David Inglesfield

This video on YouTube has someone using three D-50s to make a sort of cover version. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jy5prYnd-iI&ab_channel=VstSample The top keyboard in the video, played in a low register, seems to be the one generating the ‘trombone’ sounds. It’s not clear if the video poster is using a preset or they programmed something similar. In the video comments, someone referred to a preset called ‘Space Fascination’ from an expansion card, while a second commenter mentioned a preset called ‘Phaedra’. It’s unclear if either of those is correct in relation to the ‘trombone’, but they might be worth looking into.

On some tracks on the album, yes, but not on 'Another Day in Paradise', at least according to Wikipedia.

In a 2011 discussion of this topic on another forum, someone said (and I think they are likely correct) that they believed it was a Roland D-50 patch: 'A lot of D-50 in "Another Day In Paradise". That long strange breathy intro sequence with bells and random horn sounds, for example, is a D-50 patch.' https://forum.vintagesynth.com/viewtopic.php?t=60399

Do you mean that you're running it as a real-time effect on the vocal track? I would think that would involve a lot of processing. But they shouldn't claim you can realistically do that if it's not really possible without noticeable latency. So far I've just used it to process audio files offline and then I import the processed audio file into the DAW. You could export your vocal, process it, then import it back in and line it up with the original to get the timing right. (In fact, come to think of it, a more primitive version of that was pretty much how I used to work back in the old days: record the backing vocals on several tracks of the multitrack, sample the best bits into an S3000 or something like that, then adjust the midi timing so the samples audibly lined up exactly with the originals on the multitrack.)

Does the activation work OK with Cakewalk? I really want to take advantage of the $29 price while it's around. I've been using the free beta version and found it very useful, and high quality.

No, no Soundtoys plugins. Updating what I wrote yesterday, I downloaded Samsung's Magician and it reported that my SSD is in 'Good' condition with no bad sectors. The Toybox Audio plugin Thump One was definitely causing problems, but I'm still confused as to why, at the stage that I was still running Thump One, altering buffer settings from 512 to 256 improved performance. And also why freezing VSTs led to worse performance, when there was a huge amount of space free on a fairly new SSD reported as being in 'Good' condition.

Thanks for the replies. Yes, I came to the same conclusion. While it is usable for me, the CPU load is rather heavy. As I was using it just to generate a kick drum repeating over and over again, it was a simple matter just now for me to export a single kick beat as audio, run the audio as a sample instead, and disable Thump One.

Thank you for that. I had been thinking about downloading Magician but hadn't got round to it. I think I'll do it now. The drive is fairly new but it might be something to do with that, certainly with regard to the worse performance when VSTs were frozen. I've also concluded that the VST Thump One was causing excessive engine load. I was using it to generate a kick drum, but exporting audio of the kick sound and running it as a sample instead through Shortcircuit, while disabling Thump One, has resulted in a much lighter engine load, peaking generally at about 60%. I'll probably leave the buffer setting on 256. That did cause me problems in the past, but maybe I can get away with it on some tracks, and switch to 512 only when there are issues.

I like this too. But how are you finding it in terms of CPU? I read on Bedroom Producers Blog some comments saying there was high CPU load. Some said that this only occurred when the GUI was open. I'm finding that it runs fine with the GUI closed, but I am experiencing some problems with late buffers on the one track I've used it on so far. Maybe this is the culprit, though it could be something else.

I have an intermittent problem with late buffers and resulting audible glitches. I’m a bit mystified as to what’s going on exactly. I’ll list a few things that I’ve noticed. These are all relating to one particular project. NB: The driver setting is ASIO (Audiophile 24/96 PCI card). The track consists only of MIDI tracks (no audio tracks), plus a number of VST effects plug-ins. I should mention that I am using two instances of Shortcircuit (32 bit sampler VST). I know it's old but I find that it runs pretty well, usually with no problems of this kind. All the samples loaded are located in the project folder, and all are 32 bit float, 44.1 khz (same as the project). 1. Yesterday, with buffer size set to 512, the engine load peak was starting at about 50%, but then as I played through the track, it would go over 100% up to ten times by the end of the track, with a glitch audible with each peak above 100%. 2. I altered the buffer size to 256, and the engine load peak now starts at about 72% but increases only to 83% or 86% and doesn’t generally go over 100%. (The one exception to this was the first time I played the track this morning, where at one point it jumped to 466%, but this didn’t happen on subsequent playbacks.) Regarding the buffer size setting, I was under the impression that it would be the other way around, i.e. a smaller buffer size (going more towards ‘fast’ on the adjustment slider) would be more likely to produce glitches. I did originally have it on 256, but a long time ago I altered it to 512 and that fixed the glitches I was experiencing at that time. Now it's back on 256, as described above. But it's going in the opposite direction that appears to have fixed the issue. 3. The amount of RAM used by the project varies at different times. Using Task Manager, I could see last night that Cakewalk, with this project loaded, was reported as using as much as 700 to 900 MB. I even saw it increase to over 1 GB at one point. BUT the same project is at other times reported as using only 300 or 400 MB. This morning, the RAM usage was initially reported as around 700 or 800 MB, but some time after it was running at around 300 MB (it further decreased and at one point I saw it as low as 132 MB). Why is there such a huge range, and is it significant in increasing/reducing glitches? 4. Regarding freezing tracks, I have used this in the past to reduce the engine load and eliminate glitches. But yesterday, when I tried this on two different VSTs (Thump One and Odin), the effect was the opposite, i.e. it dramatically increased the amount of glitching. NB: The one thing I’ve just thought of with regard to freezing is that when I used it in the past, the audio tracks created by the freeze were running off an internal mechanical drive. Not long ago I replaced that internal HD with an SSD, so yesterday the frozen audio tracks were running off the internal SSD. Would that be likely to cause a problem, versus a mechanical? (The SSD, a Samsung 840 EVO, has 800 GB free out of 1 TB, by the way.) Anyway, as freezing tracks was problematic, I unfroze them and am now back to all the VSTs running live. As mentioned above, the track is currently playing OK, but I don’t understand why, and I would like to understand, so as to avoid these problems in future.

Yesterday I used MIDI controller events to adjust the filter cut-off on the Arturia Pigments synth. When I’d finished, I had a track consisting of multiple clips, each containing CC events, and it was playing back fine last night. Today, when I loaded the project and played it back, at the point where the first CC events clip started, playback stopped abruptly, the blue spinning ball appeared, and Cakewalk crashed. I tried loading it again several times but the crash always occurred. I thought I would try two things. First of all, I added some blank space to the first CC events clip, so the beginning of the clip didn’t coincide with the first CC events. Then, I joined all the clips together so now they are in a single clip. One or other (or maybe both) of these two changes fixed the problem. I don’t know if this is something that’s already known about, but I thought I’d report it here, just in case, as it would be better if this didn’t happen in a future version. What’s mysterious is the fact that it played fine last night but not today, because I hadn’t made any changes at all.