Any reason why buses only work on playback but not when recording??

[Edward Allen]

Hi

Ok, I'm firmly in "newbie territory" here, but I've been fumbling around trying to work with buses and I noticed that my buses don't give me a feel when tracks are being recorded in Cakewalk BUT do give me a feed when I am listening to the tracks back. (Make sense?!)

Is this how its supposed to work? and if so is there a reason for it perhaps that I'm not grasping?!

Any example of the buses I am setting up are for recording a drum kit where I have grouped all the drums to one bus and a pair of overheads to another bus, and  another bus for an electronic kit that outputs stereo feeds.

Many thanks in advance

 

 

 

Edited September 13, 2023 by Edward Allen
I hadn't worked out how buses function well enough!

[OutrageProductions]

If you have not downloaded the offline 'Local Help' system or the (somewhat dated, but still rich in detail) PDF manual for the program, please consider it.
On page 980 of the latter, you will find a complete signal flow schematic which can be extremely useful in figuring out where things are coming from and where they are going.
I've annotated a copy here just for you:

Edited September 14, 2023 by OutrageProductions

[John Vere]

Recording audio levels are set by your audio interface not Cakewalk. Cakewalk’s controls could be turned right off and you would still have the same signal coming in. 
Turning down a bus will only change already recorded material. 

 

Edited September 14, 2023 by JohnnyV

[Edward Allen]

3 hours ago, OutrageProductions said:

If you have not downloaded the offline 'Local Help' system or the (somewhat dated, but still rich in detail) PDF manual for the program, please consider it.
On page 980 of the latter, you will find a complete signal flow schematic which can be extremely useful in figuring out where things are coming from and where they are going.
I've annotated a copy here just for you:

Terrific! Many thank for sharing this, I had no idea it even existed and have been struggling with current online help pages too. (Are they in "mid overhaul" right now? It all seems a bit scrappy!)

980 pages looks a little daunting on first glance BUT on the flipside hopefully it gets to the kind of depth that the current online help pages don.'t

Thx again.

 

[Byron Dickens]

6 hours ago, Edward Allen said:

980 pages looks a little daunting on first glance BUT on the flipside hopefully it gets to the kind of depth that the current online help pages don.'t

You don't read the manual cover to cover like it is a novel or something. You just look up what you need.

[Edward Allen]

3 minutes ago, Byron Dickens said:

You don't read the manual cover to cover like it is a novel or something. You just look up what you need.

What! I just booked a week at the seaside to read it on the beach 🏝️ 

[OutrageProductions]

8 hours ago, Edward Allen said:

980 pages looks a little daunting on first glance BUT on the flipside hopefully it gets to the kind of depth that the current online help pages don.'t

 

I've never been a fan of any online documentation system (with the possible exception of MS Office...), so my go-to is a "hard copy".

The bad news (as you will discover) is that the manual is 1942 pages. However it is infinitely searchable by keyword, and the cross references are exceptional. 

[David Baay]

The curse of familiarity is making everyone blind to the basics:

Live input signals have to be echoed to the output of the track in order to get to a bus or output. You do this by clicking the Input Echo button in the track header:

Off: 

On:  

 

 

Edited September 14, 2023 by David Baay

[Byron Dickens]

45 minutes ago, David Baay said:

The curse of familiarity is making everyone blind to the basics:

Live input signals have to be echoed to the output of the track in order to get to a bus or output. You do this by clicking the Input Echo button in the track header:

Off: 

On:  

 

 

This, of course, is covered in the documentation.

[John Vere]

And in my video.
In which I don’t recommend using input echo for audio due to latency. All audio interfaces now have direct monitoring which allows you to blend the playback with the input so there is no latency involved at all. 

Input echo is for midi . 

[David Baay]

On 9/14/2023 at 8:29 PM, JohnnyV said:

All audio interfaces now have direct monitoring which allows you to blend the playback with the input so there is no latency involved at all. 

Input echo is for midi . 

But you can't use live VST FX that way.

I input monitor my keyboards all the time with reverb, chorus, flanging, delay, distortion, etc from plugins.  With a 64-sample buffer I get a measured RTL of 4.5ms ( 3.6ms if the keyboard has ADAT out). This amount of latency is a total non-issue unless maybe you're singing, and I don't sing.  ;^)

 

[John Vere]

This really depends on how powerful your computer is as well as the driver for your interface. 
The slap back echo I get is very noticeable and annoying if I turn it on when recording guitars. I have to run at 256 ms buffer or I get drop outs. I have to also bypass all effects. 
Motu M4 on a i7 quad core 3.5 32 GB RAM. It’s definitely an older machine but I don’t run crazy projects.