# Need help with configuring Sonar X2 with Kontakt...



## Damon (May 26, 2013)

Don't know if this is the right discussion room for this topic but I was wondering if someone could tell me how to map my midi in Sonar X2 so I can not have to open a new instance of Kontakt every track when I 'insert soft synth/kontakt'. I want to be able to have my woodwinds all in 1 instance of different woodwind sounds from Cinewinds, then open another instance for my brass and have different brass sounds for Cinebrass...etc, instead of opening every sound on a new instance. Can someone tell me step by step how to do this with Sonar X2? If you have Sonar X1, I'm sure it's pretty much the same thing. Greatly appreciated! 

-Damon


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## Reegs (May 26, 2013)

Hi Damon,

There's no quick way to have Sonar insert 16 midi tracks and have the channels auto-increment (though there should be...), so the procedure I would recommend is to use a template. Apologies if the below is overly detailed.

Here's the fastest way to set it up:
1) Start a new blank project
MIDI/SYNTH:
2) Load the three instances of Kontakt you want. Deselect all check boxes on the load prompt dialog.
3) In the tracks window right-click and Insert Mutlitple tracks. Select MIDI only (decrement the audio section to 0). Select the Kontakt 1 output and the number of midi channels you'll be sending to the instance (presumably, 16). Rinse and repeat for K2, K3.
3) Load your patches and assign the midi channel outs as desired in Kontakt. In the track view of Sonar, select the I/O from the tracks format dropdown (it might say Custom) and for each channel assign it a channel and a name matching the patch from the Kontakt Instance/Channel it serves.
AUDIO:
4) I'd assume you're planning for at least three audio stems to mix, or perhaps more (per-instrument?). Insert this number of audio tracks, rename them, and on the I/O section assign them to the right one of the 32 stereo outputs of each Kontakt instance you want to use. Assign the Kontakt output channels as such.
5) Tweak your audio channels plugin settings for any default EQ, etc, and connect them up to any buses or submixes. Route to master.
6) Save the completed template file using Save As... Template filetype in the templates directory, which can be found in the Edit>Preferences->Folder locations window.

Then you should be good to go! Every time you click File->New you'll see the setup and everything will insta-load in 30s-30min, depending on your template size!

It's also good practice to save a variant of the template without the synths or their patches loaded as a backup in case something gets dodgy loading a library later. Less work to rebuild.

HTH!


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## Hawkes (May 27, 2013)

Another thing you could do after you've done what Reegs said is this: Select the Kontakt audio output track and the 16 midi tracks (drag down over the track numbers at the far left of the tracks), then right click one of the tracks (on the left, where the track name/numbers are), choose 'save as track template', and save that as 'Kontakt 16' or something. Then, in the future when you want to load Kontakt with 16 tracks ready to go, you can go to the top menus in Sonar and choose insert>insert from track template>kontakt 16. 

After you've set up one instance of Kontakt by doing what Reegs said, save that track template, load it two or three more times (or however many different kontakt sections you'll need), then name your tracks and load instruments, then save that file as your sonar template. That will at least save you the time of manually setting up the 16 track multiple times.


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## wst3 (May 27, 2013)

So the other folks answered your question well, I'll only add that for Sonar the track template feature makes it easy to work. You don't have to load a really large master 'patch' with everything you might ever use. At least on my aging machine that makes life a lot easier.

There is a macro in the output section that rebuilds the outputs - it is your friend. And don't be too discouraged, but a lot of users (myself included) report a bug where the outputs do not appear with the correct names in the audio track drop-down menu. 

Once you get the track template configured you don't have to deal with that anymore!


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## Damon (May 27, 2013)

Wow, thanks guys for taking the time to show me this. Much appreciated!


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