Starship Krupa

See, I am a befuddled geezer.

I have the Lite 10 license, and I drop in and mess with it every so often. Maybe I'm set in my ways with my Cakewalk and Mixcraft and REAPER and Music Maker and Waveform and Vegas and....well, pretty much every DAW and NLE I've ever tried. But when I fire up Live! Lite and try to start off by writing a tune in their piano roll, there's this feature that Ableton seems to lack that is standard in all of those others, which is the Rewind button. A button that returns the playhead to the beginning of the project. This function is handy for things like when I enter a few notes or chords and want to listen to what I just did. I hit play and it plays, then it keeps going on into infinity, and I can stop it, but then just sits out there. I can find no option to have it go back to start when I stop the transport, I can find no keystroke that rewinds, so I wind up clicking back at the beginning and hoping that my click was accurate. I know there are some fab features that Ableton Live! has that Cakewalk lacks, but really, being able to rewind the transport is not something I'd ever expect to have to do via clever workarounds. Is it that the music produced with Ableton is expected to be so inconsequential that even the person making it isn't interested in listening to it? That can't be, some of my favorite artists use Ableton Live! Adding some kind of rewind would be my #1 feature request for Ableton.

And at least in my case, they have failed entirely. Double-shot $20 voucher+already owning all the UfA licenses I want=digging around in the bargain bin. Next sale I'll probably pick up Mo-Verb so as to have the set handy. I haven't tried it yet, but I do realize that it's more transient shaper than something like proximity eq+. I like transient shapers, especially for salvage work. You know, those times when my TARDIS won't let me go back and record the material over again with better equipment or mic placement. If I were to encounter myself in my own time stream, it might do irreparable damage to reality, and an impromptu jam session that turned into everyone playing way above their abilities isn't worth risking existence itself.

As a public service, I'll post a link to my A|A|S wiping tutorial. On my systems, The number of of AAS Player locations in its various unnecessary forms is in the teens. I do the cleanup after installs of any of these products, I have a folder on my desktop with shortcuts to each of the folders so that I can clean them out.

Here's one of my recipes: open an instance of that MCompressor you upgraded a couple of months ago on whatever material you want to compress. Try a vocal or guitar track where the player isn't already using tons of compression. Set it up for 4:1 ratio, 5mS attack, 100mS release. Hard knee, peak not RMS. Now adjust the threshold so that the vertical line in the MCompressor metering window is "dancing" back and forth across the angled horizontal line, right at the knee. Switch it in and out of bypass and adjust the output gain to compensate for the compressor's overall gain reduction. You're looking for about 4dB or so of gain reduction. Then park your cursor arrow on the bypass button, close your eyes, and click it a few times, listening for the difference it makes. That's one of my starting points for when I want to use a compressor to make something "pop." Another thing: They have multiple uses. Compressors were originally designed to pack more signal into limited bandwidth, but they're also used to alter amplitude envelopes in sonically pleasing ways. It was important to me to distinguish between those two uses when I was learning, because I needed that to understand the advice people gave me. There's a psychoacoustic effect, our ears have their own built-in compression that clamps down on transients, and compressors can be set up to mimic that and trick our ears into getting the impression that we're being exposed to a louder sound than we actually are. Think of an explosion in a movie, it sounds really loud, but it doesn't hurt your ears because there's a compressor (a limiter, too) on it smoothing down the spikes. I found/find MCompressor to be the best for understanding compression because it's designed to be as free as possible from character and coloration. When I click back and forth I'm not digging the "mojo" it's adding. It's a favorite of mine for individual instruments for that reason, when I don't want "mojo" to build up. Here's a video that I've watched multiple times. It's about using them for sound shaping, how to listen for what they're doing:

SPL De-Verb Plus, you are now mine.

Waves score points for using a non-proprietary dongle, for sure. It does make up somewhat for the single-seat license. And I, too have shelled out (WavesHell loading system is another PITA) money to WUP a few plug-ins, first to 10 to bring them into the Windows 10 era, then again to 12 to get the scaly gooeys. I didn't mention single-seat iLok'd companies now that I have a fiiiiiine iLok2 to use with them.😎 (Next time I go to LA I think I'm going to get a chain to wear my iLok around my neck)

Of the biggies, only Waves stick out as far as not being cool. It's about single-seat licenses and grubbing for WUP fees. I'm not scared about my v.11 plug-ins being "unsupported," if they work fine now it's likely they'll work fine in the future. Charging more than $10 to transfer a license is unnecessary, so Plugin Alliance takes a hit for their $20 fee. Otherwise, hey, good discounts, 3-seat license, what's not to like? I'll chime in with Meldaproduction love, the one hitch is that there's no discounted upgrade path for individual plug-ins in a bundle. For instance, if I wanted to upgrade my Essentials Bundle MSpectralDynamicsle to the full version, I have to pay whatever the going rate is for it. Whatever, I've benefited greatly from their generous upgrade policies and referral credits to get some really great top quality plug-ins.

Excellent advice from John regarding the Maximizer or similar harmonic enhancement tools on old recordings. Something I neglected to mention earlier, since you're trying to give the old mix a better overall tonal balance, reference it against a better-mixed song while using a spectrum analyzer on each. My choice for spectrum analyzers is Meldaproduction MAnalyzer (nice because there's fully functional free version), and Voxengo SPAN is another popular choice. I prefer MAnalyzer because it shows numeric readouts on the peaks, which would help with that midrange lump. MAnalyzer also comes with presets that allow you to overlay analyses of tracks in a variety of genres for comparison. And your analysis can be copied and pasted into MEqualizer for direct reference while you're working on it.

I've done a bit of polishing of challenging material like phone captures and old cassette recordings. I actually find it great fun to see how good I can make a poor recording sound. The tools I turn loose on them are EQ (using a plug-in like MEqualizer that can do mid, side, left and right independently is the best) stereo image processing (Voxengo MSED, and JST Sidewidener or Polyverse Wider), and transient shaping (I've used fairly simple ones in the past, but I acquired WA Production Imprint multiband transient shaper several months back and am looking forward to deploying it on one of these someday). The transient shaper can bring up or push down various elements in a mix by emphasizing attack and decay.

Regarding p. 44 of TYLIP, it describes the Plug-In Tree Icons image (which I gratefully swiped from you for Racing Green). It also halfway down the page states "These are also used for icons in the 'Add Track' instrument selection drop-down menu." I can't find that, or maybe I just don't understand it. Colin, can you clarify?

I don't have personal experience with DIY home NAS systems, but I have set them up in a pro environment, so perhaps I can offer some suggestions. FreeNAS looks pretty good, thanks for making me aware of it. I like that it's based on FreeBSD (as is Mac OSX). It looks like FreeNAS comes with SAMBA out of the box, which takes care of connecting to Windows peer networking. If I were doing this, I would set up a RAID1 with two drives, and yes, set it to RAID in the BIOS. I don't know if your HD controller would support hardware RAID, but I'm sure FreeNAS will let you set up any kind of software RAID you want. RAID1 stripes all data to both drives, so if you lose a drive, no problem, it's there on the other one. It also has the traditional RAID benefit of faster read times. The only issue with it back in the day was that you only wound up with the storage capacity of a single drive, but these days, TB drives are ridiculously cheap, so who cares. Get a pair of 3TB drives and get read speed and data protection for cheap. I assume that your home network is all Gigabit, so that won't be a bottleneck. Even if it were 100M it would still be fine. On the streaming side, you will have more speed than you need by orders of magnitude (consider that Netflix and Amazon stream 4K over the internet). For backups, it should fly. Schedule incremental backups every day for a time when you won't be on your system and you'll be secure. One thing: after you get your backup all set up and running the way you want, try a test restore. It has happened more than once that someone has set up a fab backup plan that somehow fails to restore properly due to a misconfiguration somewhere. This has me thinking that my old Core 2 Quad could be put to NAS use after I retire it from second desktop duty. I have one terabyte drive, just need another and I can set up RAID1.

In my observations, most thrones outside of the low-budget zone use a very similar base that's compatible with (or identical to) the ones that Roc-n-Soc uses. The differences are only in the seat, not the bases. So you can get just the top and it should slip right on to a decent quality Gibraltar (or Pork Pie or whatever). Gibraltar also sell replacement tops for much less than the equivalent Roc-n-Soc. A friend gave me his Roc-n-Soc tractor throne because after trying it, he wanted to go back to a round one. I tried it and also decided that I, too prefer a round one. Where the contoured motorcycle seat bothers me is when I change how far apart my knees are when playing. That seems odd, because one foot on the hat pedal, one foot on the kick pedal, but still, for whatever reason I wind up running afoul of the contours. The round one also allows me to park my tush farther back if I want. When I rewrapped my first kit in sparkle vinyl, I took my round throne seat over to the auto upholsterers up the street and had them use a remnant of the sparkle vinyl to recover it. So when I haul out the old CB700's, I have a matching throne. It looks pretty cool behind my daily players, a vintage 1970 Slingerland New Rock outfit. One advantage that the tractor has is that I can fit a backrest to it, and as I get older, I'll probably end up getting one. Tip: the top of the line Gibraltar is very similar to the Roc-n-Soc at about half the price: https://www.amazon.com/Gibraltar-9608MB-Cordura-Throne-Backrest/dp/B000BZIYY8/

Glitchmachines Palindrome for $10, Subvert for $5 at Pluginboutique until April 18th. I can vouch for Palindrome having one the coolest-looking UI's of any plug-in, in contrast to GM's usual businesslike arrays of knobs. Reminiscent of the arcade game Tempest.

Wound up with Backmask and Mishby. Re the Levels freebie, yes, make sure you uncheck the products you don't own licenses for and the formats you don't need. Otherwise it gives you demo versions and .AAX's.

BTW, I said I'm not spending another penny. I didn't say that I wouldn't happily reel in any freebies that happen to float by. 😁

https://www.pluginboutique.com/deals/show?sale_id=7809 $13 for each of their FX. Regularly $20. Dumpster Fire is my life. I'm getting Backmask this time around.

I think it will be immediately useful for me. It might even help me eliminate the normalizing in Sound Forge I often need to do.

G8CM was also my go-to, and the first time it went on sale for $29, I jumped on the "full" version. Truth be told, I haven't made that much use of the extra features in G8 (if it could do the Gatey Watey thing, it would be the only gate I need), but I thought it was such a great tool that I wanted to check it out, and I also wanted to give them some money. My love for (and investment in) Unfiltered Audio products is testimony to the value in companies' doing these giveaways. My favorite plug-in houses, the ones I've spent the most money on, Meldaproduction, Glitchmachines, and Unfiltered Audio, are all ones I was introduced to via their freebies. I found them so useful that it created enthusiasm as well as trust that I'd get my money's worth. After all, if the freebies are so useful, the paid versions must be amazing, and they are. With the Sandman Pro bundle, don't neglect Instant Delay. For me, plug-ins like Sandman Pro are so deep, with so many functions and options, that having a version that's a subset can help introduce me to those features, and also help prevent falling down a rabbit hole. There are times when I just want a bit of ear-tickling stereo ping-pong delay, and Instant Delay does that quickly without introducing too many possibilities. BYOME is a world unto itself. It's like their version of MXXX, where the developer throws in everything they have. It's intimidating, the kind of thing I'd never get all the way to the bottom of. I passed on SpecOps last time around, but for, effectively, $9, why not. It's true, when I get blocked creatively, I turn to these plug-ins and inevitably, something interesting happens. I have these projects with names like "BYOME test" or "Convex test" that are jumping off points. I put a couple of evocative chord changes (gotta add them 7ths for emotional resonance 😁) into Piano Roll, fire up Sandman Pro and start going through presets.

I'm not spending another penny on compressors, EQ's, limiters, gates, reverbs, saturators or channel strips. I'm very happy with what I have in those categories. On the other hand, those one-of-a-kind FX that open a whole new set of sonic possibilities, I'll never stop acquiring those when the prices get low enough. So: if I didn't own them already, I'd be all over the Unfiltered Audio stuff that's now on sale at PA. G8 is hands-down the best all-purpose gate I've seen (Boz Gatey Watey is the best specialized one), with a very useful display of what exactly is getting gated. The Sandman Pro bundle with Instant Delay is so so good for creating those ear-tickling syncopated stereo delays with a season of the glitch. $14.99 is way too cheap. BYOME gives you so much in configurable modules, you can pretty much roll up versions of the rest of their stuff. It has a slew of factory patches by Glitchmachines.

Actually, they are VSTi's.

Yes, was it ambiguous? I, like you, would like it to function more like Windows Explorer. I think by "CW VST layout" you mean the Plug-In Manager? The reason I don't use that for organizing my layout is because when I did, newly installed plug-ins with no category information embedded in them weren't showing up in the Browser. If I organize them in the Browser itself, I still get them in the category "Uncategorized."

Requires full version of Kontakt! Good one. Ya got me this time.

I would like the current interface to be more scalable in regard to visibility on large high resolution monitors, but I am a Skylight fan. As with other things Cakewalk, it took some time for me to realize how flexible and useful it is. It wasn't readily apparent to me that most of the views could be floated in their own windows. As a 2-monitor user, I always have something on the second monitor, usually either the Console or Piano Roll. I like the way that I can have multiple views in the Multidock and just click on a tab to switch between them. Being able to drag them out of the Multidock is great, too. Now when I use other DAWs I feel like I'm constrained in a box. Waveform especially feels like a straitjacket. Ableton Live is okay, but still restricted. Its interface is kind of Skylight-y, except without the ability to float the different views, at least in the Lite version I have.

What makes you think this? There is a stable release now that came out about 60 days ago. How often do you usually get updates of your audio software? Other companies take way longer to issue updates than BandLab. Some even years or never. Usually with Cakewalk, when it takes longer than usual the next release will include some fab new features. Now that most of the longstanding bugs have been dealt with, we've seen biggies like the Arranger Track and Articulations Map. Maybe there's something new in the works. Maybe the developers took some time off. Whatever, 2 months is not a long time to wait for an update of DAW software.