John Vere

The band in a box community is a great place to ask if anyone has a particular midi file as well as I think this is one I have used - free midi org. I have hundreds of midi files I created myself over the last 3 decades. I posted them on my website but I didn’t know if anyone was downloading them so I removed them.

It is actually all in the user guide which is by far your best option. what I do is google each question and it will usually give me the answer as well as a few YouTube’s. if you’re goal is to use midi the tempo map will be crucial. A quick method that works well with drum or bass tracks is to drag them to the timeline. Melodyne will create a tempo map.

If you do watch a lot of YouTube reviews on interfaces each presenter will contradict what the last presentation said. Many will say Focusrite is a low value because it lacks a lot of features others have. My advice is to make a list of possible features and pick the interfaces that have the features that are of importance to you. Example- Direct monitoring levels on the front. A blend control for this. Midi ports, Combi jacks a large volume knob for my monitoring. If you record with other people then having extra headphones is a nice feature . Do you like reverb when recording? Then built in DSP is cool. Even though I don’t shop there I go on the Sweetwater web site and use the filter set to 4x4 USB interfaces priced low to high. They pretty much have them all . I did a video on 2x2 interfaces a year ago

I too have possibly over 1,000 old midi files that I started collecting when they came on floppy’s in the 80’s. Generally the majority of free midi creations were done by very amateur musicians (?) so they are not even close to the original songs. I personally don’t think it’s worth your time to worry about them. I think it’s 1 in 10 that are salvageable for me. And the internet AI normally doesn’t pick up on content of cover songs that are played by a band even if you do a decent job of it. A sparse sounding midi file will be miles away from detection as copy protected content. If you use even a few seconds of the original recording it will. I have posted dozens of You Tubes of either me playing cover songs or in tutorials on making backing tracks and I have only been busted once. Grandma got run over by a Reindeer! Go figure. I have a collection of 500 Beatles songs a friend bought on DVD. They are professionally produced GM midi and because I copied from the DVD they are not named. But because they were made properly the songs are instantly recognizable. So if you find a midi file that when you listen it is not recognizable do your self a favour. Delete it.

The OP is using a proper ASIO interface and is trying to use its driver, correct? It is true that only Cakewalk/ Sonar has issue with Generic drivers being installed. I use other Daw’s now. One of them is Cubase. So yes it installed the Generic driver. Cubase simply asks you what driver you want to use on first run. I choose my Motu ASIO — end of story. It always uses that device. Waveform- Ditto. Mixcraft-Ditto Studio one Ditto. Harrison- Ditto. All once set up stay connected. More than 2 months ran by and I opened Sonar to get at an older project. I had to update and re authorize. and it crashes. I open in safe mode and get my project back and I opened Preferences and find Im in WASAPI mode?? I noticed the Generic driver on the list. I choose Motu ASIO and carry on. Next day on reboot Im in WASAPI mode again. The only solution is to delete the Generic driver in the RegEdit app. I should not have to do that! So the OP is not alone in their complaint. I know of no other Daw that behaves as badly as Sonar when it comes to driver issues. All the other Daw’s happily ignore the Generic driver.

Since day one I think most of us long time fans have had a lot of things that we totally dislike about the new graphics. A whole year has gone by and Im am still forever being tripped up but graphic “ gotcha’s” I totally hate that Im forever having to resize the views of the console so I can see pro channel or EFX bin or Sends!! They become hidden and if I make them bigger then I can’t see the bottom or the top of the strip. if I was using a real mixer I don’t think it would hide stuff! I carefully adjust this and save the workspace but it doesn’t stick if you open older projects. I’ve lost track! I’ve got work to do and now I have to learn how to use Sonar all over again!! Possibly this is not an issue for users with new monitors? Is that the only solution!

The Zoom pedal does have an ASIO driver ( outdated?) but it’s simply the wrong tool. Lots of interfaces have podcast features now. The Zoom L8 is perfect for podcasting. It was designed specifically for that. Then my Motu M4 also works great. My new SSL2 also has loopback. Bottom line is you either have to hobble together a complicated haywire audio system that will leave you using WASAPI shared mode or get an interface that supports Loopback. Trust me, I tried! The only way I could run my Daw’s in ASIO was with the loopback feature. Doing what you want to do became huge during Covid therefore the new interfaces mostly now feature loopback.

I still have the full installation files that I iso copied to my hard drive. There’s I think 3 updates involved but I just run the first one to get Lexicon and True Pianos. Theres 2 items I’d love to see updated and brought back.

@Milton Sica Just a heads up about the new Windows driver ARM. In another thread on this topic Noel informed me that you need a brand new computer that supports this. To me that will place it out of reach for a lot of people for a long time yet. I just built a new computer and it has to last me 10 years. Music computers are very expensive even if you build them yourself. Good to see that you’re still around.

In all fairness the icon is just way too small considering the damage it can do. Just this morning I tried to split and copy a midi clip and my whole project went crazy! I knew from experience exactly what it was and the reason I posted my reply above. But it is easy to forget you tuned it on. Would it be possible to have it shut off as part of screen sets or Workspaces? That way if you forget to turn it off it will be automatically turned off when you open the project again.

Plus one to trying a good quality dynamic Mike. I can’t use Condensers. It brings out the worst in me. Snorting and grunting! My go to is my live Mike too, Shure Beta 58. It’s what I sound like! It also totally eliminates background noise.

Ripple edit?

I’ve played it live but singing like that is not something one should commit to tape. Only Neil can get away with it. I too was just learning Harvest Moon and took it down to C which made my son complain because he couldn’t play the harmonics. I pointed out that it was a lap steel so go buy one. He also pointed out that it’s a drop D tuning. I showed up next week with a guitar I put 13-56 gauge strings on and tuned a whole step down. The perfect solution to old age and a lower range! The D guitar. I did a Strat too. 11-50 set. Wasn’t Cinnamon girl in a drop tuning?

Ha! Where is old Ed these days? All the old timers seem to have wandered off in a daze.

Pondering the future and what a new Bandlab membership will cost me next Summer. Now Sonar is no longer an American company which bodes well for Canadians as we enter into a trade war. Im not breaking my patriotic duty purchasing products from Singapore. But then why do I have to purchase it in US dollars? At today’s exchange rates the $99 becomes $143 Canadian as we are at an all time worst rate ever. It would be only $107 SGD ( Singapore) money. Most of the Daw web sites offer me pricing in Canadian dollars. Not Bandlab which is odd for an international marketing company. What do you UK, Europe, Africa, Asia. South American and Australia etc think. Let’s ditch the US pricing and go with SGD’s

Hmm. That will most certainly rule out a lot of Musicians! Many are still on W10. I just built a new PC and I expected to use it for 10 years like the last one.

Thank I just finished reading the blog you posted a link to. This is definitely an important step in the right direction. Well if one of my interfaces puts out an Arm driver you can definitely sign me up for testing.

Everyone should take the time to read this blog posted by Neil. It’s going to ***** the die hard Mac Fans! Amazing, Windows becomes Studio friendly! What great concept!

@Noel Borthwick Are you saying that interface manufacturers are releasing this as an alternative driver or is / will it be included in the ASIO driver package? Example I have 3 fairly modern interfaces, Motu, Zoom and SSL. Im not expecting to need a new interface for a long time. Should I be watching for a driver update that adds ARM 64?

Thanks for the update. I don’t see the bug I reported back in February listed but it seems that you can now manipulate nodes on the tempo track and they behave as expected now. That was a serious roadblock for me. I find myself opening Next as my first choice out of 5 other Daw’s whenever I need to do something fast. Open1-2-3 Recording. Later on I easily transfer over to Sonar using the Transfer file system that seems to work well. Too bad Sonar doesn’t share the Instruments yet.

The developers are very cooperative and if you have any issues you should contact them directly. I find they get back to me quickly and usually ask for more information or screenshots and stuff. I think it is still a priority for them to make sure Sonar has zero issues. They most certainly have taken my problems seriously. But it’s difficult when you are the one in a million that has the problem to solve it. Example put your hand up if you’re having crashes on opening and find out those projects on loading show “untitled EQ” untitled CA2A “ etc Once open any audio tracks that had pro channel module active the pro channel is totally blank included no EQ which is actually impossible. See - no one else right? But they are taking it seriously and hopefully together we can figure out why this is happening and only on certain projects that are made before a certain time. But before you share your issues here please submit a report to the support team. This is of benefit to everyone who loves this Daw.

You have the Coyote which is a nice sounding GM Player. That is one of the better alternatives. Even though I have the TTS-1 still, I have the Coyote set as my default. To me it has a smoother mellow sound.

Yes I reported a bunch of them a while ago. I even submitted videos of the crashing. I look at the dump files and it usually says Sonar. I was told to do a fresh re install so I totally obliterated CbBband Sonar from my system and re installed just Sonar. Later after more crashes I re installed CbB by I actually never used it. After the crash Sonar hangs in Task manager for a long time. So does Next which I was also experiencing crashing. One instance was when using the Cakewalk Exchange format. It doesn’t like audio from frozen instruments. They confirmed this and are working on it. They also fix one of the issues I had with Next. Busy people. I haven’t submitted a whole bunch of new crashes as I didn’t have time to deal with it. My concern is that it’s my system and not actually Sonar. But I’ve never had staff get back to me about most of the reports so for now I just move carefully and save ever 3 minutes. Vegas crashes as well and those people are mystified as well. Im really tempted to purchase a new SSD M2 drive and start fresh. I’m also tempted to go back to W10 but that’s stupid.

What is the mixer? If you don’t have ASIO drivers then overdubs will be out of sync. Only ASIO can calculate your RTL and your DAW will use that to adjust the offset. If you don’t overdub audio then it doesn’t matter but still a USB interface should support at least WASAPI mode. If it doesn’t get rid of it. Lots of mixers come with good ASIO drivers. Zoom, Yamaha, Soundcraft etc. But good pre amps should always be top of the list. Many budget mixers use lower quality pre Amps.

I can make Sonar crash, it’s easy. Leave Ripple edit on and try and drag a audio bass track to Dim Pro! Feature request: Giant Flashing Ripple Edit is on icon!