John Vere

First Thrillseeker I would not have bothered to download as I rarely use EQ. And when I do I use the most excellent Pro Channel EQ or the Scarlett Red. And it's promise of adding something would scare me off anyhow. That's exactly what I don't want. I'm of the camp from the old sound on sound days so I still only record parts that are already the way I want them to sound. The exception to that for me is acoustic guitar and after a 35 year quest I think I finally found the right guitar, PU and Mike combo. So I'm redoing a lot of older tracks. Anyhow I'm not interested in "Enhancing" my sound. But I'm sure others are. I might try it just for fun and curiosity. I'm a free VST sucker. Then Density mkII I immediately recognized the name. I just looked at my 6 pages of notes I made. Density was among the first batch and from what my notes say it was a distorted on a full mix and it added a lot of harmonics which would explain why. I think when I first started testing I was tossing out any that distorted a full song. I realize that is personal taste and many people seem to like what is falsely called color and is simply distortion. It's the DAW communities over obsession with wanting to sound analog. I was originally questing for a vocal compressor so distortion was defiantly out for me. I slowly was adding more free compressors and limiters to my list as the weeks went by and people made suggestions. I drew the line at 50. But I think I tested over 80. I of course avoided 32 bit as well as many were just plane boring designs and some even crashed or froze Cakewalk when you dragged from the browser. You slowly catch on that there are many Bedroom VST creators and they put these out there hoping for donations. Density probably should have stayed on my list but was a part of my earlier high grading. The first title was 35 free compressors. The testing took over 2 months and I made a video about that as well- https://youtu.be/REZ5H6GMWZY I still need to clean out my plug in folder.

Exactly. Last on my list would be isotope. There are a lot of great free compressors and a lot of them support side chaining. That's what its all about, Ducking or pumping a bass line from a kick etc. I made a video featuring 50 free compressors

A test of that would be to export the project as aMidi file. First go to preferences Midi and uncheck all midi outputs. Open the Midi file Don’t import. Open. That will give you a clean project with Just midi and the TTS-1. See if there’s any issues. Now midi track by midi track swap out the TTS-1 for the VST’ instruments you were using one by one. See at which point you get crackles. If all is still good Then start adding any VST effects and see what happens. I think using a USB hub is not recommended by most manufacturers. It says that in my Focusrite manual. It could well be the problem but seems strange you had same issues with old system too. Might just be aVST all along.

Update on the reverse phase issue. I would appreciate if anyone else could test this. I determined it only happens when I loop through Cakewalk with input echo on. The test is simple 2 mikes. One to record a transient sound. I hit my desk with a drum stick. The other mike on your monitor speaker. You have to set your monitoring so the mike on the speaker is not being sent there( obviously) The 2 mikes feed two tracks in Cakewalk and you see if they are out of phase. Thanks.

Ok huge progress and it seems you have all correct equipment now as well as your settings seem fine as well. Only weird thing I see is I was to understand there is no such thing as 32 bit audio interfaces yet? They are normally 24. But I guess this is new. I assume you still are using the same computer so possibly something in the USB bus is creating this crackle. Bad cable, or ports. I had to install a PCIe USB 3 card in my old computer to use my Motu interface and I do believe it was cracking as well. So big possibly especially if that interface is bus powered.

Nobody trust bundles even though I think they are fine but over the year many people have lost their work when it was saved that way. It’s usually a person who save as a bundle years ago and now it won’t open. I have back up CWP file in project folders that are from 2005 that open fine but just with warnings of missing plug ins.

A few things I can think of. Open the project by browsing to your storage drive and opening it using the CWP icon inside the projects folder. Personally I would never trust that Clean Audio Folder Utility It might have been what caused this. And when you used "save as" if you somehow didn't Check the "copy all audio with project" box this could also happen to the new version. It might be too late but here's a few ways to stop this in the future. If you are re doing tracks -Always rename them with a system . Like " Guitar lead Feb 24" Sounds dumb but it sure makes it easy to look in the audio folder for the track you want. Always name tracks BEFORE you record them so they will be stamped. They are also date stamped. When I'm closed to finished a project I make a "save as" copy with date in the name. I open it and then I export all the audio tracks as stems 48/32 bit no dither, no effects. I then delete all the originals which are probably broken up into a zillion clips and replace those with the stems by dragging from the export folder as complete tracks end to end. I then close the project and delete all the audio files except for the stems which will have different names or I could use the date. Now that back up copy is nice and tidy, way smaller in file size as well as could be easily transferred to another DAW. I also back them up as Midi files.

Absolutely. This is something I just figured out last summer when I was asked to play keyboards and I learned how to control Cakewalk from my Controller. Everything in Cakewalk that you can press or move has Midi learn built in. You access this by Right Clicking on the button or fader. In this case I right clicked the Master faders Mute button This dialogue will open Select Remote control and this dialogue will open Now you can choose a note on event or a Controller . Now just select Learn and either wiggle, slide or hit the control you want to assign to the function and bingo that will now toggle the Mute button on and off. I just tested it using C7 at the top of my keyboard and it works. This will be saved with the project, It is not global to other projects. And you must always have the keyboard controller connected before you open the project. Once I discovered this I am now lusting after a Controller with a lot of knobs. Mine only has 2 ;(

From what I gathered reading up on Midi 2.0 it's not just the new specification but then if tied in with USB C technology we will not suffer data log jams, Jitter or any of that. Or at least that is one of the goals. It seems these issues alone where the reason the Midi Association has been working on the long over due update. Using Midi 1.0 is like dial up internet. The thing is on a simple set up with a USB midi Keyboard controller and a Laptop I doubt if those people care or would even notice midi latency itself as it will be under 6ms or something like that ( not talking audio latency , different topic) . But set ups like your's are where every ms and data packet lost is an issue. USB 1.0 replaced the serial ports on our old PC's. And we have slowly updated that system since. We are now at USB C which was developed because of the demand put on the USB systems now needing faster data as well as more power to charge stuff. I have a pair of heated socks that have USB mirco B connections to charge them. If I had spent more money I could have got the ones with USB C. My Motu interface has USB C. Here's another one to ponder! Is Midi 1.0 is stuck on USB 1.0 specs? Guess what I tested too.. If using a different USB port made any difference. My computer is 12 years old so only had USB 1.0. I had to add a PCIe card with USB 3.0 when I bought the MotuM4. I've always had my controller plugged into the same old port so I swapped it to the PCI card. It seemed to shave 1ms off. I'm going to look at USB C PCIe cards out of curiosity. Remember my Motu is using that very same bus for it's midi and audio. Yes this I think is also important info for people who are using USB Midi devices. I mention it every chance I get in my tutorials. In my 2 video about Midi set up this is demonstrated immediately. I show how to open device manager and check your driver status. I also show how to open Show hidden devices and make sure it's not a big mess because you've been swapping to different ports and have now excided the 10 device limit per port. My Roland keyboard and my Yamaha drum kit both have there own midi drivers. I also have a Akai controller that uses a generic driver. All is I can say is there is a difference in many ways. The Akai has noticeable sluggish response which was verified in testing. And a minor detail, but you cannot turn it on and use it if Cakewalk is already running. No problem with the Roland or Yamaha. Cakewalk just politely asks if you want to connect but the Akai requires completely shutting down and restarting of Cakewalk can't find it. An interest observation is open the Midi 2.0 specification PDF and on the list of people contributing is folks from Native Instruments, Roland and Yamaha. Part of what they are doing is working on a new Microsoft Midi 2.0 generic driver that promises to be a big improvement. Don't hold your breath. Microsoft is involved. But it somehow make me feel safer knowing Roland and Yamaha are involved in this.

Got it. I guess mine are very isolated type and I can't really hear them until I turn the monitors right off, then it's like a distant sound, but that's a good point. If your monitors are turned down low the headphones could be interfering with what your hearing in the room and especially ones like yours. If you have a midi controller you could set this up using Midi learn to solo one bus or the other. If you activate the " exclusive solo " button in the Mix Module of the control bar then it would be a single keystroke.

But you still have to put your headphones on and press a button. I put my headphones on and turn off my monitors using my interface. I fail to see where time is saved here? Unless your interface doesn't have any front panel controls. Mine is sitting right beside my mouse pad. I need it there as I'm always making changes as I work including Main Speaker and Headphone levels. I'm not saying you idea is bad or anything just seems that using what's already there would be just fine and you develop habits on where to reach when you need something to happen, just like turning on your windshield wipers. Your method sounds like putting that function on the touch screen of the Audio system to me. I guess I just like the feel of Hardware ?

Thanks for that Greg this is super import part of the quest. I tested that best I could using my Roland A49 which has both USB and Midi connections. USB won the race by a whopping 1ms in this case. Pretty rare to have both options. This was one of my questions that I came up short on facts when searching on line. Once again this is impossible to determine as there could be many factors involved. Example- I will assume my Motu Audio interface uses a good quality Midi driver and I used a 3' long good quality Beldon Midi Cable. But if I had used a Cheap interface that used generic midi drivers and a cheapo 10' Midi cable the results might have been very different. I wish I could prove this theory but I don't own a cheapo Midi interface. I even thought about ordering one off Amazon. I do own a Akai Controller that uses Generic Midi drivers and it was about double the latency on the Mike test. But that's not enough data to make blanket statements and there could be cases of Microsoft's generic driver outperforming a Roland or Yamaha driver, No if any reliable info is available to me so far.

I didn't want my OP to be 3 pages long so many detail of what I have been doing are not mentioned. They might be part of the video but this is where I'm at. I only want to clearly include facts that would help people troubleshoot the midi lag issue. This is including not only the obvious audio part, but the cases where the Midi system it self can be involved. And thanks for posting the link to the thread, Those sort of things seem to be the only information sources, old forum threads both Sonar and Gear Space. That's when I started snooping around the info from the Midi Association. And I am quickly determining that as a whole, every midi set up will see slightly different results, so my demonstration in the video of how to test might be of use to others who wish to test their own systems. Therefore the need to double check my information is correct. The Hump- One issue is to actually determine Ground zero of the stick hitting the pad or keys. I eventually figured out that that hump is the Swish of the drum stick passing in front of the mike which is 1" from the Pad. I had the same weirdness when hitting a keyboard note I had to learn to have my finger on it then press otherwise the sound of the key moving gets recorded before it hits bottom. The world is a different place down there in sample land. I was very carful about leakage, the mikes as close are they are to the Pad and speaker, plus input echo off, plus Direct monitoring off etc. Only other thing gets printed is the metronome turned way down so it's pretty obvious. The Phase reversal- I noticed the phase reversal when I was looking more at the transient peak of the wave to determine the timing differences. I immediately jumped out of my chair and turned my monitors around to check the wires. All is good there. Now this becomes another time suck while I try and figure that out.

I always have at least 4 copies all on different drives. The main back up drive is in the computer so only a quick click to “save as” and put it there. Only downside to this is when you see your start screen the next day there will be 2 versions of that project there on the recent list. My habit to avoid working on the wrong version is to always open from the Existing projects tab then I know where I am. Another way would be to always include the date in the back up versions name

What works for me I as just use a”Save As “. And put it in a different location. It will only save stuff that was being used and all the garbage is left behind.

I was using an Atari so I’d be very surprised if Cakewalk couldn’t do what I did in 1988. I used to get stuck doing lights for the gigs i was was doing sound for and slowly learned my way around the world of lights and DMX stuff. You need to be on acid to do a decent job of it.

Thanks . Actually the video starts with” midi 2.0 will change all this but most of us will be using midi 1.0 for a while yet because we own a lot of midi 1.0 gear which is still and might always be important to us. “. I didn’t throw out my tube amps when solid state came out either. There’s a lot of us who keep old gear forever and as time goes by it goes from being outdated to being retro or cool. And most of what I’m trying to figure out won’t change because it’s more about understanding how the audio system relates to monitoring a VST as we perform. Especially digital drums where every ms counts.

Generally the DMX controller responds to midi information. When I did it I just used a midi track and placed pg changes where needed. I would guess that the list of Midi events and DMX is easily found.

Update March 1 2023: I just uploaded the video that is the topic I started here. I'm posting the Link here at the top for future reference by poeple who found this thread by searching for information regarding Midi Latency. Thanks to all who supplied valuable information I'm just in the process of researching for a video about Midi latency. The internet is mostly very outdated information and it is rare to find any mention of actual midi latency facts. All the videos and articles just jump right into explaining what we already know. If you hear midi lag, it is because of your audio system. But there is actual latency in the Midi system too. The best info I could find would say that it will be around 1ms per device if you daisy chain or if you try and feed 16 channels using Midi 1.0 each channel will be delayed by 1ms and channel 16 will be delayed by 16ms due to the fact that Midi 1.0 is serial. Also they mentioned USB jitter. Notice I mentioned Midi 1.0. That is because with Midi 2.0 all this will change. I actually downloaded and read most of the new 2.0 specification PDF. It will be a new age for midi users. You’ll be able to feed 16? channels thought USB C and they will all arrive in less than 1ms and so on. But most of us are still using Midi 1.0 gear and a lot of it is important to us still. So after hours and hours of reading and watching I still only had vague answers about actual Midi latency itself. I thought I would try testing to see what really happens when you hit a drum pad. I'd really appreciate anyone taking the time to read this and shed any light on my findings and what I might be missing or doing wrong. The test and the results: This is a test of the difference between the 2 mikes. It should be 6.1 but it clearly is not. Notice they are 180 out of phase. You could easily call the 1.8ms as 1.9ms the reported input latency but this is mystery #1. Note to record this I turn on input Echo for track 1 and turned of direct monitoring so in theory this should represent the signal passing through track 1 and back out again. This is thee screenshot of the test tracks. I put markers at each event. Track 1- microphone 1" from Drum pad. This signal will be delayed by 1.9ms and then Cakewalk will adjust for the latency and place it 1.9ms earlier on the timeline. This is assuming this is actually what happens. Therefore the placement of the drum hit is presumed to be very accurate. It is where it should be in time. Track 2 - the midi event is sent Via USB and is recorded 3.5ms later than Track 1. This would seem to be about what you would expect from a USB 1.0 midi system. This is assumed to be the correct measurement of Midi Latency of my Yamaha DTX drum system. Note that results were different when testing using a Roland Keyboard controller. That measurement was 5.1ms. I will assume that midi events are not placed earlier on the time line as they are not involved with the audio system. They are recorded when they arrive there. Track 3 -the audio output of the drum module is recorded 10.4ms later than Track 1. It is also assumed this audio track will be placed 1.9ms earlier on the timeline to adjust for the audio input latency. It is not clear why this is delayed as much as it is? This is what you will be hearing in the headphones even without connecting the Module to a computer? Unless? Strange it doesn't "sound" like there is latency as you play. But? Track 4- A mike placed 1" from the playback monitor is recorded 15.4ms later than Track 1. This will also be adjusted and placed 1.9ms earlier on the time line. But we will have to factor in the output latency which is reported as 4.2ms. This is where I'm sort of puzzled? Things don't compute. It took 11.9ms from the midi event to trigger the VST get to the speaker, return and be recorded again. What we do know is it should have taken 4.2ms for the sound of the VST instrument to reach the speakers. But if we subtract that from 11.9ms we still have 7.7ms unaccounted for. Possibly there is a lag from the VST? More testing. I froze SI drums and yes there is almost 200 samples when you look at the midi event and the frozen audio . 200samples = about 4ms. then 7.7 minus 4 = 3.7ms still unaccounted for? ( Note: Addictive Drums only lagged 50 samples -1ms) Thank you for taking the time to read all this and I apologize to those who are now sitting there going WTFIHTA.

Gosh, I guess I’m weird but I just take the headphones off , put them on the desk and turn the output control of my interfaces back up. I must do this a zillion times a day with out thinking about it and seems to me this is a lot less of an effort than creating a bunch of unwanted busses and dealing with muting stuff! Unless you’re listening to the monitors with the headphones on which I don’t recommend you should be doing.

Go to Plugins 4 Free and search there are lots

Just a thought but did you try and search for a Midi file version of the song? There’s thousands of free files out there. If not I explain in this video how to re create a song from a 2 track. https://youtu.be/HuPc1RjBRbc

Exactly why I use gain so that the track is at a solid pre determined level. The gain control is the most important part of your track. If set wrong your either starving or overfeeding all those effects. Take the time to get this right! Example- No point trying to use a compressor when the input gain is @ -20db. I generally set certain peak levels for each instrument. I have learned what those peak levels might be and how they will react with effects like compressors. Most VST instruments are very easy to set up a consistent level. I find Vocals and Guitars are the most work. I'm always evolving my workflow and which settings, levels, effects, compression gets me where I want to be. Call me in a month from now and that will probably change. It's the part I enjoy the most about recording and using a good tool like Cakewalk. You never stop learning and improving what you do. Even though I work with clients from time to time, this is ultimately just a hobby like woodworking and making wine.

Two things , set the view to show note names and they will appear in the note blobs if you set the horizontal height just so. Then right click on the side view keyboard to open this dialogue which will show note names as the mouse hovers.

Ya it's not an issue for me either as 80% of my tracks are set at a certain level and stay there. Faders stay mostly at unity and the tracks level is set using the gain not the fader. Like Lead Vocals, Bass, Rhythm guitars, background synths and pianos as example. But then there's this, A midi track that needs dynamics I prefer to use velocity as that works more close to how a real musician would play quieter or louder. Audio tracks I then run automation and fine tune using the envelope pay attention to what the readings are ( - 12db etc ) The faders are not something I use much really. Of course there is as many workflows as there are users so what ever works.