Starship Krupa

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.

What sample rate and bit depth are you recording with? What sample rate and bit depth are you using on the export? The higher the numbers on these, the larger the file. That said, exceeding 2 GB for an audio file is rare. What happens if you export as FLAC (which is the lossless format I use)?

Another thing I realized about singing that seemed obvious after it came to me is that it's not necessary for me to "belt." Some of my favorite singers like Elliott Smith, Tom Petty, Nick Drake, and (Reprise era) Frank Sinatra seldom got their volume very much above normal speaking level (with exceptions). They let the mic (and the LA/2A) do the work, and the result is that it sounds more intimate and less strained. So I don't have to be able to do Roger Daltrey, Freddie Mercury, or Robert Plant in order to sing rock 'n' roll effectively. Nick Drake and Elliott Smith often got down almost to a whisper, to amazing emotional effect. It can even compel the listener to work harder to hear the vocalist, and therefore pay more attention to the lyrics. Next time I get on the mic, I'm going to take John's suggestion to pay attention to where in my body my singing voice is coming from. And yes, using the mic in your collection that most flatters your voice (and try all of them, you might be surprised and find that your SM57 is The Answer).

There you go. Answers to help you weigh the matter of "do I address this by building my mixing skills or my singing skills?" I feel kinda sheepish saying this now, but a few years ago, when I decided to really start singing, at first it was an exercise in learning how much I didn't know after winging it for decades. Somehow I was of the belief that I either had singing "talent" or not, so I should just go with what I had and see what I could make of it. Fortunately, my ability to focus on imperfections got the better of me and I just kept recording the same song over and over and over, like for a period of a couple of weeks every day or so I'd try again to get a usable take. I noticed a bunch of stuff, like on listening to my playbacks, I would do some in one register, then some in another, like I didn't even know what the singing melody was supposed to be even though I had written the song. It turns out that my sense of being in tune was pretty good, I wasn't singing sour notes, they were on key, just kind of whatever my voice wanted to do with the note. One of the things I find fun to do after getting a lot of takes of the same instrument is to unmute ALL of them just to get a laugh. So I started to do this with my "discarded" takes and I started to turn into this huge men's choir. Kinda sounded like the Moody Blues on a camping trip. I could hear my technique getting better over the weeks, the later takes had things like vibrato and held legato notes. Well DUH, what I hadn't realized is that the voice, just like piano or guitar or bass or whatever, is an instrument that you make better by practicing. Singing and recording the same song over and over again for a couple of weeks got me able to do some cool stuff like extending my range, singing in (intentional) harmony, pay attention to phrasing, breathing, all this stuff I took for granted having previously only "sung" in the very forgiving environments of church congregations and inadequately mic'd underground rock shows. TL/DR: Moral of the story: singing improves with practice just like any other instrument. Mixing skills are necessary to make singers sound their best. You have takes with irreparable flaws: the clipping. Anything else can be patched up pretty well, levels, plosives, whatever. But clipping is so baked in, even with RX it's hard to get rid of it without losing transients in the highs. You have total access to the singer, you. Studio time is presumably free-to-no-cost. If it were me, I might do both (and sometimes I do exactly this): Comp together the best vocal track you can from your pieces, then use that as a guide vocal (and/or insurance), and try some new "pressure's off" takes. Set up the popper stopper like Gary says, get a glass of water, set up a music stand with your lyrics, lower the lights, turn the input knob on the mic pre 1/8 counterclockwise from whatever you think is "safe," put it in comp/loop mode and let it roll. Don't have to even do whole takes, just step back and let it come around again if you blow it. It will be easier with the guide vocal you comped together. Give yourself permission to improve as a singer rather than beating up on your voice for being "pathetic." And breeeeeeeeathe.

p. 484, "Using the Smart tool on automation" has a diagram that shows the different hotspot areas of a clip and a list of the modifier keys. Since the Smart Tool is what we mostly stick to, this page is the one to tack up over your desk if you, like me, find yourself mystified by what causes the Smart Tool to switch modes. Then there's pp. 1110-1118, "Creating and editing automation envelopes." That's the meat 'n' p'taters guide. For the individual tools, the applicable ones have their own pages. p. 488, "Using the Select tool on automation," p. 491, "Using the Move tool on automation," p. 495 "Using the Edit tool on automation," p. 505, "Using the Freehand tool on automation," p. 512, "Using the Line tool on automation," p. 513, "Pattern tools," p. 517, "Using the Erase tool on automation." Memorizing which tools are attached to F5-F9 has helped my Cakewalkin' immensely, especially when I can't get the freakin' Smart Tool to behave. Those keys would be some of the first Cakewalk-specific assignments I would have someone new to Cakewalk learn. I wish I had done so for the years I spent flying up to the Tools module in the Control Bar or calling up the HUD. The Smart Tool does so much different stuff that I can forget that there are dedicated tools that don't switch modes on me depending on where I click. Then the section on automation, p. 536 "To raise/lower an audio Clip Gain envelope," and another biggie, pp 544-546. I appreciate your asking, because it made me go through and find all these sections that I had kind of stumbled upon earlier. So now I have a list to refer to. As can be the case with that 1080-page monstrosity that is the Ref. Guide, the information is spread out and duplicated. Guaranteed, if you read those 20 various pages or even just skim them, you will pick up at least one new "hey!" automation editing move. It's another one of those areas of Cakewalk that you can get really fast and precise and creative with if you put in the time. A problem I have is that it's hard to retain stuff like this if I don't use it very often, and my frequency of doing automation makes the learning process go slowly.

To get any help on an issue like this, you must provide your system specs (check my sig for an example). Other information: what driver mode you are using, ASIO, WASAPI, etc. If you have a favorite plug-in (or plug-ins) that go in every project you do, have you checked for an incompatibility? You can do this by a process of elimination, just take them out one by one and see if things get more stable. Bridged 32-bit plug-ins are becoming less and less supported and should be avoided in a 64-bit DAW like Cakewalk. Although Cakewalk claims to be able to run them with its internal bridging, it's kind of an "at your own risk" practice to do so. Is there a certain operation that happens right before a crash, such as adding or deleting a track or a plug-in or hitting Play or whatever? Are you on the latest version? Run BandLab Assistant and make sure. If your issue were due to inherent "bugginess" in the software, topics about it in this section and elsewhere would be blowing up, and they're not. That's good, it's probably a sortable issue, and if it's not, then the developers need to know so that they can fix it. (and yes, it wouldn't hurt to go into Preferences and set Cakewalk up to auto-save every 5 minutes or so, at least until you feel you can trust it)

There are a few different choices. I always cut vocal phrases into clips, so if necessary, I do what you do, which is clip gain automation. Another technique, which John mentions, and is used by Craig Anderton and Mark McLeod, is to just have Cakewalk normalize them. I believe that this is peak normalization, though, which may not address your issue. Since you're experiencing tedium editing every clip, a plug-in might be better. There are ones that analyze the signal and "ride" it so that everything comes out near an average level: W.A. Production Outlaw is on sale for $7.90. Waves Vocal Rider and Meldaproduction MAutoVolume are a couple others. These two go for around $50 each (the Melda one can be had for $10 off if you sign up for their newsletter, plus another 20% off if you use a referral code-ask and I'll post mine). Outlaw and Vocal Rider are both 4-knob affairs, MAutoVolume (predictably) has more controls and includes a sidechain that can be used to make sure that the vocal (or whatever) always stays on top of whatever comes in on the sidechain. I will say that once I cracked the Cakewalk Reference Guide and learned some of the shortcuts and modifiers for editing automation, my automation work is going much faster and is less tedious.