Neil Cummins

@Gary and anyone else interested...the root of the problem was found in a kick drum transient in the room stereo and mono mics,which when muted with lead guitar unmuted was clear.The puzzler was and still is if I mute the lead guitar and play all tracks minus this,it's also clear.So the combination of whatever is happening at the coincidence of the lead guitar timestamp and the kick transients on the room mics is causing the artifact. Maybe this type of thing is regularly seen by professional mix engineers,I just do this in my spare time and entirely self-taught,so there's probably ways to ensure it's ironed out in the stem preparation.The two stems in question have been lined up with the kick close mics,so should be no phase problem there. Good learning experience,and hopefully not too many electrons sacrificed in posting this. Neil.

That's one to try Gary...thank you.

Hi Forum, I placed this in the General area as it probably has been experienced by many audio engineer/musicians in other DAWs,not just CbB,and probably has many possible answers...so here goes:- Spent many weeks crafting a mix only to find an artifact "click" appearing when the full mix is played back,and naturally is made worse once the track is raised in loudness level. Troubleshooting so far in CbB:- 64 track project into group Aux tracks,then into final group Aux before the Summing Bus. All 64 tracks are frozen with their VST effects,the final Auxes have a handful of Pro-Q3 and one Pro-C2 amongst them,barely any noticeable CPU activity is seen in the Performance window with project latency set to 2048 samples. Individual track playback of each stem is clean with Summing bus effects(one Pro-Q3 and one Pro-C2)active. Individual Group playback of drums,bass,piano,synths,rhythm guitar and lead guitar are clean,with Summing bus Blended playback introducing the whole band except lead guitar is clean,the artifact reappears once the lead guitar is unmuted. RMS level at the Summing bus is -18 to -20 dB with a peak level of about -8,so no clipping. There are no clip edges,splits or non-zero crossings at the location of the artifact which can be seen clearly on the mixdown waveform. Any suggestions as to what may be causing the artifact to appear when the individual sum of the parts appear to be all clean? Any help welcome! Cheers, Neil NW England.

Hi Reginald,Bitflipper, Thanks for the prompt response.Success was achieved with Reginald's suggestion,in this case I had to reset MODO Bass which then set Pluck to use CC74 MIDI Ch1,which was then visible from the Edit Filter as described by you both. @Bitflipper...I also tried the method suggested by yourself,however in my case,the MIDI parameters don't appear as exposed in your example,rather as a long list of MIDI CC values 0-16,each one suffixed with 0-128 eg MIDI CC 0|1,MIDI CC 0|2 etc up to MIDI CC 16|128.So I wasn't quite sure how this would map across to allow the automation envelope to vary that parameter.Any further suggestions as to how to interpret the correct value to be used? So far,so good anyway.Thanks for finding the time to reply and assist. Neil UK

Hi Experts, I rarely use MIDI programming or automation,and am struggling to get a functioning method to automate the RH Pluck position which is visible in MODO Bass and uses CC3 as indicated in the Control window in the VST. Could anyone please describe the correct method to be able to select CC3 in the Automation track view,confirm it's activity when moving the Pluck slider and then ideally how to finely adjust this using Continuous Controllers in the Piano Roll view during playback. Assuming this is all possible of course. Many Thanks Neil Warrington UK

Dynamic VST Plugin buffer size optimisation has definitely improved sample-based instruments on my low spec machine,a lot faster and more responsive.

Hi Sadicus, I think the recommendation is to use this feature on a "More Is More" basis,as the advantage is stated to be cumulative,so the higher number of channel strips the emulation is used on,the more noticeable the effect. I've personally never determined a quantitative effect in terms of the relative settings,however there should be a noticeable effect on the overall sound of your mix if you change the emulation model,so there is probably some subtle EQ movement taking place under the hood. I only have a low-spec machine,so I'm limited anyway in terms of real-time effects and use track freezing to the fore.I'd give a try on all channels,buses and master,and then change the emulation model and see if you can see a difference.There is some CPU impact if used across a large project,I think track freezing should help here. Regards, Neil

Thanks for taking the time to reply both.@Alan...yes,this is the most common configuration I've seen being used ie an 1176-style with the fast attack profile first in the chain,followed by the LA-2A style to smooth. Being entirely self-taught,bass is one aspect I struggle to get consistent in mixes,not so much against the kick drum but occasions where I tend to lose it underneath rhythm guitar or synths.I've not tried this combination before in a piece of work,I have the T-Racks5 versions of both so may give this a try. Regards, Neil.

Hi Forum, This one may fall between the lines as it probably applies to any DAW,and accompanied by a pre-emptive cap-touch towards experienced mix and sound engineers. Several YouTube tutorials on bass guitar compression recommend serial compression to treat different aspects of the bass transient shape.I note that in some of these,the use of an 1176-style compressor first in the signal chain is suggested,followed by a second compressor with different attack/release characteristics. Given the famously fast attack times(20 to 800 microsecond range)of this compressor and its many plugin versions,is this approach recommended for bass guitar,where the initial transient shape may be less aggressive than,for example,a percussive instrument such as snare drum? I have an open mind on this,so comments are welcome. Thanks, Neil Cummins Warrington UK

I use the PC -authorised Oz9 version and not iLok,and still see the same as everyone above,however as I'm a first time Ozone customer a few months back,I have no benchmark.Plus my system is quite low spec and I have to make a lot of compromises when using both Oz9 Adv and Neutron3Adv as the Machine Learning embedded in some of the component plugins is very CPU cycle-intensive. I've seen various accounts on YouTube that Oz9 loads a lot faster than Oz8,however I can't attest to this claim in the context of CbB. Regards. Neil.

I get by with CbB Bob with a Dell 5748 with an i3 processor and 8Gb of RAM,but with as much Windows 10 disabled as possible in terms of apps,services,no anti-virus running and following lots of the DAW optimisation tips and tricks that are well publicised on forums like this and on YouTube. The number of plugins used simultaneously will have a significant impact on CPU cycle usage,and so using track freeze and archive techniques are well worth reading up on to save on CPU time. Tools such as Ozone and Neutron which are starting to employ Machine Learning are very heavy on CPU time,and I have to make compromises in how many instances can be run at once. So with some judicious tuning and acceptance that you may hit your system limits at some point,then you should be able to get some decent results. BR// Neil.

Lindsey Buckingham may have done something similar on the opening track on the 1987 Tango In The Night Album,not entirely sure though.

Same issue...upgraded to BLA v6.0,restarted machine and two more goes..success on third attempt.

It also allegedly defragments your SSD uncommanded,I'm not sure if it is an actual defrag attempt or a trim,however not recommended for SSDs. I'm holding off going to 2004 for now. BR// Neil

Clip gain automation worked a treat,the small muting effect is almost imperceptible underneath the backing. Thanks Craig!