Robert Bone

On 8/2/2022 at 5:38 PM, C.J. Yarborough said:

Thank you all so kindly for trying to help a fella out!  Turns out...I had to set that input for GetGoodDrums to "Omni," and to get my MIDI drums to trigger the expected sounds of the kit, I had to use the "GM" preset instead of the "Invasion" preset (which was the default for some reason) for proper drum-mapping.  

So all said...THANK YOU ALL!  I am elated right now and feel like an idiot at the same time for not even knowing how to navigate the GUI well enough to investigate things on my own.  But, teamwork made the dream work.  

Cheers all!

 

You are AHEAD of the curve, by turning to the community for assistance.  LOTS of good helpful folks here.  Here is a secret - most of us here have learned too many things the hard way.  The trick is to remember the lessons learned from making mistakes, so that you hopefully don't repeat them, too many times. 

Bob Bone

Check the recorded MIDI events, to see what MIDI channel is present in the drum events.  Then, make sure the MIDI channel lines up with the MIDI channel with the loaded Kontakt MIDI channel, and on the MIDI track.  Do you have audio tracks set to get their input from the output of the Kontakt instance that has the drums?

Bob Bone

2 hours ago, John Vere said:

I saw that too and totally agree. 

Recording is done in steps. Bed Tracks, Overdubs, Editing, Mixing and THEN mastering. Adding Mastering Effects while you are still in the first 2 and even 3rd stages is not recommended. But of course we often have to return to Overdubbing stage to fix stuff or add a better idea as we progress, So therefore the Global Effects By Pass toggle is your best friend. Not only for Midi delay, but keeping Audio tracks in sync.

Sometimes your song will actually sound better all of a sudden when you do this. ⁉️

Exactly - certain types of effects are designed to only be used during mixing/mastering, because they require a large ASIO Buffer Size, to do their processing.  Lots of times, you can often see this mentioned in a given plugin's product description, where you might see it described for mixing/mastering, and/or sometimes the descriptions will mention the use of "Look-Ahead" processing, which is a big clue that the plugin needs a large buffer size specified.  

If you use such plugins, like a convolution reverb, during recording (tracking), you will almost have trouble getting what you are recording to line up with existing tracks, because of the latency caused by the effect plugin.  

I have mentioned this before, in a few responses to earlier posts, but until someone runs into the issue, it may not have been something one realizes, in the moment.

You pretty much want to keep away from any plugins that require large ASIO Buffer Size settings, when recording, or when coming back to edit/overdub or record new tracks.  If you have thought yourself done with the recording phase, of a given project, and had to go back to either overdub or record additional tracks, and have already inserted and tweaked latency-inducing plugins, you have some choices, on dealing with that successfully:

1) Bypass all effects, by clicking on the FX button, to the right of the Transport Module,  at the top of the window in Track View, just to the right of center, until you finish recording, then click FX again, to toggle the effects processing back on.  By bypassing all effects, you can track with an ASIO Buffer Size down to 128 samples, or lower, depending on your interface , and such.  

2) Click the power button on any effect that requires a large buffer size, to turn that/those effect(s) off while you do the edits or new recording, and power them back on, and enlarge the buffer size again, to return to mixing/mastering.

3) In addition to choosing either of the above options, you can also insert similar effects to the ones you had bypassed or powered off, that give you reasonable likeness to the ones that aren't processing, just using similar effects that do not require a large buffer size.  Then, after completing your edits or new recording, you can remove those temporarily inserted effects, and engage all effects again, or power up the ones you had temporarily powered off, and reset the buffer size to a large value again, to return to mixing/mastering.

Forever, you will switch between a fairly small buffer size, for tracking/recording, and a large buffer size for mixing/mastering.  I record at 128 samples, or lower, when using my better interface, while I mix/master with a buffer size of 2048 samples.  Works like a champ.

Bob Bone

18 hours ago, Dana Elston said:

Thank you for that sir. I had not heard of this before. I really appreciate this info!

I rather poorly worded my earlier comments on how to set the ASIO Buffer Size, so let me try again:

1) When recording, set the ASIO Buffer Size to 128 or less

2) When mixing/mastering, set the ASIO Buffer Size to 1024 or 2048 *

*  When you find out, in mixing, that you have to go back and do some additional recording, you will want to set the ASIO Buffer Size back down to 128 or less, HOWEVER, there is a potential challenge when you do that.  IF you have inserted any effects plugins that are designed to work with large ASIO Buffer Sizes, then trying to record with a small buffer size may cause audio issues.  You can temporarily turn off individual effects that require large buffers to work, such as those plugins that use Linear Phase processing, or ones that use "look-ahead" processing (convolution reverb effects, for example), and then turn them back on when you are done with the additional recording and ready to resume mixing/mastering.  You can also temporarily bypass ALL effects, by clicking on the FX button (to the right of the Transport Module).  Clicking the FX button will bypass all effects, and clicking it again, after completing the additional recording, will engage all plugins again.  A third option would be to temporarily turn off the effects that require a large buffer size for their processing, and if needed, insert some kind of similar effect(s) to the ones you turned off, then delete them when done with the additional recording.

Sorry for any confusion at all, with the above explanation, or my earlier one.

Best of luck to you having smooth recording sessions - if you have any additional questions abou this, I will keep an eye for for them, and will respond as quickly as I can.

Bob Bone

7 hours ago, Dana Elston said:

I just stated using SSL EQ and SSL Comp. These two plugins are creating distortion as well.  Odd thing is, I used these on a different Cakewalk project just yesterday with no issues using these two plugins. But on this newest project bada bing...there it is. I just exported the track to give an sample of what I'm hearing. The exported track does not have the distortion on it. Odd.

I'm running Windows 10

Cakewalk By Bandlab 2021.12 (Build 102, 64 bit)

 

**** Note: Well I experimented after posting this.   I changed my buffer size and it cleared up the issue.

Glad you got it sorted out.  I always record with my ASIO Buffer Size set to 128 samples, or 64 samples, or 32 samples.  Then, when I have finished tracking/recording, and move on to mixing/mastering, I always up my ASIO Buffer Size to either 1024 or 2048 samples, depending on which of my audio interfaces I am using.

Mixing/Mastering is not adversely affected by the latency incurred from the larger buffer size(S) I set it to, for mixing/mastering, and there are multiple plugins that use Linear Phase or "Look-Ahead Processing", where having a large ASIO Buffer Size gives those more 'robust' plugins enough 'room' (buffer size) to properly do their processing.

Pretty much until the end of time, you will do best by recording with an ASIO Buffer Size of 128 or less, and then when mixing/mastering, set the ASIO Buffer size to a large value, and if additional recording needs to occur, you will change the buffer size up to either 1024 or 2048.  It is simply part of the regular processing , generally speaking, to switch between small and large buffers.

Bob Bone

And, here is the screenshot I just took, showing my Test Post, Ignore post on the current forum home page, from a handful of minutes ago, so I am a bit confused, about old/new forum posting:

I have been largely absent in participation for quite a while, due to some ongoing issues with high blood pressure.  It has really knocked me silly, and I am left gasping for breath, just walking 20 feet, to either the kitchen or the bathroom, and I just have not felt up to doing much of anything.

I have been taking blood pressure medicine for several years now, and I am finally starting to see blood pressure spikes these days, so I am just starting to feel up to returning to working on playing and recording.

I had no idea I had managed to post to the old forum, I see my post in the current forums, and just posted a test post response, which shows up in the current forums as: 

Am I missing something here, besides being gone for FAR too long?  

Bob Bone

Test post - ignore

Bob Bone

11 hours ago, Roger Jeynes said:

This works, but be careful: there's long-standing but very intermittent problem when Cakewalk occasionally misses the timing on the count in, so starts recording early. If and when it happens (after 2 years we still haven't been able to isolate the circumstances), the new track will be out of sync by the length of the count-in (so if 4 beats at 120bpm, it will be 2 seconds out). If you do get this problem, do please call it out: it will make the handful of people who experience this problem feel less isolated.

Will do.  I have not experienced that issue, as of yet, and almost always start projects with 2 measures of sampled drum stick hits, to serve as my project count-in, so the projects usually start at measure 3, though if there are pickup notes occurring in measure 2, I am still good to go, because I have left myself 2 full measures of count-in stick hits.

When doing punch recording in the middle of a project, I set the punch points, then position the Now Marker some distance ahead enough of the punch point, to get the timing and feel in my head - if I am in some sort of quiet section, I may add some measures of click track of sampled drum stick hits, on the same dummy MIDI track I use for my initial drum click measures from the beginning of my projects.  I just mute that dummy drum click track as desired, deselect it during export/render of the project, and use a marker I set at measure 3 when setting the From and To points for exporting, so I don't export the 2-measure count-in drum hits.

Bob Bone

14 hours ago, msmcleod said:

@Andres Medina - It never occurred to me to leave the recording checkbox unchecked!  Good thinking!

I happened to know this one, but I learn something about using Cakewalk every single day, and  it has been going on 30+ years (mid/late 1980's or so, when it was DOS program Cakewalk, released by Twelve Tone Systems).  Good thing we have a helpful bunch of folks in these forums - we are all in pursuit of trying to record the sounds pinging around in our heads, and between us all, we manage to row in the same direction on a pretty regular basis.  Wahoo!  

Bob Bone

Ah - the limiter might well do the trick, along with the gain plug-in - I will give it a shot - THANKS to you, and to John

Bob Bone

2 minutes ago, scook said:

Blue Cat's free gain plug-ins can do  plus or minus 60 dB

OK - but I am unsure how to properly apply it, to counter the fade out from the unmodified audio.

Prior to the fade beginning, the audio peak is -0.4 db and of course it fades to zero at the end.

How would I best do this?  I have that plug-in, and use it frequently, but have never tried to do this particular kind of thing with it.

5 minutes ago, John Vere said:

Goodness Bob that's a new one even for me ⁉️  and a challenge.

I would think that all you need to do is draw a volume envelope going up but I do believe there's a limitation on how much gain you'll get which I just checked and its only +6db from 0.  So the CD track is already maxed out. A solution to this would be to apply gain to the whole song and reduce it down to a level that gives you enough headroom. This might be like -25db. Once you've leveled out the ending you could then normalize the track back to something like -1.0 db 

Other idea I might try is splitting it into a zillion chunks and applying Gain to each chunk to get them all the same level.. I would not want that task!  

Yeah - I would have thought this would be a simple concept - reversing an existing fade out, but had not really thought about the mechanics when I told my friend I could knock this out for him.

I have just never run across my own need to attempt this before.

I thought about the zillion chunks approach, but do not know how I would do it in a way to keep it smooth - obviously the more chunks the smoother, but it still seems like that would be a rather jagged uneven result.

I am hoping someone can jump in with a good way to do this, as my friend has his own time commitments for using the modified track, after I finish the edits.  He is ready to record a bass video, playing over the track, and wants to get it recorded and uploaded to YouTube as soon as possible.

Bob Bone

Howdy - my pain meds are making me a bit foggy, so apologies for being a bit dense today.

I have a friend who plays bass, and he wants to add his own playing over the fade out section of a commercial audio track from a CD.  

I have imported the audio into Cakewalk, and moved to the end of the track, to a spot just before the fade out begins.

I need to know how to add automation to counter the fade out that is on the track, so that the track volume remains at the same level as it was prior to them starting and doing the fade out.

The track shows a peak of -0.4 db prior to the fade out, and a short while later it is at -1.7 db, then -2.0 db, etc... until the track ends.

I have only ever done fade outs, where I add either a straight line or a curved line, to fade out tracks, and am not sure how to add whatever automation I need, to counter/reverse the fading that is baked into the audio track from the CD.

I am racing the clock to finish this, because my friend only has a limited window this afternoon, in about 2 hours, to come by and pick up a CD with the modified track, so if anyone can guide me, rapidly, I SURELY will appreciate the help.

Bob Bone

1 hour ago, David Baay said:

Plugin Load Balancing is not always guaranteed to improve overall performance, especially when the distribution of load across cores is already good without it. I generally leave it off as I don't often use that many FX plugins in a single bin (or in a whole project for that matter), and most of my load comes from VST instruments which can't be load-balanced. The documentation provides guidelines for when it can be helpful and when it might not:

  https://www.cakewalk.com/Documentation?product=Cakewalk&language=3&help=AudioPerformance.14.html

What audio interface are you using, and what Driver Mode are you using in Cakewalk? (ASIO? )  Please also detail the nature of your project - how many tracks, how many soft synths, which ones, how many effects plugins, the nature of them (such as convultion reverb, linear phase, etc.).

And, just for a test - what happens to render time when you temporarily first Bypass All Audio Effects processing?  (just click on the FX button to the right of the metronome icon, and it will toggle Off/On the bypassing of all audio effects - once your test is complete, clicking again on the FX button will engage all audio effects again).  Some effects require huge ASIO Buffer Size settings, and some are just CPU hogs - some soft synths are also CPU hogs.

Also, some plugins, like Native Instruments Kontakt, Battery 4, and I believe some other plugins of theirs, have settings where I could enter how many cores I have in my CPU, and those plugins distribute processing among the available cores, per the values I entered for the cores my CPU has.  Here is a screenshot of the settings for this, in Kontakt.  (The parameter is the 'Multiprocessor Support', etc., under Engine:

On 10/6/2021 at 8:10 PM, MB77 said:

UPDATE: I fixed it. I tried to add a new track by clicking "VST3" And "Native Instruments" and it worked.

Quite happy that you were able to 'fix it', though I do not for the life of me understand the original issue, or the 'fix'.  (I understand you moved a folder, and that things started behaving strangely, for Kontakt, and that you did something with VST3 and Native Instruments, and now things are working again, however that does not make sense to me.  (It doesn't have to make sense to me, as you seem to be happy with how things are once again working, I am just expressing my confusion with the details of the original issue, and the details of whatever fix you applied).

Bob Bone  

I just started a new project, then clicked on Insert > Soft Synth > Sampler > Kontakt, with the following Insert Soft Synth Options dialog box options, and it worked perfectly, inserting a stereo audio track, a MIDI track, assigned to Kontakt, an instance of Kontakt into the Synth Rack, and opened up the Kontakt user interface - and once I understand what your steps were with the Cakewalk folder, I will try to duplicate your steps and see what happens on my system:

I am not understanding what you meant, by "removed my Cakewalk folder into documents", or when you said you "removed it back".

Can you please explain the above?  I will try to help you figure out what happened, once I understand exactly what you did, before Kontakt began behaving strangely.

Bob Bone

If you find that temporarily bypassing all effects makes a noticable difference with latency, that means that one or more of the effects loaded into the project, are introducing enough latency to produce noticable lag between playing a note and hearing it. (the FX button on the right of the Transport Module, acts like a toggle, to have all effects either engaged or bypassed).

There are some types of effects that are meant for mixing, rather than use in tracking/recording.  Linear-Phase effects, which were noted in an earlier post above, and also convolution reverb effects are both notorious for this.

A couple of quick and dirty workarounds are to either: Bypass the effects until done with recording and moving on to mixing, or temporarily swap out the effect(s) that need larger buffer sizes to process properly (convolution reverb and linear-phase types), with less resource hungry equivalent effects (different reverb plugin or non linear phase effect), until done with tracking, and then swap the other effects back in, where you can mix with a giant ASIO Buffer Size without needing to worry about the lag in playback, because you are no longer trying to play notes when the lag is present.

I hope the above makes sense, and that it helps. 

Bob Bone

It looks like each program 'slot' has a volume control.  I just searched the manual for 'Master' and came up empty.

I will keep looking for it, and will post back, should I find it.  Also, I suppose you could turn down the Cakewalk MIDI track volume fader, instead of the audio track volume fader.

Here is a screen shot of a page from the manual, describing 'Volume' for a loaded program:

You can try changing the ThreadSchedulingModel to 2, which would be ideal for most newer processors.  If you find that it doesn't help, you can always change it back to 1.

Just avoid setting it to 3, as that value, last I knew, was advised to avoid, by Noel, because it was a work in progress, so stick with a setting of 1, or 2, with 2 being the likely better choice.

It will not hurt anything to switch back and forth from 1 to 2, to figure out which seems to work better for you.

I just caught the tail end of the thread, and will circle back to earlier posts in it, in case I see anything else that might make sense to comment on.

Bob Bone  

I got an email from Guitar Center, regarding some sort of fire hazard for a Line 6 product here is the link to the Line 6 recall page:

https://line6.com/g10recall/ 

Bob Bone

I have multiple HDTV's to pick from - I generally use a massive 65" HDTV for my main computer display, but also have a 55", 40", and 32" available.  Most of what I do is MIDI-based, and I record guitars or basses using my laptop, 

I typically track my keyboards using the 40", and use the larger 55" or the 65" when editing or mixing.

I used to run as many as 3 monitors, but just don't bother with that anymore - a single screen works fine for most stuff I work on.

Certainly, actual real computer monitors tend to give a more precise picture, but I don't mind the quality of the picture on any of my HDTV's, for Cakewalk.

Bob Bone

2 hours ago, Brian Walton said:

With Youtube, this was likley an automated process.  It isn't an infraction they sent you, but simply notification that you do not have the copywrite to that song (you clearly didn't write it), and therefore you can't monitize the video.  The copywrite owner can monitize your video (though with next to no views on it, they are not even going to be making a single $1 on it.

 

You can basically ignore those notifications, but perhpas think about what you want out of these projects.  I can't fathom spending thousands of dollars on convering someone-else's music in a way that I couldn't at least post on the internet without someone else running ads on it.

Thanks - it was a labor of love - and a one-shot type of project.  I completely agree on the notion of not wanting to pour a bunch of money into a mix, for a cover song, and I could have skipped the studio mix and done it in the box at home - just chose to do that for the outboard gear that particular studio had.

To do that, was like my gift to myself, and my friend.

I mix most everything in the box, at home, so outside of that one song, the issue will likely not repeat itself, unless I feel like treating myself again, at some point.

Bob Bone

I had no idea, and never thought about it, as we weren't trying to do anything but measure our music performance and production skills, celebrating a beautiful song by a fantastic band.

The Copyright Claim on our cover version did not ask/require us to take the video down - it only indicates that we would not be eligible to make any money through YouTube views (which we never sought to do - quite the opposite, as booking the time in one of the largest studios in Chicago, for the mixing (they have insane outboard gear), was not cheap - I sprung several thousand dollars on the mix/master process, trying to bring the best gear available to bear on the project. 

To date, we have around 1,400 views, and quite a few of those are from Mike and I, just circling back to hear it, and to look for and respond to any posted comments (there haven't been many, but we want to make sure we are timely in replying to anybody who took the time to listen to the song, and also took the time to comment on it.

We also included text and links in the video description, encouraging folks to support the recording band, the Dixie Dregs, by purchasing their albums and songs, with direct links to where folks could do just that.  Here is a screenshot of the relevant text from our video description:

Bob Bone