The standalone version is very useful for experimental work. It avoids the need for setting up a project in a DAW, which can sometimes be well worth avoiding.
A major problem though is that anything developed in standalone cannot be transferred to the VST, except as either audio or as midi. This means that all of the settings used in the standalone are lost. Yes, one could work through all of the standalone settings and apply them to the VST, but that’s a long job and one thinks “Why did I bother?”.
It seems strange that it’s not possible to transfer those standalone settings directly across to the VST. That facility would be a major plus to the whole experience.
I don’t use the standalone version except for doodling, but what’s preventing you from just saving the project in the standalone version and opening it in the DAW version?
I just did it. Created a project with the Stand-Alone version. Then opened a new Project in Logic Pro, assigned SynthV to a track. Inside of the SynthV plug-in GUI(not the Logic Pro GUI), Go to File > Open, select the stand-alone project, boom, it is 100% inside of Logic Pro now! Yay! All this time and I never knew it did this. Very cool, indeed, man!
i export the instrumental 2-track from Sonar, import into the standalone SV app. set up tempos, changes etc as needed to sync all up. then either import midi, or a vocal for vocal to midi, or 99% of the time, just write the notes and import the lyrics off my lyrics sheet. then once i’m (mostly happy) i’ll export the vocals as WAV. the import those into the Sonar project file. this keeps the Sonar project “lighter” in terms of virtual instruments etc, particularly in my mix projects (which generally only uses audio clips - my recording project contains all the virtual stuff so i have room in the mix for fx and mastering tools).
on very very rate occasions would i use SV ARA in Sonar (or Next if stemming a mix). i think keeping the discipline in recording vs mixing (i’m old and feeble minded) keeps things neater when separated processes. not to say sometimes i do re-introduce a VI into the mix project when i’m really thinking that “one thing” needs to be updated differently than i recorded it.