Ted K. Ling

Oh my goodness ... are people in my generation still around ?  YEP,  sure 'nough and I'm sure we're all glad to still be making/creating music !  So thanks for the memories guys !

Bitflipper wrote about Craig Anderton and Electronic Musician.  I met Craig at the Frankfurt Music Fair back in the early 90's and he (Craig) gently "forced" me into a  subscription to the mag !  Then there's the TEAC A3340 ... what a great machine.  My early works were very tediously done on this 4-tracker, bouncing and bouncing tracks trying to keep some sort of stereo landscape in the final mix !  Anyone remember Roland's SCC-1 card ?  This was a godsend for my early Cakewalk software and any support communications with Greg Hendershott were thru' Compuserve (G*d I'm old :-) ...

Cakewalk has gone thru' a lot of changes, some smooth, some not so (X1 !), but it is STILL my preferred DAW  and although I don't work daily on it (due to gigging live performances) it is still my go-to application.  I want to thank Meng, Noel Borthwick and the whole Baking Team for giving a lot of us the joy and satisfaction to CREATE !

Thanks for the info.  I'll try it.  Lots to learn 😉

Later: Just coming back to say "thank you" again ... tried YL in situ in CbB pulling WAV files from my library and testing LUFS in the plug-in is easy.  I dunno why I was under the notion to have to export out first.  Real time saver.  I suppose it's RTFM time.

2 hours ago, John Vere said:

 My solution now is the You Lean loudness meter and you drag and drop the clip or track for instant analysis 

Hi John, yes ... this is a way.  As I only got Youlean a few days ago (after your plug, thanks) I will give this a go, but I think you'd have to export the track/clip to be able to use Youlean "offline", so there is still a time trade-off.   If I have a bunch of songs, I put them all on separate tracks, all starting at zero, then run them in real time with volume = 0 to get peak levels on all.  Exporting each one to run thru' Youlean could be faster or slower depending on how many tracks you need to check.  YMMV.  Anyway, I'm grateful to you for introducing me to Youlean and I paid for it.

10 hours ago, David Baay said:

He pretty much diagnosed and solved it in the original post

3 hours ago, Starship Krupa said:

I thought I'd try the punch-in feature because it's something I rarely use.

I also rarely use punch-in/out and that's why I was interested ... maybe I was missing something.  Thanks.

1 hour ago, John Vere said:

First there is no analyzing tool to tell you what the peak level of the track is. 

Switch on the Peak Level indicator on the track.  You probably mean "Clip" ... just thinking out loud.

On 8/1/2019 at 7:35 PM, Noel Borthwick said:

Normalization is a leftover from the early digital audio days when most processing was destructive. These days with clip envelopes and 64 bit mixing there is hardly any need to do normalization unless your audio levels a super low. Even so a compressor as a clip effect would do the job.

Not to say that we shouldn't look into that issue.

Well, I use it very often when restoring (or better ... trying to restore) old cassette media, some of which is in dire straits and VERY old ... signals having been recorded terribly low.  I use "normalise to -5dB" to get me started.  AND, I also would like the multi normalisation to work, so that this workflow could be faster.

BTW, this restoration work is a sideline.

6 hours ago, Marcello said:

mmm ok than if you can change the meter settings, what do you need the meter for? I mean if I need the meter to tell me not me telling the meter LOL

Different people have different needs, as far as levels they are working to.  Some use -18LUFS, others stick with -23.  The ability to change this is to allow the graphic to truly represent their "goal".  On your first graphic you had an excessive amount of overs (the red dots at the top of the graphic) which (I think) made you "panic" a bit, like "WTF is going on here ...".  If, for example, you had Youlean set up @ -14LUFS (which of course is louder than the default -23), you would not have seen so many of the "overs".  But, this obviously does not change your mix ... it's only to give you a clue what's going on.  Also, you can get a graphic representation of dynamic range, not just loudness, by clicking on the oscilloscope button.

But you've moved on and are getting great info from others here.  My post was only a heads-up in case you didn't know too much about Youlean.

Good luck with you productions.

StarshipKrupa ... did you ever solve this "issue" ?  If so, what was the solution ?  Thx.

Looking at your graphics, it looks like you have the Youlean set at the default of -23 LUFS (that's where the red bar starts).  I dunno if the free version can be changed, but the purchased one (cheap at around 30$) you can change all that (see Settings, the cog-wheel - there are a few different windows of options).  You would get a completely different read out if you set it up to -14 LUFS.

Anyway, just mentioning this.  Good luck.

Sounds reasonable.  Have you tried playing the chord just slightly after the punch-in time and looked whether the note has been recorded (in that bar) ?  Or has it recorded at the start of the next bar ?

On 7/14/2021 at 1:19 AM, Waynebo said:

I'm still bummed about losing access to that one!

Me too ... I loved Beatscape even though it had quirks (notes stuck, playing over the end of the frame, etc.).  I was really disappointed when it was shelved.  It had some of the best percussive sounds.

28 minutes ago, dubdisciple said:

If you registered it, it should still be in your izotope account. You have to look in the legacy installers area

Wow ... that did it !  You're DA Man !! Thanks a lot.  Somehow Nectar Elements ended up in my purchase history (at $0) ... which was NOT there the last time I looked.  And once again has proven that time flies by so quickly.  It was March 2014 !   BTW, there was no legacy installers area, but that's moot now.

1 hour ago, dubdisciple said:

Kind of. I forgot the details. If I'm not mistaken it was not directly from Cakewalk. Forgive me if I am wrong , but I believe when Cakewalk first started including Addictive Drums, during the registration with XLN they were giving away the original version of Elements and we got in on deal. 

Thanks dubdisciple, your answer started ringing some bells here ... I too installed the Addictive Drums plugin at that time.  I'll see if I can get more info from the XLN people.  They are very forthcoming with any questions I've had in the past.

39 minutes ago, treesha said:

I got nectar elements with sound forge 11 in 2018. In my plugin list i think it is called izotope nectar elements. The gui is orange. I have another called nectar 3 elements with the gui opening to a black gui with question what are you going for? I think that one was in my crossgrade to music production suite 2.1. Hope that helps

Thanks to you too treesha.  Funnily, I bought and installed Nectar 3 Plus a couple of days ago (as I couldn't get the Elements anymore) thinking it was a blown-up version of Elements, but it's different as it's more voice-oriented (and is black 😀).  Elements (the orange one) had a lot of pre-defined setups based on music styles to choose from and I edited a lot to my own taste.  That's why I'm keen to get it back somehow.   I'm wondering if by getting Nectar 3 Plus it installed Elements too and is now asking for the same authorisation codes as Nectar 3 ... I haven't tried that.  Maybe ... just maybe 🤔

A question for any long-standing Cakewalk / SONAR users ...

Did Nectar Elements come as a "freebie" with any product in the past ?  I am working on an old project which used Nectar Elements as a plugin, and it's now asking to be re-authorised ... and of course, I cannot remember any of the details to authorise it.

I have an account with iZotope, but there is no sale registered there, so my conclusion is that it may have come as a "freebie".

Thanks.

Sorry, just realised this should be posted somewhere else ...

Hi John, can you please give more details on the "Backing Tracks" folder and contents thereof ?  Where does this folder come from as I don't have it on my system.  I googled for Dark String loop bur couldn't find anything that matched your Backing Tracks folder.  Meanwhile, I downloaded the Pro version of LUFS from YouLean after seeing it here.  It's great, thanks.

Ted

16 hours ago, Nok Nod Gorilla Fist said:

I'm old school, approaching 50 Fast.  So Old feels very familiar to someone like me

16 hours ago, John Vere said:

50!  That’s pretty young for this forum

A young 50 ? Sure.   Wow  I was 24 when the OP was born and still feel young - I suppose it's a musician's thing 😎

Atari, Cakewalk for DOS, then moved to SAW (which was a great application also!) with two 286's, then the first Windows version of Cake.  I'm in the club with BitFlipper and JohnT, John, Mudgel, BrundleFly, Undertow (and a few others now unfortunately gone, like BA-Midi).  A VERY BIG salute to my friends ... we're still going strong.

As for old-school, well that's subjective.  I remember cursing X1 when it came out with it's new GUI.  I LOVE it now and it's getting better all the time.

Board coming up 😁  Is this still  a problem or is that the "fix" ?

Thank you Noel (and team).  Great work !

Something weird happening here after the update.  ALL my projects now have no sound, only crackling through the speakers.  The waveforms are there and the fader meters respond normally, i.e. everything seems to be working as normal except for the crackling sound.  It's not the interface as I can play back the same WAV files through Windows.  Anyone else have or had any issues like this ?

Will investigate further, but may have to rollback to 2021.04.

On 7/3/2021 at 4:14 PM, Noel Borthwick said:

 I wasn’t aware that the friendly names feature was so popular

It was the only way to get over the issues back then and is still IMHO the way to go if you're not happy with the sometimes "over the board" long interface names.  The assignment of logical names to physical IO was/is a great feature.  So thank you Noel.

 So, to continue, here are BEFORE (on the left hand side) and AFTER update screen shots.  As you can see, I've lost all the "Left" and "Right" naming and all channels after 24 are numbered differently, with the ensuing confusion .  I'm not sure if just removing the automatic numbering (as Noel [I think] has suggested) will restore the "Left" and "Right" naming as in the BEFORE pics.

To clarify:  I use a 512-point patchbay to connect all my gear and the labelling matches the "friendly names" I use(d?).

@Noel Borthwick I know you and your team have put a lot of effort into this and I also understand those who think the changes have helped them in their routing issues.  I've never had any routing issues but may have now.  I therefore would like to have the new system made "optional".  Please consider and thank you.

Been away for a few days, so am coming back here after updating today to the latest version and to answer Noel's request for feedback.

At first glance, I was not expecting such a deep change to the input/output naming.  I'm still looking and will post screen shots tomorrow (I have rehearsals today).

Basically, it has changed a lot for me and I'm not too happy about it.  The extra (sequential) numbering has messed up my carefully prepared friendly names.  I run a hell of a lot of outboard equipment collected over the years and this has been reflected in the naming of the channels, etc.  At the moment I think I would join the "please make it optional" movement as this is an intrinsic change.  More tomorrow.

Hi, I'm reading this with interest ...

I'm using SSL hardware with RME cards which give me (max.) 192 channels.  I have not yet updated to this latest version, but will make sure to take screen shots of before and after.  I spent quite a bit of time making "friendly names" easy to read in the dropdowns, so I'm interested to see if this new "feature" will be just as easy to understand after the update.

I'll comment more later.

Wow ... thank you so much, all of you.  It looks like I'm a newbie to this forum, but actually I've been around Cakewalk from even the pre-SONAR days (ca. 1993 I think).  That's the second time I've become a "newbie" here ... Bitflipper should know me as SONARtist ...

It's encouraging to hear that it would work !  I was somehow expecting issues with graphic cards not being able to support the native screen resolution.  I currently work in 1920x1080 so going to 2560x1440 would be ideal.

Now, here's the thing.  I've got a 5.1 quasi-fixed installation (a relic from the days of the surround "hype" ... not used so much now), so having a large TV in front of me is not feasable, as it would cover the front-mid speaker (and yes, I also thought a TV should make a great monitor). 
But one of the reasons I chose to try a 49" was that the monitor is pretty skinny.  Also, the width would not present any problems as the speakers are above the height of the screen, which incidentally is similar to the current height of my 2x 24" and not that much wider.

Who knows, I may actually revert back to only stereo someday soon and put a 65" TV up.
And it's good to see some "old" names here ... I learn something every time.

Hi, I'm toying with the idea of getting a 49" monitor screen (Dell and Samsung have one) and was wondering if anyone had already used Cakewalk on such a wide screen.  I'm currently running two 24" monitors but the bezels are too wide (and it looks ugly when side by side).  Any experienced 49-ers ?