John Vere

What is the model of the Yamaha keyboard? When you say you have the input turned way down this implies an impedance miss match. The direct monitoring is only making it obvious what the signal sounds like. So it’s a simple matter of sorting out the best configuration to connect the Yamaha. Example is it a model that send Audio via USB.

Got it. The alternative is I use the “ click track” in the stops either with just a loud hi hat or even a kick drum. And for Harmonies you can’t beat a TC Voice live pedal. My first song of the night is often All my Loving and the voice live works great for that type of song. Here’s the sales pitch. I play a lot of acoustic guitar gigs and so I bought the Voice live Acoustic . Your vocal mike and guitar go directly to the unit. It has 2 XLR outs so it acts as a DI for my guitar. Then it has the best guitar tuner I’ve ever used. It has hi quality processing for both guitars and vocals. The guitar effects are static and once set stay the same. But for vocals you can not only set up the type of harmonies but create the perfect effect chain with reverb delay and ? Another feature is it can do real time pitch correction of your vocals. I find if I add about 35% blend it sounds like I’m a pro. This is the best thing for me as I get older and my stamina is not what it was for singing for 2 hours. When I play dances I play electric into an amp. But the harmonies need a feed from a guitar to work properly. So feed it from an auxiliary send on the mixer. The hardest part is it’s at my feet and you need to look down to toggle the harmonies on and off . It’s way to easy to step on the wrong switch. Then not only is it covering both my guitar and vocal it has a Aux in you can feed the backing track into and mix that in the headphone output that I use for my in ear monitors. I only wear one. You could actually use it as a stand alone mixer at a solo gig with the different options of what comes out of the Outputs and the headphone jacks. It is one more thing to hook up so I don’t usually take it to walk on gigs and my last dance I left it at home because I was excited about using the Zoom L8 and it’s built in effects. I missed having the harmonies but the dance floor stayed busy anyway.

This can happen and definitely seems to be a driver issue in my case. It’s one reason I just changed interfaces. I got fed up with my Motu M4 randomly crapping out like that. It normally would only go away with a complete restart of computer. I’ve been using a Zoom L8 for 3 weeks now and the issue went away. But yesterday I switched back to the Motu because I was using the L8 elsewhere and sure enough after 2 hours it recorded totally distorted audio and waisted a perfect take. Today I’m looking for the box and post the Motu M4 for sale. I still have 2 other interfaces that are more dependable. And one is a 1st gen Focusrite 6i6. I always though Focusrite had good drivers. Mine was and still is rock solid. I don’t use it because it doesn’t have loopback.

I keep forgetting about my avatar. I put it there one day when someone basically told me to stop posting ( shut up) because they felt I was talking down to them.

Another nail in the coffin for musician with actual talent. The world is slowly being flooded with “creations” of AI generated beats. Pretty hard for real talent to be noticed. Because there’s no more money in record deals the business people have figured out a new way to get rich on the backs of aspiring creators. Our good buddy Meng seems to be right in there. I somehow sense insincere intentions in this hype about making everyone a recording artist. Those monthly and annual fees add up. How many users did we finally figure out had activation with Cakewalk? I just hope they don’t mess with Sonar too much. im too old to switch DAWs.

You can tell when we are bored.

Where as I agree that having stems is an option it makes for a way more complicated set up. And most people like me who play solo with tracks are also our own song tech. Last thing I need is to be fussing with a mixer. I play the odd show at community events where we get 45 minutes and no sound check. The more complicated your set up the fewer songs you get to play. @TVR PRODUCTIONS What type of music do you play? you sound like all you would really need is drum tracks and possibly some keyboards. So stereo or split stereo might be all you need. My method gives me options of mixing a stereo. Mono or a split stereo Exported wave files. I also play with 1 or 2 more musicians sometimes and we like to downplay the backing tracks. The music is more bluegrass, Folk and Blues oriented. Acoustic guitars, Mandolin and Banjo. So we only really need bass. So I made a split stereo mix with Bass on left and Drums and keyboards in the right. I play Bass on a few songs. Solution. I have a Radial DI box that is made for laptops and iPads. It is a must have and a key feature is it has a Mono toggle for shows with a sound guy. But we mostly do our own sound. We send the Bass to one channel of the mixer and Auxiliary it to a Bass amp. The drums and keyboards go to the PA but we keep that down. It will mostly go to our in ears or floor monitors. Why use a click track?? I’d hate that. The drums are there to keep us in sync but the bass is the driving force and keeps us kicking along. When I play bass I simply mute the Track Bass channel and unmute my bass which is in another channel. My solo act is different depending on event. I do shows with a mix of my originals and covers that fit in. As well as I do parties and dances playing cover tunes. Those I use full stereo mixes and I personally don’t find it that hard to set up that mix in the studio. I’ve never felt the need to mix it live. How many hometown weekend warriors have you heard with a perfect mix? The punters don’t care. They just want to recognize the songs. I always test everything in the studio with the full PA set up exactly like it will be at the gig. I just lower the volume accordingly. And yes, the last thing you want to sound like as a musician is Karaoke. Kill those harmonies. That sounds scary ? The using a multi track recording device is another option and the Zoom L8 is both a mixer and a 8 track recorder. As an experiment I loaded a whole set of stereo tracks to test it out. Compared to using a laptop it’s pretty clunky. I’m used to advancing songs with a USB foot switch. And you have to record everything into it in real time. That’s the deal breaker. I recorded them as I was practicing so time well spent but! And making multi track recordings?!!? But I have them there as emergency back up if laptop died. Possibly there’s multi track recorders that are capable of playing files from a DAW. Otherwise this is totally a step backwards in technology for me.

@User 905133proof that world is flat. As you flew did your drink spill? No because the pilot maintained a level altitude. See flat?

The simplest way to do this is drag and drop your Cakewalk Projects folder to a second drive be it internal or external. This creates a copy that you can now work from. A few other things I would also do. Copy this to a 3 and even a 4th location before you delete the originals on C drive. And open the new copies first to test them as well. I like to have a minimum of 3 copies for back up. Back up storage is dirt cheap. Now in preferences /folder locations change the default project folder location to the new drive so new projects will be stored there. Your start screen will still show the original locations so don’t use that until you have repopulated it with the new location versions. So open the project by either browsing there or by double clicking on them in the new location. If your not short of space on C drive I would leave the original copies there but rename the folder as “Backup CWP Nov2023”.

Be careful with that. It is been said a few times here that too large a buffer size can cause issues in some systems.

My all time favorite is " I've used Sonar/Cakewalk since 1991 and I'm in IT. So I know exactly what I'm doing here" Seem in my experience being in IT doesn't help much when you use a DAW.

How 'd you guess! It's all about comprehension and learning disabilities because a lot of us creative people are ADHD myself included. I found out that many people only watch tutorials in fast motion. This one lady wrote me claiming that , gee, I had to actually watch your tutorial in real time because you don't bullst around like the others so I kept missing stuff. I'm also guilty of clicking to the 3 minute mark on some videos just to get to the lesson.

Good find on that link, And that's first thing I would have done was google the question. Focusrite has excellent support and documentation. It might be if phantom power is on and needed for the mike. A powered hub might be needed. Laptops USB systems are not always very powerful.

Yep. Sure fire way to make it happen. During playback your CPU is distracted and busy. Pretty easy for it to miss a 1,000 bits of info that happens when you drag midi blobs around.

Flat earth is real!

Forget it Not my problem Eh!

Funny as we just closed off another 39 reply 2 page thread where the answer to the OP’s issue was in the very first reply.

You mean buffer settings. Lower buffer settings reduce Round trip latency. But that’s nothing to do with also increasing them to stop drop outs and static. Latency is only noticeable when you turn on input echo when recording audio or midi. Not during playback. This why interfaces have direct monitoring so latency is not a factor in tracking audio. Round trip latency is more or less invisible to anyone who records, edits and mixes with a DAW. But buffer setting are important and performance is based on the quality of the system. A powerful computer with lots of cores and RAM will run at a lower buffer than a not so powerful one. Then some ASIO drivers are better than others like RME, and that also helps prevent dropping out at lower buffer settings. But as projects grow and certain plug ins are added that starts to stress the system and that might require increasing the buffers during mixing to stop glitching. But increasing buffer settings and then trying to record midi you might hear the latency so we then just globally bypass the effects and 99% of the time this fixes it. Then exporting a mix is all in the box and has nothing to do with buffer setting or your interfaces drivers. It just goes faster on a more powerful machine. I always set mine at 256 and forget about them. But that said my now retired Motu M4 was on the edge at 256 so I had to bump it up. I now have a Zoom L8 and it is on the edge at 128 so I’m back to smooth sailing at 256 again .

I’ve been on a quest for a ride cymbal that actually sounds like a ride cymbal and not a crash. I think I’ll just record my own someday. I did this about 15 years ago but I lost the folder in a hard drive failing. I recorded my whole kit and it was cool to play it using Session Drummer.

Ya I mention it when I get a chance because it’s free so no harm in trying. I had to watch a video to get it working but have no clue which one that was, but yes it’s a strange duck. Good news is once you get it working it’s very easy to use. Try different streaming settings if your getting glitches.

Don’t do anything in Cakewalk. Just choose Mono when you export. Question? What are you using for playback at the gig that requires a mono MP3 file? Just wondering at that choice?

Sure looks good to me. That’s first class support I’d say. No harm in re installing it will either work or tell you it’s already installed. People are always uninstalling and I don’t think it’s ever been necessary.

I have in order of purchase M Audio Fast Track Pro, Tascam us1641 , Focusrite Scarlett 6i6, Motu M4 and the latest a Zoom L8. These are all what we would call entry level consumer gear. Anyhow shopping for an interface based on thinking there will be a big difference in sound for $200 is a very questionable exercise. They are all about the same. And ask 100 people you will get a 100 answers as it’s subjective. You are better off making a list of features you want and compare that. I think you’ll be disappointed in all offerings that are $200 range and the Behringer might be better than some of the others. That’s one that has real ASIO drivers right? Out of all my interfaces the sound quality has always been indistinguishable but the features make a huge difference to my work flow. I Scraped the Tascam because back then the driver sucked. They fixed it after I bought the Scarlett. I scraped the Focusrite because I hate the monitoring set up. I then scraped the Motu because it craps out randomly( Due to bus power?) So far the Zoom L8 outshines them all because it has 10x the features and everything on my list is there in a neat small package. Zoom was not ever on my radar until I started shopping this fall. I almost skipped it over because of its past reputation for bad drivers. Oh and it has a HiZ input that is working really well with my guitars and bass. It’s double the price of your budget but that’s my point I’m making. Anyhow make that list first. How many inputs do you need and are they multi purpose? How many outs How many separate headphone outs. Can you adjust the mix of the direct sound with playback using the front panel? Is it bus powered and are you aware of the issue that can cause ? Does the company update its drivers? Do they have good service? Do you need Loopback?

@Craig Anderton Yes it is a big concern and I think one of the reasons I chose-1.0 db was years ago there were many debates on this topic. It was one of those everybody had their opinions endless tail chase debates kinda like sample rate or analog vs digital debates. So I took the middle ground. Truth is I had been normalizing all my wave files to -0.2 db using Wave Lab for a long time. This was in the CD and DAT days. After I learned how “wrong” this was I took a close listen to those files and never really heard anything wrong? Much later on I dropped them in You Lean and most were dead on 0 db. But nothing was a +db. And then began my using the BT brickwall set at -1.0 db. Later using You Lean I learned that most of those masters were very close to -0.1 db? I then tested a dozen or more free Limiters and the Loudmax and Boost11 won the shoot out. Set at -1.0 Loud max at worst is -0.8. I apologize to Richard for our geeky side track but this is what we do. For your backing tracks the peak limit is not as mission critical but the LUFS definitely are . This latest batch sound way better than my last go round pre Covid. And people noticed. I’m still performing at 70 and I need all the help I can get so perfect backing tracks are worth the extra time and effort. Nothing I can do about arthritis and my guitar playing but the rest of the band is in top form now. And they don’t miss practice or get drunk at gigs. And oddly enough I get paid the same as a 3 piece band. But I do share this with the band and I’m going to treat them to a new computer.

I did already.