guitarmandanp

i recorded a track in sonar 8.5.3 using pentagon1 soft synth. started auditioning other patches using pentagon1 on pre-recorded track. volumes on most patches had to be way turned down as i went - all of a sudden i experienced a sort of crash/drop-out and from thereafter all patches dropped in volume and i have to jack them to max to get nominal volume. this affects all pre-recorded and newly recorded synth tracks
thing is the meters go in the red even w/ this lower volume
also the octaves sometimes don't line up w/ my m-audio keyrig 25 controller i.e. to match the octave i performed a part i have to manually move the octave up/down in the track itself
a hell of a predicament and a mixing nightmare
do i have to re-install sonar? will i then lose my vst plug presets etc?
any help much appreciated

Freebase Dali

I use Sonar Producer Edition 8.5.3 as well, although I've never had the problem you're having.
Does it happen if you use any other synth, like Dimension or Rapture?
Being that your meters are in the red even with the synth and track volumes being normal, this tells me that it's more about your system/audio card's volume rather than the synth or Sonar itself. Check your system/audio card's output volume and ensure they're at their nominal levels.

As far as your MIDI controller is concerned, you might have to re-map with ACT. If you already have an ACT preset for your controller, just try to reload that preset and see if it helps. If not, you may have to do some manual assignments, but I'm not too keen on that as I don't use an actual MIDI controller aside from a hardware synth I use to control Truepianos. Seems to me that key notes are pretty standard though and don't need manual mapping. I don't even have a preset ACT map for my Access Indigo2 and I just plug in my MIDI cable and all my notes are correct when recording MIDI by default.

Also, you may find that your same issue has been posted the Cakewalk Sonar forums, so I say it's worth a look if your problem isn't solved. I've been going there for several years and there's never been a problem I've had that couldn't be solved by their many knowledgeable members and many archives.

guitarmandanp

thanks for your reply. don't have dimension-should I? at this point i got the synths back up to volume by changing the output on each synth channel in sonar from "master" to "stereo asio fw-1884 analog 1" which is the interface. always was good in master just don't understand!

Freebase Dali

You should have Dimension Pro. It comes with Sonar since version 8. And in version 7 it was Dimension LE.

Yea, for synths I generally create a bus and feed all the synths to it, then feed the bus into the master bus. You can go straight into the master bus though. If you're bypassing the master and feeding the synth outputs straight into your interface, you're not going to have the correct master volume in the console, and when you export, you're not going to hear the same level you were hearing while working on the project.

Do this:
Open up your project and bring up Console View. Look on the far left and make sure "INPUT" is checked (lit up) so that you see the input gain and pan for all the channels in the console. Now look on the master channel near the top of it and make sure the Input Gain is at zero (unity gain). If it was significantly less than zero, that was your problem. If it's already at zero, it's something else.

Let me know if that was the issue.

guitarmandanp

sorry for the delay i am fighting a bug that is a very good point re feeding the interface outputs direct and having a volume disparity after an export
i will follow your advice and post the results
thanks guitarmandan

guitarmandanp

sorry for the delay still quite sick i went into console view and the asio fw-1884 analog 1 master is at unity gain the master bus is at -8 but i always was using it this way until i did a bounce of all tracks to a stereo track for export then i put master up to about -0.3 so for things to radically change i don't understand
don't want to seem dense but whats the easiest way to create a bus to feed the synths and then feed the master bus?
by the way i checked the plug-in manager and see no evidence of dimension in any category strange thanks guitarmandan

Freebase Dali

I'm not quite sure why there would be a radical change if you've always had your master bus set up that way, but minus 8 decibels is a pretty noticeable reduction, so bring it up to unity gain just as a matter of good practice and if it happens to fix your problem then that solves that.

As far as creating sub-buses (or stem buses), the easiest way to do it is bring up console view and in the right hand portion of the mixer where your master bus is, right-click in the empty space (expanding the separator to the left if necessary) and choose "Insert Stereo Bus". You'll then have a new channel like the master bus. In this new bus, open the output dropdown and select "Master". That will route any audio from the new bus into the master bus.
From this point, you can name the bus whatever you want by double clicking on the red area and replacing the word BUS with "Synths" or whatever.
After that, you can then go through the channels either in console view or track view and select your new bus in the appropriate channel outputs.

The idea behind routing with buses in this way is you can control a whole stem of channels with one bus, which is a godsend for mixing. You can also put one instance of an effect in the bus and all the channels routing through it will be affected, which saves a lot of time and CPU in instances where you want the same exact effect applied to multiple tracks without having to put the effect on each individual channel. I think the most common use of this is drum bus compression.

The way I do it is I open a new project and create the following buses: Drums, Bass, Guitars, Synths, Vocals, and FX. Then I insert all my typical blank audio tracks and synths and SessionDrummer channels and feed their outputs into the appropriate buses. Once I have a typical setup, I export the project as a TEMPLATE. And any time I do a project that needs that kind of a setup, I'll just select the template from the quickstart dialog and am able to get straight to recording.

If you do that a couple times for your different scenarios and create a few different templates, you'll find it a lot easier to work with because you won't be as focused on the technical details, which always sap your creative energy.

If you need help with anything else, don't hesitate to ask.

Freebase Dali

Regarding DimensionPro, you should see it when you click "Insert" on the file menu bar, and choose "Soft Synths". There should be a list of all your installed synths. If it's not there, it's possible that you didn't install it. It comes on a separate CD and has a separate product key, but it's shipped in the same package.

Either you're using a cracked version of Sonar, or Cakewalk ripped you off.
I think Guitar Rig LE came on a separate CD as well. Along with Beatscape. (Beatscape sucks, you're not missing anything if you don't have that)