John Vere

I have a few wave editors and that Acoustica was my least favourite. In order of favourites Wave Lab Elements $100 on sale Sound Forge Free ? It came with Movie maker and a Sony USB Turntable Gold Wave unrestricted demo and only $60 to purchase. Does batch conversion of all audio files. Audacity free. But Melodyne has really become the tool for me now. You can not only fix pitch but timing, glitches and even levels are easy to fix. They thought of everything. And the comment about having to go to the menu. Custom keyboard shortcuts are your friends. Example Gain = G. Open Melodyne as regional effect = Z. Render Regional Effect = X.

Yes screensets are saved with projects. Workspaces are global. The last workspace you used opens next time. Workspaces do not save things like which browser tab you last used. It just saves the layout of what views are open in the browser. like the synth rack and where it was and how big. Sceensets still allude me as they don’t work like the workspaces in that when you like a set up you save it. Someday I’ll read the manual ? But that’s an interesting question as I’ve never really paid attention to what tab is open by default. I does seem to be the effects.

Clip mute as mentioned above. Not track mute. Had this happen. I think there’s a keyboard shortcut that you accidentally can toggle it with. Open clip properties in the track inspector and look for the mute

We were all lucky as Addictive drums came free with old Sonar versions. I think I got some kit pieces for free via Focusrite deal. I can't remember but I have a couple of full kits and some extra snares and percussion. But you can install the demo version for free to try it out. It is only one kit and no toms so it's almost less than SI drums. But then you will be all set up with an account and have the XLN installer. There's also a very good demo for their piano. Steven Slate also has a lot in their demo kit, much more than SI for sure .In the Maps is one Roland kit but my guess is someone has a map for yours out there. It also involves a log in to an installer but it's defiantly worth trying the demos for both of these.

You just click on the Control bar and choose which modules are shown. It's not technically part of workspaces but some workspaces hide extra features so choose advanced to see all features, The default Basic SUCKS! .

Make note that I just tested this and now that I have activated the DTX drum map into Addictive drums bingo, now the hi hat works exactly like the one in the brain. I just discovered the map while making a tutorial and I haven't had my drums out of the closet for about 4 years ( we moved) so I'm just like you in a way. Also take note that my DTX 500 kit is very crude compared to yours. The pads are only 1 zone etc. I dream of someday having the cash for the top of the line Roland kit. I've played one in a Music store and there's a HUGE difference. Mine is only a toy and limited in use for recording. I'm planning to integrate a real snare, hi hat and a few cymbal's into the kit and mike those up. So mostly the Kick and toms will be used. The extra pads will be assigned to cowbells. I bought the kit hoping it would add realism to my drum tracks, but it was a bit disappointing and all it added was better snare and tom fills. The hi hat is probably the biggest disapointment as I'm probably the only sound engineer I know of who always puts a mike on the hi hat and cranks it up. It is often overlooked as being important. And Midi hi hat is boring no matter what I do with it. But that changes with your kits I do believe.

My computers are way older than 5 years. My main DAW is 13 now. It does need replacing as I really don't get good performance for video editing. But my Cakewalk project are no problem at all possibly because I work no different than I did 20 years ago. 8 to 12 tracks and no more than maybe 20 effects. As far as swapping C drives I'm a huge fan of a fresh start. Cloning a drive is OK if you've do this often but I would not want to clone a system drive that was 5 years old. All the junk it has collected and stashed away is ported over so there's little change other than drive speed or capacity. I just bought a new Evo SSD drive and was all set to swap out my 4 year old Evo SSD C drive but Samsung has an app you can run that tested all my drives and it found everything other than my 1TB spinning drive working 100%. I still might do it just to have that fresh start performance boost. Sure it's a pain to re authorize all your VST's but last time I did this a year ago it only took me about 6 hours from ground zero with W10 download and install. You computer might run W11. The other thing about a fresh start is then I only install VST's and other software as need arises. They are all stored in the computers Data drive so not a problem. This spreads the re install chore out over time as well. The trick is to have good back ups of everything you need on your other drives or an external. Here's the Samsung App, It gives you full reports on all Samsung SSD drives but it will do a basic speed test of other older drives. https://semiconductor.samsung.com/consumer-storage/magician/

It’s like this. MIDI 1.0 has been with us since the 80’s. It is not multiplex so each data package has to wait it’s turn. Think of 20 people waiting to go through a door. Each midi event can take about 1 ms to travel its route to the next midi port. Short cables might improve this by a .01 ms. So when you play a 4 note chord on a keyboard the whole chord will theoretically take 4 ms. But then there’s also system latency and I actually measured this and tested all my midi devices. My Roland A49 and Yamaha drum kit were around 5 ms for a single note. My 1987 Roland controller was 11ms. I can test my A49 with both 5 pin and USB. They were very close to the same. I also tested a daisy chain of the A49 into a Sound Canvas (1987) and the 5 ms jumped to 16ms. So newer midi devices seem faster because of advances in system design but that’s as good as it’s going to be with Midi 1.0. We now will have Midi 2.0 which is multiplex and latency will no longer be an issue. My guess is your kits are only around 6ms each so a note hit on the TD 6 will possibly be 12 ms or a bit more later on the midi grid. That’s easy to fix by simply quantizing the track. You can easily test how much latency you have. Open a basic project which will give you a audio and a midi track. Put a mike within a inch of a drum pad and feed it to the audio track. Set the midi track to record the kit. Optional would be to listen to the metronome in headphones. Set in record and strike it a few times. Set the time ruler to millisecond or samples and zoom in on the transients. The difference between the audio and midi tracks is the midi latency. The difference between the midi track and the grid line is the just showing you how sloppy your timing is ?

I do what Greg shows but only split once. Once you split a clip you can slip edit to remove the silence or cross fade. But I also do as @sjoenssaid and I often export the track as a stem at 48/32 no dithering and delete the messy track and drop the nice tidy one in its place. I used to do this for timing issues but I now use Melodyne for vocals and harmonies. Guitar still gets the zillion clip treatment if needed. Of course there is a back up available if this goes wrong but I’ve done it a hundred times and it never does.

+1 to that. It’s been found to be invasive and interferes with other drivers. It gets installed with their software just like the other pesky Steinberg generic driver. You need to delete them in Reg Edit. Then use WASAPI shared mode if you don’t have a proper interface. But that said I would guess it’s because you didn’t set up the export dialogue properly A screenshot would be useful.

B

Thanks for the reminder, I totally forgot about that trick and that was actually much better than the clip gain. Super fast. But all I will do is split right in the glitch and add a fade out and fade in.

Ya the first time I did it it didn’t stick. The list might not always have the function you want or it might have a completely different name than you thought. But I’ve just figured this all out not that long ago and since I’ve swapped out lots of stuff I never used for stuff I always use. The best one was to open Melodyne and then render all with just 2 keystrokes. Huge time saver for me.

You got to be kidding, not to come across as being a smart azz but did you try the views menu???? I found it is 3 seconds and I never use the notation view. I'm glad you asked though, because I didn't even know it existed! Cool.

No but you can use clip gain to lower the aptitude so it's not heard. I know what you are saying as Cubase does that too. But Cakewalk is not a wave editor.

Don't the drums have USB? Daisy chaining midi with DIN cables will result is a huge increase in latency from the TD 6 as it has to pass through the midi system of the TD 8. So using USB will solve that. Latency is very noticeable on digital drums so I record all my tracks only listening to the Drums brain so there's no latency at all. My kit has an Auxiliary input so I patch my headphones from my Audio interface using a 1/8" TRS cable you can usually get at a dollar store. Then I plug my headphones into the drum brain jack. I guess with 2 modules you would need a small mixer? Or possibly there's a way to daisy chain the headphones and aux inputs. You sort of need a 4x4 interface. SI drums only has 8 kit pieces. It looks like your kit is at least 20 pieces. You will need to use a better VST with more pieces. All the free kits are limited so I won't bother mentioning those. But example a full set of Addictive drums has 18 kit pieces. But that actually doesn't matter as you can deal with that later buy using more than one Drum VST. As far as the recording of the kits this will depend on if you use Midi cable or USB. With the DIN Midi cable you select the Scarlett Midi as the input for the midi or instrument track and set it to OMNI so both channels will be received. I actually don't see a reason to change the TD 6 to channel 11. Unless it's re triggering the TD8. But I would be then inclined to change the note assignments in the TD 6 to sounds not being used in the TD8. Then they can share a channel. If you use USB midi you will install the Roland Midi driver and the kits will be identified in Cakewalks Midi device list and in the track header as an input source. I'm pretty sure they probably share the driver so not sure if they will be listed as TD6 and TD 8 or just Roland TD drums and Roland TD drums2 I would record the midi while monitoring in the drums brain. Once the midi is recorded you can edit it and assign it to any drum kit VST. The Roland has good drum sounds that you could then simply route the midi tracks output back to the kit and then connect the audio output to the Scarlett and record that. I do this with mine for the hi hat because it seems to be in better sync with the pedal. This leads us to also requiring a VST that can have a drum map applied so CC events etc are correct. Lucky for you most good drum VST will already have drum maps for Roland kits. As you see in the screen shot below.

I totally agree that Cakewalk seems the happiest when paired up with a good quality ASIO audio interface. definitely worth the investment. But if you’re not recording audio you should be fine using the on board sound card . I have used the Realtek audio using WASAPI shared mode on spare computers I use only for playback or midi editing with out issues. One has the Ninvidia as an option for audio which I disable in sound settings. The other is just a cheap laptop. But they work fine even with larger projects.

Not sure if you are aware of this but you undock the Multi Dock and move it to the second monitor. It should go full screen if dragged to top. Then you would save this as a new workspace which I call 2 screens. Now any views that use the multi dock like Melodyne or PVR automatically open on the second monitor and will show as a tab in the multi dock in the upper left corner. You don’t have to save as a workspace if this is a set up you will always use but I just have that one saved and another I call 1 Screen. I often use only one screen when recording as I might have lyrics on the second monitor.

I see. That is strange. One thing you can do is open the project audio folder using the Browser while recording. You will see the audio files being created. This would verify that they are truthfully in the correct location too. I did this the other day as I was curious about what happens when you freeze a synth track. it creates a file but it deleted it when you unfreeze the track. So it interesting how the audio folder can actually delete stuff.

I’m glad I read this I didn’t know about the Ctrl trick.

The best solution was one you mentioned. Purchase a PCI e USB3 card to use for all your keyboards. I did this myself not for the extra ports but it stopped my Motu M4 from cracking. I had contacted Motu about the issue and they said it was due to my computers older usb system and devices that are USB powered need the juice. So not only the Motu but my Roland controller were both starving for power. The other advantages are each device will be properly named in Cakewalk so you won’t get them mixed up. As well as there’s an advantage in Midi latency it might make a small or a big difference. I only one of the devices doesn’t have USB then best bang for the buck is an audio interface that has midi ports.

When I do remote recording I will not use a external drive for my working project storage. I use my data drive of the desktop, I copy the project folder to the laptop using a thumb or external drive and date it. I record using the local disk of the laptop. Before I transfer it back too the external drive I rename with new date. I then most likely will just drag the new tracks to the original project if that is all that changed. But I will definitely copy the updated version to the desktop. Storage is cheap. The more backups the better . Having one copy of a project is only asking for Trouble. The only thing comes to mind about what happened to you was if the recording somehow was not streaming to the external drive but was using the global audio folder.

@mettelus Yes there are now ways to try and separate a song into stems but the tools that might work are expensive. Then it depends on the recording. But your mention of this is actually one of my new ways to create cover songs using the original as the template. The results have been better tracks for me than using downloaded files . I record the song into Cakewalk and drag it to the timeline . This creates the all important tempo map . I might have to edit the tempo map. Then I rebuild the song by playing the parts. I use real bass first and then convert that to midi . I’ll also lay down a simple piano part to anchor the chords even if it’s not required for the song. I also have gleaned useful drums using drum replacer. If your lucky you can at least extract the kick and snare

I’ve worked with lots of midi download files. It’s the first place I’ll look for a cover song. The trick is to make sure nothing is selected in Midi preferences for device outputs. Then you just open the file and the TTs1 will load up with the midi tracks 1 to 16 assigned to correct channels 99% of the time it plays exactly as intended it should by the creator. If I’m keeping it I immediately save as a normal CWP file They usually sound awful at first because of the badly done guitar parts and useless guide vocals. I just mute that and see if the bass and drums are correct. Often drums and bass were generated by Band in aBox so are totally wrong. But I often get lucky and those I will keep and rework them by replacing all the instruments with proper stuff. First stop is the event list uncheck the notes and then delete most of what is there. Of course you need to understand what you are looking at. I will also try and change all the bank and patch assignments to “ none” in the track header so the new instruments don’t use them. Then I fix stuff in the bass and drums I don’t like and the see what I can use from the rest. I’ll often take one of those terrible guitars and assign it to a electric piano instead.