John Templeton

Nice dig Rain ?

I like the vibe very much and the grunting bass contrasts nicely with the piano. I'd build something around that for sure.

Nice to see that the chips are all in sockets. Opens up some substitution paths that you often don't get.

Forgot to ask how you fixed the output jacks that were cutting out.

Well done! That YouTube vid was a great disassembly guide.

I think that the things that make them similar are the vocal harmonies and the fact that each was a departure from what was expected from the bands. I have all the Beatles albums in mono on CD but I have Pet Sounds on a vinyl pressing from Holland and it's my only Beach Boys music. They did another odd album titled Holland that was different. Most people have never heard of it.

That was a very interesting video. I watched it as soon as it was posted. If it's all true it explains a lot of things. The musical middle class has been eliminated. You've got people scrabbling around trying to get gigs, but in my town most of the venues have closed down. The concept of bands seems pretty much dead and replaced by various solo artists. Those that do rise to the top are doing big arena tours and many of those have just become their own tribute bands. Madonna is coming to Toronto this year . The cheapest seat at the venue is $200 and they range up to $7,500 for the best seats. Taylor Swift is another one. She actually affects the economy of towns she plays in. For example, she's coming to Vancouver this year. There's a hotel close to the venue that usually charges around $150 a night for the basic budget room. To get a room when she's in town they're charging $3,500 a night. I can remember being able to see the biggest acts, buy a T-shirt and have dinner for $100 and have change in my pocket.

I watched your video and there's no good news. I suspect the issue with the outputs are cracked solder joints. You'd have to examine the board with a magnifier to tell for sure. That I/o board on the back doesn't look like it would be too hard to work with and reflowing the solder connections could fix that issue. The scratchy main control problem will require you to pull the main board and anything mounted on top of it. All the controls on the top of the unit may have to be removed. Seeing how it's built, that main control knob may have a very small pot attached on the back of the main board, or it may be some sort of conductive trace. You'll have to pull the main board in order to properly clean it. I can't tell the type of construction on that main board but if it's surface mount components you may be hooped. Very hard to work with and some special tools required. IF you're good with soldering you may be able to fix it. If you're not or all the components are SMT, don't bother. My pal gave me his brand new channel strip because it's cutting out. It's all surface mount and I don't have the skills required to fix it. You can tell if it's SMT on sight. The components, be they resistors or capacitors, are just little tiny blocks and you need a magnifier to read the values. They're basically glued in place at the factory and then the whole board is baked melting the solder. Or at least it's something like that. I hate the way things are built these days.

I was an early adopter and can relate to all of these comments. Those were the days. And of course there was the whole Atari ST phase. I think my first real software was something called Master Tracks Pro. I remember I had to drive an hour to Toronto and pay $499 for a 3.5" disk. It worked extremely well and the computer came with a midi interface as standard equipment. I could even play multiplayer games over midi. Anyone remember midi maze? And then everyone said the Atari was for amateurs and I had to go IBM if I was serious. So there was PC, then XT, $500 for a math co processor and $900 for a 20 meg hard drive. I was a king. Until there was 386, 486, Pentium and onward through the fog. I was spending way more time getting the hardware to work than I was creating music on a computer. About the only thing I've learned in 40 years is that if you sit on the sidelines you'll see most things come and go in short order. Sonar didn't. It evolved with the hardware and refuses to die.

Well I'm glad I decided to drop in and say hello. Sounds like there's still a core group of silver-backs lurking about. I'm very curious about what the future holds for Sonar. It's kind of amazing that some of us have been around since the DOS days and still hope the product will go on. I guess they announced the big changes coming about six months ago. I've been searching the forums for more news and I can't find anything. Subscription based use seems to be a trend in software, but I just don't care for it. I've had MS Office for decades. First by personal choice but then because it became a work platform. Since they went subscription I've stopped paying. I use my last version from about 8 years ago. When that stops working I'll find another solution, but it won't be the Office platform. What path will Sonar follow? I didn't use the free version at all. Just couldn't rationalize all the time and money invested now being given away to people that thought a phone was a good music creation platform. I may come back to the new/old Sonar, provided the old crew and the forums are along for the ride. Until then I have Reaper, Mixcraft, Mixbus and a couple of others. It's not like we don't have options.

It's true. There's a bunch of really good people working behind the scenes and I assume many of them go way back. I feel sorry for them. These ownership/management changes over the years have kept Sonar from becoming a go-to product. They practically invented this stuff and when they became a freebie I think a lot of people figured they'd never use the product as the heart of their recording studios. Those of us that used the product know just how good it was. This has happened in many industries. Remember Blackberry? First out of the gate, technically superior and now gone from the smartphone market. Bad management. I'm very interested in seeing how the new Sonar rolls out. How much will it cost, what features will it have and who will actually own it. I think the launch name should be... wait for it... Sonar-Phoenix

There's still stashes out there waiting to be discovered, but time is running out. Since the vast majority of tubes are made by 2 countries that hate us, well, let's say it hasn't helped. Here in Canada the gvt. put a 35% surcharge on everything from Russia and the Chinese just do whatever they want. The other group at JJ can't keep up with the demand since they're the only ones left that it's politically correct to do business with. In-turn, they jacked their prices and increased the minimum order numbers. Prices may ease but they're never going back to what they were pre-covid and pre-Ukraine. Shipping and delivery dates from overseas are spotty. We're dealing with global inflation on all fronts. I haven't launched a major project un 2 years due to the prices and a bout with liver cancer. Hopefully 2024 will have more on offer.

What I remember most about the song forum was NagBap. Bapu was always chasing people to send along their stems so he could get his work done. IS he still at it? I'm curious to see what the next Sonar roll out will look like. I bought every proprietary plugin they sold back in the old days and I've not been able to find really great replacements for some of them. I have all the old pre Bandlab software archived, including the plugins. I'll be curious to see if the rewrite kills backward compatibility with them. I do miss some of the Cakewalk synths because they were easy to use and had great sound. In a previous post I described the product as doomed and that was a poor choice of words. I think cursed would have been better. It just seemed like whenever things were really coming together, money and management would derail it. Roland, Gibson, Bandlab. I can't think of any other platform that's changed hands as often. On the positive side, these issues pushed me in another direction. I moved away from recording and got into hardware, building guitar amps, working with studios and eventually building tube hi-fi equipment. So it wasn't all bad. I bought a bunch of DAWs. I found most didn't work for me as well as Sonar Platinum but did get comfortable with Reaper. finding it to be very capable and low cost. Here's a couple examples of my new gig.

Happy New Year all. I spent many years and a small fortune on all things Sonar. During the Bandlab detour my account, username and posts were all vapourized and I moved on. I used to be Ampfixer and now I'm just John. I decided to start the new year with a visit to the Cakewalk forum just to have a look. Well, some things never change. Cakewalk is again changing the product and rules of ownership, Bapu still has the largest post count and many of you from years back are still hanging in, trying to make it all work. The only thing I miss about this doomed product is my interaction with some really great people in the forums. I really miss it. You were always a good group and very supportive. I hope this latest change works out for you. Ampfixer

Well this is very surreal. I've been away for years and when I have a peek, there's our Ol'Pal having a look in. I used to have the username Ampfixer. Why was I not surprised to see that once again this DAW is changing its name and the rules for ownership. All of you are kinder and more understanding than I am. All the best and a very Happy New Year.