John Vere

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 There’s a lot of us who keep old gear forever and as time goes by it goes from being outdated to being retro or cool.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 The internet is mostly very outdated information and it is rare to find any mention of actual midi latency facts.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.

Holy cow your running at like max buffers. Try using 256 ms buffer. And it seems you are using ASIO which is defiantly what you use. That seems a good safe setting for any interface I've ever owned. I still have an old M Audio fast track pro that works just fine on W10. Even though they are more a Mac oriented company they still seem to have solid drivers for windows. I guess you never watched my audio set up video. My playlist is in my signature.

I see they want $475 Can. for this plug in> ? From what I see it seems to be just a bunch of EQ pre sets to emulate funky audio systems. Did you buy it yet? I've never paid anything like that for a plug in. I think $50 has been my top dollar. Other than Melodyne I guess @ $100. It's odd how plug in's are marketed. Like they often offer 90% off sale prices? Does that mean the full price was a total rip off?

One way is if the Plug in you are using has Midi Learn then it's a simple matter of choosing the parameter you want the pedal to control, click the midi learn button and move the controller. Now that parameter will respond the in coming CC data. Make sure the controller is always connected when you open the project. I go into details in this new video I just released. https://youtu.be/h-rBdREAhDs

OBS will record all the audio happening from all sources if you choose Loopback mix as it’s audio input. In my case I’m running Win Amp to play my narrative which OBS grabs directly from the Loopback. Then I use Cakewalks master buss to balance Cakewalks output of what I'm demonstrating with my pre recorded narrative from Win Amp. As I said, you can also do this live instead . Recording a mike live doesn't require a loopback feature but then you won't hear Cakewalk. Your question made me think for a minute and you actually could set up an audio channel in Cakewalk and use Loopback mix as the input. In my case then Win Amp would be mixed in with any audio coming from Cakewalk if the input echo was on for that track. This actually has potential use as then I would set up a sub bus for the narration. I've done some shoots where I had my Narration in a couple of tracks in Cakewalk and I just play them directly from there. If you plan on narration with a live mike you could set up an audio channel in Sonar and that would be also mixed into Sonars output if you turned on input echo. But seems easier just to go directly to OBS mixer. All of your audio interfaces inputs will be available in OBS audio settings. I remember it took a while for me to figure this out and there were 3 audio inputs at one point which caused an echo. I now only use one input the Motu Loopback mix. You think in terms of you are “shooting “ a movie live. Also, are you refering to speaker phone the plug in by Audio ease ?

For full mix down audio Cakewalk doesn’t come with a De essor. The good ones cost money. But a few free plug ins are out there Try plug ins 4 free or KVR. Use the search feature. Also lots of wave editors like Audacity or Sound forge probably have one built in. To install new plug ins you follow the direction that come with the plug in and then get Cakewalk to scan the folder it was put in. Most you simply drag a dll to your VST plug in folder found under C/Program files.

And there’s many more about midi in my series. My playlist is in my signature

Thanks a lot ! glad to hear that it worked for you.

Not sure about OBS running on W7. Don’t see why not. I run Cakewalks latest release on W7 on my live rig. Take you 5 minutes to find out. As I said if your audio interface has Loopback any audio heard from your monitors is captured buy OBS. Before I had the Loopback feature I had to use a small mixer and on board audio WASAPI shared mode which sucks with demonstrating Cakewalk properly.

This feature requires a licensed copy of Melodyne to work as of last Fall. It changed when Celemony updated Cakewalks demo version to version 5. If you had Cakewalk from before then you might have version 4 still and that will still allow drag and drop midi conversion and tempo extraction. And yes the documentation has never shown the pictures for me either. It's a old web site badly in need of upgrading.

OK that's more or less a typical screen capture type video. Really all you need is OBS studio and a mike. The fastest way if you are a good narrator and can keep focused is to do it live. In other words you talk as you demonstrate how to use the software. The majority of You Tubes seem to be like this. Some people are good at it but most are not. The ones who take the extra time will then edit out the stuff that was not needed and that is why you see those glitches. You can edit out the mistakes and pauses in the Video editor. But for me, that was resulting in a bad quality production. I am ADHD and my mind wanders as I talk and then I realize I missed a step or left important info out. Way to much editing was needed. Then I came up with the idea of writing a script and pre recording the Narration. I then play the narration and follow along in Cakewalk. This works perfect for me as I can take my time, speak clearly, explore options, double check for accuracy and proof read the script and see if it makes any sense. Re shooting a scene is easy. Scripts sometimes take me a couple of weeks to write as I do my planning and research. I need to keep each script to no more than 3 pages. If it gets too long I go back and delete stuff. This keeps the topic focused and to the point. It also allows me to record my voice under optimum conditions so I can make sure I'm speaking clearly as well as edit out noises. Cakewalk is perfect for this. I actually made a tutorial on the topic. It was a great new hobby during Covid lockdown. The upside was I learned way more about not only Cakewalk, but Movie Maker and OBS studio too. The downside was I distracted me from making music. I'm just finishing a run of new tutorials and will now put it aside for a few months and get back to music. Cakewalk is a blast now because I actually know what I'm doing. I even watch my own videos sometimes and go.. I forgot about that feature. Really where your at would be to download and install OSB studio and learn how it works. There are lots of tutorials and links to documents and a user forum in the help menu. I found it a steep learning curve in the first week but then it smoothed right out. It's very high quality well thought out software. There are bug fixes at least once a month.

Yes I use OBS studio for screen capture. The ticket for me was to purchase an audio interface with Loopback capabilities. This way I can have Cakewalk, OBS and Win Amp all open as well If I wanted to I could speak live into my mike. Then I bought a Movie editor I could figure out without to much trouble. Movie Studio Platinum 17 which I paid only $30 for a few years ago. I use Win Amp because it stops after each track finishes. I set OBS audio input to Motu loopback Mix. it will record everything played on my computers sound system, and in ASIO mode too. To set the levels of each source you need to do that from within the software playing the sound. It took a bit to sort out a smooth system but here is what works for me. I write out a script and I pre record my narration in Cakewalk as 16 to 30 separate tracks. Nothing is over 30 seconds long. I export these as 48 mHz at 24 bit wave files and drop them into Win Amp. Using 48 mHz is the ticket if you do any video work. Keep your whole system there if you can. I open OBS on my second monitor and then a Cakewalk project as my movie set in the main monitor. Try to remember to use F11 to go full screen. I use Cakewalks master volume to balance between my narration and any demonstration music or sounds coming from Cakewalk. OBS can have multiple screens as well as screens with in screens. So If you had 2 programs open side by side you could easily set that up as 2 areas and switch between them using a scene change. You can even get fancy and use transitions. Once I have captured the screen shots of Cakewalk with the narration I transfer the captured video into Movie Maker. Because movie maker can have multiple video and audio tracks you can do all sorts of stuff with both audio and video as well as text and still pictures. The video I did today I mutes the audio from the screen capture and just used the original audio as the sound track so that it's first generation. If I had made sounds from Cakewalk I would then use the Capture audio track for those parts. Or you can cheat and just capture the sounds from Cakewalk as little clips and plunk them on the time line and mix them in. Then I plunked in a instrumental version of a song I was working on to use as a backdrop. Movie maker is like having a multi track DAW complete with using 3rd party VST effects if you like but there's no Midi. It's based on Sound forge. Everything is intuitive if your used to music software. Anyway not sure if this helps but with the right tools pretty near anything is possible.

Very cool but I'd say a lot of Melodyne involved ( or? )

I've always colored my tracks. I always use the same color for each instrument so it's easy to see what is in focus. If I see blue I know it's the bass track. I have a couple of project templates that have all the buses and each is colored to represent my instruments. When I insert a new track I always choose the correct bus and the track will automatically be colored correctly. And of course all track templates are already colored and will automatically use the correct bus because I keep things exactly the same for 90% of my songs. So when I stack up different tracks in PVR I always know which track is in focus by it's color. I see purple, it's the piano etc. Certain themes are certainly ugly I'm using one of Mr Cooks custom themes, Tuncury Light Green and its very easy on the eyes. There's a sub form with themes.

The Yamaha ASIO driver is a good driver and that is what you download and install. It has nothing to do with your Realtek driver. Realtek is only involved when you use the on board audio. Follow the instructions in this video for best results. https://youtu.be/JM8rKHQ9GIo - Audio set up in Cakewalk

And while your at it, quantize those puppy's they all look a tad early to me. Funny, I guess I don't ever look at midi in track view. Only in PVR. And I also never use comping mode or take lanes but when I have all sorts of weird things happen so I avoid it. But that could explain the odd graphics. Looking at mine it all depends on my zoom level and the horizontal size of the track in what I see but they are all the same horizontal size. So it does seem weird that in each track the notes are fat or skinny even though you seem to have the zoom and the height the same for all 3.