Post by Neil RutmanAnyone have any quality time with Sonar 7 yet. Would love to hear some
opinions.
Okay, my SONAR 7 Producer upgrade came late this morning. It was probably
bad timing as I was really wanting to finish up a "quick" remix (mainly
fader automation and remastering in this case), and I really didn't "need"
to distract myself from that. ;-) Anyway, here are some quick first
impressions:
Installation: Pretty painless. I think it took about 10 minutes total to
copy all the files, including all the synth content (on the order of 3GB, I
think), from the DVD. I was glad it gave an explicit chance to choose
different content folders for the synths. When it got to the first run,
where it lets you specify your previous versions preference file, I was
surprised that, even when you are selecting a preference file, it defaults
to not keeping your earlier default folder assignments. I'm glad I noticed
that, though, as it's easy enough to override. That seems counterintuitive,
though. I also noted it still did not preserve my toolbar layout. Or at
least not all of it -- it did keep the vertical views toolbar on the
left-hand side of my screen, but the horizontal part of the toolbars across
the top of the screen lost the components I'd put on there and just had a
few others that I hadn't had in my setup. Of course, maybe that the views
toolbar was where I had it was just coincidence, too. S6 also hadn't
preserved toolbar layouts, so maybe this shouldn't be a surprise.
Updated look: While S7 looks very similar to S6 in many respects, one thing
I immediately noticed was the buttons on the toolbars have what looks to me
like a very different style. If you look at them as 3-dimensional buttons,
I think they probably look higher and more rounded. They also seem to be
yet more monochrom (I didn't even think that was possible), with mostly
white graphics on a dark background or, when a button is lighted in light
blue, black graphics on a lighted, light blue background. I find the new
look of the buttons a bit harder to read than before, and that was already
one of my pet peeves about recent versions of SONAR. When graphics are
necessarily small to fit on small buttons, a splash of color can really be
helpful for quick readability, and lighting effects can also distract as
they can tend to make the white of the graphic blend in more with the dark
gray of the button background. For example, in the Views toolbar, the Track
View, Synth Rack, and Video View buttons look way too similar to me at quick
glance, and having to look closer slows me down. I suppose I'll get used to
this over time, but I really wish I didn't have to. I guess the old MS
Office 97-style buttons with strategic bits of color, which Windows XP still
uses for its small icons in menus, aren't sexy enough for musicians or
something, but they sure are a helluva lot more readable at quick glance.
Reliability/Stability: Definitely no complaints here thus far. I picked up
exactly where I left off in my remix project, which is purely frozen audio
plus some bus effects at this point, with lots of detailed fader automation.
I probably spent at least 3 or 4 hours working on that with no glitches of
any sort. I feel pretty safe committing to SONAR 7 file format with this
project, even in its very late stages. (I had saved a S6.2.1 CWP before
starting with S7, just in case, but I doubt it will ever get used.) At one
point I'd also opened up a second project just to try futzing around with
some of SONAR 7's new features to at least do a little bit of curiosity
satisfying. I probably got distracted for an hour or so, mostly playing
around with the new mastering plug-ins and checking out some of the MIDI
view-oriented enhancements. In some past versions of SONAR having multiple
projects open has increased the odds of stability issues, but things still
seemed rock solid here.
LP64_EQ/LP64_Multiband/Boost 11: After having recently done a CakewalkNet
review of PSP MasterPack, including its Neon linear phase equalizer, I was
very curious how these new plug-ins would do. I haven't had enough time
playing with them yet to render any kind of real verdict, but my first
impressions are reasonably good with one exception. When you move the nodes
of the EQ curve around on LP64_EQ, there are decided audio artifacts, which
are quite distracting. When I mentioned this to a colleage at CakewalkNet
(I'm going to be reviewing SONAR 7 for CakewalkNet, with the review likely
to land sometime in the second half of November), he mentioned having seen a
similar note on the public forums, and that Cakewalk had replied that they
intend to fix that in the first patch. I was also disappointed that there
were no presets in either of linear phase plug-ins. Actually, there is a
bank of presets in an FXB file for LP_EQ, but it only seems to add one
default preset. I know mastering engineers are supposed to use their ears,
but, for less than golden-eared types like me, a few starter presets,
especially for a multiband compressor, can be helpful for trying a few
different stock settings to get in the ballpark. The visual feedback Boost
11 gives you on what it is squashing is really helpful. I only wish that
part of the plug-in's display were significantly larger. My first
impression on sound quality was that these plug-ins sounded pretty
transparent, which is a good thing in this context. In particular, when I
shifted up to the mastering stage of my project, which was now at 96 kHz (I
don't recall if the mix stage was at 44.1k or 48k), I was initially just
using some Ozone 3 settings I'd used on the original version of the project.
Then I turned that off and tried the three new Cakewalk plug-ins to see if I
could achieve a similar effect. I ran out of time, and definitely would
need more time messing around with both EQ and multiband compressor settings
to fine tune things to the project, but my initial impression was that the
version with the new Cakewalk plug-ins might well end up sounding better.
(When I get back to that project, most likely tomorrow, I will probably also
try comparing to using PSP MasterPack in this context. Of course, these
options aren't necessarily mutually exclusive. For example, PSP Neon HR
could be used as the linear phase EQ while using LP_64 Multiband for
multiband compression.)
MIDI microscope: I think that is what it was called, but, if not, this is
the feature that magnifies a portion of the PRV or TPRV when you hover the
mouse over it. It seems helpful for locating notes, but then the movement,
should you try to actually modify a note, say to drag it higher in pitch or
shift it a bit in time, seems like it is still subject to the original
magnification (or lack thereof in this context). I didn't have a lot of
time to play with this, so I'm not sure I'm correct on this, but, if I am,
it would seem that it may be more a feature for locating problem areas than
for also making quick repairs as it could make it too easy to do damage by
too coarse of movements. I also kind of wish the magnified area had a
border around it, like the rim of a magnifying glass, to make it clearer
where the magnified area is versus the background, or perhaps that it just
shaded things slightly to make a similar distinction.
That was pretty much it from my first 4-5 hour session. Then tonight I
started S7 up again, this time just to play a bit with the new softsynths,
especially Rapture LE, Z3ta+, and the Garritan Pocket Orchestra section of
Dimension LE. I'll definitely want to spend more time playing with Rapture
and Z3ta+ (I've already spent quite a bit of time with the original
Dimension from Project5 V2, so I don't feel as compelled to spend more time
playing with Dimension at the moment), but here are my first impressions:
Rapture LE: This seems to be able to make some incredibily rich sounds with
various types of motion incorporated. It's the sort of stuff that might
well inspire playing and composition, though it's also the sort of stuff
that I probably won't find lots of use for in my normal musical genres (that
is true of most synths, so it isn't a dig on Rapture). One thing I did
notice is many (most?) of the sounds I tried seemed to get a lot of noise,
similar to zipper noise or noise from mismatched digital clocks, in the face
of a constantly changing tempo map. That isn't something I usually use, but
one of the sounds I was playing somehow inspired me to experiment with
recording "The Star-Spangled Banner", so I initially recorded that to a
metronome with that sound, then pasted in a tempo map from another MIDI file
from some third party GM orchestral rendition of the same song. I'm
guessing that is one of the side effects of time-based motion programming in
the sounds, and there were at least one or two sounds I found that didn't
have that sort of issue (e.g. one organ sound).
Dimension LE with Garritan Pocket Orchestra: The pocket subset of GPO seems
well chosen for usefulness, with solo and section string sounds, solo and
section woodwinds, solo brass, and various other sounds (e.g. harp,
harpsichord, percussion). Unlike the real GPO, you don't have to learn
special playing techniques such as using the mod wheel for volume on string
and wind instruments, so this should bring immediate satisfaction for the
casual user, and the sounds do respond to expression pedal, so that should
be helpful for varying volume over time. The setup with the woodwind
sections was quite interesting. Instead of having, say, a clarinet section,
they had ensembles of, for example, bassoon, clarinet, and flute. When
played polyphonically, these combinations felt quite reasonable to my ears.
That could be particularly helpful for situations where you're going for a
quick result, and don't necessarily need to end up with something that could
be played by a real orchestra, but still feels reasonably like an orchestra.
Of course, the biggest downside is that you can only have one sound (be it a
solo sound or section sound) per instance of Dimension LE. I might add that
many of the Dimension sounds I tried were susceptible to the same issue I
mentioned above for Rapture LE with the continuously variable tempo map, but
the Garritan sounds were not affected by that. That would seem to confirm
that it is likely an issue of clock-synchronized motion programming.
Z3ta+: I didn't spend as much time with this one as with the other two. It
felt more digital in character than Rapture, and there was definitely some
creative programming. The patch browsing interface for this, which might
well be described as a lack of patch browsing interface, or maybe a
randomized patch browser -- there are submenus of sets of patches, but they
don't appear to be organized functionally, or even alphabetically, as far as
I can tell thus far -- made it more or less a throw of the dice as to what
you got with any sound, but the sounds I did hear felt interesting/creative.
They also reminded me somewhat of PSYN, though I wasn't comparing them
side-by-side or anything. I'll want to check this out in more detail when I
have more playing time, and maybe some time to figure out if there is a
better way to approach looking for sounds of some specific function (e.g.
pads versus leads versus basses) or character (e.g. warm versus biting
versus...).
At one point I had all three of these synths going, playing the same actual
MIDI sequence, but with very different sounds. I decided I'd try to
simulate a mix, so I panned two of them to the opposite sides, the other
centered, set up a reverb bus with PerfectSpace and sent each of the synths
to it. I think I also had Boost 11 on the master bus. So far so good.
Then I decided to try and put LP64_Multiband on the master bus ahead of
Boost 11. Well, first thing was I got audio dropping out, so I took my ASIO
latency up from 4 ms, which I generally use for tracking, to 50 ms, which I
generally use for editing, mixing, and mastering. That got things playing,
but then there was some kind of fluttering noise, kind of like a toy
helicopter blade or sound through a fan or something, going on. I never did
quite figure out why that was happening, but it seemed to relate to having
the combination of ingredients there. Even when I removed PerfectSpace,
thus just having the reverb bus signal and the original verison of the same
signal being mixed together, the fluttering was still there. This was on
the project with the continuous tempo change, so maybe it is related to that
somehow, though I hadn't heard the artifacts I'd been getting earlier with
those specific sounds, so that also seems questionable. Muting some of the
sounds seemed to at least lessen the effect, though I'm not sure if it
entirely removed it (it may have just lowered the volume of it significantly
with the last sound standing). Very strange. This was at 44.1 kHz, by the
way.
In any event, that is all the time I had for tonight. If there is any
summary to this point, I guess it would be that S7 seems stable thus far, so
I don't have any significant X.0 release concerns at the moment, I think I'm
going to really enjoy playing with the new synth toys when I get some time,
and the mastering plug-ins might well end up being very interesting,
especially for someone who doesn't already have mastering bundles from other
vendors like Waves or PSP or iZotope (and the 64-bit plug-in interfaces are
an advantage over Waves and iZotope, too -- PSP does have 64-bit plug-in
interfaces).
Rick
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Rick Paul
Closet Cowboy Music (ASCAP)
Web: www.RickPaul.info
MySpace: www.myspace.com/rickpaulmusic
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