Amberwolf

I use Sonitus MBC, Reverb, Delay, EQ, and Compressor in everything. Modulator in some. Gate in a few, Wahwah in a couple, and Phase somewhere. I think the only ones I have never used were the two Surrounds. If I were to ask for just one thing to be updated on them, it would be to have full automation of every item and control in every plugin. There are a number of things in various ones that don't ahve automation available. It'd be nice if the names on all of them also completely matched the UI control names (most are close enough, but not all). The UI is fine for my purposes, being much more usable and readable than most, though if I could update those, I'd add a display showing the output results, as a vertically-scaleable spectrograph in the case of EQs, and as a waveform in the case of the others (ideally with input WF on top and output WF on the bottom, with a horizontally-scaleable time and vertically-scaleable level. In the EQ, I'd stick that as the background for the EQ curve itself. The others would require adding a spot for this.

I had to retry creating an account so many times that I had to give up and do other things, then on a whim tried again, and a few times later it worked. Then it took me a bunch of tries to even get it to stay in my cart. I'd add it, and it would be gone. Then checkout failed in a bunch of different ways, most having to do with the humanity check. Then it kept asking for a zip code that it already had, but it wouldn't let me enter anything--it just highlight4ed the box red, and wouldn't do anything else. Eventually i tried the link/button that expands the popup window it to give a whole new address/name field set, and then it sent me multiple emails telling me that I had sent myself a gift and that I had purchased something, etc etc., The links in the emails intended to take me to managing my account, or the order itself, don't work--they appear to be correctly constructed but the site asks for the email associated with the account, but it won't accept it. No error messages, just keeps going back to the same page. :roll: Finally eventually getting past all that, the instructions linked in the email (this link actually does work) say that I have to use the Native Access to download it and install it, but NA won't install on my system (NTK Daemon installer always hangs and eventually rolls its installer progress bar back and goes away, and then nothing else happens). There's no apparent option to just download the synth (as there is for some other Kontakt instruments I've gotten), so that I can simply extract the samples and use them directly in my music, as I have done with those others (since I can't afford to buy and probably can't install the full Kontakt anyway, which almost all of the instruments require). So....I gave up too.

I ditched all the tracks except the vocals, and built my own percussion track (still have some of their snare/clap but am working on replacing that) in my usual eclectic style (not everything in it was originally "percussion", etc). Rest of the bits built around the vocal (which is largely intact other than altering the fx on various sections and deleting out some of the inter-section bits, and adding a copy of a few sections after the "end" to go along with a distinctly different version as a changeup) are very different from the original. I didn't even listen to the backing tracks first, just removed them and started working on something that might be more at home in Atomic Blonde.... Curious enough to want to hear it yet?

FWIW, if you don't want to change your whole screen zoom, etc., all the CHM help windows I've ever run across accept the CTRL+ and CTRL- to zoom in and out, though it still enlarges all the images too, at least it's only for that window.

I know there have been some discussions of TTS1 replacements for GM soundsets; I don't have any thread links though. They may mention the CCs tehy respond to but I didn't really pay attention to that. This is a list of threads with TTS1 in the title, if it's helpful; it's proably not all of the discussions about it and it includes irrelevant ones too https://discuss.cakewalk.com/search/?q=TTS1&quick=1&type=forums_topic&updated_after=any&sortby=relevancy&search_in=titles If you know which parameter it assigns it to, you can reassign your CCs or automation to that one. Or if you can't reassign those, there's at least one MIDI plugin by TenCrazy that lets you reassign anything to anything.

In my SD3, if I press F1 while on the SD3 window, it pulls up the SD3 help. (I haven't perused it to see how helpful it actually is, but it is specific to SD rather than SONAR).

Hmm....would probably be great for some of the stuff I do.

Since we aren't allowed by contest rules to post remixes on any site other than the contest site, is there anyone here that would be willing to listen and critique by a private method? The critique can be public...just not the remix, until I have it finalized to post it on the contest site (LabelRadar).

They fixed that now:

Nine Thumbnails On A Dark Screen Seen Dexter? These are the people he hunts, doing their hunting.... Fairly grungy, dark piece. Only a couple minutes long. https://amberwolf.bandcamp.com/track/nine-thumbnails-on-a-dark-screen The name came from something my brother was saying in an unrelated conversation about something someone else complained about online how all the little thumbnails on the screen were too hard to see, and my brain went somehwere completely different with both screen and thumbnails....you probably wont' like the cover art once I get that done becuase it'll be the other kind of thumbnails and screen. the sound itself was an accident, i was trying to get something setup that would have been in the same vein as The Last Flight but accidentally dropped the bassline and some other bits into a track with grungy distortion fx, and when i hit play it sounded too interesting to let go of. feedback would be useful.

Assuming the background tracks (BGTs) are all pure audio, not MIDI playing synths or something like that, then if you want your vocals to end up the same speed as the other stuff, and the same quality, you'll ideally need to record at the same tempo. If you don't mind some degradation of the audio you're recording, vs the backing tracks then you could use this method (there are probably others). If the tempo it's all done at and the one you want to record your stuff at are very different, this will probably leave significant artifacts in your vocals when your'e done: --bounce the BGTs to a single new track, and archive the "real" BGT tracks. This is to preserve your actual tracks, and just use this new combined track as a guide for your singing. --Enable Audiosnap on the new BGT track's clip, these steps are based on a google search (it's differnet in my ancient SONAR) so no guarantee they're correct ... Select the clip, and choose Alt-A to enable Audiosnap. This should turn the clip into something that will stretch or shrink based on tempo, without further action. --Change the song's tempo to what you want to sing at. Play the song to be sure it is now playing the BGT at the slower tempo. If it doesnt', you'll have to check the Help or other info sources to get the exact steps of making the clip be able to follow tempo. If it's working, you can now do your recording at the slower tempo. To get back to the real tempo, you need to now enable audiosnap on *your* track Then change the tempo back to what it was before. Archive the BGT guide track, and unarchive the real ones. If the vocal sounds bad from the tempo change, you can try different options for the online (realtime) algorithm used to do the work, and you can also bounce it to a new track to see if it helps, and that can be done with differnet offline algorithms, each of which will have at least some difference on the result. Also, you don't have to record eveyrhting all at once. If you can sing parts of your vocals, a little at a time, and keep up with the tempo, you can just record each little piece (even just a single word) and then go back and record the next one. It can be done in different take lanes on the same track, or you can use a whole new track for each one if you like.

BTW, when I poked around to see where else it might have been posted, I found this, from a month ago, already stating that activations end on September 30th (not August 1st): However....if you follow the link in that post, then among other FAQ items, you find these two still referring to August 1st: So...it isn't a new announcement or a new thing, just more clearly stated in the title of the new post? I don't know if it was implemented then or if the orignal deadline at the activation server end remained (remains?) so that people were able to keep their CbB activated or not.

Funny that they've apparently posted this news in at least two places *other* than their own forum.

I don't have any screenshots, so I'm not sure what your'e referring to? I was just replying to the OP / other posters about the OP's images, speculating on the differences I can see between the one with teh drums visible, and the one without. I don't know how the modern Sonar is intended to work for those controls and visibility; just how my ancietn stuff does.

I dont' know what the pencil icon means in the modern sonar there, but it's lit orange on boht midi drum and strings, but it is not lit on midi drum when the bass is lit. If it's the same as the "visibility" state (show / hide track) that is in that same spot in the ancient SONAR versions, that would probably be why you can't see the drums with the bass?

AFAIK Grammer is just sumbuddys last name. I don't speak music any better, but I make it alright if I use the computer. 😆

All you have to do to get the coupon code is go to the link and sign up. You also get some free song stems of disputable use. (I'm still trying to think of something I can turn them into to submit) BTW, if you want some free Indian sounds, Black Octopus has a sampler here: https://blackoctopus-sound.com/product/free-indian-instrument-samples/ I have the full packs those are from, and were worth the tiny amount I paid for them during their deep sales (might've been a direct sale or maybe from APD, don't remember). The first one I used them in was Less Like A Whisper https://amberwolf.bandcamp.com/track/less-like-a-whisper and have used them in a number of others since.

Mmm...now I'm curious what you were going to say.... 👀

If you post all the stuff already tried and asked to do, in the order done and asked, step by step, with exact results at each step, along with your complete system information, someone here on the forum might be able to help. Without knowing these things, I could only suggest all the things that are already posted around the forum for the various install type of issues, as there isn't yet a place to start other than the very beginning.

Thanks for listening! Was it the track in the first post (the complete final version), or one of the other ones (the two just-the-elven-sections, or the separate nine-thumbnails-on-a-dark-screen track)?

How many outputs does AD2 have? If it is like SessionDrummer (3?) and has 8, that covers many drumkits' (well, depending on your music type) with one stereo out per drum, allowing you to setup a set of tracks with one track per output pair and separate fx bins for each one. I also sometimes setup 2(+) separate tracks with completely different fx chains for teh same drum or set of perc sounds, to mix/fade/switch between them for different parts of a song (there are easier ways, but this works). That's how I set mine up when I use MIDI-driven drums. (I often also use sliced up wave files of individual drum hits or pieces of "loops", in addition to or instead of that; these are setup in tracks the same way). If it's like SI drums and only has one output pair, then there's not much option besides multiple instances if you need to hear all the drums with their own FX live as you compose the drum tracks. Regarding freezing plugin issues--is it that it won't freeze at all, or that it doesn't work right when you do freeze it? Soemtimes setting your freeze options to realitme instead of fast bounce fixes the latter. In my ancient SONAR (probably wouldnt' happen in modern ones?), very occasionally I have run into a problem where Sessiondrummer will go thru all the motions of freezing, and actually show waveforms on every track, right up till the last one completes, and then they all go blank and there's no sound. When I look I find none of the wave files it just created still exist. My workaround is to cancel *just* before the end but keep all the partially rendered audio. I dont remember if I have done this with SD or not, but for problematic bounce-to-tracks for audio clips, I'll select just those tracks, and export those without any fx (and cancel just before the end and keep all the partially rendered audio if it fails too) and then just drag all those audio files into the tracks.

Actually....IIRC, I used some to buy Ghosthack's Shymer, and their Ultimate Cinematic Vocals Complete Edition, and their Secret Cinematic Bundle, when they had deals on each one at different points in the year. Something else too but I forget what it was.

The EXE or DLL could have the schemes built in, but the choice itself is probably stored in the windows registry. Unfortunately, it could literally be anywhere in there, under any name, value, clsid, etc., depending on the developer's choices. (it *should* be under the registry section specific to the program it's for, but in my years of registry-poking for various things, I've found many programs scatter stuff all over the place. To find out what is being read or written to the registry, to see if this is where the setting is, you can use Regmon or other similar utilities. Start the monitor, then Sonar, then stop the monitor once it's loaded and see what it accessed. Since it may not be named conveniently for the user, you may have a lot of data to wade thru. It might be possible to narrow it down by starting the monitor *after* Sonar finishes loading, and then change theme in Sonar, then stop the monitor and wade thru *that* data which should be mostly stuff relevant to the accessed menus, etc., if it's doing things in a typical fashion from things I've had to troubleshoot in other programs. If the theme data is actually in the registry (not just the user choice of which theme, but the actual color data), I'd guess from other programs I've dealt with over the years that you would see a (set of) unlabelled numeric values, probably as a set of really long strings of hex values, each set probably being for one theme. No guarantees on any of the above, and it's probably completely inapplicable to Sonar.

Yeah, I don't think that's a feature in my ancient versions, but I could use it wiht my current WIP that is setup with stuff "offscreen" (that I'm still figuring out where exactly to put) in a bunch of tracks at both start and end, so I ahve to hand-select each end of the export area on the timeline.... https://amberwolf.bandcamp.com/track/nine-thumbnails-on-a-dark-screen

Thanks for listening! I assume you mean one of the newly posted just-the-elven-rock-sections (one is longer as it has a bit more lead up left in because I think it makes the contrast more intense when the latter part starts)? No, it's blank...but it shouldn't have been there. It's wierd, usually when I make absolutely sure that I've cleared out anything that shouldn't be past the end (usually automation nodes) when I do Ctrl-A to select everything before an export, it will indeed only have the part up to the end of the last fade out. But..soemtiems it will select time past that point even though there is nothing to select, not even in hidden tracks or buses. Even if I unhide all tracks, do a Ctrl-A to ensure the whole project's tracks are selected, then select in the timeline from the real end to the farthest right I can get to (well past the ghost-selection area), then Edit-Delete with everything checked even including Delete Hole...it will still have that same amount selected past the end when I next do Ctrl-A. Amount of time is "random", in that each time it occurs it will be a different amount of time, but while it is happening it will be the same amount each selection attempt, until I close and reopen the project (without saving, or changing anything, and it will then just work). I expect it has something to do with some plugin, or some automation thing. Been that way for as long as I can remember. It's so rare I don't usually remember to check for it, so unless I happen to be looking at the end of the selection area on screen when i do the export, I won't even notice until I hear the blank space. Don't know if it still happens in Splat and above as I haven't used them enough to have enough exports to run into it yet. So...just annoying, and of course if I notice it I can just deselect that much of the timeline at the end so it doesn't export the blankness... I'll just edit the two files linked above in Audacity to trim the silence off and re-upload them. Thanks for pointing out hte problem!