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Craig Anderton

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Craig Anderton last won the day on September 11 2023

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  1. I'm involved in graphic design. It's important to remember that graphics, like music, is a fashion industry. Pastels have made a comeback in recent years, especially for websites. They're traditionally associated with sophistication, but one of the main reasons for using pastels is they retain impact because of the difference you can create between the original hue and the whiter/paler variations that create pastels. Technically, pastels start with a base color and add white. So, designers can determine how much contrast they want between elements by how much white they add. Fashion-wise, this is also a natural progression from the "dark look" that was prevalent for so many years and added black to base colors. I don't know Cakewalk's motivation for going in a pastel direction, but it looks to me like they're aiming for 2023/2024 more than women and children.
  2. To be fair, when Cakewalk introduced the "membership" label, it was because the software was rent-to-own. Even though you paid monthly, eventually you would own Sonar outright. At the time, "subscription" meant you paid or the program went belly up. I think subscription still has the same meaning today. They wanted to differentiate between the two.
  3. I've noticed companies that tried to go subscription-only (most notably Avid and Waves) went back to offering perpetual licenses as well as subscriptions. UA, PreSonus, and iZotope - who are all doing very well - offer subscriptions and also offer perpetual licenses. The reality is that subscriptions benefit some customers and perpetual licenses benefit others. Offering both increases the potential customer base. I would highly recommend that Cakewalk learn from the mistakes of others, they've already done the R&D
  4. Actually, you can generate polyphonic MIDI guitar parts with Melodyne Essential by dragging the audio into a MIDI track and choosing Polyphonic Decay for the algorithm. What you can't do with Essential is edit polyphonic audio prior to converting it into data. Also note that pitch bends don't translate. But hey, it works!
  5. Although perhaps not relevant because so many buses are involved, don't overlook Cakewalk's offset mode. It's a feature every DAW should have, but few do.
  6. I think a lot depends on what you mean by "remixing." Is it working with raw tracks from the ground up and making major changes, or just moving faders and some effects around? When I need to do inter-DAW transfers, I usually save out either the raw audio or the processed audio (effects, automation, etc.) as individual files, then import them into the target DAW.
  7. I think Cakewalk is smart to give plenty of advance warning. You have time to save up, or even explore other free programs (e.g., Audacity) in case it turns out the new Cakewalk doesn't work with your budget. Or, maybe Next is all you need anyway. Most importantly, it's not like the old version stopped working. You can keep doing your thing until the new version comes out, and then you can decide whether it fits your needs and budget. And, every day that goes by without the new version being introduced is another day you can keep using an excellent DAW for free. One could argue they started the teaser campaign too early, but that's better than too late and catching the user base off-guard.
  8. IIRC AmpliTube is one of the (many) amp sims that doesn't respond to program changes when loaded as a VST3. The VST2 version should work. I believe this has something to do with changes in the VST3 spec, not Cakewalk or AmpliTube.
  9. Yes! The original was one of the few compressors with a pulse width modulation-based design. It's super-fast. I thought it was weird because it didn't have an attack control, but then I realized that it didn't really need one in the conventional sense.
  10. These "perfect" vocal sound videos rub me the wrong way. Are they about your voice? Your mic? Your music? Your input levels? Do they even talk about how much the optimum attack time relates to the musical genre? (And if they really all are describing how to do a "perfect" vocal, wouldn't they all recommend the exact same technique?) I hardly ever use compression anymore, I use gain/clip envelope DSP to take out peaks, and add a little limiting. I do this with Cakewalk, Studio One, and Pro Tools. But I would never be so arrogant as to say it's the perfect way to record your vocals. It's the perfect way to record my vocals. Here's an excerpt from a tip I wrote for Studio One about Why I Don't Use Compression Anymore, but it applies 100% to Cakewalk. In fact. I first wrote about this technique in my book of Cakewalk tips. Replacing Vocal Compression Compression keeps vocals front and center by restricting dynamics, so the soft parts don’t get lost. But there’s a better option. Gain Envelopes and normalization allow tailoring vocal dynamics any way you want—without attack or release times, pumping, breathing, overshoot, or other artifacts. The sound is just as present and capable of being upfront in a mix as if it’s compressed. However, the vocal retains clarity and a natural vibe, because gain envelopes and normalization have no more effect on the sound than changing a channel fader’s level (fig. 2). Figure 2: A typical vocal, before and after using a Gain Envelope to edit the level for more consistency. Even better, while you’re editing you can also tweak mouth clicks, pops, and breaths in a way that compressors cannot. I’ve covered using Gain and Event Envelopes before, so for more info, check out the video Get Better Vocals with Gain Envelopes. Also, see the blog post Better Vocals with Phrase-by-Phrase Normalization. I’m not the world’s greatest vocalist by any means, yet people invariably comment on how much they like my vocals. Perhaps much of that is due to not using compression, so my voice sounds natural and connects more directly with listeners. The bottom line is I don't like the sound of compression. But other people do. That's why the best thing you can do is play around with compressors, limiters, DSP, and find what best communicates your vocal sound in the way that fits your music. /rant
  11. It's just addition. Creating mono from stereo requires adding two signals together. If both signals are flirting with maximum headroom, adding them together will exceed the available headroom. I think a simple solution would be as soon as you invoke a convert-stereo-to-mono command, the stereo signal's gain would be reduced by 6 dB prior to adding the two channels together into a single channel.
  12. If a stereo file uses all the available headroom, bouncing it to mono will cause clipped peaks. You need to lower the stereo file's level prior to bouncing to mono. The image on the left is prior to bouncing to mono, the image on the right is after bouncing to mono.
  13. This ^^^ And SSDs aren't perfect either, with some better than others. What you may be seeing is the dying gasps of a storage device. Things getting worse the more you use the system may also mean the issue is thermal-related. Have you dusted off the insider of your computer and cleaned dust off the fan blades lately? Are the fans still rotating? I know, stupid questions but you never know.
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