David Baay

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.

Yeah, I didn't want to get too far into the weeds, but I maintain a set of content folders separate from what Cakewalk installs, and the Drum Maps folder contains only maps that I actually use.

I understood what you were doing, but was concerned that someone finding this post might take it to be a tutorial on the standard operating procedure for invoking a drum map. The introduction suggested that the first step is to open the Drum Map Manager, and I suspect that's exactly how a lot of users get into trouble. I'm saying, "Don't open the Manager unless you have to". If you just use the Output assignment of the track to pick an exisiting map directly, there's no chance of invoking an empty map, and it will just work with no fuss most of the time.

FWIW. I don't have the FX plugins but downloaded the trial of Spire, and found the project behaves pretty much identically in CbB and Sonar. It ran pretty cleanly in both at 96 samples in ASIO mode (Roland Duo-Capture EX) on my I7-11800H laptop with Engine Load peaking at around 60% and exactly two late buffers per iteration of the loop - one at Note On and one at Note Off. Staggering the start times of the identical clips in the 54 tracks cured that. Switching to WASAPI-Exclusive, CbB played with a lot of distortion at 132 samples (3ms @ 44.1 kHz) using the Roland interface, but at least did not drop out. Using the onboard Realtek for output in WASAPI-Exclusive mode at 3ms, I could not even get the engine to start in CbB. I had to raise the buffer to something on the order of 18ms to get it playing with an Engine Load comparable to ASIO, and even then it was having audible hiccups with Engine Load spikes. Seeing this, I didn't bother trying Sonar in WASAPI mode. Conclusion 1: Sonar's performance seems equal to CbB in this particular project scenario in ASIO mode. Conclusion 2: WASAPI just doesn't have the towing capacity to pull this kind of load, especially using onboard Realtek for output.

Two other possibilities I can think of: - Can be related to MIDI/Audio driver initialization issues; try starting Sonar with your interface offline to check that. - Remove any large Zip/Archive files from your Desktop or Cakewalk-related paths.

This is all more or less useful stuff to know about how the Drum Map Manager works, but the steps are kind of a recipe for how not to do things. In order to use an existing/built-in map with a known drum synth, all you should have to do is: - Add the synth with an associated MIDI track (or as one or more Instrument tracks). - Click the Ouput selector of the MIDI track (on the MIDI tab of the Inspector for Instrument tracks), choose New Drum Map, and select the relevant map. You can use quick-grouping to assign the Ouputs of all Instrument-per-Output tracks in one go if applicable. - Double-click in the clips pane of the MIDI/Instrument track to open the PRV. - It should open with the Drum Pane and kit piece names showing. - Click a kit piece name and you should hear it; only if this isn't working for some reason do you need to go to the Drum Map Manager and modify the Output port and/or channel to match the synth. This should not be necessary most of the time. That's five steps, but only the second and third are the actual process of "adding" a drum map to a project and opening the Drum Pane. 90% of the time, it should be that simple.

Only nodes/inflection points appear in the list. What happens along the segment in between - the shape of the transition - will automatically move/change with the nodes that define its start and end. If you delete a node, the shape of the segment between the previous one and the next remaining one will take on the shape that previously existed after the deleted node. It should all work pretty transparently, but you might need to change segment types or add/restore nodes after deleting something, depending on the particular circumstances and the range you select. FWIW, I'll repeat something I've posted about many times: It's not musically meaningful to have the tempo changing in between the notes that define a time interval, and I generally recommend using jumps everywhere rather than lines and curves. Those lines and curves are being interpreted and rendered as a series of small jumps, anyway. I believe the default tempo change interval for rendering a "continuous" change in Cakewalk is a 16th note. If this doesn't explain the result you're getting, you should post a quick demo project file with the tempo track in question, and let us know what you're doing and what result you're expecting to get.

No, I was just responding to your post about unexpectedly silent tracks and thinking that if any part of a Drum Map wasn't working as expected, you might remove it without re-directing the track output first - a simple oversight that could lead to unexpected silence. Thought I'd mention it accordingly.

Yes, I understand. I used the shorthand "tempos" to mean either changes or nodes in the tempo track. Copy-paste should work as described in eith the tempo list or the tempo track without special procedures. Only if you're copying other content in some other view do you need to use Copy-Paste Special to ensure you include tempo changes. Bass Guitar is correct in referring you to the Ripple Edit All mode (upper right corner of the clips pane) for this purpose. Ripple Edit All will remove all content across all tracks including the tempo and arranger tracks, and pull the later/downstream content back to the start of the deleted range to fill the hole. The Ripple Edit Selection option will operate only on selected tracks.

Compare your AUD.INI files side by side to be sure. Do you still find Sonar does better with animations minimized? Try using the Pause button to invoke CPU Conservation Mode (limits UI updates to one per second).

When you select tempos in the tempo track or the tempo list in the Inspector, the tempo track is focused automatically, and tempo changes can be copy-pasted regardless of Copy/Paste Special settings.

Definitely not typical. Sonar is running at least as well as CbB on virtually all projects I've tried here, and better on some. I just had a go with Clean Audio Folder on a couple different projects, and it's fine as well. If you don't want to cut off your nose to spite your face and give up on all your experience with Cakewalk, I suggest you work with the forum and/or the Bakers to get it working in your environment. Start with the basics: Reset Configuration File (AUD.INI) to defaults; if it solves the performance problem compare the problamatic backup to the new default and/or CbB's to find the difference(s). For the Clean Audio crash, you'll probably do best to send a dump file to Support.