David Baay

Okay. That CPU should be adequate. Just wanted to know for reference. Let me know how the rest of it checks out, and give us some idea of what your Performance module is showing while idling with the project open and during playback, and compare that to Windows Resource Monitor (Ctrl+Alt+Delete to get the Task Manager > Performance Tab > Open Resource Monitor).

Okay. Also meant to mention: Make sure you Windows power managment profile is set to High Performance. What CPU does this machine have?

CPU load when using MIDI tracks is primarily a function of the processing demands of the virtual instrument plugins those tracks are driving. Are you using a lot of different VSTis, or just one or two instances of multitimbral instruments? Which ones? You didn't mention what the Cakewalk performance module is showing, but assuming it's showing spikes over 50% on one or more cores during playback, you should should check the usual suspects and one new one which I'll mention first: - As of the 20.01 release, there's a new option, 3, for ThreadSchedulingModel in Preferences > Audio > Configuration File. This should not be set by default, but a lot of users read about it in the release notes, and enabled it. This is the so-called 'Aggressive' model, and hasn;t worked well for a lot of us. If you see ThreadSchedulingModel=3 in your config file, change it to 2, and OK the change. - In Preferences > Audio, make sure your driver mode is the preferred on for the Behringer (ideally ASIO and using drivers provided by Behringer), your Playback and Record Timing Masters are set to drivers for that interface, and your buffer size is reasonable for the number of instruments and FX plugins in the project. Given you're running Win7, I'm guessing your PC might be less than state-of-the-art (?), and have trouble keeping up at buffer sizes below 128. If it's there now, try 256 or 512. - Download and run the free 'LatencyMon', and check your DPC (Deferred Procedure Call) latency. If it's spiking periodically or running consistently over 300-500us check to see what driver/process is primarily responsible. Common offenders are drivers for onboard Bluetooth and/or WiFi systems enabled in BIOS. If you're not using them, disable them, and while you're in there disable 'Speedstep' and 'C-States' (CPU-throttling functions) if you haven't already. -

The Bus FX option is there mostly to facilitate the opposite: exporting buses as stems without FX. Printing bus FX to individual tracks doesn't make sense most of the time. Dynamic FX and anything else that's sensitive to input level (amp sims, saturation, console emulation, etc.) or dependent on a sidechain input won't behave the same with only one track at a time being processed. Also some FX have unsynced LFOs or other randomness built in such that they won't behave the same way for one track as they did for an earlier one which can cause phase/imaging problems when they're mixed back together.

Yes, if you want a tempo of 72 dotted quarters per minute, that's 72 x 1.5 = 108bpm.

I reported an issue to the Bakers a while ago that an empty controller lane was persistenting after deleting all controllers of that type and removing it from the controller pane. iIRC, creating a new track, and moving the MIDI clip(s) to it will fix it.

Yes you can export direct to a stereo file using the 'Entire Mix' option in the export dialog, or... I like to 'Bounce to Tracks' the whole mix to a track named 'Master Bounce' that ouputs directly to the interface 'main outs' in parallel with the 'live' mix on the Master bus. Then I group the mute buttons on that track and the Master bus in opposition so I can switch back and forth between them to make sure the rendered mix sounds the same as the live mix (no missing tracks, or issues with timing, imaging, levels, FX rendering, etc.). Then I export just that one track. In addition to letting you confirm that 'what you hear is what you get', this lets you have a copy of the Master preserved within the project for furture reference. And you can bounce different mixes to alternate lanes of the Master Bounce track, and use the lane solo buttons to quickly A/B them as the mix evolves (faster switching than using Mix Recall, though that's also a feature you should get to know). Getting back to the task of bringing the best parts of the performance to the fore with automation, you should also look into using compression FX plugins on the better/more important performances to raise their overall RMS 'energy' level without raising peak amplitude levels which has the effect of making them louder and bringing them 'forward' in the mix relative to other tracks.

MIDI only records and plays back the performance 'gestures' of playing the instrument - what key you hit (note number), how hard/fast (velocity), at what time (measure, beat, tick), and how long you held it (duration). In order to record the audio, you need to connect the audio outputs of the piano to the audio interface/soundcard on the PC, create an audio track in Cakewalk with Input set to that source, and enable Input Echo on the track to monitor the audio passing through Cakewalk and out to your monitors. The usual process is to record the MIDI with Input Echo enabled on both the MIDI and Audio tracks but only arming the MIDI track (turn off Local Control in the piano so it's only responding to MIDI echoed or played back from Cakewalk). Then edit the recorded MIDI as necessary to perfect the performance, and then arm only the Audio track and record the output from the piano as the MIDI track plays back.

So what you're talking about is recording volume automation in real time. Basically what you want to do is click the 'W' (Write Automation) button on a track (or multiple tracks), start playback, and Cakewalk will record moves of the Volume fader (best done in the Console view) as an automation envelope line overlaid on the track in the Track view. I don't know what level of integration is possible between the Behringer and Cakewalk as control surface that would allow you to use the physical faders to write the automation. If it's working as a control surface, you can probably write automation for multiple tracks at once. If you have to use the Cakewalk UI, you'll probably want to work just one track at a time, making multiple playback passes. Also, you can right-click the W button to get different write modes/behaviors, depending on what you need. You can also draw automation envelopes with the the mouse or edit automation tha was written in real time after the fact. To draw an automation envelope from scratch, start by clicking the Edit Filter in the track, and choosing Automation > Volume to create a flatline automation envelope at 0dB as a starting point for adding nodes to change the level. There are different types of transitions between nodes available so that you don't have to draw every node to to get all the curves, lines or jumps you want. For more info, see the Cakewalk Ref. Guide on Automation. P.S. If you don't see some of the controls and options I'm talking about, make sure your Workspace is either 'Advanced' or just 'No Workspace', and change the Control Manager dropdown at the top of the tracks pane to show 'All' or 'Mix' controls.

- David. Glad you liked it. I try to resist posting raw stuff like this, but this one really 'wanted out', so I did a little copy-pasting, added a fade and called it good for now. ;^). - Tom, thanks for the listen. The piano is the 'Clear Studio' patch on my Roland RD-700NX with a little PSP PianoVerb to give a little extra depth and movement in addition to the main reverb on the whole mix. I just recently got this, and like the sound of it in small doses. I have several ongoing issues with the Bandlab upload process. The first is that publishing from CbB usually does not work. The mix gets rendered, and the upload is reported successful, but it just ever shows up in my 'Library' to be published. So I've taken to just uploading with Bandlab Assistant. but sometimes it never finishes doing whatever re-sampling and file-linking it does under the covers after initial upload, which is what happened to this one. I solved it by opening it in the Bandlab mixer, and re-saving it as a new version. The other issue I have is that it's difficult to get a new mix/version to replace the existing one. I like the concept of having file sharing and collaboration integrated into Cakewalk, but the implementation is quite wonky. I gather the Bandlab web development 'team' (I hope there's more than one...?) continues to be separate from the 'Bakers', and not really focused on continuing to improve the integration. P.S. On listening to this from the link just now to hear it on my laptop, the sax felt draggy, and the reverb is a little overdone on the piano. I checked the project and found some related tweaks got lost in translation. Will have to re-post when I get a chance.

Yes, I've done minor themes edits for other things like this. Just thought I'd mention it in case you hadn't considered it, as I expect others might also appreciate a little extra contrast for partial selections.

Open the MIDI file from File > Open, or by double-clicking it if you've let Cakewalk associate itself with .MID files at installation. When a MIDI fle is opened directly, rather than imported, Cakewalk will adopt the tempo (or tempo map if it's not a fixed tempo) of the file, and show it in the transport module and Tempo view.

Sounds like you have a 48KHz project playing back at 44.1. The sample rate of the project should be forcing the interface clock to the correct rate. First thing I would check is that CbB is using the same driver mode, and Playback and Record Timing Masters are set to the same device drivers as in SONAR But it's also possible that the interface was running at the wrong rate when recording, and is now running at the correct rate set in the project. You might check that audio file in the project audio folder play at the expected pitch and tempo in other audio apps.

Jumped through some hoops on the Bandlab site, and it should be working now.

Not sure when the Bandlab website is going to get its act together, and actually make this playable, but I got tired of waiting. Just a little something I've been fooling around with today. Piano and sax in the mold of other things I've been doing lately. Enjoy... if you can (the waveform in the embed looks goofy because it hasn't finished processing the upload):

I have Melodyne 4 Editor, and no stability issues currently. Last time I had a problem with freezing, it turned out to be an interoperability issue between certain VST3s and NVidia drivers; fixed by a driver update. Cakewalk Dev have a very good and close relationship with Melodyne, having been an early adopter of ARA, so there should be no finger-pointing. If it's reproducible by either of them, they will get it fixed, but more likely you have some system-specific issue. Ideally, you will be able to provide detailed steps on how to repro the issue in the simplest possible project, started from the ' Basic' template. If it's only reproducible in a specific project, strip it down as much as possible without losing the reproducibility, and send them a copy of that project. Sometimes the process of stripping it down will identify the problem.

Okay, I take it back. I did a quick test, and it seems there is an issue here, and it goes back a long time (reproducible in SONAR 17.10). Guess I never noticed because count-in usually is disabled when recording existing MIDI. And even with it on, I typically run a much smaller buffer (32-64 samples) when tracking so the discrepancy is significantly less than MIDI transmission delay and there's no truncation of the recording, just slightly less delay.

What audio interface and driver mode are you using? The difference with count-in enabled is not normal; I'll double-check nothing has changed recently, but I've never seen this in any of my systems, and I use hardware synths in almost every project. You should still verify you have Timing Offset at 0, and maybe try disabling UseHardwareSamplePosition in Preferences > Audio > Config File (enabled by default). If the synth is a keyboard synth, you might also try recording simultaneous MIDI and Audio using Local Control to get another data point for understanding what's going on.

Ctrl+A to select the whole project, and then open the Audiosnap palette or the Audiosnap section of the Clips tab in the Inspector, and enable Follow Project in Autostretch mode. Then delete the unintended tempo change, and experiment with different stretching algotithms for different tracks to get the best result. Slowing down audio tends to create noticable artifacts then speeding up, but 2% shouldn't be too bad. Personally I might just live with the tempo change. If you didn't notice it immediately, it probably won't bother listeners, and might even add a useful sense of increased energy later in the song.

I've always been happy with Mercury, and don't often bother to check out other themes, but I do like this one - easy on the eyes with good contrast, and preserving the overall blue and gray nature of Mercury. Really nice job. I've been using it for a bit, and the only thing shortcoming I've noticed so far is that the dark shadow of a partial clip selection is a bt difficult to discern against the darker clip backgrounds. It would be preferable to have a lighter highlight that's maybe just a bit darker than the medium gray of a fully-selected clip. But I could get probably get used to it as-is

Try dragging and dropping the ADR project from file system (or the browser) into your working project. I did a quick test, and it didn't preserve folders or track colors, but it did preserve multiple clip groups. It also created a couple superfluous MIDI tracks (one named 'Matrix Data Track) which I seem to recall hearing about previously, but maybe wouldn't happen in a project with no MIDI. Not big deal to delete them, anyway.

Audio from a hardware synth is compensated for record latency just like audio from any other external source, but is not automatically compensated for MIDI transmission delay which is usually greater than audio latency, and will typically make it a bit late rather than early, unless... Check whether you have a non-Zero 'Timing Offset' (different from Manual Offset) under Preferences > Audio > Sync and Caching. Positive values delay the audio (including the metronome and playback of existing audio and soft synths) relative to MIDI grid, effectively causing audio from external hardware synths to be laid down earlier to compensate for MIDI transmission delay. The one other possible wrinkle would be if the synth audio is coming in via digital input, then it would overcompensated because there's no A/D conversion, but that's generally a much smaller delta (on the order of .5ms) than MIDI transmission delay.

That makes sense; MIDI files don't store I/O assignment information. As you probably know, CCs are easily transformed using Process > Find/Change. But you can also copy them directly from one controller lane to another in the controller pane of the PRV. You can even copy velocity to CC1, which is handy for GPO instruments that don't respond to velocity.

Hmmm... looks like they've changed their URL recently, but the link for the latency tester at the bottom of the page is not working for me: https://centrance.club/downloads/ If it doesn't work for you, either, PM me an e-mail address, and I can send you the utility. It's a standalone executable. No installation or licensing required. P.S. CEntrance has since made made the utility available again at this new URL: https://centrance.com/driverfolder/CE_LTU_37.zip

Start by measuring the actual Round-Trip Latency, using the free CEntrance Latency Tester: https://centrance.com/downloads/ltu/ Then subtract the Total RTL reported in CbB from the CEntrance-measured RTL, and enter that as the Manual Offset. A positive value (the usual case) adds compensation to make up for the part of the actual latency that isn't being reported to CbB by the driver. A negative number subtracts from the automatic compensation in the somewhat unusual case that the driver-reported value is over-compensating. This will usually be less than 50 samples, so probably not a primary contributor to your issue, but it's a good thing to do in any case. P.S. CEntrance has since made made the utility available again at this new URL: https://centrance.com/driverfolder/CE_LTU_37.zip