David Baay

Here's a pretty detailed version of the process I posted previously. It's easier to do then to describe. Once you get in a flow with the keyboard shortcuts, it can go pretty quickly, depnding on how variable the timing is:

I prefer to get the tempo from the MIDI directly, using Set Measure/Beat At Now. Takes a little more work, but is more precise and flexible, and less prone to error. Melodyne interpolates tempo changes on every 8th note that are often superfluous and actually make the timing drift in and out of sync with the original performance.

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The sample clip opened up at 100bpm, but the notes are starting at 1:01:160. Dragging them back to 1:01:000 put the arpeggiated groups on beats with a perfectly quantized 16th triplet rhythm without having to make any other changes. To me it sounds reasonable at a tempo of 70bpm. At that it sounds like a sort baroque-style piece for harpsichord.

You're welcome. That's all I intended. I realize that the ideal is to have a full-blown modern drum sampler integrated with the Step Sequencer into a single UI. It's not something I would personally have the Bakers prioritize, but if it's needed to keep Sonar competitive with other DAWs, so be it.

Hardly off-topic. I any case, it's not your call how I choose to contribute to any given thread unless it violates forum rules in which case you can report it. Your constantly taking issue with the posts of others is a greater distraction.

Sounds like direct-monitoring is enabled on the interface, bypassing the DAW altogether. Are you seeing level on the virtual hardware bus in CbB's console?

The right MIDI track may be sufficient just to understand how the existing rhythm is working with the variable project tempo, and that would be a file small enough to post here. Or you can PM me and we can use e-mail or I can share a OneDrive folder.

But not everybody knows that Session Drummer can be used as a drag 'n' drop sampler. And being a dedicated drum machine with 12 outputs, tuning, panning and level mixing, it's especially well-suited to the task. Never hurts to offer a reasonable alternative to a requested feature.

Yes, it should. If it's not staying in sync then it likely was not properly synced with the click to which it was recorded. This may or may not be easy to fix depending on exactly how it was recorded. In order to fully understand what's going on, I would need to see a copy of the project with at least one existing track for reference, and a separate copy of the drum MIDI file that you're importing.

FWIW, if you have Session Drummer from purchasing a copy of SONAR at some point, you can use that as the sample host. You can drag-drop samples directly onto the pads.

Listen to the playback without the metronome running and snap the Now time to a note that should be on a known bar:beat like 9:01. Hit Shift+M to open Set Measure/Beat At Now, enter Measure 9, Beat 1 and OK. Sonar will reset the initial tempo and timeline to match that actual musical tempo of the clip, and insert a matching tempo at 9:01. If it was sequenced or recorded to a click with a fixed tempo and/or quantized, that might be all you need to do. In that case, you can delete the tempo at 9:01 and change the initial tempo to your taste. If it drifts out of sync with the metronome before or after that, leave the tempo node at 9:01 as an anchor, and you can use SM/BAN to align as many additional points as necessary to keep the timeline in sync with the performance. If you continue to have trouble with it, share it here or PM me, and I can help you sort it.

If you drag the file into an existing project, it will take on that project's fixed tempo. If you drag it into the open Sonar window with no project open, you'll get a new project with the embedded tempos included.

Although it's supported to insert a synth in an audio track's FX bin for backward compatibility with projects that were created before the Synth Rack was implemented, this is not the preferred routing. You should be getting audio into the track by setting the track's Input to an output of the synth. If you insert synth by Insert > Soft Synth or by right-click in the tracks pane and choosing Insert Instrument, or by dragging an instrument from the browser to an empty part of the tracks or clips pane, Sonar can set up tracks and routing automatically. And, as Jeremy noted, you remove synths by removing them from the rack, with or without opting to remove the track as well.

Does it sound audibly different or is it just a drawing anomaly? If it sounds different, I would guess you have some compression/limiting operating out of sight in the Prochannel. If it's just a drawing anomaly, my first guess would be something to do with tempo changes which affect waveform drawing. Beyond that, it's hard to surmise without getting hands-on with a copy of the project or at least seeing some full-screen screenshots. Maybe strip a project down to one track that demonstrates the issue and share it.

So it's an older synth with only 5-pin DIN connectors and no built-in USB? If so I would recommend you get a "real" external audio interface with MIDI DIN I/O; MIDI-to-USB cables are notoriously problematic. Buy used if cost is an issue. I almost never buy new gear.

I agree it's generally best to set Inputs to your primary controller port. If you don't want anything echoed on the track even when 'Always Echo' is enabled, you can either set an Input channel that deosn't match your controller's transmit channel or set the port to the Cakewalk's Virtual Controller.

You need to disable Always Echo Current MIDI Track iin preferences. It doesn't make sense to Echo 'nothing' so the input is automatically changed to Omni whe 'Always Echo' is enabled so that you'll get a response to whatever controller you're playing. But you'll still want to set a forced MIDI Output channel on each track to ensure that each instrument in a multitimbral synth responds only to its respective track. If you create the tracks initially as Instument Track Per Output, that will happen automatically.

This forum is for (new) Sonar (note the mixed case). For legacy SONAR (all caps), you would normally want to be posting in the Cakewalk by Bandlab forum as CbB is genetically closer to legacy SONAR than is Sonar. Yes, I know it's confusing (that's why there's no Nobel Prize for Marketing). All that said, this sticky post from this forum, regarding the Microsoft VC redistributable could well address the issue:

This is what you get when no map is assigned. Session Drummer has custom note names that are displyed in the PRV by default. I suspect you started the project from a template that was saved with the names pane minimized. If you were to use the Basic template, the Drum Pane should open with the names showing, but maybe not wide enough to show the complete names. I'm not seeing any difference in behavior between CbB and Sonar when the names pane is narrowed; the names get truncated, then the In and Out note number columns get closed and the name continue to be truncated further until only the mute/solo buttons remain.

Try re-saving the map with the corrected port assignments in place. I believe that should stick as the default so long as AD2 is in the project before you assign the map.

Lasso, Delete works for me...?

It works consistently for me except in the specific case menitoned above where the Selection moves to the Now time somewhere offscreen after creating the FX region. In that case, just clicking the FX region of the clip should be sufficient to focus it in Melodyne. But enabling 'Right Click Sets Now' will prevent the scenario happening in the first place. I've reported to the Bakers that the selection of the region in the DAW timeline should persist after it's created, which should solve that problem.

These are enabled by default, but I've found that after creating the region, the Selection start and end times may change to where the Now time is, and if Melodyne follows that, you get no blobs. To avoid this, I recommend enabling 'Right Click Sets Now' in Track View Options > Click Behavior so that the Now time jumps to the selection when you right-click to create the region. If you right-click the left half of the selection, it will jump to the start; if you click the right half it will jump to the end.

If you can get the recorded files to have the same order in the source folder that they have in the project, you can select them all, drop them in the first track of the project, and they'll all import to their respective tracks from top to bottom. Alternatively, you can drop them all in the empty space below the existing track which will create one new track for each file, and then drag the clips to their respective tracks within the project. Better yet, if CW's default project sample rate and import bit depth are the same as the recordings, you can start by saving the new empty project created from the template, then copy/move the files to that project's Audio folder, go to File > Import > Audio, select all the files in the Audio folder, and clips will be created referencing those files directly without having to copy or re-sample them.