Colin Nicholls

I don't know about "easy" but the feature you'll need to explore is creating and/or customizing Instrument Definitions. See Creating Instrument Definitions in the manual.

Using identical settings in PC EQ as you show in your screenshot, I get very different results: So, something isn't right. What version, and upgrade to the latest if possible, and retry in a new empty project. After a reboot.

On the Track view's VIEW menu, Ctrl-W is bound by default to toggle the option "On Stop, Rewind to Now Marker". You may find that toggling this option off gives you what you're looking for.

Confirmed. GOOD CATCH. Document updated and uploaded.

Although I love the bright white Ruler background, it does have some drawbacks (aim assist text for example), so I tweaked the colors slightly and gave the themes a tinted ruler background. ZIP updated last night. Hopefully no more changes for a while. (But we all know how that works out... sigh)

Your videos are marked Private so I can't view them. However: Any VST that changes its state will (or should) tell Cakewalk about it, and Cakewalk, which saves VST state with the project, will mark the project as "edited". Toggling Input Echo will mark the project as edited, yes. Some Preference settings are actually stored in the project (e.g. anything under the "Project" section in the Preference dialog). I'm not saying that all your observations can be explained, but some of them can.

I get two takeaways from this: 1) There's one more constraint added to the list for choosing clip colors that work in all scenarios 2) I have no idea why the display is changing to diamonds but I think we should. @scook, do you happen to have any insight?

I've duplicated your scenario following your excellent instructions. When I select (Track 1), I see the notes as black diamonds: Does this match what you're describing? I also copied the MIDI clips into the MIDI track that was created when I inserted the instance of TTS-1 (Track 3). When I select Track 3, I see the normal note display, with color: I'll be honest and say I have no idea why Track 1 is displaying differently.

Interesting. I have no idea about what is going on with your system, but I can confirm that the PAUSE GUI throttle doesn't magically go away when I bring up the Preferences window. It continues to update periodically in the background. It sure *looks* similar to what you're experiencing. Do you have some kind of screen mirror or streaming component that is running? What processes are running in the Windows TaskBar?

"Alternative Color #1" (ID_CLR_GLOBAL_15) is a different element from "Alternative Text #1" (IDR_CLR_GLOBAL_09). And that's correct, I have not detected any use of it in modern themes. Yet.

You probably need to cross-fade the clips at the merge point.

This is probably a VST that is sending "patch changed" information to Cakewalk. Cakewalk is doing what it is supposed to , and marking the state of the project as "edited". BUT: Now that I've read your post fully, I see you've identified that you have this problem even with a single audio track. So if you don't have any VSTs loaded (FX or Instrument) then it can't be a rogue plugin marking the buffer dirty. Are you able to try an alternative audio interface? Just for temporary testing?

Somehow the Track View Folder Expand/Collapse button remained invisible in the 1.0 release. I've updated the themes, and the ZIP, with 1.0.1 which includes a visible Track View Folder Expand/Collapse button.

ZIP file now includes a second version of the theme, the "Matcha Edition"

EDIT: Is it possible you are just bouncing the selected track? You need to do the entire mix. Does it sound right when you just play back the two tracks? ORIGINAL: Well, this technique definitely works because I've used it to detect differences between mixes, and other stuff. Here's what I would do achieve what you want: So, we have CLIP_1 (guitar) and CLIP_2 (guitar+synth), imported to a unique track each, say TRACK_1 and TRACK_2. I'd make sure they were aligned correctly. Obvious, but I'd zoom in to check to make sure they were in sync. Then I would flip the phase on one TRACK_1. Then I would BOUNCE TO TRACK (entire mix) to create a third TRACK_3 that will contain the SUM of TRACK_1 and TRACK_2. Actually you shouldn't need to bounce, just listen to the mix and you'd hear it. If your starting clips are what you think they are, this should leave you with the (guitar+synth)-(guitar) which should just be the synth part. Now, from your screen shot, it sure looks like this is what you are doing. So I'd question a) your source clips, b) sync/alignment, or even c) try flipping the phase on each track in case the clips are not the phase you think they are

Crap I meant the PAUSE key. Thanks Mark. From the manual:

Something isn't right here. Can you post this in the main forum with steps to reproduce using Mercury (or Tungsten) ? I'd be willing to help you figure this out but I think this thread isn't the right place.

Please let me know if you spot something that doesn't work in the context of the theme. I tend to focus on the parts of the application that I actually use. For example, I've never used Sync or ACT, so these tend to get short shrift in my themes unless someone asks for it.

My knee-jerk reaction was to say "Press Scroll-Lock PAUSE on the keyboard" but if you are working with time code and sync in Cakewalk then that suggestion is probably way off base and you'll need someone else's advice...

@msmcleod, I actually used this technique yesterday with reasonably good results. I named the arrangement "the name of the album" and then one-by-one placed each section into the arrangement and chose the "Export as Audio" from the arrangement menu. Choosing MP3 did give me the opportunity to add the metadata for each export but I kinda understand how this is working under the hood. Thanks for the suggestion. It would be nice to have some sort of "batch mode" for this sequence of steps but I can also see how it gets complicated with the metadata and all the different export formats. Even so, exporting the whole set of sections without any ID3 tag info or whatever would be a time saver. I'll leave it up to the developers whether any enhancement in this area is feasible. I'd love to see it in a future release.

@Kai Young, you should be able to do this by: Loading a clip into a new track Pressing the "invert phase" button as you have done bounce to a new track The button doesn't invert the clip itself, it inverts the phase of the output of the track. So, by Bouncing to a new track, you are effectively taking the output of the first track and saving it into a new track. The new track will have the phase inverted.

@John Nelson, I use Paint.NET. Paint.NET works great except for the way it messes up the title bar of the main window (sorry, pet peeve of mine). The website is rife with "DOwNloAd nOW!" ads that should be set on fire. Perhaps you clicked on the wrong link. This is the latest URL: https://www.dotpdn.com/files/paint.net.4.2.13.install.zip

It seems to me that you need a reference tone on another track. V-Vocal does not come with Cakewalk By Bandlab, but it will be detected and available if you install CbB alongside your SONAR 8.5 install. You can choose to use either application. (This assumes that your SONAR 8.5 install is 64-bit on Windows 64 Bit)

OK, I've updated the ZIP (See URL in top post) and I'm calling it. This is version 1.0. I've left the clip colors as-is, even though head and tail fade curves are possibly on the hard-to-see side. Updated top post description and preview images

The @Lord Tim modification: