John Vere

What is your audio interface? You might want to try also removing the pre amp from the signal path when you get the Beta. It might colour the sound. I’ve never had any issues using interface pre amps other than my Focusrite 6i6. I didn’t like the sound I got from those so I bought a Joe Meek pre amp. But when I then got the Motu M 4 it doesn’t have proper impedance on the 3/4 inputs. Now I have a Zoom L8 and it’s the best sound I’ve ever had overall. But in the plan is the SSL 2. People who have reviewed it claim the pre amps are top notch out of the majority of interfaces and stand alone pre amps.

I’m glad @Kalle Rantaaho agreed with what I said above. Where as, yes, it is ideal to mix in a properly treated room I myself have rarely ever had that option for a home set up. Everything the OP has said makes me think it’s the capture of the vocals that is flawed and not what can be done after the fact. It is the oldest studio practice from the beginning of time. Find the right mike! Large Capsule Mikes have always made me sound terrible. I tried over and over waisting a lot of money, only to end up going back to my Beta 58. A mike I have depended on for 35 years. I now can use my SM7 for stuff like harmonies and it’s hard to hear much difference. And I’m not saying the Beta will work for everyone. There’s a lot of top quality dynamic mikes to choose from. It’s a life long quest to find the right mike that works with your voice. Alway start at the beginning, not the end!

It’s all in the video. The link @Will. Posted is the latest version which doesn’t include the TTS-1. You need a full installer from 2023. You can tell but the file size.

Most good interfaces not only have an ASIO driver but they will need a Windows driver for playback from apps that can’t use ASIO. Another situation is when you want to use 2 or more different interfaces together to add more inputs to record a live band. You can’t use ASIO so you switch Cakewalk to WASAPI or WDM mode and now both interfaces can be chosen as inputs. In my collection of 6 interfaces not all of them support WASAPI because they are old. Then my brand new ones don’t support WDM mode. Only ASIO and WASAPI. The deal is it really doesn’t matter for live recording or editing but only ASIO reports the latency to your DAW so it can adjust the offset. Look in sync and caching in ASIO mode and note that it says use reported latency. Now switch to WASAPI or WDM and look. There’s nothing there. It’s guessing. All overdubs will be probably out of sync. ASIO is all about communicating system latency and fixing it for you. I’ve never managed to test if ASIO 4all behaves this way.

I bought an Atari 1040 St I guess it was 1986. I paid $1,400 for it. I brought it home and turned it on. I had never used a computer before so wasn’t sure what to expect. You could move this pointer thing around with the mouse. I might have done that for 15 minutes. But what does it do? Nothing it would seem. Later I learned I had to purchase software on floppy disks to do anything. Otherwise it just sat there doing nothing. Many years goes by and my son tells me I should try Linux Ubuntu. I installed it and it sat there staring back at me doing nothing? What do you do with this? This is like going back 30 year to the Atari? Say what you will about Apple, Windows and even Android. At least you can do something with them. Oh Waveform is a great DAW. Try it— it is absolutely free.It will be what will replace Cakewalk for people who need free.

It is no longer included with the last version of CbB or Sonar but if you have it you have it. As long as you don’t uninstall CbB I would think. Just don’t ever loose the CbB full installer from last fall that did include it. In the future if you build / purchase a new computer you might not be able to save projects from CbB but I would think you would be able to install it and therefore still install the TTS-1. There’s always the Roland SC VST. It’s only around $70. I have a video I made exploring the options.

I was actually using the MOscillator to test the Concrete Limiter. It’s interesting when you team it up with the MAnalyzer and test stuff. Even with headphones on I couldn’t hear the C1 35 hz but it was putting out 0 db .

What does 5 Hz sound like at 140 db? I guess nothing can reproduce it!

And don’t except to much from free plugins. In my tests the best free piano was Addictive Keys. It’s just missing the lowest and highest octaves no big deal for rock and roll. You have to sign up at XLN and install the product manager. You also get a set of Addictive Drums missing the Tom’s. The TTS-1 piano sounds better that a lot of the free ones. Even though I have it already I hope they bring back True Pianos.

Lots of things to consider. First You need to learn your monitoring system or purchase ones you trust. If you use monitoring that results in your mix sounding incorrect on all other systems then it needs replacement or adjustments using software you can purchase. Example I’ve used my Yamaha NSM 10’s since 1995. I’ve used them in dozens of different spaces from terrible to properly treated rooms. My mixes will always be within the ballpark of accurate. Same goes for my very old set of headphones. The foam is falling off but I’m reluctant to replace them. I have about 10 others. But then I will proof my mixes on as many systems as I can. My favourite is a cheap mono Bluetooth speaker that is easy to play exported mixes through Media Player even with Sonar still running. There’s also SonoBus to send to my cell phone which I can use it’s built in speakers and a set of terrible Bluetooth headphones. All that at my desk. USB sticks are handy and work in the car and truck as well as my getting blaster in the kitchen. But my other question is why are you requiring a lot of EQ for your voice ? That makes me think you are using the wrong mike and signal path. My guess is you went and bought a Large diaphragm condenser mike and as you said you don’t have a treated room. Try a Beta 58. Best vocal mike for untreated rooms. My songs are all over the internet so listen to them . My vocals are done on a Beta 58 into various different interfaces and only EQ is hi pass at 100 hz. Only processing is a touch of compression and reverb, We all hate the sound of our own vocals so keep that in mind too.

It won’t be an issue as someday soon nobody will be using Cakewalk anymore. The questions about actually using it have pretty much dried up on this forum now. A good gauge of interest in it is reflected on my YouTube channel where only videos with Sonar in title are being watched and very few views for the Cakewalk videos now. Why do you think Mike had to start a new channel. What will be confusing is people Googling for information about Sonar on the internet. And it doesn’t help that there’s still web pages offering to sell it that are for Sonar Platinum line up. Other than the topic of activation and purchase there’s no real difference in the actual use of the two versions.

Those settings for sure as well as it helps to use 48 as your sample rate. Videos all use 48.

The problem as I see it is probably very few people will bother reporting because its way to time consuming the way it is. I most certainly don’t. After I spent hours trying to troubleshoot the TTS-1 issues and submitted dozen or more dumpfiles. All I got back was open in safe mode??? Why. The projects were just fine. You just couldn’t insert TTS-1. I felt like whoever it was answering me didn’t get it! Shortly after they removed the TTS-1 anyway. This is the second crash I’ve had with Sonar. I submitted this one and last one with out the dump file asking what they excepted me to do? Never heard nothing so therefore my question. Is it all a waste of my time? Is the submission in the help menu going no where? Should I use the old method? I will look at the details of the dump file. I say Session Drummer because it’s the only thing in a brand new project. I hadn’t even saved it yet. I’ve been working Sonar hard for over a month and it’s been solid.

So I go to make a tutorial about Session drummer and it crashes Sonar. Fine, As a person who likes to help improve the product I use the help menu and " report a problem" and it opens up a form you fill in. Fine. Note this is very different from the contact support form on the web page. One of the questions is is this issue repeatable in CbB? Yes, No? How do I answer that? I don't have CbB installed. Why is it assuming I do? If you submit using the Contact support method, on the website you can directly attach the crash dump files to the form. The Help menu one asks for a "link" ?? So your software crashes, I go to the bother of trying to report it and now I not only have to dig around for the Crash dump I'm also expected to put it on Google drive and so on? This is almost as bad as trying to report issues with Cakewalk Next. I reported a bug which another member here verified was repeatable. I still see the bug 4 months later and my report on Discord has never been acknowledged. Bandlab- SUPPORT IS IMPORTANT! Put a little time into making it seamless and user friendly. So possibly the addition of the reporting method that is built into the Help menu needs a lot of work yet.

Johns lazy guy method. Activate Write Automation. Start playback and move the desired controller. This can even be an effect. Anything red is game. Stop play back and open the lane and manually draw the nodes. I prefer the automation is in a lane for clarity as well as then you can still edit the track.

Using a DAW as a live effects processor requires that the audio and computer systems be top quality. Example you would need something like an RME audio interface and the computer would need to be top shelf as well. $3,000-$ 4,000? This is the only known way to reduce system latency. If you want live harmonies you can’t beat a TC voice live floor pedal. Way cheaper than an RME interface. I have use mine for about 7 years now. It not only has all the different harmonies it also has all the vocal effects. You can save a patch for each song. I have the voice live Acoustic which is also my DI box and effects for my Acoustic Guitar. And it’s my sub mixer for my in ear monitors.

As far as True Peak reading yes use the You Lean meter if you want a more accurate reading. If you read the info on the web site it explains why it is more accurate. I believe the term is sample accurate. I actually have ran tests and funny enough I’m just reviewing and testing Sonars Concrete Limiter. To test take a Brick wall limiter and set it at -1.0 db. Feed the track or bus a signal that goes over -1.0 db . Now put a bunch of analyzer plug ins after the limiter including the You Lean meter. Observe that all the other analyzers are reading exactly -1.0 db as well as the Cakewalk meter. But the You Lean might show-0.9 db or even as low as -0.6 db if the limiter is garbage. Cakewalk/Sonar meters are actually as accurate as all those other Analyzers. Just not sensitive as the You Lean. It is actually one of the features we overlook.You’d be surprised that the majority of DAWS don’t have very good meters.

@Annabelle in a way starting now with Cakewalk by band lab might be a huge waste of your time. It would be like a car with an almost empty tank of gas. I’m not sure if you are aware that it is soon to be discontinued and will stop working possibly by the end of this year if not sooner. They now have re named it back to Sonar and it is also no longer free. At this point in time we are just waiting to get the news of exactly what that will be . But ya, pretty sure W7 is out of the question for the new Sonar. Have you ever looked into other DAWS that might support accessibility?

With SSD drives it’s not the fact that it is full that matters. It’s how many times it’s been written to. They work very differently than spinning disks. I had a SSD drive slow way down on me and it was only 1/4 full. I tested it with the Samsung Magician and that revealed what was wrong. So plug ins them selves won’t cause an issue, most are very small files. but sample libraries don’t belong on a C drive. The drive that was acting up wa my Working Data drive for Cakewalk projects as well as Video editing and storage. That’s what killed it. As you are working the data is constantly being re written and updated. So my plan is to replace these drives once a year. The old drives become back up storage safe copies.

I don’t think hiding tracks would change anything. You have to remove the instrument or effects plug ins from the project completely. This is what safe mode allows you to do. It normally presents you with a list of the plug ins and you can choose what gets loaded and what doesn’t. I might be wrong but I wonder what would happen if you totally remove the plug ins from your system. Open Cakewalk , no project, open preferences and run the plug in scanner. Then open the plug in manager and make sure those plug ins are gone. Then try and open the project. I just built a new computer so lots of plug ins never got installed, I have better ones I’d rather use. But all those projects open just fine with a warning and list of missing plug ins. They show in brackets. The only ones that were crashing Cakewalk were 2 instruments from Air music. I had to open in safe mode to figure that out. I had to contact Air to remove the license from the old computer. But anyway, that’s the only time I ever had used safe mode.

Are you opening directly from Windows explorer? To use Safe Mode you open the CWP file in Windows. You will defiantly see dialog boxes as it proceeds.

I just did and it is actually even better. So now Sonar includes 2 first class brick wall limiters.

I agree I’m surprised they never moved those 10 + page threads to the basement. I wonder how many people get that in joke?

Hey Jack a heads up. Posting questions here is like the same as the song sub forum. This sub forum is strictly for people to post links to tutorials. Your question will be seen by way more people if you post in the appropriate forum which is the main forum or Q&A