Kalle Rantaaho

I would set the interleave to mono anyways, because I don't trust the stereo FX. It does some stereo magic without telling me and the kick will lose grit.

To get the picture: All other programs run normally? My first thought was a hardware failure.

Dealing with EDM and several soft synths it's important to think over how the sounds match. Many synth sounds include variable portions of very low frequencies, even though the general sound isn't bassy. If you have several soft synths with bass content, decide which one has the bass "dominance" at any particular point. It may require cutting the lows of other synths very radically. Using reference tracks and frequency analyser can be very important in case of a hearing problem.

If CW automatically converts MP3's to wav at import, doesn't the edited and saved result remain as wav, unless you export it sa MP3? Meaning, CW does not edit MP3's, as it always converts them to wav?

Ok. What serves you, serves you. No problem with that. If Soundfonts are what you want to use, then I guess that's a fluent way. I just compared your method with the normal soft synth procedure. Not many use Soundfonts anymore, AFAIK. By the way, bouncing or freezing a MIDI track to audio does not require "playing" the whole song in real time, though I guess there are soft synths that don't like fast bounce.

I comp Cactus in this. 192 kHz sampling rate is an overkill and just waste of HDD/SSD space, especially in 16 bits. Do you have a special reason to use the Coolsoft Virtual, and recording MIDI directly to audio (as I understood you're doing)? You are making things unnecessarily complicated , IMO.

Matthew: ( First Question ) , The problem is when I'm using the sounds in my synthesizer to record audio data for some reason I can hear drum sounds from addictive drums as I hit the keys. Ive tried selecting a different track so addictive drums inst being triggered but to no avail. I can hear both the synthesizer audio data accompanied by the drum sounds. I cant seem to figure that out yet It's propably be the Input Echo suggested by Chuck above. It's not 100% clear to me: Are you hearing a previously recorded track with Addictive drums or the respective keystrokes you hit recording the synth audio? I'm reading your post so, that you hear the actual keystrokes you're hitting real time(..."as I hit the keys"). As you have both MIDI and audio cables connected, it could be worthwhile testing changing the MIDI channel of either your synth or AD, to make sure the synth doesn't send MIDI to tracks you don't want to. The vanishing kick drum sound is a bit mysterious thing, but it might be possible it's due to some weird MIDI messages sent accidentally in the process, as both audio and MIDI are connected. Are the velocity and volume levels of the silent kick drum MIDI notes what they should be? A look at the Event List should reveal any unintended messages.

I'm comping Cactus. I really wonder what kind of a malfunction, setting or connection issue could make the audio sound "harsh" and still having everything working otherwise ok - no drop-outs, static, crackles... At first I though it could be "telephone" effect due to out-of-phase loudspeakers but that sound would be totally unusable, not just " a little harsh". One thing to try could be testing with headphones from both the Focusrite and the computers own headphone output (after switching to windows sounds). When, if ever, and with what set up was the sound good? When you critisize the sound, are you comparing it to commercial recordings or your own earlier ones? ADDITION: I missed this comment: "My VST instruments all sound great. My only problem is with audio. I'm using KRK Rokit 5 monitors. " Well, the sound you hear from your VST instruments is audio as well, so obviously there's no problem in the output stage if they sound fine. So it's something with the input chain, mic or guitar.

This may be totally irrelevant, if so, ignore me. I did not see anyone referring to this in the above posts. Mysterious sound/no sound issues of many kind have (at least in the past) often been caused by CW "hijacking" the drivers. "Check Share drivers with other programs" used to be a relatively common answer in the past. I don't even know if that option exists anymore.

The whole question is a bit confusing to me because MIDI-to-audio is the "normal" thing to do, VST instruments, soft synths and such use that. It is what MIDI was originally designed for, so to say. Audio-to-MIDI is a much more complicated task, and is often impossible to do with satisfying results, and I believe most music makers/producers never need that (except for drum replacement, maybe). Actually, I originally thought there's a mistake in the OP.

"Unable to open audio record device. Device may not support the current project's audio format or may be in use." In SONAR, and in CWbB as well I suppose, this message usually means that SONAR and soundcard are set to different sample rates.

The word "instrument" is sometimes used in a little confusing way in Cakewalk/SONAR. I assume what you want to accomplish is simply to be able to record MIDI for a soft synth. So I'd suggest you start with opening Synth rack and inserting a soft synth (TTS-1 or whatever there are in CWbB (in don't have it so I don't know) and picking "Firt audio output" as the output choice, not Simple instrument track. The necessary MIDI track and audio output track are created automatically.

Groove clips can not be saved in a bundle file, wouldn't be surprised if it's the same with Melodyne tracks.

I'm not capable of creating music I would listen to, unfortunately.

I agree. The answers to most questions include discussion concerning the workflow, the desired/varying outcomes of the possible solutions etc. Also most (?) questions spark demand for further information on the issue and that inevitably grows into a discussion. The present division, if followed exactly, would require a question in the Q&A forum and discussions on everything around the issue in the General Forum, which isn't very intuitive, IMO.