Leaderboard

Like a lot of definitions those definitions or interpretations thereof have changed over time, especially per genre, such as w/ dance and hip hop where guys are producing/composing beats and where those two terms are one and the same in the end. As a doom metal musician I actually consider those terms to be the same thing too. These days I think you'd have to say something more like "audio engineering is not composition" in order to get any clear separation.

After you finish installing Samplitude, an activation dialog appears and takes you to that page.

My product is compost. Is that close enough?

Tom , Thanks for posting this. I'm starting a new one that really needs some better sounding natural sounding acoustics. I really need to Stop and spend some time on experimenting with the sound , instead of feeling rushed and just jumping in and start recording. You made me exhale a little slowly and start thinking again. mark

Sampletank 4 (and all IK instruments) all use OpenGL for their UI. OpenGL isn't provided by Windows, it's actually provided by your video card driver. Video card drivers almost always need to be updated/maintained by hand. Windows won't do it right. You may want to update your video card drivers. If Sampletank crashes when you first insert it, that would be the most likely cause. If Sampletank doesn't crash when you first insert it, but rather when you try to open a project you saved using it. That's a completely different kind of issue. Your description of the problem is very unclear. Problems with Sampletank once it's open and the other things in your first message about instruments and arpeggios, sounds more like an installation problem, which could very well be your crashing issue as well. Installing Sampletank and all the sound libraries can involve a bit of pain (especially the larger MAX package). You really need to read and install it exactly how IK describes. You should have a Sampletank 4 content directory. You tell Sampletank where this is in the Sampletank Settings dialog, Sound Content panel. It should have the path to your Sampletank 4 content. Which is where you should have installed all the content by downloading and running all the content installers, one at a time. Your Sampletank 4 content library should be stored in a directory you have write privileges on. This can often mess people up, since the installer runs as admin and they stick the content someplace they can't actually write as a user. There are other ways to make this fail also, sadly. If you really have installed everything correctly and you have updated your video card drivers and it still crashes, I hate to tell you this but there is zero chance IK support will be able to help you in the slightest. I have YEARS of history trying to get them to fix bugs where I've given them exact steps to reproduce the problem, which they confirmed would crash for them to only to have it not be fixed. The good news is that it's not crashing like this for most people (me for example) so odds are it's something about your config and installation. But again only you know how you installed it and configured it.

I really wanted to like Samplitude. I got the demo a few years back and tried to get into it, but then the 1980's called and said that they wanted their UI back.

Yesssss. Don't be a stranger! Hope your time away was for good things. Great dynamics in this piece. I liked the synth arpegg noodle around 1:00 mark. Catchy. As per your usual, many elements come and go and are balanced to mix perfection. The only thing I might ask about is adding some more low end weight to the toms, bass, and kick. As they are, very polished and controlled. Nothing up top is overwhelmed by mud. So kudos there. And it might be just me because I really like bass-end stuff. But I think just a bit more heft, even if it were just the tom fills, might be interesting to try. It's all so subjective. And you certainly got your $$$ worth out of Omnisphere! Do you have Omni 1 or 2? I just have 1, never upgraded, always wondered of 2 was worth it. Lastly, the guitar work is spot on for that grand epic atmosphere, good power there, well done! great to have you and your tunes back, Dan! -Tom

The ST4 UI and preset loading system is a bit weird at first. Groove3 has a SampleTank 4 Explained video (with Eli Krantzberg) that isn't that bad (if you happen to have a sub). Though I don't think it goes into the included multis all that much, since that section actually was expanded after the initial software release. But if you want to learn the interface and some of the more complex features it is maybe the best video guide I've seen. ST4 is better than ST3 by a good ways. I'm not sure I've ever used the drum kits that much, they don't seem as good as Superior Drummer 3/EZDrummer/Addictive Drums 2/etc. But they are certainly usable. The big thing I wish they might address is that ST4 lost the visible keyswitch guide that ST3 instruments had. This was very nice with the Miroslav instruments. In ST3 you could see the keyswitch guide but in ST4 it's just some red colored keys. You can see what articulation is active in the main parts view (shows up under the instrument name) but that's it. Sampletank has never been home of the deeply sampled super-realistic scripted instruments you can find in Kontakt. But for a rompler its sounds aren't all that bad. I know there are still some outstanding issues with 4.0.9 (check KvR for the thread). But at least for me 4.0.9 and the sounds update that went with it, addressed most of the problems. I still don't trust the VST3 version though and stick with the VST2. For Sampletank 3 this was pretty much required, for Sampletank 4 I believe the VST3 should be stable, but the long history of it crashing (when the VST2 wouldn't) kind of makes me avoid it.

You may need to download each of the Sampletank sound installers, unzip them and run them and point them to the same directory. Trying to get around the installer by "hand unzipping" may result in more problems. There are a lot of downloads and installers for Sampletank content (even more if you are doing the full MAX version) and it takes forever to fully unzip and run all of them. When you are finally done, start the stand alone version and it will rebuild the database. Which takes forever also. When it's all done though you should have a ton of presets even for the SE version.

I also have BFD3. SSD5 and Trigger. Superior Drummer 3 I am really pleased with and find it logical and sounds great. But I am just learning drum programming. I have not really done much with my own music but enjoy mixing a lot. Most of my work is within live sound and TV/video, Since I joined Cakewalk many moons ago... I have learnt so much from here. I am now retired and have a modest studio set up here above my stables and need to work on some of my own stuff that I wrote when I was 19+ which I never got to put down. All the best. Gary

For your sheepish compositions absolutely ??

The thing is.....I have heard some great composers who didn't have mixing/production chops. So no, production is not composition but in this day and age composers need either someone who can do it or they need to learn to do it. Makes all the difference online (where most music is heard nowadays). Also, it is possible to change composition with production now.........they pretty much go hand in hand IMHO.

Thanks Matt and others for chiming in. I think I have finally found the answer which was something I overlooked. Since I recently installed ST4 I was pretty sure I had the latest version. Wouldn't you know it was version 4.0.7 and not version 4.0.9. I uninstalled that version and reinstalled 4.0.9 from the IK website>products area. FWIW I went to their forum and this has been occurring on pro Tools , Ableton and Fruity Loops to name a few...so this was not a Cakewalk issue. 4.0.7 and maybe earlier versions are buggy. I loaded the old version into Studio One and I had some kind of a default dummy graphic. I guess the SE library is lighter than I thought it was. Scanned that twice. Unzipped multiple files and still only have maybe a handful of sounds there. Shouldnt ST 4 show up on my Custom shop ? I knew something was amiss when I seen the default graphic. See the pics below. If you have the grapic in the first pic there's a problem. Looks as if there's an issue with my TRacks too.

I tried to explain that to my friend's band too... ?

@Noel BorthwickNice idea, man everything I do is 100% Cakewalk really, let me post an suggest the last thing I did, instrumental experimental, acoustic tracks and some oft synths: Instruments played: Ronrocos (2) Charango Acoustic Guitar Acoustic and electric drums Electric bass Caxixis Cymbals Rhodes electric piano (Waves E88) Wurlitzer (two different; Waves E200 and Arturia V1) Some Kontakt freebies: Aurorror, DrumCircle Lite and Free Fall Several Waves plugins fro metering and Master bus (see pic), Two oldies as bus/send reverb: Lexicon Hall reverb and the good old Perfect Space... No other FX really. photo by joshua earle

many thanks for the listens . . . and much obliged for any comments.

by Woter Hisschemöller is a free Web app for creating rhythm patterns. It's also available in a desktop version for Windows, Mac and Linux, and you can get the installers or source codes at GitHub: https://github.com/hisschemoller/music-pattern-generator

I wouldn't put too much into Windows icons. The whole system for how that works is kind of broken. Software can be installed and work 100% and still not have the right Windows icons. If you Google around you'll find tons of people with issues and advice on rebuilding the icon cache etc. But it can be a sign something is wrong too. I'm not sure what's in the SE library (I have MAX plus a huge collection of Sampletank 3 libraries that Sampletank 4 loads/uses). You may need to download some installers though. Here's the sound list: https://www.ikmultimedia.com/products/include/st4/soundlist/SampleTank_4_SE_Instruments.pdf That's a pretty big list of instruments (30gigs). Sampletank 4.0.9 has definitely been better than a few of the earlier releases. You might want to search your computer to make sure you don't accidentally have older versions of the plugins in other directories. If your Sampletank 4 content dir isn't near 30gigs I'd say you're missing something.

Dan I recognized High Road as something from you since I think you have a signature sound/style to your music. Just sit back, relax, let the music take hold and you won't be disappointed. The mix sounds really good to my ear. Welcome back! Bjorn

Hey , Thanks for the input so far. To Tom , yeah the cello didn't come in until that point . I guess I should have just said featuring Mandolin. The cello was added as an after thought after everything else was done. Seems like everything I've been posting (that I think is worthy) has cello in it . I guess I really need to spend more quality time with it. To Gary , 2 of the 4 Sonar 7 drum loops I used , had a really sub sounding kick , the bass guitar was pretty thin , so that's probably where the deeep stuff came from. As far as the bass sucking sound , if it was mainly from the short break it may have been from the reversed reverb on the acoustic. If not , Iv'e been told several times that my bass sucks .. mark

When they said Flash Sale they weren't kidding! Thanks for the review @MeshI'll keep it on my wishlist for the next sale

Freddy and Geeare thank you both for the kind words. Dan, certainly I care, and much appreciate you taking the time to give me some constructive feedback. Evidently I will have to go back and work on the mix with an eye (ear) toward a "finished" piece. I labored over mic placement and, you may have noticed my comments at the end, learning the piece. As you said, capturing an acoustic can be "challenging", especially in a small room. Often the better the signal chain, the more "bad room" you get, at least that has been my experience... Again many thanks to all of you who took the time to listen and leave comments. Tom

The new Orchestral Tools Sine player is behaving well as a Vst in Cakewalk for me. The free Layers library contains full ensembles of orch, brass, strings and woodwinds. I am impressed by the quality and flexibility of the free and unlimited orch library. The learning curve to master the nuances offered within the player looks steep, but the end result is going to be worth it. https://orchestraltools.helpscoutdocs.com/article/148-sine-quick-start Getsine.com Registration requires an email, promises no spam. Total download was 25gb or so.

Very nice piece! What others have said about the ambience really comes down to a weakness in many orchestral libraries: There is no physical way to sit in a spot where all of those instruments sound so close to you. But, if you smother them in reverb, you'll just smear everything up and ruin it. So, reverb isn't the way to address it. It can certainly help define a space, but it is also very important to place the instruments so that they aren't in the lap of the listener. It's really difficult to do with a sample library, but it can be done with the right tools. So, in light of all of that rambling, I think you did a great job in putting together a very listenable, coherent piece! Congrats! Dan

Hi all, here's another project (I think) I've nearly finished. Based loosely on a murder that happened close to where I live some time ago, the story unfolds from the murderer's viewpoint as he taunts his victim, his wife. It's definitely an "album track" owing to its duration but I'm hoping it has enough going on to carry it without anyone yawning, but please do shout up if you do yawn and it's my fault. I hope you enjoy it despite my woeful attempts to play lead guitar.

I think you did a great job of capturing the guitar with both, the sparkle and the body of it. That's pretty difficult without a lot of practice and a real decent mic. Usually, acoustics tend to sound all boxy if you aren't careful, but you avoided that very well. If you care what I think beyond the point of your experiment, then I would say that a little compression of the lead wouldn't hurt. just to smooth out some very slight abrasiveness, and the L/R guitars, IMO, would work better if they were either pushed back a hair, or they played the same thing together. It was slightly distracting to have the mix shift from side to side in the parts where the L/R guitars were quiet separately, with the lead the only thing holding the middle. Dan

Note that mixing RAM with different memory chip config can cause issues. Having the same timing alone doesn't eliminate all compatibility issues.

may want to review Process > Find/Change

Neil, please keep us posted if you receive any updates. A viewer of one of my SampleTank 4 vids is having the same issue so any help in finding a solution would be great. There has to be some common denominator somewhere that triggers this on some setups and not others.

Answering myself: track templates to the rescue

@Starise...I've trouble ticketed the exact crash message you have posted to IK,as I'm getting the same with a brand new ST4 install. Neil

maybe this thread will help.

I think white icons are VST3 (you can see the 3 in the icon) orange are VST2 (looks like a plug), green are 32 bit

And if you don't have Kontakt, an alternative to free Kontakt libraries is to use the free sfz format Virtual Playing Orchestra library for the Plogue sforzando player (the player is from the creators of the Aria player used by Garritan): http://virtualplaying.com/virtual-playing-orchestra/ "This is a full, free orchestral sample library featuring section and solo instruments for woodwinds, brass, strings and percussion." "Virtual Playing Orchestra is a free orchestral sample library, in sfz format, that attempts to emulate multiple articulations of the solo and section instruments from a full orchestra using the best free samples from Sonatina Symphonic Orchestra, No Budget Orchestra, VSCO2 Community Edition, University of Iowa, Philharmonia Orchestra and extra free samples from Mattias Westlund, author of Sonatina Symphonic Orchestra." https://www.plogue.com/products/sforzando.html The main drawback to sforzando is that it's not multi-timbral, so you may need to insert multiple instances of the plugin to achieve what you need.

Thank you for listening and providing feedback, Gary! I apologize for taking so long to respond, my Dad's been in the hospital for several weeks and it seems that my time is no longer my own. Melodyne is incredibly useful for creating harmonies and I often use it in the writing process, but usually once I have them I set them aside and record the harmonies the old fashioned way. It sounds a lot better to my ear that way.

This track is called Sunset. It is from my newly released CD entitled "Midwest Stroll". I'm currently in the Smoothjazz.com Indie Chart and Main Chart top 100. All recorded and mixed in Sonar BandLab. https://soundcloud.com/andromidus/sunset-radio-version-1

Here is a colab effort with about five other members of the forum. The only ones that aren't members of the forum is the singer and the drummer. This was all done in CbB from start to finish. We have the project files if needed. Remember

Here's a jazzy "spy" style instrumental .... https://soundcloud.com/jazzstan/elegant-espionage Red3 Compressor, BReverb, Replika, Px-64, Sonnitus reverb.

Here's an instrumental "Funky Fat Cat" https://soundcloud.com/jazzstan/funky-fat-cat Boost11, BReverb, Px64, Red3 Compressor, Replica... I freeze all midi-driven synth tracks

My first DAW was Cakewalk for DOS This song, "Solo" 48hkz 24bit heavily utilizes Melodyne Studio, it has sidechaining on the vocals using Cakewalk's PC4K S-Type Bus Compressor to cut a vocal impression out of the mix. Instrument Plugins: NI Session Guitarist Electric Sunburst, NI Scarbee Jay-Bass, Dimension Pro (pad name: "As Quiet As Possible"), NI Abbey Road 80s Drummer, NI Vintage Organs (patch, "Green Onions"), Guitar Lead: Orange Tree Samples Evolution Rock Standard Plugin (user made preset), NI Symphony Series String Ensemble, Effects plugins: Kazrog - True Iron, Fab Filter Pro-L2, Heavy use of the CBB ProChannel, Overloud - Breverb 2, Overloud - ReMatrix possibly utilizing PerfectSpace impulse waves and 2 Overloud impulse packs, Nomad Factory Blue Tube DL3D, Waves Vocal Rider, Izotope Ozone 9 Imager. Mixed on an Intel I9 12 core 24 thread processor w/Nvidia 1080TI graphics card, 16GB ram 3000mhz (overclocked), RexRed is currently #3 on Reverbnation's global charts for singer songwriter and is placing at #33 globally on the charts in all genres All of the over 200 songs of RexRed on Reverbnation are made in Cakewalk. http://rexred.com RexRed- Flock of Angels (gay romance) channel on YouTube receives an average of 2 million views a month, the original songs in the videos there were all made in Cakewalk. ?. The song, "Solo" is completely original and all rights are owned by RexRed. All of the tracks have been frozen but they can be unfrozen to reveal the inner settings, just keep a copy of the project if it becomes corrupted by accidental edits/saves. One of the guitar tracks is comprised of wave files created in an earlier version of the project so they cannot be unfrozen. I can create a new project and I could include them in the project muted if you wish. The genre of this project is, "psychedelic rock ballad" I would say, if this song is chosen as a candidate I will make the project available in a onedrive link. As for the REmatrix impulses from PrefectSpace, a generic reverb could be assigned to these tracks if there are any problems, I can provide the impulses but they are all in the wave folder of PerfectSpace and the name of the impulse packs I have from Overloud are JPVerbs and Dusty Racks Volume 1. I have over 200 songs on Reverbnation, choose another song or several if you like.

Hi Noel, Recently released this track and video made with CbB. Not sure what genre it is, but it's somewhere between unusual rock and electronic.

Large midi comp. Not sure if you will have all the kontakt samples. But I can freeze the tracks Will add screen shots if required.

Live recording mixed and mastered in Cakewalk

Uses mostly Cakewalk plugins like sonitus compressor and melodyne I am remastering it on the weekend with some new techniques.

Noel here is a song and video that a few of us on the forum put together. We got all the info and project files if you decide to use it.

I forgot to list the plugins. For Drive, the non-native plugins are: Izotope Neutron. Image Line Delay TAL Reverb II Soundtoys FilterFreak1, Sie-Q Nicky Romero Kickstart Sleepy-Time DSP Lisp (Desser) For Voyager: Neutron

Awesome, I'll be at Namm with GHS Strings, looking forward to saying hi again Noel. I have two for you, both released 2019: Voyager at the Heliopause Ambient instrumental, with lyrics in morse code. Here's a music video with 3D animation I did - all of which are scientifically accurate recreations of Voyager's journey through the solar system. Drive Synth heavy dance track with vocals.

Having heard some tunes here recently where the drums were a bit underwhelming, can I start by complimenting your drum kit, and programming if that applies? If those are live drums, as they sound, I'd say very good on those! Super tasteful. Oh, btw the guitar tone was friggin' fantastic. Your choices in the 2:50 area should be studied in an improv class. Wonderful! Love the smooth jazz genre, and thanks for sharing this! cheers, -Tom