Brian Walton

13 minutes ago, jesse g said:

It's because they are making money from WUP that they can sell their plugins so low.   Think of it, 20 to 40 or more plugins upgraded annually from most users is $$$$$$ to Waves.

I'm not convinced that is the only reason.

Selling hundreds at $30 to people that would never ever even consider a $200 single plugin also adds up fast.  I think they did enough reseach to figure out what the market really is these days.

Spitfire Audio LABS

https://www.spitfireaudio.com/labs/

On ‎7‎/‎17‎/‎2019 at 6:29 PM, Starship Krupa said:

These are some great links! Who needs a sticky when this keeps getting the bump? Of course I cheat it a bit by not posting the masses of links like mibby did!

Boz Digital Labs has some good stuff, especially Bark of Dog, which is a bass management/enhancement tool that used to ship with Sonar Platinum as a ProChannel module. It's now up to Bark of Dog 2, which unfortunately doesn't come in a ProChannel module format.

Boz is a good guy, though, and if you tell him that you're running CbB and ask him nicely, he might let you download the original, which will install both the VST and the ProChannel module.

Another note about the Computer Music plug-ins, one of them is Sidewidener by Boz Digital and Joey Sturgis Tones, and it is my hands-down favorite way to stereoize and enhance mono sources like iPhone recordings. One challenge I take on for fun is to take mono rehearsal recordings, like where someone set their phone down at band practice, and polish them up as best I can using things like Sidewidener, iZotope RX, proximity eq+, iZotope Neutron's transient shaper and so forth.

My friends marvel at the results and it's a fun challenge and a good way to learn what the tools are capable of. Sidewidener is the best.

Love Boz's stuff and the Sidewinder I think was my introduction.  I used that all the time.  

However, when Izotope came out of the free Imager, I found that became my go-to and Sidewinder the backup.   Both are excellent.

On 7/15/2019 at 2:25 PM, craigb said:

I believe there is an "upstairs" to this place.  THAT is where things should be both helpful and on topic.  Expecting things to conform in the Coffee House is like expecting guests at a picnic to only talk about one topic - not going to happen!  Nor should it.  I work 90+ hours a week between a start-up and the older company that still pays the bills.  This place accounts for the vast majority of my socializing for the entire week (sad, isn't it?).

Exactly.  Anything goes in this sub forum (within the rules), but I expect the other places to be on-topic.   

17 hours ago, Starship Krupa said:

It is excellent, and the one I use most, but if you dig deeply into Meldaproduction's MEqualizer, it does just about everything that the QuadCurve EQ does, plus way more, if you start digging into the deep features. Try the harmonics for one thing, and it also throws in this really great sounding saturation knob, if you choose to access it.

It has the scaleable GUI, your choice of skins, color schemes, bunches of sonogram and analyzer options, mid-side, more stuff than I can list.

For me, the PC QuadCurve is my everyday workhorse, but when I really need to go to work on something, it's MEqualizer (or one of my paid plug-ins).

I'd have no problem being given nothing but what comes with CbB and putting together a decent mix. It would be more work, and it might not pop and tickle as much as if I had my favorites to work with, but I could get it done in style.

Everything else just makes it faster and more fun, and in some cases lets me work magic with challenging material like phone recordings.

I'd agree the MEqualizer is very feature rich for a free EQ.  I didn't find the interface to be as welcoming but see value in using it for more surgical and unique tasks.

The Pro-Channel is straight forward and easy to dial in without a lot of clutter and its place in the PC adds extra value. 

MEqualizer would be my suggestion though if I was using any other DAW, excellent addtion to the thread.

PC EQ beats any free EQ I've ever seen.

Both ReMatrix and B-Reverb are top notch

Tape, Channel Emulation good (but expensive alternatives sound better, IMO)

The compressor is ok, but a number of Paid compressors I'd argue are a noticeable improvement (if for nothing else versatility).  

Pro-Channel as a whole is fantastic and can easily produce pro quality results in the right hands.  I'd love to see more effects and options added as the format certainly beats VST windows.  

17 hours ago, razor7music said:

I think this post belongs in the Feedback Loop forum. 😛

Not related to the product itself, so I think not

"Provide feedback on features, ideas and requests for future releases of Cakewalk by BandLab"

Have access to the real thing this is modeled/sampled.  Demo sounds pretty good for those that don't have the access or need the editing functions that Midi can provide.

For the demo songs, oddly enough the bass is a little low in the mix, IMO.  

The amount of threads not related to "Discussion focused on all things related to Cakewalk by BandLab software, the DAW formerly known as SONAR Platinum" are getting out of hand.

I've even posted within a few of them, but wondder at what point I should be posting the "this is the wrong forum" instead of providing advise and direction.   

20 hours ago, mibby said:

I don't think that is correct.  Not an iLok fan - but I recently de-authorized my SoundToys plugins on a PC and freed up an Activation slot.  I now have 1 of 2 available...  Unless I am mis-remembering and SoundToys gives you 3 Activations. (??)

All 7 of mine say 2 activations and there does not appear to be an option to deactivate On-Line.

Yes, you can deactivate on a working machine, but the point being if that machine does down, there is not option to then free up that seat via the portal (from what I see).  Thus you lose a seat if your HD fails, unlike many other plugin providers.

I do recall a long time ago that ilok would let you lose and replace your dongle liscence once a year at a max, but I'm not sure if that applies to the local authorization as well.  

6 hours ago, Warren Postma said:

Tezza, man, the voltage of the power supply has NO effect on the quality or the amount of "power" an amplifier or a DAC has.

That being said, most USB DACs do have an option to have their own power supply. The problem is not voltage, it's total current draw from a USB port.

Saying that 5V versus 12VDC matters tells me you haven't got a lot of knowledge about electricity, or possibly, audio, in general.

A USB port limits the total Amps you can draw.  However, you do not need more amps than a USB port can provide to effectively drive a pair of HD6xxx cans.

The problem with laptop audio is  NOT ONLY  to do with the total RMS wattage output of the laptop audio interface, it has to do with the extremely LOW quality of the analog elements of the amplifier circuit and the digital to analog (DAC) convertor stages on board your laptop sound card.

Google "DC to DC convertor", Tezza, my dude.    You can turn a 5 VDC signal into a 12 VDC signal.    What you can't do is exceed the total power in DC watts (volts times amps) that a particular source can provide, and that source, in both cases, is pretty weak.  Good thing it's not a problem of power, but rather of clean signal, high fidelity, rather than "power".    We absolutely don't need more power than a laptop can provide to drive headphones.

These cans are not high resistance, they are high impedance.   So many audiophile websites on the web are so full of nonsense.
Headphone amps are overcoming impedance with a higher signal level. So far so good.  The thing is that your laptop and your usb powered DAC absolutely have enough power to provide a much higher signal level. We're not driving a 10" speaker here. We're driving some cans.  A 10x higher impedance means a 10x higher signal than needed to drive earbuds.  All well within the capacity of your usb DAC.

USB3 can deliver 900 mA, almost an AMP.   USB2 can deliver half an amp.  5 vdc at half an amp can probably drive any headphones in the world.

 

 

I think we disagree on what "effectively drive" means.  Will you hear sound that comes out?  Yes.  Will that sound be as rich sounding as it would with something of the same fidelity but drives it better?  Nope, it won't. 

Thus they are not a good match.  250 ohms is too high for the way that particular interface is designed. 

2 minutes ago, abacab said:

Yep, I'm with you, but everybody had the opportunity to vote.

As @Craig Anderton expressed above, "CbB is a mature program. It really doesn't lack anything that's needed to make pro-level music."

My vote would go to  MIDI editing (such as chord editing), but the audio editing area seems to have taken at least a 2:1 lead over that item.

As far as workarounds for lack of MIDI editing or songwriting tools, in my opinion the best strategy at this point would be to do that workflow in another DAW that does have those features (such as chord tools), and then export the MIDI results to Cakewalk.

Those that compose with notation have long wished for a remake of the Cakewalk staff view, which was never completely ruled out under Gibson, but looks even more distant now.  At this time the only other realistic option for a full featured score editor is to use a 3rd party notation program.

I'd like to think there are far more than 1K users (the number in that poll)   😄

My point is I think many of those that voted don't even know what they are talking about.  I'm a heavy "audio" user, but I also realize that Cakewalk doesn't have a whole lot they could develop there, so what would be the point voting for that?  

So few people use Standard Notation in an digital enviroment, I understand why it wouldn't get much attention.  

Both MIDI and Audio are at the forefront of modern prodcution and the tools to make composition easiser/better seems like low hanging fruit for a company that wants to make music production accessable to all.  A great composition has universal appeal, "technical" improvements to audio editing - seems like things that are unnecesary considering the tools we have now.  

Is it concerning to me that the majority of users don't understand what is of value in music production?  Maybe a little bit. 😂

23 minutes ago, abacab said:

I think that is is highly likely that the direction of available development resources will be   based on the results of this recent Cakewalk poll from @Jesse Jost

Can you guess what the top feature area voted for was?

The answer is in the poll results at the top of the linked post.

 

 

I had not seen that.  Good call.  Though it seems interesting to me that the community that did vote put Audio Editing development as #1.  

Outside of something like Spectral Editing, note quite sure where I expect Cakewalk to go with that one.  

There just isn't that much more that is out there (considering effects such as noise reduction, is a seperate catergory).  

Glancing through a number of comments on the subject, I'm not sure all of the users understand the scope of what that audio editing catergory would encompas.  

I'll also note that the vast majority of music production doesn't need better technical mixing, it needs better music and composition.  Most people don't seem to grasp that is the real improvement they need to make the music actually matter.  The technical tools we have are so far beyond what was used to record long term impactful recordings.  The challenge is far more a creative one than a technical one with what we have at our disposal.  

5 minutes ago, John Maar said:

Haven't tried. Kept hoping for machine auth.

Most (all of mine?) plugins that use machine auth. permit 2 or 3 activations, enough to get you going on a replacement PC before trying to get the used activation back.

Right most permit 2-3 authorizaitons.  However, iLok in theory you don't get that "lost authorization" back if the HD fails since there is no on-line deauthorizatoin available like other providers offer (XLN Audio is one example).  

I personally use 2-3 authorizations in my environment, thus losing an authorization outright equals a decision to either pay for more or switch to a provider without such problems.  Thus why I tend to never use iLok applications unless I feel there is a real need to, and that is fairly rare.  

6 minutes ago, Craig Anderton said:

Well after my semi-humorous response, here's what I think of the current situation. Again...this is speculation on my part.

CbB is a mature program. It really doesn't lack anything that's needed to make pro-level music. You can point to features that other programs have and say "CbB doesn't have them, therefore it still needs ongoing development" but you can also point to features CbB has that other programs don't have, like Upsampling, Mix Recall, the QuadCurve EQ, etc.  And it's important to note that CbB has been receiving ongoing development. In addition to bug fixes and smaller changes, the program has implemented ARA2 and elastique pro time-stretching. Neither is trivial. And, the latest iteration of the export function hints at further integration with BandLab, which could turn into a big deal over time. 

So the bottom line is CbB does everything did SONAR did, which a lot of people thought was enough for a DAW, but it now does more. If I were BandLab, I wouldn't feel compelled to prioritize Cakewalk over introducing a new line of guitars (which I believe will be well-received) and some other current BandLab initiatives. CbB continues to evolve and be maintained, which I think says all you need to know. 

Personally, I'd like to see an online store where people could buy the "missing pieces" that were in Platinum but aren't in CbB. But what with Waves, Native Instruments, IK Mutimedia, Arturia, Melda, and a zillion other plug-in developers, it's not like we can't get work done

Bottom line: Don't worry, be happy, make music. 

 

+1 what Cakewalk offers is plenty for the future already.

The only thing I'd really like to see is some simple arrangement "chord" type of tool built into the interface.  Would be helpful to see, create chords and song structure in an easy to setup and with a sizable view.  This kind of thing (Kind of Like EZ Keys) is harder to work with as an "external" tool.  

I think this would also help bridge the gap for newer composers.  

Not needed of course, but is one of the view things I could see as a real value add to the way the whole tool could be used.

5 minutes ago, John Maar said:

At least Soundtoys allows PC authorization, unlike Slate, which forces you into either a hardware key or, MUCH worse, the iLok Cloud, where the plugins keeps checking for auth via the internet. Sure wish I could get that money back.

True, but last I checked I was thinking the "local" ilok manager requires deactivation from the PC.  So if that HD fails for some reason, you just lost hundreds, or thousands worth of virtual gear.  

And yes, I can't see any possible scenario where I'd pay for a Slate like system.  You can't resale Slate either??  

21 hours ago, Tezza said:

I also posted this on another tread just recently, may be more relevant here:

 

It's nice to have monitors because you don't want to be wearing headphones all the time but the truth is, unless your in a good acoustic environment for your monitors then you are probably better off using 2 or 3 pairs of headphones both to set up and mix and then use the monitors as reference.

I also have 4 pairs of headphones at the moment as well and I find I mainly use those for setting up sounds etc.

HD 280 Pro - Best isolation of any studio headphone i've heard, great for getting a good sound from your acoustic guitar and separating harmonies but highs just a touch harsh, a bit clampy and weird looking on your head

HD 380 Pro - Really comfortable to wear for long periods and great for vocals and separating out midrange instruments, they look pretty cool as well.

ATH-M50X - cups are a bit small, just touch top and bottom of my ears, i don't have particularly big ears, they make everything sound good but not that accurate on midrange instruments. Brilliant for hearing drums and bass, toms, kicks, can hear really well, great for general listening and when your first putting stuff together and don't want to be bothered that much about what things sound like.

HD 598 - very light and comfortable, good for general mixing and vocal foldback monitors when there is no click involved, I don't care about bleed from instruments! I seem to be using these a bit more for general listening. They certainly seem more sensitive to anything that is not mixed right. Also great for identifying stereo placement.

I was going to choose between these headphones but instead have decided to keep them and get a headphone bag to put them all in.

Word of warning my black official Senn headphone bag....black rubs off on the Cream headband of the 598s.  I baby my headphones and they basically look abused b/c of that bag.  I also imagine this might be the reason for the color change on the 599 headband.  

7 hours ago, John Maar said:

Yup! Not Soundtoys (best bundle ever!), but quite useful tools.

I only have about 6-7 of the smaller Soundtoys plugs but the Bozbplugs I have get used on every single project.   Soundtoys sound great but seem like the every now and then use for the ones I have.  I also never use an ilok plug if I have an equal with a more liberal authorization process.

Mongoose, Pan, T-bone, manic Comp

Clipper, delay, Sasquatch, gate all are go tos when the effect is needed.

10 hours ago, Billy86 said:

 Some good things to think about here. In researching, I noticed on some headphones I’m considering the ohm rating.  I don’t use a headphone amp, I’m coming straight out of a Focusrite Scarlett 2i4.   From what I’ve read, the higher the ohms rating the more power it takes to drive headphones 

Will my set up efficiently drive a pair of headphones rated at 250 Ohms?   Or should I look for a lower rating? 

I'd look for a lower rating.  You won't have the output the phones are capable of using 250 Ohms headphones with it.  They would benefit from adding an amp to the stage. 

With a much lower rating an amp wouldn't be necessary at all.

8 hours ago, Sonarman said:

which country are you from if you are from USA you should have a look at massdrop 

https://drop.com/top-list/Headphones

They basically sell the same headphones with different nameplates. These headphones come from the manufactures itself but made exclusively for massdrop. They also come with manufacturer warranty. You can still buy if you are outside US, but you might end up paying a lot for shipping.  

https://drop.com/buy/massdrop-sennheiser-hd6xx as you can see you can buy the same 400$ HD650 by paying about 220$ and its totally reliable. Hope this helps. 

A friend bought a pair and we did side by side testing with my 600 and 650s.  All 3 were a little different. 

They are not made down to the "t" the same.  Excellent headphones, no question about that.  Not sure how well they do with resale haven't tracked that.

The 600s or 650s are more relaxed, like sitting farther away.  The 590s series are more upfront.  While the drop phones are a good value compared to the 650s, they are still quite a bit more expensive than the 599s which I prefer and I've done a few listening sessions in a studio with friends and I'm not alone.  I like 600s for classical recordings, but tend to prefer 590s for just about everything else. 

16 hours ago, Toddskins said:

Hey Billy,

I'm getting ready in the next few days to drop about $320 (including shipping) for some new headphones.  Sennheiser HD 650. 

I know that's out of your budget (mine, too), but let me just tell you a quick story.  My general, cheap AKG K240S are very old and I know I want a new pair.  Also, I'm finally at the point in my life where I can, finally, do some recording and mixing.

A couple weeks ago I went up to Sweetwater Music for their Gear Fest for all the free workshops (most interested in mixing), and while in the retail store, they had a wall of numerous headphones that you can try on and listen through - all playing the same track.

There was absolutely no comparison in sound from the 2 Sennheiser models they had (600 and the 650, and are open cans) and all the others.  No comparison.  And they were the last 2 pair I put on.

I also could not get over how comfortable the Sennheisers (HD 600, and HD 650) were with large cans that go over the ear and not on the ear, and the incredible space and sound dynamics I heard.  I was sold instantly.  More than I was intending to spend, but I cannot be happy with others now.  I could not hear any difference between the two, but the HD 650 goes up to 39,500 htz, whereas the HD 600 goes up to 39,000.  I was going to get the HD 600 because they look nicer, but....

One last quick note, just in case I have persuaded you -- The HD 600 (which is prettier, blue) cable comes with a mini (1/8", or 3.5mm) plug and an 1/4" adapter.  The HD 650 comes reversed, with a 1/4" plug and a mini adapter.  That point alone is making me spend the extra $25 because I hate using adapters, and all my usage will be to plug into 1/4" slots.

Have owned the 580s, 600s, 650s.

I prefer the sound (and comfort of the 595, 598, and 599s.   plus side they are a lot cheaper and are more easily driven by different musical sources.  

20 minutes ago, mibby said:

It feels like the opposite to me - like the big boys are radically dropping prices and putting the squeeze on the small shops...

I'm under the impression it is a little mix of both depending on the product.  Realistilly a lot of it is market driven.  I never understood the model of $150+ for a single plugin effect for anything other than a full blown studio in terms of rationalization from a budget perspective and with DAWs now including real usable effects in the package, it makes even less sense.  Unlike a piece of hardware, the software runs a chance of being "worthless" in a limited amount of time.  Current state they have many advantages over hardware in the short term, but your average home producer has a budget that is more in line with where the market is heading than what the manufactures were trying to dictate 10 years ago.   

I'd much rather have a competive product from Boz than the "big name" due to things like authorization methods and install processes.  

In the case of the +10db, is has to be hard to compete with something like the Waves Omni Channel when it goes on sale for around $25, outside of those of us with multiple workstations that would need to buy are than one seat to seamlessly use across platforms.  

Since when is the Abbey Road Bundle $1K?

Don't get me wrong that is one to the best things Waves offers as a package but seems like a bit of an oversell.  

Hate to say it, but having to listen to that song for as long as it would take to mix it would not be worth the top prize, IMO.  

Really like this pluign, but does anyone else have issues running this in 64bit VST in current Cakewalk version?

VST2 works fine, but VST3 on my machine freezes the entire project for some reason.  His other VST3s don't have this issue.  

52 minutes ago, Mesh said:

It's the thought that counts

I've had this, but don't really use it...

V1 gets more use from me because of the Pro-Channel module.  

And since not everyone knew about it, always good to get the word out about a solid freebie.