Reference Guide

207
Changing track settings
Controlling Playback
The Track Outputs dialog opens.
4. Select the desired audio output port and click OK.
The audio output port is assigned to all selected audio tracks.
To assign the same audio output port to all stereo buses
1. In the Track view, click the small drop-down arrow in any stereo bus’ Output control
.
The Output Port menu appears.
2. Choose Set All Bus Outputs from the context menu.
The Output port submenu appears.
3. Select the desired audio output port.
The audio output port is assigned to all stereo buses
Choosing the instrument sound (bank and patch)
Electronic keyboards and synthesizers often contain hundreds or thousands of different sounds.
Each sound is known as a patch. The name comes from the early days of synthesizers, for which
you physically rewired (using patch cords) the oscillators and modulators to produce different
sounds. Patches are normally organized into groups of 128, called banks. Most instruments have
between 1 and 8 banks, but MIDI supports up to 16,384 banks of 128 patches each (that’s over 2
million patches).
The bank and patch settings in the Track view control the initial bank and patch of a track during
playback. Every time SONAR starts playback at the beginning of a project, the bank and patch
settings for the track are set to these initial values. Many instruments have descriptive names for
their banks and patches. SONAR stores these names in an instrument definition. If you are using an
instrument that supports General MIDI, your patch list will contain the 128 sounds that are defined by
the General MIDI specification.
Note: The Selected Track Outputs command is essentially a shortcut for the Tracks >
Property > Outputs command.
Note: Surround buses are ignored.
Note: Only hardware main outputs may be assigned, not other buses.
Note: Different MIDI instruments use different types of commands to change banks. SONAR
supports four common methods for changing banks. For information about the bank selection
method you should use with your MIDI gear, see your MIDI equipment’s documentation.