New Sonar and negative track delay articulations

[Steve Harder]

It's interesting to me that over on vi-control posters are focusing on the articulation negative track offset in the new Sonar.  It's a feature that serious daw users have not been finding in their preferred daw despite lots of request.

[Mark Morgon-Shaw]

Yes it's very useful when using Orchestral libraries. I don't see it in the new Sonar though ?

Edit : Oh it's in the articulations rather than at track level. Interesting

 

Edited March 20 by Mark Morgon-Shaw

[David Baay]

59 minutes ago, Mark Morgon-Shaw said:

Oh it's in the articulations rather than at track level. Interesting

Yes, this makes it much more flexible and useful for accomodating the variable attack times of an instrument's various articulations throughout a track. The appropriate offset can be built in to each articulation so it's completely transparent. I understand the desire some users have expressed to be able to just plug in a fixed absolute time offset at the track level like the Time+ offset in ticks that we've always had, but once you've defined a particular absolute time offset and saved it in your articulations library, it's quite easy to add it across the entire length of any track that needs it.

[sjoens]

Does this translate to exported MID files that can be played with another sound source or does it remain exclusive to the Cakewalk project?

[David Baay]

MIDI files do not have the capability to store time offsets of any kind, ticks or milliseconds. CbB generally renders any non-destructive MIDI effects/transformations into the MIDI events on saving as MIDI, basically the same as it does when rendering MIDI through a soft synth. I haven't tested this with articulations but I would expect that to be the case.

[msmcleod]

14 hours ago, David Baay said:

Yes, this makes it much more flexible and useful for accomodating the variable attack times of an instrument's various articulations throughout a track. The appropriate offset can be built in to each articulation so it's completely transparent. I understand the desire some users have expressed to be able to just plug in a fixed absolute time offset at the track level like the Time+ offset in ticks that we've always had, but once you've defined a particular absolute time offset and saved it in your articulations library, it's quite easy to add it across the entire length of any track that needs it.

Not only can you have different delay times for different instruments, you can have different delay times for different note ranges and/or velocity ranges within the same instrument.  This can be useful if you have a string sound that has a slower attack at lower velocities.

[Promidi]

On 3/21/2024 at 10:57 AM, sjoens said:

Does this translate to exported MID files that can be played with another sound source or does it remain exclusive to the Cakewalk project?

Yes. All articulations that are present translate to exported and saved MID files (That includes time offsets).

[sjoens]

Not sure but it sounds like I got 2 different answers??

[Promidi]

6 minutes ago, sjoens said:

Not sure but it sounds like I got 2 different answers??

MIDI does not store offsets of any kind. 

However, when Cakewalk exports or saves a MIDI files from a project that contains time offsets (from articulations or track time offset parameters), the actual positions of the MIDI events themselves in the MIDI file will be changed to reflect those offsets.

When I saved the project as a MIDI, the temporal placement of the MIDI events themselves were changed - that is, the offsets were baked into the actual MIDI events in the file.

I actually tested this before answering your question.  I added an articulation map that produces an offset to some MIDI events.  I reloaded the resultant MIDI file into Sonar.  The MIDI events themselves were offset.

[ptheisen]

As with most things in life, there is no perfect solution.

Applying the offset and exporting the new positions is good from an audio  standpoint, perhaps this is the most important.

From a visual standpoint, the notes in the new positions will look slightly out of place in the piano roll view, and perhaps even more so in the staff view. Also, there is no way to negatively offset a note that starts at 0:00:000, so you'll want to pad the beginning of your song with some empty time.

[sjoens]

Thanks for clarifying Promidi.  It makes more sense now.  Tho articulations are still too complex for me to get into. 

[Bristol_Jonesey]

6 hours ago, ptheisen said:

As with most things in life, there is no perfect solution.

Applying the offset and exporting the new positions is good from an audio  standpoint, perhaps this is the most important.

From a visual standpoint, the notes in the new positions will look slightly out of place in the piano roll view, and perhaps even more so in the staff view. Also, there is no way to negatively offset a note that starts at 0:00:000, so you'll want to pad the beginning of your song with some empty time.

Padding the beginning of a song is good, normal practice, irrespective of enabling artic offsetting to occur