Blades

I hope you will find this post and related video useful.  Please take a look.
https://www.blades.technology/music/daws-sonar-and-studio-one/softube-plugin-collection-volume-5-and-other-vst-bundles

and the direct link to the YouTube video if you don't want to read!

Hello Everyone!  Hope your day is going great.

I did a new video covering the Console 1 American Class A emulation that I hope will be interesting for you.  In this I cover the differences between the Console 1 and VST versions of the Softube Plugin, show examples on individual drum tracks, and then do a comparison with and without the Console 1 on the full mix of drum tracks.

Link to the Blog Post:
https://www.blades.technology/music/daws-sonar-and-studio-one/console-1-american-class-a-api-channel-strip

Link to the YouTube video directly:
https://youtu.be/XZd8r4CnCFA

Hi all,

I did a video today, continuing the "Which EQ Should I Use?" theme.  I accompanied this with a new video on my YouTube Channel about the same topic, with audio examples and EQ settings using the PreSonus Fat Channel series of plugins, which are also available in Cakewalk products, whether purchased separately or as a part of a Sphere subscription.  I hope that this is useful information for you to determine the type or exact particular EQ unit to select for your material.

Blog is here: https://www.blades.technology/music/daws-sonar-and-studio-one/which-eq-multiple-emulations

Direct Link to YouTube Video is here: 

@Soundwise I did a follow-up on this, but I didn't post it here because it's specifically about the Presonus ProEQ2 - fairly similar to the QuadCurve in Cakewalk, I suppose, though the Cakewalk one has some emulation factor to it with its different curve responses (though there's more to emulation than that and I don't think QC has that), where the PreSonus one is purely a graphical parametric EQ.  I wonder if there would be any value in doing one about the QuadCurve separately.

If you are interested, it's here: 

https://youtu.be/ewP97liHClw

@Billy86 Did you  watch the linked YouTube video?  This goes info the details of how it works in Cakewalk by Bandlab.  In general, I think it is still a worthwhile option in Cakewalk by Bandlab, even if it doesn't have all the features that it does in Studio One.  Having transitioned from the Behringer BCF2000 to the FaderPort 8, I can say that it is a pretty significant improvement, in my opinion.

I am starting a new series on this topic on my YouTube channel.  If you are interested in this, have input and want to suggest some items to cover, or just want to follow along, my Blog post for the Intro to the topic is here:

htttps://www.blades.technology/music/daws-sonar-and-studio-one/which-eq-should-i-use

And the direct link to the YouTube Video is here:

7 hours ago, pwalpwal said:

it was the x1 disaster that made me look

Yeah - coming from Sonar 8.5 I wasn't a big fan of X1.  I skipped X2 and only got to Platinum (X3+) after the lifetime updates offer.  I didn't really use X1 a lot.  I got used to it.  It was a step in the right direction at the time, I think, but lacked so much polish and lost features from 8.5 (layers for me).  At the time, I still didn't look elsewhere.   I am loyal to a fault, I guess!  Now, the new Cakewalk is an evolution of that Skylight interface.  It's definitely better, but I think some of the sluggishness I experience in the program compared to Studio One is because of the legacy of this interface.

I doubt it.  Once bitten and all that.  For a few reasons:

1. I already have fully adopted Studio One because of the Grand Screwing Gibson did with the Sonar product.  If you all remember me from those days, I was quite involved in these forums, in helping others, in keeping up with Sonar versions, and in buying into the "Lifetime updates" that lasted about 6 months (?) for me.

2. Bandlab has already said "we will never charge for this".  The day they say "we are going to charge for this", they will have signed their "you can't believe me" note and I'll not be interested in paying - though I still have to wonder how the heck they are paying the developers to continue to improve and advance this now-free DAW.  Got to make money somewhere, and if they are smart they will start finding a way, whether through in app purchases or whatever - just not a charge for the base product.

3.  I'm still not using it as my primary DAW.  It's unfortunate because had Gibson not done what they did, I'd have never looked elsewhere and wouldn't know any better.

I still think that Cakewalk is a quite useful DAW and if I hadn't looked around I would still be using and promoting it to this day.  Too bad Gibson screwed it up for them the way they did.  I've really actually enjoyed getting to know Studio One and all of its features.  I DO wish the community here would migrate over though.  The PreSonus forums are "ok" but nothing compared to what happens here.

I have a presonus faderport 8 that I really like in studio.one but also works pretty well in Cakewalk in mackie mode.

I use it primarily for transport and navigation, but it is just fun to be able to control several channels at the same time and to do things like automation rather than drawing it in.

I did a video showing how to use it in cakewalk on my youtube channel if you are interested: https://youtu.be/RlZASE5gibU.

I have an Acer dm431k at the house and one at the office.  I love these things for both work and studio use.  4k running at 100% zoom is exactly like have 4 1080p monitors without the bezels.

At the time I got these, they were $299 each. During covid lockdowns they hardly available anywhere. I see now that there are 6 in stock in my local microcenter at $450 and b&h says they have them at $399.  These are sharp.and true ips panels.  One if mine has a few bad pixels right the very bottom but otherwise no problems.

I did a video on this topic on my youtube channel if you are interested: https://youtu.be/XBBWMGd-gj8

Since there are a number of people around here interested in the Console 1, I thought you might want to hear about the newly released TrakPak for Console 1 from Empirical Labs, including the LilFrEQ and the Mike-e compresser (etc).  Check out my review here:

https://www.blades.technology/music/daws-sonar-and-studio-one/empirical-labs-trakpak-for-console-1-review-and-comparison

It's a great device.  Of course, it is more full featured in studio one since they are both presonus products but it is still a ton better for me in cakewalk than my bcf2000 was.  I am sure that I am missing some things with the extra modes, but unsure wish cakewalk and presonus would get together about a few of them and other issues, like the fader scale being not the same so feeling a little drift from the actual markings.  I don't know that either company needs to do anything.  I think it's both.

For those who want to skip the Blog post, here's a direct link to the YouTube video:

For the sake of comparison, I've done a video on this for the FaderPort 8 in Studio One as well, which shows some of the differences in the behavior of the hardware in the Studio One software and how some of the functions that Mackie MCU mode in Cakewalk doesn't cover.  You might find this interesting:

https://www.blades.technology/music/daws-sonar-and-studio-one/5-reasons-to-use-the-presonus-faderport-8-with-studio-one

@jack c. Wow. Humbled.  Thanks for that.

@Grebz I did a quick Google and didn't find them, so here you go:

Verse 1
Spaceships in the sky
Does anyone know if they're real or just a lie
I swear just the other night when I walked the dogs
what I thought was just a shooting star
could have been aliens from a million miles away

Verse 2
Frisbees or pie shells
We've seen Trick photography
TV shows that sell the
the subject of history

Verse 2b
for the phenomenon that nobody's sure about
The broadcasting news all flying to the bank

Bridge
Little Green with oversized heads
Are they real or make believe?
Science will show that they don't really know
As the search for Bigfoot goes on

Verse 3
Symbols in the fields
A Two-headed pregnancy
NASA won't reveal
The changing of history

Verse 3b
On the Dakoda farm where the woman was abducted from
She's still furious 'cause her husband called the shrink

(bridge) and then back to first two lines of Verse 1
 

@jack c. - thanks for the listen and the comment.  Not sure what the George Michael comment is - but I'll take any comment with his name in it when it's about a song I did and hope for it to have been a compliment!  

@timboalogo Glad to hear that you liked this and thanks for the comment.  The original song by The Tories along with the rest of that album was one of the early 90s gems.  Check it out!

I redid a bunch of stuff on this one that was just not sounding right.  I added a center guitar, brought the hard panned guitars in for most of the song and automated a few spots to send them back farther left/right, brought the background vocals closer to the center and spread them across the left to right spectrum more rather than them all being in the same spot, cut a little more low on the bass guitar and added a little bit of Red Light Distortion, and cut a little more bottom out of the kick drum.  Finally, I changed the export to not dither because it seemed like it was making the overall mix sound different.  If you listened before, I'd appreciate another one, but if not, well, hopefully this sounds better than last night's version.

The last cover I did was "Spaceman".  Even though this one is not made with Cakewalk like the last one was, it is in the same "space" theme, so I hope you might take a minute (or 4) to take a listen to this.

This is a cover tune from a band called "The Tories" called "Spaceships in the Sky".  I did a brief writeup on my blog along with the audio as well.

I hope you'll give it a listen:
https://blades.technology/music/songs/spaceships-in-the-sky

Hey all.  I had a chance to redo an old video walkthrough of the FaderPort 8 in use in Cakewalk by Bandlab in Mackie MCU mode.  The last time I tried to do this, I had a lousy audio and video situation and made the best of it.  This time around, I got it a little better and I think the video is more useful as a result.  Hopefully someone here will find this to be of value:

I did a follow-up on my last video that covered the Cakewalk ProChannel vs. the PreSonus Fat Channel. In this new post, I go into more depth on the use of the SSL Bus Compressor that is present in both of these plugins and I show examples on the drum bus using Pearl Mimic Pro sounds as the basis of the track. Hope you find this useful:

https://www.blades.technology/music/daws-sonar-and-studio-one/cakewalk-prochannel-vs-presonus-fat-channel-ssl-bus-compressor

Coming back to this after some other interesting revelations on the Studio One side of this controller (which I think are demystified now):

So - is there a solution to this?  @Noel Borthwick is there someone you can work with over at Presonus to come to some kind of workable solution?  It's not just that the markers don't match up - it's the little fader move that happens when you release for some reason - I guess because the resolution of the fader on the FP8 is expecting a different overall range than the Cakewalk screen representation or something.

Either way - it's pretty annoying and as mentioned, since it seems to be common that the devices (Mackie, Behringer X-Touch, Presonus FP, 8, and 16), which are all using Mackie control protocol are labeled with +10 (though I did find that Novation's are marked +6 and Avid and Slate are marked at +12 (not sure if they are Mackie or not)), and Cakewalk uses that Mackie protocol, that it would follow the markings on the matching hardware.

I would even kind of get it if at least the Unity marker were right and it was just off from there, but it's weird to move a fader on the hardware to the Unity mark and have it drift downward by about 3db or so and then when you look at the screen - sure enough it IS at -3db.  And really oddly if you move the on-screen fader to 0, the FaderPort is at 0 as well.  Just seems really inconsistent with it being "just a labeling problem".

Am oldie, but a goodie.  Like ID 10 T and Pebcak.

All that is happening in Cakewalk, is that value is mapped directly to the fader position on the channel strip. There is no db conversion going on whatsoever.

So, since this is the scenario, it seems that the setting would be on the Cakewalk side to ask "what is the range of the Mackie Control Surface faders" and then adjust how it behaves, mathematically, accordingly.  Agree?  Seems like a "simple" fix to the control surface part of things (says the drummer who used to be a mainframe programmer who makes websites these days).

It would be better for surfaces to allow calibrating their fader strips more flexibly rather than forcing the DAW to change based on one particular surface.

The end result is that several vendors can debate who should conform to whom, but for the end-users, the result is the same.  It doesn't work right.

If the Mackie Control on which the non-"Standard" was created has hardware that goes to +10db, it seems that the software would favor this particular hardware alignment.  

I don't have a Mackie Control.  Can someone tell us if this works right with their hardware?  Is it just "relative" rather than "literal" as it appears to be in the Presonus hardware?