Mark Morgon-Shaw

Some uses You can quickly check your project's waveforms and loudness levels. You can easily see where clipping has occurred. You can use the Stats tab to see your loudness stats. You can save time by not having to output a file which can take a while. You can easily identify any issues with the waveforms before committing to a full render. About the loudness stats Once the Dry Run process is finished, you can view the loudness statistics for your project by clicking on Stats/Chart → Open Render Statistics. This includes the integrated LUFS, true peak, and maximum peak levels, as well as the short-term and momentary loudness levels. This information is useful for ensuring that your track meets the loudness standards of streaming services like Spotify, Apple Music, and YouTube. These render statistics can be enabled, disabled, and configured in Preferences → Audio → Rendering. ▶ Here’s a full list with all terms used and their meanings. Useful actions There’s a bunch of useful actions that allow you to dry run render things like your mix, your tracks, time selection and even selected items! Open the Actions menu (shortcut: ?) and do a search for “dry run”, you’ll find: Calculate loudness of master mix via dry run render Calculate loudness of master mix within time selection via dry run render Calculate loudness of selected items via dry run render Calculate loudness of selected items, including take and track FX and settings, via dry run render Calculate loudness of selected tracks via dry run render Calculate loudness of selected tracks within time selection via dry run render Calculate mono loudness of selected tracks via dry run render Calculate mono loudness of selected tracks within time selection via dry run render

True, Misha, but in the world of production music, having a taste that resonates with an audience isn't just a preference; it's a prerequisite. Whilst your passion for BIAB is admirable I can't help but wonder why I've never heard any of your music.

Are you sure you're not just moving further away ?

What could be cooler is a new breed of ' Skip Marker ' that when reached wil jump to the next marker. It could just be an added option on the existing markers

Yes I suggested something similar about 4yrs ago

An informed one. I hear tracks from people that use it all the time. Dreadful.

Me too Then I still can't find the one I want and have to buy a new one

You could get a much better result from Ezdrummer, EzKeys & EzBass

Is there a Discord for New Sonar yet ?

I agree it's certainly special ?

You either need a better string library with more articulations or need to fake it somehow . There are some libraries that have fast attack patches which might help but a lot of folks fake the accented feel by doubling the start of the note with a pizzi articulation and mixing it in such a way that it sounds like one bowing action. Also boucing the track to audio might make it easier to control the note envelope using automation

That methodology has always struck me as a bit of a strange way of going about things. Surely more efficient to learn onw DAW really well and just roll with it ?

Gave Next a try ( I have Discord here on my studio PC btw for a few years as we use it to talk about collabs and hadn't noticed any issues ) Next seems very slick and polished, it's too simplistic for me to use in any real way but I am guessing I am not arget audience and I can see the appeal to those stepping up from something like the Bandlab App or creators seeking a first DAW. I like the visual style, and the one thing it has that I wish CbB or Sonar had is the Xsampler - I like the way if you just drag a loop into the track pane it offers to make it into a sampler instrument. I hope they carry this over to the new Sonar.

I have to collaborate with mutlple musicians for some of my production music tracks and everyone I know in the industry just sends each other Wav files as it's so much simpler. One guy I work with regularly has CbB and honestly I don't even want his project files because how he works and lays everything out is very diffrent to how I work. His projects look like a unicorn vomited on the screen whereas mine are very simple and grey. I use folders, he does not. I use multiple busses - he does not. Even the way people name their tracks differs. So it's not really an issue to bounce a bunch of track-outs and everyone who does it regular enough knows the drill. Print any FX that are an integral part of the sound and leave the rest to the person doing the final mix/master. Most of us use Dropbox to send wav files to each other. I think that's as univeral as it gets.

I first tried it in the late 90s when as you say it was purely midi , wasn't impressed then ( I ended up buying a Yamaha TG300 and programming my own tracks instead ) nor in 2000's when I demo'd it again nor more recently after they introduced RealTracks and there was quite an in depth review in SOS magazine. I think if you're into a certain chintzy kinda trad style or just want a tool that will let you easily demo a song to be replaced with better parts then it has a role to play but some of the more modern styles are laughable once it goes outside it's lane. Just had a watch on Youtube, the actual instrument sounds on these things have not improved that much in the last 15-20 years, they're not as good as what you can do in a decent plugin which may even be free. Again the style are kinda chintzy throwback trad stuff which is fine - I didn't spot anything vaguely contemporary but I suspect given the sounds are not that brilliant it would be another cheese-fest. Something like VPS Avenger will sound way better, Cool but that's not what you originally said. As an extension of a Chord Track feature it should automtically reharmonize the underlying midi ( and audio) to follow anyway. That's how it works in StudioOne for example. But it's nothing like a QY100 etc.

The new one doesn't force KK for using the Kontakt instruments, it's directly integrated with K7 Personally I don't care for pads, or faders much which are absent on the new model. I have them on my M-Audio controller and never use them. What I do use a lot in Kontakt , pretty much every track I make has a handful of Kontakt Instruments or more. So having direct control from the keyboard itself is a big attraction to me.

Because generally they're not that well programmed esepecially when it comes to anything vaguely contempory. Dial up a Pop preset on any pre-baked arranger and it sounds nothing like what we would call Pop now for example. Yes if they're really well done the Trad Styles in the likes of EZkeys can probably stand the test of time much better but if you're trying to make music for today's market they're probably not a great idea.

Back in 2010 I joined the Taxi forums ( self proclaimed World's Leading A&R Company ) so I've heard a lot of it used there from various people trying to get into the industry.

I think if it's to be once again taken seriously then it's these types of things that can be deciding factors for busy media composers

Because it sounds like it would require some new code and no new code is going into CbB from this point forward.

Everything I've ever heard made with Bland In A Box sounds cheesy and terrible. Maybe it's the user's fault and it can actually be made to sound really good instead of canned, or maybe it's just really meant to be a placeholder for something better like a live musician. But it's often easy to spot when someone has used it. I've been asking for a chord track for several years ( and have received hints that it's coming ) but I think going further and providing some sort of full on auto-accompianment falls outside the remit of a DAW and gets into 3rd party plugin territory . There's already a ton of good quality virtual backing band type plugins available for example :- Toontrack have EZkeys, EzBass & Ezdrummer Sonscore's 'The Orchestra' is great for Orchestral parts as is the Orchestrator which is part of EastWest's Opus Orchestra Ujam have a bunch of stuff like virtual drummers, a virtual bass player and several virtual guitarists Then there's loads of Kontakt instruments like NI Session Guitarist series, Session Strings and Session Horns with their animator presets Also if you're down with the kids there's stuff like LoopCloud which has 4 million samples and can repitch / tempo match to your project and can be a useful source of inspiration I'm sure there's plenty more options I've not come across and doubtless once Ai plugins start coming to market we'll have tools that we can tell to just play a guitar or violin solo and it will spit out something pretty good. But anything that whiffs of something from a 90s home keyboard isn't really writing music in my book and also tends to sound generic and of low quality.

I use Kontakt a lot and the the new S series Mk 3 keyboards look very interesting but I just watched a review which says for it to function properly the DAW needs to be made compatible. I don't know what this entails and as CbB is now sunsetted that's obviously never going to happen, but as all the other major DAWs look to be compatible or adding compatibility is this something we can hope for in the new Sonar ?

Wow . That is a lot Out of interest do you get useage data , are you able to see how many CbB were logged over a given time period ?

Will the preset persist if I save it in a Project Template ?

Great. Does this mean my preferred choice of Sound On Sound editing can be part of the preset so I don't have to go back in to preferences and select it each time I start a new project ?