[ddots-l] Re: so what's new in ct 8???

Sorry about the delay in answering - have been busy stuffing myself
with goose! (Smile)

Here's what it says in the Help file which covers what's new between 7
& 8.

George.

What's New In CakeTalking 8.0 for SONAR 8.0

The facts in this What's New chapter, are not yet incorporated into
the rest of this Help file. So make sure you study this chapter in
order to learn what's new and different. When this Help file is
finally updated to incorporate what's new, it will be posted both on
the Dancing Dots web site, and included in a Maintenance Release of
CakeTalking.
 
Table of Contents
1. Increased Responsiveness.
2. Instrument Tracks.
3. Arming and UnArming During Playback and Recording.
4. Fast Forward and Rewind.
5. Opening a Soft Synth's Properties Page.
6. Changing Values in Plug In Windows.
7. Track Templates.
8. Opening the Clips Pane.
9. Splitting Clips.
10. Quick Select Next Track.
11. Arrowing Up and Down on a Track or Buses Peak Meter Column.
12. Fixes.
13. Remaining Issues.
 
Contents
1. Increased Responsiveness.
SONAR 8 handles audio processing more efficiently than previous
versions. So you will probably find working with audio tracks, and
soft synths more responsive. On some systems, the increased efficiency
is remarkable. In addition, CakeTalking 8 is also inherently more
responsive.

2. Instrument Tracks.
1. SONAR 8 has a new track type called an Instrument track. And
Instrument track makes it very simple to work with soft synths. It's
essentially two tracks. A MIDI track and an audio track, both
associated with the same soft synth, but contained in one track. So
you can control both the MIDI data that is sent to a soft synth, and
the audio signal that is returned from the soft synth.
2. You can create an instrument track when first inserting a soft
synth by checking the "Instrument Track" check box in the Soft Synth
dialog. Or if you've already inserted a soft synth as a pair of audio
and MIDI tracks, you can open either of the track's context menu, and
choose the command, "Make Instrument Track." Let's take the first
case, inserting a soft synth as a single Instrument track.
a. Open the Insert Menu, navigate to Insert Soft synth, and RIGHT
ARROW to open the sub menu.
b. Choose a Soft Synth and press ENTER. The Insert Soft Synth dialog
opens.
c. Navigate to the Instrument Track check box. The Instrument Track
check box is just a SHIFT TAB away from the MIDI Source Track
checkbox. Check it with the SPACE bar, and then OK the dialog. A new
instrument track is inserted.
3. Alternatively, if you've already inserted a pair of soft synth
tracks, that is both an audio and MIDI track assigned to the soft
synth, you can consolidate both of them into one instrument track.
Here's how to do that.
a. Select both of the soft synth tracks. On either the soft synth MIDI
track or Audio track, route JAWS to PC with JAWS Key + Dash.
b. Right click to open the tracks' context menu.
c. Navigate to "Make Instrument Track", and press ENTER.
d. The separate soft synth tracks will disappear, and be replaced by a
single soft synth Instrument track.
4. When you make an instrument track, the track name defaults to the
soft synth name. You of course, can always rename it to whatever you
want. Because an instrument track is a hybrid between an audio and a
MIDI track, an instrument track strip contains both audio and MIDI
controls.
5. The instrument track strip exposes MIDI input and audio output
controls. Internally, the MIDI output is assigned to the soft synth's
MIDI input, and the audio input is assigned to the soft synth's main
output.
6. You can convert an Instrument track to a purely audio track, by
freezing it.  Here's how to do that.
a. Move to the instrument track, and open the Tracks Menu.
b. Navigate to Freeze and RIGHT ARROW to open the Freeze sub menu.
c. From the Freeze sub menu, press ENTER on Freeze synth.
d. You will now have a conventional audio track containing the soft
synth's audio data.
7. If you have created an Instrument track,  you can actually split it
back into separate MIDI and Audio tracks. Here's how to do that.
a. Open the instrument tracks context menu by routing JAWS to PC, and
then Right Clicking.
b. Navigate to "Split Instrument Track", and then press ENTER.
c. Your Instrument track will be replaced by 2 tracks, a MIDI track
and an audio track, both assigned to the Soft Synth.
3. Arming and UnArming During Playback and Recording.
1. SONAR is now able to arm and disarm tracks during playback and
recording. This allows you to record to different tracks while the
transport is rolling, without first having to stop playback in order
to arm a track for recording.  Before this feature is enabled, you
must first check a particular check box in the Record options dialog.
Here's how to do that.
a. Open the Transport menu, and navigate to Record options. Press
ENTER, and the Record Options dialog opens.
b. Navigate to the checkbox named, "Allow Arm Changes During
Playback/Record." You can now arm and unarm your tracks during
playback or record.

3. Note that the "Allow Arm Changes During Playback/Record" option is
disabled by default, because this feature can puts an additional load
on your computer. When enabled, SONAR keeps all hardware input ports
open so that it can arm tracks on the fly. But with some drivers in
WDM mode, this can add significant overhead if there are many input
devices enabled in the Drivers page of the Audio Options dialog. This
may lead to more frequent drop outs. So, when using this option in WDM
mode, it is recommended that you disable all unused input drivers in
the Audio Options dialog to minimize this overhead. Disabling unused
inputs is not required when using ASIO mode.

4. Fast Forward and Rewind.
1. As veteran users of CakeTalking know, if you press a number in the
QWERTY section of your PC keyboard, you will skip forward that number
of bars. And if you double press a number in the QWERTY section of
your PC keyboard, you will skip back that number of bars. Playback
stops during this process, and under certain circumstances, you may
hear jerky playback. Well, you can now do a smoother fast forward or
rewind, by using the hotkey, SHIFT+GRAVE ACCENT. Here's how it works.
a. If you're in playback, and you press SHIFT+Grave Accent, the
transport will fast forward. Then when you press the hotkey again, you
will find that you have skipped forward, depending on how long you
waited. Note that when skipping forward, the sound of normal playback
continues. It is only after you've pressed the hotkey a second time,
that the new playback position is heard. The number of bars you move,
is less accurate than when using the number keys, but it's a lot
smoother, and you may prefer moving like this under certain
circumstances.
b. If you want to do the same thing, but fast rewind, then hold SHIFT,
and press the GRAVE ACCENT twice quickly.
2. Note that when you want to stop the fast forward or fast rewind,
you only have to press SHIFT+GRAVE ACCENT once. For instance, if you
pressed SHIFT+double GRAVE ACCENT, in order to rewind, then when you
want to stop rewind, you only have to press SHIFT+GRAVE ACCENT once.

5. Opening a Soft Synth's Properties Page.
a. You can open a Soft Synth's Properties page, by pressing CONTROL+Y.
Previously, you had to be on the Input Column of the soft Synths MIDI
track, or the Input column of the Soft Synth's Audio track before you
could press CONTROL Y. Now you can press CONTROL Y, while on any
column, and the Soft Synth will open.
b. If you're on an instrument track, pressing CONTROL Y will open the
Soft Synth, but when you close it, you will find that you are on a
column of the track, that is prior to the Name column. There are 4
such columns. Automated Mute, Show/Hide MIDI Event, Edit MIDI Event
Type, and Note Duration. So, just RIGHT ARROW if you wish to return to
the Name column.

6. Changing Values in Plug In Windows.
a. In effects and soft synth dialogs that require you to lock the
mouse on a control before you can change its value, CT will now report
the current setting of the control, as soon as you lock the mouse.
This is better than the way CT previously acted, where you had to
change the initial value before you could hear a value. So you could
never hear the initial value.

7. Track Templates.
a. Because of the way that SONAR 8 handles MIDI track Inputs and
Outputs, it's not possible to import MIDI templates from a machine
that has a different MIDI interface than the one that's on your
computer. Because of this, CakeTalking's AAA template found in the New
Project dialog have been reconfigured. There are less AAA templates
now. Here is a list of the AAA templates.
AAA MIDI External Synth 16 Track. This is a template of 16 MIDI
tracks, dedicated to what ever MIDI Input and output you currently
have. So, if your Output is to an external synth, like your keyboard
synth, it will trigger that synth. You will have to assign all 16 MIDI
channels yourself.
AAA MIDI Softsynth TTS-1 16 Track.. This template uses the TTS 1 soft
synth. So the sound of your MIDI tracks, will be coming from your
computer, not from your external synth.
AAA 0 Blank Project. There are no tracks inserted. You will have to
insert them yourself.
The AAA audio templates are AAA Audio 8 Track, AAA Audio 16 Track, and
AAA Audio 24 Track, AAA Audio Voiceover, and AAA Karaoke.
These audio templates have 3 buses. A Master bus and 2 effects buses.
And in the Inspector, only the controls for the FX, E Q, and EQ graph
(or Plot) are displayed.
The AAA Audio Voiceover contains 2 audio tracks. A backing track, and
the Voiceover track. The backing track has the Sonitus Compressor
patched into its effects bin. And the Voiceover track has both the
Sonitus Compressor and the Sontius Gate patched into its effect bin.
On the Voiceover track, the presets for both effects have been chosen
to optimize the vocal.

8. Opening the Clips Pane.
You can now open the Clips pane not only from Audio tracks, but also
MIDI tracks, Instrument Tracks, and on Folder Tracks.

9. Splitting Clips.
You can make a selectd region of a clip into a separate clip by
Splitting the Clip at the Selections From and Thru. By doing this, you
can execute various editing actions on just that new clip. For
instance, you could nudge it to the left or right with the Nudge
hotkeys. You can Split the Clip in either the Track pane or the Clips
pane by pressing F4 to open the Track Pane Options dialog, or the
Clips pane Options dialog, and pressing enter on Open the Split Clips
Dialog. In the dialog, there is a radio button for Splitting the clip
at Selection.

10. Quick Select Next Track.
In previous versions of CakeTalking, SHIFT+COMMA selected the current
track, then moved to the next track and selected it. This is a quick
way of selecting contiguous tracks. However the hotkey was failing
sometimes. In CakeTalking 8, SHIFT+COMMA will not select the current
track, but only move to the next track and select that track. So if
you want to make sure that the current track is also selected, first
select it with another hotkey, like CONTROL+ENTER, or COMMA, and then
select subsequent tracks with SHIFT+COMMA.

11. Arrowing Up and Down on a Track or Buses Peak Meter Column.
In previous versions of CakeTalking, when you were on a track or buses
Peak Meter column, pressing an Up or Down Arrow would not move you to
the previous or next track. You would just stay on the current track's
Peak Meter column. In CakeTalking 8, however, you can Up or Down Arrow
in the Peak Meter column and successfully move to the Peak Meter
column of the prior or next track.

12. Fixes.
a. Reading Meters in the Bus Pane was sometimes failing. This is
fixed.
b. Navigation in the track pane is often faster.
c. Using the Jump to Column hotkeys is faster.
d. As in Previous versions of CakeTalking, SHIFT+Z will unarm, unsolo,
and unMute all tracks and buses. Now, it also turns off Input Echo for
all tracks.

13. Remaining Issues.
a. SONAR 8 has a new soft synth called Beatscape. It's a new way to
create beats from loops and samples. Beatscape combines a
sophisticated 16-pad REX file player and beat slicer with per-pad
effects, a step generator, extensive MIDI control, and more. however,
as of SONAR 8..0.2, it is not yet accessible. But hopefully, by the
next version of SONAR 8, it will be accessible.
b. Step Sequencer. In Sonar 8.0.2, the TAB and SHIFT TAB hotkeys are
broken. They move to the next or prior enabled step. This is a SONAR
bug that has been reported. As a result, HOME and END, which move you
to the first or last enabled step in the sequence are also broken.

End of What's New

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-----Original Message-----
From: ddots-l-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:ddots-l-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Arnaud
Sent: 30 December 2008 16:22
To: ddots-l@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [ddots-l] so what's new in ct 8???


Hello all,

seems that no one have bothered to post a previous of what's new in ct
8 
in term of accessibility ioor virtual instrument support, etc...

come on, people, if you want to sell upgrades of ct, now it's time to 
tell us?...


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