
You can now tremble in fear for a bit, because you're adding something to the registry, but go ahead and click on 'Yes' - everything should go smoothly, and you'll be informed that the profile was added. You'll be asked if you want to add this information to the registry. Now double-click on any of the encoder options you want to add (for example, LAME MP3 High Quality Stereo.reg).Inside that, open the External Encoder Profiles folder. Don't let it auto-run instead, Explore the CD and open the Utilities folder. Insert the Sonar 4 distribution CD-ROM into your drive, as this is where the encoder profiles dwell.This involves installing a profile for the encoder and telling Sonar where to look to find the encoder it's supposed to use. Second, you need to take advantage of a new Sonar 4 feature, 'Configure External Encoder', to get LAME to work. However, it seems that no one's getting prosecuted for doing the occasional MP3 conversion using 'freebie' tools (although if MP3 is a significant part of what you do, you may do your conscience good by getting an 'official' encoder). It's widely available on the web, and I found a copy at Now, I can't comment as to the legalities of using the LAME encoder without paying royalties to those who invented the MP3 format, and LAME is said to be for educational purposes only.
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However, there's still a free encoder option: the LAME encoder.įirst, you have to download the LAME software. Unfortunately, it's not possible (at least, not yet) to get CWENC to work with Sonar 4. Many Sonar users chose the CWENC MP3 encoder as an alternative to Sonar 's 'optional at extra cost' MP3 encoder.

But once you do you'll find yourself zipping around in much less time. It takes a little effort to break old habits and start to think of the Navigator as your primary way to get around a project. Resizing the window resizes the contents as well, so you can do anything from floating the Navigator to a second monitor and maxing out its size for easy navigation, to slimming it down and using it as a floatable Navigator strip on your main monitor. Go View / Navigator, and the Navigator appears in a separate window that supplements the main Navigator strip. There's one other cool navigation technique. For projects without a lot of tracks, I recommend the Tall option, as that makes the tracks much easier to see. The other pop-up menu selection involves track height within the Navigator view. This is particularly useful for the 'Horz Zoom to Project' function, as hitting a key can instantly fit your entire project within the Clips pane and Navigator view. This may seem redundant - isn't it simple enough just to resize the rectangle? Yes, but making the zoom levels part of the pop-up menu options means that key bindings can trigger them. You can also select one of six horizontal zoom levels. In any event these commands, regardless of how you invoke them, now affect both the Clips pane and the Navigator.

Many of these commands (Fit Project to Window, Hide Selected Tracks, Track Manager, etc) duplicate those found under the 'View Options' button in the toolbar above the Tracks pane. Right-click within the Navigator view strip and you'll find multiple options. This is all fairly basic, and a lot of Sonar users could stop here and still get a lot out of the feature. You can also click inside the rectangle and drag it around, which acts like putting a magnifying glass over the tracks. Make the rectangle smaller to 'zoom in' on the tracks on the Clips pane enlarge the rectangle and you see more tracks. On top of the strip is a resizable rectangle - and that's where the fun begins: the area defined by the rectangle also defines what you'll see in the Clips pane. You can make this strip appear and disappear with the Show/Hide Navigator button (located above the Tracks Pane), as well as dragging the separator bar between the Navigator view and Track view up or down to change the Navigator view's height. The Navigator view is a strip that sits in the upper part of the Track View and shows the entire project at a glance. Such is certainly the case for the Navigator view, which is more than just an overview it's a powerful tool for getting around a project. Quite a few of the new features in Sonar 4 seem fairly straightforward - until you dig a little deeper.

This month, find your way around projects, undertake hands-free recording, configure an external MP3 encoder and create pseudo-Track Folders for MIDI. The Navigator view provides another point of entry for accessing commands that relate to sizing projects and fitting them to the available space.
