rayray

25 minutes ago, pedwal wally wally wha said:

Read the post title, the op has stuff to do but now has a sudden one month cut off date for his current tool

yes a guy with a brain.  sorry other guy but kinda critical mass for me right now,  i'm gonna wait until the last week in july to jump.,  that way i have everything done for ECO/BMI/MLC as far as mp3 exports. they will be close enough.  

i love CW and now gonna love SONAR most likely.  i need to take a look at the interface somehow before i actually load it up to see what i still recognize.

the most concern when jumping platforms is will all settings follow and such.

i hope the nags to buy premium are not too intrusive. i will buy it eventually - i don't need to be nagged to death to do it.

i am readin the forums to see what issues are being found.  they are doing builds so i may as well just wait.

hello,  

i'm still wondering about my previous question below.   Will  i have issues in Sonar?  Some posts indicate yes.

I don't need to go through a big learning curve right now.  hopefully this Sonar is close enough to Cakewalk i can use it.  Otherwise, will have to switch DAWs.

anyway.....

Ok still need some questions answered.  I'm goin to use the free tier for now and eventually purchase.  I need to know before i update to Sonar if like my projects will be the same settings-wise when i open them.  I want the screens for Track View on certain songs and Console view for others.  Will they open the same?  Will all my current settings remain the same and do the exports and imports work the same?

Do cut and paste still work the same with selections and copy then position the cursor to paste from that point in the track on?

I was a little concerned when it said Cakewalk projects cannot be saved after a certain date.  No matter how old my cakewalk projects are, will i just be able to open them with Sonar when i get back to my older projects?  then will they save to the same folders ?  i don't want a huge learning curve just trying to search out my projects.  If the project list comes up as it does now in cakewalk when you start, then i hope if the Sonar projects save to a new folder area that it will know and manage my project list until all projects are switched over.  It would be nice if all the projects i currently have are recognized by Sonar and it will just present the list regardless of if it is still a Cakewalk project or Sonar one.

Or better yet, just ask to convert all my Cakewalk projects so i dont need to do anything but open Sonar.

UPDATE:  NO ANSWERS TO THIS YET?  

On 5/19/2025 at 12:16 PM, User 905133 said:

 

Personally, I automatically just right click in the TV [Track View], select Insert Instrument and the use the Add Track Wizard.

There's a whole lot more but from the sound of it, once you get Instrument Tracks, you'll see tons of options.

Hope this helps.

Read the manuals, watch videos, explore, ask questions.  Each synth is different. So how to use one and what they each do will vary quite a bit.

i like this way also,.  i have yet to get back from my travel and try it.   i should be back soon.  

the other part of my question was when you add a synth track (or instrument)  what will that do?  does it detect the key of the song and "play along" or do i need to go through every measure and add chords or notes?  in this case bass notes that are say an octave or maybe 2 lower than the key of the song,

will this be in the instrument track options once i get in there?  like setting the octave of the instrument and if it doesn't autodetect the key choosing the Key of the song?

tia

On 5/19/2025 at 11:58 AM, User 905133 said:

I was under the impression that Mike has made his video series freely available to all.  

I edited out a rather lengthy post I did trying to explain about tracks.  Since I had to assume you were a "newbie," it was very wordy and left out a lot.  So I felt that Mike's Creative Sauce series would better meet your needs. 

Sometimes I save old posts when editing them (especially when I have spent a lot of time writing them up). Maybe I saved my original post and maybe that will meet your needs after all.  I'll take a look. 

GREAT NEWS [I hope]: I found it.  Since it is a pdf, I will have to edit it down to the way it looked as originally posted.  (BTW, if it turns out not to be helpful, I apologize in advance.) 

just a newbie to some certain features of Cakewalk.  My goal was to add a bass synth track to see what my songs (that i have produced on cakewalk for 2 years but never needed this feature) and see what the song in question would sound like with a Prog Metal version

On 5/22/2025 at 5:54 PM, Starship Krupa said:

Right click in the Track Header area on the left side of Track View and select "Insert Instrument" from the resulting context menu.

Be sure to check out the Bandcamp page in my sig as well as my YouTube channel. Don't forget to like and subscribe.🙄

oh i will and thanks for the answer so difficult for others to provide,

On 5/19/2025 at 12:15 PM, John Vere said:

Anyone who has to come on a user forum to ask how to use software that has a complete users manual built in and literally hundreds of free tutorials on you tube is obviously out of touch with how things work! Simply Google your questions and you’ll get 500 pages of instructions and answers. 
The forum is handy when that somehow fails to answer tricky questions but regular users get pretty bored by trying to answer questions that are searched for “How do I turn on a lightbulb “? So you will be directed to RTFM .  
So I apologize on behalf of the internet for not supplying you with a detailed explanation of the question. 
The AI. 

well thanks for your valued input, but, i didn't quite grasp the concepts in the tutorial.  it doesn't explain a lot of stuff like "how it works if  you add a synth track" and a lot of other holes in the documentation.

you don't have to be bothered with my asking questions and since you want to belittle those t rying to find out information NOT a course that costs money,  you can consider yourself out of touch and stay in your little corner of hell ok?

really,  so i get advertisements for $79 dollar course just to figure out how to use a synth track.  

smh

-- I have used it for mostly tracking and "fixing things"/mastering.   but never played with more than adding eq, splitting tracks, etc.

i guess i don't know how to use or how synths or how to apply them and what they do,

thx

RR

5 hours ago, AB7777 said:

rayray - 

Wishing you great success!  As to the bass part that has a problem but not in another section.  Is the tempo identical in both parts?  Are both parts identical except for the bass flaw?  Sometimes the great part can be copied and pasted into the bad part.  There are other variables though that can affect this, including what is before and after the part so it does not stick out as some abrupt action, and there are ways around that too!

Of course if the bass is on a totally separate track, cutting and pasting a good bass note in the song over the bad bass note, works as well.

yes it will copy seamlessly.  i did it in Cubase already and you cannot even tell.  but don't have it figured out in CW yet.  i tried selecting a portion of the waveform then it started referring to sections and it started losing me. i didn't know if i had to use sections instead of the waveform or not.  but yes, the parts are identical and have no singing to complicate cut/paste of the chorus bass part that turned out to be about a measure.

also i had trouble switching back and forth between beats/measures timeline and minutes and seconds time over the waveform.  sorry i'm just learning CW terminology if that is not what it is called.

RR

i was able to get the looping which i use a lot to work. 

I just called it a "de-esser" i guess because early on when i used Wavelab in the 80s and 90s, it had a "de-ess" setting and never learning the actual purpose for it i just thought that de-essers removed hiss-like sounds.  so i am not up on terminology really and am more a musician than a producer/recording engineer.  so have patience with me if i mis-label stuff.

thanks for the info on ReaFIR and Lisp!

I will definitely try them.  I can post a before and after of a song on here if that is something of interest of what i have done from raw cassettes so far.

you mentioned the cymbals, in some cases i like that "slashy" highs sound that you mention that the SM-57s get when you record cymbals.  not for everything but i have a use for it in some of my stuff.  i need to get recommendations on the budget-friendly cymbal mic(s) because my current drum mic setup doesn't have any.

Also, i am having trouble with CW trying to convert over from Cubase 12.   I know practice and hacking at it is how i learned Cubase.  but this is a different animal .

for example, i want to copy a portion of a song that the bass player hit the wrong note with another section (chorus) where he played it correctly.

i have tried to be intuitive trying to figure it out on CW but no luck.  In fact, with these "basement tapes" releases i will be needing to do this a lot.

can i get some quick start steps to do this because the documentation did not come up with this topic

thx much and hoping to jump over to BL 100% soon.  i have only experimented with it on three songs so far and it is taking me waaay too much time to do what i can do on Cubase in a few minutes.  But, i want to get up to speed and use CW now.  Especially with the Bandlab linkage!!

I downloaded and tried BlueLab's DeNoiser but found it to lower the overall gain trying to get the hiss out

RR

21 hours ago, Bill Ruys said:

Mr bitflipper is 100% correct on this.  A de-esser is essentially a high-Q (narrow band) filter in front of a compressor.  It's looking for peaks in level within that narrow band, and compressing them.  The reason for this is so that the (typically high frequency) band is not being attenuated unless it crosses a threshold, because you don't want to roll off that band all the time, only when a sibilant jumps out.

So as the flip master says, it's totally the wrong tool for the job.  If you have a section at the beginning or end of the recording with silence that exhibits only the his, a learning noise reduction plugin would be best (as others have said).

One free plugin that does this is Blue Lab Audio Denoiser.

i do have about 3 sec of nothing but the hiss on one recording and low hum on another.  one mic was near a device that produced hum on the recording thru that mic,

i have eliminated a lot with EQ believe it or not but i can do better .

is the Blue Lab free or have a full functioning eval?

i only need it for a couple things right now and will buy it later when i am doing more stuff from other bands

RR

On 2/22/2023 at 4:27 PM, mettelus said:

^^ I forgot to mention this previously, but I believe iZotope RX, Adobe Audition, and Steinberg SpectraLayers all have functional trials, but RX has the most painless method to remove the software afterwards.

Side note: It is good practice to record an ambient lead in/out on tracks just in case noise reduction is needed. That way you will always have an ambient sample embedded into the track for post-production of the full frequency spectrum, especially if doing something like recording old songs from magnetic tape into a DAW.

i did not have the option to do ambient or would have.  in fact that is all that was done in these recordings were ambient.  i'll have to post a before and after some time just to show what i was working with and what i got for results using source cassettes recorded on a one or two mic ambient setup turned up to 11 ... yeah... anyway, i recorded directly into a Zoom R24 Recorder and used a few things on that like EQ , cutoff etc. ,  reverb, and a few canned effects and it was amazing how much a difference it made bringing out things like vocals, cymbals, bass drums, bass and gave it depth. 

On 2/22/2023 at 12:31 PM, Lord Tim said:

I'd also be a little wary about using a "normal" EQ to get rid of 50/60Hz hum too. Aside from potentially gutting your kick drum and sub bass, most EQs introduce phase shifting around any boosted or cut frequencies, and for something like this, you'd need a fair bit of cut, and likely some stacked bands to really narrow in on the hum (and possibly even some extra EQ if there's overtones too).  You'd have better luck with a Linear Phase EQ which stops that from happening, but that also comes with is own gotchas, like pre-ringing, especially in the lower frequencies.

A de-noiser is definitely the way to go for any of this stuff, be it a plugin or in a standalone editor.  

is there any plug-in that can isolate and just listen to the hum or hiss?  like maybe tell the frequency range with a 'knob' and see if it eliminates it?

On 2/18/2023 at 10:26 PM, Craig Anderton said:

If there's a section with hiss that's isolated, there are tools that can take a "noiseprint" of the hiss, and subtract it from the file. The best ones (e.g., iZotope Rx) aren't cheap, but one of these free options might do the job for you.

this is great! thanks!

On 2/18/2023 at 10:14 PM, John Vere said:

For full mix down audio Cakewalk doesn’t come with a De essor. The good ones cost money.  But  a few free plug ins are out there  Try plug ins 4 free or KVR. Use the search feature. Also lots of wave editors like Audacity or Sound forge probably have one built in.  

To install new plug ins you follow the direction that come with the plug in and then get Cakewalk to scan the folder it was put in. Most you simply drag a dll to your VST plug in folder found under C/Program files. 

I found a boatload of plug-ins in Reaper including De-esser.  i guess the way of life if you cannot afford to pay for a full DAW is to jump from one to another to get done what you need to.

Cakewalk and Reaper are my faves.  I use Cubase 12 Elements since i got a license with my new notebook purchase from ASUS.  i use it to cut/paste and experiment with the plug-ins (sparse) on it.  but some are good.

haven't played enough with cakewalk to know how to select and paste from two different tracks or songs.  a lot of the time i have an ending on one song and want to paste it (append in this case) to another song.  sometimes i want to extend a section of a song for a couple more measures and i can do it in Cubase but not CW yet

On 2/18/2023 at 10:14 PM, John Vere said:

 

On 2/18/2023 at 10:14 PM, John Vere said:

For full mix down audio Cakewalk doesn’t come with a De essor. The good ones cost money.  But  a few free plug ins are out there  Try plug ins 4 free or KVR. Use the search feature. Also lots of wave editors like Audacity or Sound forge probably have one built in.  

To install new plug ins you follow the direction that come with the plug in and then get Cakewalk to scan the folder it was put in. Most you simply drag a dll to your VST plug in folder found under C/Program files. 

 

 

hey thanks.  what's with de-essers?  i found a lot of DAWs don't have them or the ones out there cost a lot of cash just to process ,  these things were included in wavelab back in the day but it is not a free program anymore.

CUbase has none unless yu pay for the premium packages which right now i can't afford.

So far i'm liking Cakewalk.

update - Reaper comes with a De-esser!  Also, a ton of plug-ins.\

I have a full mixdown and it has a hiss on it.  unfortunately, the source had the hiss and i just need to use the de-esser to limit the high hiss.  i have another recording with a low hum on it but, if that requires a different technique or not i don't know.  i'm hoping the de-esser has a frequency selection cutoff.

i'm new to cakewalk - i have used it before but after some frustrations with other DAWs, i decided to try CW after so many years.

i don't seem to be able to find de-esser in my plugins or compression tools.  oh how do i add new plugins?

can help?

RAYRAY