencers were more rudimentary, it was more critical to keep track of what channel was being transmitted and recorded. Now that we have software instruments that have dedicated MIDI ports and tracks with forced output channel capability, we can pretty much record everything as channel 1 with no specific Input channel assigned (though I still recommend it as a best practice along with assigning a specific Input port), and rely on forced Output channels to differentiate them as necessary when using a multitimbral/multi-channel VSTi.

If you still have a copy of the original un-fixed project, you should share a copy with the Bakers to investigate. They may not be able to get at the root cause if you can't identify the steps that got it into that state, but they might still be able to implement a fix that would make the state impossible.

To clarify, it shows the channel embedded in each Note event regardless of what I/O channels are currently set for the track.

Good story. Welcome back. I'm curious, were you not aware Bandlab resurrected Sonar soon after the shutdown or just didn't trust it to remain viable?

Good question. I would have expected the OP to mention if hardware synths were involved, but you never know.

No problem. I already felt important. 😜

The reverb is being generated by the SD-50 in response to MIDI messages from CbB setting the reverb level in the sound module. As others have mentioned, this can be due to CC91 events in the MIDI track data, but most likely these have been read into the Reverb control in the track Inspector - M in this screenshot linked below. CbB sends the values from the various MIDI track controls everytime playback starts http://static.cakewalk.com/documentation/Cakewalk/EN/images/Inspectors.3.4.png from: https://legacy.cakewalk.com/Documentation?product=Cakewalk&language=3&help=Inspectors.3.html

This should work without pre-bouncing so long as you either select nothing or everything. When you select nothing, CW includes everything by default so that;s usually the best approach. If you use separate MIDI and synth audio tracks and select only audio tracks without the MIDI tracks that the drive synths, the synth tracks won't generate any output. That said I generally recommend bouncing the Master bus to a 'Master Bounce' track that outputs directly to hardware outs in parallel with the Master bus (Tracks > Bounce to Track(s) with Source = Buses and only the Master bus selected). Then you can group the bounce track's mute button in opposition with the Master bus to A/B between the bounce and the live mix or check for nulling by inverting the phase of the bounce track with both unmuted. Once you're satisfied that the bounce sounds right, export just that track in the desired file format.

ProjectScope does not show any channel info, and CAL mostly deals in embedded event channels. It does have a function for setting the forced Output channel on a track, but does not appear to have a function to return the current value. It may be possible to work around this but it would take a lot of iteration to check all the tracks and keep track of which channels are used on which tracks and whether they're forced or embedded. My CAL chops are too rusty to justify the effort to attempt this. Now I'm curious what the use case is...?

Not really, but it depends where they're set. If you're talking about channels embedded in events, you can view all tracks in the Event List and scan the Channel column. If it's forced Output channels, it's fairly easy to step through the tracks with cursor keys while looking at the Ch assignment in the Inspector (MIDI tab for Instrument tracks). Same for Input channels but this may require hovering over the Input widget since the channel is a suffix and may be hidden.

So put the channel numbers in the friendly names: Onyx 1|Onyx 2 Onyx 3|Onyx 4 ... You can even define a 3rd name for the Stereo Input: Onyx 1L| Onyx 2R|Onyx 1/2S

I can confirm something is not right with opening OMF files in Sonar. I tried opening an OMF that I had previously saved from CbB, and Sonar crashed. This file still opens successfully in CbB.

Actually input quantizing isn't done in real time (it can't be because there's no way to pull a late note back in time); it's just applied automatically when recording stops. After recording Input Quantize appears as a separate operation in History and can be immediately undone without losing the recording.

For this to be truely useful (for me at least), it would have to display a history list showing what time range was quantized with what settings on which track(s). In order for it to work at all, Sonar would basically need to keep a backup of all raw MIDI recordings as it essentially does for audio recordings. One big quesiton would be whether it's advisable to store that history when the project is closed as undoing a quantize operation much later could eventually become incompatible with other edits. For the time being, I suggest you Save-As a version of the project with a different name after every new recording, and again when you start making destructive (or hard to reverse) edits so you always have "raw' versions to go back to later. Alternatively you can drag-copy the unquantized MIDI to a second lane, noting that it's "RAW MIDI" in the lane notes area, lock it against editing and mute it so it doesn't show up in the PRV with Hide Muted Clips enabled.

There was also a time when you could just create an empty text file, save it with a .pcp extension and import it, but that stopped working at some point. In any case, it seems to me you must have been using a template with empty Prochannels (maybe acquired from another user) at some point since so many of the tracks in that project had empty Prochannels, not just the one causing problems. Normally if you open an old pre-X1 (or even pre-SONAR) project in CbB or Sonar, all audio tracks and buses will automatically have the default modules.

Put a pipe "|" symbol between left and right channel names, and they'll show up that way in the Input pick list and in the Input widget after you select one.

In order to bring in the tempo changes along with the notes, you'll want to Open the .MID file with CbB from the File menu rather than importing to an existing project. When you import, the MIDI takes on the tempo(s) of the project. After opeing the file, save it as a "Normal" Cakewalk project.

Step Sequencer is probably a better way of producing a drum track without a keyboard, but if you really you want to "record" MIDI within CbB, you can set the Cakewalk's "Virtual Controller" as input to the track. Clicks on the virtual keyboard can be recorded in real time or by the Step Recorder (not to be confused with Step Sequencer), using either the virtual keyboard or its computer keyboard mode. Recording in real-time is challenging and with either method you need to get familiar with the mapping of drums to the keyboard. Ultimately you won't want to spend too much time messing around with this when basic used MIDI keyboard controllers are a dime a dozen.

Interesting. Definitely an oversight that the Bakers forgot that Home Studio installed to Cakewalk\SONAR (I presume it was all-caps then, but Windows doesn't differentiate). But if the more advanced versions of SONAR could open Home Studio files, I would have thought some sort of EQ "translation" would have been part of that process and would have carried over to Sonar. So I'm wondering if a template with empty Prochannel might still have been involved; like possibly you dragged a Home Studio project into a SONAR project started from a template at some point to update it...? This is normally a good way to update an old project, but not if the template has issues.

This is a bit of a tough call. I would mostly agree with John that if you re-save a template after verifying everything is laid out and working as intended you should be in good shape, but I have occasionally encountered issues in the past with old templates that seemed only to be resolved by building a new one from scratch so I tend to feel it's good to start over once in a while. For the most part I find this happens naturally at least every couple years due to changes in hardware setup, favorite VSTs and evolving compositional focus.