John Vere

Re reading the OP I see a few options depending on the state of the original project and depending on Melodyne being available . So I’ll assume you have put down a bass audio track and also assume it was not played to the clock? Also it would help to know if your version of Cakewalk has Melodyne still available. They just changed this with Melodyne 5 so the demo ends. If you do have Melodyne and no set tempo you can drag the wonky bass track to the timeline and it will create a tempo map that follows the bass. Audio snap is the old method. Now you have a tempo and you can create the kick track with midi and quantize it. I’ve done this lots.

I have a few tutorials that show you how to convert from audio to midi using both Melodyne and drum replacer. #16 & # 21

I figured out feedback a long time ago. First - Not enough Power. An Underpowered system trying to fill a space it’s to small for will just feedback when you try and achieve full volume. Second- pour speaker design and placement. Move the speakers. Don’t use cheap plastic Cabnets that back wash Third- Wrong choice of mikes. I only use SM series . Even my drum overheads are Shure. Very very last thing I do is EQ. A feed back destroyer is just an automatic EQ that quickly trashes you mix. But the OP has an interesting idea that might be a useful tool to use once a show has started and my options are now useless.

I taught guitar, bass and even keyboard and drums for about 20 years Im often asked to resume teaching guitar lessons but I don’t like to be tied to any schedule like that these days . So marking the videos is a great teaching outlet and it’s on my own schedule.

@David Baay interesting point about midi only being like old school sequencer projects that drives hardware. But all the ones I’ve converted had at least 4 VST instruments and it worked fine. This is now something to ponder about what is it exactly happens with audio from soft synths? I think all the ones I’m using are sample based.

Good catch. But if the OP is not recording any audio then I’m not sure it would matter? Do soft synths output audio at these settings or do they care? Good question. Never gave it any thought. Except in the case of freezing the midi instruments if need be I’m not dead sure it matters?

Actually midi only projects can be changed at any time. I do this a lot. I used to be using 44.1 because it was for CD and my Yamaha o1v only used it. Now because I work with video I’ve switched over to 48. So I open old projects and immediately I convert them all to 48. I have a tutorial about how to do this. But simply you export all 44.1 audio as 48 . Delete all audio from project, change the sample rate rate of the project that now is only midi instruments and bring the new 48 audio back in. Done this dozens of times now. Just last night I opened an older backing track project that had no audio tracks and converted it from 44.1 to 48. To me 44.1 is for people who make CD’s. These days everything is video which is 48. And even though my projects are 48 I can still export them at 44.1 if I need a CD.

Your probably not alone but it is not normal. You might want to post one of the projects that behaves this way and others can see what happens using their systems. You can share projects in drop box etc. My guess is it’s a plug in you always have used. You say this happens with all audio interfaces but have you ever used a good one? The Mackie driver is not that great. I used to have one a few years ago with a mixer my band used.

Is this a midi track you created or download midi? The track inspector/ header midi bank and patch setting dialogue boxes over rules any patches set in an instrument GUI. Is that where you set up the patches or was it the GUI? Download midi files often have the PG events in the tracks so as said above look in the event list for those. I’ve run into tracks that I can’t see the PG info for some reason and the solution was to split and delete the very start of the track just before the first note. That was rare

It looks like you have added effects to the Pro Channel effects chain. The effects bin on the track is a different location you can use as well. You have nothing there. This is fine you can use one or the other depending on where you want the effect in the signal flow

Buses can only have one output. Adding another bus won’t help because then your sub buses would not be routed there. So you insert a send on the master buss just like when you add a send to a track. That send can be routed to 3/4 and will control the level of the sub. That way you don’t need to disturb the cat who probably will leave anyway! I’ll try and take some screenshots later. Even-on huge PA systems subs are always mono. Mine have the 2 RCA inputs but they are summed to mono as it’s only a mono amp in there like all of them. A Y cable will work but if your bass and kick are in the middle it won’t make any difference. It might be more critical for crazy electronic music but sub frequencies are generally mono and none directional.

Updated links

Yes but be warned that you need a powerful computer system. I only have a 6 core i7 3.4 hz and 16 GB of RAM SSD drives etc. i basically can’t use a lot of their products or my projects will freeze up on me. Good stuff but CPU hogs.

Also there’s a effects toggle on the control bar. If it’s not there then once again this is due to using basic workspace. You should watch tutorials # 5 and #9. That will bring you up to speed with a lot of the new features. Workspaces is a major change from Splat versions.

Change the record mode to Overwrite. This is the most bulletproof mode for starting out with both midi and audio. Later you can learn how to use the other modes. Right click on the record button in the control bar to open the preferences dialogue where you select your recording mode. And thanks @bdickens for posting the link to the tutorials which is a very good idea for all newcomers to take a little time each day to watch.

I have 3 powered subs kicking around all of them have built in crossovers and an adjustable cut off. The Yamaha I’m using also has a very cool auto on / off feature. It stays in standby mode until it gets a signal. I’ll mention that every interface I own has 4 outs but each works a little differently. My Tascam the 3/4 outputs by default clone the 1/2. Therefore nothing needs to be done in Cakewalk. The Scarlett needs you to route this in the Mix Control software mixer. But once set it works on all playback. The Motu requires me to add a send on the Master bus that is routed to 3/4. So I have to do this on each project. Another reason why I don’t like this interface.

Hey Michael The M4 has those 3/4 outputs you probably aren’t using. That’s what I use to go to my Yamaha sub. It’s way under my desk so hard to reach the level control so I can do that using the Main output faders found on the very far right of console view.

I have a whole series of tutorials that will get you going #1&2 are all about setting up audio and midi

Just to clarify how things work. All input signals are 100% controlled by your audio interfaces gain settings. Some interfaces also have software mixers so it it super important to read the manual for your interface to have 100% understanding of signal levels. Personally I would only ever use a proper audio interface for recording audio just for this reason alone. You could shut the level controls in Cakewalk right off and it will make no difference to the signal level that is recorded- OK got that? Most all audio interfaces come with a monitor setting that allows you to blend the DAW playback with the input signal. The ability to mix this either with a front panel control or in the software mixer is also important to understand. if your interface has a mix control it will be marked with something like input/computer. If it’s a software mixer you need to learn about how it works using a tutorial or the instructions. They are all different and some are overly complicated. On the 4 interfaces I own this does not involve making any adjustments inside of Cakewalk. I simply either move the balance control or adjust the software mixer. Generally the blend/ balance control is at 12 o clock. If it isn’t then you might want to review your levels in Cakewalk. Heres another audio system fact that is misunderstood. A lot of people seem to think you use input echo. Absolutely for midi tracks but wrong for audio as if you turn it on you are now hearing the input as it passes through all that processing and out the back end. It has now gone from your mike to the interface A/D converter then USB system, buffers any effect on the track might add latency, more buffers and the back out the USB to the D/A converter to your headphones or monitors. This adds an average of around 10 ms on most peoples systems. So you will hear that as a delay. Really the only time you would use input echo is to play a guitar into a guitar sim VST.

Tutorial #1 shows you how to set up audio correctly, All audio interfaces use 24 bit and normally can’t be changed but on board audio has options.

Am I seeing a volume envelope on the track 2?

Theses day just about all studio monitors are powered. The big advantage is the best models have added DSP to make them flat response. And then the top end ones are tuneable for further control and correction. But I will stay with my good old passive NSM10 Yamaha’ s probably until I croak or become incapable of studio work. I used a perfect match Yamaha P?? Power amp with them for over 20 years but it started crapping out and I tried a few alternatives. I too have a collection of very good old school home stereo integrated amps. But home stereo system are totally coloured. So that’s not going to work just as you discovered. A little research ended up with me looking at using what they put in the new powered monitors, a class D amp. I ended up with 2 as they are not expensive. I have one made by Dayton Audio and the one I’m using now is made by S.M.S.L. It’s only 50 watts and I run it at 12 o clock and that’s as loud as I need. I could most certainly spend a lot more money and get something bigger and with better specs but I’m not having issues with my mixes so for now I’m fine. And yes my room is very nicely treated. And yes I have a sub but I never turn it on unless I’m in a kick back with a glass of Scotch listening mood! I make hundreds of backing tracks so you might say I do an excessive amount of mixing. My solution is this: Bass-I always use Ample p bass and the Midi velocity is set at 106. The output of the track is steady at my target level. This is with fader at unity. On backing tracks I run a little hotter than full songs. Kick drum- same deal. I always use the same kick in AD and midi velocity at 100 max. It’s EQ’d and processed in my preset. Every song uses this same kick. Boring? I don’t care, It always works and if it isn’t working all I need to do is fix the preset. If you need to tame the bass in you mixes a quick and simple solution is put a hi pass filter on the master and try raising the frequency cut off a little bit at a time. My guess would be if you don’t have a hi pass filter happening already then around 50 hz might be enough.

The fact that it resets on re start of playback is implying that there is a volume (cc7) event in the Midi data. Open the Event list and look for one.

What you are doing wrong is a simple matter of not understanding how to use your DAW or your interface yet. You really need to do some homework before jumping in and trying to record

This is true but most of us who are long time users have come up with our work arounds and for me this is rarely an issue. I just exported about 30 backing track projects that I had wanted to split the bass out into the left side. I normally would use the time selection in the export but that’s too much trouble when working with this many songs. It’s faster to top and tail in Wave Lab where I also preview and check the loudness. Out of those 30 only 2 songs had long endings. The rest I trimmed only by a small amount. So generally Cakewalk does an excellent job of endings. It seems the most common cause is from editing and leaving something way down the time line. There’s always a tiny artifact like a volume node or orphaned midi note. In the case of these 2 songs they were both songs I had shortened to remove parts I didn’t want. In retrospect if I had used Ripple Editing it probably wouldn’t have happened. But there was a volume envelope exactly 8 bar down the line.