Kontakt 3.5, Cakewalk 8, Beatscape, Dimension Pro!

Originally posted by darvlay
When I first started with SONAR, I was getting clips, distortion and dropouts too. I solved this problem by configuring my SONAR driver settings and my ASIO buffer settings in "Audio Settings". Initially SONAR was set to use WDM drivers. I had to change the settings myself.

😏

There is a nice piano inside Sonar, called True Piano, it sounds pretty good, not fantastic but usable.
I was able to start recording with that, Sonar alone, using the Kurzweil.
Kontakt seems dead in the water, I was not able to play anything in it today, got major errors, I even tried uninstalling and reinstall to no avail. Another trip to support!

I dont use any of them... im using protools m-audio with all my hardware... (akai mpc1000, yamaha rs7000, yamaha motif es, korg ms 2000b and Technique turn tables) Love my set up. no computer plug-ins and sounds will beat the pure hardware sounds.... its getting there, but not yet. ok, just putting in my 5 cents.

Originally posted by ghostfaceking
I dont use any of them... im using protools m-audio with all my hardware... (akai mpc1000, yamaha rs7000, yamaha motif es, korg ms 2000b and Technique turn tables) Love my set up. no computer plug-ins and sounds will beat the pure hardware sounds.... its getting there, but not yet. ok, just putting in my 5 cents.

Is that Protools m audio v 7?
I used that one and like the punch in punch out feature which is on the same page as the recording window.
Sonar 8 finally has that also, so I have not gone back to Protools yet. Sonar 8 also has post production mixing, like built in cross fades, fade ins, fade outs, and such, also a built in CD burner, where you line up all the tracks for recording and it puts in the standard 2 second delay between tracks, etc., where I had to use CD creator before to do that, now it's all in the one suite. It is also very easy to use the soft synth stuff, before I had a heck of a time connecting to soft synths, but with Sonar 8 it's a breeze.
Now if I could only play piano like Alicia De LaRosa🙂

Originally posted by sonhouse
Is that Protools m audio v 7?
I used that one and like the punch in punch out feature which is on the same page as the recording window.
Sonar 8 finally has that also, so I have not gone back to Protools yet. Sonar 8 also has post production mixing, like built in cross fades, fade ins, fade outs, and such, also a built in CD burner, where you line up all ...[text shortened]... ynths, but with Sonar 8 it's a breeze.
Now if I could only play piano like Alicia De LaRosa🙂

Sonar is the s__t, for sure!

Originally posted by darvlay
Sonar is the s__t, for sure!

Sonar too complicated for you, I gather? It has a steep learning curve for sure.
Right now, I just found out my computer was shy some ram, it had 2 gigs but had artifacts when running soft synths, like Sonar's True Piano, if I held down the sustain pedal too long, clicks started impinging in the sound, I think from the CPU meter running up past 72 %. So I got more ram, now is up to the 32 bit max of 4 gigs of ram and now the clicking has pretty much gone away.
So I tried to see if Kontakt got the same improvement but have been having problems getting it running, first it crashed giving off some error message, called a crashlog, which I sent as an attachment to NI, so I reloaded Kontakt and re-activated it and downloaded the 3.5 upgrade only to find the crashes seems to have gone away but I can't get the dam thing to play audio, either as a stand alone or as a VST through sonar. The RME hammerfall is working just fine, I can play CD's through the windows media player and I can play say, true piano, in sonar and hear the audio just fine but kontakt is deaf. Did you ever run into that problem? I tried for two hours last night, gave up at 1 AM, checking every button and setting I could fine, like audio engine says it's running, samples loaded, etc., to no avail. I wish I could get an NI dude on the phone with Kontakt running in front of me like I can do with Sonar, I had to call them up if you remember, which was just a setting problem, no audio drivers showing up in Audio Options, the phone call fixed that in one minute, but I don't think there is a phone line for NI, maybe you know of one? It's been a couple of days and they have not responded to my Email ticket.

Originally posted by sonhouse
Sonar too complicated for you, I gather? It has a steep learning curve for sure.

"It's the s__t"

Translation:

It's great. It's magnificent. It's the best.

NOT:

It's too complicated. It's terrible.

I love how you tell me it's too complicated yet you're the one who didn't know what a track was and couldn't even figure out how to get the software to make sound. Yeesh! 😵

Originally posted by darvlay
"It's the s__t"

Translation:

It's great. It's magnificent. It's the best.

NOT:

It's too complicated. It's terrible.

I love how you tell me it's too complicated yet you're the one who didn't know what a track was and couldn't even figure out how to get the software to make sound. Yeesh! 😵

What makes you think I didn't know what a track was? BTW, I was able to connect with NI support on the phone and the problem getting audio from Kontakt was a button that says 'always load samples in purge mode' which is nuts, don't understand what anyone would want to use that 'feature' for. Anyway, unclicking that and reloading the sample let the audio out. I am 99% there, gotten rid of audio artifacts for the most part, by going to 4 gigs of ram, full load for XP. The reason I was confused about the audio V keyboard midi recording was basically I never used that before for recording, I had always done audio recording where a track is just the place where audio is layed down.
It's a bit more complicated with midi because you have two things going on. So I have recorded a piano piece in Midi and see what to do now. When I get finished with a midi track, I export the audio out to a wave file and then back into a pure audio track for finishing or mixing with other audio, that way I separate the midi track from the audio mix.
I thought you were panning Sonar, that's why I said it's too complicated, not for me, but for others who just started using it. I saw how protools LE or M audio was simpler to use but also has less features but for immediate recording for a newbie I can see it being easier to work with, especially V the earlier versions of Sonar.

One last note: The NI support guy told me XP does not recognize more than 2 gigs of ram. Have you ever heard of that? He said if you looked in 'system' from the control panel you would only see 2 gigs listed but in that regard he was wrong, I saw the ram listed at 3.7 odd gigs, which seems to me to say XP does recognize more than 2 gigs. I was under the impression XP 32 bit maxes out at 4 gigs because 32 bits of binary cannot make a number greater than 4 billion. To be able to use more than 4 gigs you need to go to a 64 bit OS, which can support terabytes of ram, more than that but I think it will be awhile before we see terabyte ram systems, eh!
The support dude also said XP 64 is not tested by NI, the only 64 bit OS supported was Vista and Windows 7 and I guess whatever the 64 bit version is in Apple.
He also said the DFD feature that the Kontakt manual talks about, where you can set the amount of ram allocated to samples is no longer valid in the latest upgrade, V 3.5.
Did you upgrade to 3.5 yet? He said in that version the DFD feature is no longer manually adjustable, being fully automated, Kontakt decides what ram to allocate now.

I have Kontakt 4 and run Windows 7. Never had an issue with either. Mine works as smooth as can be.

Originally posted by darvlay
I have Kontakt 4 and run Windows 7. Never had an issue with either. Mine works as smooth as can be.

Did you upgrade from 3.5? I think it is 150 bucks from that version.
How much ram do you have? Do you have multicore processors? If so, did you notice any difference?

Originally posted by sonhouse
Did you upgrade from 3.5? I think it is 150 bucks from that version.
How much ram do you have? Do you have multicore processors? If so, did you notice any difference?

I bought Komplete 6 which came with Kontakt 4. I never owned 3.5 so I can't tell you if I noticed a difference.

Here's my system, straight off the receipt from Dell:

Intel® Core™ 2 Duo processor E8500 (6MB L2, 3.16GHz, 1333FSB)
Memory 4GB Dual Channel DDR2 SDRAM at 800MHz- 2 DIMMs

Works like a charm! Works fine with Windows 7 as well!

Originally posted by darvlay
I bought Komplete 6 which came with Kontakt 4. I never owned 3.5 so I can't tell you if I noticed a difference.

Here's my system, straight off the receipt from Dell:

Intel® Core™ 2 Duo processor E8500 (6MB L2, 3.16GHz, 1333FSB)
Memory 4GB Dual Channel DDR2 SDRAM at 800MHz- 2 DIMMs

Works like a charm! Works fine with Windows 7 as well!

How much was Komplete 6? There are so many soft synths inside Sonar, it doesn't seem to me I need much in the way of other synths, unless you have some experience with the ones in Komplete and find them better, do you use both, if so, which do you like better, I guess in terms of usable presets and making up your own sounds.
BTW, I just got this magazine at Borders, called MusicTech Focus, a UK rag, it's a print version, the URL is www.musictechmag.co.uk
This issue is crammed from front to back with Sonar 8/8.5 tutorials and articles! It cost me 20 bucks, and has a DVD also with more than 2 hours of video so I am sure I will find new features I glossed over or didn't know about at all! A great find!