Craig, how do you deal with organizing your sonar files?

[halljams]

I just read your article on computer speed ups. That stuff is great! I recently switched from Cubase to Sonar and am having trouble creating a scheme for saving and organizing the audio files. They have no names! I can't get the cubase way out of my head also. Am i doomed to have to rename and export a wave from sonar if i want to work on it elsewhere? Do you have any suggestions? Thanks for your time. This message has been edited by halljams on 10-22-2001 at 03:47 AM

[Anderton]

I save as a .BUN file (actually the format has a new name in 1.3, I can't recall offhand but it does the same thing -- save all associated files in one big bundle. This is similar to Acid's "save file with embedded audio" function. There is no "save with all media" option like Acid, which is a pity. I intend to keep bashing on Cakewalk to include this . If you want to use the files elsewhere, yes, you need to export individual tracks and import into the other sequencer. This isn't too hard, just solo a track and choose the export audio function. Solo the next track, export, etc. Until all sequencers have a common file format (ha ha ha!!), this is pretty much how you have to deal with file transfers among incompatible programs. [img]http://www.musicplayer.com/ubb/frown.gif[/img]

[Master Zap]

Dont forget the Tools menu! If you have e.g. soundforge it should appear in your TOOLS menu. You just select an audio clip, and do "Tools->Sound Forge" and Sound Forge pops up with this clip. Edit, close SoundForge, you are back in sonar, clip updates (and the change can still be UNDONE!) Although I understand your problem coming from Cubase, and also that I *do not* really 100% agree that the "cakewalk way" is the best (I would love to be able to keep the audio for each song saved in a folder near the song *if I wanted to*, if not simply beacuse for example my audio disk is getting full and I have an almost empty 40 gig disk sitting right beside it....), the best wasy to WORK (today) is to let "cakewalk do its thing". Dont care about the files as files. That they "really" are stored in your audiodata directory is a fact you just ignore..... and if you just ignore that... things work fine. [img]http://www.musicplayer.com/ubb/smile.gif[/img] /Z

[pumpcat]

This is an issue that's really starting to annoy me, now that I'm working at 24-bit and getting into higher track counts. I'm working on a pretty standard rock project, 24+ tracks at 24/44.1. I've been trying to back it up, but the Bundle file (.cwb) for a 5 minute song is over 1 GB, too big to fit on a CD-R. So now what do I do? The solution that I came up with is to do the whole .wav export thing, but it is kludgy at best, and I lose all of my edits, crossfades, etc. I was _really_ hoping that the new file-formats that came with v1.3 would finally provide us with a logical, useable, maybe even elegant file management system. No such luck, it's just the same wonky system they've had for years, with a bunch of new extensions... oh well. So what's the deal with AES-31 anyway? is it going to be the Holy Grail of DAW interoperability? the digital equivalent of 2" tape with people hauling around a caddied hard drive able to pop into any DAW and go? -Matt M

[Anderton]

<> The Microsoft Backup program on my Windows computer, clunky though it is, can save a file over multiple media. It just occurred to me that maybe your best bet is to create two CD-sized partitions, and save to those. When one fills up, the rest of the file will be written to the other one. The burn the contents of each partition on to a CD. I haven't tried this, but my backups to floppies and ZIPs would indicate that backing up to other hard drives would be possible. I may be saying something really dumb or really smart....

[Philip OKeefe]

The file management is probably the weakest area of Sonar. I [b]hate[/b] it! I prefer my Vegas method of file management. Each file has its own name, and I just put all the files for each song into its own individually named folder. If I can't get all 24 (or whatever) tracks onto a single CD-R, I just burn half on to one and half on to another. The way Sonar uses one master folder to store everything and a single BUN (or whatever it is now in 1.3) and cryptic "names" for saving files is driving me batty! Craig, please keep on griping to Cakewalk - they NEED to fix this! Phil O'Keefe Sound Sanctuary Recording Riverside CA http://members.aol.com/ssanctuary/index.html pokeefe777@msn.com

[halljams]

Regarding a song file being too big to back up on a cd... I have been toying with the idea of having one small partition per song being worked on, say 2.5 gigs, Setting the audio folder directory in sonar to the appropriate partion, for what ever the song is, then when i want to back up, i would use Power Quest's Drive image to copy the whole partition and break it up in portions that fit on cd's. I would just use 3 or 4 cd-rw's for each song and overwrite them each time i backed up. I have a question regarding power quest's compression... Is it ok to use it on audio files? Does anyone know what it does, how it compresses data? For that matter, is it ok to use it(drive image's compression) for backing up my primary OS drive?

[steven dunston]

The only way to do backups in SONAR is this: Make a backup of your entire Wav data directory. Mine is over 65gb right now. I have a removable bay with a 100gb drive in it, and at the end of my sessions every day I copy the new files to the backup drive. BUN files are problematic. They combine all your audio into one file, so if that file gets corrupted, you lose every bit of audio for the project. I just use File Export when I need to share audio clips between audio programs. With hard drive space getting cheaper every day, it doesn't bother me to make duplicates. Luckily, there aren't too many reasons to export, because SONAR does so many things well. I agree that the SONAR file system is its biggest weakness. I think that Cakewalk is also aware of this, and I hope that File Management is a big focus in SONAR 2.