Apollo progress slow because of Sonar X1 Crashes

I have been a very happy Sonar Cakewalk user for the last few years. I started recording  my own music in 2005 and I have selected Sonar back then since I liked the work flow and intuitive layout. Since then I have upgraded on all versions coming after that. I never had any real problems so far. When Sonar X1 came out I was already working on my Apollo album and thought it would be wise to wait with the upgrade until the album was finished. But I could not resist downloading the demo and was very pleasantly surprised by the new layout. So I decided to upgrade anyway. At first everything looked OK, but now I'm working with heavier projects and I get a lot of unexpected and unexplainable crashes. I looks like a memory leak problem to me. My Roland contact told me an update was coming soon, but so far it still isn't there. I can still continue working, but I have to work around the bugs and the crashes slow me down a lot. If I don't make the deadline for the April 16th release it will be mainly due to these technical issues :( And I'm afraid to tell you that things are not looking good at the moment :( The chances I made release on E-day are not more than 50/50 at the moment. Just wanted to let you know. And I hope the Roland guys read this post too and hurry up a bit with that update ;)

Jazzmutant Dexter Finally works with Sonar 8

Last year when Cakewalk released the upgrade to Sonar 8 my Dexter unfortunately stopped working. Back then I E-mailed to Jazzmutant about this. They replied that they knew it didn't work, but could not say when it would be fixed. But weeks and months went by without an update. Then on the Musik Messe last year I visited their booth and they promised to look at it. Well last week (almost a year later) I mailed again when something was going to happen. Then I got a reply I didn't expect for anymore actually. I got a beta version to test. And what do you know it works :) I'm quite happy about this because it really is a cool gadget, but also a very useful tool.

If you don't know what it is you should really check it out. It is a multi touch controller that you can use as a DAW controller. It also works with Cubase and Logic by the way. Here you see the standard mixer view. Here you get 8 + 1 faders that you can all control simultaneous. Another nice thing is that this thing talks over ethernet with your DAW software. And it sees what software is active. I have two PC's in my studio and I can control both with this control surface without having to rewire anything. But I already have a control surface with real faders so why do I use this?

Well I especially love this view. On top in the red part is the equalizer controller. You can move four points simultaneous here to shape your EQ. That really beats the crap out of a mouse :) In the green part is a XY surface that you can easily asign to parameters of a VST effect in on your channel strip. You could use Resonance and Cutoff of a filter plugin for example. And on the lower right in the blue circle is a surround panner and on the far right you have all sends on the channel on a fader. Very useful for adding reverb or delay. And the great thing is when you set your channel to record you can record all movements you do with automation. I really love this and I'm very glad that I can use it again :) Now I just hope Jazzmutant will be a bit quicker on the next Sonar update.

Cakewalk Sonar 8.5 Update

Yesterday I upgraded my Sonar installation to the latest version. The update from Sonar 8 to 8.5 is paid but it gives a lot of new stuff. So I really don't get why they didn't call it version 9, but OK. I'm very happy though that they did honor a feature request I did. I have quite some USB connected Midi devices and I ran into a limitation in Sonar of max 64 ports. It looks like they upgraded this because now they all work :) I had about 72 the last time I counted. Most devices nowadays immediately add multiple ports and so you run out quickly. Another neat thing is that now the midi ports are plug and play. You can insert (or switch on) devices without having to restart Sonar again before Sonar sees them. Great work guys :) If you don't know Sonar have a look here -> http://www.cakewalk.com. I use this software as my main midi and audio sequencer. In other words all my music is recorded with this software.

Cakewalk V-Studio 700 arrived

I posted an entry before about the demonstration that Roland did in my studio with their latest product the V-Studio 700. Well I was so enthusiastic about it that I decided to order it right away. As one of the launching customers I could make a good deal on it that will benefit us both I guess :) I will tell you more about that later. I used to work on a Tascam US2400, but always had trouble properly integrating it in Sonar. Well this really is a dream come true. This is really total integration for me. I can do almost everything from the console without even touching a mouse or keyboard. Great job Roland and Cakewalk! I love it already. This will really speed up my work flow. And it also really finished my desk.

Here you see a close up of the right part of the console. One of the things I love is the surround panner that I never got working on the US-2400. Well now it works like a charm and it even can be assigned to more functions. The transport part also is very neat. Also the jog shuttle has multiple functions you can easily assign. You can use it to navigate your project, but also to select parts of your track and zoom in and out. Very cool! The big handle you see is used for several functions as well, but the neatest is that you can fade the controls from your loaded VST's in and out. Easy to adjust some parameter and then go back to your project without having to close and open the VST again.

And here is another close up of the left part of the console. The left lower part is what I love the most. It holds all kinds of Cakewalk functions like opnening and closing certain views in Sonar. I used to grab my mouse for that, but now it is so much quicker. In the left upper part is the ACT controller. You can use this to adjust parameter of the currently access VST. You can see in the display right away which parameter you are changing. The same goes for the faders by the way. Very convenient is that you see your track name in the display right over the fader. A great feature Roland came up with is fader locking. You can browse through all your tracks per bank of 8 faders but you can lock one of them. In this way you can assign tracks to faders from different parts of your projects and have just the ones you need at that moment in front of you. Very clever!

In this last picture you see the audio box that comes with it. I won't use the inputs and outputs on there. I'm sure they are very good, but I already have 128 inputs and outputs on my RME MADI interfaces and using two audio interfaces together is possible with WDM/KS but it will have different latencies then and that is not convenient. I usually use the ASIO drivers by the way and then it is not possible at all. But what is cool is that in this box is also an actual Roland Fantom synthesizer that you can use as a VST in Sonar. The unit acts as a DSP and doesn't use any CPU on you host. You can even add an extra ARX board to the synthesizer for even more sounds. The sounds is very good of this synthesizer I can tell you. Well all in all I'm very impressed already and even haven't dug into all the functions yet, but I already know this will save me a lot of time when I'm working on my music production. So big compliments for Cakewalk and Sonar!