msmcleod

@Craig Anderton - I've thought about having using TeamViewer or VNC myself, but I've always thought there'd be a huge performance hit. Have you encountered any issues?

The Korg nanoKontrol Studio also works wireless (via Bluetooth MIDI). The only restrictions are: You need to use UWP instead of MME in your MIDI config (this may affect older MIDI interfaces if you have any); and AFAIK, only Windows 10 supports Bluetooth MIDI Personally, I use the Korg nanoKontrol 2 with a long USB cable. It's stuck to the wall using velcro right next to my vocal mic.

No, sorry - not me

When you right click on the speaker icon in your task-bar, are any of the options set? If so, set it to be Off and see if it makes any difference.

I actually found MIDI a huge plus for the limitations back in the day, and also saved a huge amount of cash. I could record 16 tracks of keyboards at home for free, then run the sequences "live" sync'd to tape (or later ADAT) through the console when I got to the studio... and when using a 4-track or 8-track, it was fantastic for keeping tracks free for "real" instruments. There's no rule that says you have to edit or quantize, and nothing to stop you using MIDI to record exactly what you played.

Personally, I would move the clips out of the tracks and put them into take lanes under one track. You can then mute / comp as you see fit to build up a single track. You also have the advantage of all of your takes being kept in the lanes just in case you change your mind later.

@Tenfoot - from what I remember, Cakewalk needs to re-authorise every 6 months. As long as you run BandLab Assistant (with an internet connection) once every 6 months, you'll be fine. Given that updates are far more frequent than 6 months (normally every 2-3 months), you shouldn't run into any issues.

Certain things do continue to work even after the trial period. For example, Audio to MIDI conversion was working for me on my work laptop several months after the trial period ended. At no point however, did I actually open up Melodyne or use it in a Region FX... so maybe that had a bearing on it.

I have to admit, it only looks like that for about 20 days of the year... it rains the rest of the time!

Where I live... or the middle of no-where as my wife calls it.

Hmm - maybe try installing a loopback device (e.g. http://www.tobias-erichsen.de/software/loopmidi.html ) and make this the first device. Then when the control surface isn't plugged in, it'll steal that one instead?

The Audio & Midi setup are global settings and will apply to all projects. The master bus output can be set as follows:

The motorboating sound (constant hum) is a common issue with Focusrite drivers. I get this intermittently too with my 2i2, 6i6 and 18i20 - all on different machines. I found that a higher ASIO buffer does reduce the frequency of this happening.

I use Sonarworks Headphone Edition for headphones, and IK ARC 2 for speakers (which is basically IK Multimedia's equivalent to Sonarworks Studio). Both have made a huge difference for me. I can't say whether ARC 2 is any better or worse than Sonarworks, but essentially they're doing the same thing. If I had to choose again, I'd probably just go for Sonarworks Studio so I was using the one solution for both headphones & speakers, but Sonarworks wasn't around at the time I bought ARC 2. Is it worth 300 bucks? Definitely.

Are you using a Focusrite interface? This is a known issue with the Focusrite drivers. Starting/stopping the engine cures it, but in most cases just pressing the space bar to stop/start the song again will cure it too. I've found it happens less with a larger ASIO buffer size. Unfortunately upgrading to Windows 10 will not make this one go away.