aleo

I enjoyed reading about everyone’s experiences with acoustic pianos. We have and continue to play our Steinway upright that is now about 54 years old. The original felt hammers and dampers are in very good condition, everything works, it still holds its tune, and I had to replace one string when it broke about forty years ago. I am not a good pianist and have never worked as a professional musician, but I love the sound of the instrument. Back in the seventies I had the opportunity to play a Steinway Concert D grand piano. The piano tuner at a local college music department was a friend of mine and after he had finished tuning the instrument for a recital to be held later that evening, he noticed me standing off to the side on the stage and said, “Why don’t you sit down and give it a whirl?” So I did. I didn’t have my sheet music with me so for about 20 minutes I played whatever I could remember—a little Debussy, some Rachmaninoff, a short piece by Scriabin, and a little jazz. It was incredible—not my playing--the sound of the Concert D. It was made for this stuff--think of the opening bars of Rachmaninoff’s 2nd Piano Concerto. When you play a grand piano, the fundamentals of the lower keys are much more prominent (owing to the longer strings used for these notes), and you feel these low frequencies through your fingers and arms, even through your feet as they rest on the floor. My impression was, WOW, this is a REAL piano, everything else I’ve played sounds like a toy. For those who like pianos but haven’t had a chance to play a concert grand, I hope you get the opportunity soon; it’s an extraordinary experience.

David, With regard to annoyance 2, I didn't explain this clearly. I was referring to the pane to the right of the Drum Notes pane where you have the time grid with the colored rectangles representing notes, except in this case they represent beats or hits on the various percussion instruments when you've selected Show Notes with Duration. If you select Session Drummer 2 from the New Drum Map list and Show Note Names, the colored rectangles contain the names of the various drum kit pieces e.g., Bass Drum, Snare, High Conga, etc. When you select Session Drummer 2 Default you get the Drum Note pane on the left, and the rectangular notes on the time grid to the right, but it will not show the names of the kit pieces even when you've checked Show Note Names. My point was if the Bakers could find a way to do this it would make editing the drum beats easier, like it does when you're editing notes in a MIDI track. With problem 3, your solution is a good one, I've done something similar with my Templates folder. I'm grateful to Starship Krupa for bringing the Drum Map feature to everyone's attention in the Forum. I hadn't worked with Drum Maps for more than a year, but I remember the fun I had working with it back when I was using SONAR X3, and I began to get some new ideas for using percussion in some of the compositions I've been working on. That's why I think it's important for the powers that be in Cakewalk to make some improvements here. If the feature is fun to use and fairly easy to learn it will attract more users and new customers.

I’m returning with the results of my “experiments” with the Drum Map feature in Sonar (v. 2024.09, build 105). I’m working with the Session Drummer 2 plug-in that comes with Sonar and tested it in four different templates that I use when composing plus the Sonar Basic template, suggested by David, which I hadn’t used before. In each template I created a simple instrument track for Session Drummer, then going to the Output field on the MIDI console strip selected New Drum Map. The list that appears offers two choices for Session Drummer; I chose Session Drummer 2 Default because this one gives you the Drum Note Pane (white letters on grey background) when you go to Piano Roll View. Once you’ve selected a particular kit in the Program field of Session Drummer and have Input Echo on in the Track header, you can play the various pieces in the drum kit, record what you play, and edit what you’ve recorded—no problem, everything worked fine in all five templates. There are however three annoyances I encountered in every template and every project I created that I wish could be corrected in future versions of Sonar: 1. When you slide the vertical border between the Drum Note Pane and the Note Grid to the left, the names of the kit pieces disappear instead of truncating, so if you see blank lines in the Names column of the Note Pane, slide the border over to the right about three inches and all the names of the various kit pieces should appear. 2. Even though Show Note Names has been checked in PRV, no labels appear on the notes in the note grid whether you go with the rectangular notes that allow you to show duration or the short diamond shaped notes. 3. When you select New Drum Map a very long list of maps appears and it takes quite a while to scroll down the list if you are looking for a map or kit that is near the end of the alphabet. It would be great to have a vertical thumb on this list to enable faster scrolling. Also, rather than calling it New Drum Map, I think Select Drum Map or Drum Map Menu would be a lot easier, particularly for new Sonar users, to understand. Some of these annoyances may have been caused by me setting something up incorrectly or not clicking a on the right item; if so, I apologize for any confusion this caused, but this is what I observed.

David, Thanks for responding and providing additional info. I'll run a few more experiments later on this week and get back to you.

I only worked with Drum Maps on a few experimental projects when I was using CbB, but they did work. I hadn't gotten around to trying Drum Maps in Sonar, but inspired by the lively discussions in this thread, I decided to create a test project using Session Drummer (included in Sonar) and build the project following David's instructions. At Step 2, I found two choices for a Session Drummer Map on the list: Session Drummer 2 and Session Drummer 2 Default. I selected Session Drummer 2 then completed Steps 3 and 4. The names of the various drum kit pieces do appear on the left side of PRV, but it is not the Drum Map pane. You see a plane, white background with the names abbreviated to the point where they are difficult to read and interpret, and there are no columns for Note In, Note Out, Mute, or Solo. Any notes that you record or draw in the PVR grid are named if Show Note Names has been checked and I had no problem editing them. Next, I created a similar project, but selected Session Drummer 2 Default in the Output selector. At Step 4 the Drum Map pane appeared (white letters on a medium grey background), but no instrument names were listed--at first. Scrolling down a way, I discovered one instrument, claves. I widened the column to about two inches and suddenly all the instruments appeared! Unlike Drum Map panes in CbB, the kit instrument names in Sonar are not truncated when the column is narrowed, they disappear(!?) as you slide the vertical border line to the left. The columns for Note In, Note Out, Mute, and Solo are there, but in the PRV grid, notes have no names when Show Note Name has been checked(?). I didn't have any problems with recording, drawing, or editing notes. I agree with others in this thread that the Drum Map feature needs to be more intuitive to work with and generally improved. The two problems mentioned above should be corrected and a thorough explanation of how to create a drum map for both MIDI and Instrument tracks needs to be included in the much-needed Sonar Reference Guide and Off-Line Help which I hope will be coming soon.

Noel. thanks for responding. I use a MOTU 828x for my interface; and, for both CbB and Sonar, I've always used ASIO for driver mode. Almost all of my projects run at 48KHz and 24 bit depth.

Wookiee, thanks for the advice on uninstalling CbB and upgrading to solid state drives. Returning to my questions about CPU usage in the Performance module: the info in Windows Disk Management indicates my C drive is 81% free space at ~440 GB and the D drive has 94% free space. I believe the Performance module is indicating only 6% of the drive has been used. Page 1370 in the old CbB Reference Guide explains the data shown in the Performance module. If this information holds for Sonar, my system is probably working efficiently as I've never seen the Disk Load icon turn red.; it seems to stay at 0.00%. I'm thinking the flurry of CPU activity I observed a couple of days ago, not connected to the internet, nothing being loaded, played back, or recorded, was likely caused by some activity going on in Windows.

Wookiee, thanks for responding. My computer has two drives: the larger D drive (1900 GB) contains the Audio, Cakewalk Content, and Cakewalk Projects folders. Under Preferences>File>Folder Locations, all of the folders listed except Sysex and Cal Files are on the D drive, typically within D:\Cakewalk Content\Cakewalk Core\. I believe CbB and Sonar are sharing these folders, though I rarely use CbB anymore and plan to delete it soon. I've also noticed that when I save a project, the third core from the left tends to spike for a split second. Please advise if there is something I can do to improve the efficiency of my system.

When I initiated Sonar (v. 2024.09) this evening and began working on an old project containing only two recorded MIDI tracks, I noticed an unusually high level of activity among the cores in the Performance module. Two cores went into the red and stayed there. My System Performance was roughly 10%, Engine Load approximately 0.5%, Late Buffers stayed at 0. I opened four other projects including one that was simply a blank template and observed the same activity. When I opened a sixth project everything had calmed down; System Performance averaged 1%, Engine Load 1.1%, and Late Buffers remained at 0. As I continued working on several other projects, everything remained very calm in the Performance module. I don't believe I was running any other programs when I started Sonar unless Windows was running something in the background and it didn't seem to affect playback or the sound from any of my tracks, but I just wondered if anyone knows what could have caused this. This never happened when I was using CbB. Additional info: Disk space = 6%, System Mem. = 8%. My P.C. has an Intel i7-8700 CPU @ 3.20GHz., with 32 GB RAM, 64 bit , Win 10 O.S.

I've been working with Sonar for about a month now and have tried several of the new themes, but decided to stick with Classic Mercury as the darker themes make it difficult to see features and details in both clips and console strips. I'm using an HP monitor with 1920 x 1080 resolution and have seen only a slight improvement in sharpness of Sonar over CbB. However, there are several fields of data in the Sonar U.I. that are definitely more difficult to read. In the time block within the Transport Module (Classic Mercury theme) the data appears almost black against a light cyan background. The colors are fine, but the data in the rate/beats per min. field and the data in the beats per measure field is difficult to read and needs a larger, black font. The MIDI Reset symbol is far too faint, please darken and make easier to identify. Also, the font used for the time display on the left, above the track headers is too small and appears slightly fuzzy on my screen. The font used in the original Mercury theme in CbB was larger and sharper. When switching from Clip to Volume automation in Track View, the lighter colors of the notes in a clip become much darker and more difficult to see against the black background of the clip. Notes should retain their light color to be easily seen against the dark background of the clip when switching to automation. In the meters in both track headers and console strips, the colors for background, the green indicator bars, and meter markings are very muted and difficult to read. Giving users the option of changing colors of various data and background fields is not just for esthetics. Making the U.I. more attractive will certainly attract potential customers; however, from a practical standpoint, being able to alter colors it makes data and information much easier to read reducing errors and user fatigue. Please take steps to improve the above-mentioned parts of the U.I., it will make my work easier and potential customers will spot these improvements immediately. It's bound to improve sales/subscriptions.

A peculiar anomaly occurred yesterday that I thought I should report. I had finished making some changes in the Colors section of Preferences, clicked on Apply, everything seemed to be working fine, closed the Preferences dialog box then a toast message appeared indicating I needed to restart my computer because of a change in Language(?). When I restarted and re-initiated Sonar everything in the U.I. came up in German! I've always worked in English and have never touched the Language section in Preferences. The problem was easy to correct, but I've never seen anything like this occur in all the versions of SONAR and Cakewalk by BandLab that I've used. I'm working with Sonar v. 2024.09, build 105 running with Windows 10; please advise.

Wookiee, thanks for responding. I tried the Reset and re-scanned all my VST plug ins, but neither TH-U or ProChannel Concrete Limiter appeared. Went to the Cakewalk Products site and was able to find and download TH-U; I probably won't need the Limiter plug-in. I'm a little confused about your advice on solving the problem of no off-line help by downloading Documents(?). Where will I find the Documents file or folder to download for Sonar. I thought it was part of the Sonar program. Please advise.

I recently downloaded and installed Sonar 2024.08, Build 571. I'm running Windows 10 on my DAW computer, and the installation went smoothly. I opted to have Sonar use the same settings in Preferences that I use in CbB and again everything seems to be working fine so far, but I have encountered a few anomalies. When I click on Documents for offline help in the Help menu, I get a "Failed to Launch Help " message. I've checked " Always use local Help" in Preferences, so is Local Help available in Sonar? Oddly enough I also get this same massage when I click on Keyboard Shortcuts in the Help menu, yet Keyboard Shortcuts is working fine. Second problem: I don't see TH-U or ProChannel Concrete Limiter listed in the Plugin Manager, even after doing several plug-in scans; Sonar can't find them. Can you provide me with a path?

Thanks so much for sharing this wonderful interview with us, Criag. The growth of electronic music and the genesis of the early synthesizers back in the late fifties, the sixties, and seventies--it was an incredible time. I was lucky to have personally known a couple of these people and some of the students or engineers that worked with them. I'm grateful for being around then, if only as an enthusiastic observer, supporter, and experimenter.

Glenn and Tom, Many thanks for responding. I've taken notes on your suggestions; I know they'll come in handy when make the transition.