New Sonar Hardware Insert question

[jesse g]

Hello All,

I haven't come back to the new version of Cakewalk Sonar yet.  I still have BandLab on my computer along with another DAW that I have grown fond of using mainly because I can easily use my collected hardware processers with it without any problems.   With the old Cakewalk Sonar, if you connect a stereo Processor,  and wanted to use one of it's mono channels, you had to remove the already attached stereo pair and attach it as mono.   

So my question is, has this been addressed in Cakewalk Sonar now since the release of it as a full fledge DAW again,  or is it still the same setup for hardware inserts?   

Sorry,  however, this lack of a feature was the reason why I started falling away from Cakewalk. I loved using the old Sonar and the BandLab DAW itself, but the problem was adding my hardware to it so I could use it as mono or a stereo pair when I wanted.

Thanks for any news about this.

[gustabo]

Cakewalk Sonar Enhancements

 

[David Baay]

  On 3/20/2025 at 7:47 PM, jesse g said:

With the old Cakewalk Sonar, if you connect a stereo Processor,  and wanted to use one of it's mono channels, you had to remove the already attached stereo pair and attach it as mono.   

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I can confirm you can now just change the I/O assignments of an existing External Insert to use one channel of the pair, and the other channel will be freed up for use by another EI instance. However there may be issues trying to use the two mono paths in series on the same track. I encountered some issues that I would need to investigate further.

[msmcleod]

  On 3/20/2025 at 10:23 PM, David Baay said:

I can confirm you can now just change the I/O assignments of an existing External Insert to use one channel of the pair, and the other channel will be freed up for use by another EI instance. However there may be issues trying to use the two mono paths in series on the same track. I encountered some issues that I would need to investigate further.

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Hmm - I could see that might be an issue if you had a stereo track, going to two separate mono processors.

To be fair though, it's not a very common thing to do.  If the L & R signals are significantly different, they really should be two separate mono tracks.

If it is a true stereo track, that happens to be going to two identical external mono effects, then you're as well keeping it as stereo  - the latency for the two sides is likely to be identical (or at least very close).  Sonar won't care that you've fed the Left & Right outputs to two different physical effect processors.

The only time this may present a problem is if you've got two different digital effects processors for each side of the signal.  Whether the difference in latency is large enough to be of concern however, is debatable.  By far the biggest latency is the D/A - A/D routing out of and back into the interface - any differences in the latency of  FX processors are probably not worth worrying about.

[David Baay]

  On 3/21/2025 at 12:57 PM, msmcleod said:

Hmm - I could see that might be an issue if you had a stereo track, going to two separate mono processors.

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I found some of the same issues putting two mono EIs in series on a mono track - mainly delay compensation not working correctly but also some other undesirable side-effects. I'll send a report.

[jesse g]

Thanks Cakewalk for the update to External Inserts.   ❤️What good was it to be able to use a stereo compressor as a EI and then not use it as a Mono  EI for another channel later when needed.

 

I think I feel a purchase brewing..  💲

Edited March 21 by jesse g