Starship Krupa

Neutron, probably. I'm a broke, frugal guy, so I only have the Elements versions. That's awesome that you have the Exponential Reverbs, who the heck has been advising you? It's like you've skipped 5 years of trial and error on FX acquisition. ?

But  you have all these tools, so start using them and then you can  educate me!

This thread has gone hijack, which is sort of a thing in the Deals forum anyway, but I have to acknowledge it for etiquette's sake, sorry, Larry, and it's good to see you back.

A piece of unsolicited advice: you have all of those cool iZotope tools, which I am a fan of. They aren't as controversial as they once were, they were considered crutches and blamed for producing overhyped overloud masters. Thing is, you can do that with any tool, and iZotope really got their game on as far as the concept of their suites not being crutches or shortcuts, but rather excellent ways to acquire a world-class suite of plug-ins with special integration that can help novices sound good quickly and pros take it to the next level. Their website is packed with learning material.

Their wizards, or assistants or whatever they call them, and their presets give a good starting point, and they're especially good for when you've just tracked a band and need it to sound good NOW, but I have found that especially the compressor settings can stand some tuning. Not surprising, compressors are very program specific.

So my advice is: watch what the wizards do and absorb it. It can be like looking over the shoulder of an experienced engineer. It's still essential to learn the basics of how to set up an EQ and compressor on a track. The iZotope wizards do sometimes overhype a track, sometimes they thin it out, and it's essential to know how to correct for it.

I think your iZotope suites probably have it covered, but I just picked up Wavesfactory Trackspacer in their most recent sale and now consider it an essential tool. So simple and effective it feels like cheating.

17 minutes ago, Hillmy said:

I have not tried the Melda Production plugins all that much. I remember downloading one and uninstalled it right away because of the nagging "This is a free trial BUY NOW" staring me in the face each time I loaded it up. ?

If you mean the banner down at the bottom of the Free Bundle plug-ins, just ignore it until he has one of his 50% off everything sales and you can make the banners go away for $25 for a suite of 37 plug-ins, which he regularly adds new ones to. Or you can do it right away for $50. I never found them that obtrusive.

One of the recent additions to the Free Bundle was MTuner, an instrument tuner that, um, if you look close, just happens to be polyphonic and has MIDI out, so that if you play guitar into it, you can trigger synth lines. My existing license covered it. I think the guy might be an android sent from the future.

On 7/27/2020 at 2:53 PM, Hillmy said:

would it be worth the money to upgrade to the Suite version

To echo what Brian said, with Neutron 3 and Ozone 9, plus what comes with CbB and a download of the Meldaproduction Free Bundle, what you'd have would knock Magix' collection into the creek. You're already way beyond the need for that.

It sounds like you're putting together a nice collection of processors. From my perspective, you're there. Wait for Pluginboutique to put one of the iZotope Exponential reverbs on sale again, Phoenix or Nimbus, and there would be few mix engineers who would say that you needed anything further.

All it's about at that point is "creative" FX like Stutter Edit or whatever if you're doing EDM production, or "character" compressors and EQ's, like emulations of old hardware if you're into that sort of thing, which I'm not for the most part. You can join me in the zombie horde waiting for the next Pluginboutique freebie and seriously debating whether my budget can stand less than I'd spend on a bridge toll on a Soundspot plug-in.

I was just taking a browse back through our very own Freeware Instruments Thread and saw that someone posted a link to this:

https://www.adsrsounds.com/product/software/adsr-sample-manager/

I haven't tried it, but from the description, it sounds purpose-built for what we've been talking about.

If you want to be blown away by filter and modulating FX that can be had for no money, download the Meldaproduction Free Bundle and rack up MComb on one of your audio tracks and start browsing through the presets.

Then check out some of the other filter and modulation and sound-shaping plug-ins in the bundle. You'll perhaps get why I coined the term "Meldamoonie" to describe my admiration  for the company's products.

MCompressor and MEqualizer that come in this bundle are 2 of the first plug-ins I ever downloaded years ago. Cakewalk says I have over 600 plug-ins now and MCompressor and MEqualizer are still ones I reach for on almost every project.

And if you're looking to amass a good collection of tools without shelling out a lot of money, go over to the Instruments and Effects subforum and check out the "Favorite Freeware FX" thread. The Dead Duck plug-in bundle is listed in there, LJKB Luftikus, all kinds of great stuff.

I think the suggestion to go to Preferences/Audio is a good one. Select Devices and see if your speakers and headphone out are listed as separate outputs.

If they are, then you'll need to explicitly set the output of your Master bus (or whatever the last bus in your chain is) to the headphone output instead of the internal speakers.

If they aren't listed as a separate output device, then your system isn't switching over automatically when you plug your cans in, and what rsinger says about needing to work with Windows' settings and/or Control Panel is your next step.

I've seen it work both ways, where the speakers and the jack are separate devices, and then where there's just one device and the system handles switching them.

And yes, once you get it set up properly, your USB keyboard as an input device with the headphone jack for monitoring is fine. Onboard sound chips aren't the greatest for recording audio, but they handle playback just fine, so if what you're doing is all soft synth and sample based, IMO, you don't strictly need an external interface. Start recording vocals or anything else requiring a mic, it's a worthwhile investment.

Thing is, though, Steve, there are these folks who show up with crash-y issues who for heaven knows what reason are actually still using SONAR, as in, SONAR. I saw a hapless feller a couple of weeks ago seeking help with SONAR PE of all things. How he could make it as far as registering an account to get on the forum and not realize that he could have the equivalent of a supercharged version of SONAR Professional for free....

This baffles me. There's even offline validation now, for the people who don't want to have to go online and have Microsoft update-bombing their DAW's. Anyone who has any kind of concerns about CbB can (and should, for all the premium content) keep SONAR on their system in case they want to revert.

Given the incredible volume of bugfixes and enhancements the  code has gone through since the program changed  names, including not a small bit of messing about in the plug-in department having to do with handling of interleave and other things, if someone's having a tech issue and calls it "SONAR" or "SPlat" or whatever, that question's gonna be asked.

Also, they're going to get me rah-rahing them about how they're missing out on 2 1/2 years of development and significant new features like the Arranger and the Take Lanes/Smart Tool overhaul. Comping and editing is so much more versatile now. I would hate to have to go back to CbB 2018.

30 minutes ago, User 905133 said:

This "implied feature request" intrigues me

I'm glad you like the idea. It wasn't really something I'd expect the BL engineers to add to Cakewalk. Just something that occurred to me that would be useful if someone coded it. If this were to be added to CbB, the Browser would surely be the home for it, as you say.

The more I think about it, it just seems like something like this must exist already. I know they do for consumers' music collections, of course. There must be some deejay software like Serato that can pull BPM and key and so forth out of an audio file and catalog it. Seems like a short leap to adapt that kind of software for composers/producers.

Ha! So, having said all this, what did I just do.

My old friend and onetime bandmate, now housemate, Alex, brought his Tascam 8-track digital Portastudio over after complaining that he couldn't get a workflow going with it the way he used to with his old cassette 4-track. He also has a Sterling ST-51 to go with it, so I had him bring them with the idea that maybe I could parse the manual and make him a cheat sheet for doing guitar/vocal demos, which is his main goal.

I sat down with it, recorded a take of one of my songs using its built-in pair of condensers, then overdubbed my vocal using the ST-51. Good lord, the thing takes half a dozen button presses just to turn the phantom power on! It even has a button labeled "Phantom Power," but when you press it, all it does is make the dialog appear on the tiny LCD screen and then you have to confirm it and all this crap.

After tracking, the big challenge was to get my 3 tracks from the Tascam to my Dell for import to CbB. What a zany process. In order to do this, it partitions the SD card into a FAT partition that the PC can read and then a proprietary file system that the Portastudio uses. So you must call up your song and Export it to the FAT partition to get it to a place where a computer can read it.

Dropped the tracks into Cakewalk and went to town with my usual tools and techniques, and it sounds fantastic. I did a whole "unplugged" version of one of my songs, right after participating in this thread. ?

(and I think I may be able to help Alex get his head around the Portastudio)

17 hours ago, bitflipper said:

ThreadSchedulingModel tells Cakewalk which of the three variations (0-2) to threading algorithms to employ. The newest of those methods (#2) is intended to be more efficient with modern CPUs (4+ cores) and was designed with WASAPI in mind specifically. However, Cakewalk will utilize all of your CPU's cores regardless of which model you choose.

Los Pastaleros introduced a 4th a couple of versions ago. #3 is "Aggressive" mode. It's supposed to take even better advantage of newer, faster, many-cored CPU's, but exactly how is probably a trade secret. ?

My guess is that Noel tightens up the timing as more processing power allows. And/or shifts priorities in regard to the audio engine vs. other tasks.

That's just speculation based on my own experimentation with a couple of older computers that preferred model 2. It felt like Cakewalk was stretched a bit thin. Switching back to model 2 made everything okay. It's there to take advantage of higher-performance systems, not to squeeze more performance out of aging systems.

The Word is: "Try it and see, but remember that you made the change, so that if your system responds unfavorably, you know to switch it back." I have trouble with the "remember" part sometimes....?

Have Microsoft ever officially acknowledged the existence of ASIO? I've searched their site and the only mention of it is from users asking questions. Any answers are from other users, not official Microsoft representatives.

I've always assumed that ASIO grabs the hardware for itself and hangs on. And an app using it appears to WDM similar to an app using WASAPI Exclusive. Anything else seems like it would require some kind of mixing that would result in latency, wouldn't it?

This is all just undereducated guesses based on observing how programs interact, so please set me straight about any of it if you have concrete information.

Also, am I the only one who has wondered if either:

1. Realtek's owner's favorite charity makes a steady income from their not supplying a usable ASIO driver to go with what is overwhelmingly the most common sound interface found in personal computers? Via donations from companies whose names rhyme with Wineberg, Patronus, Snowshoe, Tax Scam, Smoker's Rights....

or

2. The developer of Realtek's ASIO driver got a visit at home from a shady character who admired their place and expressed that they would hate to see anything happen to it, say, if Realtek ever started shipping a functioning ASIO driver....

Some good ideas here. Good on ya Morris for bringing up something that a lot of solo producer/composer/recordists struggle with. I'm sure that film/TV scorers must keep their own libraries of musical ideas around for when they need something.

Kinda has me wondering whether there would be a use for a dedicated app to manage these snippets and sketches, it could have some analysis built in for BPM and key, and of course a way to add one's own tags and notes. A composers' sketch manager, like there are photo managers? You could import things from anywhere, say the voice recorder app on your phone, etc. Hmm.

I was recently feeling blocked and opened up a project that I had done to demonstrate a bug to the Cakewalk developers. Just me playing drums to a 90BPM click for about 8 minutes, but there were a few measures in there where I hit some nice smooth chilly grooves. Because of course, no pressure.

Since it was all to a grid, I cut out a few of the best ones and looped them and played around. Thanks to Pluginboutique, my collection of synths with sync'd arpeggiators is many, so it's a great excuse to explore presets....and I came up with a cool chillout piece.

As far as actually getting a finished piece finished? I think it's a real issue for people who are solo producer/composer/players. In a band, you have peer pressure and deadlines, it's good enough, we need to have a recording we can use to get gigs/sell on Bandcamp/iTunes/whatever. And back in the day, due to financial constraints, we had only a matter of hours to go in to a studio, record multiple tunes, mix them, master them, and go home with a 2-track DAT.

I don't have an answer, I wish I did. I have half a dozen songs that are one lap from the finish line, and they're good songs, best stuff I've ever done, even a topical political novelty song that I should get out there while it's still topical.

But sitting here in my home studio, every time I turn the DAW on I get better at being a mix engineer, I get better at singing, better at songwriting, whatever, so it's really hard to stop myself from endlessly applying my newly-acquired skills to works in progress. It's like learning carpentry by building a house starting at one end. By the time I get 1/4 of the way done, the first stuff I did looks like hell, so I want to tear it all out and start it over, and then when I'm done with that, the stuff I did earlier.... Why should I settle for it sounding all 2-dimensional when I just found a reverb like Phoenix that is playing in a different league than anything I ever used before? When I've started to explore artists like Dave Tipper and the insane holographic sound sculptures he creates?

(Two of my biggest musical heroes are Brian Wilson and Kevin Shields, but I missed the part where I influenced a generation with my early work before I barricaded in the studio for decades. ?)

Taken out to its worst conclusion, people with infinite time, control and resources can wind up second-guessing themselves so badly that they decide that what really happened was that Greedo shot first.

I tried it back when I was searching for the perfect Rhodes, and it was nice enough, but the one that actually took my heart was the mDa E-Piano, now reborn with a nice GUI as Dead Duck's DPiano-E.

What I use now is A|A|S Lounge Lizard Session 4. A|A|S finally got it right. Previous versions of Lounge Lizard didn't really do it for me.

As for your settings issue, the best place to bring that up is the Feedback Forum.

When you say "minimize it," do you mean you open the plug-in UI, then close it, then open it and your settings are changed back to the default? Or what?

And which "Save button?" Cakewalk has its own preset saving method up at the upper left of the plug-in window, does Sweetcase have a preset manager of its own?

Is the plug-in a VST2 or VST3? You can look at the top of the plug-in window to check this. Are you using the 32-bit or 64-bit version?

Si quieres encontrar mas plug-ins gratis, mira estas conversaciónes:

My expectation for the command would be that it would have the same result that doing it via drag and drop would today, that it would just be a shortcut. In this way I'd hope it would minimize the complexity of the programming/decisionmaking task. We wouldn't have to worry about what all it would do, because we're already doing it manually. As I said, a "shortcut."

I do like the idea of being able to go both directions. That would allow for selecting either record to separate tracks or record to single track, and then if one finds out after tracking that they would have done better to do it the opposite way, there's a quick way to sort it out.

Another "Element 2 working fine on my systems" user here. It's a vital synth for me. I would know right away if there were an inherent issue with Cakewalk, so your prognosis is excellent for getting it to work.

What @Hillmy says about reinstalling Element 2, is the best advice, although you may have to reinstall more than just it.

Waves Central likes to splash a zillion versions of their shell all over the place, 32-bit versions, etc, so it's no surprise that  the host gets confused from time to time.

I'll gently suggest that contacting Waves support may also be a fruitful course of action. If a simple reinstall doesn't nail it, then they may be the ones who can give you your best advice on how to get Elements 2 to work right.

It happened again last night, this time more serious, although I did capture the performance. I just feel like it's only a matter of time before it really bites me on the *****.

The issue: in the physical world, I plug microphones and guitar cables into an audio interface with inputs that are labeled simply 1-8. No right, left, up, down, or sideways. It also has stereo S/PDIF jacks on the back, making it a 10 in/10 out interface.

When I plug a mic into the 4th jack from the left, it has a "4" under it.

When I create an audio track and go to select one of these inputs, Cakewalk presents the list of inputs of my interface like this:

Wanna guess which input to select to enable monitoring of Input 4 that I just plugged a mic into?

Well, I DON'T. Last night I happened to select "Stereo FirePod ASIO x64 Pod 1 - Input 3L" when my mic was actually plugged into "Right FirePod ASIO x64 Pod 1 - Input 3L." I was also recording using "Left FirePod ASIO x64 Pod 1 - Input 3L" at the time, so I wound up with a stereo track with a redundant side. The fact that I was getting a signal into the other input contributed to the confusion, because I was seeing activity on my meters. By the time my eye traced across that huge string, I lost which "Input 3L" was the correct one.

Cakewalk tantalizingly gives us partial control by allowing us to assign "friendly names" to each of the "stereo pairs." However, only the text string following "Left" can be changed, Cakewalk won't let me rename the individual halves of the imaginary pair. So it always has to be "Left 1/Right 1/Stereo 1" "Left 3/Right 3/Stereo 3" and so on. I can't name them something like "One/Two/One+Two Stereo" which is what they actually are. The end result is that the even-numbered inputs lose their names

I'm willing to roll up my sleeves and do it myself in Preferences or by editing a file, just please let me before I make a costlier error regarding arming the correct input(s).

Need I add that my other audio programs don't have this same problem....Mixcraft, Reason, they figured out how to show me the individual inputs by their actual names.

I'm not 100% sure, but I'd think "Collapse to Lanes" would be selecting multiple tracks and then the lanes in those tracks would end up under one track?

In the case of my Send to Track feature, I'd find it handy to be able to have the choice of creating a new track as the target or choosing an existing track.

1 hour ago, jsg said:

I'm hoping it will be as stable as the final version of Sonar has been on my Windows 10 machine.

?

Well, cross your fingers!

I don't consider a program truly "stable" until I can forget to exit it and leave it running overnight and then sit down and it hasn't frozen or crashed. Cakewalk passed that threshold quite some time ago, to the point where I don't even think about it any more.

The OP had good luck indeed. This is a really  helpful online community.

Maybe it's kind of a sideways "good sign," maybe the BandLab servers are having trouble keeping up with demand. If that's the case, I hope they get it sorted quickly. But then again, maybe most of the BandLab DAW users keep it "in the box."

I see a lot of potential in their collaboration model, too, and I look forward to more seamless Cakewalk integration.

A friend of mine recently bought a used iPad with the idea that he could use Garage Band, and was despondent that Apple were app-blocking him from installing it, despite the fact that his is running iOS 12.X. I suggested he try BandLab, and it didn't quite get through at first (people love their Apple ecosystem), but now he's forgotten all about Garage Band.

Your question appears to be about one of the functions of the BandLab online DAW, while this forum is for discussing Cakewalk, BandLab's Windows-only standalone DAW that's descended from SONAR.

Some few people here use both of them, but you'll probably get better help in a forum dedicated to discussion of the browser-based DAW.

The only advice I can give is....since you're running a Windows 10 system, if you feel like you get to the point with BandLab's (reportedly excellent) online DAW where you want to make the jump to a pro desktop type, use BandLab Assistant to download and install Cakewalk and see what you think.

Good luck!

In case you hadn't noticed, you  no longer must hold the Ctrl key to get your fully-active right-click context menu.

It's not just the snap feature that's been amended per your requests....

Speak up, they need to know that it's now really working the way you all wanted it to.?

10 hours ago, Max Arwood said:

Why isn't the Drum map editor not built into the PRV? You could click a plus sign by the notes track(Piano Key) to expand the info from the drum map and be able the edit it there. 

Wait a minute, let's not go crazy here!

1 hour ago, kmather741 said:

Wouldn't it be reasonable to add a button to the Drum Map Manager like: "Change all output ports to X"?

Hey, the beloved Drum Map Manager has its own somewhat idiosyncratic keystroke modifier to streamline this mass operation.

To change the Output Port for all rows with the same Channel/Port, press CTRL+SHIFT while changing the Port. Did I just add years to your life or what?

You can also use Ctrl to select multiple rows while you're toiling in the DMM.

So, Jerry, is thy Staff View once again a comfort to you? ?