user390096

Hi, Just got a Focusrite OctoPre and want to add 8 drum tracks fast to existing project files. Is there an easy way to do this? I imagine I could create a project with just the 8 drum tracks all prepared for the different inputs from the Focusrite and somehow add that project to an existing project but I don't know how to do it or if it can be done. Thanx, Fredrick

Jonathan, your method is working best for me with one additional step (bouncing) and a few clarifications. I'm going to try to detail for others the method that works for me: Render a one track guide track to it's own file that doesn't include the part you want to record, in my case I left out the lead guitar, Then create a whole new project, call it something like "Guitar slow down" and the name of the song, Then drag the guide track into the new project and place it at the very beginning 0:00:00, Then make sure you are in Snap mode and put a marker where the imported section ends, call it "original clip %100" or such. You may need to turn off Snap mode for a moment to adjust the ending of the original guide track to have it match up on a snap line. Then go to the end of the guide track and hold down CTRL+SHIFT and the little icon will change to the "stretch icon" which looks like 2 arrows on each side of a vertical line, Then stretch to the right the entire track or just the section you need slowed down. Make sure you are in Snap mode and stretch it to the right to slow it down, about %125 works for me. If you are just doing a section in the middle of the song and you remove any of the beginning of the song, make sure you drag that section to the very beginning at time 0:00:00, and then do the strectching. Also give yourself a dew seconds of lead-in music so that you can find the place you need to start playing. Then create a new track and record your instrument in time with the slowed down track starting at time 0:00:00, and allow the recorded section to go until at least a little past the end of the guide track even if it's just silence. After recording, adjust the end of your recorded track back to be in line with the end of the guide track but don't hold the SHIFT+CTRL when you do this. Once the tracks line up at the end, hold down CTRL+SHIFT to select both tracks and slide them to the left to where the marker that says "original clip %100". This is where being in Snap mode helps out for getting things back to %100. Then highlight your new recorded clip which will say about %75 in my example, and "bounce" it to get rid of the reduced percentage mark in the top of the clip so that it doesn't show any percentage which I assume means it's back to %100. Then close this "slowed down" project and re-open the original project Then go to the folder of the slowed down but sped up audio file you named "Guitar slow down" and find your perfectly played new modified clip in the Audio files folder and simply drag it back into your original project and place in the right spot. NOTE: I just tried using the entire 3 minute guide track (stretched to about 3.5 minutes) and waited for a 15 second scratch guitar part I wanted to do in double time at about the 2 minute mark and I had to wait several minutes to get there and then after recording only 15 seconds allowed it to record silence to the end of the guide track. If you do this, you don't need to worry about placing lots of markers. I was hoping recording the entire track would allow the new track to more easily line up when I inserted back into the main project. However, when I dragged it into the project it still didn't match up perfectly and I had to move it just a hair. Anyway it works pretty well and no math to do! I'm also going to try the method Blogospherianman detailed but I've never had luck using the Audio Snap, so I'll give that a try and see if it's any better/faster, etc. Thanx to everyone for helping me out, and yesterday, I actually recorded the main formerly too fast, riff, again, in real time and think it's an even better take. OTHER NEWS My 30 years of gout arthritis seems to be fading as I had my 29th infusion of Krystexxa yesterday, the new miracle gout cure! Both hands had obvious lumps of gout tophi on them 2 years ago which made playing guitar painful and I lost a lot of speed and dexterity and had completely stopped playing. But 6 months into my 1 year therapy so far, all the lumps were gone and I could resume playing music again. My Doc said I have it bad and set me up for another 6 months of treatment. So if you have out-of-control gout or know anyone who does, look up Krystexxa. At the rate my gout is disappearing I may actually be able to play as fast as Van Halen!

OK Max, it worked fairly well but I think I needed to be a little more precise on where the guitar riff ended as I had to tweak it a bit. But, I was able to get it done and it sounds way better than before. FYI I was trying to play the guitar riff to "I Want Candy" by Bow Wow Wow, something I originally thought would be easy - not. Getting old here (61) with a bit of arthritis in both hands. Fortunately I was able to play the drums, bass, rhythm guitar, keys, egg (we need more egg!) and sing in original time (about 101 BPM), so all is not lost. Thanx again.

Thanx Max, I'll give this a try. I knew somebody probably already does this and wonder how many guitar heroes do it as well.😏

Hi, I'm trying to slow down the backing track (which is easy, CTRL+SHIFT at the end of the clip, then drag to the right). Then record a fast guitar part at the slower speed (that I can't play at the desired high speed), then speed the backing track back up to 100% and then the confusing part, do what with the recorded slower guitar part? For example, I have a song where I can play the guitar part easily if I slow the song down to 120%. So I drag the end of the backing track clip out until I see it says "120%". Then I record the guitar at a much slower and easier pace for my old hands. Then I return the backing track to it's original setting of 100%. But I can't find the "formula" to shorten the guitar part. I tried setting it to 80% thinking I recorded it 20% slower but it's not quite syncing up (83% actually sounds the best). Does anybody know the trick to get this to work? Thanx, Frederick PS I've tried practicing but it just ain't happening and it seems easier and at least, doable, if I slow it down.

Yes, and thanx for posting your Cutya kit. I have Add Drums 2 and notice they don't have any mixer channels for the cymbals either. I guess I can just go onto the individual instrument "edit - detail page" and turn up/down the volume on each cymbal if I desire but it would sure be easier if they had a mixer channel for each cymbal. If they can have a channel for the sacred cowbell, they should provide them for cymbals as well. We need more cymbals (not cowbell)!😏

No it's not that one! It's one that states something to the effect that your HD is struggling with input and output and the suggested remedies are to de-fragment your HD or change the buffer size on your I/O playback/recording. My HD is a new blazing fast Samsung 870 EVO M.2 SSD and I've read you should never de-fragment any SSD, and the I/O increases I tried did nothing. Actually, I'm getting the crashes again so I suspect it may be a plug-in doing the damage. I just created a very simple project with 1 audio and 1 midi track and no plug-ins and it works smoothly, like it should. Next I opened a recent project that was crashing a lot and giving me that error "5" and all of a sudden it is working smoothly again. I have no idea what's going on but at least it's working again. Maybe I need to run a simple project to get the gears working smoothly before I open up my more complex projects. I think I'm one of the few who uses a Universal Audio Apollo Twin Quad with a super-fast Thunderbolt 3 connection. I spent the money thinking I would never have any crashes again but somethings always cropping up to put a damper on the fun. Oh well, hopefully it keeps working and I thought getting rid of those WOV and TR2 files was the cure, and it was, for a little while....🥴

Thanx reginald, I'll look into it.

After working smoothly for weeks, Sonar was crashing again, as usual, and I didn't know why but I kept getting error 5. One of the suggested remedies for error 5 is to increase both the Playback and Record cache buffer sizes, which I did, and which did nothing to fix the problem at all. Then I searched for the word "cache" in the forum and came across something I had never heard of after 20 years with CW, the "Picture Cache". Folks were saying this folder can cause all sorts of playback crashes and that the files in it did not even need to be saved as they are generated every-time you load a project. So I went into the Picture Cache folder, gulped and deleted over 30,000 TR2 and WOV files (which I had never heard of), and now CW runs smoother than ever. I also found out that dragging mp3's into the track view can cause problems and is something I do on a regular basis. I knew CW automatically converted the mp3's into wav files but wasn't aware this could make things run poorly. Oh well, it's worked for me so I guess maybe I'm just lucky in that regard. Anyway, for those who have mysterious crashes, try deleting all of your files in the Picture Cache which can be found at C:\Cakewalk Projects\Picture Cache. I wish there was a list of little known remedies one could run on a regular basis to keep things running smoothly. And thanx to the forum members who figure these things out.👍

Hi, Does anybody know how to insert all of the drums in a SSD5.5 kit into the mixer view? The "Mixer" only seems to display a pre-set list of drums and there isn't any channel for any of the crash cymbals. However, there are channels for cowbell and tambourine but they aren't even part of my kit. Confusing. I've tried going to the SSD5 web-site but it doesn't seem to address this situation. Help!

Thanx, I'll give it try when I get home.🤞 Back home and all 3 methods worked! Thanx again HIBI👍

Does anybody know what that darkened adjustable section is in timeline with a little "S" that pops up above it? Is it important? Can I turn it off? I find it annoying and can only get rid of it by sliding it's left handle to the very beginning of my project and then also sliding the right handle all the way to the left and then it finally disappears. Sorry I couldn't get an image of the "S" in my screen capture picture.

You may want to run a "CAL", if I assume correctly that is your goal. Here's a link on how to split up drums tracks into separate tracks. https://www.cakewalk.com/Support/Knowledge-Base/2007013155/Splitting-up-your-MIDI-drums

It Works! Updated again to 2020.04 build 179 and this time it works for whatever mysterious reason so I'm thrilled. Thanx to all for figuring this out and thanx for showing how to roll-back versions.

Found it and rolled it back and it loops perfectly again. So now I can reinstall 2020.04 build 179 and it should work this time?

Thanx Noel, but how do I rollback, or manually force a reinstall? The Assistant says I'm up-to-date (2020.04 build 179) and doesn't show any way to reinstall what it thinks is a perfectly functioning program. Yours Truly, Frederick PS I tried the Roland Quad-Capture and it crashed as well.

Mystery. Just updated my seldom used (for CW) Win10 laptop and it loops with no problems (0.04 build 179). The major difference is that I use the simple on-board sound-card provided by ASUS. My studio computer uses a Universal Audio Apollo Twin but I did test it without any plug-ins at all and it still crashed. I have a Roland Quad-Capture I can try as a stand-in for the Apollo to see what happens.....

Just running lyrics from video files I make. Small projects with just a few audio, and at times, midi traxx. It's build 2020.04 (179?) that's giving crashing. All previous versions looped fine.

New build has created a mess with looping songs with videos in them. The songs crash at the first attempt to loop. I tried changing the formats of the videos but it did it no matter if the videos were mp4, wmv, avi, etc. Tried lots of different songs and they all crash. If you delete the videos, they don't crash when looping but I need the videos for scrolling lyrics and guitar chords. As workaround, I'm back to the latest(?) Sonar Platinum version and it still loops when the videos are present. I have sent a few midi-dump files into CWBBL and they tell me they got the message but no response yet. Anybody else experiencing this?

Izotope RX works very well and quickly. You can get the their basic version called "Elements" for about $120. It can fix clips, clicks, hums, and noise. I have the more advanced version (RX 7 Standard, about $400) and use it often.

Thanx for all the responses. I experimented and discovered FX/plugins are the real time consumers. When I tried turning off ALL the FX, it exported about 7 times faster. Too bad I like/need/love my FX.🙄

Thanx Promidi, Good to hear my export times are "normal". I've been exporting to mp3 from the early days as the mp3 files are 10 times smaller than wave files and I never really noticed ANY discernible difference in quality between wave and mp3 files. Of course, I supposedly can't hear much above 10 kz anymore, if I ever could, according to results from an on-line hearing test I recently did where you download wav files and give them a listen.🤨 I tried the wav export and it was only about 5% faster. My Cakewalk program file is on the boot m.2 "C" drive but the audio files are on a slower old-school magnetic disk. I wonder if moving them to the m.2 would speed it up considerably. I'll have to try that.

Hi, I'm curious as to how long it takes folks to export/encode a final song. My typical song is about 4 minutes long, and it takes at least 2 to 4 minutes to export it and I'm wondering if that's normal. I export typically 5-20 tracks thru 2-5 busses (vocals, music, reverb, delay, harmonizer) and make them mp3's at 44.1, bit depth 16, triangular dithering, using the lame encoder. Is that normal? I'm using an Apollo Quad MKii sound-card and just installed a new m.2 SSD hard drive with 16 GB RAM on a Thunderbolt 3 mother-board. I think I have a pretty fast machine but wish I could speed it up. Does anybody know of faster techniques?

Just learned a few days ago you can simply highlight the part of the clip you want to apply an increase/decrease of gain. Just go to the where it says "Clips" next to your wave track and open it and choose "clip automation/gain" and you should see a red line going all the way across your wave. Then select the section you want to increase or decrease, then let the mouse hover a little towards the top of the track and it will change shape to a little horizontal bar with arrows both above and below it. Then simply hold the mouse down and move it up to increase volume or down to decrease volume. You'll notice it will create 2 little nodes and those can be moved to "slant" or ramp the increase/decrease to taste. When you've made all your edits, simply bounce the track to clips and they will be locked into a new more polished track and of course the original will still be available in the audio folder if you change your mind. I've used cakewalk for decades too, and just learned this trick that I had requested years ago. It's working great.

Actually, I'm trying out Auto-Tune Pro (again) and want to record the pitch corrections as I sing in real-time. I know there was a way to do this but I don't recall the details, and yes you need a fast system to do this but I have an even faster system now and wanted to give it another try. As I recall, I could listen in real-time on the main track but used the echo "on" whilst recording an aux track, attached to the main track. It would record my voice with the Auto-tune stamped to the recording but it never sounded smooth and led me to invest in Universal Audio's Apollo stuff which can easily record FX onto tracks. UA has a version of AT but it doesn't have the graph mode or the throat option. PS A year ago I tried to demo ATPro but it wouldn't even load in Cakewalk as CbB couldn't find it in the plugs directory, so I gaave up back then. A few days ago I installed it with ease so I think both Cakewalk and Anteras have improved their integration of the 2 systems.