Alan Tubbs

Massive X is a good and different bass makers.

Are they all on the same midi channel? I’ve done that more than once.

Thanks. I knew it was somewhere under organs.

I wonder when I’ll get an update to plasma by cakewalk, the early looper program. From the beginning of the century. Got it free in one of those English music rags with a cd and then upgraded it so I could do more than 4 or 8 tracks. It would do acidified files before Sonar did, or at least home studio (my next upgrade!). if cakewalk isn’t going to update P5 maybe they could make my old copy of Plasma work today. What did I do with that CD?

Dim pro and rapture Pro are still relavent and have some great presets I still use. I forget if it is rapture or dim that has the “jimmy…” preset which is a go to for organs. There are also plenty of “effects” and evolving drones and legiti-esque orchestra sounds. Good stuff. My minimoog is older yet still makes sounds I use.

Freezing soft synths solves many of these problems. Then you are dealing with all audio.

So we have our official answer to how long cbc? As long as it takes, I guess. Users need to take cakewalk at its word that it ain’t coming for your DAW - yet. And you’ll get warning so you can find another free DAW.

The original Minimoog D is a mono synth, unless the new ones are different.

Compression is only a tool that when used properly can help even out the volume of tracks, busses and complete songs. It can also provide tone, like the 1176 or la2a style comps. It isn’t always necessary but helps, especially in popular music to balance out many tracks. when recording acoustical signals I almost always use a little compression going in.Not much but enough to thicken up the sound, by which I mean lowering the peaks and spikes in relation to the quieter sections (having a transformer in line also helps with this). That signal often gets a second dose of digital compression after vol automation. And most busses get a little more compression that helps, as referenced above, with glue. A little compresssion, applied serially at each step, can provide a strong, solid signal that holds its own among other tracks without extraneous or distracting bouncing of instruments. Even if you don’t have an analog compressor on the front you can still use digital for track and busses. Cakewalk comes with three very usable comps. The 1176 style comp I find good for rock and roll compression, almost like a light switch going on and off. The Opto style comes in useful for lead stuff like vocals and guitars, holding and swelling the instrument out front but in a subtle way. Finally the “buss” comp is my favorite and works well for glue. Ps Another reason that samples and loops sound good in our own productions is that the samples are already comped and eq to fit songs.

Re: the u 87 is a FET (solid state) version of the U 67. Same capsule etc. the original U 87 is called just that. It was quickly superseded by the U 87 Ai. The original unit is preferred by some for tone, but it is down -3dB compared to the Ai. The Warm unit is based on the original unit and needs a good pre to get the most out of it. I find the Warm unit good. It can sound (like the Neumann) strange in isolation but is usually good or great in the context of the production.

I’ve got the Warm 47 and it is pretty good vox mix. The 251 is better still, esp for vocals, tho that is what I’ve heard from others, not from use (tho one studio I’ve used us to have one and it was great on female vox). Chad at signal arts tricks them out as well as makes his own mics. He used to be with warm and helped design their 47. That would be a $1000 solution or so. I’ve been meaning to send in my 47. He has over your budget 47s and 250s he makes but under your budget FET 47 etc. another great all around eq in your price range is the microtech m930. It is made by the Neumann 2nd factory set up during wwii when Berlin was problematic. The ruskies overran it and east Germany continued to make mics with the original m 7 capsule. The m930 uses their modern make. It looks like a baby Neumann but has a big sound. What you put in comes out so much change and I haven’t found anything it doesn’t work on, including vocals. another story is most studios used small diaphragm mics for vocals back in the day, but people walked off with them. They couldn’t do that with 47s etc. and Ive used the small oktava mc 012 for primarily female vox. Works great and is another all rounder for most instruments.

To get to the secret decoder page go to other links home cakewalk. It will lead to a page which has the two “new” DAWs info. Click and read and you’ll have all the information available to those of us outside of Cakewalk authorized folk. hint: the free version of CbB will go away at some unspecified point in the future. Then you have to pay for your daw like regular shlubs, not the special customers you are now. 😉 @

Well, that is welcome. After a couple days doing my morning browsing using the good ole iPad, today cakewalk is signed in with my password. I guess it took some time to get established. Don't know why, but ill take it . Funny stuff in computer land.

I just got a surface pro running windows 11. My music computer and writing laptop are both win 10. My tablet I’m web writing on now Is an iPad. The surface however doesn’t want to accept passwords to get me into bandlab, cakewalk forums, gearslutz . When I checked my Windows passwords listings not only were the passwords correct but there were multiple passwords for the same site. I remember having problems with the two win machines. I used one password for windows itself and another for my email. Those kept getting switched - one would work with mail but not windows. The next day it would be switched. any ideas? Does win 11 not work seamlessly with passwords? Is it normal to have thee or four passwords under the internal listing? I’m interested in any ideas. thanks @

From gearslutz, I mean space. https://gearspace.com/board/new-product-alert/1417163-bandlab-launches-exclusive-music-distribution-more-membership-subscribers.html who knew?

I don’t know of any audio interface geared for guitar or drums or vocals. That is asking a bit much for a $2000 interface, much less a $200 one for use w a specific instrument. Basically, a good interface/preamp will sound good on most sounds. I’ve used an audient and they are very good sounding. A few years ago they used the same pre across the entire line, from cheapest interface to their $20,000 console. Those were very nice indeed and of all the interfaces pres I’ve used the most “analog” sounding, like there was a transformer inline. I would check them out first. for years I used a tascam uh 7000, which not only had double plus good conversion but crystalline pres. Unfortunately they made it for audiophiles, not musicians, and had high latency and no real expansion capabilities (there was stereo digital in out but no recording of the 2nd unit since tascam told me that they didn’t trust audiophiles with feedback). Shortsighted. They had a real winner . I don’t know how much they go for used. But it is the best sounding unit until I used the new Neumann mt48, a 2 grand unit.

The Yamaha Motif etc can function as a one stop audio and midi usb unit. You have to run their driver and then you can record the motif’s audio directly as well as the standard midi output via usb. When I used it back when, however, the latency was high. This was years ago and I didn’t really try to replace my interface with the 2x2 Yamaha usb system, so others might have got it to work. however, the Motif line is a significant step up in price from the Korg. And that is about the only thing I know about the Korg.

Pretty much the same look. The software on the screen is different and in brilliant color. And there is ADAT squeezed onto the rear.

Had the chance to review the new interface from Neumann, the MT 48. It is a modified Anubis from Merging Technologies and part of their house and mastering system. It comes with AES67 for Ethernet such connections. And it is a step up from any other interface I’ve used. 136 dB signal to noise ratio and 78 dB gain on the mic preamps. It has the clarity to give you pristine replication and show off the slightly thickening sound you get from class A, transformer coupled front end. Even using their own pure pres the sound doesn’t come out serial, just clean. Two pres, two line ins and 4 out. Plus 2 separate headphones out, and all 4 of these stereo outs can have their own mixes and excellent effects package from Merging Tech. In fact, all outs share those same channel strips and you can record both the clean and effected mixes to your DAW for parallel compression. You basically get a complete hardware digital mixer with big board monitoring controls built in. You can run this with your DAW or bypass it and have practically 0 latency thru the unit. With the clean effects. There is even a setting to run the single ADAT signals straight out, skipping the DAW again to run out to your analog hardware. Like a tape deck. And the kicker is a touchscreen monitor to handle all the MT 48 functions in a logical layout. Much better than my DAW control via a large touchscreen. You might prefer a Burl ADDA sound, or any of the other top notch units, but they aren’t better, just different. And the Neumann lists for less than $2000. Admittedly that is pricey, but since the new Cakewalk offering will be a professional DAW(s), you can hook it up with a top notch interface too. A complete review will appear in a couple of months in Tape Op. and to squash that argument Neumann didn’t “pay” me for the review. That is a simpleton’s argument. Why would anyone even remotely professional want to waste one or two months reviewing a POS product. I asked to review this product because it seemed intriguing. And it certainly met my expectations, although i didn’t think it would sound obviously better than any other home studio interface I’ve auditioned. @

If you need a no compromise interface try the Neumann mt 48. It is a take off of merging technologies hardware. Just finished a tape op review and it worked fine on pc. 136 dB gain on crystal clear preamps, reference quality adda and an internal digital mixer for 0 latency and world class eq (and the dynamics on each channel ain’t shabby at all). it has most of the features of a large format console including a monitor sections. It has a great but small touch screen with easy access to the most used functions. When I checked to see if it was outputting sound I plugged in the headphones ( I cracked a couple of lamar’s so digging around low didn’t appeal to me until more pain meds kicked in). My Akg 240s sounded better than my mains. If you want to hear that step up from commercial gear pros talk about try it. It does cost almost 2 grand but is worth it if you can afford it.

Let us know what you think after living with it a while. I never got a chance to review this unit and have the transformer coupled outputs from my RND summer but it always nice to hear what others think. Warm stuff generally punches above its price. The ssl unit costs 1000s more. Even if I thought it was worth it I couldn’t afford it.

This topic has a huge, locked thread. Read it and you’ll see there is no known answer until cake releases it.

I haven’t had any probs with the newer ultralight M5 on pc.

Cakewalk has had several different plans for payment. Mostly you just bought a lease of the software (you don’t own the software and can’t use the code itself ). You can, tho continue to use the software until MS breaks something. This usually came with a years worth of updates. cakewalk has sold versions of their DAW with effects and softsynths included, or just plain. Those cost more but continue to work to MS breaks something. Updates incl for the year. and the most problematic was rent to own. You sent in a monthly payment for 12 months and then you owned the last version of cakewalk you paid for. It didn’t die and leave you stranded. Why this is so hard to grasp is beyond me. Maybe if cake called it layaway.

If you read all that cakewalk has put out here and on-site it seems that CbB is going to eventually wither into obsolescence since it won’t get updated. Window will eventually break it. Two of my favorite synths died this slow death - Komplexer and one that went Mac only. this makes sense if you are selling software. Don’t kill the golden goose but don’t unnecessarily ***** your base. After 6 months or a year CbB will be phased out (see the link below and read staff’s remarks). No more freeloading of their top line software. You’ll have to decide on Sonar, Next, Bandlab or some other company’ Daw. https://www.cakewalk.com/sonar Hopefully there will be a cheaper standard Sonar and one with cakewalk synths and effects. By now Bandlab Co has a good idea of expenses for keeping Sonar (and Next!) updated. Hopefully the vanilla version of Cakewalk with come in from a hundred dollars to 2 hundred and keeps the flow of newbies from Bandlab entering their paid world.