Kevin Walsh

Michael, you might consider posting your question in the songs forum. I got a lot of great mix-related feedback on my projects there.

+1 on a cheap mic. Love 'em, that's all I have but man, that fizz. A problem I also battle constantly comes from recording vocal takes in a poorly treated room. This results in a relatively high noise floor which, after a compression stage tends to distort the signal. So even though your gain staging was dead on, if there's noise in the chain it will get smooshed into audible fuzz.

Glad you found the answer! I had lots of stability issues with CbB. I tried everything I could think of, and nothing helped. After a lot of digging around I found Windows 10 system file checker, and that stabilized things nicely. If others are having issues and nothing in this thread has helped, you might wish to check out this link: https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/4026529/windows-10-using-system-file-checker

Yeah, I suspect lots of things fell through the cracks around the time BandLab acquired Cakewalk IP and launched the new product line. Contributors like @MUDGEL and @Craig Anderton are pretty valuable to a product community and while I don't know for certain, it's seems likely (at least to me) that no messages were intended by the silence from BandLab. It's good to air these kinds of things so that steps can be taken to address any oversights that may have occurred.

Bleh! I'm glad I don't have to deal with that kind of cognitive dissonance.

For the sake of folks who may at some point in the future find themselves in a similar pickle, perhaps you could share how you resolved the issue?

Gosh it's nice to know I'm not the only one seeing this.

I never really stopped using Sonar. I was going to keep using it till it wouldn't go no more and then deal with the problem when that happened. I did poke around with other DAWs though. I have MixBus and Reaper in addition to Cakewalk. In both of those DAW's I keep reaching for stuff that isn't there. Well, I know that the stuff is there, I just kept not finding it. I found MixBus charming and I like it but I don't really use it. I'm just not smart enough to figure out how to make mixes that sound good there. To me Reaper's UI is like watching a 1970's cheap action movie. In particular I dislike how automation lanes are laid out. It's nice to see and have at everything at once but all that information on the screen confuses and angers my amygdala. I must have gone through about a gazillion themes trying to find one that worked for me.

I know the BT plugins get slammed by some, but I've always liked them and the special little sugar they sprinkle everything with. Guess that was a little off topic. My bad.

I really enjoyed this take on that song. Completely different but honoring what the song is. Very imaginative and inspiring.

This is a great song. I really love your voice and the whole vibe of the piece. Really enjoyed it and the lovely guitar work.

Thank you, Paul! Yeah, if you throw the Beatles into that list you've listed my most impactful influences. I appreciate you listening!

Sounds like a great, old-school mix of kick-ass rock to me, awesome tune!

I think there's the makings of a quite nice song here, and there's a nice clean sound in the mix that I like. I agree with the comment about the drums, they need to be more up there and to my ear, your vocals are too forward. I also hear a lot of proximity effect in your vocals where you are perhaps a bit too close to the mic. You can eq that out to a great degree rather than re-record it, but it's best not to have it there in the first place. It doesn't sound like there's any compression going on with the vocal track, just some limiting on the overall mix (or my ear doesn't have the experience to hear what you've done here.) Some compression will help the track settle into the mix better. Finally, while everything's subjective when it comes to stuff like this, if it were my track I'd pan the vocals more toward the center.

Sounds fantastic to me and my fat, clumsy, arthritic fingers. Great job!