Rick Paul

Hi Noel, I did read it when the release first came out, but didn't recall the specifics with regard to mono in/stereo out. Good to hear that is coming in the future. Thanks. Rick

Today I found another issue in using Waves plugins in CbB that further highlights the functional issue I mentioned yesterday with the PRS SuperModels (i.e. which have only mono and mono to stereo versions of the plugins, no stereo version). I was using their new version of StudioRack, again on a guitar part. (Actually, it was a virtual guitar part since I don't play guitar. The only reason this is relevant here, though, is because softsynths tend to start as stereo in CbB, short of your explicitly configuring them otherwise.) StudioRack is a plugin chainer, with presets at the plugin chain level. There are mono, mono/stereo, and stereo versions. One of the presets I was trying out started with one of the PRS SuperModels plugins, which was then followed by a parallel process (with multiple plugins that run in parallel in that rack slot), then a delay, then a reverb. If I used the stereo version of StudioRack, knowing that the delay and reverb would be stereo effects, then the PRS amp simulator was disabled, just as if it were a missing plugin. Thinking about this, it became obvious that it is because there is no stereo version of that plugin, so it was, in effect missing. If I used the mono version, then the PRS amp was there, but the reverb (RVerb) was disabled, because there is no mono version of RVerb. If I used the mono/stereo version of StudioRack, all the plugins were available, but, of course, CbB treated it as mono, so the stereo effects of the delay and reverb would not come through. As for the more general considerations, most of what CbB does with mono and stereo interleave and plugins seems reasonably logical to me. There have been times where I've needed to force stereo operation on a mono track due to either an effect that was inherently stereo (e.g. chorus, Leslie, ping pong delays, etc.) or effects that simply behaved badly in mono for whatever unknown reason (e.g. an older version of PSP MixTreble used to get bad artifacts if frozen in mono -- that has long since been resolved). I'm not sure if I've ever forced mono (other than for checking mono compatibility, for example on the master bus), but, in general things have behaved as expected. CbB's FX bins also give helpful visuals to see if plugins are outputting mono or stereo. In fact, this is how I first noticed the issue with PRS SuperModels' mono/stereo plugin. I'd had a stereo version of a distortion plugin ahead of the PRS plugin, and it clearly showed stereo output with its little tics. That was followed by the PRS plugin then Channel Tools, both of which showed mono output because CbB had forced mono from the point of the PRS mono/stereo plugin. I just checked Waves' website, and the only DAWs Waves supports in general but indicates as not being supported for the mono/stereo plugins are CbB and WaveLab. It's not clear to me why they don't have a stereo version of the PRS SuperModels when their other guitar-oriented plugins do have stereo versions. Rick

This is revisiting an old thread (after an internet search to try and figure it out what is going on in a project), but I recently purchased the Waves PRS SuperModels guitar amp simulators. While many Waves plugins have mono versions, stereo versions, and mono/stereo versions, the PRS SuperModels plugins only have mono and mono/stereo. This makes sense for guitar amp simulators in that guitars are inherently mono instruments, so the input would be mono, even if the effect could turn it into stereo, for example with echo-based effects. The problem, even with CbB 2020.05, is that CbB treats these mono/stereo plugins as mono, even if the interleave is set to stereo, which defeats the purpose of a mono/stereo plugin. When a plugin also has a stereo version, it is possible to just use that to work around this (though some plugins have issues here if they see the mono input as only left or right rather than equal signals in both channels -- in such a case, it is possible to use a stereo aux track to route the original track to), but that isn't possible when the plugin only has a mono/stereo version, and there doesn't seem to be a workaround for this in CbB. Is there something I'm missing? Rick

When working with audio take lanes, especially when the number of lanes grows large (e.g. when tracking a lead vocal, I will often do 6-12 takes, allowing for comping doubles from the same pool of takes as the main vocal, often while still learning a new song), it can become important to zoom in on the vertical scale of each take (see attached screen shot). This allows more clearly seeing where good cut points for comping may be (e.g. vocal phrase boundaries, areas with similar volume and phrasing, clear breaks between words, etc.). Currently, there are two issues that impact the usability of the existing ability to Ctrl-drag-up/down to zoom in on the scale: 1) As best I've been able to determine, there is no way to do the same zooming on multiple take lanes within a track at the same time. Thus, it is necessary to do the same zooming on each lane individually. Since the goal is generally to have the scale on all lanes be identical (i.e. to be able to compare "apples to apples" in visual examinations for cut points), the best one can do is watch where the scale numbers (circled in one lane of the screen shot) end up to try and get them to be the same. However, this can be challenging, especially with lots of takes as the numbers can be very small and are sometimes covered up by the mouse. And, of course, it takes N times the effort where N is the number of takes (i.e. compared to being able to do it once for all takes within a track or for selected takes, where N is the number of lanes selected). 2) The most recent setting does not persist across project saves, closes, and re-opens. Thus, if your comping session has to span more than one Cakewalk project session (a very common thing for me), you have to make the scale changes all over again in any subsequent sessions. This can happen not only intentionally (e.g. closing things up at the end of a night, then opening the project fresh the next day), but also unintentionally (e.g. when Cakewalk crashes or hangs). My feature suggestion is thus two-fold: 1) Provide a way to scale all take lanes within a track, or at least all selected takes, with one operation. This could either be the default for zooming on the audio scale within a track or via a different modifier key from zooming on a single lane. Bonus points: Allow doing the same for all take lanes of selected tracks. (This would be useful when comping multiple background vocal tracks where each harmony part has its own track, but it might be useful to be comping those in parallel for a song section.) 2) Make the most recently used settings for any given track(s) persistent across project saves and re-opens. While my main concern here is for comping audio, these changes might also be useful for MIDI. (#1 may be more questionable, though, as playing different notes on different takes may make the optimal scale needed for each lane different, and any clear phrase boundaries are likely to be most evident by having all vertical notes within a given take as zoomed in as possible to contain all those notes. This may argue for being able to continue using the current method in addition to the suggested additional method. #2 would still be useful for MIDI in all cases, though.)