Mark Morgon-Shaw

I never install any of them because I had better options since before Sonar introduced their bundled plugins or the Pro Channel.

I had this recently and it turned out to be a hardware fault with my midi controller..spewing out random pitch bend data. If you have Kontakt there is a tool in there for monitoring incoming midi data and I saw pitch bend data being sent even though I wasn't touching the controller. Definitely worth ruling out first.

Thanks, gave it bit more width too was the other I meant to say Really enjoyed your song BTW

PS @Smashing Galaxy Hope you don’t mind — I was curious what would happen if I pulled your MP3 through a stem splitter and did a quick rebalance/remaster. Mainly pulled the vocals back, matched them with the guitar reverb, and gave it a bit more low-end body. To me it feels more emotional now. Here’s how it came out, thought you might find it interesting. Wiil I Be Good Remaster.mp3

Really nice song and performances so congrats on that. Mix and master sound good, a few thoughts on going the extra mile... First I think the intro is far too long for modern audiences, the first thing I would do is chop it half so we get into the vocals more quickly When the track is more sparse the vocal sounds a bit thin and feels like it could use some warmth. Maybe you filtered out the bottom end to make it sit in the mix better and I think when all the other parts come in it's fine because they fill out that part of the audio spectrum and mask what's missing. You could maybe "mult" your vocals onto two separate tracks with slighty different EQ so we get a fuller sound in the sparse sections and then you can thin it out when the full arrangement kicks in. Guitar is a bit bright to my ears in the upper mids - it makes things like fret squeaks really jump out and set my teeth on edge. I think you can darken it a bit and pull out some of those harsher upper frequencies and it will sound easier the ears. I have Oeksound Soothe so personally I'd throw that on it as it does a good job of taming these things without ruining the overall tone. If you don't have anything like that then maybe use a dynamic EQ so it's only pulling them back when needed. It's more when the picking pattern hits the higher notes that they sound a bit overly bright. Regarding the fret squeaks they are quite loud so I'd look into what you can do about them. These days I use Izotope RX and go in surgically to tame them but before I had that I'd use the split tool to isolate them and move them to an adjacent track which is lower in volume so when they occur they don't leap out at the listener. There's a bit of a balance issue for me between guitar and vocal, it's sounds like the vocals are 2-3db too loud and they sound like the singer is stood right in front of my face whilst the guitar is some way back playing on stage. I think in these types of songs you want the listener to imagine you are playing and singing at the same time , so the voice and instruments need to sound the same distance away from the listener. Some of this is just balancing the two and maintaining that balance throughout the song with automation etc and some of it is to do with the FX on each part. You might need you cut some of the vocal frequencies out of the guitar so you can turn the vocal down a but without losing any intelligbility. These days I use Trackspacer to help with these types of things as it works dynamically I think part of the reason the vocal sounds a little bit disconnected to the rest of it is it seems drier and doesn't see to share the same space as the guitar. In some places there are some BV's which are wetter and I think when those come in it helps glue the track track together better so you might be able to use a little of that to feed your lead vocal to. I like the string parts, they sound really nice which is great as they're often difficult to record and are a great addition. The ending feels a little abrupt - maybe you faded it out to upload it here but it deserves a bit more of longer a ring out I think or a more composed ending. I don't know if you used any reference tracks for this when mixing / mastering - something like Lower Your Weapon by David Ford sprung to mind as it was a similar arrangement ( although an entirely different sentiment ) Hope that helps

The pre-cursor to Pro24 was Pro16 on the Commodore 64

Well it's good enough for Hans Zimmer so....🙄

Nobody? I’ve got to disagree there. Cakewalk’s MIDI core is solid, but it’s missing a lot of things other DAWs have had for years: humanize, iterative quantize, non-destructive quantize, probability/randomisation tools, per-note expression, proper MIDI FX racks, etc. Even the Articulation Maps — while useful — aren’t as tightly integrated as Cubase’s Expression Maps. There’s a reason most big Hollywood film scores get written in Cubase or Logic. They just offer deeper, more modern MIDI toolsets that streamline the workflow. Cakewalk still feels stuck in the mid-2000s on that front.

Mine works fine..just a cheap M Gear Pedal and an M Audio Midi Controller I don't recall having to set anything up , it just worked

Wookie locking thread in 3....2....1...

I specced one up for a friend of mine who also works in production music, and even with the best prices over at PC Part picker it was only £100 less to get all the parts than over at Scan, inc the build, delivery and 3yr warranty. So he ordered it from them and it arrived yesterday - I persuaded him to go for the 12 core Ryzen instead of the 8 core and not pay what were asking for Windows 11

They made a clear design choice to move away from the skeuomorphic style and go fully 2D flat, paired with a more muted colour palette that has noticeably less contrast and saturation than Skylight ever did. Add to that some overly abstract icons and font choices that don’t always read well, and the end result feels less functional as well as less engaging. That's the problem in a nutshell.

Haha..hard to believe. I pre-date the DAW era. Actually my first music software was ProTracker on the Amiga - there is still a scene where people make music on it today. Surprising what you can do with 4 tracks. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3B4zq7gm-uM&ab_channel=laamaa

Before Cakewalk I used MusicX ( Amiga ) which was a great sequencer, and this was hooked up to Fostex X28H 4-track cassette via Midi Time Code with various outboard gear. No digital audio recording in those days unless you had a sampler. Then I switched to the midi-only Cakewalk ( V4 I think ) in the mid 90s as the Amiga was a dying platform and I've used various versions of Cakewalk or Sonar ever since. At one point I had an ADAT synced with Cakewalk Pro Audio 9, plus outboard which gave me quite a bit of flexibility. I've dabbled with others, made tracks in Reaper, Bitwig, Studio 1 & Cubase but I know Sonar too well to re-learn a different DAW unless I have no other choice. I use what use , there's loads of features I've never touched even in CbB & Sonar..like I've never found a sampler much use even when I had a hardware one back in the day, I don't use the built in Pro Channel FX or things like Worksapces because I learned to use it before these things existed. Since Bandlab took over , the best things they added IMHO were the new Export module and Arranger tracks which both make my life easier for making deliverables for production music libraries. The worst thing they did was downgrade the visuals and make everything flat and drab looking.

Thanks for that but I don't mean pasting a note, I am either drawing or playing it in

I constantly have to do this ! I'm not sure if it's me but did they changed the way it works at some point? The issue I have is when adding even just a single a midi note via the PRV to an existing track, it always seems to create a new clip in the track view. This is maddening as stray notes become hidden 'behind' other clips and I have to bounce them to a single clip afterwards to consolidate so I can see them all properly. I might be mis-remembering but I thought at some point if you placed or recorded new midi data that overlapped an existing clip it was automatically consolidated.

Whilst these aren’t features I’d personally use, I 100% agree with @Xel Ohh – it’s crazy that the BandLab App and Next have features missing from the flagship DAW. More modern tools, tighter BandLab integration, and workflows that give continuity for BandLab App users would definitely broaden Sonar’s appeal, especially to a younger audience. I genuinely thought when BandLab acquired the Cakewalk IP that’s where we were heading – Sonar would become the pinnacle of the ecosystem, with all the same features as the entry-level apps so users could move through the product stack seamlessly. Yet all these years later, it still feels like we’re miles apart.

Try Waves Torque

Sent you a PM

I’ve run into this as well – at first I thought it was user error, but it’s consistent. I just opened several recent projects and in all of them the PRV keyboard strip was closed by default. When I switch to Cakewalk by BandLab, the same projects open with the strip visible in its normal position. In Sonar, if I drag the strip back into place and re-save, it seems to remember it the next time I open the project. I also noticed the track pane is closed in all these projects. I’m pretty sure it should have been open in at least some of them – I do occasionally close it, but the PRV keyboard is something I always leave open.

The BandLab Membership itself doesn’t seem to cater for professional users. It’s clearly aimed at up-and-coming artists who need promo tools, distribution, mastering, etc. That’s a completely different crowd from the hobbyists we see on these forums. Right now you’ve got three very distinct groups: Hobbyists (mostly older) – just want a solid DAW to make music for themselves. They’ll happily buy once, maybe pay for an update every few years, but they aren’t spending monthly. Aspiring/“wannabe” artists (younger) – they’re chasing exposure, playlists, distribution, branding tools. BandLab Membership is built for them, but they don’t care about a heavyweight DAW like Sonar. Most of them are in FL Studio, Ableton, Logic, or just on the BandLab app itself. Professionals – We don’t need distribution bundles, mastering gimmicks or social features. We just need a rock-solid DAW that lets us work quickly and reliably, with clear licensing so we know our projects will always be accessible. That’s it. The problem is BandLab’s marketing is all over the place. They’re trying to pitch Sonar to three very different audiences at once — but the product and business model don’t properly serve any of them. Hobbyists resent subscriptions, pros need ownership and stability, and the younger artist crowd doesn’t see Sonar as relevant or modern enough compared to the competition. It just feels scattershot — like they’re tone-deaf to the core user base and missing the expectations of the next generation at the same time. So instead of capturing new users, they’re bleeding their legacy base while failing to onboard the younger crowd.

There are two major missteps with Sonar that have caused the most backlash and driven users to jump ship to other DAWs: The new GUI – They’re only now starting to fix it almost two years on, but it should never have been released in that state. The licensing model – Deeply unpopular from day one, with still no alternative option. Both were completely avoidable own goals. With a bit of foresight and genuine engagement with the user base, neither issue needed to happen. It’s a real shame — Sonar used to be one of the major DAWs in the industry. Now, for most people, it barely registers. Hopefully, now that they’ve finally addressed the GUI problem, they’ll listen to their users and rethink the licensing model.

In theory if the whole thing is vectors, shoudn't you be able to drag out the entire timeline display to whatever size you want? Otherwise what's the point.

Why do you think it's called Reddit..'cause once you've read it , it's gone

Excited to know theming will be back