Helios.G

This right here. I have a hard time differentiating between the background, the waveform and the gui. It feels like all one thing, with very little to discern what's what on my screen.

Personally, I don't care that it looks "flat" but I myself have never enjoyed the inverse clip colors where the "meat" of the sound is bright and the background is dark/black. It hurts my eyes like nobodies business. Each version of sonar that has had it since 6 or X I can't remember, I've gone through the trouble of changing it or getting a theme on here that has it inverse. My 2 cents, but it's not all about style for some of us.

I don't have an issue with the general flat look of it all, but that color scheme is hard on the eyes yeesh! I know that there are other color schemes under the hood, but they didn't do much for that department either, imho. I hope they allow themers to start modding again, cause I can't see myself using it long term the way it looks right now.

I'd like a modified version of your idea and the original way. So the clip name, with an underscore and the project details at the end. Like that we get the best of both worlds, knowing what the file actually is, but also where it might've come from.

I've had this issue for ages. What I tend to do is set up my markers, however many I need, and zoom in to the sample level and make sure they are on grid one by one. Since I don't like doing this every single damn time, I've just got 3 basic templates set up to build projects from that I go to now, and I haven't done this in a while. Sorry you're having trouble with this.

You've got to give a little more info in order to help. What are your specs, what's your system like, interface, computer, hardware etc.? That said, a few spikes won't matter as long as everything is playing along fine. What setting do you have the interface set to? (Bit depth, sample rate, buffer)?

I get what you're trying to say, but Ben Jordan is a very successful and respected musician, producer etc etc in the industry. As someone who loves Sonar and has wanted this DAW to not only survive but get the recognition it's due, I think it's pretty cool someone who actually works in the biz is giving cakewalk it's props to his followers.

Yeah, I guess since I setup my menu the way I like forever ago, I don't find myself needing to change its layout. I can see how that'd be annoying.

Agreed on all fronts Glenn. I'd also add that if you do decide to use the preset mixes on each software drummer, Addictive just sounds that much more "professional" out the box than ez does to me. Just my 2 cents, but I've heard Addictive on actual top 40 tracks several times with nothing on the preset changed but the pattern played. To date, I haven't recognized any ez drum "sound" out in the wild.

Question, can you not use the built in search in the plugin section? It's much faster than scrolling through deep plugin menus imho.

Nice tip Canopus. I personally love ez drummers interface and "ease" for putting quick drum arrangements together, but addictive drums sounds better to me, regardless if it hasn't been updated in a few years.

Very nice Martin ??

I see what you mean, I respect that. Yeah, as far as I've heard, the new sonar won't permit it at all at 1st. I saw a screenshot of the one that was leaked a few months ago somewhere, and lets just say I'm not a big fan of the new look. Hopefully that was just some prank and the real thing doesn't resemble what I saw ?

Respectfully, there are many of us, me included, who use mixing surfaces to control our daws. These look and feel just like a console, and in some cases integrate function/function directly with a daws layout. Maybe this would ring true for bedroom/home studio producers, but many people work on large format mixing surfaces just like in the old console days.

Melodynes files bypass that, regardless of how you setup your project folders. It's audio is sent to a specific "separations" folder usually in the documents section of windows under Celemony.

By any chance did you open a track template from cakewalk's preinstalled ones? At least that's what that looks like to me. They have all the routing pre determined when I've done it, but I could be wrong.

I got it on both my devices. My laptop, that I keep connected to the internet and my desktop which I don't, go figure.

Same, been waiting to see how many people this hit this morning.

Not sure. I'm going to try what Outrage suggested though, it makes more sense to me.

Awesome. I'll try this out soon as I get in. I'll let you know if it works, thanks!

Oh, this sounds interesting, so I load up a vst in it's folder like normal, then just hit the A button?

Huh, that's interesting. If that's right, then I shouldn't have any issues with this, I'll have to test it. Thanks.

Hey Guys/Bakers, I'm still here building my custom production template and am almost done. I was wondering, is there a way to load up a vst instrument and have it on standby but not actually loaded in the session? For example, you can load a plugin chain and deactivate all fx until you want to use them. Is there a way of doing this with VSTi's? EDIT: Hey guys, thanks for everyone chiming in and trying to help me, I tried all the methods described here, and they all helped, but I ended up going with setting up the vsti's I needed then playing a dummy midi note and freezing the track. I just felt that was easier and less hassle for my set up since I literally only use virtual instruments sporadically. Thanks again for trying to help me out.

If it's a small section, best advice I can give is to go back and re-record that section. There are plugins that will use trickery to mitigate some of the damage, but in my experience they never quite sound natural. If it's a very short portion, like a one word, or a couple of words, and the project isn't going for commercial/major label release, then maybe just clip gain it down to match the other phrases in that section and call it a day.

Hey Gregy, just an FYI, I figured out what was going on on my end here. You have to put the keyboard in DAWRec mode in it's settings for it to track out properly in cakewalk. You lose Arpeggio functionality, but it lets you hear only the track selected when highlighting different tracks as intended.