Misha

slartabartfast,

Lol! I am that ignoramus, that likes to experiment  with different vocal ranges in one song for the sake of musical expression and just have some stupid fun! I believe that is still legal   Yes, sure I will lose some dynamics at very peaks using compressor, but it is better than having some  clipping ..in my case.  Yes, I tried software that magically "heals" clipping, but I do not like the result of that.  My clipping issue is not that serious., around 5-10 seconds total in a single tune (If I would of left it as is, without re-recording  sometimes with maaaaany takes) . 

When I record vocals, it is semi-improvised process,  and it seems to me (and I am sure some people here know exactly what I mean) that occasionally   the best sections are the ones screwed up with clipping. Then, when I start at fresh takes,  I usually lose the  drive needed to recreate same thing, and the end result is not as hot as intended.  So instead of creative process I get  choreographed stage dance thing. 

P.S. I use a decent, sensitive, large diaphragm mic, and that is a mic of choice.  

3 minutes ago, marled said:

singers that use a wide range of dynamics

Marled, bingo! That is what I am battling with

I looked at some DBX stuff. Prices are very reasonable. The thing is, I am not worried about "beautification"  of sound by getting something that cost as much as used car,  but something that would do the job clean, without audible artifacts. I do not want to kill the tone of the nice mic that I am using, just so the compressor kicks in when needed to suppress clipping. 

P.S. Grant, thank you for reply.  V.Rider is a nice little plugin, but it is used on post recording, not in live recording.

John,

I am not sorry for the post . I am sorry it is in the wrong place/thread in the forum

I know Cakewalk community is awesome. I learned about many cool things about music making from the folks here.

M.

Thank you for commenting.

Sure, I use various techniques, including multi takes on quieter / louder parts, good pop filter, position of mic, stepping away.  Yes, it does help  in most cases, but I still think that outboard compressor should solve most of remaining issues. 

Thank you for replies!

"The caveman approach" LOL! I like that! Actually I sometimes do just that, but as you said, me too thinks it is a caveman approach. That is why I am trying to find a more intelligent way to deal with it.  Seems that outboard compressor / limiter is the way to go. My audio interface has FX Inserts, so that should not be a hard task to connect a Limiter/compressor to the chain, before it hits A/D. I was looking at vintage TL Audio Ivory series 5021 tube compressor, which is 10-18 years young. and priced relatively reasonably. The only thing it does not precisely says it is a limiter, but I think it should do what I am after.  

I am sorry, now I feel that this thread should be outside Cakewalk topics, for some strange reason, I thought that I could use software limiter to limit live input. 

1 hour ago, slartabartfast said:

slartabartfast,

thanks.

"A hardware limiter is what is needed if you want to avoid clipping on input, since it will act on the analog/electrical signal prior to it reaching the A/D. "

I guess that would be my path. 

martsave martin s,

Thank you for trying! Roland "capture" line is solid, I had Duo Capture some years back, but also it was pretty "quiet" unit, it was actually hard for me to make it clip  

mettelus,

I have Arturia Audiofuse. It does not have onboard DSP.  Mic positioning, pop filters, shields, stepping away from mic etc.. sure these things work for me to extent.  Here is the issue. Some of my tunes have both gentle and aggressive vocals.  Lowering the input on interface helps of course, but after using gain in Cakewalk at later stages, brings out room  noise and presence is somewhat lost.  The last time I used hardware limiter/compressor was 20 years back.  I had a beat up, cheap unit from fleamarket.  If I remember correctly, It did what it was intended to do, but the quality for "recording" was less than acceptable. Just want to find a solution of taming natural loudness as it comes, without lowering input below comfort level

Byron,

Thanks.

I guess I am out of luck.  I have read Cakewalk thread from years back... I thought things have changed.

I guess if I want the workflow I am after, outboard is the only choice.  My interface was supposed to have DSP on board, but sadly, that was a Sweetwater misprint. The problem is, I am afraid that average outboard stuff will color and introduce noise to the sound... Probably big bucks outboard limiter/compressors modules will not do that, but I can not afford them

Gswitz.,

thanks, however this does not answer my question on using a limiter in live scenario, while singing.

Hi Folks.

Can anybody tell me how I can use a software limiter in Cakewalk in live scenario to reduce clipping while recording vocals (not after the recording)?

Thank you!

Scook,

Silly me,  I was trying to go directly from synth splitting it to specific buses.  Of course that did not work, but when I assigned  plugin audio channels to different audio outputs, created audio tracks linking them to these plugin outputs and routing them into specific buses it did work perfectly. Two problems solved. You are helpful and correct as always. Thank you!

Scook,

It worked perfectly, no issues with solo button. Thank you!!!

Can I please bug you with one other question?  I am assuming that if I decide to move a couple of MIDI tracks from same group to different buses, I would still have to create multiple instances of Halion, or there is a more intelligent way to do it? Thank you for your time.

I am ashamed to admit how little I know, and that I am a little lost...

What does this mean:

"When using multiple MIDI tracks to the same plug-in, it is best to avoid using an instrument track.  Split the instrument track."

How can I split it without loading multiple instances? Halion Sonic is a single plugin synth that has a multichannel "save" for my midi file that has 5 or more tracks.

The only workaround I found is using multiple instances of Halion and routing specific midi tracks to specific Halion instance to specific bus.  Please be patient with me

P.S. Maybe I am being somewhat unclear. I create my multitrack midi file arrangement and corresponding Halion "multibank save state" outside of Cakewalk.  

Then, when I am in Cakewalk I create an instrument track (Halion) and use "import midi" to bring in my midi file (which has 5 or more tracks).  

Scook, thank you for the reply.

Halion is similar to Kontakt...Sampletank in a way. Usually I have my Multi instrument 

bank saved there. I do not believe opening multiple instances of Halion is wise for the

purpose of solving solo button  annoyance.

Hi Folks.

Probably something ridiculous, just can't find the cure.

Here is the scenario.

1) I create an Instrument track in Cakewalk  (Halion VST).

2) I import my Midi arrangement (several tracks) to Cakewalk

3) Everything plays as it should... BUT

If I solo a single track out of lets say 5 playing (In Cakewalk, not the Halion interface)  it will solo that track and the solo is also automatically pressed  on Halion instrument track in Cakewalk.  If I un-click the solo on the midi track, the solo button on Halion  (Instrument track) will remain active, so I have to unclick it manually.  Is there a way to fix this, so the solo button is synced to unclick from actual Instrument?

I hope I am making sense

Thank you!

Hi Folks.

One of the most annoying things for me in digital audio recording is audio latency. Especially when recording vocals. I am aware that there are a million reasons why this can happen and even more "tips@tricks" out there, trying to address the issue.

So here is my request for the feature.  A built in analyzer in Cakewalk, that would run tests on audio input/output of the audio card, system etc on the active setup, meaning with particular opened project or a "heavy" test dummy project....And which would recommend realistic steps, sorted by priority of particular items (Cakewalk or System) that can be addressed on that specific computer to reduce latency, yet preserve the project in original form  (no bouncing of tracks, disabling FX etc.)   Not "general" ideas as in latencymon, something more particular to the "current" setup/project in Cakewalk.

I would call it CALA (Cakewalk Audio Latency Analyzer)   I know, this is request is probably too far from reality, just thoughts. 

Maybe it is there, I just didn't find it. I am learning something new all the time in Cakewalk, but would love to have a feature of hiding/un-hiding muted take lanes and whole muted tracks, so work space is more manageable.  Maybe not a big thing for most of users, but it surely will help some. 

Thank you for considering!

Bob,

thank you for extensive post and trying to help! To clear misunderstanding. I have very powerful computer (for my needs) , that I recorded my projects with. It handled everything absolutely great before recent Windows and Lenovo updates, which came almost simultaneously. After these updates, same  projects that were flying under heavy load  begun to experience severe problems.  With help of folks  (posts above), I got it under control.  It has to do with power management mostly... I am afraid it is power management firmware that I am up against and not your average software that is possible to "unroll".  Lenovo has a tendency of issuing half baked drivers and firmware. Hopefully their gurus correct on next update.

You have some really important points written out. Especially about "look ahead" VSTs... and other items such as mixing/tracking buffers, etc.  Which I knew, but you put in a compact, easy to read/understand form, which I am sure will be picked up by current and future users.

I do have (actually 2) Asio interfaces, which I tried before posting this cry out  

mettelus,  Thanks!

yes,  one of the first 10 things I tried to fix this was "un-parked" CPU 

Turning off network discovery helped a lot.

P.S. I am not tech guru, so forgive me if I sound silly, but I think it would be a very useful feature if Bandlab develops a built diagnostic tool that would  pinpoint exact hardware / software tensions and clashes that particularly effect Cakewalk stability  and would offer suggestion to remedy these.

mettelus, Thanks!

Good wealth of information. (digesting :)) 

Actually turning off ACPI from control panel + disabling network discovery as you suggested, got me where I need to be.  Part of Lenovo update was "power management firmware", I can not unroll it. I guess that what is happening... It manages processes differently than it was prior to update and somehow encroaches on my Cakewalk. 

Wondering if it is possible to move ACPI process to another core? Will do some reading later today. 

This forum is a treasure. I want to thank everybody who helped! Big thanks to mettelus!

P.S. Now, that problem of what was chewing my Cakewalk is narrowed, I will post back when/if I find a solid  solution without disabling ACPI.

HIBI, Thanks. Double checked. Not the BIOS. All power "savings" turned off.

----------------------------------

mettelus,

Excellent  suggestion! Thank you! Got much better.

My issue is definitely resource related, but not very obvious.  Processor is i7-8850H which is fairly decent for my tasks and it was pulling everything very well (30+ tracks whole bunch of VST FX/synths) without any issues/hiccups for several month. This recent "update" was not very polite... Turning off discovery, reduced latency significantly. Last thing on the list was (is) ACPI.... And that is telling me that it is power management related item.  As soon as I switched that off in CP, Cakewalk started to behave like a good child. This is not a permanent solution as by turning ACPI off turns off battery charging, but at least now I know where the evil is coming from.

I found one other item that now, I feel worth investigating. If I turn FX off in Cakewalk, everything runs smoothly... We had a discussion here a couple of month back about plugin "load balancing". To my understanding, this feature in Cakewalk was designed to spread the load of VST's onto multiple cores. 

Looking at CPU cores in Latencymon, while playing back VST heavy project, I saw that only first core (out of six) is taking most of the load... In Cakewalk monitoring window (upper right) it shows that all cores are active pretty much equally... Not sure how to explain this. In task manager CPU usage shows around 35-40% under full load.,  maybe Cakewalk has these dropouts because it is using less cores and putting more stress on these than it could...?

Thank you.

Thank you to all who tried to help! Still, damn thing doesn't want to cooperate. 

Couple of more hours tackling the issue. 

Tried:
Parking CPU (through regedit)
Reinstalling Chipset drivers
Creating new "High Performance" power profile
Rolling back Realtek driver to previous version / reinstalling new

Rolling back USB audio driver / reinstalling freshly downloaded
Checking USB ports in device mgr for power saving...
Even tried go back to one of restore points before the issue started about 6 days back... but got BSOD, so had to come back to latest build.

I even thought that it might be Spectre and Meltdown patch related, as Microsof noted to expect decrease in performance... My machine falls into a 1 digit performance decrease (after the patch), so I doubt it is that.  

Do not know what else to try...

Spoke too soon., it is not wireless adapter. 

LatencyMon shows this wonderful thing: Wdf01000.sys    that has issues. /creating latency. Not sure if IT is the actual problem,

but the dropouts/audio engine has been stopped  unexpectedly thing is not "occasional" .,  Cakewalk starts acting up from first few seconds.

Anybody?

Thank you.

ok, getting some clues. I was looking at CPU monitor when dropouts occurred, and did not spot anything suspicious, but then I saw a spike on network window. I turned network "off" seems like it is helping.  Caught that right before I left home, so need to do more testing. I know it considered to be "good manners" to turn off network when working with audio...but I am not very well mannered guy, as this was never an issue that effected me. Can somebody point me to the right direction to fix Network+Cakewalk issue? Is it to: give priority to programs and not to background services setting or something else?

Thank you.

msmcleod,

Thank you for trying!

 followed that.... did not help. I even reinstalled Cakewalk too,  when suggestions failed.

I do not believe it is directly related to specific card (internal or external), because both were working before without any issues and now both of them exhibit same pattern of behavior.  Almost as computer does not have enough resources...But I know it has plenty because same projects were working absolutely fine last week.

Man, I wish that little Cakewalk "Audio Dropout"  pop up would have a specific cause of the issue.  Not sure what else to try...