Alan Tubbs

It is hard to make a go of it without an apple version of music software.  Such as one time owner Roland having to include a different apple daw with their hardware  along with their free sonar.  Being pc only cuts your customer base by half or more.  Most pro studios are apple and there is a natural tendency to look down on pc software and “other” it and think of it as for home use despite Cakewalk being a fully professional daw.  It can do everything other daws do, just not on the Mac.  Bandlab seems committed so be happy you have access to such great software so cheap and don’t worry what others think.

Sometimes my cakewalk freezes etc. and after I close it down the midi activity icon in the bottom right corner of the task bar (the one with usb discount icon) is still live.  Open and shut down cakewalk fixes that problem.  Work around that works.

Unless your drummer is very good or your band very tight and steady you’ll want to record drummer first.

use the snake to hook 8 or as many as inputs as you want and can to the 18 20 and record those to your computer to record.  You don’t need to involve the mixer at all unless you need to feed the master output somewhere via analog.

If you already have those synths installed in x2 cakewalk by bandlab should pick them up unless they are installed somewhere bandlab doesn’t look.

One would think it would be easy to make it drag and drop...

Audient id44, TAscam uh 7000

Mini moog, arp oddessy, ensonic fismo, seil  dk 600, chorus echo

mtg 930, 57, 58, wa 414, 47 and 87

rnd portico II, wa 76; la2a, 73, pultecs and Burgin’s McDaniel’s Komit compressors stereo 

Yea, it is a really nice and cheap all in one synth that does wt, samples pb and fm.

Synthmaster 2.9 is on sale for $29.  No doubt  version 3. 0 Is coming soon.  But a cool deal.

Nothing wrong with assembling prefab riffs into songs.  I mean really, there are probably half a dozen loops the blues use for most  songs..  they just sing different lyrics over the same old tunes.  And it still works great.

you are thinking too much.  There are plenty of reasons your vocals aren’t sharp other than mics and preamps.  Have you ever had anyone with an ear listen to your voice live to see how your recordings sound?  How does your room sound.  How much do you play with the mic to get the best position.  All that can affect your tone more than switching out preamps of one $200 interface for another.  And by the way, the Roland pres are ok.  The mic is old but other people like it, so I don’t think switching out a $200 mic for a $300 one is going to solve your problem.  Maybe, but until you try it you won’t know.

some of your comments about not capturing the vox attack sounds like it comes from the “ sensing” limiters built into the inputs.  I hated the ones on the old Roland interfaces and turned them off.  It is easy to screw up your sounds with such if youre not sure how it works.  You are likely to get all kinds of sonic problems if you are pushing the envelope (pun intended) of cheap electronics.  And switch around cables, you might have a internal kink.

try messing around with your room and mic position with  someone helping you.  I’d start there.

finally, expensive (ie. high quality) electronics do help. Most quality transformers cost $75 or more per, even in quantity.  And you need two to couple a unit in and out.  If you grew up before 90s almost all the pro audio you heard ran through tons of caps and transformers giving a thick, clear sound.  That is why people pay good money for higher end hardware.  It is quite exhilarating to finally hear and  understand your bass having “that” sound you’ve heard on a 1000 songs, or an la2a on a vocal.

@

Get an 8 inch guitar amp combo.  Not to loud, yet can sound great.  I use a -$100 mxl ribbon and can get a nice, smooth sound..

Thanks scook.  And Bristol too!

good stuff.

All,

ive got a brand new computer for music and I am retiring my old win 7.  
 

win 10 pro.  What is the best process for preparing wi 10  and then assembling the programs, such as cake first?
 

any ideas welcome before I start.  Thanks in advance.

I don’t know what a “dynamics” buss means.  And dynamics means compressor limiters, not eq.  Busses are usually reserved for reverb or combining stems and treating them the same, like drums.

I’ll usually use a reverb buss and then a guitar buss to combine and treat guitars, incl. dynamics and eq.  I’ll often use a lead buss, and shunt the lead vox and lead guitar through it instead of the instrument and or backing vox reverb buss.   Puts them in the same space that stands out.

When I wrote this post I was talking about a good deal on an ubersynth, one that you could learn the various synth methodologies.  You can get into NI, or falcon etc. but Synthmaster is a lot cheaper than those options.  There are plenty of good free or cheap synths but none cheaper that lets one in on so many kinds of synthesis that I know of.

but I haven’t heard or used of some of these others.

There have been a lot of questions about which  synthesizer works best in cakewalk or is the first to get.  Synthmaster 2.9 plays like the big boys that contain various favorite synth engines.  Wavetable, VA, sampler, FM are all available.  And unlike Falcon etc., it costs less than a $100.

it isn’t as pretty and slick looking as Falcon (which I also own) and some of the other ubersynths with similar capabilities, but works just as well.  Or start with the even cheaper synthplayer and upgrade if you like it.

https://www.kv331audio.com/synthmaster.aspx

Monarch and massive both are good analog emulations to learn on.  Many of the other NI synths use different synthesizer methods, FM, sampler etc.  so you came to the right product. Massive X is a better synth in my mind but more complex, so wait for it.

have fun!

You should send tracks to busses if they are part of a similar group, say drums.  You can have eq and compression and reverb affect the entire group, as well as very track volumes without resetting all the other elements too.

you should have a master buss which all tracks or busses go to.  The master buss goes to your interface output, which goes to its physical output, which goes to your headphones and your speaker amplifier input.

sends are just a another kind of buss, mostly for reverb.  In this case you have several tracks you want the same effect on with  various depths.  Different levels  of the same reverb on lead and backing vocals so they seem to be in the room ( even if your backing vox already has verb on it.). I typically have a LEAD buss for lead vocal, but slip some of the lead guitar onto it to put it into the same space with the vox.

I usually use a gefell  930 for vo.  I’ve had success with the warm 87.  I’ve tried others but dynamics don’t have the detail I want, but that might be as much about the room as anything.  It is treated but a little dull and dynamic mics don’t shine with moderate speaking levels.  I also have used  a nice crown pcm for vo.  It was a little too much  surface and little depth - a bit too hard tho it sounded radio friendly.   the condensers are more expensive but do double duty on music instruments and singing.

Dimension pro/Rap pro were always cutting synths to me.  With their clean, anti-aliasing engines they jumped out in front of most alchemy lines.  Alchemy was a much thicker, more analog sound.  They worked well together, texture wise.  They still sound great.  I wish they’d release new libraries, tho.

Yea, upgrade away.. and it won’t overwrite your present version of sonar.

The op is missing the point of mixing, or adjusting the relative level balance between tracks.  Or turn it up, as one of the first posters said.

Once you have recorded a solid track with no distortion that you don’t want, then you can lower the volume of those instruments (either individually or via busses that provide a single fader to control your overall drum levels, for example), you need to balance the music tracks against the vocal  tracks, thus raising its realities volume.

also, tracks can refer to either to complete songs - I heard a great track on the radio!  Or to individual audio tracks within your daw.  It also has a verb use in audio - I need to track guitars today, ie. record them.

dont be discouraged there is a lot to learn.  Recording is like an learning a new instrument and it rakes rime to understand thee techniques but also the lingo.

Most importantly, how much money is available?  I love Barefoot speakers and I’m sure they would work, tho 10,000 USD might be too much.  At the lower end of the market I’d go with Yamaha, although every superior speaker they make seems to get cancelled because of manufacturing problems.  The Beryllium speakers in my NS 500 became too dangerous to make as did the paper cones in the ns 10.  I’ve had the ns 500s since 1975 and still use them at home.  By nice hardware that lasts.

The ssl style buss comp is marvelous and works close enough to the real thing.  I’ve never used the waves comp, tho.  As for the rest off the pro channel ssl modules, I’ll have to go back and listen more.  I seldom use the eq because the pc eq is so useful.  

You can copy and  paste a clip or selected section as many times as needed within the “paste special” command.  It is in the paste command itself..