The hurdle: Aardvark/NForce 2/Sonar 3....

[MikieNes]

Back to square one: In the interest of getting the ball rolling and reducing personal stress, I've decided to ditch Gigastudio once and for all. I want to use ONLY Sonar 3 (well, maybe adding SoundForge 7).

Can I get the quality samples integrated into my music that gigastudio promised (but, unfortunately couldn't deliver on my system) with Sonar 3 alone? (do I HAVE to get Kontakt/Halion or is Sonar 3 Producer sufficient?)

Here's my rig:
Athlon XP 2500+
512 MB PC2700 SDRAM
80 GB SEagate Barracuda IV ATA 133 7200 RPM
80 GB Maxtor Diamondplus 9 ATA 100 7200 RPM
AOPen AK79D-400VN NForce 2 Motherboard
NVidia 5200 AGP video card, 128 MB SDRAM
Onboard sound NForce Audio (software based?)
MPU-401 Comapitble MIDI Device
Aardvark 24/96
Asus CD RW Drive slave 1
Asus DVD drive slave 2
Windows 2000, System Pack 4

Even though I've RTFM, the Aardvark Configuration panel's a bit of a head-scratcher. While I underSTAND it when I read through, being able to work out how to CONFIGURE it for various scenarios is the bitch. I need to configure it to:

1. Record vocals with a "wet reverb" headphone mix (playing MIDI and audio back) and a "dry" Input into Sonar.
2. Record guitars while monitoring it along with backing tracks through studio monitors
3. Input MIDI from a kawai keyboard while monitoring backing tracks -- configuring the MIDI to play samples of a quality on par with Gigastudio's (I bought some Akai libraries I thought I could use with Gigastudio)

So my questions are (and they're big ones, I know):

1. What should the settings be for the Aardvark's control panel to achieve those ends?

2. With only my Aardvark, Sonar 3 Producer and the onboard sound to choose from, what should I be choosing to output quality MIDI?

3. CAN I obtain top quality MIDI performance with just what I have?

4. What should the MIDI settings be in Sonar 3 Producer with the Aardvark and onboard NForce chip?

5. How do I install Sonar 3 to use my "D" drive for soundfiles?

I must sound like a total dolt, but, comparatively, my rig with Cakewalk 9, a Delta 44 and Soundblaster was a frigging SNAP to configure and use. If somebody can help me with these 4 hurdles, I swear I will get busy and hassle no one for a significant length of time.

Thanks for your time, one and all....

[This message has been edited by MikieNes (edited 11-26-2003).]

[wogg]

1. I dunno, I use M-Audio.

Wait, it gets better...

I use a similarly setup nForce2 system, without the Aardvark though.

2. Use the Aardvark MIDI I/O (if it's got it, see #1) to connect to outboard MIDI gear and disable the on-board MIDI controller in BIOS. The on-board I/O is through an old school gameport dongle.

3. Sure!

4. When you choose MIDI I/O ports, highlight the Aardvark input, and the Aardvark and system soft synth for output. The system synth will be named "NVIDIA(R) DLS Synthesizer" if your using the nVidia nForce drivers.

5. That's in the Global Options on the Audio Data tab. Just name the path.

I saw this post on the Cakewalk web forums as well. Cool to see a fellow forum drifter.

[oops]

Vsampler3 comes with Sonar Producer Edition.
It will load akai,lm4,sf2,gig,wav,hal, and a few others. It works perfectly with the right setup. Be sure to visit cakewalk home page for the patch to update Vsampler etc. Afte you load the program.. Ps put the extra into Producer Edition.. Your upgrade price alone is worth just the Vsampler alone. Good luck.

[oops]

How's your Aardvark working with Nforce2 great???? Just wondering..

[MikieNes]

Thanks so much folks!

oops:

I can get audio out of my system with the Aardvark no problem. And I've been able to record a "spoken word" cd on one occasion with excellent success, but haven't attaempted any music production yet because I've been trying like hell to get Gigastudio working, with only bad results. Seemed like GS would crash anytime I tried to load an instrument more than a few MB in size. NOT what it was advertised as being capable of (especially under a robust system like I built SPECIFICALLY to use it! http://www.audioforums.com/forums/frown.gif )

Simplifying the equation seemed like the the best course of action (although I'm mad as hell at Nemesys now)

[oops]

Are you putting your giga samples on a seperate drive, as suggested by another forum member??? Are you using asio drivers??
And; are you putting the latency slider up to about 30mls with turbo on??? This should work for. Ps do not overclock your videocard. What are you using for video card? Matrox will work but needs to load only the latest drivers, also does not like to have dual monitor support on. Geforce ti cards work well. Not sure about the 5200's. Anyone else?


[This message has been edited by oops (edited 11-27-2003).]

[MikieNes]

Yes, the samples were on a separate drive, and I have been using the drivers recommended by Aaardvark. I didn't set the latency as high as you recommended; although I tweaked it twice as an experiment, I left it at the default -- when Sonar opened it said 1.3 ms.

Didn't overclock the video card either.

I don't think it was an issue of latency. I couldn't get to the point where I actually used any effects in realtime; Gigastudio was crashing every time I tried to LOAD a sample over about 25 MB. And, with 750 MB of SDRAM, having suffcient memory shouldn't have been a problem -- nor did I have a lot of background services running.

But I've given up on gigastudio. I'll just use Sonar 3 as a standalone product -- at least my samples will still be useable, apparently.

Thanks for your replies, though. http://www.audioforums.com/forums/smile.gif

[oops]

Its common practice to put the latency slider up to 24 mls with asio while mixing. Latency doesn't matter at that point as all tracking should be pretty much done with. After that I usually record the part in midi then bounce it to a software sampler. This should work for most situations where you have more tracks to record after doing a bit of mixing where you are loading the cpu with plugs etc. Hope this helps.

[MikieNes]

So oops:

I want to be sure I've got this right:

1. you write your MIDI part in a sequencer (in my case, Sonar)

2. open the MIDI files in, say, Gigastudio,

3. use the MIDI files to play the samples,

4. save them as audio,

5. import the MIDI-converted-to-audio track into your sequencer?

Is that about right?

[oops]

Originally posted by MikieNes:
So oops:

I want to be sure I've got this right:

1. you write your MIDI part in a sequencer (in my case, Sonar)

2. open the MIDI files in, say, Gigastudio,

3. use the MIDI files to play the samples,

4. save them as audio,

5. import the MIDI-converted-to-audio track into your sequencer?

Is that about right?

Exactamungo!

[MikieNes]

Awesome! Thanks!

:-)

But now I'm gonna tackle the Sonar 3 manual! Holy CRAP it's huge!

[oops]

Originally posted by MikieNes:
Awesome! Thanks!

:-)

But now I'm gonna tackle the Sonar 3 manual! Holy CRAP it's huge!

Toss it aside and start making tunes.
It's a fast read if you skim. Use it more as a guide, the help button from within Sonar works well also.
Here is some fun. Load Cakewalk midi drum session in a midi track,Load Edirol VSC in an audio track,tell the midi track to play the soft VSC. Open Drum Session and pick a style, on the right double click the patterns to get them to jump to the bottom mix panel. Hit the spacebar(play) and you should hear a drum track.
Go to another midi track, and pick looper from the musiclab folder. Also tell it to play the Edirol VSC. From looper pick a style from the left and a pattern from the right. Hit spacebar(play) you should now here a drum track, and piano. Open VSC Change the piano track to a bass track if thats what you chose from looper, or guitar if thats what you chose from looper.
Go back to the looper, and in that midi box leftclick to open the ntonyx style enhancer, open its dropdown menu and select bass gliding. Have fun.. Hope this helps.

[Bops2000]

"Its common practice to put the latency slider up to 24 mls with asio while mixing. Latency doesn't matter at that point as all tracking should be pretty much done with".

Dam it ! another good common sense thing, I kick my arse for never thinkin about it.