Starship Krupa

As just such a user (Player only), I appreciate this. The library thumbnails with patch list browser on the right (complete with single-click auditioning!) will make KP7 much more of a go-to. I have some libraries that I'll probably only now hear all of their presets for the first time due to the clunkiness of browsing the old interface. I've always loved the sounds and functionality built into the Kontakt libraries I've downloaded, but detested the crud I had to crawl through in order to just call them up. This is brilliant. It even has a way to "favorite" presets in the library view. I love to play fine acoustic pianos and guitars have no interest in making them. Same with Kontakt instruments. For the more committed users, I'll send out hope that they are also in the process of making improvements to the under the hood UI in the near future.

Okay, finally. Shadow Hills Mastering Compressor Class A $9.99.

Next thing you know we'll be paying to sit in rooms and watch filmed performances by actors. 😄 (When moving pictures appeared on the scene, people who produced and acted in plays were quick to adopt the term "legitimate theater" to distinguish what they did from moving pictures. Which implied that movies were an illegitimate ("*****") art form.) Nothing new under the sun. Gorillaz had plenty of people pay to watch them as holograms the last time they toured. Computer-generated voice having huge hit? "Benny Benassi, "Satisfaction" You go to a big enough "classic rock" arena show and you end up watching Jagger or Clapton or Springsteen or whomever on the Jumbotron. As someone who's played and watched many live gigs over the decades, for me going to a "live" show is mainly about 2 things. First, checking out how the act presents themselves in "live" format. If their sound is based on electronic elements, how do they make those "live?" If it's a straight up rock band, do they do the songs the same as on the recordings, or different arrangements or energy level? Light show? Stage presence/moves? Everyone who plays "out" wants to come across as cool and entertaining (even if they claim otherwise, even if they do nothing but stand there working a mixer, that's their schtick), so what's their idea of that? Second, being in a room full of other fans of the music. That communal experience is HUGE, and it transcends "musicianship" or whatever. Everyone's there to share it, and to check out the above presentation. Maybe look over at the person next to them and smile when a favorite song comes up, and certainly dance in place. What do the other fans look like? Am I the only person over 50 in the room? Is my glowstick big enough? Neither of those things requires human beings being up on a stage playing musical instruments. I'm in a communal space watching a presentation that humans have put together for my entertainment. The form that entertainment takes can be many things. The process of doing one of these holographic shows requires a TON of human artistic endeavor. It's just not of a kind that we older farts can perceive and connect with right away. Someone had to program both the vocals and the stage moves of the character, and I bet there's a live puppeteer there so that she can do impromptu moves. I'd love to see the process behind how they project her. We easily recognize a "show" or "concert" as being a live, realtime performance by people playing instruments and singing. But that's not even necessarily what we grew up with. I grew up watching American Bandstand, This is Tom Jones, other variety shows, etc. The guest bands on those shows usually mimed to a tape backup. It's obvious, you go back and watch these performances and there are no amps on stage, not even cords coming from their guitars. The Who and Pink Floyd toured in the 70's with taped tracks to back them up. They wanted to present their music as it was conceived, with all elements in place whether they could be completely reproduced live or not. Also, where ELSE in the world are you going to see a 3-D hologram that represents a singing dancing anime girl? It's not like they're all over the place. "Oh, there's another singing anime girl hologram with a live rock band backing her up, can't go 5 feet without walking through one."

Remember, several months back, Cakewalk was named best free DAW for electronica by Computer Music magazine. That surely led to some uptake among EDM producers. That's great, given the popularity of those genres among younger music creators. Here's a thing: no matter what genre(s) you start out doing, if you branch out at some point (as I did from mostly straight-up rock type music into purely ITB electronic music), you'll likely keep using the same DAW. If someone starts using Cakewalk today for electronic music, then pivots to singer-songwriter guitar music in 5 years (and/or starts recording other people doing that), they'll find that it works really well.

I assume that "Directlink" is the mapping software that used to come with the Axiom. It's probably not needed in order to the Axiom to be able to control parameters in Cakewalk as long as each control is sending standard MIDI CC. There are multiple methods for setting up control surfaces in Cakewalk depending on what you want to do with the controls (transport and faders, or plug-in parameters, etc.).

In the event of a sudden apocalypse that somehow nukes the internet but leaves the power grid intact, CbB will work as it always has for 6 months. At which point, all you need to do to continue working with it is set your computer's clock back a year. And you can even leave it that way, because, remember no internet, therefore no internet time servers for Windows to contact. @scook would probably create a script to set the system clock back, start Cakewalk, then upon exiting, set the system clock forward again. Assuming phone lines still work, we could get this script via the revived Cakewalk dial-up BBS. Not to worry!

There's no call for forcing yourself to warp your head around any piece of software when there are so many great alternatives. You have a powerful enough computer to run any DAW on the market. Of the other two, Cakewalk will surely satisfy the needs of a singer/songwriter and then some. For that kind of thing, you want something with good tools for comping and mixing. I can record in anything, but give me Cakewalk when it comes to mixing time. As far as comping, Cakewalk has a full set of tools. It has a learning curve for comping, to be sure, but I don't know of a DAW that doesn't. I've never run into a comping task that I couldn't accomplish with Cakewalk's tools and workflow, but I still from time to time get into "flurry of Ctrl-Z's" trouble when using the Smart Tool and turned out it wasn't in the mode I thought it was. My more confident workflow with editing is to switch to the Edit or Draw Tool I need rather than relying on my memorization of what the Smart Tool is supposed to do in a given situation. That's my caveat: Cakewalk is great for comping if you remember to loosen your grip on the Smart Tool. Although I have a license for Reason Lite, I'm much less familiar with it because I couldn't get my head around it. I never even got as far as recording anything, so I don't know about their comping tools. No software, regardless of licensing model, is immune to abandonment. Sonar was payware up until 5 years ago, Cakewalk, Inc. had been around for 30 years and was owned by a much larger company. Then, poof. You're old enough to remember when WordStar, then Word Perfect absolutely owned the word processing market. The mighty may fall. A program like Cakewalk or Chrome that's not expected to earn its parent company revenue in the form of license fees isn't necessarily less "safe" than one that must constantly keep its user base updating in order to earn a profit and justify its existence. For that reason, I encourage people to remain at least familiar with one DAW other than their primary. At least familiar enough that if DAW A breaks for whatever reason, you can at least get tracks down with DAW B when inspiration hits rather than struggling to get it into record mode. There's some FUD about "will Cakewalk keep working if BandLab and its validation server goes away?" I have faith in both the Cakewalk devs, and then if there are legal issues, the world of hackers, that if that ever happens, a solution will be found.

If your motherboard can take it, I'd be tempted to drop an i7-4770 in there (about $50 on eBay). That's a faster processor than the DAW I was using up until a couple of months ago (i7 3770) that will handle pretty much anything I throw at it. Cakewalk loves having 8 virtual cores to play with. I'm a frugal guy who tends to run my stuff until the wheels fall off. Cakewalk runs like a bat out of Hades on that i7 3770 system. Also, don't know what graphics you're running, but I recently bought an nVidia GT 1030 (passively cooled for quietness) for $70. It even runs the 5-year-old games I play in top graphic quality. Cakewalk and Vegas love it.

Well done, sir. The themes I'm currently working on include efforts to use more pixels in the images. I like what you've done in the Mix Module. And of course the rest has the usual M-Excellence. You a truly a Lord of the .STH. Also, that's a pretty impressive project to be running on 4 cores!

Les Pauls are way too heavy for me. I have a couple of Gibson-made Epiphones from the 60's though. More Melody Makerish than Les Paul-ish. I'll go with "set neck with P90 or humbucker" in place of "LP."

Hot. At some point every guitar player must get one. Resistance is futile.

Looks like they fixed the browsing presets crash in MSoundFactory. Details here: https://www.meldaproduction.com/changes/#changes-16.01

Indeed, this. I have to confess to being confused as heck at this point regarding PA discounts. I think I was trying to stack SHMC-A and B15N. I did take a pass on the Neoverb. Nice-sounding 'verb, but I have more reverbs than I need anyway. Dang, that's a nice thing to be able to say in good confidence. To me, reverb (and saturation/distortion) is the only category of effect where its inherent character is critical to my producing a mix that I like. Compression, EQ, delay, flavors of modulation, it's more about how the controls are presented and how intuitive/flexible they are. And that is important as it affects my enjoyment of and enthusiasm for using a given processor. But they don't sound as qualitatively different as reverbs do to me.

Sheesh, I tried entering the code for "any plug-in $29.99" and it spit it back saying that I needed a certain number of products in my cart or something. Whatever, I snagged the B15N for free and it is definitely ALL THAT as bass amps go. Got me much closer to the War B.B. Dickerson growl. Clicking on the plexi glow panel is a nice surprise, a noise gate and power soak, choice of cabs.

True. Stratus seems to be a surround reverb? When I got my first Exponential reverbs Phoenix and R2 were the only ones available at $9.99 a pop. Single-seaters, so 2 of each. Then a while later PB put Nimbus and R4 on sale for $9.99, and I couldn't resist those modulated tails. 2 of each again. Of course, now my 2 licenses apiece for Phoenix and R2 are superfluous and due to the iLok transfer fees, it doesn't even make sense to give them away. Since the only reverb I've heard that can touch the Exponential stuff is MturboReverble, I don't mind the licensing stuff. It is what it is, and the fact that they're single-seaters that require an iLok 2 probably contributes to the peanuts prices.

Okay, I answered my own question about Neoverb. Maybe I'll get it 5 years from now in a $12 PB sale when my computers have been further upgraded, but for now, pass. Using Cakewalk's Performance module: Pianissimo in a 2 bar loop. With FX bypassed, engine load is 4-7%. A single instance of Nimbus on the track, load is 8-11%. A single instance of Neoverb, load is 17-25%. Using PlugIn Doctor's "performance" graph (which I don't completely understand) concurs. Neoverb's preset collection of "over 100 inspiring presets" is much smaller than the massive lists in the Exponential reverbs. Not that big a deal since I tend to stick with about 3 of the Exponential presets. The auto EQ thing is pretty nice, though. It seems like Shadow Hills Class A (which I want for its M/S functionality) will see more action around here. The ad copy, though. 🙄 "....hand-wiring each compressor with Mogami Cable, an important factor when Brainworx Audio modeled one of these...." Yeah, I can hear the Belden in the green version, it just doesn't have that characteristic Mogami smoothness. "With the gain set to identical values on both versions of the Shadow Hills Mastering Compressor, the Class A hardware version clocks in roughly 1-3 dB hotter, delivering a thicker and richer tone to whatever is running through it." Really? REALLY? I guess they took Marty DiBergi's "why not just make 10 louder?" to heart.

Question for the Neoverb-equipped: Phoenix leveled my mixes up so much that I wound up buying about $80 in $10 PB licenses for R2, R4, Nimbus....I get that the algos are probably the same, because, y'know, it would be very difficult to improve on them. I'm interested to see what iZotope have added to the party, but I have concern that they also added the notorious iZotope hunger for CPU cycles. What's the experience with that? I'll be downloading it for testing, but an hour or so might not reveal everything. Weighing the choice between this or the aforementioned SHMC-A/B15N combo.

How do I get Neoverb for $9.99? I have the monthly $25 voucher, the $20 no limit voucher, but Neoverb is listed as being $245. By my calculations, though, I should be able to get B15N and Shadow Hills Mastering Compressor Class A for $9.99.

Krep. Missed it. I want that B15N. In my quest for the "World Is A Ghetto" growl.

It's pretty cool if you're into things like MRhythmizer, Stutter Edit, Gross Beat, Tactic.

MONSTER Drums is a really nice multi drum machine.

😆 A little gasoline on the fire. If anyone actually tries the analogy, the way I'd approach it would be with something more humble, "I dunno, sweetie, I guess it's like clothes. Different outfits for different occasions? Each one sounds different and feels different and plays different." Or you could snap "You just can't stand the idea that I have something I enjoy!" No. Don't do that.

https://www.audacityteam.org/audacity-3-2-is-out-now/ How far off is VSTi support and a piano roll? 😄 (also future CLAP support?)

I'm surprised that nobody else picked up on this. If you just duplicate the same take of an audio track and pan it, all you get is a louder, reinforced mono track. Which sounds kind of like what you're hearing. Is this a single take just duplicated, or are these multiple takes? If what you want is the sound of a doubled vocal coming from a single track, you need to do this with FX. iZotope Vocal Doubler is a popular free plug-in that is (obviously, from the name) intended for this use. With just one track to apply FX to, you'll find it much easier to use compression. However, if I have this wrong and you did re-record your vocal multiple times, what I do for this is route the vocals to a bus, then use compression on the bus to even them out. Taking a look at some tutorials on how to EQ vocals to sit in a mix might be helpful as well. It's amazing how much low end you can roll off, and the positive effect it has on the mix. I usually wind up rolling off my vocals around 400Hz. That way they don't step on the other instruments as much.

This is not necessarily an apples-to-apples test. Your test uses the same audio file for every track. If the issue has something to do with reading the audio data off the disk, Cakewalk streams every audio file in a project in real time. If Antre's project has 130 unique tracks, that is reading 130 different audio files at the same time, that is a very different test condition. If someone has a project with over 50 different audio tracks, check that, observe how fast it goes into Play. And please, fellow forum folks, lighten up. The issue is that Antre has observed this issue across every release of Sonar/CbB for years, on multiple PC's. The idea that a single computer he's using is somehow unique and causing a problem is spurious. He's (I am presuming gender) not threatening our favorite toy, he would like to be able to use it more effectively. Testing similar projects across multiple DAW's and computers is reasonably diligent troubleshooting. He has way more experience with Sonar/Cakewalk than I do. @Antre, do post the specs of one of the computers that's exhibiting the behavior, preferably the fastest one you have. Especially memory, video card and audio data drive. If nothing else, it'll reassure the skeptics that you have plenty of computer power.