bitflipper

Cakewalk will abort after a buffer underrun extending beyond a given period (IIRC, 250 ms by default). Could be the project was still loading samples, or there was some background process preventing the CPU from filling the output buffers in time. I have some very large projects where the only way to get them to reliably play on the first try is to open them and then go make coffee.

See? While any one of us may be full of it on a given point, collectively we're a frickin' encyclopedia. (Kirby, I gather you're old enough to know what an "encyclopedia" is. For the kids, it's like Google with less - but better - information.)

P.S. I'm not sure if F11 is still the default keypress for inserting markers. That may have changed at some point in the past and I've just reset it to F11 on my machine because I'm an old codger who hates change. If that's the case, somebody will correct me, I'm sure.

Lucky for you, you got the attention of an actual expert in this sort of thing. It's what Geoff (Gswitz) does. Unfortunately, experts can sometimes inadvertently talk over your head. If you're really lucky, he'll make a video for you. In the meantime, let me take a stab... It sounds like you've managed to get the original recording into Cakewalk. At this point you have a crazy-long file sitting there. Unfortunately, there will be a lot of horizontal scrolling to get the editing done, but it can be done. First thing I'd do is scroll the track until you get to the start of the silent part. Press F11 to insert a marker there (best to put it slightly to the right of the start of silence). Then scroll until you get to the end of the silent part and press F11 again to insert another marker there. What you're doing is specifying everywhere you want to split up the long file into smaller files. You can put in as many markers as you need. Right-click on the track and select "Split..." from the context menu. You'll be presented with several split options, one of which is "Split at each marker". Select that one and click OK. You'll now have multiple clips, one of which will contain the silent part. There will just be a thin vertical line showing where the boundaries between clips are. In the track header, there is a dropdown list that may say "Volume". Select "Clips" from that list, which will allow you to select individual clips. You can now click on that silent clip and hit the Delete key to make it go away. At this point you still have silence, but you can get rid of it by sliding every clip to the right of it to the left until it butts up against the first audio portion. Finally, use slip-edits to make gentle transitions between the remaining clips. Hover the mouse pointer over a clip until you see a little triangle cursor. A little experimentation will let you get the hang of it. It's non-destructive, so if you don't like your first attempt just press CTL-Z to undo and try again.

You're trying to bait me, aren't you? 😄 Well, thanks! That's the equivalent of slapping an unconscious guy while yelling "stay with us, dammit!".

Thanks for all your well-wishes, everyone. Lots of longtime friends here I'd be sad to bid goodbye to. My absence here has just been due to a new emphasis on live performance that's stolen the focus away from recording. As many of you know, I reluctantly joined a band after the death of my wife, as a way to combat the natural instinct to withdraw from an abruptly empty world. Every piece of advice I came across said to remain social and encourage human connections. That band decision was made reluctantly because, frankly, most live music hurts my ears. But making a not-awful band has given me purpose. Truthfully, it's still a work-in-progress. The band still sucks, but not as badly as it used to. And not as badly as most bar bands I hear, to be honest. It's not a high bar. Even though my voice will never be where it was in my 30's when I sang 6 nights a week, my keyboard chops are better now than they've ever been. Calmer, more tasteful and thought-out. Gone is the need to impress strangers with lightning-fast licks, replaced by a desire to simply serve the song. My doctors insisted that I not play piano for at least a week, lest I rip open the wrist incision and bleed out. That meant cancelling this weekend's gig. Damn. I also can't drink coffee, which, ironically, has encouraged insomnia. That has left me in a strange waking-dream state, but maybe that'll actually be conducive to creativity. Lemonade, you know. BTW, Sean Costello's new delay is really good.

Well, not literally. I didn't actually die. Saw it up close, though, and through the haze of excruciating pain I accepted that possibility as a welcome relief. But for the fourth time, medical technology brought me back. Looks like the book of my life has at least one more chapter to go before it concludes. Whatever the contents of that chapter may be, I'm confident that the subject of what's the best delay plugin isn't gonna be in it.

Hmm. Rush didn't make the list?

Looks nice, Ed. Don't worry, it'll clutter up nicely in time. I don't think of it as "clutter", but rather "acoustical diffusion".

T on Y, since the project is just for your own entertainment, why not experiment with the arpeggiator, a soft synth and some randomly-selected patches? You might be pleasantly surprised with what you come up with. It worked for Jarre.

Whoa, you're thinking of wiping the drive because some file associations got changed? Yikes! No need to make more work for yourself. The file association changes actually make sense because you now have two applications that can read the same files - so you have to choose one. If you'd installed a better text editor than Notepad, you'd expect it to open .txt files, right? But you always have the option of changing the file associations back if you'd rather 8.5 be your default DAW. 8.5 and CbB can happily coexist, each with their own file locations. But one or the other must be designated as the one that wakes up when you double-click on a project file.

Doesn't stop him from recording on ProTools. 😉 It's not the computer's fault. The adage "GIGO" has just morphed into "Garbage In -> Turd Polisher -> Somewhat less-stinky garbage out". I prefer to think of it as democratization. We all have the option of quantizing or not, pitch correcting or not, comping 34 takes or grabbing it live in one pass. Or choose a key other than Am. The computer might allow me to drain someone's bank account, but it doesn't demand it. BTW, I am a big fan of Rick Beato. If you like his content, look up his buddy Adam Neely, who does a great job explaining music theory.

You still have to route the synth's audio to an audio track, but then click the track's "Input Echo" button. As you play the synth, it will be routed through the track's fx bin and its sends as if you were playing back recorded audio. There can, however, be significant latency (delay) between the time you press a key and then hear a note, depending on what effects are active and your buffer settings.

OK, since we're comparing the lengths of our, um, service...abacab, I was the guy your school would have called in to repair said paper tape machine, card reader or teletype console. I have little nostalgia for that time, though, given that I often was covered in grease and ink by the end of the day - despite having to wear a suit and tie to work. But I spent my free time learning software, became a software support analyst and saved a fortune in dry-cleaning bills. I became the guy your COBOL instructor would call to complain that the compiler didn't implement register optimization the way he expected it to. By the late 80's that had led to a career in programming, software and database design. Now I can wear the jeans 'n t-shirt uniform that I always wanted, and most days don't get dirty except when telling jokes.

I like to sit down with a fully-mapped orchestra that brings in different instruments based on velocity and MIDI values. One of my favorites is Solid State Symphony from Indiginus, but there are plenty of others such as the Symphony instrument in Amadeus Symphonic Orchestra from Sonic Scores (based on Tracy Collins' SSS but with real instruments). In the review I wrote recently for ASO, I included a couple of improvised real-time, made up on the spot jams to demonstrate the instrument. You can also create your own multi-instrument jam platform using Kontakt multis, such as the ones in SampleLogic's Cinematic Guitars series. Granted, an orchestral example probably doesn't fit your genre, but the principle applies to any genre. It's simply the time-honored process called "jamming". I promise that you will eventually come up with something interesting in less than an hour. And that's when you start up the DAW and make a recording. Not necessarily a full song; it can be just a fragment for future reference. I have a project set aside just for remembering unrelated chord progressions, licks and melodies. When I'm stuck for an idea I'll often go back to those for inspiration.

That was a brilliant bookmark-worthy post, John. Your conclusion about the power of suggestion is spot on. Then again, why do TV newsreaders universally have low-pitched voices? Could they be tapping into cosmic vibrations that make them sound more credible? An interesting experiment would be to play back Piers Morgan at a slower speed and see if people suddenly find him credible.

You may have too many plugins if ... - you have some that you've never figured out how to use - you've accidentally purchased a plugin you forgot you already had - you have bought any "every plugin" bundle from any vendor - you still think that a "musical" EQ or compressor is a real thing, and you just don't have it yet - you have more than one tambourine and/or cowbell library - you have more than one convolution reverb - you have ever been mesmerized by a Dan Worrall video, AKA Hypno-Toad - you are trying or have ever tried to keep up with bapu

Whenever I think about the past, it brings up so many memories! When I sit around with my geezer contemporaries these days, we're not talking about CP/M or Berkeley vs. AT&T as much as about what body parts are failing at the moment. Although sometimes I do get nostalgic for vi. Back then, composing a text message was a real skill.

Mesh, you're going to do well with those M50's. I can't think of another model that's as versatile for the price (and most of us paid more than $129 for ours). Isolation is decent enough for tracking, frequency response is good enough for at the least the early stages of the mix process, transients are clear enough for detail editing, and they're not bad for just kicking back and listening for enjoyment. That said, I have moved away from the M50 as a single do-all headphone solution. All headphones compromise something. It's about physics, which no amount of money can defy. The M50 achieves a practical balance of compromises, but... For tracking, I want better isolation. For mixing I want a less-hyped bass. For lying in the dark listening to music, I want clarity and a flat response. Because no single headphone model can do all that, I've resigned myself to having a different headphone for each purpose. The M50s still serve for editing tasks such as Melodyne tweaking and cutting/fading clips, but the HD280Pro's superior isolation and midrangey-ness makes it better suited for vocal tracking. The HD650s are for pleasure listening only, being too nice-sounding for critical listening but deeply satisfying for immersing myself in my favorite music. I use the very similar but less-expensive HD558s for travel, just because they're older so I wouldn't be as heartbroken if they got crushed in transit.

There's a downside to disabling the zero-controllers option, which is why it's an option in the first place. Weird stuff can happen if you don't zero controllers when playback stops, such as restarting playback and the sustain pedal is stuck down (resulting in stuck notes), or an instrument playing out of tune because of where the pitch wheel was last set. For this reason, I combat the Kontakt modwheel problem using msmcleod's method of inserting a CC1 event at the start of the track. It's a small bother, but the problem mostly affects orchestral libraries that I'm probably going to add CC1 events to anyway.

Is your whole house that tidy? I'm guessing probably not. Then again, kitchen utensils and your wife's knickknacks don't really lend themselves to wire tie organization. My own rack keeps getting emptier as I cannibalize it for the band. Gotta get some more blank panels.

I've been a Sweetwater customer for many years. Service has always been excellent (although I've only dealt with two employees in all that time, so maybe I just got lucky). Shout out to Dennis Konicki, my guy at Sweetwater. If only Guitar Center salespeople were as self-confident and honest enough to say "hmm, I don't know; lemme check", I might still be doing business with them. Dennis has been a good source of solid advice - for a bass player. After dozens of purchases big and small, I've only been disappointed once, and that was partly my own fault. I had ordered a keyboard case only to find that my keyboard did not fit inside it. Of course, they took it back but I had to pay $95 to ship the case back to them. The moral of that story: measure twice, cut once.

It might be helpful to specify exactly which "various sidechainable plugins" you're using. It could be a specific combination of plugins, and that's why it's not a widespread problem. Also, presumably you have crash dumps that would identify whether the fatal error was raised by CbB itself or a plugin. That's the first place I look after a crash has occurred. 98% of the time it'll point to a specific third-party plugin, usually a recent acquisition that I haven't established a track record with yet. I have, however, never experienced a sidechain-related crash with any plugin, and I use sidechaining a lot. One other thought...if the project does not consistently crash, then the problem could lie outside the DAW entirely. If it does crash consistently, that's the best possible scenario because then you'd have a reproducible bug that Noel & Co can analyze. If it's a big project, make a copy of it and start removing plugins until you've boiled it down to the simplest demonstration of the crash. Doing that has sometimes pointed me in a surprising direction, toward some factor that I'd previously not thought of as being relevant.

Sadly, it's not that old a picture. Less than 5 years, IIRC. I say "sadly" because in those short intervening years my hair has taken on the same hue as my beard and the small bald spot you can't see in the photo has expanded greatly. My daughter commented that nothing looks dumber than a balding guy with long hair (or worse, a pony tail, which I was often guilty of). So I cut it all off. RE Craig's Yes/Halloween comment: I actually still have a couple Wakeman-esque wizard robes and dragon kimonos in the closet from my glam-rock days. Might have to have those dry cleaned before Halloween, the only appropriate time to actually don them. I'd need a wig, however, to complete the image. I can relate to the hospital discharge story, as can we all. My theory is that they intentionally drag the process out in order to bill an extra day's stay. It's happened that way every time I've been in hospital: in the morning they inform me that I'll be released, but it doesn't actually happen until afternoon. In the meantime they've brought me a fresh $100 toothbrush and a $50 sandwich. Yes, I realize that's just here in the U.S. - nobody in Australia, the UK, Canada or the civilized world in general has ever seen a bill for a $20 plastic cup.

As a fellow four-timer, I can tell you that life gets better quickly once you unclog that lifetime's worth of kielbasas and big macs. Just remember to eat your veggies and you'll be feeling 20 years younger in a few weeks.