Craig Anderton

It doesn't look like the Sound on Sound column will be coming back any time soon, they said not enough of their readers use Cakewalk to justify the space. I miss writing it, so I was hoping MusicTech would want to pick it up (Meng's company owns the magazine), but that didn't pan out. At the moment, the only place I have to put Cakewalk articles is on my craiganderton.org web site (although the Cakewalk by BandLab tips book is still available on craiganderton.com). I do continue to post in the forum, but basically, I just scan the threads and see if any have topics where I might be able to help. It seems the regulars have everything under control, and of course, Steve Cook is a national treasure for Cakewalk users.

Sometimes I've fixed issues by doing a repair installation, which is an option in Waves Central. It's faster than a full install and cleans things up nicely.

You won't be a great guitar player by screwing around with one for four hours It's been mentioned previously, but I can't emphasize enough that Cakewalk is a complete recording studio whose capabilities dwarf what used to require at least $100/hour, a professional engineer, daily maintenance, and a tape op. I can say with certainty that if you spend a month trying to learn Cakewalk, you'll be much further along than if you'd spent that month trying to learn how Record Plant worked many decades ago.

I wrote an article called VST 2.4 vs. VST3 - Who Cares? You should that you may find helpful. Bear in mind that VST3 is a set of suggestions, not rules, and it's a crap shoot as to which features a plug-in company will support. VST3 is loaded with potential, but that potential has not always been realized. The only truly annoying thing I've noticed is that sometimes I have to use a VST 2.4 version because it can receive program changes commands, while the VST3 version cannot. Huh? I've asked software companies about this, and apparently, there's no technical reason why VST3 plug-ins can't support program changes so I don't know why this is a common problem.

Fixed the typo, thanks! Note that the tips apply to Sonar as well.

Hey all - I posted a new Cakewalk tips article on craiganderton.org. I hope you find it helpful. Since Sound on Sound discontinued the Cakewalk column, and I have a few articles that weren't published, I'll probably post them on my site when I get a chance.

The variety of responses as to what is "best" should give a clue about how subjective this all is. You can always try just adding a low-frequency boost in the same range as a head bump for your speed of choice, and add a bit of saturation. Frankly. I the only time I use "tape emulation" is (sometimes) on acoustic guitars to saturate the pick transients, and bass so it cuts better on mixes played through crappy playback systems. And for acoustic guitars, a transient shaper is often better at taming pick transients. There's no "magic bullet" to make a mix sound wonderful, other than an awesome song. and the ability to hear all the instruments clearly.

At least you got it working! Sometimes you just have to accept that something will work for reasons you don't understand, and likely never will

Tape exhibited a low-frequency "head bump" that added a low-frequency boost; this was different for different tape speeds. Also, tape softened transients and added distortion. Even sine waves as low as -20 dB would start showing a tiny bit of distortion, which increased as the level increased. The distortion also meant you could get a higher average level. But bear in mind that there's no such thing as "universal" tape saturation. Tape required interacting EQ and bias adjustments that had an effect on frequency response, distortion, and level. So for example you could have better high-frequency response if you were willing to trade off for more distortion. Also, different tape formulations had different characteristics. Tape Emulation plug-ins should be called "emulations of particular recorders, using particular tape, calibrated in a specific way, and which may or may not have been well-maintained." I wrote a comprehensive article for the Waves web site comparing their J37 and Kramer master tape plug-ins. It does not go into marketing-speak, it's about what tape did and what tape emulation does. It also has a couple audio examples, and I think it will answer pretty much any questions you might have about tape emulation.

In my experience you have to learn a control surface by working with it over a period of time. Until your muscle memory gets to the point where your fingers go automatically where you want them to go, a control surface can get in the way of your workflow. However, once you get proficient at it (which can take a couple of months, or maybe I'm just slow), you can move a lot faster. (I think the best, but most frustrating way, to learn a control surface is to go cold turkey on using the mouse for anything that can be done with the control surface.) Another factor is being able to control multiple functions at once. For example I use my mouse left-handed, and work the control surface with my right hand. Keyboard shortcuts get you partway there, unless you need to use both hands to hit a combination of keystrokes. Not odd at all!! When I was a studio musician one of the most important lessons I learned was watching the mix for "Brandy (You're a Fine Girl)." The engineer closed his eyes and moved the eight faders (yes, it was that long ago) with very subtle rhythmic movements. Those little movements added life to the song. It would have been difficult, if not impossible, to make those changes one fader at a time with a mouse. Also, if you use a control surface, try turning off the monitor...it's an interesting experience

@gswitz - thanks for the name check The tip was originally about creating perfect pad loops, but it would apply here. I searched for the Sonar Friday Tip of the week that described this, but couldn't find it. However, I did "recycle" the tip for my Studio One blog, and I think it's obvious how this would apply to Cakewalk - it's just waveforms.

And let's give BandLab a round of applause for continuing to keep the servers accessible for those of us who've been loyal to the program.

Where you don't do a fast bounce. In other words, if a song takes 2:30, then the bounce process will take 2:30. and the song will play through (and you'll be able to hear the sound during the bounce if you want). Might be worth a try and see if you still have the same problem.

Are you doing a real-time or non-real-time bounce?

They may be getting into an argument about who's the master clock. If the 20x20 is the master, but the Joe Meek is feeding it, then maybe the 20x20 is expecting the Joe Meek to be the master. You say that the 20x20 doesn't receive SPDIF, but ADAT is working as expected. Does that mean that you are running ADAT in to the 20x20 as well as ADAT out to the Yamaha? And, you also have Word Clock connected, so you have three digital audio clocking protocols in play. I'm taking a guess here because I don't know all the details, but maybe simplifying the setup is the solution. Try using the Joe Meek SPDIF as the master, sync the 20 x 20 to it, sync the Yamaha to the 20 x 20 via ADAT, and see if that works.