Glenn Stanton

did you select the MIDI tab on the lower right - sounds like you're on the Audio tab....

install MIDIOX and see what is coming across from the controller or MIDI interface. if it is sketchy - as John noted - time to replace it if there is no option to update or reset it.

one thing i used extensively about 12-15 years ago was the Bolland [Super] Brass sound font - not partcularly "real" compared to todays ampller VI but it made adding horn sections really easy and in the mix was pretty decent for an soundfont. https://www.zanderjaz.com/downloads/soundfonts/brass/

free soundfonts. i use the sforzando player (free) The Blanchet 1720 – Play a virtual harpsichord copied from an 18th-century French instrument. It’s perfect for adding a touch of history to your music. The soundbank is available in soundfont or Kontakt 2 format. Either way, you’re sure to get a high-quality, authentic sound. http://sonimusicae.free.fr/blanchet1-en.html Christian Zell Harpsichord 1737 – 420 MB https://musical-artifacts.com/artifacts/728 The Small Italian – Small Italian is a soundbank of a harpsichord copied from an anonymous 17th-century Italian instrument. This soundbank is perfect for Renaissance and 17th-century music and is available in Kontakt 2 format and sf2 format. http://sonimusicae.free.fr/petititalien-en.html

can you plug your phone into it and see that you have access to the phone storage? if so, as i think it is, it's a USB type-c which basically should handle whatever USB device you use. likely it as marketed as "audio" because they included a cheap USB-audio converter in lieu of a headphone jack... it would be helpful to know what PC you have.

if it is a USB type C port, then i don't see why you couldn't. you just need the right USB cable to connect from the IO to the C port.

as a note: i seldom ever have more than 2 or 3 automations on a given track or buss. and i tend to focus and make sure (for example when selecting a node) that i select the correct note or segment of the envelope before executing a change - delete, shifting, levels, etc. as there are cases where the "smart" selection stuff is trying to be helpful (like using a clip as the range selection when i want an larger section selected) so i take a couple of moments to make sure it is what i want. do errors happen? sure, and it's more than likely if we watched a video of you documenting the "bugs", its probably you were rushing things in an effort to go fast. why this observation? the incessant ranting gives one the impression you are not a patient person. not judging but consider that if you've got a lot of automation envelopes on each track, then maybe you need to consider the workflow and steps to avoid these "bugs". just sayin'

they're two different clips? one is call Vox and the other is call Record 11. plus the IO units does not change the levels on the clip display, so either you zoomed in (or out) or as per the previous statement, they're not the same clip. if you're trying to say one IO unit fed a higher level signal (or vice versa), then it's because one of your IO units fed a higher (or lower) level signal (presuming the input to each was the same). one thing to do: calibrate your levels. use a pink noise (or any noise really) set to -20db, -18db, or -12db and feed it through your IO unit directly, or if using a mic (same one in each location) then play the noise in the room and set it for a level at about 12" from the mic of around 50db (or more but i like to not potentially damage things) and calibrate your levels for each unit.

i have a bunch of them (you know, just in case) AD2. EZD3, BFD Player, SSD Sampler5, MT-PowerKit, Sitala, SI-Drums, Session Drummer 3, and a few others... apparently you cannot have enough drum options 🙂 the nice thing is: a bunch of them are free and most generously share some of the samples from their full products.

you can set it to use tracks in lieu of take lanes although you lose the built-in comp editing features and have to manage it across tracks as you might normally do.

i could 🙂 i was hoping for the 3D kind so i didn't have to buy that SSL 9000 in order to get 3D controls 😉

yes, if you're not using 3D vector graphics (ala gaming ...) then it can definitely be fast and lower on resources. for me, i design things with a lot of 3D vectors and materials so i'm always wary of apps using vector UI unless they're basically the flat kind...

i used to do the same thing - record, delete, re-try, multiple full takes then edit tracks etc. then i watched a couple of comping videos which clearly explained it, and the next session - comped it. 12 takes by 2 singers (i.e. 6 each). once you get the hang of skimming through the takes and picking the best one, then on to the next (all key strokes to move and select), it went really fast, like less than 30 minutes. then onto the detailed edits, clip gains, de-essing, pitches etc etc. next project same success and again and again. using the takes and comping tools is my workflow now. last note: Melodyne - once you have the track comped - you can do a lot of the work in Melodyne - tweaking any minute timing and pitch, de-essing a bit, node leveling, cleaning up noises, etc and then rendering.

vector can also take more CPU to recalculate each time as well as typically being restricted to a single CPU (as multiple CPU vectoring is often more wasteful than simply processing on a single one...)

you can't create buss templates but you can set up some tracks which use those busses and then when you add the track(s) the busses will be added as well. one thing which is annoying, is colors are lost - so you need to re-color the busses (if you do...) addendum: i've found after making any number of track template + associated busses, that it was just simpler to have a larger template which encompassed most of what i do at a given stage - recording, mixing, "mastering", etc and just remove tracks and busses later. so once i have the tracks i think i'm going to work with, i will remove the extras. and if i do need to add something back in, i have the templates or simply insert one and use my presets.

Andres has the best answer for levels - pull down the levels all together will help and is fairly easy to do --- now the caveats --- with regards to David's approach - pulling down gain on the master each track, you risk altering the level into any effects on the buss those tracks - esp saturation, amp sims, etc and same for the master buss - any effects on that with reduced gain may behave differently than changing the overall input levels. however, the answer may be some volume reduction on the tracks/busses + slight gain reduction on the tracks and master (and any associated busses). Bristol has the best answer overall - you reset the levels and add the high passes (your distorted guitars will thank you) and redo the levels. this is not the fun option but very likely to get you to where you need to be. beside, you're not sleeping between midnight and 3am anyways, so a couple of days and you'll have it done! 😉

sadly, it used to be all for the help with decoding SETI messages, now it's just either steal or mess with people. using auto-wreck on your texting for example - it comes up with words i would never ever ever use...

say you have a "master" buss where all the outputs are routed to. create a new stereo buss and call it "reverb", and route it's output to the "master" buss. set up your reverb on the reverb buss and make sure the reverb output is set to 100% wet, and 0% dry. set the reverb buss to -12db on the volume fader for now. next, on each track you want reverb on (e.g. snare, guitar, not kick or bass), create a "send" to the reverb buss. set each send to -4db (for starters). hit play. you should now have the reverb buss showing some activity and hear the reverb in the overall mix. as an extra, insert an EQ before the reverb and set the high pass to 300hz and the low pass to 2khz (for starters). this will help reduce extra LF and HF in the reverb content. later you can discover more EQ after the reverb, compression, etc tricks as well as reverbs for vocals vs drums vs instruments like guitar and so on...

you could have a track template that loads up synth, and another one for the audio: you could save both an audio and a MIDI together as an "instrument" track saved as a template.

part of the archive process is to export all tracks (much easier now with the new export functionality to set up FX PRI and RAW tasks) - both printed with FX and raw. save the project as a new project to a new folder so only the relevant audio files are copied. make copious notes on FX and settings. compress all the tracks, project, subfolders in a ZIP. clean up old version of project and do any future work on the new one. then... 10-20 years later... if the old project and FX are not fungible, then create a new one, bring in the tracks into your new projects based on your latest mix template, setup your new effects w/ equiv settings from your copious notes, and voila! you are nearly there. and i've found along the way, when re-using old projects, i may use some of the print tracks and most of the raw tracks as i want to change things up anyways but really liked one particular track effects.

one of the new, erm, features is AI. MS has a new product called "co-pilot" and from my observations, it's more a suicide pilot because it constantly interferes with not only the browser but every app i use - including notepad. so after some research there is a couple of ways to turn it off - one is using the GPEdit in the Pro version, and directly adding a value in the registry for Home edition. i have "turned it off" in mine and things are better, but i still see it happen on the Edge and Google Chrome browsers - so i suspect the AI in those products cannot really be turned off or worse, they're using network roundtrips (like the spelling assist) to perform the evil.

apparent v6.1.3054.056 works fine on the Mac v11.2.986.75 but not on the Mac v11.2.387.44 and also not on Mac v10.7.344.33 or on the Linux VINE... but that's just today's postings...

pretty sure they didn't create the B3 in only 2 weeks. lol. but sure from the time they announced they were going to release to actually releasing was about 2 weeks -- however - one of the threads on the B3 @ the toontrack forum was started in 2018... anyways, i bought the B3 expansion after holding myself back for almost 2 hours after adding it to the cart... LOL. it's a decent organ and while i only had about an hour yesterday to mess with it, it's well done, and even includes some MIDI slides, etc to add some realism to the performance. PreSonus interestingly enough on several forums (including its own) seems to be struggling as many plugins and general functionality are being reported as "broken" - mostly on the Mac side.

one more - the free BFD Player. somewhat akin to the SI Drums or the Session Drummer 3. it's a VI instrument and does (mostly) require you to provide the grooves to perform, but it has some high quality sounds. and it's free. https://www.bfddrums.com/drum-software/bfd-player.html and lastly the free version of Steven Slate drums - high quality sounds + upgrade / expansion options. https://stevenslatedrums.com/ssd5/#SSD5FREE

no, i would leave the defrag tasks "off" as i'm not so sure Windows is smart enough to simply enable "trimming" vs trying to create contiguous file arrangements. edit: supposedly the Windows "optimize" processing does a TRIM on SSD -- but for some reason the "defrag" task is still there. see https://www.pcworld.com/article/406367/when-to-check-defrag-and-optimize-storage-devices.html and since the MS learn site seems to think defrag is run as "defrag" i would leave it off. https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-server/administration/windows-commands/defrag