norfolkmastering

I just installed VB-Audio 'Matrix' which is quite a neat audio router app. I had hoped to use it with CbB for a routing solution which I can't do in Cakewalk alone. Unfortunately CbB won't load with the Matrix app installed. Has anyone got experience of the Matrix app or any other VB-Audio apps? And has anyone got it to run with CbB?

Really useful if you use multiple external analogue interfaces in your sessions. So you can name the Sonar External Inserts to match the gear, e.g. 'Vocal WA-2A' or 'Drum Bus FX' etc.

Just to say that a new feature for External Inserts has been included in the latest Sonar release. It allows you to rename any instance of an External Insert, which is really useful if you use several within a session. So you might have a track with an external insert named 'Guitar FX' and another track with an external insert named 'Vocal WA-2A' etc.

Radio silence from Bandlab. That’s the most disappointing aspect of this important conversation. Let’s put out an appeal. Talk to us!

As we can be reasonably sure that the Bandlab guys will be keeping some oversight of this discussion, it would seem to be a good time for them to make some kind of clarification statement about how Sonar is going to be made available in the future. It is confusing to see the pre-release being made available on a paid for basis via Backstage Pass, without (as far as I can see) any confirmation that this paid for access is going to count for something when the full release is done. I say this, in part, because of the amount of additional 'beta' testing feedback which those folks accessing Sonar via Backstage Pass are providing to Bandlab. I'm not suggesting that firm pricing needs to be announced now (although I don't see why not) but at the very least some clarification as to whether Back Stage pass is the final 'purchase' route to Sonar or not; and if not, how we are going to be able to purchase Sonar.

Can anyone clarify if Backstage Pass is now the route to Sonar access for the foreseeable future or is Sonar going to be available to purchase? I probably will buy a year’s worth of Backstage Pass if it is the only way that Sonar is going to be made available. And have I missed a link for the Sonar forum? There are plenty of folks checking out Sonar now via Backstage Pass but I can’t see whether a forum page has been created? Makes more sense than the current Sonar posts going into CbB. And … is must be getting to that time when we get some idea of a Sonar launch date?

Thanks for the heads up that you are aware of the issue. Text clarity is important.

I've attached four images, two from CbB and two from Sonar. In the Assignable button module have a look at the words 'Fit Project'. You should be able to see an example of text fuzziness issues in Sonar in the letters 'F' and 'e'. In general this module is much easier to read in the CbB version. In the fader screenshots, have a look at the numbers '18' and '24' on the LHS of the Sonar fader scale. Same issue of text fuzziness. I can say that what you can see on the screenshots is pretty close to what I am seeing on-screen. As I said in an earlier post, I use two 24" BenQ GL2450H Monitors running at their maximum resolution of 1920 x 1080. Both are fed by digital outputs from a dedicated graphics card. It may be that the Sonar text is super sharp on a 4k monitor but after spending an hour on a trial session my eyes were struggling to focus on the Sonar GUI.

I agree that aesthetics are important in supporting functionality. It will be good to review when we’ve all had more time with the new GUI. Worth having another look at text legibility which I’m struggling with in the new Sonar GUI. My monitors are on maximum possible resolution and I’m struggling with some of the text.

I think this sums up the issues with the new Sonar Tungsten theme very well. I don’t mind it not being an exact copy but it should be better, not worse. I hope the themes are not being ‘fashion’ driven. Totally irrelevant for an GUI you are using for music production. We need good contrast between functional blocks, easy to see buttons and knobs, and very legible text. The CbB Skylight GUI does that really well and is the standard to start from in any new Sonar GUI.

The different screenshot sizes was accidental, sorry about that.

I loaded CbB and Sonar on separate screens and did a screenshot save of the 'custom' tab at the top of the screen. I've attached jpgs of both. The CbB version is nice and sharp, the Sonar version less so. Have a look at the label 'Fit Project' on both. On the Sonar version you can see quite a bit of fuzziness, especially on the letters 'F' and 'e'. This is what I'm seeing on screen not just a fluke of the screenshots. The CbB version is the first image (first tab is 'Save As'.

It's a nice idea but that means I would need to decide what external FX chain I want to use before I use that track in the session. I think you can merge a track preset into an existing track but you overwrite some key stuff like track to group routing.

I have tried to contact Mark by email to ask what is planned. My short term concern is about my previous post below. I use FX Chain Presets to store my external insert port configurations so I call recall them by name, e.g. 'Drum Bus', rather than having to configure them every time from scratch. Using FX Chain Presets also means you get a meaningful FX label in your track/bus strip rather than just the generic 'External Insert' label which is too difficult to keep track of when you are using a lot of external presets in a project.

I opened a project on both CbB and Sonar and compared my default CbB Tungsten theme (which is the one I use) to both the Sonar Dark and Tungsten themes. The CbB Tungsten is far better. Why? Better contrast between the backgrounds and the control text. Also a lot easier to pick out a channel strip on the CbB Console View. I also think that the move to more 'cartoon' like knobs is a step backwards. I also had a very careful look at the rendering of the text, let's take the example of the word 'Gain' on the Console View channel strip. On my monitor it is clearly sharper on CbB compared to Sonar. Overall I am finding the text on the Sonar displays more fuzzy. I am running two BenQ GL2450H 24" monitors with a resolution of 1920 x 1080. I think it would be fair to say that the CbB (and its Sonar Platinum predecessor) UI had a deserved reputation as being one of the best DAW GUIs available. I still think it stands up well to anything else out there (having just spent a couple of days evaluating Cubase which has a hopeless GUI). I would suggest that the new Sonar Tungsten theme is reworked to get it as close to the CbB Tungsten theme as possible. I am more concerned about text rendering which doesn't look great on the new Sonar at the moment, at least on my monitor.

Can we have longer faders now that the UI Framework has been redesigned?

Thanks for an interesting take on the use of hardware outboard. I do use quite a lot of mono hardware gear on mono tracks during mixdown, so typically: Mono EQ and mono compressor on bass guitar Mono EQ and mono compressor on lead vocal Mono EQ and mono compressor on each backing vocal Mono EQ and mono compressor on each acoustic guitar Mono EQ and mono compressor on fiddle Mono EQ and mono compressor on mouth organ I have a rack of Wes Audio EQs which I mostly use on the mono tracks And I have a range of mono compressors, 1176s, WA2As and some SSA TTs. Yes I have some stereo gear which I use on either stereo tracks or on the buses but quite a number of mic'd sources are mono in a typical project. So that's why it would be great to get Sonar in-line with other 'big' DAWs like Cubase and Presonus Studio One and offer a properly sorted external insert system.

I had a look at the Presonus PipelineXT plugin IO Matrix. It looks to be a really easy way to program connections to external audio gear. Personally I don't have a problem with the current CbB/Sonar External Insert interface. It just needs to work properly! Still waiting to get some comment from the design guys ...

I have downloaded the new Sonar and it has all the same issues with the external inserts which I listed in the first post in this thread, so with a little bit more info: 1. Sonar and CbB do not offer true mono external insert sends. So if you allocate e.g. the left leg of a stereo pair, then the right leg is no longer available for use by another send. CbB is the only major DAW with this very out of date limitation. It is also inconsistent with the external insert returns which can be configured for true mono use. 2. Sonar and CbB appear to offer the facility to configure a external send only. The configuration is allowed and the meter shows the audio activity BUT no audio actually appears at the port. If this was fixed we would have access to pre FX sends which is incredibly useful. Again, there is inconsistency in that external insert returns only (i.e. with no corresponding send port allocation) are supported and I use these extensively as effect returns. 3. Sonar and CbB have issues with external inserts which are part of FX Chain Presets. When such a preset is recalled and is in use, the audio engine often halts . ('A Dropout has stopped the engine (12)'. The only workaround is to extract the plugins from the FX Chain. So sadly the development team haven't done any major work of external inserts. I can only continue to make the case and see if I can further encourage one of the team to engage in discussion on this thread. I'll keep trying!

That's good input. I could understand the logic (no pun intended!) if the track sends had the same restriction, but they don't. You can quite happily allocate e.g. Track 1 send to the left leg of the stereo pair and then allocate the right leg to Track 2 send; so I can't see why insert sends should have to work differently? Hopefully someone from the development team will be able to explain the issue in detail and what they can do about it. It's been years and years of waiting!

Thanks for your input and support. I have a whole bank of 500 series gear (including a rack of Wes Audio EQ units which are VST controlled) and I use very little digital processing during mixdown, so external inserts are a big deal for me. I know the development team is super busy getting Sonar ready but I hope they take a moment to feedback into this thread. External inserts have been neglected for far too long!

Some of us have been campaigning for years to get the issues with Cakewalk/Sonar's external inserts sorted, since way back into the Gibson ownership days. I tried raising this with the help centre again recently but was told it was probably on a to-do list but with no timescale. This is the reply we have always received for many years. So the help centre suggested I try posting again on the issues, in this forum. Of course I realise that most Cakewalk users are probably working 100% in the box but for those of us with hybrid set ups, it continues to be a real pain. Let me summarise the issues again: 1. CbB does not offer true mono external insert sends. So if you allocate e.g. the left leg of a stereo pair, then the right leg is no longer available for use by another send. CbB is the only major DAW with this very out of date limitation. It is also inconsistent with the external insert returns which can be configured for true mono use. 2. CbB appears to offer the facility to configure a external send only. The configuration is allowed and the meter shows the audio activity BUT no audio actually appears at the port. If this was fixed we would have access to pre FX sends which is incredibly useful. Again, there is inconsistency in that external insert returns only (i.e. with no corresponding send port allocation) are supported and I use these extensively as effect returns. 3. CbB has issues with external inserts which are part of FX Chain Presets. When such a preset is recalled and is in use, the audio engine often halts . The only workaround is to extract the plugins from the FX Chain. After all these years of asking for the external inserts to be overhauled, and with the new Sonar release in sight, it would be nice to get some level of commitment from the Bakers to get these issues on to a timetabled release. If you are one of the design team reading this post, PLEASE reply.

Thanks Mark, that worked. However I found my MIDI note timing was not accurate enough so I ended up using the manual method of marking the start of each bar against the original audio waveform peaks. It took 90mins but it's done and pretty tight.

Thanks for the link. That method looks to be entirely manual and would take me hours to do the song tempo. I was looking for an automatic method which timed off the t edge of each midi note.

I want to create a tempo map which matches a song which has been imported as a file into a new Cakewalk project. I tried audio to tempo conversion but it doesn't work well with this particular song. So instead I want to record a MIDI track (maybe using the virtual keyboard) and simply tap out the tempo using my mouse. Is there a way to then take this MIDI track and derive a tempo map from it? Or is there a simpler way to tap directly into the tempo map using a mouse whilst listening to the audio track? I do not want to adjust the timing of the original audio track.