John Bradley

Thanks Lynn, glad you liked it! But are you sure you didn't leave out an 's' in that first bit? 😄 Also, that's the first time I've seen "showcasing my talents" and "my dong" appear in the same phrase. Certainly not from the missus... 🤥 As for the singing, my microphone (and neighbors) would probably disagree. Let's just say I know how to use technology to carve what I've got into something reasonable-sounding. The Melodyne blobs and I are old friends at this point. (So glad I upgraded to Studio -- makes fixing harmonies much more pleasant when I can see and edit all the lines at once.) Rock on!

In Native Access, click the little person icon in the top right and select Preferences. That's where you tell it where to install vst2 plugins (both 64 and 32 bit versions), for all NI instruments. If you browse to that directory you'll probably find them there. (vst3 plugins by default go in c:\Program Files\Common Files\VST3, so most installers don't even ask where you want those installed.) By default, NI stores their VSTs in c:\Program Files\Native Instruments\VSTPlugins 64 bit. You could uninstall all your NI stuff, change the directories in Preferences, and reinstall. A much easier thing to do would be to just tell Cakewalk to look there, as well. Add that directory in the VST Scan Paths, under Preferences | VST Settings.

Too Much Time on My Hands Yay, more '80s stuff! Drums: Session Drummer 3. Kick/Snare/Toms send to a parallel 'crushing' compressor (BOZ Manic Compressor) for bigness, hat/crash/ride sent to a parallel 'smoothing' compressor (the ProChannel PC76). Ozone 8 Vintage Limiter on the master drum bus. Bass: IKM's MODO BASS '60s P-bass model, DI out only (no amp/fx modelling) into Blue Cat's Axiom for amp and speaker modelling. Synths: WA Production Babylon (deal!) doing the pitch sweep in the beginning, along with a reversed sample of same (distorted and delayed) coming in at the end of the intro. Two more instances of Babylon doing the riff that comes in next (and continues for the whole song, doubling the bass guitar) and the synth bass that only appears at the beginning (leaves at verse 1, never to return). An Arturia Prophet rounds out the collection, doing the filter sweep chords that appear periodically. Percussion: Two instances of 2getheraudio's CL4P, set up slightly differently, to each play one half of the two-clap flourishes that appear in the chorus. They're panned to opposite sides, but alternate positions each time. Guitars: One guitar doing power chords, another doing a clean, high 2-note chord thing starting in verse 2. (The second guitar is doubled by an Arturia Prophet doing a vaguely synthy/Rhodesy patch.) Third guitar for the lead, also doubling the signature hook in the verses. All guitars recorded dry, processed with Axiom. The lead features Blue Cat's Accoufiend feedback simulator, most evident at the end of the solo, though it's on all the time. That was probably recorded at 3am, without the neighbors or the wife even noticing. Technology is great. Vocals: Single track lead vocals run through iZotope Nectar 2 for gate/compression/saturation/eq/de-essing/limiting, then into a Valhalla Delay set for as a subtle chorus, into a second Delay for a subtle 1/8th tempo delay, and a BREVERB for juicy goodness. There are 2 tracks of backing vocals doing harmony during the first half of the choruses ("hard to believe such a calamity"). During the second half of the chorus there are three vocal lines, each of which is double tracked and panned left/right to varying degrees. Blue Cat Chorus and BREVERB on the bg vox bus. Effects: Other than the normal ProChannel stuff per channel, there's a GW MixCentric on the master, followed by an Ozone 8 doing whatever it felt like doing.

Open a new blank project. Create an audio track, set the input to one of the channels on your interface, and plug a microphone into it. Arm the track for recording, but do not enable Input Echo. In the Control Bar, next to the big Time display, make sure "Metronome during Record" is turned on. Aim the mic at your speakers, hit 'record' up in the transport and let it run for a couple of bars. You should hear a metronome clicking, and you should see pulses appear in the track that you're recording to. In the Track pane, select View | Display | Vertical Grid Lines | In Front of Clips. Set the Snap value to 1/4 to get vertical lines every quarter note. It should look like this: Zoomed in: If you turn off snap, and switch the time ruler to Milliseconds, you can measure the distance between the line and the start of the pulse. (Turn on Aim Assist and Aim Assist Time.) All of those options are available by right-clicking the time ruler. In the above example, the metronome pulse begins about 1ms after the gridline, which is inaudibly different from "absolutely dead-on". It takes some time for sound to go through the amplifier, the speaker, the air, the microphone, and back to the interface's input. Physical objects (speakers, air, mic diaphragms) don't move instantaneously. -- The point is, if you do this test and get similar results, it's your playing and/or the inability to cope with the fairly long round-trip time, not anything intrinsically wrong with your system.

You can verify that CW and your audio interface are handling the synchronization corrrectly by having CW send a metronome out, and then record that signal by either connecting the your interface's outs to your ins, or simply aiming a microphone at your speakers. (In the latter case, don't monitor the recording, or you'll get feedback!) The clicks in the recording should be 'right on' (like, within 1ms) of the vertical grid lines. --- Assuming that checks out, it's a (human) mechanical problem - 40ms is getting pretty long between when you hit a key/string and when you hear the result. That's going to screw with your timing. It might be something you can get better at with practice, or it might not. I've got a 30ms round trip when I track, which is still too long for comfor. I just accept the fact that my recorded guitar tracks are going to be roughly 30ms ahead of the beat, possibly because of the round-trip, possibly because my timing just sucks. After I record, I just nudge the clip over to the right by 30ms.

Yep, the 802 has a headphone amp.

Probably not. Without delving into them, I'm going to hazard a guess that the Xenyx 1202 and 1002 are both 'N inputs to a stereo mix' devices. Larger mixers often have additional submix outs (eg. Mackie 1604), wherein you could have a second stereo mix (on submix 3 & 4) feeding the input of the Focusrite, and the main mix (submix 1 & 2) going to your speakers. But that's almost certainly massive overkill for what you're doing. FWIW, I have two mixers in my setup. A small Mackie 1202 which I keep all my sound-generators connected to. The output of that mixer goes to the inputs on my Focusrite. Also provides me nice high-res level meters on the input signal. And I have a second 'output' mixer connected to my speakers/headphones. Both the Focusrite and the Windows audio are connected to that mixer, as well as the output from the 1202 and an ancient hardware reverb - this lets me monitor my vocal recordings (with reverb, that doesn't get recorded) at zero latency. I wouldn't necessarily recommend doing all that, it's just using stuff that I already owned for various reasons.

I love Axiom for many reasons. The UI and preset management is fast and civilized (the preset heirarchy is just a subdirectory in Documents, easy to copy them between machines). Doesn't waste a lot of screen space trying to look like a pedal board. Being able to open the editors for all the pedals, amps, etc. to see all the knobs at one time if desired (and if you have enough screen space). The modularity (being able to insert arbitrary VSTs, including itself anywhere in the signal chain). The way that every component has its own set of presets, as well as 'complete rig' level presets. The included LateReplies is incredible and does things few if any other delays can manage. (Though it is damned near incomprehensible without a serious manual deep-dive.) The Accoufiend that they include if you buy the $250 bundle mostly solves the lack of feedback/sustain that you get when you're recording a real amp at volume. (Which isn't an option for a lot of us.) That said, I'm a sound-designer sort, so I roll my own presets - starting with one of their amps, tweaking it, and then adding fx pre- and post- amp as desired. Downsides: I'm coming from the BIAS world. One thing that they did over there that isn't replicated in Axiom is a whole lot of "Mashall JayCeeEmm" -type "oh, so that's what this is emulationg" presets. There are plenty of presets in all levels of crunch, many of which give some hint as to what they're trying to sound like, but most of them do not. So it doesn't tick that "now I have a large pile of virtual 'real gear' that I could never afford... or fit in my bedroom" box that others (BIAS, the IKM stuff, etc.) do. No "ToneCloud" equivalent with user-contributed presets. That could be argued as a feature, given the useful/crap ratio of an un-curated preset repository, but having such a thing was useful on occasion. Also, some of their 'pedals' are functional, but not great. I routinely drop in Valhalla Delay and Breverb into slots in the rig rather than their provided delay and reverb units. One upside: a very generous fully-featured free demo. There's no timeout on it, and it just does the "mute the audio processing for a half-second every now and then" thing. More than adequate for use as a practice/dicking-around rig without ever buying the whole thing. Another upside: licensing is of the "put it on all your machines, just don't use it in two places simultaneously" variety, where you copy/paste an authorization code they give you. Don't know if the software ever needs to phone home. Certainly no 1- or 2- install limit, no iLok, etc.

Back in the '90s I used CW mostly as a tool to drive my external MIDI gear (Alesis DM5, Emu Proteus 1, Alesis Quadrasynth, etc.). Recorded vox and pre-processed guitar onto audio tracks. Didn't do any fx or mixing in the box, just ran a couple of channels of audio from CW through an Echo Gina to an external mixer, and drove the MIDI gear live into the same mixer. FX were done with hardware units also attached to the mixer. About 10 years ago I deleted all of the hardware and my MIDI interface and threw them in a box in my closet. Since then I do everything in the computer -- synths, fx, guitar/amp modelling, mixing, automation, pseudo-mastering, etc. Have a 49 key keyboard (AKAI) for playing synths, but I mostly draw what I want in the PRV. Couldn't be happier; the results are near enough to 'pro' quality, which was never going to happen with an external hardware solution ($$$). There's no futzing around with saving and recalling presets on various hardware, I can automate faders, pans, and everything else, and years later I can load up a project and it sounds just like it did when I last worked on it. No trying to re-match whatever the hw config was back when I originally recorded. I still have a pair of Mackie mixers in my setup, mostly because I already had them. One of them provides a convenient way to send different things to the audio input without rewiring, the other gives me live monitoring of my vocal recording (with fx in the monitor) while listening to the track playback in parallel. Also serves as a handy volume knob for the speakers/headphones. But neither are necessary; could certainly do it all with just a 2x2 usb interface and a laptop - though a desktop with 3 screens is certainly more pleasant. Great time to be alive!

Record a couple versions of a section of the song using Auto-Punch. Once you decide "well, that's as good as it's likely to get" move on to the next, abutting, section. Grab the start handle of the auto-punch in the time ruler and drag it to the end of the next section, such that the old 'auto punch end' stays in place and becomes the new 'auto punch begin'. The previous takes should perfectly abut any new takes. But CW records the next set of takes on new lanes. I have to turn off snap, and manually move the auto punch start a hair later so that there's a small gap after the end of the original set of takes, and then it'll reuse those take lanes when recording the next section. It'd be preferable if that wasn't the case.

Get the cheapest passive stereo line mixer you can, plug the outputs of both sound devices into it, and take the output of the mixer to your (powered) speakers. Search Amazon for "Little Bear MC5" for example. Note that this particular mixer doesn't have a headphone amp, so if you want your headphones to recieve audio from both sources (rather than just plugging them into the Focusrite's headphone output), you'll need to step up to something like a Behringer Xenyx 502 or equivalent. Use the Realtek's EQ for your windows sounds. It's not a good idea to have the Windows sounds and the DAW sharing the same interface, as you can run into various conflicts if you're running the DAW and Windows decides it wants to beep or whatever.

Can't believe I never noticed this before (maybe I did, and forgot about it) but alt+mousewheel changes the horizontal scaling in the PRV... but not if the mouse is down in the controller area. Why not? That just seems wrong. Ctrl+mousewheel horizontally scrolls in either half of the window, as one would desire. Alt+mousewheel should do likewise.

If you're going to be running Premiere, make sure to get a decent video card, rather than relying on Intel's built-in graphics. Modern Premiere (and other Adobe apps) can make use of Nvidia cards, and possibly Radeons as well, to speed up rendering, encoding, and other operations. Don't have to break the bank with cutting-edge stuff, a GTX 1060 3gb ($225ish) is plenty.

Personally I'd recommend you keep your Windows sounds and your DAW sounds separate. Avoids sample-rate and exclusivity issues when you're running CW and Windows decides it needs to beep for some reason. Just plug a cheap set of PC speakers into the Soundblaster, and hook your nice speakers/headphones to the Scarlett. If for some reason you want the Soundblaster to go to your good speakers (e.g. gaming, videos, etc.) I'd get a cheap Behringer mixer or whatever, plug the outputs of both the SB and the Focusrite into it, and send the output of the mixer to your speakers.

Sorry to sperg on your deal thread, but if I can save someone the other 60% of the price... 😏 --- I spent around $500 over the years on Positive Grid things (BIAS FX, BIAS FX2, BIAS AMP, BIAS PEDAL, the metal/bass/acoustic expansions, and god knows what else). Was happy with it at the the time. Obviously; I kept throwing more and more money at them. Felt they dropped the ball on BIAS FX2. Bought it on day 1, and a year later they'd addressed none of the problems with it. Got tired of the slow-as-molasses UI, the whole "this was designed for an iPad, yet you're charging premium prices for the PC version" thing, and the constant "we just introduced a new thing so you don't have it 'all' unless you buy it, and until you do the ToneCloud is going to taunt you with patches you can't use" money-grabbling. Blue Cat Audio's Axiom crushes it in every way that matters, at least to my mind. It's fast, designed for people with lots of screen real-estate that want to see all the controls simultaneously, and powerful. (You can insert arbitrary VSTs -- including another instance of itself! -- anywhere you'd like in the signal chain.)

Click the Shop link at the top. TX16Wx Pro is $39 for the non-commericial license, $99 for the unrestricted version. FWIW, the free one does everything (and much more) than I've ever needed.

It's 2020 - everything is 'racist'. Like your keyboard controller, unless you happen to be playing a Doepfer d3m or similar.

This is a bug introduced in 2020.05. The contents of the right-most tab in the multidock are displayed on load, regardless of which tab was selected when you saved the project.

Tantra's cool, but I don't often need that sort of thing... not often enough to pick it up at $69 at least. For a low-budget version, I use 2getheraudio's RE4ORMFX, which you can get for as little as $10.

Valhalla Delay. Best $50 I've ever spent on a VST. Also pick up their various freebies (Supermassive, FreqEcho, and Space Modulator). Also recommend the Blue Cat Audio freebies for their Chorus, Phaser, and Flanger. Good sound, nice ui, lots of presets, and no auth/ilok nonsense. Iris 2 (currently on sale for $9.99, I believe) is a completely alien synth from the plethora of virtual-analog subtractive synths most of us have got. It gives you something interesting to do with all those GBs of sample libraries you've probably collected.

Elixir Polywebs on every guitar in the house. They last forever (years) with no oxidation and little if any tone death.

Random guess: are you using the computer's built-in audio (typically a Realtek chip)? If so, it's possible you might have the recording input set (in the various Windows/Realtek control panels) set to "Stereo Mix" or "What I hear" or words to that effect rather than "Line-in". If that's not the case... never mind!

Are You Gonna Go My Way Not from the '80s, but close - 1993. Good lord, this song's nearly 30 years old... Technical data: Minimal -- Straight ahead rock - guitar, bass and drums, no synths. Recorded in Feburary 2020. Drums: Session Drummer 3 as always Bass: IKM's MODO BASS doing what it does. The Rickenbacker model rather than the P-bass I typically use. At some point I stopped using the internal amp modelling in MODO, and just take the 'direct' out into Axiom, but this is before I figured that out. Did add a bit of Trash 2 to give it a slight edge, and some ST3REO and BREVERB to fill it out. Guitars: Two 'riff' guitars panned hard left/right, the one on the right playing up an octave and coming and going as it sees fit. A third guitar for the lead. All three are done on this '85 Japanese Strat (with EMGs) that I got for my 21st birthday so very long ago. BIAS FX doing the amp sim on each of them. Oh, and the "Les Paul rhythmic cutout using the pickup selector" thing at the very end was done by automating the Gtr1&2 bus volume after the fact. Strats don't do that. Vocals: Double tracked the whole way through, with some NECTAR 2 on each track providing some very slight chorus & delay, compression, limiting. Critically the 'Harmony' module is providing 2 voices of unison with a bit of pitch/time variation. So there's effectively six voices singing the vocal at all times. (vox, vox double, + 2 voices of harmony on each). And obviously, some Melodyne Studio 4... the magic whatsit that makes any of this possible! Effects: Beyond what's mentioned above, just normal ProChannel stuff and BREVERB, plus an Ozone Limiter on the drum bus and Ozone 8 on the master.

Baum baum... chika-chikahhh.

EMF mode enabled: You're unbeliev-a-bull!