Jerry Gerber

Hi Nigel! I can't tell you how much I would enjoy a better word builder. The East West Hollywood Choirs (the one on this movement) is adequate, actually better than adequate, but since it's only a 2nd generation software program, I know there's a lot that can be improved. There may be a few artifacts here and there, I got most of them out through careful programming, but it's not perfect. There is nothing on the market yet to compete with this word builder and East West, I am pretty sure, has abandoned this VST software and is not upgrading it in any way. The choir itself is recorded beautifully and the singers are wonderful. I have grown more fond of the word builder and it really is ingenious. It does take study however, it's not an "out-of-the-box" tool that is going to create perfect results. The Word builder uses a specialized language so to get the words to sound reasonably natural is not always intuitive. For example the phrase "you and I love each other" might have to be programmed YoO and I luv eac! uT!er", or something like that. The manual is good so all of this is explained in detail. Remember, when hearing a live choir in a reverberant hall or church it's not easy to understand the words being sung unless you know them by heart or you have them written down so you can read while listening. That's why I included the words on this recording. Jerry

This is a slow, brooding movement. Scored for VSL orchestral strings, winds and brass. The Yamaha MODX is playing the synth pad, the choir is East West Hollywood Choirs. Here's what the choir is singing (choir doesn't enter until 3:27): Antilogies* abound On your world of joy and pain. Of light and life, of darkness and death-- You make or destroy your soul by love or fear, and govern your fate with every choice you make. Be the witness of living truth, or you may become like a black hole-- where light and life cannot escape, and who you once had been is never more. * antilogies: a contradiction in terms or ideas PLAY Jerry

I'll check it out, thanks Larry..

Thanks everyone for listening and commenting! Much appreciated, Jerry

A song scored for voice (Abby Parker) and VSL strings PLAY

A short instrumental with synths. PLAY

Yes, multiple outputs, 16 ADAT channels coming into the UFX II via 2 discreet ADAT ports. I called RME tech support the other day and the guy I spoke with insisted I was "doing it wrong" by using loopback. But when I did further investigation I found that 1) the manual itself says that when you are recording multiple tracks at once you need to use loopback to get all the tracks recorded (at one time) onto a stereo wave track in Cakewalk and 2), my own experimentation proved to be in agreement with the manual; if you're recording one track to Cakewalk you don't need loopback, but you'll end up with a mono or stereo audio track of that one instrument (or mic recording) only. That's not the way I work. As far as bouncing, that can only be done with audio tracks or synth tracks when the audio from the synth is within Cakewalk. So all is well, the loopback feature works just the way I want it to, after I am done composing and sequencing a piece I render all MIDI and synth tracks to a stereo wave file. Thanks Tom! Jerry

Tom wrote: You must have the midi and the SoftSynth tracks selected to bounce a Synth track; easy as pie Cake! I see what you've done, and I could be wrong, but most of my MIDI Tracks are assigned via Ethernet (MIDI out) to a 2nd computer that handles the Vienna Symphonic Library Orchestral Cube. They are simple MIDI tracks, with only MIDI data. MIDI data contains no sound, no audio, no wave files. It's just data. I can bounce them, trim them, copy them and paste them, but I still don't see how you are converting them to audio without actually recording the tracks to an audio track in real time. The VSL machine sends the MIDI data back to Cakewalk as audio via ADAT ports. It's this audio that I record using the UFX II's loopback function. When I call up the same dialogue box that you have in your above post, I see no option to convert MIDI to audio. The only source track that I am being shown that can be bounced is the one track that is a softsynth and the audio connected to it, this softsynth resides in the DAW as a plug-in under Cakewalk. Either am completely missing something, or we are working differently. I suspect everyone who used Cakewalk uses it slightly differently than others. songwriters, engineers, sound designers, live recording---all these approaches require we learn our own workflow differently. Either I am really slow (I am!) or it's just not possible to render a single MIDI track that is not triggering a plug-in within Cakewalk to audio. Is that your experience? J

Hi Tom, For the life of me I can't figure out, and never have been able to, how to bounce MIDI tracks to audio. I can bounce audio tracks, I do it all the time, I can bounce synths (instrument) tracks even though I never need to, but I have no idea how to bounce a track that only consists of MIDI data to audio. I can copy MIDI tracks, but that just copies the MIDI data, it doesn't render the track into audio. The manual of the UFX II confirms that if you want to record MULTIPLE tracks from a DAW, the best way to do it is to use Loopback. Otherwise, you can only record the input channel that corresponds to the hardware output channel, which means you end up with multiple audio tracks rather than one stereo audio track that contains all the tracks in a Cakewalk project. If there's a way to bounce MIDI tracks and turn them into audio, I'm all ears!!!! Best, Jerry

by the way, which model of Focal monitors did you get? I hear good things about their monitors. I mixed the 2nd movement of symphony #12 on AdamS3H's...

Wow, you made me laugh bitflipper! I am glad my audio skills are coming along, Yes, I am a bit of a obsessive-compulsive personality, no doubt. I am still working on being a fully civilized person-not there quite yet!

Thanks Tom! I compose a piece in CW and it might contain many midi tracks and numerous softsynth tracks. When I am ready to render everything to a wave file, I don't create stems, I create a stereo track of all the instruments in the piece. So I think the loopback function is ideal for me. Otherwise, I'd have to choose which instruments go to to which output , which means I'd have to record an audio track for each softsynth (or bounce them) and the midi tracks would have to be recorded in multiple takes based on which ADAT input they're coming into. That's an awful lot of work for my purposes. Instead, I created on stereo output channel on TotalMix that is receiving signal from outputs 7-8, which are then looped back into Cakewalk. This way I record all of the MIDI and software synth tracks in one fell swoop. Since I do extensive editing and mixing in CW, there's no need for audio stems. The only time I want that is when I am recording a soloist or singer and need to take multiple takes which become a composite track using bouncing. I am not hearing any delay in the recorded audio track that is noticeable. CW is reporting an input latency of around 6.2 ms seconds and an output latency of 7.1 ms. Using 1 stereo output channel with loopback that renders a stereo wave file of all my tracks is the most efficient way for me to use the UFX II and Total Mix FX. The Total FX manual confirms this on page 78. Best, Jerry

Thanks Scook, but that's not the issue. When I am done composing a piece, I record all the MIDI tracks and all the soft synth tracks together and render them into a stereo wave file. I don't bother to turn the instrument tracks into audio separately, they are already mixed exactly as I want them. With the MOTU 1248, which I was using before I got the UFX II, all I did was record all of the tracks back into Cakewalk; the USB cable sends MIDI data, audio and synth tracks in both directions. No loopback involved. I have figured out how to achieve the same results with the UFX II but I have to use the loopback function. I am not sure why, but I see no other options as far as getting audio into Cakewalk. Is this by design, or am I not understanding something? My confusion, I think, isn't about using Cakewalk, it's about understanding the UFX II and the TotalMix software...

Hey Tom or Scook, I think I am not understanding something about recording into Cakewalk. Say I have a piece with 20 midi tracks and some soft synths. I named a hardware output channel on TotalMix FX "Rec to DAW" and turned on the loopback function and the cue function so I can hear exactly what's going to get recorded back into Cakewalk as a stereo audio file. No other submix is receiving audio other than this one hardware output. Am I doing this right? Is there another way to get the MIDI and synth tracks recorded in CW as a stereo audio track without using the loopback function? The video on RME's website suggests that there is, but I haven't figured it out yet. Thanks, Jerry

I figured out why RME names the drivers as they do. Each USB output, using the loopback function, can be routed back into Cakewalk as well as sending signal to any hardware output on the UFX II. That's why they name each USB driver ADAT, AES, or Analog--those are the hardware outputs. After using the MOTU 1248 for years it didn't make sense at first. But now it does, TotalMix FX is far more flexible in both routing and submixes..