Craig Anderton

It would be cool if you could do the CbB users a big favor, and write The Big Book of Cakewalk by BandLab Tips - The Next Generation!

Note that if you want to increase the pitch slightly as well to give a brighter, "poppier" sound, that's possible too.

I wrote a pretty comprehensive article about the K-System, mixing, and speaker calibration for inSync, some might find it helpful. With LUFS some feel the K-System isn't as relevant, but I find the aspect of speaker calibration and consistent monitoring levels is still very helpful.

The way magazines work, if I write something at the end of January, it will probably show up in the April issue, or maybe even May if they're overbooked for articles. Sorry!

Write in my own language, I will - Yoda I think it just goes to show that Cakewalk is international in scope. All hail Google Translate!

Another aspect that hasn't been mentioned is that an algorithm can't do something like decide to cut four bars out of a long, self-indulgent solo...or decide where to fade, or whether to crossfade two cuts together. In theory, an algorithm could help fix some technical deficiencies, but there's no way it could make artistic decisions.

Maybe it could also be a phase issue, where the vocal is out of phase in the left and right channels. Also, the desktop PC may have "special effects" included (thanks, but no thanks!) and the "karaoke" option is selected that does central channel cancel.

Here's one of those articles, it tells how to build the Transient Tamer inside a guitar cable. Most people look at the schematic and assume it can't really work, but look at the screen shots of the before and after You won't hear any clipping or distortion, it just lets a digital device operate in a happier place, and tangentially, gives a better feel. I also EQ before going into any amp sim with distortion. Amp sims have the capacity to reproduce sounds a physical cabinet cannot, so I keep the extreme highs and lows from getting into the sim. As to post-sim EQ, I sometimes add a bit of a broad lift in the 3-4 kHz zone and scoop out the lower mids to give more articulation, but you have to be careful - a little bit goes a long way. Just a dB or two in either case will be enough. FWIW I also wrote a book called How to Get the Best Sounds Out of Amp Sim Software.

I've mastered hundreds of tracks. Just finished mastering (for vinyl!) a jazz album for Martha Davis (the Motels). I couldn't agree more with what you say. I've always said there are 20 valid ways to master a recording, but the only one that matters is the one the artist likes. I'm proud of the fact that I have no "sound." My goal is always to amplify the artist's intention, not turn it into something else. As to online mastering...I differentiate between different mastering goals. If you have a live recording you want to put on your web site for you fans, try the online mastering. If you like it, great - you just saved yourself a ton of money. If you have a mission-critical project, then use a good mastering engineer. I didn't say "professional" mastering engineer - I said a "good" one. It's not always the same thing. Finally, what makes a good mastering engineer is ears and experience, and good acoustics in the mastering suite. You don't need a lot of gear and plug-ins. I'd say EQ is 90% of my mastering approach, and everything else takes up the other 10%.

Choose a system restore point and return to before you uninstalled Cakewalk, and everything was working. Then let's find out what the issue is with the VST, and try to fix that before getting into uninstalling programs and such. We also may need a better idea of what "FL Studio ASIO stuff" is. ASIO is an audio streaming protocol and doesn't really have much to do with plug-ins or VST.

I'm with scook...I had BandLab and Platinum installed side-by-side, but only went back to Sonar once a little over a year ago, when there was an FX Chain-specific bug in BandLab that affected my CA-X amps (the bug was fixed in the next iteration). If nothing else, BandLab is optimized quite a bit. But in any event, I'm glad your studio is up and running again, and you're back to your favorite workflow.

From what I understand, many Mac people who would have started with Pro Tools because it's the "industry standard" went to Studio One instead, and other Pro Tools users who didn't want the subscription thing switched as well. I can understand that, I like Studio One way better than Logic.

For example, there's no mention of video. Mixcraft has better video editing options than any of the DAWs mentioned, including Pro Tools. If all you care about is recording a song and getting it up on YouTube, Mixcraft is "best." But what this tells me is not so much that Music Radar doesn't know anything about video, but that none of their readers care about it, so they didn't vote for it.

The best DAW is the one you know best

However, do remember that clip gain is before any processors. This can be to your advantage in some cases, like using clip gain to vary the amount of level going into an amp sim...if you add an envelope with an attack time, it's like your turning up the drive and hitting the strings harder at the same time. Good for dynamics!

I've also found the algorithm you choose makes a difference. However, I haven't found any "rule" about which algorithm to use, other than "if one doesn't produce correct results, try a different one." In general, Melodic seems to work best. But with some music, the only way to get the desired results was with the Percussive one. "Universal" isn't so universal

That's odd, I tried it and it worked fine. Maybe you didn't have the staff view window open?

Right-click on the fretboard, and choose "Select Fretboard Track." Now the fretboard will be associated with that track. If the track has the piano roll, what you enter in the piano roll will show up in the staff and fret view. Insert notes in the fret view, and they'll show up in the piano roll. I should add - this isn't something I use regularly, so I don't know if there are any gotchas. But I tried it now in order to answer your question, and it seems to work well. Circle back if you encounter issues.

AFAIK, Cakewalk by BandLab and Ableton Live are the only programs that can conform to tempo so easily, although they use different approaches. I use Cakewalk to analyze tempos from "classic recordings" - the results are very interesting.

Now is a good time to note the virtues of rendering virtual instruments and tracks with plug-ins, so if you ever have to open a project in the future and all else fails, you can at least open the WAV files.

Agreed.

I believe there are still ways to update 8.1 to 10 for free, for most machines.

I can't replicate the problem here with audio loops (which I assume is what you're talking about). When you click on the Loop Construction window loop button, do the clip corners become rounded? And when you stretch, does the waveform repeat, or is it section following the loop just a straight line? Try saving the loop to see if that helps. To close the Loop Construction window, click on the X in the tab that says "Loop Construction," below it loop construction window.

FWIW, I just wrote my next Cakewalk column for Sound on Sound, and it's about integrating Cakewalk with NI KK. No, you don't get to do everything...and the column is based on the S-series MK 2, so I don't know how the A series responds. I'm on Part 2 of my Friday Tip for Studio One about integrating NI/KK. Even for something that is well-supported, there are nuances. My big surprise was discovering that for Windows (not Mac Catalina) I could use the KK keyboards to control any plug-in or effect, NKS or not, and have parameter names that I entered show up on the keyboard's display. This even works for Cakewalk DX plug-ins wrapped in Studio One. But it took me a loooooong time to a) figure it out, and b) comes up with the steps to make it repeatable enough to write about. MIDI 2.0 with MIDI CI (Compatibility Inquiry) can't come soon enough for me!! The MIDI 2.0 spec was ratified last Sunday at NAMM, so MIDI 2.0 gear should start rolling out over the next year. (FYI - your MIDI 1.0 gear will still work with it.)

I set up a keyboard command for normalize, and I have another one for gain...speeds things up a lot. But usually, I just normalize to 0 using the shortcut, and then if needed, use the trick I've described previously for lowering clip gain. Granted it's a workaround, but the process is very fast, and was always very helpful to me when doing vocals or narration, where a consistent level is helpful.