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newbie questions (lc with sonar...)


rambinator
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Hi everyone!

I'm new to this board and would like to introduce myself.

I've been reading here for quite a long time and have

finally decided to start building a midibox lc. I've now

ordered pcbs and parts from mike's midishop and can't

wait to start soldering :) I've allready done quite a lot of electronic diy project so this won't be much of a problem.

As I am planning to set up some sort of DAW, step by step, I still have some questions regarding the MboxLC and some aspects of working with it, buying software etc.

Since now I've been playing around with my yamaha clavinova as a masterkeyboard, an uc16 controler and orion platinum as a sequencer. The main problem I have with this setup is that orion's midi implementation is really poor as you can't use relative encoders and don't have any midi feedback. on the other hand it is quite easy and intuitive to use...

Recently I saw Sonar 3 at a friends house and was quite impressed how cakewalk products have developed (I had an old version of cakewalk, before cakewalk pro audio came out). Now I'm planning to set Sonar on my wishlist for christmas :)...

Nevertheless there are still some questions I couldn't answer surfing the web and reading this forum. So I hope there are some members in here, using Sonar and owning MidiboxLC...

1) As far as I understood, the Mackie Control is the best solution for controlling Sonar's mixer and effect plugins, right? But what about vsti/dxi- instruments? will I be able to controll their parameters? (will sonar "show" them to the box via LC-protocoll) or do I still have to use crappy uc16 (which I want to put on ebay) for this without midi feedback? I was reading some articles about Mackie Control and Sonar and some mentioned VSTI-Parameters but it was nowhere really described.

I read that Sonar will have an update soon to support forthcoming Mackie C4. Does that mean that instruments aren't supported yet in the way the mixer is? if I won't have midi feedback and have to assign every parameter via midi-learn I could also stick with orion...

2) Are there any german motorfader-group-orders going on at the moments? if not I will order some at albs anyway...

3) Would it be possible to have another 8 encoders on the LC which aren't connected to the din by default but could be connected by the software, using a spare dout line and some optocouplers (at the same time disconnecting the motorfaders and some buttons to provide spare dins)? or is that nonsense because lc-protocol won't support more than 8 encoders and another 8 (as if you had a mackie xt or sort of small c4, if the implementation of this device will get known) would have to use another midiport (forcing me to build another complete midibox lc)?

...well that's it for the moment :)

I hope that these questions aren't too dumb anyway.

I'm really glad I found a new project I can spend my sparetime with  ;D

cheers...

rambinator

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Hi rambinator,

I'm a Sonar 3 user and I'm building a MidiboxLC.  I put together some modules to test the functionality, although I haven't finished in yet

In Sonar 3 my only complaint was that it would work with the channel EQs built into Sonar Producer Edition.  Other VST effects and instruments usually worked fine.  Occasionally one would not automatically be recognized by the MidiboxLC.

I will be upgrading to Sonar 4 Producer soon.  Hopefully the built in channel EQs will be recognized in that version.

If you have questions about specific VST effects or instruments, I'll answer if I can.

xile

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Hi xile!

Thanks a lot for offering your advice. What I am not sure about at the moment is how it generally works if you use one of the "working" vst-instruments. The online manual I saw on my collegues daw just talked about how to control effects in a certain channel-strip.

So let's say you want to use one of the "bigger" vst instruments like absynth, vanguard or z3ta+. What do you have to do to remote control lfo parameters or filters like cutoff? are the parameternames displayed on your box's lcd?

I hope you allready found out about that :)

cheers

rambinator

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