John Vere

What @RexRedsaid about listening over the same system as where your songs are going is definitely one of my top of the list proofing tests. I’ll upload to Sound Click and then go sit on the couch with my cell phone and Bluetooth cheapo headphones. I have a set of close backs that are ridiculously bass heavy and some ear buds. I will also bypass the Sound Cloud step by putting Sono Bus on the master. This will stream your audio over the network. But I can’t wander too far from the studio that way. The best so far is my $15 thrift store Bluetooth mono speaker. It is amazing at pointing out flaws in the mix. I export the songs and play directly from Media Player. I can leave Sonar open( not playing) and Windows will send the WMP audio to the Bluetooth audio out.

Credit Union - Over 55 No service charges and free checks. BC Assessment- Home owners grant $1050. Local Aquatic Centre 30% Just a few I can think of but there is a lot of things and events that still offer senior discounts. Offering a seniors discount on software is sort of over the moon. Like seniors discounts on appliances or building supplies!

I always shut down when I m not in the studio. I have the typical Set up with a bunch of high quality power bars and a Furman Conditioner. Like right now I’m not at home I pull the plug from the whole system. Lightning is 50/50 through the ground. Turning of the hot side of the power won’t save you. But you are on the right track about there’s always a way to find money for the things you really want. I just made $300 at a gig and they better hurry up and take it from me before I start thinking more about a new guitar ?

Proofing your mix. Lots of great workflows are at your disposal and most cost absolutely nothing. This was the best tidbit of advice ever passed along to me from a friend of mine who was a real audio engineer. 1- listen at all volume levels. Never stay at one level. Turn your monitors right down to 0 and slowly bring them up. What is the first thing you hear? It should be the vocals and you should understand each and every word. 2- never mix with a subwoofer system on. Only use a sub to check for low end artifacts.

Yes reality check. I’m sitting in my deck chair in a mom and pop lakeside resort campground. I am surrounded by a couple of million dollars worth of RV’s. Guess who inhabits them? People my age and older. As The OP called us, Seniors. Guess where the younger families are sleeping? in tents they somehow managed to stuff into a Honda. It’s sort of obvious to me who has the cash flow these days! There’s been a few people begging for a discount on a product that 1- Is not for sale 2- We don’t know if and when this happens what the price may be. 3- Bandlab gave you 8 years for free ! What else do you want? 4- CbB still is free and we also don’t have a clue for how long this will be the case.

I actually don’t get what Glen was saying but I think if I visited the coffee house more I would ?

I despise any short cuts that require 2 keys. So I changed a few important ones to use single keystrokes. Some of these might have been defaults but this is the ones I’ve memorized. Q= Quantize T=Transpose G=Gain Z=Open Melodyne regional effect X= Render Melodyne V= Save N= Normalize

@Duncan Stitt I just released a video at lunch time and it’s about GM midi and at the end I demo swapping out the full players. You use Replace this synth and all tracks. There’s no internet here right now so can’t add the link. I think my channel is in my signature if you’re on a computer.

If you look at my screen shot it shows as version 1.00. The laptop it is on was rebuilt a year ago. It is safe to assume that Version 1.0 is what you would find if you did a fresh install of Sonar 5-6-7 etc. on a computer that has never had a Cakewalk product installed before. For sure Gibson would not have paid Roland to update it. What’s to update? Like the Sonitus effects these are solid built and it’s really shows how good DX was. I think only Windows will eventually kill it. The sad thing is all these GM midi players are 20 year old tech. I think Synth font is possibly the only one sort of maintained.

I just tried Tungsten Classic and you are right. It's much better and now my record buttons are red again, thanks you saved me a lot of cursing! It will do for now but the black PRV I still find hard to use. I was using the Cosmic or the dark grey themes.

It's in the videos = how to save it for the future. These are the links: Goodbye TTS-1 -Solutions- https://youtu.be/Zw-UqrMmF0A No TTS-1 No Problem- https://youtu.be/kF3tEttGdIQ How I saved the TTS-1 from Death by Sonar- https://youtu.be/gDm9AhrTbfk And the TTS-1 has been the same for 20 years now. The version that came with CbB is dated 2004.

I made 3 videos on the topic.

What happened to me was Sonar was randomly crashing. So I reported and sent in the crash dumps. The reply I got was that I needed to do a clean install and the instructions were for Cakewalk, not Sonar. But I decided I might as well nuke the whole works. I have no use for CbB if I’m using Sonar so I didn’t bother installing it. And every time Sonar updates it installs a Sonar Platinum icon.

I don’t like any of the themes That’s the problem. I used to use one of scooks themes inCbB. I’m optimistic that 2 years from now we might have a return of the theme editing software. In the meantime I will just put up and shut up about how much I hate the way Sonar looks. Isn’t Mercury the one that looks like 1996 ? I think that’s the one I switch to to use the white background on the PRV. But then I get blinded by the look of everything else. I think the Scook theme was a Tungsten based version. It had green highlights. Like I say. I generally don’t pay much attention to software backdrop but this is just been terrible for me. But that’s all I’ll say. I will shut up now and get back to work. In the dark!

It is really bad. It’s been what? 3 months and yesterday I checked Solo instead of the record on a track. I do it almost every session! You just want to see a red button! I’ve been spending time in other DAWs and you come back to Sonar, or Next and the graphics just sucks. And I’ve yet to see a plus side to this? I really don’t care about looks but if the graphics make it hard to see important objects then that a bad design.

Plus1! It’s a short name so doesn’t need abbreviation. If someone posts right now asking “How do I do such and such in Sonar “ it’s pretty likely we know what version they are talking about. If some reclusive hold out is asking about Sonar x3 I’m sure they would have that stated in the question. As I make new tutorials I’m pretty much always saying Sonar. I uninstalled CbB a few weeks ago.

never mind.

Groove clips. Most pre made midi loops are already a groove clip. If you drag a drum loop like I did from SI drums it is automatically a groove clip. If you create a midi clip in the step sequencer it is a groove clip. But if you draw notes in PVR or record a midi track it is just a midi clip You can convert any midi clip into a groove clip by right clicking on the clip to open this dialogue or as said CTRL+L

It’s easy to use export stem’s.

To be clear it is found in the PVR track inspector view which might be hidden from your view. It is on the right .

@Duncan Stitt I found something that might be perfect for you. I fired up my laptop and I noticed an icon on the desktop for a Midi Player. it just said Midi Sound synth. I think I got it from the Synth font web site. But noticed a link in the top to this site ; https://www.goldmidisf2.com/ I think I installed it and forgot all about it. This is looking very promising. I loaded up Sultans of Swing and it sounded real good. Then further poking around reveals this player is loaded with all the features you could want for playing live. It actually designed for this. Playlist- drag and drop. edit, save -recall. Lyrics / chord display if files support this. Change the key on the fly and drums are not touched. A mixer for all channels used in the song playing. It will play midi and audio files. It will even covert them. Keyboard shortcuts for USB foot control of transport and playlist. A unheard of feature that I tried and it worked flawlessly. It will create an audio stem for each track of the midi file. It seems to have very powerful tools for converting all midi and audio and even MP4. I have the free version which is missing a few features. iPad is 30 - 70 euros. The company is based in Italy. Update. Well I was just messing around trying to figure out how to go to next song on playlist and it crashed!

I put a few days into research regarding GM players. The TTS-1 has by far the most features and can be customized to a certain extent. Most of the GM players are static interfaces with no options . They seem to be based on the same sound fonts. I like the sound of Coyote. And when the TTS-1 finally dies I’ll set it up as my default. The Roland SC VST is $70 and I own an original hardware box. It doesn’t sound any better than any of the free players. The bass sounds terrible. But I will keep the TTS-1 going and it seems it’s not dead yet.

Yes that’s not a problem as all you do is set the two tracks in record mode. If your keyboard controller is selected as the input to those tracks it will play those two instruments. I think you can even use the advanced midi settings to split the keyboard. Cakewalk/ Sonar is a very powerful midi recording tool. There’s other videos in my series that teach about using midi and how to record and editing

It's actually useless at this point. On my system it only lists Next. It doesn't do anything! But I'm hoping someday it will be where we can install our old legacy Plug ins without the hassle of re installing old versions of Sonar. I have no clue why they released it when there's actually NO PRODUCTS!