John Vere

OK that narrows it down to what I originally expected. First I'll say it again- upgrading and optimizing a computer for audio has zero bearing on what get recorded. You could use an old XP 32 bit 1.5Mz with 2 GB of RAM and the sound would be identical. ( if it didn't crash . Even though you "think" you've tried everything with your mikes etc you haven't even scratched the surface on possibilities. Most of what you have tried is pretty basic low end gear. And very good point by Mike above about using a treated room. And from what I've read in reviews those KRK's are not an accurate monitor so are not to be trusted either. Your's is a classic case of "Home Studio Blues" and all you can do is either make adjustments and changes to how your inputting with what "hardware" you have on hand or find the weak link and replace it. Your blaming the wrong "hardware" When I say Hardware I'm not talking about computers. I'm talking Mikes and Pre amps. Your font end. What you hear during tracking via headphones can also factor into what is wrong. Example, headphones that are bass heavy and no mid range would result in mid range heavy recording EQ choices.

Bundle is not the way most of use would do this. You just transfer the whole project folder(s) which should all be on a portable back up drive anyways. I've been working between 2 or 3 machines for years now and have never had any issues. As I said all your projects should be stored in a main folder and then that folder should have been backed up to an external drive for safe keeping. Make sure you date the containment folder. I have 3 DAW set ups right now. Main DAW is a typical i7 It has 3 Drives. No data on C. Working data on E and then backups on G. Then an i5 Laptop which has 2 drives same set up but no back up drive. Both have all the same VST's and are fully licenced so projects all run smoothly on both of these machines. It is worth noting that most all VST's like Melodyne and AD2 allow for 2 machines. Then the 3rd laptop is a 2008 duo core Sony with only 1 SATA drive which I use differently. All run the latest CbB as well as have Splat and various older versions still installed. Here's a step by step of how I copy from machine to machine. On my main DAW I use a Data Drive (E) to store all my projects. Each song ( project) folder is inside an ALBUM folder. Album folders keep different types of project tidy. -- Live Band performance, Backing Tracks, Original Songs, Sock Monkey Album Old albums and inactive stuff are kept elsewhere on backup drives . All are backed up to the 3rd (G) drive as well as an External drive whenever possible. I will date the new Folder, example _ "Original Songs Feb 24 2019 " after I copied it over to the BU drives. When I need to use the laptop I hook up the external drive and I copy over the latest version of the "Album" that will be worked on. Note: Now that Album is stored in a minimum of 4 places! I work on the songs and save them into that same folder and when they need to go back to my main DAW I simply Re name the Album folder using current Date'. I then copy it to the external, and then copy back to the E drive of the main DAW. I could now choose to delete the older folder but I usually don't do this until my (250 GB) SSD E drive is passing 60%. The Laptop is used for live recording and right now is living at my partners house over the winter. He is laying down all his parts ( audio only) to our 65 song "album" . I am also working on some of the same songs so it will only be a matter of copying his audio tracks once he is done back to the main DAW. The Sony I use in the Family room to edit and adding some additional instruments like Mandolin. Because I cannot authorize certain VST's I will just freeze synths first and save a special copy in a different folder marked as such. But if you can it is well worth the effort to fully load up your Laptop with everything possible as this also serves as a solid back up in case your main DAW goes south. If not, it's a minor hassle to either ignore all the warnings about the missing stuff and then just swap them out with what's on hand. I didn't freeze some songs and therefore I didn't have AD2 on the 3rd laptop so just swap it over to SI drum kit or even Session drummer. I actually liked one song better with SI drum kit.. now that's weird.

What do your VST instruments sound like? If they sound good then there is nothing wrong with your set up. Your just not recording through a signal path that's working for you. How are you monitoring? What brand of monitors ? If you make a CD of the recording does it still sound terrible elsewhere? If you say your monitors sound great with VST's and pre recorded material that will rule out half of what could be wrong. Computer settings, software, updates etc have no bearing on how digital recordings sounds. It will record exactly what is processed at the A/D convertors. Only item at play would be your interfaces ASIO drivers. It is possible for those to become buggered so make sure you at least download the latest and/ or re install them. Bad sounding audio is a hardware issue. Either you front end is not up to it or your back end is crappy sounding. We can easily rule out the back end if you say it's OK. You could try 10 different mikes and still not get the sound your after. You could use 10 different pre amps etc. It's a lifelong quest to gather the right gear that sounds the way you want. What works for one does not work for all.

I was going to buy a MTK but I didn't really need the multi channel interface. We bought the Signature 10 just for our duo's live performances. We use backing tracks so that's all I wanted the USB for. It's been mostly stored in a road case but I needed a 3rd DAW set up the other day and set it up. Been working flawlessly for a few weeks now and the pre amps etc are possibly the best I have on hand. I never liked my 6i6 pre's.

I agree, BIOS is not something that has any bearing on how software runs, if anything a few system setting have reverted to default that you need to go and tweak but I doubt that is the issue. When in doubt, re install the software from scratch. Before I update Bios I always read the list of "why". It usually is nothing that will make my life better so it's been years since I've had to update a BIOS.

The new Sound craft boards are my favourite right now. I have the Signature 10 as my Studio B set up. So nice to leave stuff plugged in.

The reason the pre amps failed was a design flaw that some mixers have. You have the XLR jacks which are not a problem for phantom power even if a mike is none phantom. But you also have a TRS input jack in parallel and if you plug a guitar cable in with Phantom power on it gives the pre amp a 48 volt hit where it doesn't belong. My solution was to plug those TRS inputs with Silicon. so it would not happen again. Generally it's a good idea to always leave phantom power off until all connections are made. But the switch was very small and hidden on the back. I don't think there was a warning light either. As it was I generally used a Mackie 1604 mixer to feed the Yamaha via the Mackies direct outs. I also used this massive 24 ch Soundcraft board that had a million patch points, all XLR. It was 4 feet wide!

A screen shot might make this more clear.

But I repeat as you seem to have missed my post. How is your Midi playback from the sound modules patched in to your system so that you can hear the output? This has not been made clear. You will not hear them if only the midi cable is connected to the 6i6. Below is what you said is your wiring. I don't see any audio cables. My wiring setup is: MIDI keyboard out to MIDI in on the 6i6 MIDI out on the 6i6 to MIDI in on the Ketron SD-2 MIDI module MIDI Thru from the SD-2 to MIDI in on the Roland JV-1010

It's funny because as far as older projects with audio goes, As time goes by I discover better ways to capture audio so re doing stuff usually leads to a better finished project. The only trouble is I've gone over that hump of being at my "best" as far as guitar playing goes. As most of us geezers are aware our finger slowly let us down. Singing I just have to sneak up on that mike and catch it in a good momment. What was that little Feat tune Old folks Boggie " When your mind tells you something that your body can't fill" So let me know if you get it working as then there is hope!

The OP has had 3 day's or more to respond so we still don't know if this is midi or audio or both.

As Noel said you can apply a mix scene from an identical project. This is the case when you have made a template and have used that template to record a band live. You will end up with multiple projects that are all the same from song to song only the audio is different. BUT if you add a new effect that will not show in the next song you use the mix scene with. Mix scenes do not add vsts or sub routings etc. But if your template was well thought out and you had added all foreseeable effects this can work. If not, make sure to save the pre set for the new effect you add and then it's easy to add it to the other songs.

It's just me.. I just don't get along with Audio snap, never have I ever gotten anything it does to work and I guess I'm just not "getting it". With me it's sort of how much time I'm willing to spend learning a feature. I'm always willing to give it a try but if it takes too long to get things working, I return to my tried and true methods.

forget it.

So where is the audio from the midi sound modules going? Remember in the other thread I described why you either need an interface with enough inputs for that audio or to use the Mackie for a sub mixer. Midi cables only carry data, not sound.

Can you open CCC and log on there? You must have been doing that on the old computer to stay up to date and your password would have been saved by your Browser. If you used Chrome that should If you have all of your old installers you can re build everything with that. There should be serial numbers and activation codes which you also hopefully copied down to a notepad or screenshots as well. If you can't get at CCC then you could try the offline activation which I do believe is still working as they never killed the servers. The old Sonar stuff is really nothing to Bandlab, it's not their responsibility, it is up to the individual to make sure they kept the old software and all serials etc. on file.

My observation has been that midi controllers that came with drivers behave better than the ones that use generic drivers.

What is critical as to how this question is answered is if the project is midi or if there is audio recorded. If this song is only midi then drawing a tempo map will work but that will certainly make no difference to the audio. If there is audio then you need to: A-Record all audio to a metronome that follows a tempo map ( easy to difficult depending ) B- Record all audio with a midi backing track that includes the tempo changes (easy) C- Learn how to use Audio snap that can speed up and slow down audio that is already recorded ( Difficult and mixed results ) D- Play your song they way you want it on the guitar or piano and add parts without quantizing them ( easy but song might be sloppy)

Well I'm a wimp and I took the path of least resistance. I followed directions and dropped the original into the new version and tried a few times but then the guitar parts all went weird?? So I did the right thing and poured a glass of Glenlivet and re sang it and guess what-- it's was even better! So there's always more than one way to do something in Cakewalk- I highly recommend the Glenlivet VST.

Yes the old forum has probably 400 pages on the topic your welcome to Google your question there. Bottom line is they have no plans on charging for the software. In the year they have owned it the focus has been on bug fixes which is what 99% of us had always wanted. If there's a feature missing you want you simply buy the DAW that has it. https://help.cakewalk.com/hc/en-us/articles/360002366114-Why-are-you-giving-Cakewalk-by-BandLab-away-for-free-

Not dissing the device, they were awesome recorders in their day and my MD 8 was very similar to the AW16G with the difference being it used Mini Data disks for storage. I had a very good set up with my MD 8 midi synced to my Atari and my Yamaha 01v mixer. Full automation mixdown etc. I also had a MD4 track so this gave me 12 tracks of audio and 16 tracks of midi. Those to this day are still some of my best recordings. I think one of the pitfalls with a modern DAW's is all this "unlimited" audio and midi tracks and the zillions of VST effects options. Amature "engineers" will tend to toss all that in just in a simple song and end up with 40 badly recorded tracks when 8 real good ones might have sounded much better.. With my old system I had to make sure each track was perfectly recorded, there was no turd polishing after the fact so you mindset was different. The 01V did give me a lot of effect processing power but you still only had 2 effect busses. I also looped in a Alesis reverb. I could even do automated mutes to edit out glitches. I was very slow to switch over to using Cakewalk but the Atari was doomed to die so I had to get on board. At first I was only interested in the midi but soon learned that audio was much easier too. But to this day I still keep myself to very limited track count. I could totally get buy with an 8 track and midi unless I was using real drums,, then I'd want 16. But I guess my point is - ya you could fight an uphill battle and get the old girl working, I don't see why it wouldn't,, but if you think it through, there's nothing that machine can do that you can't do with a DAW and the proper audio interface. Example is I could use my 01v as a control surface and even rig things up to mix down like I used to but it is just clunky to get it all working properly. The MD 8 I sold for $50 to a very happy man. He totally was not into using a computer and has made some very good recordings of his songs he writes. I'll add this little story too because it's relevant to your machine. Mine only had the 2 XLR mike inputs like the AW 16. Those I found out were Yamaha's bottom of the line pre's they used in Box mixers. I blew mine up under warranty and because I was a Yamaha dealer I got to talk with the technician at the headquarters in Ontario. We had already had to return another unit with the same issue so he agreed to upgrade my pre amps to the top of the line they used in the Pro consoles. So just be aware that those pre's could be low quality. Your audio interface might have better pre's and A/D which is what is most important overall.

The CbB installer is not saved unless you make a copy of it after it downloads. This from scook- http://forum.cakewalk.com/BandLab-Download-Locations-m3753980.aspx The process *currently* deletes the install files after installing (given it's 1/2GB, I think this is poor practice), but it's stored in C:\Users\<username>\AppData\Roaming\bandlab-assistant\Downloads The bandlab assistant installer will be in your download folder unless you deleted it. But your friend shouldn't be having that much trouble. It's pretty straight forward. I think it works best with Chrome.

Most of what you say is also true for me. I'm just so used to my keyboard shortcuts that I tend to reach for those first. And like you the way I work on stuff I need at least 4 different set ups quickly available. And yes working on a laptop is a whole new ball game and quickly becomes a chore just to do simple things like open PVR. I've got this figured out and involves a lens I made for the Laptop.

There's no known reason NOT to be using CbB over the old Sonar unless your one of those weirdos who are still using 32 bit OS.

Not saying his set up is bad, but would he have not been just as far ahead with a 2i2? I fail to see the extra money for the 6i6 is worth it in this situation. He already has midi, and if what you are doing is recording the modules in separate passes then 2x2 would suffice. I have a 6i6. In reality it is only a 4x4 for most people unless you own a SPDIF device.