Blades

@Jim Roseberry: Yeah - in the IT world (Windows Servers and such), "effective permissions" means: the permissions of the selected user or group would be "this" if these permissions were put in place. In other words, "effective" means "in the real world" or "practically", where in this example, it means nearly the exact opposite - like, "if there were NO other factors in place, the latency would be 1.5ms, but of course there ARE other factors in place all the time, so just ignore my effective ineffectiveness" - or something like that Thanks for your feedback. Glad to see that you feel like the Quantum IS actually the real deal. I'm still keeping it on the list of possible purchases for some time that isn't now.

I have an Echo Layla 3G that I was happy with for a LONG time. It still works, except for the Phantom power. I'd love to sell it but not sure what to list it for at this point since Echo Audio stopped making such things. Since I jumped ship from Sonar to Studio One and I had sold a bunch of other stuff on eBay and I got a great deal (at the time) on a Presonus Studio 1824 (new last year), I went with that. In the end, I suppose it is "better" than the Layla in that the overall latency, even in a completed project is better. I don't really thin kabout the latency and having to switch between multiple different settings. In Studio One, I just leave it at 64 samples at 24/44.1 and don't get bothered with it through my simi-simple projects. In Cakewalk, I have to move that to 128 samples to be usable for even just a single (same) softsynth (SampleTank3). Numbers that are reported through the software are: Studio One at the above 64 samples at 24/44.1 = 2.954 Input + 2.49 Output = 5.44 This is workable for me playing guitar and bass and recording vocals. Studio One has the option of what they call Blue Z and Green Z monitoring, but I honestly never bother with them - it's just a bit too complicated, really. In Cakewalk, I can basically double those numbers as I have to go to 128 samples if I want to do any SampleTank3 stuff. Since that is my primary meloduic Synth (along with Arturia Analog Lab), that's what I'm dealing with. In Cakewalk, the screen at 64 samples says "effective latency is 1.5ms". It's not usable and I don't really understand how 2.9+2.5 somehow is 1.5, but whatever. It's not real. At the end of the day, for ME (a not very great guitar player), any of these latency numbers are acceptable. It's only the edrums where it is completely intolerable for me, even in Studio One at 64 - though I can go to 32, which is still too "soft" for drumming VSTs to me. I have a Pearl Mimic Pro, which is effectively the same as a VST for monitoring and really, recording, since I loop the recorded MIDI (after massaging) back to audio in multi-track audio anyway. The thing sounds fantastic and pretty much eliminates any drum playing VST issues I might have. I used to just use the TD-20, but now with the Mimic I kind of have the best of both worlds. I REALLY wanted to get the Quantum and a Thunderbolt card for the PC, but I was making the purchase on sold "stuff I had in the audio shed" and the Quantum + card was outside of that reach. I still have a few things around to sell, like the Layla, an original Yamaha DSP Factory DS2416 card (which sells for a decent amount still on eBay), a pair of Roland VH-12 hi-hats, etc. Between all of that stuff, I might have enough to get a Quantum + Thunderbolt card (if I sold the Studio 1824 too), but I might be tempted to just get a few more e-cymbals (like the ATV 18" ride) or something else. End result: I think my Presonus Studio 1824 is "good enough" and my dollars might be better spent elsewhere as a single-person-hobbyist. That was a longer post than I expected.

No doubt on loss - My wife and I often wish for a do-over on our 40s because in that time we lost all four of our parents, both were the executors of the latter death, and had many other losses as well. Again, I just appreciate you and your voice in the matter, whatever the outcome of it.

Hey @MUDGEL, you and I have been around the forums a long time. I am not sure how much we've crossed paths but your feelings here are exactly what I was trying to say when I made that last post. Software companies should be VERY seriously listening to what their base is saying and if they aren't, they deserve the things that happen to them, even if it is at the loss of their while customer base. Shameful, really! It would be great if any other company seemed to behave any differently, but it seems they don't. Can't say that I haven't felt the same ways a dozen times here and elsewhere. I think it's great that you spoke your mind on the topic.

Include them All! Haha. Seriously, all software companies should always look at what others are doing. What makes them good/great. What does their user-base think? There are so many features that Studio One has that Cakewalk is missing and that Cakewalk has that Studio One is missing. It's a shame that each isn't all over what the other offers. It's especially short-sighted for a company like Presonus (or the others) to not capitalize on what Sonar users wanted in Studio One that they had in Sonar. And for Cakewalk to not look at what their departed users decided were great things about their alternatives would be just foolish, especially when they have an interest in not getting just new people and retaining the old, but surely attracting the others back. Here's an example for me: I always used to use the Sound on Sound recording mode in Sonar and it is sorely missed in Studio One. However, I now use the "pre-roll" feature of Studio One and when I think about Sonar, I wonder why it isn't there. Each can learn from the other here. Another: Automatic crossfades does exist in Studio One. In Sonar it was always a no-brainer as long as you had the option turned on. Why wouldn't Studio One have that? It's REALLY annoying to get a pop because you did a punch or whatever led to two clips overlapping each other. Sure, you can press X after dragging them over each other. But why not offer an option to do this automatically - toggle-able. Another one where Studio One has something to learn: Separate loop points and punch points. I really don't get how Presonus hasn't put this in place. Especailly for those of us who need to record when we are alone. When I record a Guitar Solo, I have to do a lot of takes. I like to have a little bit of the lead in playing (same for a vocal or whatever), so I might loop over that section. In Cakewalk - no problem, set the loop points outside of the punch points and loop record away. In Studio One, there is a loop point and there is a Punch point and they are both determined by the same markers = Stupid. So the loop goes around and you have to be ready to record right at the loop start. So back it up? Well, there's no "sound on sound" recording, so when recording engages, you can't hear the audio that was there on that track before that. Sure you can allow the overlap to record and not replace, but you can only hear the new material! Poor, Presonus. Ripple Edit: Cakewalk wins. Sonar is just at the track level, not across multiple tracks. How in the world is that useful, I wonder... Other direction: Macros kill the antiquated CAL scripting, period. Resizable sections of the console = Studio One win. Assignment of automatable parameters is far easier and faster in S1. Cakewalk: Gain knob is on every channel. Studio One has a plugin for it. But in Cakewalk that gain know that I don't really always need takes up a huge amount of real estate and when it is turned off, it just blanks out that panel - not a useful space still and now without the gain. In Studio One, I get to keep the real estate where it is needed. And no matter what they say, the two DAWs sound the same (don't get me started), so it is the usability that is the deciding factor (and the locked plugins, if that's your thing) And these are just picky things off the top of my head. I could find 100s of them given time, I'm sure. None of wants to do that - and that is the crux of the issue, isn't it? these picky little differences makes big impacts on work flow for either DAW. So, developers, Observe. This is the key to winning the hearts of users.

What I learned is that there are other fish in the sea, so to speak. The loss of Cakewalk in 2017 caused me to examine other options without any knowledge of the revival coming from Bandlab. I'm glad I did, as I found and have really enjoyed working in Studio One 3 and 4. There are still things that I prefer about Cakewalk as a whole: 1. The drum map is better 2. The community is better, I think. Even if there are some things here that are a little difficult sometimes, the general sense is more community and less "program". The Presonus forums are not as active and definitely not as "community" oriented. There are features (many of them) that I prefer in Studio One (the immediacy of everything, GUI specifically). There are features (some) that I prefer in Cakewalk (Sound on Sound recording, for example). The reality is that I keep getting pulled back to Cakewalk for some reason. Even though there are a lot of things I prefer about S1 and the fact that I'm currently working on several projects in there, I keep coming back to Cakewalk to see what's going on, and keeping in touch with this forum for all of its value, even as is extends beyond just the application. The stronger integrations with Bandlab as a collaborative platform are certainly appealing and something I am looking at. Even if that's the only aspect of Cakewalk I continue to use, it might be something that holds me here. In a perfect world, I'd have all of the features of both DAWs. I tried to stay very dedicated to Cakewalk/Sonar over the years and had it not been for the untimely breakup of Gibson/Cakewalk, I'd have never looked elsewhere. I even went to all of the Cakewalk Tours in the local Guitar Centers each year as a matter of course with a friend of mine as a traditional yearly outing. But that was lost with the demise of the Gibson situation and I looked elsewhere and found a reliable and affordable alternative. Now I know and can use both and I'm a bit torn with the revival of Cakewalk. I will likely continue to keep tabs on what is happening in Cakewalk land, might finish out some old projects over here, and will likely continue to build new ones in Studio One. But it is with near certainty that I will continue to follow both and will likely use both for different reasons.

Super Sorry for your loss. Have gone through it several times myself. We have three fur babies here and they not LIKE family members they ARE family members. When you know awesome they are it is hard to believe how some people can treat them badly or neglect them. I have one laying across me right now. When she (Bailey) joined us I didn't really even care for her much (rescued from becoming a puppy mill mother on Craig's list), she has claimed me and now we are inseperable. We foster small dogs and have had more than 30 pass through our home over the past few years. When the time comes to get another companion, please consider a shelter or rescue group.

Had a little playing around with this and in just a few minutes, this transformed my Ovation into a mic'd guitar. Sure, it still isn't a Martin or anything, but holy cow - I applied a few of these impulses (just the first set as a sound check), added an EQ after to cut a little bit of about 600Hz, cut the very bottom with a shelf, with a tiny boost right around 60Hz or so, then a really little shelf boost around 8k for some sparkle and "wow". It really sounds night and day better than the original. I can A/B the with and without the FX and it's really hard to believe it's the same instrument. Impressed. This is definitely going in the "didn't thing an effect could make something that much better" bin. I will be searching for some other impulses now to find the best ones for me and my guitar. Thank you so much for the pointer to look at this. Woudn't have even thought of it!

I think that the vdrums send a polyphonic after-touch midi event for a choke. I'm not using the Roland brain to send data any more - now using Mimic Pro, which sends choke as a midi note number, but I'm pretty sure that's how it worked on Roland modules. So I think that is what you need to be looking for in your midi stream. My guess is that there is no "off" being sent - like maybe you are somehow stopping it in the middle of a choke. Seems really unlikely, but might be acting like a stuck sustain pedal for a keyboard that would only release once it is pressed and released again. Flipping the bit is what I call it in many things IT/Web. Does that help at all?

My reality is I don't have that kind of acoustic, that kind of room, that kind of preamp, or the ability to play guitar without moving around too much and recording that sound too. 😉

I like the idea of this and gave it a little playing around with my variax even though that guitar certainly tries to so something like this by virtue of it existing. I went out and got a new 9volt for my ovation 1861 standard balladeer to see what happens when I record that directly. I prefer to play it to the variax for acoustic but the piezo sound just doesn't work for me and the variax tends to sound better recorded to me. Looking forward to trying this out.

John, at 24bit you have a lot more headroom to be able to record at lower levels and then process to get to the higher levels without getting the "never-pleasant" digital clipping. At 16bit recording, you have to be a lot more careful not to clip. Then there just isn't as much information in the system to get your effects to "work on". Yes, you still have to boil that all down to 16bit when done to get it on a CD, but there is a lot that can happen between the time it gets recorded and the time it gets dithered out to 16bit. Think about it this way: Why not just eat a handful of flour, a handful of sugar, some cooked eggs, a bit of vanilla and some chocolate chips instead of mixing it all together, baking it and having cookies? I mean, the end result is that you just eat all of the ingredients, so why not just cut to the chase and eat them rather than doing a bunch of stuff to them first.

Pwalpal, I went through that npr thing a while back and I think I got about 66% which I suppose is good. I actually ended up there after a video from Rick Beato on the topic using his friend as the young, perfect pitch hearing music major. She got 66%. I felt good matching that, but in all honesty I could only discern the difference when hearing them right after each other. If I heard them 10 minutes apart there is no way I could do anything other than guess. It's not exactly the same measure as this thread but similar I think at the end of it. I use 24/44.1 here. I am happy with the results and as mentioned above, my room, my equipment and my talent at playing, mixing, and mastering will fail me before the differences in these settings will.

So I saw this: "In addition to exporting Cakewalk projects to BandLab, you can now also export projects from your BandLab library and open them in Cakewalk" What does this mean? Appears to mean that I would be able to look at a Bandlab project (mine or someone else's) and would be able to save that in a Cakewalk readable format, rather than just stems or mp3. Is that what it actually means? That would be great for collaboration, but I can't find anything like this oiption in the Bandlab interface. If this were only for my own projects, I can't see how it would be useful since I'd already have those in Cakewalk format, but if this is for projects on which I would like to collaborate and add tracks, it could be VERY userful.

Yep - that was completely it. A little ironic that using a saved view, which I'd use to specifically show plugins in a certain way breaks the method of being able to sort/filter by them. Anyway - completely works and I think in general, this direct from the browser method would be preferred! Thanks.

Just a "way out there" suggestion: You don't have any plugins that have a lot of latency inherent to them anywhere in the project that just get worse and worse as you add more tracks, do you? Like a Convolution Reverb somewhere?

@msmcleod I just went back over to Cakewalk to try out this nifty idea of creating a new category or ctrl-clicking. Now I cannot get the properties dialog to display at all for any Audio FX in the Browser. It still works for Instruments, but right-clicking any of the Audio FX does nothing - no properties popup. I closed my project and re-opened. Nothing. I closed Cakewalk and re-opened. Nothing. I closed Cakewalk and that project, opened a different project. Nothing. These are the kinds of things that drive me nuts. If I'm in the middle of a tune and encounter one of these oddities, it makes me want to quit, or switch to a different program.

I also didn't realize that you could re-categorize a plugin/instrument directly from the browser with the right-click and select a category. What is missing here is: The ability to drag and drop (only a little easier for moving things around, especially when you are doing a bunch) The ability to create a new category that I can see. What is a plus here is: The Plus - The ability to add a plugin to more than one category AND see that it is in multiples. There are some things that just need to be in more than one place I like the idea of eliminating these old dialogs from any software. I see it everywhere, from Microsoft Word, to the IT system monitoring software that we use, to the dreaded Windows 10 "control pane(s)" where there are mixes of old and new dialogs with some overlap between them but some things that can only be done in one OR the other, so both must persist. The Drum Map Manager is another that needs some love. Just update the controls at least and get rid of the tiny boxes with scroll bars that don't resize or popups that look completely different than the window they popped out of (again the Drum Map - this time the Map Properties dialog that comes up form the double click of a drum in the map on the left sidebar of the midi window - and this window almost every time dropping behind the midi window with no easy way to get back to it - all the way back to my video on drum maps from Sonar 5!

@Starise sure.. Transiberian orch prog could work for me. I'm not a super fast player and I can hand with a time signature change here and again. I too have a full time job. In fact I own a business that just expanded to a second location (business managed IT services, web development and internet marketing) so my time is pretty fractured, but I get around to it while the wife plays video games! Let me know how you want to do it and er will see what we can come up with. I do play to a click, by the way!

@LittleStudios In the interest of offering up other options, have you considered a Presonus Faderport 8? There are a lot of things that this unit does using the Mackie control protocol within Cakewalk. I like the device a lot. I'm sure there are others that are better, but since I also use Studio One, this was a good fit for me that happens to also work in Cakewalk. Check out my blog post for a quick overview of how it works, if you like: https://www.blades.technology/music/daws-sonar-and-studio-one/presonus-faderport-8-with-cakewalk-by-bandlab

My own "experience" with Bandlab was when I first heard of it after taking over Cakewalk/Sonar. I created and account and looked around the system in hopes of finding options for online collaboration. What I found instead was a lot of "rap" that was Not Good. It isn't a genre issue for me - it's that it just wasn't done well at all. Getting a loop and talking over it doesn't make rap or hip hop or anything else. There is plenty of quality music out there that I don't like, but at least can recognise the quality. In the case of nearly everything I heard on Bandlab, I was left shaking my head. What I was hoping for was something more like the old collaboration forums I used to participate in, which were well organized, showing what people needed for their tunes, selecting musicians, exchanging mixes and parts, and assembling songs from ideas. What I found instead was what has been described in this thread: a bunch of people posting their music for others to listen to and others copping it and laying stuff on top of it that didn't seem to have any reason to be combined with it. Maybe I didn't give it a chance. That all said, I am always interested in participating in other people's music. I play drums and can lay down some quality sounding pop/rock/some progressive tracks if anyone happens to need that.

Ok - after much listening, getting feedback, and messing with this mix, I've done a few other things to hopefully improve it. I think I'm done making changes at this point, so I'd love to hear your opinions on this. I only have the most recent version posted. If you happened to have listed before, here's what I've changed since the last version: 1. I re-recorded the first few lines of the first verse to give them better strength 2. I have doubled the lead vocal on the Choruses 3. I have fixed a line that had a wrong lyric (oops) 4. I have change the chorus fx plugin that I was using to a different one and turned the Mix on that plugin way down, so there isn't much of it there. 5. I have tweaked the EQ on the acoustic guitar a bit to put a little high end back in it to brighten it up some. 6. I have fixed the guitar solo levels to be a little bit hotter, as in the last mix I pulled them a bit too far down, I think 7. I added a phaser plugin to the wash of distorted guitar during the choruses and raised the level a bit from where it was before. I think this helped fill out the chorus a bit. 8. I changed the reverb used on the vocals from a room (Presonus) to a Plate (T-Racks). So, here's the page. I sure would appreciate any further thoughts you might have on this! https://www.blades.technology/music/songs/anything

Thanks, Chuck!

Ah.. I thought you were saying that PFR and the band you were referring to had those Beatles influences.

@Chuck E Baby BTW what is that band you like that this seemed similar to?