David Baay

I'm not an orchestral composer, and I don't know Studio One well at all, though I took advantage of the discounted cross-grade price when Cakewalk went dark for a while, so take the following with a grain of salt. Just my $.02: I think the main advantage Studio One has over Cakewalk in integrating with Notion is that it can now export directly to Notion without having to go through the intermediate step of exporting to MIDI or MusicXML file. And it does a couple other tricks like automatically exporting a MIDI piano track to a grand staff. But for real-time integration using Rewire (and a virtual MIDI cable for some purposes), I don't think there's a significant workflow difference between using Cakewalk and Studio One with Notion . Given Cakewalk's generally superior MIDI recording and editing capabilities , if you're already familiar with Cakewalk, I wouldn't think migrating to Studio One just to integrate with Notion would be worth the trouble. Presonus continues to improve the integration between Studio One and Notion, but the pace of development of Notion itself has been pretty uninspiring with the last major release two years ago, and minor release 7 months ago. Which way you go might depend on whether you plan to compose primarily in Notion and then export to the DAW for final production,or compose in the DAW and export to Notion to generate a score.

I found that moving the the cross-faded clip to another lane eliminated the unexpected linkage with splits in other lanes, but I didn't go through all the possible permutations, and given the nature of this seemingly buggy behavior, there may well be some inconsistencies. FWIW, I don't think what Steve posted is relevant either.

Hmmm... okay. Not a usual part of my workflow, but I can repro all of that, and it seems buggy. The only thing I can suggest as a workaround is to use additional lanes: - Create crossfades at both ends of the middle clip to start. - Add another lane and drag the middle clip to it, holding Shift to constrain the position. - Now you can move the split point by dragging the end of either clip at the crossfade, and the fades will move along with the split point to wherever you want it.

+1, Or just expose it for mapping to a keyboard shortcut so the UI doesn't have to change when driver mode isn't ASIO.

I think you'll need to clarify exactly what moves you're making and where. Crossfades are only created automatically when working in the parent track with lanes not showing. If you drag a clip over another in the same lane with lanes showing, the clip you're not moving will get cropped out of the way, not cross-faded. And I don't understand what's meant by "the crossfade is changed to a fade out/fade in; that's exactly what crossfade is...?

My understanding from the distant past is that some display functions in Cakewalk, specifically the Now Time Cursor, depend on one or more of these settings to work properly. To avoid problems, I've always left this set to Best Appearance. I think it would be very unusual that graphics functions have any bearing on audio processing performance. Unless you can identify a specific graphical event/condition that coincides with a glitch in audio processing, I would look elsewhere. If you haven't yet checked DPC latency, that would be the place to start: https://www.resplendence.com/latencymon

I think this could be simplified to just have Cakewalk report how much Plugin Delay Compensation is being applied on top of the interface driver/buffer latency, and which plugin is reporting the highest plugin delay. There really are no other sources of latency that need to be (or can be) easily measured and reported. The only other significant sources of latency are un-reported audio interface hardware/firmware latency, and total MIDI keyboard scanning/interface/synth response delay, neither of which Cakewalk has any way of measuring unless the user sets up a loop back path. Un-reported audio interface latency can be a significant part of the overall audio latency when running extremely low ASIO buffer sizes, but is usually not more than a millisecond, and can generally be ignored after measuring it once to set a Manual Offset for record latency adjustment. MIDI input latency, on the other hand, can be upwards of 6 milliseconds which is significant in the grand scheme of things for performing/recording live MIDI input, and doubles when using outboard hardware synths that are subject to outbound transmission delays and hardware and synth response delays as well.

I agree, Diamond is my Goto patch. Addictive Keys was mentioned. I have that as well. It sits well in a mix with a less complex tone (fewer high harmonics), but is not as responsive to dynamics in terms of timbre change on the attack or the harmonic evolution of the sustain decay on held notes/chords. And you can't interrupt the release when pedaling late, so I use it for more percussive parts that don't require a lot of nuance, and in settings where the piano isn't the star. EDIT: Of course, there are plenty of demos out there, but here's an example of what TruePianos can do. The tone on this is minimally EQ'd or otherwise manipulated, using the Diamond 'Jazz' patch: Dexter's Tune (Cover of a solo piano piece by Randy Newman)

I'm still struggling with the fact that my MOTU MIDI Express XT interface isn't detected at startup. I either have to power it up or toggle the power off/on after booting to get the driver loaded. I've not had this problem on any PC or version of Windows in the 25-odd years I've been running this interface until Win 10 1903 installed a couple weeks ago. The problem manifested immediately the first I launched Cakewalk after the final reboot. I've tried a number of different things to fix it without success. The MOTU ClockWorks utility doesn't see it either, so it's not specific to Cakewalk. Other than that, I've had no issues.

I don't know if 4Front are really still honoring the discount for SONAR owners; you might want to contact them. TruePianos is still the best-sounding, most expressive and playable, inexpensive piano I know of. It's not 100% modeled, like Pianoteq, but modeling is clearly being used to get smooth timbre change across the dynamic range and to produce a more realistic release sound and sustain behavior. I despise pianos that have a noticeable velocity switching, and TruePianos has none. It also lets you interrupt the release with the sustain pedal which a lot cheaper sampled piano can't do - another feature that makes it more playable if you're used to a real piano. It makes a slightly unpleasant 'warbling' sound when releasing notes held by sustain , but it's not that noticeable in most situations. I don't know of anything free that sounds even half as good as a solo instrument.

I don't understand what you're clicking on that closes it. The way it should work is you adjust the height of the focused track, and then when you click on a different track, the previously zoomed one returns to the default height of the other un-zoomed tracks, and the new one expands to the zoomed height you set previously. And if you adjust the height of an un-zoomed track, they all change together.

Perfect! I understand your reticence to upload the file. Thanks for taking the time to detail the changes. I'm not surprised to see incorrect samples being referenced; it's a common error, probably due to copy-pasting lines to build the file. Sometime obvious on auditioning the instrument, but sometimes not. I've done it myself. ;^) Cheers, Dave

Although it may not be relevant to this issue, I have always felt that using WDM driver mode, and letting Windows have access to your audio interface is asking for trouble. I prefer to use ASIO mode, and set Cakewalk not to share drivers or release them when not in focus. I leave my onboard sound active for use by Windows, browsers and generic multimedia apps so that they all keep their mitts of my audio interface, and patch the soundcard output to an outboard mixer so it can play through my studio monitors when desired.

I generally use keyboard shortcuts in lieu of the context menu as well. But this issue renders the context menu mostly useless (everything that depends on selection gets grayed out), and should definitely be fixed. In the process of checking it, I re-discovered that it affects the PRV and inline PRV as well. I think the problem in that context goes back many years (maybe to X1 when Skylight was first implemented). I had totally forgotten about it because I use keyboard shortcuts.

Not a problem for me. While I would usually suggest to take a discussion like this to another thread, I think it brought out some relevant points in this case.

Glad you liked it, Joe. I'm not really accomplished at performing in real time using wheel/joystick/aftertouch inputs, and I try to avoid doing a lot of data entry with a mouse at all costs. So this is a quick and dirty solution I came up with when I first got GPO, and later JABB.

Not to downplay the importance of having this issue addressed, but I try to avoid making complicated selections because it's all too easy to lose them (or inadvertently include/exclude something) by my own ineptitude if not by a bug. ;^) I'll usually just take the the extra bit of time to perform several independent operations on partial selections. And I also make liberal use of Ctrl+Z. ;^)

Yes, toggling Input Echo on MIDI tracks is a fairly common way to switch instruments during playback or live performance. But the OP was toggling Input Echo on audio tracks during playback, which is not so common, and is generally to be avoided because it requires making a request to the driver to open/close the port, whereas using mute/solo is a software operation over which the DAW has complete control without depending on good behavior from the interface driver to get the desired result with the least latency, audio artifacts and potential system instability.

How did you start the project after re-launching Cakewalk? From template chosen in the New Project view of the Start Screen or by File > New or by Ctrl+N or... something else? And what is the value of Sampling Rate under 'Default Setting for New Projects' in Preferences > Audio > Driver Settings?

Here's my tip for that: - Record from your keyboard, playing with variable velocity as you normally would though the patch doesn't respond to it (applies to most Garritan instruments). - Select the whole clip/track. - Show the Controller lane in the PRV, and add a CC1, Modulation lane. - Right-click the CC1 button, and choose 'Copy Selected Values to this Lane'. The velocity values will be copied to the CC1 lane, giving you basic starting volumes for each note that you can leave as-is or use as a reference for manually drawing in more controllers for swells, etc. The same can be done of CC11, Expression as needed. It may be helpful to layer some other instrument that does respond to velocity so you have an audible response to guide you while recording.

I don't use a lot of strings in my music, but hate to think there's a flaw lurking out there. Would you care to share the corrected SFZ?

A few additional thoughts/clarifications: - My main point was that distinguishing by channels makes toggling input echos unnecessary. But if you're changing channels on the controller, there's no need to have a forced Output channel to the synth; what's important is to restrict the Input channel, so that only one is recorded and echoed at a time (in the case of non-multi-timbral synths) - If TTS-1 or any other multi-timbral synth is using all 16 channels of one port, the other synth tracks would need to use a different port in order not to end up being layered with a TTS-1 sound. Unfortunately, most controllers do not offer multiple output ports. At that point you do have to start disabling Input Echos or muting tracks. - Most decent controllers can send on more than one channel at a time to address the need for layering but not all make it easy to quickly select output channels from the front panel without going into menus, and many can only send on two channels at once.

Confirmed, and I can't imagine it was intended. Probably a side-effect of the customizability enhancements to the Smart Tool which were primarily aimed at the Clips view.

Okay. So it was more about being surprised that it didn't work than that you really need it to work. Normally it would, but, as you say, there other ways to to achieve the same end using mute/solo

If I'm understanding the goal, I would suggest you just set a unique Input channel on each track, and enable Input Echo on all of them. Each track will only echo events arriving with the matching channel from the controller.