Starship Krupa

Sorry, I didn't mean to dispute your statement. Just speculate as to what might have led to such a tragedy. And I'm really glad to be in an area where people don't have to take that kind of chance. Poor drivers (and those in way to much hurry) abound, and the less they are asked to decide whether it's SAFE TO DO anything, the better. As you mention, even a near miss will stick with you the rest of your life. Very glad that nobody was hurt in your incident!

To go into more detail here, controlling the dynamic range with compression allows the mix engineer to boost elements of a mix that might otherwise overwhelm the rest of it. When I was starting out, I had a pro studio owner friend look over my shoulder while I tried to get a vocal to stand out in a mix. My reference was Elliot Smith's XO album, where his voice is very up front. He taught me how to sweep for honks with the EQ, to highpass, and to compress (using MCompressor, gateway to many for understanding compression) by about 3-4 dB with a 4:1 ratio. This seemed counterintuitive, as I originally thought of it as taking things away from an element that I wanted to stand out, but the effect of all this was to allow me to bring the vocal up in the mix without it overwhelming everything else. It had its own space and didn't poke the ears. Mind: blown. There's another function, which to me is also "basic," and that's to use it psychoacoustically. Compression can make sounds seem louder without the sound actually being at a higher level than the rest of the mix. This is because our sense of hearing has built-in compression, it actually closes down when presented with loud, sharp sounds. This is probably an evolutionary thing, so that our brains won't get overloaded when presented with loud sounds and mess with our ability to escape threats. Another thing that it does on buses (including master) is help individual sounds in the mix stand out. By controlling the peaks and raising the floor, less prominent elements can be brought closer to the front. This is especially true for me on complex instruments like the drum kit. Yet another trick that's a favorite of mine is to use mid-side compression (and limiting) to enhance the stereo field. Even just switching to mid-side mode can do this, but if you get into changing the attack, release, and ratio settings independently, you can really create some headphone candy. In the case of ultra-fast compressors like the 1176 and its clones, you can actually induce distortion as a special effect. Tame Impala's drum sound uses this. It's the "all buttons in" setting that was not originally an intended thing. But some studio person wondered what would happen if you pushed in all the buttons, and another use was discovered. I think that these uses of compression (and limiting) were what they call in the game industry "emergent," in that compression was not originally designed for them. Mix engineers discovered them along the way.

Well, I don't care for arguments as such, either. Your experience and preferences are as valid as mine. And we all want the same thing: software that does what we want without having to keep our fingers crossed that it will work, and without having to develop workarounds for features that are broken. I think that as people continue to use a beloved piece of software, we learn to tiptoe around the things that make it fall down and go boom. And everyone has different paths through complex software. I'm that way with Vegas Pro, I know that it's crash-y and fragile, but it's what I'm used to and I've learned how to tinker with its zillions of options to make it way more stable. And I'm probably the opposite of a power user with it. It has gotten better, but not to the extent that I've seen with CbB. I'm not equipped with the skills needed to report bugs in a video editor. I picked up that recent Humble Bundle with Corel Painter. Never used software like that before, but I found a nice Wacom tablet at Salvation Army a few months back and wanted to try it out for its intended use. I fired it up and started testing brushes and stuff, was having a great time, even came up with an abstract thing that I thought was a keeper. But since I was having so much fun, and started out just fiddling, I neglected to save it along the way, and sure enough, it poofed (crash to desktop with no warning). Can't blame it on plug-ins because I have no 3rd-party ones. My system is based on components that were top of the line for workstation builds half a dozen years ago. I can do video editing, DAW work, game all day long (which I sometimes do, unfortunately). Painter is MATURE software. I remember it being around 25 years ago. WTF Corel? Fortunately PaintShop Pro by itself made the bundle worth the price of admission. Something that I suspect happened along the way was that under previous management, feature addition took precedence over bug fixing, to the point where veteran users lost hope that long-known defects would ever be cured. I've run into resistance among veteran users to report issues to the current team and they'll say that they reported it 8 years ago and gave up. Of course, 8 years ago, it was a different company. Noel B. was obviously given a lot more leeway, hence the focus on bug-smashing. Also, regular users sometimes aren't able to sit with something long enough to crank out a step-by-step so that the devs can reproduce it, and a bug that they can't see is one they can't fix. They're kinda more interested in spending their time making music than beating up on the program. However, I am a geek, and actually enjoy that sort of thing. Making music is a hobby. I love CbB and I hate to see anyone not enjoying the program as much as I do. I used to earn my living as a pro software QA engineer, these phenomena are more common than they should be in the consumer software market. I like to contribute, so I've written up many CbB bugs and frustrations and turned them in. It ain't perfect software by a long shot, but the devs do listen. Some of my feature requests have even been implemented (fit horizontal, toggle numbers from Aim Assist, Replace FX are some of them). My current beg is to be able to delete markers from the right click dialog. Feed me some bugs, in PM if you don't want the chorus of "it works for me, it must be your system or the plug-in's fault." I'll hammer them and if I can repro them, I'll turn them in. You never know....if the wheel don't squeak, it ain't gonna get the grease.

I never had SONAR Platinum as such, but I grabbed CbB within a week of the announcement of its release. You can believe that all those bugs they say they fixed and optimizations they say they made were fake if you want, but on my system(s) if I had paid money for that first release of CbB I would have been dissatisfied enough to return it. A behavior I remember too well is how the audio engine would stop if I moved the playback loop markers more than twice. The status of the audio engine in general was pretty iffy, it reminded me of a balky lawnmower where I'd have to jump off and pull the starter cord every so often. Now I can't remember the last time I got a prompt informing me that the audio engine has stopped. It also did this amusing thing where if I dragged the window to another location on the desktop while it was playing back, the main window would move, but the playhead and vertical indicator line would stay behind, happily cruising along as if the window hadn't been moved out from underneath it. There was this other thing where if I recorded with take lanes closed it would scramble up the resulting clip boundaries. It just felt fragile in general, like I shouldn't click and drag on things too quickly or it would trip over itself, that I had to baby it. It would crash or start playing back weird if I left the program running for too long. I remember months into the improvement process when I was psyched that I had accidentally left the program running overnight and when I got back to my computer the next day, it was still running fine. This was a computer that had already been running a number of other DAW's just fine. I was coming from Mixcraft, which was solid as a rock. The very next release got it working better, then the one after that, and 3 months in, it was clear that the new management had shown up with their a55-kicking boots on. I don't recall any bugs having to do with Tempo or Arranger Track that affected anything other than display of the Tempo or Arranger Track. But this is all my own memory of events, and memory can be funny. Not saying anyone else remembers it better or worse, just saying this is how I remember it. Here are some features that would now drive me nuts not to have in CbB: Ripple Edit Indicator, display of selected note value in the PRV header, display of note names in the PRV, ability to turn off the numeric readout on the Aim Assist Line, Replace FX menu item, open synth UI on replacement, right click menu item to rename clip, fit project to window horizontally (without altering it vertically), configurable Smart Tool, persistent instrument names list in the PRV....

The quote says "two-way undivided portion," which could mean that it was a 2-lane road where passing is allowed on some sections. In Arkansas, where I learned to drive, such roads were not uncommon, and they used to scare the 5hit out of me even though I was a teenager (and therefore invincible). I don't know if the situation is still that way.

Thanks for this, and turning me on to Epic Games' freebies in general. Although Elder Scrolls Online. ... That one has taken over my very soul. Not sure whether to be grateful or resentful!

Wow, examine the tail end of that URL. S**tmaking bundle?

Ouch. Not all of their plug-ins are created equal. Especially in the case of ones where they absorbed another company, as they did with Dodge Pro and Venom. Venom is a sound design powerhouse, and Dodge Pro does the sequenced filter and volume very well. Their main line I see as "Soundspot done right." They have the big cool looking UI's and they combine functions to get quick results for people new to mixing. I eventually found that I could get better results by using individual higher pedigree FX, but I think they still have a place for people wanting to build a tool chest outside of what their DAW comes with. As for vocal doublers, my favorite is still Soundspot's. Does just what I want with a very good visual representation of what it's doing. That's a good inexpensive solution, but there are even freebies, like iZotope Vocal Doubler. Check that out if you need a vocal doubler, it's also excellent. And remember that vocal doubling ain't exactly rocket science, it was invented over 50 years ago by a guy at Abbey Road who set up two tape decks and delayed one by holding a chunk of felt against one deck's reel hub. So you can do it by setting up a bog standard delay plug in with a short delay and long LFO. Then pan dry and delay and voila, vocal doubling.

I also picked up whatever bundles were within reach of my credits. MSoundFactoryLE when it goes on deep discount is a good purchase toward the whole enchilada. I predict that by this time next year, maybe sooner, you too will have achieved MCompleteness.

I've found MeldaProduction's beta releases to be more stable and bug-free than many other companies' final releases.

The strategy is to buy whatever individual pieces come up in deep discount (or freebie) sales. I posted my referral code around and got muchos creditos (especially at VI-Control, those cats are not afraid to spend money). Unfortunately, the places I posted told me to stop, but not before I had leveled up to MComplete. I didn't even post my code with the main intent of grubbing credits, I wanted to help other people get the cool discounts. I would have done the same thing even if there were no referral credits in it for me. Apparently that approach results in good will.

Craig Anderton addressed this question a week ago: https://blog.presonus.com/2023/12/15/why-i-dont-use-compressors-anymore/ I don't quite agree with everything he says, but he does at least mention that compression on buses, including the master bus, can really help "glue" a mix together. Try messing with something like bx_masterdesk Classic that you can get for free at PluginAlliance. Put it on your master bus and try a few presets.

Like looking for reasons not to take your horse and buggy out on a modern freeway: how many do you need?

With REAPER you don't get a chance to meet them because they'll be too busy setting it up and customizing it to leave the house. I can only speak for S1 Artist, but as with any of the DAW's I have installed over the years (Mixcraft, Ableton Live, Waveform, REAPER, Music Maker), I've only ever had one issue with a DAW installation interfering with another. And it doesn't apply to S1. Products by Steinberg (and sometimes MAGIX) just love to install their own rebranded ASIO4ALL WASAPI-to-ASIO wrapper, which will then show up as an available driver in the other programs. Fortunately, it's easily removed, and as I said, it's only Steinberg and MAGIX who I have seen doing it. ASIO4ALL is pretty useless if your program supports WASAPI Exclusive. It seems to cause trouble for some Cakewalk users who have tried using it, although it never bothered my system when I used it in programs that don't support WASAPI (c'mon Ableton, get with the program, well, driver as the case may be), or even when I tried it with Cakewalk.

I don't believe you've ever seen me do it. Unless you consider my reaction to their announcement of adding a cell-based workflow a couple of years ago, "Avid upholds their reputation for innovation." Don't worry, I'll get mine if the day ever comes that Sonar starts shipping with a bundled sampler (I mean again, did they stop because they thought that using samples to make music didn't have a future?). Avid kinda lead with their chin what with the way they treat their userbase, the heavy pressure to subscribe and so forth. It's hard to find a PT lover who also likes the company that sells it. I've found that with a DAW, it's good to be able to see eye-to-eye for the most part with the people in charge of making it. Otherwise, too frustrating. As for the software itself, my contact with it has been slight. It looks like they've done some good work on prettying up the UI recently. The new dark theme looks great, the color scheme reminds me of one of my own Cakewalk themes (Racing Green).

This came from left field for me. Never heard anything by Lil' Yachty before. Seems like he started hanging out with Tame Impala and got into psychedelic rock (the first track on his most recent album sounds like Dark Side of the Moon-era Pink Floyd, I kid you not). This song played over the credits of a movie I saw on Netflix and tickled my ears with its cool production and Tame Impala-esque drumming: My only issue with the song is that it's 2:30. It really needs the current ending to be a break and then come back into a chorus before it ends. It's too good ear candy not to be at least 4:00.

The only advantage would be if you have a lot of tracks and they really do the "Distribute your music to major music platforms" thing without somehow revoking it. I mean, once your stuff is in iTunes and Spotify and whatnot, is it possible for them to pull it after 3 days?

I'm not looking for reasons to do so, so feel free to keep them to yourself, but I'd find it very difficult to even find any reason to criticize Mike if someone asked me. He's done a TON to help the CbB user community, and if he has truly quit, his work stands and will be of great help to Sonar users in the future. If touting or using a DAW other than my main one (I also have a license for S1 Artist and think it's stiff competition for Sonar) bothered me, I'd be bothered by a LOT of people (including myself). 😄 I don't think there's a "bad" DAW on the market. They're all great. Some of them lend themselves better to certain genres of music or styles of music production, but they all seem to do what they do very well, and even afford at least the ability to do things outside their specialty.

Not a great idea there. If you snag Cakewalk by BandLab while it's still free, you'll have everything in SONAR Platinum plus 5+ years of bug fixes and new features. As a free upgrade.

I think I get what you're trying to go for. You're not eschewing a whole frequency range, you're staying away from the instruments that traditionally put energy up there. Big fan of Peter's back in the day. Yes, if you eschew cymbals in a rock song, it may sound like something is "missing." Our ears are tuned to like high frequency transient sounds, as the ability to hear such helped humans survive in the wild. Listening for the footsteps of predators and the like. That's what our hearing evolved (or was designed, if you like) to pay attention to. Deep Ambient, which is designed to fade into the background, eschews spiky transients for this reason. One answer to this is to focus on emphasizing transients from the instruments you are using. They give the ear something to grab on to, and Security has lots of great processing of transients. Do a Google search for "transient shaping" and give it a shot. I have dedicated plug-ins for it, and I use it when I'm cleaning up phone-recorded jams, one of my favorite tasks. It makes instruments pop out of the otherwise muddy non-mix. It can also push otherwise spiky sounds more into the background. Check out EDM, which often uses no cymbals and manages to be exciting nonetheless. They use synth sounds and glitch processing to put information into the attention zone. David Tipper, Telefon Tel Aviv....

This. If you go over to the Instruments and Effects forum, there is a topic on Favorite Freeware Instruments, where I bet you can find free 64-bit substitutes for whatever you're using. If not, you can post there what you're using now and see if we can find you good substitutes. REAPER is known for being a DAW that plays very well with challenging plug-ins, but they are the Achilles heel of any host.

A less than .5% failure rate in power supplies, then? I hoped it was the power supply. They are one of the most stressed components in a PC.

Drumsynth has a scalable UI, for one. I have it, as well as Boom and DrumSynth 500 and I like them (got them for $10 a few years ago). I like Boom for its ease of getting meat-and-potatoes old school drum machine sounds, but its UI is suffering from tininess. DS500 has a larger UI, so not as much of an issue. Still, not scalable, which may become an issue in the future unless someone figures out how to scale legacy plug-ins. I got the WAP freebie (qualified via the xPand!2 Multivation presets bundle, which is surprising me with how good it is, it's got monster Synthwave sounds) and haven't been able to spend enough time with it to say for sure whether it can replace Boom. It seems to have the DrumSynth 500 engine with a new UI and more capable mixer. As such, the note mapping is not strictly GM, which always p's me o, because why, it just makes it harder to try different drum synths with the same MIDI track. Given that I use Cakewalk, with its....idiosyncratic drum map situation, this makes it something of a pain to use as a quick go-to. So, bottom line, it's a replacement for DS500, not Boom. If you need a cool old school drum box, Boom sounds excellent (typical of AIR in that regard) and comes with a ton of useful internal patterns that may be keyswitched. With my aging eyeballs, it's kinda small. Looks fine on my 40" monitor, but can't imagine it at 4K. All of them may be downloaded and trialed, so I suggest doing that before you buy.

And nothing I said was intended to be critical of Mike. Very much the opposite, I think that he and his videos are great and I sympathize with his situation, both healthwise and professionally. I hope he gives Sonar a chance once it's on the market because he brings so much. His Cakewalk vs. S1 videos are of service to the Cakewalk community because they emphasize what's at stake and how BandLab can't count on every CbB user to happily shell out for Sonar. The program will no longer be playing in the "best free DAW" leagues. It's trying to make a comeback in the "best DAW for the money" leagues. The competition have not been resting during Cakewalk's free period. Studio One Artist is now a $99 license (free if you buy a PreSonus interface) and supports VST plug-ins.

Matrix View was never removed. It's still there in Cakewalk by BandLab. Well, at least anyone who was/is using SONAR Platinum and installs Cakewalk by BandLab is still able to use all of those plug-ins. Some of the old SONAR Platinum plug-ins are shown in the teaser screenshots of Sonar, so it looks like you may get your wish there. 😉 One of the earliest features/fixes in Cakewalk by BandLab was "sandboxing" for plug-in scans, did that not solve the problem for you? You are using Cakewalk by BandLab, I hope. It sounds from your post that you might not be. The new Sonar will have all of the dozens of features and thousands of bug fixes that Cakewalk by BandLab has gotten in the past 6 years, minus Theme Editor (although some kind of return to theme editing has been hinted at). As far as an integrated sampler, such a thing is one of, if not the most-requested features that has yet to be delivered. You'll find a topic about that in the Feedback Loop section, which is the best place to post what you would like to see in newer versions of the product.