Amberwolf

I just use the very simple TenCrazy MFX Track Doorman http://forum.cakewalk.com/FREE-TenCrazycom-MFX-Plugins-now-in-64bit-news-thread-m2887519.aspx http://www.midiplugins.com/Plugin/54 Setup one midi track for each zone you want, all receiving from the same MIDI hardware input so they all get the same data from your Nektar. Insert TC Track Doorman MFX into the fx bin of each of those tracks. Set the keyrange you want each zone to cover, in the Track Doorman for each of those tracks. Set the output of each track to send to the appropriate sound source. It will now work both realtime and from clips on those tracks. If you record clips onto the tracks, it will have all the notes that came from the input, but they will be filtered by the fx bin to send only the notes for the zone to the output. If you want the clips to only have the filtered version, you can apply the fx bin to the clips (there are several ways to do that).

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I haven't had it just freeze (white screen, no response) yet. For cases where that happens, I'd suspect a plugin that it's hosting, and some incompatiblity between them. Intended to be the last of the OT: With the Cakewalk plugin manager, mine does scan/etc, and makes entries for new working plugins. it just screws up all the existing instances of stuff, so that nothing in existing projects will then load (just get the plugin placeholder). So I can't use it anymore without breaking my ability to keep working on anything I'm already doing, and that I can't live with. So....for this machine, I'm just stuck at the point I'm already at--troubleshooting is too great a risk, since that tends to break stuff while looking for the problem (already done a LOT of that in the original troubleshooting to fix the original issue), and I just don't have the time, energy, or willpower to deal with that again. I'm in the process of setting up a second machine that probably will work normally with new stuff, but if it doesn't work with the original stuff I have to keep the other one going for the existing projects.

The cal still won't do what this person appears to want to do, since it cannot split the audio outputs to separate tracks so they can be fx'd/etc separately, only the MIDI notes. A drum map is great for putting the right note names on the right midi notes (so you don't have to remember which note is which drum), but it doesn't affect this either, so having the map or not doesn't change what this user appears to want. Having a drum synth that has multiple separate audio outputs (either mono or stereo) *would* do it. Or using multiple separate copies of the synth, each played by only the notes for the set of drums that will have the same fx chain/etc.

I haven't tried to use it for more than stereo, so can't answer that one. If by "quit working" you mean the audio ceases, I don't know why it happens, but when it does I just hit the Engine-Restart menu option and audio begins again. Not that it matters for this thread, but I only started using it because something broke in my system with the SONAR VST adapter after I tried installing CbB some long time back, so I couldn't add any new VSTs (if I did, it completely broke all my existing ones, and screwed up all my projects, and uninstall reinstall etc didn't fix anything (just made it worse), so I had to find a registry backup and do a bunch of fiddling to get my old stuff back (which took all the new stuff out). None of the audio editors I had at the time could use VSTs.... So I used it to build chains of stuff for trying out "mastering" the final renders for various songs made in SONAR, with VSThost chained with audio loopbacks between the editors (audacity, cooledit, etc) and my speakers. The process didn't really work very well, since most of the mastering doesn't work very well with a single setting all the way thru, and there wasn't a way to automate the plugins (like you can with envelopes in SONAR). Audacity eventually added VST support for effects bins, but there's still no automation so.... What I wish I could find was a (modern?) VST-DXI wrapper like the old DirectiXer; something other than the one built into SONAR just so it would not touch any of the stuff in the registry or elsewhere for the SONAR VST stuff. Then I could use new VSTs in SONAR itself, as I can't risk breaking SONAR/etc again (it took forever (weeks? months? a really really long time) to fix the problems and I couldn't do anything I needed to do until it was done).

Couple decades back, used to be a rack called Forte by Brainspawn, but it doesn't work in modern versions of Windows. It did work in XP, so if you can set up a system to run it, and can find an archive of it, that should work. (That's assuming your TTS1 is not locked to only work in Cakewalk products like most of the stuff shipped with various versions was). Regarding VSThost, I've never gotten it to see anything but VST's. If it works with DX effects and synths, I'll have to figure out how to do that. It is a rather complex program because of all the possibilities in it, but it works a fair bit like the old KxProject did for the SBLive cards, and I got used to setting that up (to use it's internal DSP rather than CPU cycles), so I figured out how to 'wire" things up pretty quick. Setting up the banks, performances, etc takes some trial and error but once you get th e hang of it it's relatively easy. I doubt I could explain it very well, though. 😳 EDIT: Also, this thread https://www.kvraudio.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=178414 talks about Xlutop Chainer, which Iv'e never used, but had vague memories of wanting to try out years b back. Might also be worth checking out.

If I understand correctly, you want to process the *audio* from SI drums as separate audio tracks for different drums? Not just split the MIDI notes out to separate tracks (or clips)? If so, you don't need any CALs (though if you can get them to work they may save some time getting the MIDI parts split if you need to use separate synths), but you do need to setup the synth being used with multiple sets of audio outputs that you can use as the input to different tracks, *or* use multiple separate instances of the same synth, each fed by just the notes for the specific drum(s) you want to use. SessionDrummer and some other drum synths have multiple separate audio outputs that you can use for individual drums within the synth, by changing the settings in the synth (in it's mixer, or the drumpads, etc) to point the different pads or sounds to different outputs. With these, you just use the separate audio tracks' fx bins to make your separate-drum fx chains, then set the outputs of all these tracks to your common percussion bus(es) with the rest of teh chain that is common to all of them (like a master multiband compressor, soundshaper, room space, etc). There is no need to split the MIDI out to separate tracks or clips, since it is all feeding the same synth and it doesn't matter for the audio side whehter the MIDI side is one track or not. So you can leave it as a single track if you like. If your SI drums is like the ancient one I have here, it only has one stereo output, so you can't do this quite as simply and instead have to use multiple separate instances of it, each for one drum or one set of them that uses common effects, etc. In this case, you do have to split the MIDI out to separate tracks, each one feeding just the synth for that specific drum sound or set of them. For example, with a very basic kit if you want the kick, snare, toms, and cymbals to each have it's own chain, then you'll need at least five instances of the SI Drums to do that. And you will have to split the MIDI out to separate tracks to go with those. If your SI drums has multiple output channels, then you just make tracks for those and assign each drum to a separate channel, just like the Sessiondrummer. To split the MIDI you can either use CALs, or there are two ways to do it manually. I'll just specify the simplest, which is to clone the whole MIDI track for the drums to as many tracks as you have drum synths / sounds to trigger from them. Then for the first of those tracks, go into PianoRoll View. In PRV, first deselect all, then on the piano up the left side, click and drag on all the notes you do not want to have in that track, which selects the whole track's worth of notes except for teh ones you want there, then press delete. Repeat that for each separate track. Assign each track to the synth that you have setup for that drum. If you want to do it the harder way I'll describe that one but it's a lot more steps. If it helps to see what I'm talking about, I've attached a cut down version of a project from my ancient SONAR (which should still open in modern ones) that uses SessionDrummer3's multiple output busses to feed different audio tracks from different drums, and different effects, etc on various tracks, that are then routed to busses to get mixed down (with other more global effects on the busses). It also has the drum MIDI clips split out to separate tracks (which I do for ease of editing rather than anything needed for bussing / effects). drums split to tracks.cwp

If I had the time, I'd do the artwork completely on my own...but since I don't, the artwork is AI generated via google's ai test kitchen imagefx program. I takes quite a bit of work and time (up to several hours of my time, and hundreds of iterations) to figure out the right words and phrases and order to get it to provide anything even close to what you want, but it is much less time than it would take me to actually draw it all up myself (weeks or more, which I don't have available). Half the time it does really weird stuff that totally messes up an iteration. Might be fixable with hand-painting over it if I had the time, but that's why I'm using the program in the first place. Sometimes it does almost what you want, but has some obvious mistake a human wouldn't ever do. Or it ignores a significant thing you told it, or mixes some of them up, etc. It has no way to 'redo' a piece. It does every one of them "from scratch" even if you tell it the very same thing it generates different outputs (sometimes way way different). It has an "edit" function but that just lets you crudely paint over a piece with a round patch of newly generated material that is not integrated in any way with the underlying thing. You're better off generating just the part you need to be different, then manually blending the two in a paint program yourself--the ai really really really sucks at it. At the end of this post are some examples of wierd stuff it did in the session of creating the artwork for this. I had several concepts I tried, from inside the bridge of the zeppelin to outside in the sky to just behind one of the planes, to trying to make it obvious it's on some other planet (by using a ringed world or a superjovian in the sky). I tried many ways to get it to show a POV from right outside the bridge windows (so you could also see into the bridge), under and across the side of the zeppelin, to show towering cloudbanks and the other zeppelin and the fighters in the distance. For instance, here's the text i used for the last type: "On a dark moonless night , seen from behind as they fly away from you, the small wolf pilot of a gray unmarked biplane flying formation with a single huge sleek zeppelin with a red wolfhead in a shield on the tailfins . A different more distant zeppelin flying away from all of this has a black dragon painted on it. Both are flying through tall dark Cumulonimbus incus clouds high over the dark ocean far below. Distant tiny biplanes dogfight among the clouds. The dim baleful blurred barely visible ghost of a dark red-glowing gigantic superjovian planet fills the entire sky as the only light source, and it's shadow cuts across the scene like a black sheet." it always ignored that entire last phrase, and it usually ignored "moonless", and usually put all the markings on all the zeppelins together, and always put more zeps than it should. Some were very spectacular failures; beautiful and even nearly inspired layouts, lighting, etc., but messed up in some seriously unusable way. Even the one I chose is such a failure, in that the plane has no front end or engine, but since it's possible to have a pusher-prop plane, it's at least not impossible for it to exist like some of the stuff it created. The first example below has what looks like a Viper from Galactica in just about the center of the image. Others have the wolf pilot of the closest biplane inside the parts of the plane, or gigantic compared to the plane, or even just sitting on the top wing, etc. Some of the zeppelins have wolves sticking out of hte side of the fuselage, or stuck like 3d logos on there, or only partly existing sitting on some sort of platform sticking out of the zep, etc. Some of the interior bridge images have wolves outside the zep, perhaps floating nearby? One has them inside the window frames, another that I actually wanted to use because of it has a "bobble head" wolf on the "dashboard". :laugh: Another has what looks like a saxophone in one of the wolves' "arms". One has a plane *inside* the bridge cabin (this could be excused as a hanging model if asked, but I'm sure that's not what happened with the program ). One of them made the planet *into* a ring around the sky...another has the ring like a frisbee being thrown at (or by) the planet.... Some of them really are "good", if it weren't for the serious flaws because computers can't actually understand things or "know" what they are, etc. Some are terrible. None of them has the aesthetic I was after, though. Another variation was "Seen from behind at a distance, one huge long narrow zeppelin with a royal crest on the tailfins of a red wolfhead in a shield is ponderously chasing another, through and inside broken puffy cloudbanks high over the distant dark ocean far below. Above the clouds are distant tiny biplanes in a dogfight far away. In the distance is another long skinny zeppelin coming out of a tall dark thunderhead." and another was "Seen from behind at a distance, one huge long narrow zeppelin is ponderously chasing another , over broken puffy cloudbanks high over the distant dark ocean far below . In the windows of the closest zeppelin 's gondola are photorealistic wolves seated at the controls . Above the clouds are distant tiny biplanes in a dogfight far away. In the distance is another long skinny zeppelin coming out of a tall dark thunderhead ." Tried that one on ChatGPT and I think I blew it up. 😆 I think I had over four hundred variations, with none of them actually doing what I told it to.

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@AndyB01 Thanks! Yeah, I'd probably totally redo the drums; I know a fair bit more about how to set them up for better effect now, such as in my WIP Ookami no Kari no Yume over here, or Just Give Me A Voice over here:

Played around and convinced the program to give me something resembling what I wanted for track art:

Thanks! I hard panned some parts of the kit (I think it is laregely a modified version of the MisfitKit in sessiondrummer3, with various things replaced with other sound. The kick is probably centered, but the hats I know I panned off to the sides, and pushed the snare over, so you'd hear the kit as if you were sitting at it, more or less. I may have also fed it thru the ChannelTools "widener" setup; dont' recall for sure (done that with a number of parts over the years). Someday I'm going to hack my Vizio speaker bar to install a line out coming from the amp side, so I can use their fake surround as a much better widener. You'd probably like Just Give Me A Voice, too--there's a thread for it somewhere in this section; it's also on Bandcamp but I think it's "hidden" inside the album "Lies, Truth, and Assorted Inconveniences" instead of having it's own icon on the page. (apparently you can't have both, unless you have a totally separate upload page for a second copy). I probably used the same kit and panning setup on it, since I think I started In These Amber days not long after JGMAV. I tend to use the previous project as a "template' for the next one, as I learn with each one on mixing, etc., and it's easier to do this to transfer my new bussing, effects, etc on to future projects than to build a new template from scratch. Regarding kits and panning, I think I started doing it that way (whenever the kit / synth / etc had the ability) back when I used the old Ensoniq ASR88 and EPS16+ for everything (sequencer and sounds). I tended to mix in headphones mostly then, before I learned to get better mixes from speakers, and liked the way it felt like I was right there. Most of the kits in synths I had used before (like the Yamaha TG33) didn't pan the different parts around much, if at all, so they were fairly dull. The old (1996) Uncommon Ground cd here https://amberwolf.bandcamp.com/album/uncommon-ground-full-album has a number of tracks, like Girl, Stratus, Merge, Fox and Wolf, Play Guitar, Gwen, Sara, Slave to Emotion, Katspaw that use various versions of a panned kit. I kinda wish I'd been using Cakewalk when I made that stuff (I could go back and remake those probably much better nowadays), but IIRC it was all done on the step sequencer on the ASR/EPS units, which only have a two line text only screen, so you can't see anything in relation to anything else. Makes editing pretty difficult, so most of what's on Uncommon Ground is played in on the keyboard with minimal editing afterward, mostly just deleting bad notes and a fair bit of quantizing to one degree or another. I played to a lot of delays to keep time, since I don't really play to a metronome very well (it's not very musical).

I'm probably better at the titles than the songs.

Imagine enzymes unzipping DNA and building proteins and the like...making, processing, evolving.... Intron 159 https://amberwolf.bandcamp.com/track/intron-159 Several Z3TA2+ synths, Rapture for most of the main percussion, Sessiondrummer3 for a few other drums here and there, and some SI Strings. All constructive criticism welcome. (I'm no professional; it's just a (very important to me) hobby, so improvement is always possible, and easier with help from others. Heck, I'm not even a musician, or a real composer, etc.) I couldn't get quite the art I was after, but ended up with this one after some sleepless hours of poking at the program: These were a couple of others that just didn't quite do it but I liked a lot: And I thought about this one as a statement of the perils of messing with genetics:

Cloudwalkers https://amberwolf.bandcamp.com/track/cloudwalkers This is one of the very few that was made for a specific "story": I made it to be about a zeppelin voyage and battle in the clouds of another planet's sky, from a story "Last Cruise of the Zeppelin Tempest" by JP Boyd. So, fly thru some clouds and enjoy. All constructive criticism welcome. (I'm no professional; it's just a (very important to me) hobby, so improvement is always possible, and easier with help from others. Heck, I'm not even a musician, or a real composer, etc.) All the guitar on this one was played in by me (I think on the Ibanez 6string bass), edited for mistakes as much as possible, and timing where I could. But that was five and a half years ago and I was still learning a lot about the many audiosnap functions (and related ones), so it could be improved. (also could be improved by having a real guitar player). EDIT: Looked up some notes, and it's not the Ibanez, its' a crappy First Act guitar. Pasted the notes in here in case they're useful or interesting. I have four guitar tracks. The first is the one I laid the basics of teh song down in, where i just played until I had something useful, and cut several minutes of the beginning out entirely, reducing it to the 9 or so it is now. Recorded in dry via the Avid FastTrackProUSB. In SONAR's effects bin for that track it has Wusikstation's FX, set to preset 16, with some of the levels of controls tweaked (don't remember what I adjusted, would have to compare the defaults to what I have to figure that out; I just tweaked till it sounded like I wanted). Next is SONAR's SonitusFX Delay, which is basically jsut a stereo delay, set to sync with the host with a left delay of 1 beat and a right delay of 3/4, which at the 99bpm of the project gives me 600ms/450ms. There's a crossfeed of about 10% between the two, and a feedback of about 13%, and a mix of 67% wet. THen there's SONAR's SonitusFX Delay, set to the Big Blue preset (kind of a big hall) tweaked up to be fairly diffuse. This track's main audio clip is also cloned to the Bass track, which has the SonitusFX Delay in it's bin with basically the same settings as the above, except only about 10% feedback and 6% crossfeed. The bass has a sub-bus it goes to that has the Sonitus Multiband EQ in it, which is setup for Vintage Compression and the EQ maxing out the bass up to about 80hz, then the next band up to about 300hz a few dB above normal, then the rest of teh bands way down below normal or zeroed. Effectively this could just be put in the bass track itself, as this song has no ohter stuff routed thru it, but it's part of my template so I just use it this way. The "fat" lead guitar track uses the same effect types as the first track, in it's own bin, except it has the VST BJ Overdrive between Wusik and Delay. Deptha and volume are maxed, with drive at about 45. The reverb settings are almost the same, but the early reflections are set much lower. The overlay track (the high pitched bits here and there) has the WusikStation FX with teh same preset as the tohers, then teh SonitusFX Modulator set to "Creeping Feedback" which is a string phaser, I tweaked it but I think most of the settings are the same. Then the same delay, but with feedback at 25% and mix at 30%. I didn't adjust the tone or volume controls on the guitar for any of them, both are at max clockwise, so full high tones and full volume. All of those except bass track feed to an Audio sub buss, whihc has the SonitusFX Multiband EQ set to th Vintage Master preset, untouched. All the busses go to a Main Buss that has another SFX MEQ, which I think was originally the VM preset, but I've tweaked it here and there enough that I don't recall where it started--but it is still very similar to that preset. It's pretty flat EQ, average compression, mostly just there to ensure the final mix doesn't distort but still "fills" the speakers. Without it, the audio is more dynamic, but must be turned down significantly to keep it from peaking out in a number of places in almost any project. (note from today five years later; not sure if it is, but it's what I did then) The best way to use a final EQ/comp like this is to automate it so it's bypassed almost all the time, and then just adjust it's mix ratio (or knees) so durign the too-loud parts it is compressing sufficiently to prevent clipping, but that most of the time it leaves everything dynamic. It's one of those "someday I'd like to go back and...." songs, that's about good enough as is, but could certainly be better in quite a few ways. Tempo changes would probably help it a lot. 😳 Haven't made new track art so it still has the old logo art

In These Amber Days https://amberwolf.bandcamp.com/track/in-these-amber-days Another experiment (from last year) that sounds like a medley of different things, I suppose (but isn't). Most of it is synths, but there are some guitar parts played on an Ibanez 6string bass (and then edited for timing, pitch, etc since I can't actually play, to create the parts you hear). Haven't made new track art for it, so it still uses the old generic logo

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Yup, that fixed it! Thank you very much.

In CbB (wahtever the latest is) it doesn't poof, AFAICT, (but the identical actions / tests in the old SONAR on the same test laptop does poof) so it's something about how the older SONAR handled buffering. I'll probably just have to avoid using the loop/AS in any projects I'm using MM in.

Thank you very much for the attempt...but the new version still POOFs reliably under the stated conditions on both my test system and my main one. Attached is an example project with the MIDI all within the loop, where it doesn't poof. But drag the clip past the loop end even a note's worth, and POOF once it hits the spot close enough to the end of the loop. I'm going to try to install CbB on the test laptop and see if it also happens there. viramor test 9c.cwp

The point I was making (and I think what the OP is) isn't about the automation system itself (which does have a channel picker in the envelope creation dialog)...it's that if you are attempting to assign (midi learn, etc) a control in a synth, there isn't a way to pick which channel that control is on, so you can't use the same CC (regardless of source) from different channels to do two different things. So, if you have for example two faders (say, on two different hardware modules) that are both locked to the same CC but you can set each module to be on different channels, then you cannot use them to control two different things in the same synth. Like if you wanted to use a built-in non-assignable volume fader (CC7?) on keyboard 1 to control resonance, and the built in non-assignable volume fader (same CC#) on keyboard 2 to control delay time, etc. It should be possible to remap a CC with an MFX plugin (if one exists; I don't seem to have one that can) so if you have this situation, you can put one of the faders on a different CC, so that it doesn't matter about the channel. EDIT: A quick google finds this post http://forum.cakewalk.com/Midi-CC-Conversionrerouting-in-real-time-m3611481.aspx pointing to this MFX by Tencrazy that should do it. (I thought I had all the TC MFX, but apparently not that one; I do now ) http://www.tencrazy.com/gadgets/mfx/TcMfxCcMap64-14.zip http://www.tencrazy.com/gadgets/mfx/TcMfxCcMap14.zip EDIT2: I tried to test that one, but for some reason even though it correctly registers, SONAR doesn't see it. Probably something about my setup since I seem to get other wierd issues; I'll keep poking at it. I also found that MFXScript has a USER script called cc2cc, which probably does this job, but I have not tested it, either.

You can have data recorded on a track in clips that sends different channels different data and a VST synth or external hardware that is capable of using that should respond correctly. But AFAIK you can't assign different controls on a VST (etc) to be automated by different channels of the same CC/etc. That's what the OP wants to do, AFAICT. I'd love to be wrong on that one. (I don't need the feature at present, but I can imagine there are people that do).

Minor MidiModulator UI bug: the numbers at the top of the Freq slider is only two digits wide, so anytime you go to a higher value it then show only the leftmost two digits, which is confusing. Since the result / output is still correct, this is just cosmetic and not very important. once the user realizes what is happening. The other sliders don't use more than two digits so they don't reveal this issue.

Behavioral change request: In MidiModulator UI, changing numbers in the CC boxes is more difficult than necessary. Except in one case, the user must first click in the box with the number to be changed, then select the text "OFF" with the mouse (can't be done with the keyboard and arrows, because the cursor is kept forced against the right edge of the box past "OFF"), then type the number you want. If you want a different number, you have to repeat this procedure, because as soon as you backspace or delete key the existing number out, you can't just type a new number as it now changes to "OFF". Additionally, if you have already selected "OFF" text, and accidentally type a non-numeric character, it unselects the text and you have to do it again. If you click in a box with a number, and don't backspace, you can type a number, but it is just inserted with the existing one, and the cursor is forced to the right side, past all of them, so you can't just hit "delete" (or arrow over to the one you want to go away and backspace), you have to backspace thru all of them and then your'e back to "OFF" and have to do the selection/etc. Better behavior would be to just replace the number or "OFF" in the box with whatever the user types once the box is clicked on to do this. The one case that's different that is already the desired behavior is if you click on the first box, then tab to the next one with the keyboard, and it will preselect the "OFF" text and replace it with whatever number you type.

In my ancient (couple decade old?) SONAR version, I never found the option to do this either--Any CC (etc) from every channel on every port is received the same; can't be assigned differently within any specific destination. (I didn't explore it much, as I have never had a good control surface, just one of those really cheap and crappy Worlde things, whose controls are not reliable or easy to use). Hopefully someone else has different news on later versions.