Gswitz

Maybe there's a way to do it in Event Viewer? I don't know.

I'd love to see a live unedited recording of his actual gigs.

Keep your head. I'm sure we can get it working for you. I love mine.

Length is more important than price. Shorter is better. I like cables that have some difference between them so I can keep them straight. Some variance in colors or ends helps there. I wouldn't want 16 identical cables b/c I'd have to mark them myself. I've acquired my cables over decades so they look different. It has been decades since I've had one that went bad. They do sometimes go bad, but not that often if you treat them lovingly. Don't walk on your cables. Definitely don't bounce on them as you jump to the beat. I was running sound for some band in the Boulder band shell when some guy did this. haha. Nothing I could do to help that! I got a 25 ft snake this year and it has been handy. A nice thing to be able to have the DAW a nice distance from the amps. Previously, I've linked two mic cables when necessary. Guitar output is actually kinda strong (electrics). I didn't know that when I started. Phantom Powered mics do ok with distances up to 100 ft too. Be cautious with the ribbons. They have a very faint signal. Jerry Garcia said once that the longer your cable the more it's like turning down your tone nob on your guitar. When he first found himself on enormous stages, he got really really long cables for fun and was like, 'What happened?' 🙂 At 12:31 he says get cables that won't break. I totally agree with that. If you ever have a bad experience with a cable, mark it like a bad climbing rope.

In cakewalk there is a virtual controller you can open up. Can you get it working with that? If it works with the virtual controller, then I would agree that the next step is to ensure that the signal is coming in properly. When things weren't working for me once where I was having a hard time figuring it out, I needed to go into Preferences (hit P) > Midi > Control Surfaces and delete a surface I use sometimes but didn't have plugged in at the moment. That surface was steeling my midi input. Beyond that, things usually work by the book for me. If I add a midi track and step on the FCB 1010 I can see the midi jump on the channel (after hitting the record enable)... next, route it to the input on the VST (which has to be enabled as we've talked about). Other than that, there isn't much left. Does the midi meter jump when you step on the stomps for the FCB 1010? Are you sure your in/out cables are plugged in correctly? have you flipped them to see? I can't read that small print and always go trial and error to get that right.

You are missing the step to enable midi input or the routing of the midi track to the input. Make sure your midi input is not assigned to a controller in preferences. https://www.cakewalk.com/Documentation?product=SONAR X3&language=3&help=Mixing.37.html

The output for the midi track should be set to the input of the amp simulator. This will be available only after you open the vst window for the amp sim and enable midi input.

I don't know if these videos may help but many of them involve me using my FCB 1010 with TH3/THU.

I don't use Act with my FCB 1010... I just bring it in on a midi channel and output it to the input on the THU/TH3 amp sim. You ask if you need to configure your FCB 1010... the answer is maybe. I have no idea how you have it set up. You can make any stomp or expression pedal act however your like. You have 10 banks with 10 stomps and 2 expressions on every bank. If you wanted, you could set every stomp to the same midi note... alternatively you could set them to ascending notes... or controls... you have to decide. I'm sharing a link to directions for importing my settings to your fcb 1010 if you want. You can also back up your settings first if you want. Basically, I have every stomp on my FCB 1010 trigger a different midi note. That gives me access to 100 stomps and 20 expression pedals to use within THU. Pretty awesome!! I just have to remember how they are assigned (or not... I could have 1 bank for 10 different rigs). Anyway... here's that info... https://discuss.cakewalk.com/index.php?/topic/3590-custom-midi-foot-peal/&do=findComment&comment=31040 So, We can't answer for you how your FCB 1010 is set up b/c you are in control of that. We can help you figure out how to set it up and that's what the above link is useful for. I think it's an awesome tool. You don't have to use it with ACT or set it up as a controller if you are going to use it with your Amp Sim. HTH

It sounds to me like woes related to the Windows update. I know that you reported no issues in latency monitor. I presume you left it running for hours, but if not, try that. I suggest restarting you pc, not sleeping and checking for Windows updates to make sure you have them all. Also, make sure your power settings indicate not to suspend USB. Check your network cards in device manager and uncheck power related settings so your pc doesn't power them off. I'm guessing you might have tracks with input monitor checked and that would be like streaming audio. If there is a timer from the last time you used your network card to the time it powers it down due to idleness that could cause this. Anther thing to check is usb hubs. Look for power settings on those too and disable. Keep a list of the things you change. Once cakewalk starts working properly, you can undo steps until you discover what was causing the problem.

For live band vocals, i find use of expanders more valuable than compressors or limiters. When the singer isn't singing, don't send the room sound to the mains. This is especially important when the band stops.

@Misha some folks like the sound of a hot preamp. If that is what you want you may have to attenuate it before digitizing. That is why the Rupert neve 5211 has two outputs for each channel... One louder and one softer... Otherwise the same. But if you don't want preamp distortion, you can use tons of preamps and just come in softer. A quieter signal will not clip. After digitizing, you can raise your level internally using compressors and limiters or channel gain. Whether you do this in the interface or in a daw is a difference of the round trip on the USB cable. Other than that 3 millisecond latency, there isn't really a difference. I suppose the code behind the effects might be different but that argument favors your daw choices which will be many. So, there are a lot of good things about better interfaces and external hardware. Keep in mind, hardware is heavy. Currently, i leave my two channel compressor at home when i go to capture field recordings. But i do use it often when making recordings at home. I pretty much always run through it when practicing. I got a nice compressor before i got a nice interface. If i knew then what i know now, i would not have prioritized that compressor purchase. My video i made for you does not set compression or limiting well at all. I was just demonstrating. If you want me to try to set up an in-the-box chain that might be useful for live performance, i will. I'm sure you noted how handy the eq would be at finding and notching feedback in a live situation. Anyway, it seems I'm mostly alone here. Everyone is waiting for the crazy guy to stop talking. Ha ha. Live stuff has to go well and you don't have time to mess around. This is a fair argument for limiting your choices. Keep it simple. That way you can't mess it up so badly. Most people end up with an array they trust and understand clearly for live stuff. You get to pick what yours will be. Don't mistake free for unworthy. Cakewalk is pretty great and might in the end be a better tool than thousands of dollars of hardware.

By 2x i meant you could watch it on double speed. I'm kinda a slow talker. There really is no difference between using rme dsp and cakewalk except the time cost to go into the computer and back. Both are applied after initial digital conversion. Dsp stands for digital signal processing. You can move your gear externally but you will face the same gain staging issues. Overdriven preamps and compressors distort. If you were recording to tape it might be more important to use compressors before the tape because tape introduces a good amount of its own noise. But adcs these days are awfully quiet. For example, my bro and i thought to test the rme specs, but we don't have any mics quiet enough to do a valid test. There are many good ways to do this. Nothing wrong with external gear. I have some myself. I took issue with you having to use external gear. I don't think you do. If you set levels correctly, i think you can do what you are describing in cakewalk. Certainly, you can play and learn. You already have it. 😄

I know you told me not to. But anyway... don't forget you can listen at 2x if you want.

I remain undeterred. There may be reasons not to use cakewalk for live performances, but inability to compress or limit isn't one of them. Any compressor can be overdriven, before or after adc. If you are wanting to print the compressed track instead of the initial input you can using patch points and aux tracks. This is really no different than using the rme compressor except the round trip to the interface. To save clipping you have to properly set your gain. Once done, everything else you ask for you can have. Failing to properly use preamp gain will not be avoided by having external gear. I find external gear is subject to all the same gain staging criteria as internal gear. You can absolutely use cakewalk to create beautiful live mixes with eq, compression and limiting. To do so, you must set inputs low enough to avoid clipping. You can still maximize output though, targeting your favorite crest factor.

I'll make a video. Yes, I'm saying you can use that compressor to impact what you hear through headphones or speakers.

The sonitus compressor is very low latency.

Just in case I was crazy I just did it with the Sonitus compressor. I have my sample buffer at 64 which gives me 4.1 MSec round trip. So from the time I say a word to the time it comes out of the speakers is 4.1 MSecs. It's equivalent to having the speakers 4 feet further away. This is totally workable live. I just tried with a 48 sample buffer and this gets me down to 3 MSecs. I'll grant that I don't record through Sonar because when Sonar drops out it stops. I never want the recording to stop during a live performance so I use RME Digicheck. Digicheck will clip all tracks by a sample buffer if the computer can't keep up, but it never stops recording. To me, this is preferred. If you are using a laptop with DPC issues, you will have to set the sample buffer much higher and this could be too high for live performance. But, we can probably help you resolve DPC issues so you can run at a lower sample buffer. Even on a cheap laptop, recording a heap of tracks with no (or only a couple) of FX is usually no issue at all. It's another thing if you're going to drive the processors hard with soft synths etc. Then I raise the buffer as much as I can stand.

Just to add to Bit, if you sing loud loud, the dynamic will sound better. Being soft and breathy into a dynamic hurts. It brings out the words of the mic. Being good and loud it will sound much better. Also, if you are good and loud, your level will be more consistent. It will help you compress yourself as it were. When you sing softly then get really rolling the variance is much more significant than when you go from louder to loudest. Long ago I made a soft recording with a dynamic and it sounded drastically different from my ribbons. Then, with the amp cranked, noticed the difference is much less obvious.

No, I'm talking live. You sing... it goes into channel 1... into Cakewalk... compressed... sent to the master out... limited there... out to the interface... out to the mains. Why does this not work live? The only problem would be not being low enough latency. Latency would be driven by your computer and interface and choice of compressor/limiter. I have at least 10 options personally that work fine for this with low enough latency to perform live. So do all the other people trying to advise you. Most folks here may have better gear now. So, for example, my RME interface has compressors on input and output so I could do it without going through the daw. Same with delay and verb. But I could go through the daw. No problem. So can you. Back me up here, Bit? Anyone?

Congrats

Just put the effect of your choice on the channel. Preferably a low latency one. I don't understand why this is hard. Reduce the input gain and raise it with vsts before sending to the mains. Now you don't clip and it sounds great. You might use the cakewalk compressor on the track and the same with a high ratio for a limiter on the master out.

Omni directs any midi to your synth. When you have multiple midi inputs that go to different synths you don't want omni. For each midi channel you want to select the correct input. Don't forget there are midi only plugins like filters and delays and other cool things.

Lower the gain on your interface input tho reduce clipping. Raise gain with a compressor or limiter by adding them to the fx bin. You can also raise the gain on the track without risking clipping the input. You can still clip the output however.