Craig Anderton

You're very welcome No need for others to re-invent the wheel.

You'll hear the difference not only in the bass itself, but in the overall clarity of the mix - beat note problems with bass seem particularly problematic, so eliminating them is a Good Thing.

I always use pitch correction on bass. Bass strings violate the laws of physics; they simply can't be under enough tension to produce notes that low, yet still be part of a playable instrument that doesn't have a 7-foot-long fretboard. So the pitch varies wildly as the note sustains. I use Melodyne to flatten the notes past the initial pluck.

And as I point out in the article, you can even do it after the fact. So you record to the click, have your signal processors sync, and all that good stuff. But then, add the final touches that belong more to the realm of mastering. Sure, people could say "but the tempo changes should have been there from the beginning." But they're not - so you do the next best thing.

Yes, you can flatten a varying pitch all the way down to a straight line. Sometimes, using the pitch drift correction tool can do the job as well. Being able to work with vibrato is one of Melodyne's strong points IMHO. You can isolate vibrato down to individual cycles (I split on zero-crossings), and raise or lower their amplitude. It's impossible to tell by listening that the vibrato has been manipulated.

I'd also add it's not just about quantizing rhythm, but tempo. Tempo changes are crucial in helping a song breath. Check out this article for an analysis I did of tempo changes in a variety of songs, using CbB. The article also includes the "time traps" concept I wrote about in The Huge Book of Cakewalk by BandLab Tips, but applied to Studio One. I also did a second article about "feel," and how to restore feel with timing shifts - it's basically an article about "un-quantizing" quantized parts.

The Melodyne Essential version is more limited than V-Vocal was, but the higher versions like Editor and Studio are incredible. The only real feature it lacks compared to V-Vocal is the ability to add artificial vibrato, but you can do that with the Sonitus modulator. Drawing pitch lines doesn't have an exact equivalent, but the way Melodyne can flatten vibrato, enhance vibrato, separate the "blobs," do polyphonic processing, and so on is pretty effing remarkable. Being able to pitch-correct a couple guitar chords in a rhythm guitar track because I pressed down too hard on the strings is mind-blowing. I also feel that all things being equal, Melodyne is more transparent, with part of that due to formant controls. It's too bad V-Vocal was never pursued further by Roland, but companies have different priorities. With Melodyne and Auto-Tune, as well as programs like Cubase/Logic/MOTU etc. having their own equivalent functionality, and companies like Waves and iZotope offering additional third-party solutions, Roland probably saw it as a niche market that would never pay back additional R&D.

Clearly, then, the new strategy should be "don't plan" Good job, Noel!

I think any null test is supposed to be post-master fader, i.e., what goes to the D/A converter. At that point, the only remaining variable is the converter.

Great for corporations - cost-effective, everyone's using the same version, easy file exchanges, etc. Not so great for consumers, who have different needs.

IIRC you only need to log in once every six months or so to let BandLab know you're still around. So turn on Windows Defender, log in, let BandLab know you still exist, log out, and get back to making music...and update CbB while you're at, there have been a lot of useful bug fixes.

All valid points, and yes, pan laws do make a difference. My last album project had a mix of songs done in Studio One and in Cakewalk. I don't think anyone could tell definitively which was recorded in which. But your point about the GUI is spot-on. There have been many studies about how look influences perception. Wine experts were given identical wines to taste, and they invariably said the more expensive ones in the bottles with nicer graphics tasted better. Another good study is when people saw the identical movie, but the sound quality was better in one than the other. People said the video quality was better in the one with better sound! I have no doubt that particular GUIs resonate better with particular musical approaches. As I always say, right tool for the right job. When I did the Simplicity album (2017), Cakewalk was mostly the right choice. For Joie de Vivre (2018), it was mostly Studio One. It's like being a painter, and deciding whether you're going to start with acrylics or oils. It depends on the type of painting you want to create...and how you feel that day

I've written and lectured about this extensively. This is the basis for things like groove templates, but even something as simple as pushing the snare late by a few milliseconds gives more of a "Bonham" feel. For dance music, I'll often push the high-hat ahead by just a little bit to lend urgency.

Cool, it's not my imagination. Something even stranger is that I was never able to sing with vibrato for, well, decades. When DAWs came along, I started adding "faux" vibration with modulation. When I sang along with these tracks to do overdubs, I acquired the ability to do vibrato and now, it's a natural part of my singing. I do recall a study once along the lines that people who thought about practicing piano gained almost as much proficiency as those who actually practiced it. Maybe these phenomena are related.

I'm not sure people are switching to Cakewalk as much as starting with Cakewalk, or adding Cakewalk to their repertoire. At some seminars, I've talked with Pro Tools users on Windows who are intrigued by Cakewalk, and because it's free, they're going to download it and check it out. Time will tell whether they stop using Pro Tools, use both, or decide to stick with Pro Tools. The biggest issue is that they can't use their Pro Tools plug-ins in Cakewalk, so the cost of getting new plug-ins offsets Cakewalk being free.

Re live versus studio and tools...in live performance, there's so much more going on than the music, like the interaction with the audience. If you make a mistake, a second later it's gone. With recording, whatever you play is frozen in time, forever. So there's more incentive to "get it right." The irony to me is that when I started in this business, the object of recording was to capture the "magic" of live performance, which had been honed with months of practice or time on the road. Somehow it got turned around, and now the object of live performance is to reproduce what was created in the studio. Given that I play live very rarely, I can't do the first approach, which I prefer. My way of compensating is to write and record a song in the studio, and once it's finished, then the song has its personality established so I re-do it (sometimes from scratch, sometimes just basically replacing everything). The replacement song is always better. Interestingly - and I'd be curious if anyone else has experienced the same thing - I pitch-correct my scratch vocals (which are usually pretty rough) so that they're perfect all the way through. Listening to them over and over and over again while recording the parts does something unexpected. When I go to sing the real vocals, the pitch is a zillion times better. It's like listening to the "perfect" vocal trained me to sing better. Same with rhythmic parts, like rhythm guitar.

Which means that you totally get it!! You fix the notes that sound wrong, not the notes that look wrong B.B. King would have never had a career if his flatted-7th-to-tonic bend ever actually made it to the tonic... I've often said that far from leeching the soul out of vocals, Melodyne has made my vocals MORE soulful. That's because I can sing with abandon, knowing that if a note or two is off, I can fix it. That's a big improvement over constantly second-guessing whether the vocal is any good while I'm singing it. Similarly, quantization takes the pressure off of playing drum parts. They're all tools, and neutral. The skill of the person using the tools is the determining factor in the tools' effectiveness. But I sure am glad we have these tools. P.S. In my workshops, I use John Bonham as the poster boy example of why playing around the grid works a lot better than playing to the grid.

Okay. I've been working with music software since it could do only MIDI. I've worked on everything from award-winning classical albums, to an album that spent 2 years in the Billboard new age top 20 chart, to hardcore German electronic music. I do rock music and EDM concerts. I wrote the manual for Ableton Live version 2, was an expert witness for Magix when someone initiated (IMHO) a totally bogus lawsuit because they claimed they invented loops, consulted to Avid, wrote a best-selling book about Cubase, did demos at the last show about MOTU's really excellent amp sims...there's a lot more, but you get the idea. I love music, I love creativity, and I appreciate the people in this industry who've devoted their lives to what they love, instead of making smart bombs and raking in the $$. When it appeared Cakewalk was doomed, I know at least one "competitor" that was - and I don't use this term lightly - devastated. They had an incredible amount of respect for Noel and what Cakewalk was going. The two companies collaborated on working out the kinks in a third-party spec. This company is composed of musicians, and they knew what it would be like to lose your primary tool. When they offered a deal to Cakewalk users, they weren't leeching off of anyone. They genuinely wanted to help out. The industry is very much like this. Look at MIDI, where companies got together for the common good of musicians. Sure, they made money selling MIDI gear. But I submit it was because they had the right motives. This tribal talk about DAWs is silly. I have a lot of stringed instruments. Each one is different. Some have obvious differences, like an acoustic vs. electric, or 12-string vs. 6-string, or a 5-string bass vs. a 4-string. Some are dobros or ukuleles. Some have short-scale necks and some have long-scale necks, which has a huge influence on playing and tone. Cakewalk has some extremely advanced features that other companies would do well to emulate. Studio One has that incredible harmonic editing and the project page for mastering. Ableton Live has an audio engine that won't quit. Acid Pro is still the fastest way to put music together. Cubase can basically do anything, if you put in the time to learn it. Mixcraft is the most flexible and cost-effective "needledrop music" library ever devised. Reason remains the #1 program that everyone should have, so they can ReWire it into their host program. And MOTU's amp sims, and video options, are stellar. You can nit pick about "this program has this, this program has that, nyah nyah" but all that means is you're spending time on forums spinning your wheels, when you could be making music with your program of choice. And before people get too freaked out about "those EDM kids," I've been watching the progress of the son of a close friend over the past few years. He started off borrowing a Casio keyboard I had, he was probably 11 or 12. Then he started putting loops together in GarageBand. Then he became interested in Ableton Live but stopped doing loops, and is recording his own music into it. He's now 15 or 16, and following an arc where he is getting more creative and more individualistic all the time. He is not alone. EDM is the "gateway drug" into a life of music for some people. I can't help but think of all those oldsters back in the 50s and 60s who dismissed those "kids" who could only play three chords on guitar in a garage. Be grateful there are so many choices, so that people can choose exactly what they need...or in my case, the right tool for the right job. This is a low-paying industry, and only getting worse as companies (like Apple, sorry) diminish the value of software. If you want software to have all the features you want, be willing to pay $1,000 for a program. Until then, spread that $1,000 over multiple programs, and you'll be covered for anything. It's no harder to learn different software than it is to learn the differences in playing an acoustic guitar compared to an electric...actually, I think it's easier.

Clearly Bitflipper has not worked with some of the drummers I've known

I agree with everything here 95%. I left Sonar Platinum installed and installed CbB. CbB is just plain better. However, at one point, there was an issue with TH3 and FX Chains that left me dead in the water for using them with CbB, so I had to use Platinum instead. I alerted Noel, and there was a fix in the next CbB. Haven't opened Platinum since then. It has become a sort of vestigial organ on my hard drive.

To get back to the OP...something that's free, and good, will probably not become less popular over time

The following is excerpted from my book, "The Huge Book of Cakewalk by BandLab Tips." If you have the book, the complete section with illustrations starts on page 395. But hopefully, this will be enough to get you going. It’s entirely possible to stream Cakewalk by BandLab’s audio. Bluetooth adds about 30-40 ms of latency so you probably won’t be doing any overdubbing, but for listening back it’s fine. To do so, you need to use the Windows drivers, not ASIO. MME is the fail-safe option, however it adds lots more latency. WASAPI Exclusive or WASAPI Shared mode is a much better option. I’ll use iLoud as an example, but the protocol for other Bluetooth devices is essentially the same. 1. Pair your Bluetooth device with your laptop or desktop Bluetooth. Your device will provide instructions on how to do this, but it generally involves pushing a button while the two Bluetooth-friendly devices are turned on, and in close proximity to each other. 2. Choose Start > Settings > Devices, then click on the Bluetooth category. Verify that Bluetooth is turned on, and make sure that your Bluetooth device is shown as Connected, not just Paired. 3. Return to Settings, then click on Personalization. Next, click on Themes, then Advanced Sound Settings. 4. Your Bluetooth device should appear in the list of potential playback devices. Click on it, and use Set Default to make the Bluetooth device your default playback device. 5. In Cakewalk by BandLab, under Preferences > Audio > Playback and Recording, choose MME as the driver mode. I’ve also used Bluetooth successfully with the WASAPI driver mode. Note that you will not be able to obtain latencies comparable to ASIO, so if there’s distortion, aliasing, etc., try increasing the latency. 6. Also in Cakewalk by BandLab, under Preferences > Audio > Devices, choose your Bluetooth playback system as the output device.

Although not a particularly glamorous application, you can also use the Matrix View as a "parking place" for clips, alternate takes, and the like.

WASAPI is a fantastic advance when working with laptops where you're stuck with onboard sound. However, you still can't get the kind of latencies with it that you can with ASIO. I think WASAPI will have a shot at replacing ASIO only when it starts hitting the sub-10 ms latency range consistently. One huge advantage Core Audio on the Mac has over ASIO is the ability to aggregate interfaces easily. This is something that's been possible to do with the native Windows drivers for as long as I can remember, but again, aggregating meant using higher-latency drivers than ASIO. Sonar got on the WDM bandwagon early on, and it looked promising...but if you check out forum comments of that era, it seems most people opted for ASIO as being better in terms of either stability, compatibility, or latency. With WASAPI, it seems that WDM is now a "legacy" driver.

The ONLY potential improvement I can think of, and it would be such a slight improvement as to be insignificant, is that when playing back a 48 kHz file, the playback system might be able to use a gentler smoothing filter that might make for a slightly better sound. But that's a real stretch, because the difference between 44.1 and 48 kHz is so small. And as Bitflpper points out, the file itself won't be any better.