CJ Jacobson

56 minutes ago, Clayton Ryan said:

Hi There,

New user so please bear with me. On the preferences screen having changed device output to digital keyboard I have no option to ok and apply. Has anyone experienced this problem,

 

Many thanks

Clayton

Are you talking about MIDI outputs or audio outputs? If its MIDI, you need to make sure all channels are enabled.

Windows has nothing to do with sound quality. Your audio interface and its D/A converters have everything to do with your sound quality.

When you upgrade your windows, you need to make sure your audio interface has the latest drivers installed for that version of windows. Then you need to adjust the driver buffers for optimal playback and recording latency. Examples, ASIO drivers set at buffers of 256.

On 3/3/2019 at 8:34 PM, Sidney Earl Goodroe said:

I have absolutely got to turn off my wifi and above all, kill the antivirus before I even open any audio programs!!! When my Windows 10 antivirus is turned on my latency has to be upwards around 512 even on ASIO drivers!! With the antivirus off I can run the same large project at 128 to 170!!!

 

Sidney, If you are using plugin effects that are only meant for mixing and/or mastering, then you should not have those enabled when you are still recording. Certain plugins that are meant for mixing and/or mastering and not Recording, have hidden buffers in them.

Do not use any plugin in the recording stage that have hidden buffers in them and that are meant for mixing and mastering. Insert them after the tracks are recorded. It makes no difference as they are Non-Destructive. So they are not getting printed onto the track anyways

4 hours ago, Collin Fields said:

I can't get any sound out of Cakewalk. Sound works fine with everything else. Just not Cakewalk. Please advise....?

I have a zillion questions, as you left out a lots of details regarding how you have your audio interface set up in Cakewalk.

I'll start with these question first,

1. What audio interface are you using

2. Did you define that interface in Cakewalk?

3. How did you define the audio interface? What driver mode and other settings did you set it up with?

4. Did it just stop working? Or are you trying for the 1st time?

16 hours ago, Alex Theo said:

Whenever I try to edit my bass guitar it sounds to guitarish. It reminds too much of a bass guitar in one of Korn's tracks. I tried everything like google, youtube and things but there is now tutorial like "how to make hip hop bass"

It all depends on your knowledge of your soft synths you own and your knowledge in all the audio effects you own.  

Editing a sound to make it sound like another sound takes a lot of talent, trained ears, and knowing all your audio & MIDI effects inside and out. 

The easiest way to go about this is not starting with a bass sound that gets to sound like Korn's Bass sound, which I love as a bass player. Korn's bass  has saturation/distortion ad its heavy in the MID and HIGH frequencies. This is far off form a HIP HOP bass sound. 

You need to start with a sound that is close to where you want to end up. Then you use your knowledge of your audio effects to carve the sound you want. It also depends on the arrangement of the mix, the other instrument sin the mix and the vibe and feel you want for the entire song. It is unteachable, as the same bass guitar sound can sound different in 20 different songs it is mixed into. This is why learning your tools and starting off with a similar bass sound is the most important step. 

15 hours ago, kevro2000 said:

However, when I play it, I do not hear beat one of first playback measure, until its on beat two

Start your songs on beat 1, measure 2. apparently, the buffers need time to react. So beat 1 measure 1 may not be enough time

3 hours ago, Marcello said:

so I have my guitars track clipping a bit over -6db, I already did gain staging at the beginning without plugin and kept it at -18/-6db, but then adding the plugin it goes over it.  
now what should I do?

You can do what ever works best for you and the sound. what you do depends on if you like the sound or not.

You can lower the fader or lower the plugins input or output or both or all the above.

3 hours ago, Marcello said:

1- low down faders volume ( apparently this is just tricking, the wave form will remain the same anyway, not good.)

Why do you say its not good? did you try it and di the sound change so much you didn't like it? Lowering the faders doesn't trick anything. It just lowers the track dB levels at the track level. There is no trickory here. Its black and white. If you lower a fader, you raise the volume and dB. the reverse happens when you lower a volume.  

Lets say you have a 40 tracks project, the faders on all the tracks will have to be lower than a project with 20 tracks. That is math, not trickery.

Just to sum up, you lower what ever gets you your desired sound. There are no right or wrong ways as long as you get the sound you want in the end,.

18 hours ago, Marcello said:

SHould I have 2 busesfor guitars with no reverb and one with it or just one bus with reverbed guitars?

You can do what ever sounds best for that specific guitar in that specific mix.

There are no rules and you can do anything you want as far as routing and bus'ing, as long as you like the sound.

Every song/mix will need different things done to it. Every different guitar sound will need different things done to it, in order to fit in the mix. So with this info, you just do what ever is needed.

6 minutes ago, Marcello said:

I see you have basically routed not just guitars but also drums to the same reverb bus, would you suggest to send drums to reverb bus as well together? Consider I already applied some Room Reverb to the drums in the Studio Drummer plugin

You can, if that gets you the desires sound, stereo field and space you want form your drums and mix.

19 hours ago, Teegarden said:

Could there be a hidden setting (one of the menus) that could cause a volume drop from a track to a bus and from a bus to another bus?  It makes me crazy🙁

The send level controls how much of the signal goes to the bus.

18 hours ago, John Vere said:

If I turn the Moto on after I boot up it doesn't happen. This is 4 or 5 tries this morning.  This might be the only option? 

But if the Motu is powered on before the Computer this happens. PITA.  

It is always better to have your PC turned on first, then power up your audio interface and other peripherals, like MIDi controllers and such.

QUESTION: Did you delete the old MOTU drivers and install the newest MOTU drivers for your new MOTU interface?

18 hours ago, John Vere said:

Other issue is I getting crackles in playback of some projects. Another new thing for me. I have stayed at 256 buffer same as my 6i6. I'm going to A/B the 2 interfaces when I get a chance but looks like this will have to wait it's time to put on my Christmas sweater. 

Some projects need more or less resources to playback at an optimal performance.  

After you delete the old drivers and install the new drivers for your new MOTU, go into the preference menu in Cake and enable 'share drivers with other programs'

18 hours ago, John Vere said:

Haven't had this issue for I bet 12 years. You open Cakewalk, load a project and it plays a bit fast and1/2 step up ( approx) 

Just bought a Motu M4 and have been using it for about 2 weeks.

Yes, you are right about it being a sample rate issue. I think if you delete the old drivers and then install the latest and greatest from MOTU's website, you will be fine.

17 hours ago, Tracey A Meyer said:

i have all the amp sims i think. Amplitube 5, guitar rig 5, TH2, and a couple others. But when i do to mix (and i am not an engineer, just a novice) , the guitars are fizzy. i have tried and tried to get them to not sound fizzy.  Any suggestions?

I would not rely on using the pre-sets for any of the amp sims and this includes any effects as well.  Assuming the dry guitar was recorded good, you can make any guitar sounds from the list of amp Sims you have. They key is to learn everything about each amp sim you use. Then you can dial in the sound with ease whiteout relying on pre-sets.

The person who make the presets did not have your taste, your song, your guitar sound in mind and they are usually overly exaggerated as well. Just  learn what each knob, setting, dial, cabinet and speaker selection does to the sound and then dial in the sounds you want.

When its glowing (enabled), it means audio is going through the Prochanel and processing the audio.

6 hours ago, xxrich said:

I want to see two track in track view so I can reference the one against the other.

You can see as many or as little tracks as your screen fits. You can adjust each track height and width with your mouse and the zoom can be controlled by the little plus and minus signs on the bottom of the screen. You can also move tracks so they are next to one another.

With a few mouse movements, I can see 2 or 22 tracks on my screen. Is there something that i am missing?

1 minute ago, Mr. Torture said:

I have a stereo drum track that I am trying to import into a session. It goes through the process but the track is not visible? I tried importing, dragging & dropping. Still cannot see any wave file in the session? 

Its probably all the way at the end somewhere off screen. Scroll to find it. It probably  has embedded info in it that makes it go to lets say measure 121, beat 2

Quote

when a track is playing, opening any plug-in's interface causes a short dropout in playback, which never used to happen before -

Whenever you upgrade to a new windows architecture, you need to make 10000% sure everything in your pc and connected to your pc had drivers and/or firmware that is made for Windows 10. 

Did you check to make sure everything can work in Win10 and has drivers and/or firmware for win10? If yes, did you install them in your PC? Thi sincludes even your PC's MOBO.

Quote

Booting back into Windows 7 and it is as solid as ever at the same latency settings.

When you upgrade, the same audio interface drivers need to be re-adjusted. Even if you didn't upgrade, the same drivers settings may not work for everything. The bigger the project, the more resources it needs and the more ASIO buffers you may need to compensate for it.  I always adjust my latency. When I record, its as low as 32 or 64 and when mixing, i raise it to 128 or 256 or even 512. Its normal.

14 hours ago, Raja Bhat said:

I installed Asio4all but that did not solve the problem, and in fact added listings when I chose ASIO in preferences. So I uninstalled it. I give up; 3 hours wasted! 

ASIO4all is a WDM wrapper. Its not a proper driver when using an audio interface. Use the M-audio drivers and get them from the M-audio's website. Install the latest drivers for your PC's architecture.

Just as the others said. Drivers like ASIO are for audio and PC performance and its not a CAEKEWALK Issue. 

7 hours ago, Mark Nicholson said:

Hi,

I am a total noob here, and the first project I want to try out is to take a single channel of spoken voice and give it that NPR, broadcast voice. Can you give some pointers where to look for guidance on this? I'm sure there must be tons opf material on this, but my mind is still blown by the sheer scope of Cakewalk.

- Mark

How your voice sounds depends on these things:

1.) Your room - Your room plays a HUGE role in how your vocal recording sound. Tune and treat your room so it is as flat as possible with no standing waves. The radio stations like NPR have their studios treated

2.) Your mic - The mic you decide to record with. The RE20 is a industry standard in the broadcast industry. So if you wanted that sound, I would use that mic.

3.) Your recording techniques - where you decide to record in your room and how far away you are form the mic decides in how your voice sounds in the recordings. The proximity effect is a useful tool. Learn it and experiment with it.  Since we are on the techniques, the position of the mix to yuor mouth should not be directly on axis. It should be slightly off axis and maybe pointing between your nose and mouth

4.) Your mic pre - The mic pre-amp accounts for about 5 to 10 percent of the sound. You can get away with using a mic preamp in a average sound card form MOTU or Focusrite in the price range between $200 to $600

5.) Effects - You should be using EQ and compression to get the vocals sounding just right.

6.) The way your voice sounds. If you do not have a 'radio' voice that is close to what you want it to sound like, then hire someone that does. 

You probably need to find out which one of your plugins are not supported by your new windows architecture. When gong into a new windows, you need to check and make sure all your software and hardware is compatible with the new windows. 

You may need to update a plugin and/or not use it anymore if it doesn't have an update to the current windows you are using.  

3 hours ago, Michal Ochedowski said:

Is there a setting in Cakewalk that would allow synthesizer patches play-out their ADSR envelopes and effects, without stopping them so abruptly?

Well gosh willy, there is just a setting. Its in the preference menu and its called 'Play effect tails' or something very close to it

On 12/9/2020 at 7:54 AM, lapasoa said:

I expected some partecipations with more technical comments. Instead I've found much musical philosophy.

Every song is mastered differently with different effects and different effect settings.

The basic effects used for mastering are EQ, (stereo, left, right mid and side), compression and limiting. how they are used depends on what the song sounds like and how it was mixed and what deficiencies are in that mix.

Its an art just like paintings. Every painting uses different brushes, brush strokes, and colors. same goes for every single song.

On 12/4/2020 at 11:52 AM, John Vere said:

I’m looking into DDP as my latest client says that’s what the duplicate people are asking for. I guess they don’t compile the CD anymore.

Probably in  another 10 years, CD's will cease to exist

On 11/25/2020 at 3:38 PM, Konskoo said:

I want to record piano pieces. I will use VST piano, MIDI keyboard controller, studio monitors, audio Interface.

Next I will make mastering of piano pieces.

After mastering I will upload piano pieces to different music sites - this will be the only way to distribute these recordings. There will no be physical media - CD, DVD - in distribution.

What studio monitors to use?

Even the best studio monitors will not do you any good if your studio is not tuned. In a un-tuned studio, you will not be able to hear the true sounds and you cannot make the mix and master sound the way you want it to sound and have it played back at its best on every sound system without hearing the true sounds you are mixing and mastering.

The room plays a huge role in the sounds you hear.

For mixing, i suggest 2 ways from either of these 2: JBL or Focal and for mastering, I suggest 3 ways form the same manufacturer

18 minutes ago, Brian Johnston said:

Hotone (JOGG)

This is not really a good interface if you want good performance. Its a stomp pedal.  

19 minutes ago, Brian Johnston said:

Line 6 Toneport UX8,

This is really not a good interface for good performance either.

I would invest in a good audio interface, form MOTU, RME, or Focusrite. They have good drivers written for them and drivers is what gives you good performance.

Our of the 2, i would use the Line 6 and the last thing i would try is to update the line 6 drivers to the latest ones available and lower the buffers. too high of buffers can cause artifacts.

9 hours ago, Bobby Thistle said:

Everything works; The blue light on the Ketron blinks when I press a key on the controller.  The VU meters for the track are moving when I press a key on the controller.  I can record midi on the track.

The only thing is, there is no sound.  Even though Cakewalk sees the MIDI signal and can even record the signal, there is no output sound.

You say you can record the MIDI ,but MIDI doesn't have any sounds. The MIDI data needs to trigger a soft synth or the sound module in the ketron. If you use the Ketron, you need to record the audio output form it, not the MIDI output.

I love the Ketrons. I have had 2 of them in the past.