Sonar 8.5 Producer: Show/Hide Synths In The Synth Rack - Is it Possible?

[Annabelle]

When I have a project with several soft synths, it seems they all wanna hide, and Caketalking and JAWS keep announcing, "Please press F6". Is there a way to show/hide synths? Maybe a Sonar keyboard shortcut exists to "show/hide synth", or "show/hide all synths". Anyone have any pointers?

[Amberwolf]

If you mean a way to show or hide individual synths in the rack, then, no there isn't.

You can enable or disable (connect / disconnect) them individually, and you can open their separate interface windows (GUIs), etc., but there's no way to show or hide (or rearrange) them in the synth rack view. 

If you have minimized a synth's GUI, then CTRL-Tab will take you to it, as you switch between all the views / subwindows you have open in SONAR, by holding CTRL and then pressing and releasing Tab until it gets to the one you want.

If you have closed the synth's GUI, then you'd have to reopen it to access it.  That can be done in SRV, or in Track View (probably Console view but I don't use that). 

 

Within Synth Rack View, then AFAIK there's no keyboard access except for:

--up and down arrows to "select" a synth, which then highlights the tracks in Track view that use it,

--P to bring up the selected synth's GUI window

--M to mute or S to solo the selected synth,

--F to bring up the Freeze options dialog,

--O to bring up the Insert Synth Options dialog,

(thats' all I remember)

I don't know any way to do most things in Synth Rack view with the keyboard; it appears to require the mouse for most operations.  If there is any key access to it, I've never found it, but I don't normally use SRV for anything other than inserting the synths in the first place, and very occasionally setting up automatable parameters, or renaming the synths, etc; pretty much all these things require using the mouse AFAIK.   

 

I don't know what "F6" is setup to do on your system, so I don't know why it would be asking you to press it.  If it is used to switch between windows like CTRL-Tab, then it would make sense that it asks you to do that if you're trying to get to the synth's window. 

 

 

Edited December 6 by Amberwolf

[Annabelle]

10 hours ago, Amberwolf said:

If you mean a way to show or hide individual synths in the rack, then in 8.5 (I still use 8.5.3), no there isn't.

You can enable or disable (connect / disconnect) them individually, and you can open their separate interface windows (GUIs), etc., but there's no way to show or hide (or rearrange) them in the synth rack view. 

If you have minimized a synth's GUI, then CTRL-Tab will take you to it, as you switch between all the views / subwindows you have open in SONAR, by holding CTRL and then pressing and releasing Tab until it gets to the one you want.

If you have closed the synth's GUI, then you'd have to reopen it to access it.  That can be done in SRV, or in Track View (probably Console view but I don't use that). 

 

Within Synth Rack View, then AFAIK there's no keyboard access except for:

--up and down arrows to "select" a synth, which then highlights the tracks in Track view that use it,

--P to bring up the selected synth's GUI window

--M to mute or S to solo the selected synth,

--F to bring up the Freeze options dialog,

--O to bring up the Insert Synth Options dialog,

(thats' all I remember)

I don't know any way to do most things in Synth Rack view with the keyboard; it appears to require the mouse for most operations.  If there is any key access to it, I've never found it, but I don't normally use SRV for anything other than inserting the synths in the first place, and very occasionally setting up automatable parameters, or renaming the synths, etc; pretty much all these things require using the mouse AFAIK.   

 

I don't know what "F6" is setup to do on your system, so I don't know why it would be asking you to press it.  If it is used to switch between windows like CTRL-Tab, then it would make sense that it asks you to do that if you're trying to get to the synth's window. 

 

 

F6 is a Caketalking key, which will refresh the screen to display whatever's in view at the moment. In the Synth Rack, F6 is supposed to refresh the Synth Rack to display the first visible strip.

[Max Arwood]

If you don’t have to many synths, you might be able to load them all on the screen and toggle through them. 
The main question is what are you trying to do that you might want them to appear and disappear?

[Annabelle]

1 hour ago, Max Arwood said:

If you don’t have to many synths, you might be able to load them all on the screen and toggle through them. 
The main question is what are you trying to do that you might want them to appear and disappear?

I'm trying to adjust assignable controls, but since I don't use a mouse, I want to find a keyboard shortcut to display all synths. I have sometimes up to 20 synth strips, as each MIDI track of a separate instrument is assigned to an instance of a VST. For example, I have 12 instances of Kontakt, 6 instances of Play, 7 instances of StylusRMX, 1 instance of Trilian, and 18 instances of Garritan Jazz And Big Band.

[Max Arwood]

I’ll try some clicking around in a little bit. I do not think this is possible. Do you have a shortcut program of any kind running, like autohotkeys. Or can your reader search and click on text that has been searched??