Starship Krupa

This is a common task around my house, but with different source material. I do ambient instrumentals, and dialog samples are a staple in that genre (and fun to collect). My issue is that since I sample them on my computer, direct from Netflix, Disney+ or Amazon Prime, they come through sounding really high fidelity. Which is wonderful for actually watching shows and movies, but unfortunately sounds like crap when used in the context of ambient music "dialog samples," which typically fall just this side of "telephone" as far as tonal balance, dynamic range, and noise. There's a reason that speech is so intelligible even on a cheap telephone, and it holds true for full mixes: make it sound like a phone call and it'll cut right through. If I don't process it, it sounds about as appropriate as hard rock electric guitar with no distortion. It's not "dialogue," it's just someone talking over the music. Cymatics Origin is a popular freebie that allows you to add noise, wow, and sample rate reduction. I used it for a while, but finally ponied up for the industry standard, XLN Audio RC-20 Retro Color, and it was worth every penny. I found exactly the sound I wanted in seconds with RC-20, whereas with Origin, I could get pretty close with a certain amount of fiddling. If you have call to make things sound "dusty" on a regular basis, it's RC-20.

Well, if you are trying to go by what Jacques suggests, render with Elastique Pro.

No, it just means that someone named the track "Clean Reverb." You can double click in that field and it will allow you to change it to a less confusing name. It seems that most of the tracks in this project have the names of common effects as track names, which I would find really confusing. As you have. If you didn't name those tracks, then you must not have created the project yourself. Maybe you downloaded a project or template that someone else created? Typically, tracks are named after which instrument is (or will be) recorded on that track. Buses, on the other hand, are often given the names of particular FX they host, like "Reverb" when they are used as sends. Perhaps the tracks in this template are intended to be renamed that way. When you want to add FX to tracks, you do so with the FX rack, which is toward the center of each Console strip or to the right of every Track Header.

This, unfortunately. The problem with continuing to rely on deprecated software technologies like 32-bit VST plug-ins is that yeah, maybe they'll work for a while, but eventually they won't. It's not up to you when that's going to happen, and when it does, it'll be hard to find help because tech savvy people will have phased it out years before. The last time I installed a 32-bit plug-in was two presidents ago. Consider yourself lucky that it still works for you using WASAPI and start shopping for a replacement. Once you get the replacement, bounce any tracks you recorded with Mobius and kiss it goodbye. The Overloud TH3 amp sim that comes with Cakewalk has a built-in looper. Never tried it, not sure what features it has, but it's guaranteed to work with Cakewalk.

Um, yeah, I mean, from my perspective, there ain't that many loops out there that AREN'T dance music in some form or other. I haven't checked Bandlab Assistant lately, but last time I did, dance music made up the largest percentage of what was available. Maybe you need to drill down into more specific subgenres when you hit the search engines. Deep house or trance or whatever specific flavor of loops you are seeking? W.A. Production has tons of dance music loop packages, Computer Music issues a handful of loop and sample packages every month for free download....

I got a used iPad Mini in absolutely pristine condition for $65 on eBay, complete with an Otter Box. I had a first generation iPad mini and too many apps stopped working with it (although plenty still do, I can play my Mellotron and Arturia Mini Moog on it). The 2nd gen iPads are a great deal because places like doctors' offices use iPads for check-ins, stores use them for inventory, whatever. And they dump them the moment Apple declares that they will no longer run the latest iOS. There are starting to be some apps that won't update on my 2nd gen, but the older versions work. I figure it's good for a few more years. Regarding using MIDI keyboards with Android devices, in my experience, the audio driver latency has been a problem. I hope that some clever developers come up with a better MIDI/audio subsystem so that Android tablets and phones can join the music making party. For now it's kinda true to its Linux roots, unfortunately.

I got the track control buttons on mine to trigger Matrix cells, which is fun.

First off you need to give us more information. All I get from what you've posted is that you have apparently made some recordings, a good chance in Cakewalk because you're posting here, and when you play them back, again, presumably with Cakewalk, they are playing at the wrong speed. Is this what's going wrong? Answer the questions that @Lord Tim already asked you: what audio hardware (interface) are you using and what driver mode? Project sample rate? You say that you've "poked and cajoled." I assume you mean that you've tried different settings? What specifically have you tried?

Make sure that you have the correct folder locations set in Preferences/File/Folder Locations.

That tends to be an issue with the decade-old VSTi's I like. All of the AIR stuff is now, with my 1920x1280 23" displays, at about the limit of what I'd consider legibility. Massive at least has those nice big knobs.

This. Considering the excellence of their sound quality, it's unfortunate, but they do seem to eventually get things sorted, even if it takes a while.

Meldaproduction MReverb has similar features; of course, it probably doesn't have your ONE sound. You can demo it, though, and if you wait for it to come around in their Eternal Madness rotating sale (or one of their likely upcoming 50% off everything sales), its price drops to $19. (and if you've never bought anything from Meldaproduction, use my referral code, MELDA1923165 to knock 20% off your first purchase, sign up for their newsletter for a $10 credit, and you'll end up getting it for $5)

I used to have similar issues with MSF (usually when browsing presets), but the recent update to 16.01 seems to have cured it, at least on my systems.

So much for speculation about the incipient demise of Massive. If they were going to set it adrift, I doubt they'd go to the trouble of porting it to Apple Silicon. As of right now, I'm still sorting out where Massive fits in my collection of synths. It's too iconic and well-supported by tutorials and presets not to take it seriously, but I still like Hybrid 3 better. @abacab's advice to use the genre browser in Komplete Kontrol was good. I discovered quite a few usable pads/soundscapes in the Expansions. Not so much in the original factory presets, which tend toward turn-of-the-century Car Alarm Trance. First-world problem I'm running into: the humongous amount of free presets available for Massive. I've downloaded thousands. After the years of my favorite synth being Hybrid, with far fewer free presets available (although I find the factory set more useful than Massive's), I'm like a kid in a free candy store. Since I find a large amount of my inspiration in timbres, I browse the presets in search of that, but with this number of presets, it's days of doing that, and then I find yet another source of them. It occurs to me that for someone just getting into working with DAW's, the amount of freeware plug-ins must feel like that. I'm keeping good freebie hygiene, though: if I can't find a good sound in the package, it gets deleted ASAP.

Swatches has been updated with a selection of sounds from this new soundpack. It's up to 636 sounds now.

Tactic for $5. I'm building entire songs around it.

Whoa. I have their free convolver, which according to HWINFO makes good use of my GPU. I had no idea they were cooking up a synth.

Dusty actually passed on July 28, 2021. He is missed. Back in my teens, before I even owned a bass, I wanted a Telecaster Bass just like Dusty's. (check out the baby face on Billy!)

I have one question: I like those knobs in the Channel Strips, how did you make them? Custom knobs is the one thing that I have yet to tackle in regard to theming.

Hmm. Then you've probably also tried the trick of opening Device Manager and getting rid of all of the old entries for the Korg. I have a nanoKontrol2, it sure would be nice if Korg paid some attention to supporting it better.

Try ditching the Korg driver and just using the Microsoft class-compliant driver. If all you want is CC's, it should work fine. Of course, if you want to be able to use the remapping software that comes with the nanoKONTROL2, you'll need to switch back to the Korg driver for that operation, but then you can switch to the MS one after you're done.

This can be an issue, especially if one is a curious sort who likes to take all opportunities to try out free things just to see what they do. Based on what I learned during a recent new system build, I've adopted the policy of making sure to delete plug-ins as soon as possible once I've auditioned them and deemed them unsuitable to my current needs. If I fail to do this, if I leave them around "in case they might be useful someday," they invariably just become clutter. And there's a real danger that I might on a whim try throwing one on a project-in-progress, then later cull the plug-in from my collection only to call up that project and see that it's missing. It's a trap! Try all I want, but only keep what I can see an immediate or near future use for. This is especially true for mixing FX: Compressors, EQ's, limiters, reverbs. I no longer even try new ones of those even if they come out at my favorite price: free. With synths, it's harder, because they of course do all sound different, but if it doesn't catch my ear right away, when will it? A good test for me is to open up the plug-in browser and just look at the names. If I don't even recognize a plug-in by name, that means I'm probably not using it enough to keep it around. My DAW is a tool, not a museum!

Indeed. A golden age. And there's so much great music coming out of it, especially in the various forms of electronic music. You may have these already, I can't remember, but those Plugin Alliance mega-sales are a great time to snag Unfiltered Audio's Sandman Pro bundle, which comes with both Sandman Pro and Instant Delay, and not incidentally, the insane presets that come with them. More than one of the Unfiltered Audio FX are basically delays with something happening in the loop like pitch shift or whatever. I have the whole collection, I even have Sandman, which was their first ever plug-in. This is thanks to the aforementioned PA sales, where you can often pick up one or two for free with a $20 voucher. I have a deep bench when it comes to weird delays: Surreal Machines Diffuse (got it as a freebie 5 years ago before my pivot to electronic music, I tend to forget about it, but it's kinda got a Valhalla Supermassive thing going, which is great) McDSP EC300 (another freebie, 3 delay models, insane number of presets) MDelayMB (freebie again, might see more use if it hadn't been utterly overshadowed by....) MTurboDelay (if you only want to own one delay where you'll never reach the end of what it can do, this is it) MSpectralDelay (freebie, a sweet sounding glitch-o-destructo-toy) A|A|S Objeq Delay (yet another freebie, never fails to yield fascinating results, underrated I think) D16 Sigmund (freebie, recurring theme, anyone? A sleeper, has a lot of sound design tricks up its sleeve, if you also got it as a freebie, revisit it, even more underrated) Sphere Delay (does some nice cross feedback and modulation tricks, doesn't see as much use since I acquired all these other ones. Rhymes with "Keir Dullea") T-Racks Tape Echo (still another freebie, typical excellent IK Multimedia quality, but usually shunted in favor of EC300 if I want tape delay) Unfiltered Audio Instant/Sandman Pro bundle (just go ahead and get them for free or peanuts when another PA sale comes up, they're great, with the built-in Unfiltered Audio modulators section) ValhallaFreqEcho (it's always free and has a frequency shifter in the feedback loop!) Glitchmachines Hysteresis (always free, and as with most of my beloved Glitchmachines FX, it's not for times I have a definite goal in mind but it's joy for tempo-sync'd utter weirdness) Notice how many of those monsters I got for free. Even the ones that are always free will provide hours of fun.

I'll chime in here and say that I, too have had this happen, and each time, I traced it down to a plug-in or plug-ins in combination not playing nice. I've had it happen with both FX and instruments. Sometimes everything will just go silent until I restart the audio engine. Yes, sometimes 2 plug-ins that work fine separately don't like being in the same project or on the same track. Try leaving Neutron enabled, and then disabling the FX on each channel one by one and see if the problem disappears, then you might have just such a situation. The only thing you can do once you narrow it down is, depending on how important the plug-in(s) are, contact both Cakewalk support and the plug-in(s) manufacturers with your findings. And substitute, if you can, other plug-ins in order to get the project finished. Neutron is a very common suite that is marketed by the manufacturer as compatible with Cakewalk, so if something is going wrong with it, all parties need to know.