Starise

Thanks Craig. I was successful in the mastering. Sounds pretty darned good! I only added light compression where needed and EQ in the mix stage. Final EQ and limiting in the master stage. Studio One can't be beat for this application. I had forgotten how easy it is. Drop the tracks in and they all line up in order. Low cpu hits. Master. Burn disc. Done!

I started out with Ableton on PC fully intending to use it every week. It is truly an amazing program for this application of for making your own backing tracks. This might not be what you wanted to hear but I'll share what happened to me. I invested in a nice PC laptop and Ableton, began using it, Realized I could replace it with something way more intuitive. An iPad with the prime app you can get for free from loopcommunity.com. Buy their tracks for Prime and have everything on a music stand in the iPad. You can change keys, mute/solo parts all in the app.The tracks all have cue and metronome that you route to channel B whilst routing the audio to FOH in channel A. You use earbuds on stage from a stage mix. One track in each ear. Sooooooo much easier than Ableton. By a mile. The only thing I use Ableton for now is mostly new track construction. All tracks in Ableton can be uploaded to Prime app as indivisul tracks. PRIME separates them. "If" you only want mainstage for the synth sounds. Yeah you can get that in multiple other ways on PC. You could use Sampletank and any other similar program. Alternately go hardware for the bread and butter sounds mostly used in worship music.

Thanks cclarry I think the main question I had with these sales was , Should I buy individual plugins or wait for the package deals? In my case it was kinda both. I bought a handful of the singles at good prices. Around the holidays they had a good deal on the packages. It can be redundant if the packages have the same plugins. If you only plan to use a few waves plugins this is excellent. I highly recommend the package deals as well. Once you buy one package it's less to jump to the next one up. If you buy Waves Silver, upgrade to gold is less.

I find myself frequently going to certain waves plugins. No matter how or why they are so cheap I like it. They have some very quality stuff. I was on a mix last evening and used Kramer Master Tape, Scheps parallel particles, Gregg Wells Mix Centric on the "fairy dust" setting and a few others. Abbey Road TG Mastering chain is understated. It totally rocks. Sheps Omni channel and 73...can't say enough good about those. I could go on about their other stuff. It's all mostly good, They're re working some of their older plugins and adding new ones. I use the usb stick option. Usb sticks are inexpensive. If your motherboard or hard drive smokes today you can have new plugins all verified and playing tomorrow. You can transfer between computers with it. It doesn't cost 30.00 like the iLok. Most computers have lots of usb port in them. If not, I recommend you buy a usb hub.

Thanks Craig. I'm a long time Cakewalk fan...since Pro 8. I was hesitant to mention my other programs here which are in fact Studio One Pro 4 and Sound forge. I made an acoustic guitar album with SO4 tags and all. I have not used SoundForge. Bought it on a deal never opened it. I have some decent limiters including the Waves L3 I think. The acoustic album was an easier mix. Less elements involved. I think I'll do the same thing you do. I'm not as familiar with SO4 but I should be able to get the hang of it. My last CD album was several years back. That's the last time I attempted this. I'll read those article links tonight.Thanks again!

I mostly record my own material and post it online. I'm not well versed in the ways most mix a set of songs in Cakewalk for album CD distribution. I've been getting more jobs that require mixes and setups that want a finished CD, so I'm curious how some of you who do this more often might go about it. For instance would you put any limiting on individual songs before they go to the final master? Some of the mixes lack punch and volume if I don't add a limiter before the master. My plan was to mix each tune for the CD and then use another more dedicated program for the final mix. The CD will be for a charity and so it won't need to be tagged for commercial distribution. My client has someone who will run off the CDs. Not sure what they are using to do it or if they are subbing it out. My plan was to get all of the tracks lined up after export from Cakewalk into the other mastering program where I would even out the volume levels, add EQ if necessary and limiting. As it stands each track needs a different touch. Some seem to need limiting before the master mix to get the levels up. To those who mix these kinds of projects often, do you employ some pre mastering before the master? Thanks!

I think their mantra is a newb can get up and going quickly in it and have everything they need to get started. I like it for video. Like all daws I think a lot of work goes into building one and keeping it up with updates. I mainly use Cakewalk. Have a few others. I respect the work that's gone into it and I think anyone who has used it and likes it could do much worse than updating it for such a great upgrade. No I don't work for those guys....just sayin'. Respect.

Well, I want it loud but I guess not that Loud. My ears almost baked anyhow.

Eh...what were we talking about?

She looks like maybe her oscillator needs an adjustment. Volume could go up too but I can't see the knob.

You can l;earn to play on 7 days.....Mary Had A Little Lamb....she did too.

And you know what that means...........tomorrow is Saturday. Great revelations here today. I do like me fridays.

I scanned over it. Looks like this guy has all the right ideas. FWIW when talking about stems, this is basically what you have with most drum software and even some synth programs. In the case of drum software, you have an internal mixer and all the effects you probably need for the kit. Some choose to still strip out each track and send it to Cakewalk as separate tracks. ...so what I'm saying is there's not an especially good reason to do that unless you don't like the program itself. Drums are probably the most common stem mixes. I suppose you can get deep into that with orchestral templates. You could send all the brass to a stem , all the violins etc. It is possible to simply go into the main mix with only a stereo pair for a whole drum kit or a whole orchestra. Not that you can't get more specific in Cakewalk if this is what you want to do. We seem to have gotten away from dedicated mastering programs like Wavelab and similar with everything mostly being in the DAW. Still I think there are good reasons to export a track and use one of those more dedicated programs, mainly if doing it helps you to concentrate more on the master. In a DAW I tend to like tweaking at all stages. It can't really be argued any more that no one else offers dithering. The decent daws all offer many of the same things the dedicated programs do. On the loudness wars. With the Lufs standard out now mixes seem about half as loud as I remember before. Makes one want to pull out a nice limiter and bump it up some. This usually puts me in the red. I'm still sometimes trying to find that happy medium.

Just used Q-3 on a project last night. I don't think I'll ever use another EQ....well ok maybe I will but not often.

This is a very nice program. Maybe not so much for payed recording studios as home studio enthusiasts, although to a point it can tow the line even better than a few on some things. I find myself going back to it for different things here and there. Definitely worth the upgrade. Their support is pretty good too. Handles Melodyne, has lots of effects and synths. Should be something there to get anyone started making music. Loop content is decent.Above average video handling for a DAW. It ios rather unusual to have the plugins not be tied to the program like almost everyone else has done.

Great suggestions here. A few things I'm sure you probably already though of. No sends from bass to another buss that has other tracks going to it. Bass almost always in mono. No two basses are ever the same in a mix. I second the comments made by Batsbrew here. Mud can be caused by several things. One is simply too much of a certain frequency that needs to be notched back. If you have a graphic representation it helps to see where the highest peaks are on the bass track and drop them 3-5db usually. Sliding the frequency around on the EQ while listening helps to hear it in a mix. Lots of people think that bass needs to have a lot of low end when in reality you are likely hearing the "bump" from the bass more in the 200-300 range usually in a narrow Q . Sometimes you get the mud from something else and it seems like the bass when it isn't. What it really is, is several tracks all pumping in that same range, so the other tracks need to be EQ'd to stay out of that sweet spot which will be different each time. A few toys that help are dynamic EQ and side chaining to an offending track. Gain staging can also play a part. If tracks are much over -6db after you load up on plugins and push the master things can get mushy. Lastly, mp3's just plain suck, especially low rez mp3. If you can hear the mp3 before you mixdown on something like the features offered in Ozone using mp3 monitoring you can hear how badly the compression is going to toy with your mix and try to compensate. On SC upload on wav. Yeah it's still an mp3 in the end but it only went through one conversion. If you have the choice upload at least 256mps mp3. 128 is the worst thing since briars and rabid dogs.

The idea that it works for me but doesn't work for you is an age old battle here. I don't believe either side is lying about their experiences. We have the video Scott posted as proof. Neither do I think all of it was duplicated by the Cake team., so they are being honest too. If you haven't duplicated it, then how can you fix it? The only thing you can do is attempt to find a solution by thinking the process through. In my own experiences I have only had the space bar delay issue maybe once in roughly 20 times and it never happens with regularity. I only just bought a Fabfilter plugin so we'll see. It was more than just Fabfilter though. Scott I guess if your just tired of dealing with the issues you're getting any future fix is moot. I understand your frustration, especially if the tracks didn't save. That's a biggie for me. You could export the stems to another daw and hopefully save most of it, although it will require mixing again. If you want it fixed and it is fixed, then wouldn't that be the result you wanted? You can drink anything you want to drink but I'm not going to sit here and pretend that I don't think it could be clouding some of your software mixing decisions. It's like if I went to my lunch break and drink a beer and come back with beer breath to work. You know people will assume that I drank more than I really did. I'm not going to pretend that it doesn't influence my judgment some just because it offended you someone mentioned it. Might be the wrong conclusion to draw, but if your going to do it on a technical mixing video and drink then you can live with what I think about it. I am entitled to my opinions. I will say that most likely you haven't had enough to make a difference, but I can't assume anything. Maybe you did something dumb ass because you were half toasted. If you have a serious point to make then you want to be taken seriously right?

Those IK reverbs get buried in my plugin list. I forget I have them. They are pretty good.

I'm with Gswitz on the Z3ta2. It's a killer synth.

Thanks TheSteven for that tip on the jam points. I know what I said but when you have GAS just one more limiter is all you need FWIW this limiter is head and shoulders above any of the free limiters unless they can do the same things under the hood. I haven't seen one that is anything like this. Limiters are not all created equal.This limiter does not use look ahead, it uses a sample calculation and has a cleaner sound than many of lesser variety. This is one reason I bought it even though I have a bunch of limiters including all of the waves stuff. Here's a few reviews on it . It was selling for 149.00 which is why I didn't initially buy it. https://www.soundonsound.com/reviews/ik-multimedia-stealth-limiter https://soundsandgear.com/review-ik-multimedia-stealth-limiter/

Thanks.

I tried to like green tea, I really did.

Good to see you're breaking things up a little there. I have chickens. Between 6 and 8 eggs a day. I'm still not tired of them.

Man Mesh, you might as well do grease intravenously. 😁 That happens to be my favorite combination, especially the corned beef hash. Make you slap your momma. You left out coffee tho......and OJ. I can only eat that breakfast once a month and not die clogged arteries....ok...maybe twice a month.

This is a great deal. I dunno....for me, ever since I picked up the McDSP ML4000 on a flash sale I haven't needed to look at any other limiter. Uses ilok, but you can now use ilok without a dongle "in the cloud". I am thinking I might buy the ilok so I can avoid logging into the cloud to use it. You need to RTM to use that one. I salivated over the Stealth limiter before this. You could do much worse. I also continue to use the Adaptive limiter offered by Cakewalk and occasionally the concrete limiter in the Pro channel. Maybe one day they will offer the Adaptive limiter again to everyone. It's a tough one to beat. Craig mentioned in a recent post that some of the plugins offered in the older Cakewalk package weren't taken as seriously because they were included in the deal, however development went into them and they were often a step or two above offerings in other DAWs. Adaptive limiter is a good example of that.