SONAR LE - the most complete OEM production software

SONAR LE

Cakewalk's Sonar LE is a OEM music production software bundled with the following Brand products :

Roland, Edirol, EMU products, Open Labs, Rain Recording, Samson.

Unlike other OEM bundled applications SONAR LE is designed simple yet it provides complete solution for creating music. The best part is that you can record 64 Audio tracks - which is enough for professional work and you will not think for upgrading immediately. Further it supports 256 midi tracks - which again is quite some for programming midi.

In other words although the name is SONAR LE but the features are more like pro versions. You can have 24 track effects enabled simultaneously. Sonar LE gives you the power to make the best sound quality since it supports 24bit / 192Khz recording.

You can use maximum 8 virtual instruments at a time - No problem as you insert more virtual instruments it effects your system load otherwise. So you can always bounce the virtual instrument to audio track ( since you have bounce the midi tracks for mixing ) in case you need  more instruments to be added.

The final restriction is that you can have only 8 simultaneous inputs and outputs. Hence you can record maximum 8 tracks simultaneously which is sufficient these days and as far as output is concerned - all the mixing is done internally these days. Even if you use a outboard you still have 8 outputs to route.

SONAR LE

SONAR LE also supports ACID™-format loops and Rewire clients such as Project5, Live, or Reason etc.

The new version of SONAR LE (based on the features of SONAR 6) is supposed to be shipping now as it was scheduled in Feb 2007. The new version has support for Windows Vista (32-bit & 64-bit) —NEW , Windows XP Professional x64 Edition—NEW, and Windows XP operating systems. If you are a registered SONAR LE users then you are eligible to purchase upgrades and other products at special discounts.

What else can you expect from a OEM bundle - it gives you more than some paid Audio suites in the pro audio market. You can compare yourself. For more features which I have not detailed you can go to Cakewalk's site at Cakewalk SONAR LE page

I will give some tips and trick on using SONAR LE in my future posts.

TIPS: Freeze VSTi plugin and decrease CPU usage to add more tracks in Nuendo 3

How to Freeze VSTi Plugin:
We all face problems when we use a number of midi tracks playing lot of different VSTi's. Some VSTi's almost bring your CPU load to shoot 100% usage and halt. "Freeze" feature is the best solution in such condition. Since all virtual instruments use CPU processing for real time sound generation, we can disable them to save CPU usage. Freeze is a feature which allows you to remove the VSTi while you can still hear the sound. You start sequencing as usual using VSTi and midi track as shown below.

After you are done with the track open VST instrument panel and click the Freeze switch on the left as shown below:

A dialog will open as shown below.

You need to select "Freeze instrument only" and check the box "Unload instrument when frozen". If your sound has long sustain tail then you need to adjust your tail size depending on the length of tail otherwise 10s is enough.

In case you are using a multi channel VSTi, you can freeze instrument along with all the channels as shown below only if you are done with all the channels.

When you press OK button the midi tracks are rendered as wave file and played through the same VSTi audio channel. The midi track gets faded showing that the track is freeze and cannot be played in real time now as shown below.

How to unfreeze or enable VSTi Plugin:
If you want to modify or make changes to the tracks you have freeze, you need to unfreeze them in order to enable the real time playback of VSTi through midi track. The track is disabled or faded when it is freeze as shown below and cannot be recorded or played back in real time.

First of all open the VST instrument panel and press the Freeze button as shown below to unfreeze the instrument and enable the midi track.

A dialog will open, press unfreeze as shown below. This will load the VSTi again and enable the midi track again.

After unfreezing you can again start working on the same track for editing or further addition without any problem. It will appear normal as shown below and can be re modified any number of time.

Hope now you have become familiar with the freeze function in Nuendo 3 and can use it without any problem.