Instruction Manual

93
Tutorial 1—The Basics
Tutorials
The software synthesizer itself must be routed to one of your audio outputs
in order for you to hear it. Your project might also contain audio data,
perhaps vocals, that you have recorded. To hear the audio data playing
back, you need to choose an output for the audio track that contains the
audio data. The output you choose for both the software synthesizer and
the audio data will be the one on your sound card that you have connected
to an amplifier and speakers, or to headphones.
Let’s insert a software synthesizer, Cakewalk TTS-1, to the tutorial project
file.
To Insert Cakewalk TTS-1 into a Project
1. Use the Insert-Soft Synths command and click Cakewalk TTS-1 on
the popup menu.
The Insert Soft Synth Options dialog appears.
2. In the Create These Tracks fields, deselect MIDI Source, because we
want to patch the pre-existing MIDI tracks into Cakewalk TTS-1.
3. Verify that the First Synth Audio Output option is checked. We’ll need
this track to route Cakewalk TTS-1 to our chosen audio output. The new
synth track will have Cakewalk TTS-1 already patched as an audio
input.
4. In the Open These Windows fields, select only the Synth Property
Page. This option opens Cakewalk TTS-1’s property page (interface).
5. Click OK.
SONAR opens the TTS-1 interface, and inserts a synth track that has the
Cakewalk TTS-1’s output 1 as an input. Feel free to look over the Cakewalk
TTS-1’s interface, but we will not be making any adjustments here in this
tutorial. Close the TTS-1 property page (interface) by clicking X in the
upper-right corner of the window.
Now that you have a software synthesizer available for use, you can
continue preparing the project for playback. We now need to direct our MIDI
tracks to the Cakewalk TTS-1.
To Choose MIDI Outputs for Your Project’s Tracks
1. In the Track view, click the dropdown arrow in the Output dropdown
menu in a MIDI track to display the track’s Output
menu. MIDI tracks display a MIDI icon just to the right of the track
number: