Feature request related to midi recording

[Sammy D]

Greetings to all.... I've been a long time Sonar user off and on for a number of years. I've consistently made a request for midi merge or overdub recording to a single clip. It's always fallen on death ears and I'm frankly not that optimistic as I make the request now. I've never understood why this feature has always been treated as frivolous. Dealing with midi clips in Sonar has always been messy. Having to bounce to clips to have a single unified performance has always baffled me. While other DAW's offered the option to do separate midi clips, they also offered overdubbing to the same clip as well.  I hope someone on the team will want to bring such a basic feature to reality in a world were stem separation is becoming a new standard in programs and Sonar still behind on basic midi. Let's go team Cakewalk/ Bandlab!

[Base 57]

The way Sound on Sound recorded clips are displayed in Track View is messed up. If you open the take lanes, all of the data in unmuted lanes is displayed in the parent track. But if you close the take lanes, the most recently selected clip is displayed on top of other clips. This is a problem that should be addressed. The parent track should at least show all unmuted data in all lanes always. This would appear to be a single clip.  

So, I am sympathetic to your problem. But...

41 minutes ago, Sammy D said:

Having to bounce to clips to have a single unified performance has always baffled me

Bouncing clips is merging them. Until the bakers make changes that address this problem, learning how to bounce clips is the simplest solution. I would not hold my breath waiting for overdubbing to a single clip.

[sjoens]

I suppose they could make them "appear" to be one clip when hidden, but that might be equally confusing for some users.  IOW, there would be no visual clue there's more than one take on that track.  I'd view having to spend a lot of time expanding TLs just to see if there's more than one take as a waist of time.

OTOH, when they're expanded, the main track does display them all at once.

What's odd to me is Paste Special > Paste into Existing Clips only works visually in PRV.  Track View still creates a new clip requiring a bounce to finalize the paste . . .  but that could be construed as another topic entirely. 

 

Edited October 17 by sjoens

[David Baay]

19 hours ago, Sammy D said:

I hope someone on the team will want to bring such a basic feature to reality

Okay, but then you get to answer all the threads on the forum like:

"I accidentally recorded a bad/duplicate MIDI take into an existing clip and it's too late to undo; how do I fix this, and why isn't there a big red flashing light warning me my takes will be merged?"   😉

[Sammy D]

On 10/17/2025 at 6:51 PM, David Baay said:

Okay, but then you get to answer all the threads on the forum like:

"I accidentally recorded a bad/duplicate MIDI take into an existing clip and it's too late to undo; how do I fix this, and why isn't there a big red flashing light warning me my takes will be merged?"   😉

A modern DAW, ( especially Sonar ) that has always been marketed as a product for professionals, should not have a limitation that even the most basic entry level programs have, including Cakewalk Next and BandLab! If you make a mistake recording audio... you typically have to do the following: Record it over, Attempt to punch in, do multiple loop record takes or comp the takes. Why is some users perspective about midi so different. Midi is far easier to fix by comparison. You're not going to always nail everything you do the first time, whether it's audio or midi. It's just an unavoidable part of the creative recording process. 

It's all about having the option to tailor your workflow to your needs. That's fine if someone prefers midi clip takes rather than merged midi. It's not elegant in Sonar. DAW's like Studio One, Reaper, Cubase, Samplitude, Abelton Live, Logic pro, have the option to record either way you choose. I particularly like the midi takes feature in Studio One. In most cases I don't record midi in takes, but it can be useful in certain scenarios. Most users of midi will have a need to move clips around the timeline or make duplicates of clips to do other things. You most certainly have to bounce to clips if you're doing such things in Sonar.  This becomes cumbersome to do when it's mostly a midi session. I think in the past I created a shortcut to do the bounce, but still had to select all the clips then use the shortcut. They could at the very least make a macro or script to do this since they refuse to do what all the kids on the block can do. 

The program still has a lot of it's old base code under the hood, so there are some core things that has never changed. There's a reason that Sonar has never been a leading DAW used in pro studios or a part of the conversation of DAW's, especially since it's only been for windows. The older Sonar gets the more it never really changes. They just add more siding to cover up the shortcomings.  The program will always lag behind the competition. The only reason I bother revisiting the program at times is because the sound engine is great. A lot of folks do step recording or manually input notes, so real time midi recording and midi merging is of no interest to them. Calkwalk Next is a cool lite weight app, but event that has problems with basic midi options. It doesn't have input quantization. It only does hard Q, after the fact. No option to choose the strength and it's acting wonky at this current time because there's a bug where it doesn't quantize to the set value. Midi is simply not their strong point! 💩