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In his guide, Pete sez... <<I beg forgiveness for the marketing-like blurb, but please do check [Edge] out.>> I know he can't shamelessly promote Edge without looking like a shill, so I will. Edge is fast and efficient, and improvements like Collections shows someone at Microsoft is thinking "hmm, I wonder what would actually help users."

Not sure why they decided it`s a leap year. Hope the 3rd code isn't on the 29th. Just saying?

This guide was written by @Pete Brown from Microsoft who is also an active DAW user. I thought I'd post it since it takes a common sense approach to getting the best performance from a PC, rather than some of the stuff out there with outdated nonsense that dates back to the XP days https://aka.ms/Win10AudioTweakGuide

But where are the $4 deals of yore ...

Got it. I don't agree with the decision to disable Defender, but I get where you're coming from. What you don't end up protected from, however, are drive-by malware installs that use browser exploits to install software on your PC, Mac, Phone, etc. The owners of the sites often don't even know that the malware distribution is happening there, because it comes through compromised ad networks, hacked sites, posted comments, etc. You can still manage a lot of that by being careful and aware, but some of these things can be tricky. I still use Defender, but I've also done a few other things in this house to help keep all the PCs safe (I have a 12yo and 15yo, each with their own PCs since they were 6, and my wife also has her own PC) Ad-block. I felt guilty at first, but ad networks were a primary distributor of drive-by malware, so I gave up, That, and the ads that were pushing content all over the page were so distracting that I just couldn't function anymore. Pi-Hole. I have a pi-hole for the house. Originally, I installed it so I could actually surf the web with my iPad Air. It was otherwise choking due to all the supplemental ad/tracking/scripting going on on pages. It really made a huge difference. I've unblocked the domains for xbox achievements, and some telemetry, but otherwise, it blocks a ton. Before it was mandated, uninstalled and disabled Flash on all the PCs in the house. Way too many exploits Way back, completely disabled Java on all browsers on all PCs. Hot mess of exploits that was. The only reason Java was on any of the PCs was (is) for Minecraft. Since then, there's only been one instance of malware in the house, from when my son was trying to download a Minecraft texture pack, and clicked the wrong download button (I hate those sites). He learned a valuable lesson that day, and no one has had problems since. There's a person on Gearslutz who PM'd me about malware they got. The vector there was their router, which has apparently been compromised. Again, didn't require any bad behavior on the part of the user, other than not making sure the router was up to date (and even then, not sure that would have stopped it). One thing I did recently enable is Windows Defender Controlled Folder Access. The first time you enable this, it's a bit of a pain as file access starts silently failing for some apps. But once you let them through, it's all good. Given the massive rise in ransomware, this seemed prudent. Defender is pretty low-touch and low resource usage. Worth a try if you ever decide to give it another shot. Pete

My home page says 371,592 trackers and ads blocked, 5.2 hours time saved. But they could be just making that up. It's not like I've been keeping track. A more useful metric would be how many hours I've wasted watching cat videos.

I've had some time to play with Legendary Low Strings. Didn't take long to figure it out, as it's one of those one-trick libraries that just sounds great with zero effort. And golly, does it sound good. We're talking animated Disney princess-movie good.

I finally got bass mint. At $29 it’s lowest it’s ever been as was always an exception to these voucher codes.

For those not old enough to get the reference...

I picked up the bx_console SSL 4000 G. It just seemed too hard to pass up. I wasn't going to let software gas get in the way of saving up for my new guitar amp but here we are. ? Rocky

It sounds great, no denying....but I find it sad that fewer and fewer people are playing real instruments. Just sitting down with an acoustic and twiddling around is so therapeutic, just as putting pen to paper beats typing on a keyboard every time, plugging in an electric and pretending to be Hendrix....how you gonna pose in front of the mirror in your spandex with this VST? I guess this is why I gravitate towards 'left-field' music that could not be reproduced on a VST. I'd love to hear someone try and pull off Thurston Moore or the Pixies Debaser on this thing The same with virtual drums or Piano - they sound great for certain genres, but try and do Elliot Smith...nah! Nothing beats a real instrument sound

FWIW I really wouldn't recommend the Realtek ASIO drivers (unless they've been updated/overhauled recently). I had no end of problems with sluggish UI and hangs using it on one of my laptops (it's a pretty high end i9 laptop too). Switching to WASAPI solved all my issues.

I feel that way by 6:00 AM. Most mornings I'm up at 4:00, for no particular reason. Well, actually tbh it's because I have a self-imposed rule of no cannabis until an hour before bedtime. So bedtime has been coming earlier and earlier.

You too can be Ray Manzarek! Very nice modeled bass piano.

Maybe I'm amazed or maybe it's very sad, that people don't need to master real instruments any longer as they can simply draw and readjust rectangles in the dadgum piano roll.

BTW we pushed an update to our installer that detects and shuts down the Waves Local server until this is fixed by Waves. So it should at least temporarily resolve this from our end.

Hey folks, This is a 'finished' song, as in I'm not planning on doing anything more to it. (Mixes are surrendered not finished). It's about as good a mix as I'm capable of at this stage. However, I'd love to hear suggestions on how I might go up another level. Any ideas or feedback will be much appreciated! Please note that this song is mastered using LANDR. It does the trick but I realise it's not the best way to finish a track. Cheers! Dave

Oh those girls just love cosmetics .....Re-mix bottom of the page .

I thought this was apt. https://www.instagram.com/p/CLrTNj7hc5Y/?igshid=17lufqmbp1nif I was puzzling yesterday why my EQ did not seem to be making a difference- I was tweaking the plugin on a muted channel, not the one I was listening to. ?

Not only that but it typically refers to alo a playback where you click on camera shots from a multi cam view and each switch creates a cut and switch in the timeline. This dramatically reduces editing time with multiple realtime sources. Many people use 4 or more cameras to capture an event. Non video centric folks don't have several cameras so the concept makes less sense to them. I consider it essential.

From @Pete Brown's article: This gives me some hope I can upgrade from 1803 at some point.

Yep.

I've had a yet-to-be-used Kitpiece and ADPak in my account for about 5 years...

Tracktion is supposed to be releasing their new FM synthesis instrument F.'em sometime this year. Caught a NAMM promo about it, where they mentioned they've been running a bit behind in development. Letting the devs, including Wolfram Franke (former Waldorf dev and now current Biotek dev) take a deeper dive, or something to that effect. Might be interesting... It's a 13 operator FM synth with 8 operators as classic single cycle wave operators, plus 2 sample oscillators. Plus loads of modulations like Biotek has.

Tis lurvely, mate.

Controversial, to the point that I seldom recommend it unless people ask, but I disable Defender realtime scanning completely on all my systems. Excluding folders and processes from it as you suggest probably works as well. "Kids, do not try it at home" caveats apply. Background: I have my own anti-malware system in place I call "not clicking on random crap I get via email and on-demand scanning any executables I download." In the 40 years I have been using DOS and Windows, it's never failed me. Having been around that long in the industry, I'm also cantankerous about lowest common denominator precautions. In my IT career I never encountered malware that was as destructive and invasive than the malware solutions I encountered (slow startup, resource hogging, performance degradation, pop-up nags, etc.). I understand that as the user base for Windows has expanded (and to be fair, malware has gotten nastier) it may be considered essential to harden the protection to make it more fool-resistant. I'm a very persistent fool. ? Regarding updates, I've found that the standard control in Home is fine for my amateur home studio.

FWIW the group policy editor is not actually supported on Windows 10 Home, but I figure anyone doing the above knows that. Also, be careful with DISM, as it's really easy to hose your drive with that. DISM does a lot of things, including provision an empty drive. It's the deployment image servicing tool. The way the batch file is written, that's not going to happen, but should anyone get curious about the tool, this is important to know. Which group policy settings would you apply to a DAW? I have some for controlling updates linked to from the post, but I haven't found any others that are essential, myself. Pete

I quite often use virtual instruments for writing, then re-record with real instruments; the exception being drums, as I've only got an electronic kit, and perhaps acoustic "strummed" guitars, cos... well, they sound a whole lot better than my £300 acoustic does! But the beauty of instruments like NI Session Guitarist/UJAM Virtual Guitarist is that they provide some interesting riffs I wouldn't normally come up with. That's not to say I always keep the riffs as they are, but they're a great starting place for getting the creative juices going. In some cases though, they're bang on the money and I'm happy to use them as is.

Oh, there are still plenty of remote, unincorporated spots to build your house without gummint interference. When the Nazis moved out they left behind some verdant, low-tax, isolated properties. At least, I think they've gone. But then that's what they'd want you to think.

I updated EZB just a hour or two ago.

Read about that, so Reason 12 it is

Then explain to me why a new i5 6 core blows my i7 4 core 8 thread out of the water. (I know why. Just trying to be funny.) ? BTW/OT ... Do remember in another thread you were asking about the emoji's suddenly becoming very limited here on the forum? I installed the Brave secure browser today and it's happening to me now too in it but not in Chrome. The Winkey plus semicolon trick works though. So far Brave has blocked 2,600 ad's and cookies and stopped 50MB of data from being sent. And I haven't been on much today at all.

Any other Beatmaker 2 product like Vice, Kandy , Void, Dope etc. (but only v2 not v1).

I have been playing guitar for 50 years, but I love the Session Guitarists and a lot of guitar VIs. While I can still play, I can't play as well as I used to, and I never was that great about playing in steady rhythm. The last time they did one of these there was a $49 upgrade. But I guess this is a new product and you get no special points for owning all the other Session Guitarists. This seems to me to be the most sophisticated one in the series to date. I would expect that there will be upgrades in the others to catch up to these new features. The combination of this and Electric Sunburst with EZBass and the is unbelievable. I can't wait to experiment.

The "prefer background processes" bit can actually hurt you. During the investigation for my tweak list, I looked this one up, because it comes up often. That setting is primarily for servers with background processes (think Database or web server) which need to be prioritized over the interactive applications. Normally, foreground apps get a boost to keep them responsive. Setting it to prefer background services puts foreground and background on a fairly equal footing, with some caveats. For DAW use, when using an ASIO driver setting it to "background services" : If the driver is loaded by a process other than the DAW (like a service), and doesn't use MMCSS threads, this setting could potentially keep the audio driver from being starved by a faster interactive application. If the driver is loaded in-process with the DAW, this will not have any positive effect because the audio driver is part of the foreground application process. If the driver is loaded by another process (like a service), and DOES use MMCSS threads, this setting will not have any positive effect. In all cases, when you set this to prefer background processes, you are causing all those other services that folks put in tweak lists as "robbing" processor cycles, on an equal footing with your DAW app, causing them to potentially use more CPU than you may want. If you are using WASAPI, the calculus is a bit different because there are more moving parts. And, again, if the bit running in the background process is using MMCSS threads (many do now), this will not have any impact because those have a different scheduling algorithm applied. As I mention in my on tweak list, the key is to measure measure measure. And be sure to do so both before and after the change, and in isolation from other changes. In most scenarios, this setting is not going to help performance of the DAW. In some cases, it could make it perform worse. Pete

Hey Bill do what you need to do. You have to get healthy as I'm still waiting for one of your famous "Pies"

Very nice ... but I wish you would stop arpin on about this stuff ? You have to be from the UK to understand the above slang ?

Ah - Wookiee, you do have a talent for mixing up some great sounds and having them all sound good and make sense in the final product. As I have mentioned before, they always create a mental picture for me.

I enjoyed the song, particularly when the drums came in and the tempo increased a bit! I might agree with Kurt on the delay. Perhaps playing around with the timing of the delay might result in it matching it a bit better with the keys. However, having said that, I am a sucker for delay and reverb. I have been a frequent abuser of them and so, I guess my comment should be measured against my abuse (lol). Very nice work on this song.

cool song/chords and recording job.jack c.

I like the song. For me less delay on the vocals would sound better. I feel like it fights with the delay on the keys.

Hey Keith - I hope you are well . I like this a lot - nice open mix. Arrangement-wise, I was waiting for the drums to come in earlier but that's a personal taste thing

I'm using El Clapo sequencer and is trying to get either midi or audio to record to a track but has been unable to figure out how? I can here sound on playback and the claps are there if i bounce down the entire track, but how can i record it to the track? I'm totally lost here and could really need some help please!

Adding an additional audio track is not necessary. Right click in the instrument track header in the track view and select "Split Instrument Track" to gain access to the underlying audio and MIDI tracks. This audio track is setup to record the synth audio output. In this case the MIDI track is not being used for anything other than a way to get the synth positioned before the audio track input.

Synth plug-ins that generate audio without MIDI data be recorded using synth audio recording.

Yesterday we pushed an update to our installer that should prevent the waves local server from blocking our installer from completing. Anyone who tries to update again should get the new installer. This is temporary until Waves resolves it on their end.

Give that money to Melda and get all of their plugins, free updates, plus any new plugins they put out for free as long as they are in business.

Hmm, I think I've found something - by using smart tool, ctrl + shift, you can just drag the midi clip to twice the size and that does it. Isn't modern technology great!

Hi Lynn , and thanks for those encouraging comments ...now I´m really confused !!! , totally agree with you all on the over the top reverb so Ive calmed it down and re-mixed Ived re recorded the bass in parts and I´m now rewriting and recording some of the vocals ... I´m shocked and suprised by some of the response to this one as I was going to delete and bin it convinced it was a pile of ..doggy doo doo .....and said so much on another forum so it really does go to show that I know absolutely nothing about the stuff I do..... cheers ...still confused

Recording at higher sample rates gets you more headroom with equivalent fidelity. Most vsts for audio will sound the same at 44.1 as at 96. Using all available bits (loudest moment in the song hits 0), 44.1 can theoretically reproduce everything a human can hear up to around 108 decibels at 16 bit. At 24 bit 44.1, there is enough information to reproduce everything a human could hear if one could listen at 160 dB. Thunder is 120 dB. (This doesn't guarantee your stereo does a good job of reproducing.) Now soft synths are different. Guitar amp simulators may be different. Those may audibly benefit from a higher sample rate depending on how they are written. To this end, you can choose to have cakewalk run any vst at a double rate without altering the project. Bouncing a 44.1 Recording to 96 will likely have no detectable benefits imho.