Sonar 3 and Volume Envelopes

  • Thread starter Thread starter dachay2tnr
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dachay2tnr

dachay2tnr

One Hit Wonder
Is anyone else having problems with volume envelopes in Sonar 3.1.1? The issue is that the volume does not track the envelope. It is starting to drive me crazy - although there is not much rhyme or reason. It only happens on certain tracks/envelopes.

I have a project I am working on. I had an envelope on a guitar track, and it was working fine. I made an ajustment to it, and suddently it doesn't work anymore. Since I hadn't resaved the project, I simply closed the project and reopened it with the old settings. The envelope still doesn't work anymore. :confused: What's up with that?

I sent a note to Cakewalk Tech Support. However, I see on the Sonar forum that others are having similar problems, and Cake seems to be noticably silent on the issue.

This kills me, as I waited for months before upgrading to Sonar 3. You would have thought the bugs would be fixed by now. I mean this is pretty basic stuff. I have been using these envelopes since I started recording with PA9 and never had an issue before. How could they break something that used to work??

Universal Bus Routing is great , but not as a tradeoff for functional envelopes.
 
Yes this not good. (No I havent run in to it yet though.)
There was another report of envelopes (or maybe it was just master faders) reverting to new values when the prog was reopened.
Hmm.
I think I'll play it safe for a while. So far I'm continuing in S2 on the current projects and only do 'save as' versions in S3 until I get up to speed.
Wayne
 
OK, just to keep everyone up-to-date, I got a response from Cakewalk.

They asked if it was just one project that had this problem (which it is), and they suggested copying and pasting the tracks into a new project. This is a bit of a nuisance, since I believe you then have to re-establish all your plug-ins and their settings. However, I think it will be worth in the long run.

For the interim I had worked around the problem by routing the track with the problem envelope to its own Bus, and then puttng an envelope on the Bus. A bit wierd, but it worked OK that way.

Also, although so far this has been isolated to just one project, I'm still a little concerned because this is the only project I have worked on to any real degree since upgrading to 3.1.1.

By their recommended solution, it appears to me they may think it is a problem in converting an S2 project to S3. I'll let you know the results once I've had a chance to try out their recommendation.
 
Hmm... I actually had the same thing happen to me with a panning envelope in S2. I'm pretty sure that I ended up copying the track and redoing the envelope - don't think it was a new project, not sure tho. Luckily it was a pretty simple envelope, otherwise I would've been pretty pissed.

But, anyway, just wanted to let you know that maybe it's just a matter of your track getting hosed somehow regardless of which version of the software you're running. At least I hope so, since I haven't done much with the latest version yet but will not be very happy if this is a commonly occurring problem in S3.

-Jeff
 
dachay2tnr said:
...By their recommended solution, it appears to me they may think it is a problem in converting an S2 project to S3.
Click to expand...
Did you happen to try removing the envelope and starting with a new one?
 
mixsit said:
Did you happen to try removing the envelope and starting with a new one?
Click to expand...
Yeah. First problem I had was on a track that existed in S2 (with an envelope). I don't think it happened immeidately when I opened it in S3. However, sometime soon afterward I started getting wierd volume changes. Jumps in volume where there was no change in the envelope, and no changes in volume where the envelope called for one. First thing I did was to delete the envelope and add a new one. No dice. The new envelope didn't work right either.

I was able to work around this problem by not using an envelope.

Then this weekend I added two new tracks to the project (in S3). Put volume envelopes on them, and started getting similar behavior as described above. Envelope calls for a volume increase, but nothing happens. Stop and start the project and volume jumps up. Rewind it back to where the volume is lower, and it stays at the high setting.

Very frustrating to say the least.

I redid the project over tonight by copying and pasting the tracks to a new project. Royal PIA. While the tracks the their envelopes copy intact, none of your plugins (and settings) come over, nor do any of the Busses, nor the Track Sends and their settings. The missing busses were a problem because I had a volume envelope on one submix bus that had to be completely redrawn over.

The whole thing took me a few hours - and I must still have a couple of tweaks left to do, as it's not sounding exactly right.

I'm hoping this is isolated to just this one project, or at worst just an S2 to S3 issue - which at least would eliminate the problem going forward.

I ran into a similar instance converting from PA9 to Sonar 1. I had a project that refused to open in Sonar. Cakewalk came out with a patch that fixed it a few weeks later when lots of other people started complaing about a similar occurrance. I didn't expect problems this time because I had waited for quite awhile before upgrading.

Of course, that's my luck in general. I call it the Dachay factor. :(
 
Toki987 said:
how was 2.2 runnin? ;)

:eek:
Click to expand...
:D :D

2.2 was running just fine. However, I longed for the Universal Bus Routing, and heard the siren's call of the VST Adapter.

I am a weak man. :(
 
:) so it was a "need & desire cocktail"

I can eat my sandwich and appreciate that.. :cool:
 
yup, I read along on that journey there. I'm glad you pressed till you found a way around the bug. I gotta hand it to you, you didn`t settle for any less than the answer to your question on that loop/punch bug....:)
It does look like there`s more efficiency in the engine for S3 though. Possibly that newfangled routing takes care of some of the load with plugins. I run into the plugin-blues occasionaly and get stuttering on some things in S2.2.
I may let it go another service pack or two and then pick up S3. Maybe most all the bugs will be squashed.

the envelopes are outstanding in Sonar. Easy to draw and manipulate.

maybe we could use a couple of El Presedente Selects and a bottle of Port to bribe Mike into tellin us all the tricks he knows... ;)
 
Toki987 said:
maybe we could use a couple of El Presedente Selects and a bottle of Port to bribe Mike into tellin us all the tricks he knows... ;)
Click to expand...
You certainly know the way to my heart. :D

However, I prefer cognac to port. Just in case you were serious. :cool:
 
Progress Report. Stardate 13.4.04.

Opened my new project tonight. The one I spent most of last night copy and pasting as suggested by Sonar support.

One of the friggin' envelopes is no longer working. Worked last night, but tonight... nada. I even added some nodes and took the envelope down to silence. Sucker played right through it at the same volume as before.

Unhappy camper this moment. :( :( :( :mad:
 
Progress Report. Stardate 15.4.04.

Wrote back to Cakewalk telling them their fix didn't work. They asked me to send them the project file.

They came back today and said they don't see anything wrong with the file, and asked me if my faders tracked along with the volume envelope. As I don't normally use Console View ( :) ) I couldn't answer the question, and will have to look at it tonight.

However, I do know that the numeric volume levels by the volume slider in Track View do, in fact, track along with the envelope. So if you are playing the file, when the envlope calls for the track volume to drop from -3.0db to -8.5db, you will see that happen on the volume slider indicator. HOWEVER, THE FRIGGIN" VOLUME DOESN'T CHANGE!

Then, in other parts of the song, where the envelope is just a straight line (no vol. change called for), suddenly the volume will jump up (or down).

It is impossible for me to mix the song in this situation (with random changes in volume settings). I am about ready to go back to Sonar 2.2. Unfortunately I already saved this project in S3, so I guess it's copy and paste again. :(

I'm gonna give it a couple more days first, to see if the folks at CW come up with something.
 
hmmmmm... volume envelope drawn and postions marked, but signal level does not change when track is played back......

did you bite your lip when you were asked "does the slider move when in console view?"

:eek:
 
maybe its your computer dacha? format re install?

thats my solution for all computer problems and works 10 out of 10 times
 
Toki987 said:
did you bite your lip when you were asked "does the slider move when in console view?"
Click to expand...
No, but for a minute I thought that maybe moskus had taken a job in Cakewalk Tech Support. :D :D

maybe its your computer dacha? format re install?
Click to expand...
I have thought about reinstalling Sonar 3. Thought I'd give the boys at Cakewalk a shot first. But an S3 reinstall would be relatively painless.

I have already tried changing the drivers for my Delta 1010 - with no change in results.

I'm not quite ready to think about an OS reinstall. :( :(

I'm not suspicious the OS is an issue anyway, since there is nothing else wrong except these stupid track volume envelopes in Sonar.
 
This happened to me. I just cloned the track that wasn't working and deleted the original. worked fine. a lot less time consuming than mixing the whole song over again.
 
Progress Report. Stardate 17.4.04.

In case anyone is intersted in this, Cakewalk's tech support suggest a reinstall of Sonar. Since I was going to do this anyway, I took their advice.

First resintall: midi notes were suddenly being dropped. About every measure and a half, a note just wouldn't sound. What's up with that?

So I did a second reinstall.

After this I was getting an echo delay from the SIR reverb. I was able to trace this down to the VST adapter not being checked to "enable delay compensation." Never had to manually enable this before, but once I did, the delay went away.

After that, everything appears to be operating OK.

I'm not totally ready to pronounce this fixed, but it's looking good for the time being. Got my fingers crossed.
 
The Latest

Despite behaving quite well immediately after the Sonar reinstall, the problem then reappeared the following day.

This I find very strange indeed.

So far I have only encoutered the problem with one specific project (although I have mostly only been working on this one project), and only a few specific tracks.

I have some workarounds that allow me to go forward with this project (e.g., clip gain envelopes, rather than track volume envlopes). If it remains isolated to this one project, I think I will just simply move on.
 
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