Starship Krupa

2 hours ago, Gswitz said:

You could also set it up so you can solo various buses to turn on and off sets of speakers.  This gives you a single click to turn on or off a speaker pair and can leave existing speakers on.

Oh, right! I hadn't thought of that, I might try it myself.

So many ways to accomplish the same task. Cakewalk is a huge beast.

10 hours ago, abacab said:

I found Aria and you can install it, but the license is actually only granted if you have a paid license for the product. It's not a freeware product, so proceed at your own discretion.

Hmm. You should have found and downloaded a file named WIN_ARIA_Player_v1.872.exe. I didn't notice any admonitions about having a paid license when I installed it, was that in a click-through that I didn't read?

I can't even remember now how I found out that it was downloadable or why I thought it was free because it uses Plogue's GNU licensed code or something. Maybe on another forum.

That sounds pretty nasty.

Seems like something's gotten scrambled in the way that CbB keeps track of plug-ins, and from what I've seen, that information, or some of it, may persist after an uninstall, so if you do try an uninstall/reinstall, make sure you do a completely clean one.

There is probably a way to clear your system of all prior plug-in settings as well, although I don't know what it is. I'm sure that by this time you've contacted support.

As others have pointed out, obviously this is not common, and things can get corrupted on individual systems. Where I get frustrated is with programs that leave settings behind that perpetuate the problems I was trying to cure by uninstalling them! Usually in the registry, but maybe in an .ini file in my user profile.

Good luck whichever way you go, with a new DAW or whatever. Ableton Live is very different from Cakewalk. It's said that with the right theming you can get Reaper pretty close. Sometimes after a period of frustration and the damn thing just not working, the impulse is to never want to look at it again, but after all, it's free to jump back in any time you want, and I certainly recommend being reasonably proficient at more than one DAW. Very much so.

BTW, I have to say that I'm pleased with the lack of aggressive defensiveness displayed by people responding.

They don't make it obvious any more.

Once you've made your account, you need to go to their generic Downloads page and go to the Search tool, and do a search by date for Aria Player. That should bring up a link to the latest downloadable version, which I believe is from 2016.

Download it, install it, and once you have it up and running, go into the plug-in's Settings and check for updates, both on the plug-in itself and the engine. If either of them are not the latest, Aria will automatically update itself, then you're good to go from there.

Another favorite of mine that supports SF2's and SFZ's is TX16Wx, but I haven't tried those formats with it yet. It's a powerhouse sampler, though, and great to have in its own right.

@msmcleod might want to look into it going forward.

https://www.tx16wx.com/

The biggest issue that I had with Cakewalk-on-10 was Windows Defender's realtime scan doing things like scanning my plug-ins and sample libraries and audio tracks as they were streaming from the hard drive. All of which is entirely unnecessary and was causing a serious performance hit on my system.

So I rolled up my sleeves and figured out how to configure Windows Defender on Windows 10 Home to behave as I want it to, which is to disable realtime scanning.

I've heard that you can supposedly exclude certain folders from realtime scanning, but I don't even want the engine running. I got cantankerous about it. Defender scans my system in off hours, and of course doesn't find anything because I don't click on suspicious email attachments or download and install software from sites that look suspicious to me. My anti-virus protection for the last 30 years has been common sense backed up by on demand scans.

9 hours ago, abacab said:

I would follow up on this duplicate deal as I have four duplicates, and one triplicate.

But then I would probably feel so guilty about taking the freebies from these nice folks that I would cave in and buy Chromophone the same day.

 

That's the idea, I'm sure, create good feelings. I'm kind of flabbergasted that they are doing this, given that we wound up paying what, less than $1.00 each for these sound collections?

Swatches, their freebie, has grown in size now to what, almost 500 sounds? (they just added a bunch more to it)

Thing is, I don't really want the advanced features, but I'd be happy to pay a bit more to be able to load the guitar packs into Strum Session.

This is so above and beyond the call of customer service that I feel kind of weird asking them, even though as a business owner, it's something I would probably allow for the same reason. I will spread the word about their products every chance I get, you can be sure.

Nice. I'm an Aria Player fan when it comes to soundfonts.

Be sure to go into the Settings every once in a while and let it check for updates to both the program and the engine. They're always working on the thing and keep it up-to-date with versions that are not available on the website.

Howdy.

+1 on the value of YouTube tutorial videos. I've learned a lot from them. Do a search on how to mix whatever genre you're trying to learn to mix. You don't spell it out. Cinematic scores? Show tunes? Pop?

The default seems to be synthetically-produced pitch-corrected R&B-tinged vocal pop, whereas my deal leans more toward indie rock recorded with instruments you have to stick microphones in front of, so I've had to sit through a lot of music that ain't exactly my thing and interpolate.

Another +1 on remembering that mixing is an art and as such, every person's opinion is just that, including your buddy's, and razor's, Jim's and mine.

As far as your questions about mixing orchestral instruments, personally I would not use ensemble samples in mono. I mean, they go to great pains to record these things in big concert halls with expensive equipment so that it will sound authentic in stereo. That goes for the solo instruments as well.

There are some contexts when using orchestral samples where I might squash them down to mono, especially a solo instrument, if I wanted to use my own reverb on it to make it sound more like it's in the room with my band or something.

Everyone's workflow is different. It sounds like your friend likes to bounce his MIDI virtual instruments to audio tracks early in the process, maybe to conserve memory. That's also known as "freezing." I don't use very many tracks, so I just let my MIDI tracks stay that way until mixdown. I like to mess around with the instrument sounds themselves.

Noise between sounds is something that we audio recordists need to be concerned about. Mostly things that vocalists do. Breath noises, lip smacks. If you're doing virtual instruments (MIDI) only, it's not a thing.

Panning will affect the balance of instruments in an ensemble sample. To hear the extent of it....listen! Put on your best set of studio cans and turn the pan pot and check the effect.

Hope this helps, hope we see more of you.

Yeah, it's a pain, other audio programs I use that uses ASIO drivers have the ability to take what the PreSonus driver is giving it and translate that into "Input 1, Input 2, Input 3, Input 4, etc."

I've never bothered to say anything to either party because on the PreSonus side, the drivers for my Firebox and Firepods will never be touched again, and on the Cakewalk side, I suspect "we list what the driver reports" would be the end of it, they have bigger fish to fry.

You can at least rename them in the Devices list.

Wow, so sorry to hear this. I used to love those cheap breakfast buffets.

And I, too clicked on this thinking it would have something to do with MAGIX taking the program over from Sony, and I was preparing to tell you that you just need to configure MAGIX Connect so that it stops showing you ads for their products that you already own.

And, BTW, I just upgraded from 10 to 15 via the Humble Bundle and they really went to town on that code. Vegas, the tourist trap, might have jumped the shark, but Vegas, the video editing software, has acquired that feel of speed and stabillity that Cakewalk is sporting these days.

And you don't even need to take "grandpa's special vitamins" to enjoy it!

7 hours ago, razor7music said:

Just to be clear, this isn't a complaint about CW. I know WL is a different animal, which is why I have both. I just really like the speaker configuration in WL and wondered if anyone else would find it useful to have something similar in CW.

I get ya, and I know it chafes when I toss out a good feature request and get offered a lame kluge in response that only proves the need for the feature. So I'll try not to be lame.

Cakewalk is such a huge beast that as you no doubt know, "feature request" around here often turns into "it can actually already do that." So to answer your question, no, I would not find it useful. Here's why:

I do what you do every time I finalize a mix and can tell you how I set it up.

In addition to the Events and Alesae in my sig, I also have a pair of Boston A70's connected to the FP10 so I was psyched when I figured out that Cakewalk could do this. In Mixcraft, it's way clumsier.

7 hours ago, razor7music said:

I may have some tracks route straight to the HW outs, as well as some busses routing to the same HW outs, and of course the master routing there too. With a large project, I might have 6+ sources routing to the HW out.

Change things just a little and I think referencing will become much simpler.

1. Create a stereo bus called Output

2. Route everything you would normally route to the HW out to Output

3. As you mix and want to reference on different speakers, route Output to whichever HW out you wish to use at the moment

No more running around chasing down every track and bus that's routed to the HW output, everything will always be routed to Output (which you will rout to your HW out). It will be 2 mouse clicks away.

This is what I do and it works a treat. From what I can see, we're essentially doing the same thing that Wavelab is doing, putting another software layer in right before the output.

Again, if I have it wrong and this wouldn't work for you, let me know.

I've had to read your post several times to try to figure out how you might be switching speakers now and how you would like it to work more easily and quickly.

With my setup, I have 4 sets of speakers, plus headphones also connected to the same output as 1+2.

My interface has 10 outputs, and these outputs drive amplifier/speaker combinations, so I switch outputs at a software level, which is what I assume you want to do.

What I usually do is go to the In/Out panel on my Master bus strip and switch to the appropriate output from there. That's two mouse clicks. Is that what you mean by "manually?" The change works on the fly, but there is sometimes a brief gap in playback. I adjust the levels in the Hardware Outs to compensate for any differences in the amplifier or speaker levels.

Can you be more specific about how you're switching outputs now, and why it's not working for you?

What you are trying to accomplish may already be doable with sends and/or buses like Mark suggests.

Let's see....I just set up my Master bus with its Output set to "none" and a Send to each hardware output. All I have to do to switch to any output I want is enable the appropriate Send.

Does that work for your use case?

On 6/23/2019 at 2:03 AM, msmcleod said:

I might contact the developer and see if he'll consider doing a 64 bit version.

That is a nice interface, but heavens, the Geneva.

(Don't want to be a party pooper, but shouldn't this be in the Coffee House or something?)

I'm a pro amp tech and designer, and have lost count of the  number of  Hot Rod/Blues DeLuxe/Villes I've had through my shop in the past 15 years.

Basically yes to most or all of what @Tubeydude says, but I find that with good jack hygiene, which on those amps means looping your cable through the handle on top to act as a strain relief, the nylon input jacks are just fine.

At this age, and with those symptoms, the power tubes are suspect and should be swapped out by a tech who can properly set the bias for you.

As for the power supply caps, in the mid 2000's, China's manufacturers had a massive problem that affected many brands of electrolytic capacitors, including Illinois, the supplier of the caps for Fender's tube amps (The common failure mode of LCD TV's and monitors where they come on for 10 seconds and then go back off is due to the cap cootie problem, and most of those TV's and monitors can be repaired with $10 worth of caps. Yes, all those 52" TV's that are sitting in landfills....). That's why Tubeydude has seen those poor Illinois fail after only a few years, and I'll bet they had that crud that looks like Gorilla Glue oozing out of them.

Any current manufacture electrolytic capacitor, even generic, will likely last at least 30 years in that application. I see 40 year old caps in Fender Twins that are still holding on, and electrolytic caps, China crisis aside, are not in the category of things that used to be made better than they are now, quite the contrary. Materials science and manufacturing have advanced greatly in the past several decades.

And yes, the power resistors for the 15V rails should be checked, as they do melt their own solder joints. I think they're 470 ohms standard and I started stocking 500 ohms to swap them out with, which cools things down and still provides plenty of current.

I'm not familiar with the Rock Crusher, but aren't attenuators supposed to attenuate? I kid, but this one sounds like something's gone wrong and I hope the manufacturer of the device can set you up with a manual and expected behavior and all that. They do put a strain on your power tubes.

Oh, and whatever you put in there, I suggest you make sure that whatever the labeling, it's made by Sovtek/EH/New Sensor. Sound great and last a long time. They make the tubes for Fender/Groove Tubes.

On 6/21/2019 at 1:45 AM, msmcleod said:

I use SampleLord as my sample player of choice for all the samples I've done of my old hardware gear.

😲

I'm not familiar with this plug-in, but I'm surprised that you'd be using a 32-bit player when there are modern 64-bit options like TX16w and Garritan Aria Player available at no cost. Aria Player requires a bit of spelunking to obtain, which I can help with if you are interested. I think it's based on open source code, so they have to give it away, but they don't make it easy.

Curious: which 'verb plug are you using? I know it shouldn't matter, but then, CbB shouldn't be locking up when you sidechain the compressor.

Maybe there's a specific reverb that doesn't like being next door to that compressor while it's being sidechained.

I doubt it's an incompatibility with the update, as there are hundreds of notebooks with Realtek HD chips that function perfectly with CbB, including mine, running the latest version. The forum would be exploding with this issue. It's not out of the question for an update to expose another issue in your configuration, but then that's what we're looking for anyway.

My only thoughts at this point is that you really need to load up a project that works and go into Preferences and comb through every setting, no matter how trivial it may seem, especially on the drivers and devices and MIDI pages, and note any discrepancies between what you find there and what appears when you start a new project. Look for the slightest difference in nomenclature, like "Headphone" instead of "Headphone HD" or anything.

You can even screen cap each one with the Windows Snipping Tool, just type Snip into your Search Bar and it will come up. Then you can call them up side-by-side for comparison.

It could be that you have some audio in your old projects that is setting the chip to a friendly rate/depth, I don't know.

Also, make sure that you're testing using the most vanilla of synths! Fire up TTS-1 and blorp around on it, or the SI-Bass or String Section or Electric Piano or something absolutely known to work with CbB. Don't load up a Reaktor ensemble or Massive or something.

BTW, if you can figure out how to do it, it's friendly etiquette to post your system specs in your sig, look down at mine for an example. That way you don't have to keep answering questions about how much RAM, what processor, version of Windows,, etc.

Just spent a goodly amount of time going through most of the sounds in the bundle and while each of the packages, true to the quality level I've come to expect from AAS, has plenty of gems, Cinémathéque for me is worth more than what I paid  for the whole bundle.

It  got me planning a '70's Tomita/Phillip Glass/Vangelis instrumental synth concept album I'm going to make using them. Or at least a Mort Garson Music For Plants/Black Mass by Lucifer/Signs of the Zodiac record.

Oh, I think we have a winner. Way to go @RobertWS.

You don't say whether you did it as an upgrade or a fresh install, but I found out that it does make a big difference.

Microsoft allow you the option of "Fresh Start" so that even if you did it as an upgrade, you can go the fresh install route.

Also, 4G RAM is absolute minimum, 8G if you want to be okay.

I run Cakewalk on Windows 10 Pro just fine on an old Dell i5 laptop with 8G of RAM, so what you're trying to do is not out of the question.

4 hours ago, Grem said:

`Ya'll need to get a room!!

A properly acoustically treated one with as few standing wave nodes as possible.

Yes, this deal kicks some serious AAS, and I recommend tappin' it while it's still out there.

That would be the best spent $49 in plug-ins I could possibly think of for someone who didn't already have them.

Man, to have had Ozone and Neutron Elements 5 years ago when I was struggling to get things to sound okay and piling on the plug-ins willy-nilly on each channel would have been such an education. Boom, here's a tool with just an EQ, a compressor, and an exciter, and it's going to make your track sound like gold. Boom, same thing on the Master bus. Limiter, EQ, Spatializer. Wham, your mix sounds 100% better.

Their genius of iZotope for me is in the gorgeous UI's, the integration of the suites, and the killer presets (and wizards, for the ones that have them). They provide such good starting points.

3 hours ago, chris.r said:

What is this Relay used for?

You put instances of it on each track you want to manage with the Visual Mixer, then those tracks appear on the grid in the Visual Mixer. I think it's used for other things if you have higher versions of the iZotope Suites, but that's the most basic.

Man, this is an odd one. The only thing I can think of is that there might be a Realtek HD control panel somewhere that is doing some processing and getting in the way. Look in the system tray, poke around, search in Cortana for HD Audio, Realtek, etc. and if you find something like that, make sure that any processing is disabled. They especially love to enhance the bass, which is what you're having trouble with.

I'm starting to think that your best bet may be to create a template by deleting all the data from one of your existing projects that loads okay and just start your new projects from that!

BTW, I use the onboard sound in my Dell Inspiron notebook for monitoring both through headphones and through powered monitors, and as long as I'm using WASAPI or ASIO4ALL, it sounds fine. Perfectly suitable for DAW monitoring, and I am very picky about things like bit perfect audio playback. All you're doing is mixing, not recording, right?

The thing to avoid is getting the Windows resampling between your DAW and the chip, so WASAPI Exclusive or ASIO4ALL is the way to go. Windows resampling smears the transients like MP3 conversion.

I've even, as an experiment, connected a small Yamaha mixer to the line in and done some recording just to see if I could get a halfway decent sound, and I did. Not as good as my PreSonus interfaces, but the Yamaha preamps were doing the heavy lifting and I used a nice condenser mic and people might be surprised to learn how it was recorded.

They can run side-by-side, but only on the same drive.