Lee D

Waveform Extreme Bundle can be had for $300.  Worth it?  Anyone using this?

4 hours ago, Robert Bone said:

I have never heard of an ASIO Buffer Size of 96 samples - could that be the sample rate at 96k?

Also, unless you use pretty much no effects - certainly not any convolution reverb or those that use linear phase processing, you will never have a single buffer size setting that works for mixing and recording - just does not work that way.

Bob Bone

Nah it's 96 samples.  I agree, it's unusual.  It appeared recently in the newer Focusrite Scarlett utility, previously it just went form 64 to 128 samples.

Well I use algorithmic reverb and don't use linear phase EQ's.  But I know what you're saying, when it comes to doing the final mixing then the buffer size will have to go up probably.

6 hours ago, slartabartfast said:

I am not sure what the holiday is. Halion 6 is apparently available as a crossgrade from  Kontakt / Komplete, Falcon, Machfive, Omnisphere for $125. Does anyone have experience with Halion?

Halion comes with a big library.  The includes acoustic sounds (piano, strings, etc) are serviceable but nothing great.  The synths are pretty good.  It's a very capable sound-design tool and it has a very good wavetable editor and granular engine.  It's a very capable sampler as well.  The main draw for it is if you want to create your own multisampled instruments. 

For $125 it's a very good value, and I don't think you can get anything better for anywhere close to that price that does everything Halion does.   You don't need a USB eLicenser dongle for it, which is good.  You do have to have a soft though, kinda like how Cubase Elements is.  If you ever want to sell it then the only way is to transfer it to a USB eLicenser though.

I'm not a fan of the overall interface and I frankly hate the Macros.  Also, they advertise that it's super easy to create your own instrument interfaces but I would disagree with that, and I am pretty computer savvy.  Though honestly I was just trying it to see if I could. . . I had no interest in creating my own really. 

The development of it is super slow and the community on Steinberg's forums is pretty non-existent if that matters to you.

I actually posted my thoughts on it when I owned it. 

https://www.steinberg.net/forums/viewtopic.php?f=262&t=148241

Feel free to ask me any questions you may have.

Thanks for the feedback everyone.  I'm running Windows 10.  My buffer size is at 96 samples.  I will try bumping it up to 128 samples and see if that fixes the issue.    I didn't even think about the ASIO buffer size being the culprit because there's no crackling during playback.

Robert Bone I hear what you're saying but I am frequently jumping back and forth between MIDI editing with VST synths and mixing, so I'd really like to get a buffer setting that will work for 95% of the time.   

Will report back after some research!

WTF are they smoking?  Is this an early April Fool's or something?

1 hour ago, kitekrazy said:

 That's where I give it the linear effect.   Tracks and patterns match.  I name the channel and pattern the same thing.  I could never dissect someones full blown project. I find it amazing to see older versions of people cranking out great stuff just using 3xOsc on Youtube.   Look for Seamless channel on Youtube and you can learn a lot.  I have a subscription to MacProVideo and there is a guy how does FL tutorials.  You will also find nice paid ones on Udemy.   I think there is one just on mixing. There is another guy who does FL, Live, and Logic.  It's interesting to see FL on a Mac.

I like In The Mix and Busy Works Beats as well, great FL tutorials!

This is probably unlikely, but is the "insert" key on your keyboard busted?   The "insert" key is a shortcut for adding a new track.  

Great track man!  Nice and catchy, feel good for the summer tune for cruising with the windows down!

21 minutes ago, kitekrazy said:

Adjusted? I find myself making mistakes with patterns.   FL works great for dance genres.  The best thing about it is the screen real estate, awesome piano roll.   I always watch tutorials.   Patcher is really great.   Using something like Kontakt is not as easy like in Bandlab. 

Yeah patterns is the difficult part for me.  Which is basically the entire workflow.  It's awesome for quickly getting ideas down but then when you get into copying patterns, make unique, etc it gets a little bit tricky.  And remembering what instrument in the rack is attached to what pattern, etc.  I love the interface though, and piano roll is awesome like you said.

15 minutes ago, kitekrazy said:

I know.  If you work with linear DAWs it's real easy to do that.  I've had FL Studio for over 10 years and have to switch my mindset.

After you adjusted do you like the workflow now?

Is that a custom plugin layout?  Or just the default one?  If you customized it maybe you need to update your custom layout.

8 minutes ago, Russell McKnight said:

WASAPI  Exclusive - no sound.

Hmm that's weird. . . you may want to troubleshoot that to see if you can get it to work.  Kick the computer a few times. . . that always helps.

Yeah that sucks. 

Maybe easiest is to run the line-level inputs to your Focusrite and use guitar amp plugins instead of running through the Katana 100.  

22 minutes ago, Russell McKnight said:

So here is the problem with that.  I have a Focusrite Saffire LE interface. Has it's own ASIO drivers. Should be perfect, right?  When I uninstall ASIO4ALL and switch to interface ASIO I can choose only that interface. If I plug in my USB interface from my amp, you can't use it to record. Cakewalk I can only choose one interface. Same when I use WASAPI. I'll try WDM.

 

Had this (ASIO4ALL) working perfectly a month ago.

 

That's typical with the Windows low-latency audio drivers.  They provide basically direct access to the hardware.  The drivers that allow multiple devices to work typically have higher latencies unfortunately.  I used to struggle with that when I had the Focusrite USB and also a Yamaha keyboard that had a USB-audio interface. . . couldn't use both.  Unfortunately your best bet as far as I'm aware is probably to use the Focusrite ASIO and just run the amp into the Focusrite.

I heard that Macs natively allow you to use multiple audio devices with low-latency. . . nice feature.

Is it awesome?  Worth $100?  I struggle with the FL Studio workflow in general.

 I have to second this. . . I took a long break from Cakewalk (my last version was Sonar Platinum but I always found it had too many bugs / glitches to really use) but I started using it again with the July update and I'm REALLY impressed with it.  It still has its flaws of course but overall I would say it's really come into being just as good as the other major players, and I actually prefer the workflow and strongly prefer the UI over many other DAWs at this point.  

On 8/11/2019 at 6:04 AM, jkoseattle said:

Cakewalk is reliably unstable on my Windows 10 machine. While I do occasionally get the instant crash, which has over the years caused me to save compulsively as I work, the more reliable instability is that every morning when I get up to work, my project is frozen, and I need to end Cakewalk from Task Manager and restart. It always starts up just fine, but this is actually the NORM, not an exception. This is true regardless of whether anything else is running on the machine. Basically, I leave a Cakewalk project open overnight, and it's usually frozen by morning. Any idea why this is?

Kind of vague info to work with but here's some thoughts.

When you open up task manager next time it freezes, make note of the CPU and memory usage of Cakewalk.   That would be interesting to see if it is taking a huge amount of memory up.

Is there a VST plugin that you always use in your projects that could be the culprit?  

Have you had this issue with other DAWs?

Is your PC in "High Performance" power mode?  If it's in a lower power mode maybe it's suspending the USB peripherals or something related to power-saving features could be causing issues.

All your drivers for your hardware up to date?

I haven't tried ASIO4ALL, but I know that they made improvements a few years ago to Windows WASAPI driver.  Have you tried using WASAPI instead?

I have a Focusrite 18i8 first generation that I'm using with ASIO drivers.  It works fine 90% of the time but I've noticed that when I do a lot of playing and stopping quickly (which I do frequently because I'm editing small sections of MIDI), it will occassionally either:

1) Play no audio when I hit play (the transport moves but no audio).  If I stop and start again then the audio comes back.

or 2) Continuously play a static / humming sound through the speakers when the playhead is stopped.  This goes away if I hit "play" again or if I reset the audio interface using the button in the control bar.

Anyone have similar behavior?  It's not a huge deal but it gets a little bit annoying over a long session when one out of every 5-10 "plays" has a problem.

Last night I spent an undue amount of time extending the MIDI clip lengths because they either didn't start exactly on the measure, or they didn't finish exactly on the measure.  The problem is that if I don't make these adjustments, then copying/pasting or groove clip looping doesn't work like I want it to.

For example, when I drag in a 2-bar drum loop from Addictive Drums, Cakwalk will consider it to be slightly less than 2 bars, possibly because it doesn't have a MIDI note right at the very end.  But this also happens with MIDI playing.  Or even while making edits, it seems like Cakewalk is overly eager to make my MIDI clip lengths less than I want them!

Other DAWs don't seem to have this behavior. . . they round off to the nearest bar with the MIDI clip.

Does anyone else deal with this issue?  Is this something to do with my settings?  Or is this is a Cakewalk-unique workflow that I need to understand better?

+1

On ‎8‎/‎8‎/‎2019 at 2:56 AM, msmcleod said:

The Mackie Control Universal, and the Mackie MCU Pro both come with a set of overlays for different DAW's which re-label the buttons to better map to the functions available on each DAW.

One of these is an overlay for SONAR/Cakewalk, which is what the MackieControl DLL expects the buttons to be mapped to. Any MCU compatible control surface that has a SONAR mode will map their buttons to this configuration. 

With no overlay, the buttons are as follows:

The SONAR/Cakewalk overlay looks like this:

So as you can see, the CLICK button on the standard button configuration is the same as LOOP ON/OFF on the SONAR overlay. This is why the "Metro" button on the KeyLab controls looping.

Automation read looks like it's mapped the same, but there's no equivalent for automation write. "In" and "Out" also have no Cakewalk equivalents.

There's no way of configuring the button mapping at present. To do so would require a fair amount of work, and would make setting a control surface up even more complicated than it already is. Although its possible to have presets for various control surfaces, given I don't have all of them, it's not something I'd want to commit to code without actually testing it.

In the meantime, you could try setting the KeyLab to ProTools mode and changing the protocol to HUI within the MMcL MackieControl dialog.

I can't guarantee that all the buttons will work (as mentioned earlier - not all of them have Cakewalk equivalents in the MackieControl DLL), but they may more closely match the buttons on the KeyLab.

 

 

Thanks again.  I tried the ProTools mapping as well with the HUI.  The loop button was correctly mapped but some of the other buttons didn't work as well, so overall I think the Standard MCU is the better fit.  Really appreciate your help and also your efforts on making that software!

Phenomenal! Love the little video images because usually it's a little hard to understand the changed just by reading.  Really great update, hats off to the bakers!

1 hour ago, scook said:

Convert MIDI Controllers to Envelopes but you may want to record as automation instead of CC data.

Is there a way to easily create a automation lane with a parameter assigned?  I know there's a dropdown list for that instrument when you create an automation lane but I was wondering if there's an easier way if I'm tweaking a knob in the VST and want to automate it.

I have an Arturia Keylab MK2 MIDI controller.  When I load up Analog Lab 4, it automatically maps the knobs and sliders to various controls in Analog Lab 4.  When I record MIDI and move the knobs, I see the CC changes overlay on the MIDI note recording and when I open the piano roll I can see the control changes as separate lanes.  Is there a way to show that data as separate automation lanes in the track view instead of showing it in the piano roll view?