Reference Guide

788

Software instruments

Muting and soloing soft synth tracks

SONAR automatically places any synth and MIDI tracks that use soft synths into a group that makes

muting and soloing the tracks easy:

• To mute or solo a MIDI track that is patched to a synth track, simply mute or solo the MIDI track—

SONAR automatically mutes or solos the correct synth track. If another MIDI track uses the synth

track as an output, SONAR leaves the synth track unmuted.

• To mute or solo all the MIDI tracks that are patched to a specific soft synth, simply mute or solo

the synth track that the MIDI tracks are patched into.—SONAR automatically mutes or solos all

the correct MIDI tracks.

• Click the M or S buttons (mute and solo, respectively) next to the soft synth’s name in the Synth

Rack view. This mutes or solos all the tracks associated with this instance of the soft synth.

• Click the Solo button on the soft synth’s property page. The Solo button functions the exact

same way as the Solo button on the source track/bus.

You can use the Mute and Solo buttons in the Track view, Synth Rack, or Console view.

Rename synths in the Synth Rack view

It is possible to rename synth in the Synth Rack view. This is especially useful if you use many

instances of a particular synth and you need to distinguish each instance.

To rename a synth

Double click the Name field of the synth you wish to rename.

Multi-port soft synths

A multi-port soft synth allows you the option of using a different synth track for every output that the

soft synth has. This allows you to use different plug-in effects for each sound (or in some cases,

group of sounds) that a soft synth produces. For example, if a soft synth can produce 16 sounds at

the same time, and has 4 outputs, you can send any of the 16 sounds out through any of 4 different

outputs, giving you a choice of 4 different plug-in configurations for that soft synth. You would use 4

different synth tracks: one for each output. If a soft synth can produce 8 sounds at the same time,

and has 8 outputs, you could use 8 synth tracks and 8 plug-in configurations. If you need more plug-

in configurations or just more sounds, you can insert more copies of the same soft synth, using new

synth tracks for all of the new copy’s outputs. You can also send all the MIDI tracks out the same

output and synth track if you don’t need separate plug-ins for each sound, or just want to use the soft

synth’s internal effects.