Starship Krupa

But is there a minimum purchase?

Right on. I misunderstood your topic title, I took it that you had been under the impression that Cakewalk tutorials were in short supply. I guess Groove 3 are heavy hitters in the recording tutorial business?

I know, I declared a moratorium on mixing plug-ins, but gee, five bucks and it was an Unfiltered Audio plug-in that I didn't already have.... Unfiltered Audio's Zip, not only a mixing effect but a compressor of all things, as if I don't have dozens of them. Oh well, I bought four candy bars the other night at the market and it was $10 and I've eaten the candy bars already. So it's cheap fun by comparison.

I think we've discovered almost 20 YouTube channels that have Cakewalk tutorial content and that's just the ones we know about.

Well, actually, Cakewalk forumites came to the rescue! I was just now thinking that people who mostly stick to the Coffee House/Deals forums might not have seen this, and here's the perfect opportunity. Together, some of us (special thanks to @MimoJP ) figured how to export and import the presets that Cakewalk displays in the plug-in UI (Cakewalk's Preset Manager, not to be confused with Plug-In Manager). It began with the Sonitus suite and then expanded to Plugin Alliance. Once someone has bashed all of the PA (or other company's) .vstpresets into the Cakewalk system, that person can use Plug-In Manager to export them for others to import. Steve Cook (with a little QA help from me) came up with a way to bash them in with a Windows script, but it's slow and requires babysitting, so he's not sharing it for general use. The GREAT NEWS is that between doing it manually and via the scripting software, we managed to cover almost all PA plug-ins. I still need to upload the .SPP file for Masterdesk True Peak. Unfortunately the topic was started in the forum for Templates since there is no sub forum for Preset Manager presets. I put a link to it in the ProChannel Preset sharing forum. ENJOY!!

Since there is no subforum for sharing presets from the Cakewalk Preset Manager (for plug-ins other than ProChannel), the topic for sharing them started in the Templates subforum. It might be better to continue it here, maybe not, but at least there's a link to it here.

As long as you're reasonably happy with the cans (they are well-respected), and by "flaking," you meant that the earpads are worn, get a set of velour replacement earpads and spend the rest on whatever mic you're interested in. It surprises me how often helpful people neglect to ask "what kind of music/instruments are you mixing/recording? Are you using the cans for tracking and/or mixing?" It looks like you're mixing on the cans, so the important thing is to have a set of headphones that you like to listen to for long periods of time and are familiar with. The first will help with the second. You want to know how great mixes sound on whatever repro system you're using, so listen to everything on those cans. You apparently have $500 to spend on this. On its own, the Slate M-1 is "just" a large diaphragm condenser mic. The VSL system is a package of mic modeling software that's matched to the M-1. I would think of these as two separate things that are part of a bundle. If you want a new mic and you want mic modeling software, you can buy this package, but there are other options available. Unlike most bundles, this one seems like they are charging more than what you might pay for a mic of similar quality and a similar software suite. Disclosure: I have little interest in mic modeling; my strategy is to get the best (used) mics my budget will allow, get the best capture possible with them, then process that with the (quite extensive) array of software tools I have. I'm skeptical about the technology. If you think that it's a substitute for actually owning any of these illustrious and expensive classic mics, I suspect otherwise, because in addition to the things that software can model, microphones just respond differently to different levels, different placement, etc. I hate to be "that guy," but if you want to expand your palette of mic sounds, it might be more useful to put some time into figuring out how to position the one you own and treating your room to get the sound you want. No mic is going to sound optimal if it's being used in a suboptimal way in a suboptimal space, and a pretty lowly mic can sound excellent in the right context and environment. You don't have a room that's going to be much good for recording anything unless you set up some treatment. Even some foam on the walls to kill the bright reflections helps. If I were to go this route, I would be more inclined to get a mic that I really liked the sound of and then buy a separate software package. There are multiple standalone mic modeling software packages on the market. Others may chime in with what they think are the best ones. IK Multimedia has Mic Room, Antares has Mic Mod, Mic Mod is $150, Mic Room is $50. I would rather have a $350-450 mic and one of these packages, but that's just me. I'm not the best person to recommend vintage emulations. I'm just not that into them. I think I regularly use about 3 plug-ins that are emulations of vintage gear, the T-Racks 670, SPL Vitalizer, and bx_B15n. As a rule (to be broken at will!) I'd rather have modern technology that can do what was best about the vintage gear than I would modern technology that is trying to imitate the compromises made back in the day. This is a viewpoint that is currently out of fashion in the audio engineering world, I think. I'll just do my music and wait for the inevitable "it has that classic mid 21st century In The Box sound" fad. So find the best possible mic for your ears and your needs. I like diversity. Depending on what you want to record, that could be a small diaphragm condenser or a classic dynamic (Shure SM57, SM7, Sennheiser MD421, Electro Voice RE-20 or perhaps a Beyer or more modern Sennheiser). I can't say because I don't even know what source(s) you are recording. That will give you the widest array of sounds, and you can still use Mic Mod/Room software on the AT 2050.

Jerry Goldsmith's score for my favorite movie, L.A. Confidential, captures/enhances the mood so well. He taps into the collective pop culture memory of Dragnet with the tympani, strings and brass. I can't hear it without picturing Ed, Bud and Jack prowling the turn of the 50's. Bill Parker and the change from a small-town policing model to a high tech military model looms in the near future. Jerry was born and raised in Los Angeles and was in his 20's during the years depicted in the film. The ideal composer for the job:

Do they? I'm not sure which dialogue you mean. When adding tracks, I either use the button above the Track Headers or right click on or below the track headers, both of which give me what I think you are referring to as the "new option." There's a different dialogue that I see if I select Insert/Soft Synth. I only use that if I want to make a Synth Track without any MIDI (neither a simple nor "split" Instrument). It does look like it uses an earlier framework than the Add Track button or right click menu. I don't think I've ever used the "+" sign in the Synth Rack except once to see what it did. I never run with the Synth Rack visible and didn't even know what it was for until I had been using Cakewalk for many months. I thought it was odd to have a separate list of soft synths stuck down under the plug-in Browser. I guess it goes back to before there were Synth Tracks and Instrument Tracks?

I once had a weird routing issue that seemed to have to do with a plug-in that communicated with another instance of itself. What cleared it was removing the suspect plug-in, then doing a Save As under another name. I even put the same plug-in back on (in an effort to create a bug report) but it behaved the second time around. So that's my suggestion: pull any track plug-ins off your vocal track, Save As, then open the renamed project and see if the issue persists.

I can tell you I struggled with figuring out the different modes, Comping, Overwrite, and Sound on Sound! I even asked for help with it on the old forum and still couldn't get a clear picture. I finally figured it out by doing some tests. I can also say that what we call Comping mode is either the default or even the only mode in every DAW I've tried. It was the existence of Overwrite and Sound on Sound that threw me for a loop (no pun intended). And I'm impressed by how songs come to you so fully-formed. I used to think that I was somehow inadequate or inauthentic because it doesn't work that way for me, I bat ideas around like a kitten with a ball of yarn until I get something that jells. Some of us are Albert Bierstadts, some of us are Jackson Pollocks, some of us are Andy Warhols. Once I became more experienced, I realized how The Beatles wrote their songs in pieces. Paul would have been working on one part, John another, and they'd stick them together. "A Day In The Life" is one example. Paul's later "Uncle Albert/Admiral Halsey" is another obvious and notable example. I count at least three independent song snippets in that one. I watched Get Back, the Beatles documentary, and they would sit around in the studio and noodle and stitch things together. It's odd, because listening to their catalog, it sounds like they started out with more fully-formed ideas on the early records and then (d?)evolved into the piecemeal methodology. Maybe after they fried their brains on pot and acid! Watched an interview with Brian Wilson, who said that he would have loved to have had Pro Tools back in the day so that he could have more easily pieced together songs like "Good Vibrations." I've been taken aback when finding out how much of some of my favorite more recent songs turn out to have been stitched together from samples! A notable case is Daft Punk's "Digital Love." I thought it was inspired by all these older songs, turns out that the bulk of it was older songs (the badass fake synthesizer guitar solo was original, at least). Sometimes I'm reminded of John Godfrey Saxe's famous aphorism about sausages and the law: “Laws, like sausages, cease to inspire respect in proportion as we know how they are made." But the truth is, it doesn't "cease to inspire respect" in me, although it may change the flavor of the respect. I contend that if it sounds good and moves my heart (and/or booty), it is good.

Am I the only one who noticed that it looks like he's not working with audio, but with MIDI? Or do I have that wrong? They work differently in Cakewalk, in some important ways. It's just another signpost on the race to the bottom. This "comping" thing came about because sometimes an entire take isn't considered "bad," maybe one clammed note or a flubbed lyric that may be "good" in a different take. So what the engineer does then is substitute the bad note or lyric with the same one sung correctly in the other take. You can do it with instruments as well. Seems icky, like taking the one rotten egg out of a carton and putting a fresh one in its place. It's one of many talent substitutes that exist today. I'm sure that pros like you guys can nail complete takes in your sleep, but to be honest, for duffers like me (and Lindsay Buckingham of Fleetwood Mac on their Rumours album and Tom Scholz of Boston on their first LP), we need every crutch we can find. I've even heard about finicky, indecisive so-called "talent" who record multiple takes and then can't decide which one sounds better and want to come back and decide the next day or, ugh, hear it "in context." If one of the takes doesn't stand out, they should just wipe them all and do it right! Don't want to gross you out, but I've even heard of unscrupulous engineers letting their "singers" do stuff like recording a verse at a time, doing the chorus or bridge isolated from the rest, then stitching it all together, and even abominations like copying their favorite performance of the chorus and pasting it multiple times! These abominable practices supposedly originated back when people recorded to tape, and computer recording has just made it easier, to the point where they've made this stuff the "default." You can't fight it any more than you can fight the software coming with a connection of pre-recorded musical "loops" that are intended to be strung together as "songs." I even heard of something the other day called "Band-in-a-Box," which sounds appropriate for something that sounds like it kills creativity. Band-in-a-Box-And-Lowered-Into-The-Earth is what it should be called!

In addition to Unlimited, which I really like, another free solution is Limiter-Z by LVC Audio. D16 also make a freebie adaptive limiter called Frontier. I count at least 4 possible no-cost solutions, at least one of which I can personally vouch for. No need to either suffer with one that's not working properly or spend any money.

Ah, MModernCompressor, the neglected child of the MeldaProduction line. It was the first one of their plug-ins outside of the FreeFX bundle upgrade that I bought. It was $25 in a half-price sale, I had my 10 euro newletter sign-up credit I was new enough with compressors that the "automatic" parameter setting sounded interesting, and I was in the market for a compressor that was more capable than MCompressor. I did the same thing as @bitflipper, played around with it and truly couldn't make head or tail of it. It even lacked the great "moving line" dynamics display that MCompressor has, as well as the ability to make custom curves. I asked the people on the MeldaProduction forum what I needed to do to be able to use MModernCompressor and the impression I got from the responses seemed to indicate that most people who have a license got it as part of a bundle that also included MDynamics, so they kept trying to tell me how to use MDynamics to get the job done. Even Chandler, in his "all MeldaProduction compressors" round-up, glossed over it and when he did the wrap-up he said that he supposed he might use it for a voice over gig and paid no attention to its unique features. My determination to master this first pro compressor I had paid money for was great, but I still didn't have a handle on it. A couple of Melda forum regulars gave me advice (mostly that I should just get MDynamics). It was suggested that I not waste time messing about with the automatic settings feature and use the rolling display for compression visualization. Vojtech himself tried to explain what the dynamic distribution graph was for and how it worked, but no luck. I recently saw a post from Vojtech himself saying that nobody My deep dive revealed a cool feature that's front-facing (it exists in MDynamics, but it's 2 menus deep): there are various detector settings you can select, one of which is "psychoacoustic," which Vojtech says is supposed to mimic human hearing in some way. I tried it and really liked it. I've lobbied him many times to add the MCompressor dynamic display, but he's kind of given up on developing MModernCompressor. He admitted that hardly anyone can figure out the "automatic" settings thing. I finally did and found no use for it. It requires you to decide ahead of time what dynamic range you want, which is useless for music, because who decides that ahead of time? You just set the parameters of a compressor by memory and by ear. Who starts out saying "this vocal needs a dynamic range of 20dB?" It's a nice workhorse compressor for compressing. It has the clutter of that useless autocompression display, but has easy access to the detector settings, if those interest you. At this price, it's a good bundle coupon for MMixing and MMastering.

A spot o'Googlin' reveals a possible cause: https://forum.deltamotion.com/t/server-busy-error-message/462

If you're using a Stratocaster, make sure your hand isn't hitting that damn volume control!

IMO, best practice is to bounce to a lossless file, then use a converter to create whatever other formats you wish to use for distribution.

Not on my systems. If the VST or VSTi is installed on both systems, it will load automatically on both. Cakewalk projects don't care about what folder the VST is installed in; this is different on all 3 of my systems and works seamlessly. Where things CAN go out of whack is when I've accidentally used the VST2 version of a plug-in on system A when only the VST3 version is installed on system B. This doesn't happen often because I'm diligent about only installing the VST3 version of plug-ins when they are available, but some manufacturers don't allow the user to omit the VST2 version from installation. Vienna may be one of those that doesn't allow the user to select on install, so both versions end up on there unless you delete the VST2 manually after installation. Cakewalk should substitute them automatically if both are installed, but this doesn't always work correctly. This situation can also happen when a company switches from supplying VST2 versions of a product to only supplying VST3. What to do in your case? On the first system, check to see what version of the plug-in is installed. How to do this? You can click on the name of the instrument in the Browser, then look down at the bottom. You can see this in your screen cap. In your case, you have clicked on a plug-in that says it's a VST3. Do this on both systems. If it's different, you can run the installer again and try to select both VST2 and VST3. Otherwise, you're stuck with the procedure outlined earlier in this topic.

I, too get the list of "buy with credit" FX. Probably because I have taken advantage of their freebies in the past.

Actually, Mixcraft has this feature, that's where I got the idea. I don't like to approach the devs with "can Cakewalk have (feature X) just like (DAW X)?" So I have used the feature, it is incredibly handy. The "Mute" button changes with the clip's mute status, which adds a stronger visual cue as to which clips are muted. Cakewalk only has them change shade, which works but isn't as immediately apparent to me (it is in comparison to non-muted clips, but not as much all by itself). Cakewalk has a tendency to relegate some functions to keystroke-only. I think of Cakewalk as being "keyboard-y," which isn't surprising given that the OS the program ran on for its first 5 years of existence was DOS. Mouse? What mouse? Mixcraft, on the other hand, leans toward the mouse (to a fault, IMO). There are so many commands and things that can't be accessed with keystrokes....being able to do things with keystrokes is, I think, considered a luxury or afterthought. When I first started using the program, they had, in the latest release, removed the keystroke command for setting a marker! You set markers by double-clicking in the timeline. I hadn't noticed it when I was demoing the product, because it's so basic. Ever try to comp where you are or have recorded someone else's band and had to either stop the transport to set a marker or hope that your double-click hit the right spot? I found a workaround by the skin of my teeth: it was a command they allowed to be assigned to a MIDI note. So I just set the highest key on my controller to be "set marker." Due to the fuss I raised, they put it back in the next version, but jeez. Their markers are great, though, they have "tails" that run the full height of the track view. It is SO great for lining up clips and note events. What I believe is that with new users, the more stuff that can be in well-organized menus, context menus, and front-facing, the better. Otherwise, they have to look up basic operations, within 5 minutes of starting the program they will be stalled, staring at the screen, maybe rage quitting. I also think DAW and NLE users eventually head in the direction of the keyboard, bringing in more keystrokes as they memorize them. So older, "power" users need powerful keyboard command support, which Cakewalk has, and it has big time. Adding more elements to what is immediately visible can just seem like clutter to someone who already knows that Shift+Space is the command to audition a clip (not exactly the most intuitive key combo). Where keystroke-only commands really fail the new user is that there are only so many letters and numbers on the keyboard, so some of them are going to be pretty counterintuitive. Muste, for instance. If I were new, and someone told me that muting clips was done with a key, the first one I would hit would be "M" for "mute." And then I'd get this funny flag-looking thing in the ruler (which would initially seem to be non-delete-able due to there being no right click context menu for markers; instead, Cakewalk users must click on a marker, hold the mouse button down, then reach across the keyboard with their left hand to the "delete" key over on the right hand side of the keyboard. There is certainly a difference in viewpoint: a veteran user can't imagine why someone would want to go to all the trouble of right-clicking on something, scanning through the resulting context menu, then clicking again when they find the command they want when they could just use a keystroke. They may be forgetting weeks or months it took them to discover and then reliably memorize all those keystrokes. Yeah, RTF 1700-page M. But new users often don't know the nomenclature well enough to even look something up. Even basic terms like "clip" vs. "region," "export" rather than "render" or "mix down," etc. are different from one DAW to the next.

Seems like a great excuse to bump that topic too. 🙂

In the classic form, as recommended by the Cakewalk QA staff: User reports issue with no step by step repro instructions Read "BR: Theme Editor Copy & Paste Broken" topic on Feedback forum Request step by step procedure to reproduce the issue Observe that user says issue occurs "50% of the time" Observe that user does not supply step by step procedure to duplicate error Actual behavior: user's report of issue is too vague to allow others to attempt to reproduce it Expected behavior: user will list what steps others must take in order to observe the issue (Seriously, I promise to try it if you tell me exactly what steps to take. Be as specific as possible, because it helps minimize the personal differences in how we use the software like launching TE from the Preferences dialog rather than Start Menu, etc.).

I was wondering, I know that you tested various driver models, including WASAPI Shared, but did you ever get around to testing the sync performance of WASAPI Exclusive? They are very different animals. Shared goes through the Windows mixer, which adds a lot of processing and resampling steps to the process. WASAPI Exclusive should sync a lot better than Shared. The Blue Yeti (and most other USB mics) comes with a built-in headphone amp for monitoring, so that should be taken care of. In any case, the OP's stated issue is that when they record this mic in Cakewalk, it sounds muffled, whereas using the BandLab DAW, it sounds fine. Subsequently, almost everyone jumped on the "your mic's not suitable for music production!" train when the OP didn't even say that they're trying to produce music. Cakewalk is used for VO work and podcasts as well as music, maybe this person is just trying to record speech. They didn't mention anything about overdubs or any of that. They've been using the BandLab DAW (presumably to their satisfaction, audio wise) and it would seem they want to graduate to Cakewalk. Guessing from their avatar and handle, good chance that they're doing hip hop or reggae style production, which may be less sensitive to the kind of sync issues that you describe. Probably everything but the vocal is going to be in the box. Whatever else is going on, recording a Blue Yeti mic into Cakewalk shouldn't sound "muffled." Blue Yeti is a Logitech product that sells for about $90. It's not a "turd," it's a decent quality mic aimed at VO work. It comes with its own drivers (although probably not ASIO). And yes, it can be used to lay down vocal or instrument tracks. It's not the ideal tool for making music, but it should be able to perform the task with a bit more effort to set it up. The person has been using a DAW that operates inside a web browser, and people are lecturing them on driver modes. I'll take a wild guess that the browser-based BandLab DAW doesn't sync perfectly. Thank you. As I said, the Blue Yeti is not a "crap mic." And it's the mic that the OP has. If someone doesn't want to help them get it to work with Cakewalk, fine. Me, I'd rather not have a potential Cakewalk user walk away with the conclusion that in order to use the program, you need to fork out $150 more just to be able to lay down a vocal. Then the word goes out that "Cakewalk isn't compatible with USB mics," which isn't true and is detrimental to the program's rep. So, to @Jahrika!: since you mention background noise and level issues, it sounds like maybe you're not getting a hot enough signal from the Yeti for some reason. I don't think you need a plug-in or any special trick, just a good hot level. My hunch is that your signal might be going through the Windows mixer, and the Windows mixer might be attenuating it. In order to help you straighten this out, can you give us more information about your setup? In Cakewalk's Preferences/Audio/Playback and Recording settings, what is your Driver Mode set to? Ideally, it should be ASIO, but if that's not an option, then WASAPI Exclusive. Have you installed the Blue Yeti drivers from Logitech's site? It's s good idea to do so, but supposedly it comes with software that lets you add "broadcast effects," so make sure any Logitech mixer or control panel isn't screwing with your signal. All effects and processing should be switched off. What hardware are you using to listen to your playback? Probably your computer's on-board sound chip? Look in Preferences/Audio/Devices and see what it says about your input and output devices.

AFAIK, GoldWave and Sound Forge are not free, if by free you mean freeware licensed.

The only ones I can think of are Cubasis, Garage Band and BandLab. They're not up to snuff?