Starship Krupa

50 Volts! Och, McLeod, d'ye live up 'n the Orkneys?

You'll have better luck asking on the Meldaproduction forum. I wasn't even aware that MEqualizer had this function and I have been using it on every project for the past 3 years. Meldaproduction products are full of surprises. Have you upgraded your free bundle? A couple of times a year Vojtech has a half price sale on everything, and that includes the upgrade on the Free Bundle, which I took advantage of. Well worth it if you haven't done it.

It doesn't help that Cakewalk's documentation is very thorough about describing the many options for audio export while being careful not to explain or recommend any specific option (at least that I could find). This is unfortunately common among DAW's, among metering plug-ins, and even, sadly, among articles and videos about level and loudness. I have found them all strangely coy when it comes to specific instructions. By that I mean like where you actually insert the metering plug-in, which might seem obvious, but it's not for someone new to all this. If you don't know where to put it, it's like getting a Roku Box without knowing that you are supposed to connect it to the Internet, but if Roku Boxes also didn't pop up error messages saying that they weren't connected to the Internet and also without knowing that you're supposed to be able to watch Amazon Prime and Netflix and Kanopy and Hulu and Tubi and all this other stuff on them. I would expect there to be something like "examine your DAW's signal flow chart to find the last point you can insert the loudness metering plug-in before monitoring and rendering and do no level adjustments past that point before rendering" but nope, they just expect people to come from the womb knowing that. In the DAW world, the documentation usually says "you can render from here, there, and everywhere, isn't it wonderful how versatile it all is?" When it would be helpful to at least be told that most of the time you're going to want to choose this and this and this option. And if you find that your rendered file's level is too low, increase it on this or that fader. The simplest stuff is not always painfully obvious to first-timers and because it's considered the simplest stuff it won't be documented as well. When I was starting out with DAW's I read a couple of articles and watched a few videos about this stuff and studied my DAW's documentation and at the end of all that I knew that Oasis had ruined radio by using a brickwall limiter and that it was up to all of us to use the LUFs standard to fix things. I learned that we could use metering plug-ins on our DAW's to do it, also standalone programs like one by my old company, Orban. I also knew that there were a bunch of different LUFs numbers that different streaming and digital music services used as their standards. What I did not learn from any of my reading or video watching was where to put the plug-in, which of the numbers I should be shooting for, how Level relates to Loudness, and what to do if my LUFs were too big or too small. And that seems weird to me, that after all that effort to figure it out, I'd still be so in the dark, when all those things are not only quite important, but also easily explained (except for the loudness/levels thing, which I still haven't sorted out).

That's a thing, back in the VST2 days it seemed like the hosts mostly knew what to do with the .fxp and .fxb files that were installed with the plug-ins. I'd go to the host's preset menu and the factory presets would already be in there. With VST3's, that's not the case.

Who cares about Sonar X3? Cakewalk by BandLab is better.

Cakewalk for Windows 1.0? Whoa. Yeah, I always click the little double arrow in the Track Header to minimize the track image when I'm working in the Lanes. I trust that you do that? I find it helps. It would be nice if that would happen automatically when the Expand Lanes button is pressed. I have messed myself up by performing operations on the Track Image that I meant to perform on a Take Lane, and that's its own Special Cakewalk Horror. A feature that I haven't submitted because I'm 99% sure it's already been submitted is horizontal Zoom to Selection, like Audacity has. Audacity has some convenient features that I pine for in other audio programs. The way that their selections just automatically become loop points and vice versa, and the way that you can adjust the selection points by dragging them, man, do I ever wish that all of my audio programs had that. When I first got Mixcraft I kept dialing these perfect drum loops using their loop markers before remembering that it was a dead end, there was no direct way to convert a loop selection to a crop selection or any other kind of selection.

Hey, John, good to see you. I always enjoyed the discussions that resulted from your questions at TOP. I heartily second what @slartabartfast, @bitflipper and @marled have said, especially regarding the importance of recording your virtual instruments as "dry" as their controls will allow and adding reverb in Cakewalk with the reverb plug-in of your choice. Also, it is not down to sample rate or the price of your virtual instruments. I'll share a personal tip with you. When I got back into home recording in a big way half a dozen years ago, I was at first knocked flat by all the choices and how much was available, how you can slap 12 plug-ins on each track if you want, etc. Then I brushed up on my mixing theory and practice and settled down. The way I see it is with a mix I'm painting a picture or creating a diorama, and reverb is the room the diorama sits in. So I rarely put a reverb plug-in on an individual track. I do it like the engineers did 50 years ago when they had "echo chambers" or a single plate or spring and put my favorite reverb plug-in (at the moment Waves TrueVerb, there, I get a bingo point, but I also like the freeware OrilRiver) on a bus and use sends so that everything that gets reverb goes to that one Reverb bus. This has the effect of making everything sound as if it's happening in one sonic space. The point of reverb (unless it's being used as an obvious effect) is to make sounds seem as if they are in natural acoustic spaces, and I want everything to sound as if it's in the same acoustic space. In the case of your piano ballad, which, BTW, I liked the song and the second mix, I especially wanted it to sound like your voice and your piano were in the same virtual room. So that if I closed my eyes, I could "see" you singing and playing. Because your voice is the lead instrument, and you are doing a good job of keeping it in front, and then your piano is your main backing instrument, and we're used to seeing singer pianists. The rest of the band can then be arranged around behind you, sonically, but singing John and his piano should stay up front. Like Elton or Billy when the band comes in, they stay up front and center. When I mix, I close my eyes from time to time to "see" what the "band" (who are all me overdubbed) "look like" in the mix. I usually try to spread the drummer out, then the bass player a little to the right, keys to the left a bit, and my lead vocal and one guitar in the center and relatively dry to provide a focal point of "Erik singing and playing guitar." Reverb is, to me, essential, but it can also fill up the acoustic space like nothing else. One rule of thumb I have is that if I can hear the reverb, there may be too much of it. Not always true, but if I hear it, I will back off the sends and see if the mix sounds better. After all, in real life how often do we actually consciously perceive room reverb vs. just feeling it? It's good to be careful with putting reverb plug-ins on individual tracks because it can make mix elements sound like they are happening in different acoustic spaces. It's not a no-no, it's just good to be careful that it doesn't mess with the image. Usually the reverb that comes built in to virtual instruments doesn't sound as natural as an external dedicated plug-in either, so I look for a way to mute it as soon as I can. Similar with big wide patches on synths. They sound great solo'd, but eat up too much room in a mix. My friend and local studio owner and sometime client Myles Boisen has written a couple of good articles on this topic that I will leave you with: https://www.emusician.com/how-to/space-is-the-place-part-1 https://www.emusician.com/how-to/space-is-the-place-part-2

Yeah, I know about that Silverlight. "Skylight" is the name for the system with all the collapsible and docking windows, then. I just think of it as "Cakewalk." 😊 And Keni must be a Sonar old, old timer. I don't know anything about Sonar's layers, but lanes systems seem to be the DAW standard for compositing and I am glad that Cakewalk has them rather than something else. It made it way easier to transition, and I know that my Pro Tools user friend who sat down cold in front of Cakewalk and knocked out a song in 2 days was helped by the fact that Cakewalk uses a lanes system for comping. I feel your pain on the transition, though. There have been some nasty bugs addressed in the Take Lanes system, according to the release notes, which means that it must have been rough on first release. There's still one that messes my clip lengths up when loop recording multiple audio tracks. I have to drag the ends out on a couple of them if I stop the recording before the end of the loop. It may have put people off from the lanes system in general. Also, Speed Comping is really confusing at first, with its automatic muting and all that. It took me a long time to sort it out before I got hold of a copy of the old Ref. Guide. I can see where it can be quick and handy for some workflows, but I still haven't incorporated it yet and I'd like to be able to turn off some of its features. It's too easy to get into trouble with it, especially if I have clips grouped. As I've seen people gripe about "take lanes" I've wondered how much of what they really dislike is Take Lanes as such and how much of it is the other features (some buggy) that came with take lanes. For instance, it drives me batsnot that my takes get cut up into clips where I don't want them to. I finally learned how to "heal" them with the comping tool, but why? I'm still not 100% sure what's expected behavior there. The Ref. Guide doesn't mention it.

I'm going to resist Googling this one....I remember the box you're talking about, think it was maybe made by Sequential Circuits? It's stuck in my memory with the Drumtrax and the SixTrak. Same era.

I didn't think that was possible. Well, I'm glad that it brought you back to square one at least. Now I hope you install BA and just let it do its thing. It'll be fiiiine, don't worry. And the thing is, Cakewalk is supported, so if you run into any snags, you can put in a ticket with an actual support staff who will help you out. You don't have to rely on forum flunkies like me for advice. I don't know what your focus is in using Sonar, but the devs, in addition to doing some good work with tuning for speed and stability, added ARA2 support in the latest build of Cakewalk, so if you're doing anything with Melodyne, it will add a lot of functionality to that. Get your blob on.

If you go to the Finale/Garritan/MakeMusic website and create an account, you can also download the Aria player. Thanks for the tip on Grace Sampler, @Kurre. I'm a TX16Wx fan, but it may be good to have a simpler sampler on hand.

My understanding is that if you let CbB install with its default settings, and you have a Sonar installation that was done with default settings, nothing in your existing Sonar installation will be overwritten. I don't speak from personal experience, just reading many, many accounts from forum members on the subject. The bundled MIDI and DXi plug-ins in particular are mostly or all ones that are common to both Sonar and CbB, for whatever that's worth. I started with CbB and since I've had it I have installed and uninstalled both a trial of Sonar Artist and a full version of Sonar Home Studio and all three programs coexisted happily.

This is a confusing post. What's silverlight? What switch from layers to lanes? Cakewalk by BandLab has never had anything called "layers" in all the time I've used it, and I've used it from the first week of its existence in April 2018. There are some things I don't like about the zooming logic, though, and I agree that the tracks wind up humongous when what I want to focus on is the clip or automation I'm working on. I can't figure out the logic of the horizontal zooming either, so I always wind up zooming in way to the left or right of where I want. I thought it might zoom centered on the Now Time, but that doesn't seem to be the case. I just try to figure out which way CbB seems to want to go and try to "cheat" it in that direction so that I wind up somewhere near where I intended. It also drives me nuts that there's no command to zoom to the horizontal extent of a project without also filling the screen with the project vertically at the same time. So if I have a project with 2 tracks and execute the Fit Project to Screen command I wind up with these HUGE tracks.

I guess this is my chance to snag RX Elements for $29 only to have Pluginboutique run one of their deals where you get a license for $1 with any purchase a week later....🤣

d00d! My mixes have been languishing waiting for me to be able to look into the Volterra kernels of the plug-ins I've been using. 🤣 Good lord, there are some things that interest me about Plug-In Doctor, but if I had it, I suspect it would be yet another thing to distract me from getting work done.

Woo, that is a nice deal on Mixcraft. I didn't know they were shipping Recording Studio with a full license for Melodyne Essentials, either, I thought you had to buy Pro Studio to get it. Mixcraft is a heckuva deal.

Do you have your gain staging dialed in? Plenty of level going in to the FX rack? Also, is it just these two FX or does it happen with any others? Do you hear the hiss with the transport stopped? Is "Cakewalk FxEq" the same as Sonitus:fx Equalizer (or Sonitus Equalizer), the paragraphic that comes with CbB?

Pluginboutique has Celemony Melodyne Essentials on sale for the next 48 hours, so jump on it if your Cakewalk copy has timed out or is about to: https://www.pluginboutique.com/products/2035

Good opportunity for Cakewalkers whose trials have timed out or are about to. https://www.pluginboutique.com/products/2035

SongKey is fun to have around because sometimes I write songs on guitar with open droning strings, 7ths and so on, and it can be a chore to figure out what key they're in. I turned the "MIDI out" feature loose on one such piece, and while it didn't do the best job of tracking, what it did put out was kind of interesting in a textural sort of way. So far I'm finding that Mk3's new tempo detection and pitch-to-MIDI aren't so great for their intended uses, but I already have way better tools for doing that in Cakewalk anyway. Saverio will probably keep working on it.

Heads-up, SongKey Mk3 in VST2 form does not play well with Cakewalk, so be sure to install only the VST3 unless you have another host that needs the VST2. If you do, go into Plug-In Manager and exclude the VST2. As soon as I add the VST2 to an FX Rack, CbB throws up a dialog and says it's gonna exit. Not so with the VST3 version. I've let Hornet know.

Cakewalk includes ProChannel as a feature, so you can easily find out for yourself by getting your own free copy and trying it. But as far as "stacking up," they're two different things. The Waves plug-in is an emulation of a hardware console strip and ProChannel is a plug-in module system. It's like asking "how does VST3 stack up against a hardware Distressor?" I've never used the Waves emulation, but I've used other emulations of the SSL channel strip and given the choice between what is available in the current ProChannel system vs. any SSL strip clone, for me, hands-down give me the ProChannel. The ProChannel comes with your choice of a convolution reverb, algo reverb, 1176-type compressor, SSL-type bus compressor, emulation of 3 different consoles including the SSL, tube saturation, 4-curve plus hi and lo pass analyzer/parametric EQ, tape machine emulation, a collection of 8 single knob FX similar to the Waves Single Knob FX that includes a gate, reverb, tremolo and transient shaper, and if you go to their sites and register for free you can get Softube's Saturation Knob and Boz Digital's Bark of Dog modules. The Waves plug-in has EQ, a compressor, and a gate/expander. This comparison suggests that ProChannel would be more versatile. Sonically, I'm pretty blown away by the modules that come with Cakewalk, but again, never tried the Waves SSL plug-in and matters of taste are what they are.

Indeed, it was 3 Euros for me! Instant purchase. Do you find that it works better? I haven't tried it yet. My first exposure to Hornet was the DrumShaper included with Computer Music, which certainly helped me out on the way to learning what I was doing with processing, drum-wise. They do pretty well at getting an instant drum sound, but more importantly, he included a sheet telling what's "under the hood." As in the compressor and EQ settings that are being affected when you turn the knobs. I studied that and copied the settings to discrete plug-ins, which was a good starting point for learning how to do it on my own.

I hear ya. But the hosts will have to get their game on, then, eh? It's just disappointing that with all of Steinberg's blather about how revolutionary the new spec is, I have never, and likely will never, notice a difference from having my plug-in be written to conform to one spec or the other, except at the moment Acoustica still haven't gotten Mixcraft straightened out with VST3 support, IMO. It's just more trouble for developers and apparently saved the Cubase/Nuendo engineers the work of implementing a couple of features that other DAW's already had. Marketing: "Can you lads put in audio routing between plug-ins like Sonar and all these other DAW's have? The young people like to do this thing called 'side chaining.'" Engineering: "That would be really hard and nobody wants it. Young people only use pirated Ableton Live. Please leave us alone." Marketing: "How about resizable GUI's? Our own VST spec calls for it and everyone else is doing it already." Engineering: "You are very annoying and should leave now." Marketing: "How can we get these features? Aha! We control the VST spec, we can force the plug-in developers to add it themselves!" I can think of lots of cool things to have in a plug-in spec myself, like better protection from having the plug-in crash the host, maybe some way for different instances of the same plug-in to share resources so if you have 15 tracks, each with the same compressor, they can be more efficient, specifications for how to have a plug-in use the resources of other networked computers for processing, more uniform standards for latency reporting, standards for gain staging and level matching, and so forth.

Oh, thank you. Just because I don't like installers that install 32-bit plug-ins on my 64-bit system so I then need to go find them and remove them so that some over-eager host program doesn't find them during a scan. How about hosts that claim to support both, but I only trust the VST2 support? Mixcraft likes to fall down and go boom if I load VST3's up. So far I have yet to notice any of the supposed benefits the VST3 spec allows for or even see a plug-in or host developer (other than Steinberg) claim that they are taking advantage of it. There are even those who say that the introduction of the VST3 spec was mostly a boondoggle on the part of Steinberg to get plug-in manufacturers to make up for Cubase and Nuendo's inability to make audio routing between plug-ins work. Also GUI resizing on the Windows versions, which was not a problem for anyone else.