Track-by-track playback

SONAR lets you play back any combination of tracks at one time by changing each track’s status. You can control the status of each track with the individual controls that are on every track, or with the global controls in the Control Bar’s Mix module. For more information about the Mix module, see Mix module.

Figure 43. The Mix module.

A. Mute B. Solo C. Arm D. Input Echo E. Live Input PDC Override F. Bypass All Effects G. Exclusive Solo H. Dim Solo I. Automation Read (playback) J. Automation Write (recording) K. Offset mode

There are several different status settings for each track:

Table 20.  

Status	What it means
Normal	The track plays unless one or more of your other tracks is soloed.
Muted	The track is not played, but you can turn it on while playback is in progress.
Archived	The track is not played, and you must stop playback to re-enable it. Archived tracks do not tax your CPU during playback so they can be used to store alternate takes.
Soloed	Only those tracks that are designated as solo tracks are played; all others are muted.
Armed	The track is armed for recording.
Mono/Stereo (audio tracks only)	The track plays back in either mono or stereo, depending on what the individual track setting is in the Track Inspector (see Track Inspector overview).
Phase normal or inverted (audio tracks only)	If a track was accidentally recorded out of phase with another track, the Phase button in the Track Inspector lets you reverse the phase of a track.

While playback is in progress, you can mute and unmute tracks in any combination, which means you can hear only the tracks that you want. You can change the status of a track in the Track view, the Console view, the Track Inspector, or the Mix module in the Control Bar. If a track is both muted and soloed, it does not play. Mute has precedence.

The track status is saved with the SONAR project file. If you save a SONAR project as a standard MIDI File, however, all tracks are saved without mute, solo, or archive indicators.

 

See:

The Mix module

Silencing tracks

Soloing tracks

Inverting the phase of a track

Changing tracks’ mono/stereo status