John Vere

I'll be making a tutorial eventually but I think that one is #20 and I'm just working on #7

Everybody's different but if I recorded that low I'd then have more work to do to get levels where I need them for the Master. If my goal is a -1.0 12 LUFS master then I need to feed it a good healthy signal. If all my tracks were recorded at -18 I'm WAY off the mark. -8 is very safe as far as I'm concerned. -2 is a bit to close as example but not over the top yet. Insert a Soft synth and feed it a midi track with the velocity at around 100. It will probably output closer to -2.0 db by default. It's probably not clipping the meter either. There's plenty of articles and Tutorials about mixing and level and its all over the map so take it all with a grain of salt. A lot of these ideas are coming from different situations and systems. I just know what work for me coming from Analog equipment both recording and Live Sound mixing. My masters are nice and loud at -12 LUFS and they are totally safe from clipping @ -1.0 db true peak level. None of my tracks or busses are clipping or even close at -4 db even. You can actually hit 0 without a clip but that's not a good idea. It's not "wrong" to have to turn up the Gain on the Master Buss but it's not how most people would deal with a quiet song. It all boils down to healthy track output levels, effects in the correct place in the signal chain, sub busses for adjusting sections and a good limiter and analyzers on that Master buss.

I took my conclusion from the screen shot. He shows the gain at 12 o clock and it is reading -8.9. which is correct. It is true that experienced audio engineers don't touch Master bus Gain or Faders. You use your sub busses. This is why sub busses are important for normal complexed mixes. If your song is quiet it's no wonder as to me -18 is way to low. I use between -10 and -6 with -8 being perfect. I use the the track gain control to achieve this. I play the song and adjust buy analyzing the peak and LUFS is averaging for each track. I also use Span and the You Lean loudness meter for accuracy using LUFS or RMS as all it take is one little spike to make you "think" a track is peaking at -2 when in fact there was only one little peak and the average level was really -12. It's a bit time consuming but a properly gained project will almost mix itself. First step is before I use compression to tame peaks I will find the peaks and pull them down with a volume envelope or clip gain. It really depends on what the track is. Vocals take the most work. Bass, keyboards and rhythm guitar are usually a steady level. Drums are a problem child and usually need lots of compression to keep them up there without peaks. But the goal is 20 tracks that all are steady at -8db. Then I use the sub busses to mix the parts usually with the Vocals at unity and a little pull down on the rest. On the master I now use the free LoudMax limiter. Then the You Lean loudness meter to tell me my true peak level and LUFS which I go for 1.0 peak and - 12 LUFS. So easy to dial this in with the Loud Max.

I notice your Workspaces seems to be set to none? Not sure if this would cause that. Becuase I do use a few pre sets I made my screen is always exactly correct the way I want it, But-- I opened a blank template, I set my workspace to none and the whole browser view disappeared completely and there was no double arrow. So there were no views to see. So I inserted the Browser by pressing B and then added the synth rack. You are correct that I can minimize the Browser but there's no arrows to do that with the synth rack. Weird for sure. So are you using Screensets? If there's a bug then I'll assume it's something got messed up in a screen set.

Buss Gain are set different than Tracks. The unity is at 3 o'clock instead of 12 o'clock, Why? I guess because you don't normally need that +18 db of headroom that a track has on a buss because it is being fed by a track that should be in the ballpark and not that far out. You'll notice track gain is either + or - 18db. The Buss gain is from - inf to + 6.

Fanboy? Hardly. I could careless what OS you use. I still have XP on my netbook. I also have W7 on a laptop and these are both because I have hardware such as a printer, scanner and a very cool PCI audio interface that need those OS. So there’s people who run old OS versions for compatibility issues but then there are what I call holdouts who have it in their heads that the new OS is evil. ? We seem to get this with every new version of Windows.

FYI. I have a 250 GB SSD system drive on my main Daw computer. I have probably 30 different software suites all on C drive. it’s a little more than 1/2 full most of the time. I don’t store any data like pictures, music or movies on the C drive. Most of my VST libraries are on the 1 TB drive. But all of Cakewalks stuff is still on C drive. I store all my data on my 1 TB data drives. For Cakewalk I installed a second 250 GB SSD drive just for projects and Wave files. I found using the 1TB HHD was bogging things down. Doesn’t matter for samples as they load into RAM.

@scook That's one way I never would have figured out. Excellent. But guess what? I did find a way too. Append instrument track. There was a thread the other day and the OP was having trouble using append instrument track, I had never heard of this feature. So if you choose Append Instrument track with the instrument in focus it creates a new instrument track. I had to change the channels but it gave me 2 outputs for the TTS_1. I then inserted using Append again and the 3rd instrument track automatically was set to Channel 3. So that's pretty easy.

Try to take an existing instrument track with one stereo output and change it to multiple stereo outputs. I’m unaware of a way that can be done. ? If there is it must be complicated.

Mr Fra is a Windows 7 hold out. To me if you have decided there’s something evil about W10 then you better be prepared for the day that you can’t install anything anymore.

When you insert an instrument there is an option to choose to use all available outputs in either stereo or mono. You have to do it then, not afterwards.

In the latest update they seem to have fixed this issue and it works great. In the past these tracks would all have been 31 sec. Now they are correct. This is a export using Tracks Through entire mix. So they have all passed through my limiter on the master buss etc. This was just simple narration dialogue but this can now be used to master an entire album of songs. For me this will change an important workflow and I can almost kiss Wave Lab and it's stupid dongle good bye.

100% agree that we should try to use the correct name for features on this forum. My go to is the help module. So my bad for using that label when I actually do know its correct title. The help module is never wrong. I thought it was the other day when looking for the correct name for the right hand view in PVR. I was surprised that it called it the "Track Pane"? But the info in the help module is different than what you see for the Track Pane found in Track View. So I concluded there is a Track View Track Pane and a PVR Track Pane. Of note is the Add track dialogue also appears when you use the menu found by right clicking a blank space of the Track Pane. But the insert Audio Track found there doesn't. I have a feeling the Insert Instrument was added to this menu at the time they added the Add Track feature.

Yes it would seem easy to add a few more options. Im not exactly sure when the newer dialogue appeared in Cakewalk or Sonar. I ignored it’s existence up until I started making the tutorials. I always had used the synth rack exclusively as well as split instrument track set to single synth output.The only 2 synths I use that have multiple outputs are AD2 and Xpand I use the built in mixer and effects. So I rarely even used the old one. Now I’m liking using simple instrument tracks so the new dialogue works better because of the input/output options. But then it would be perfect if I could set those as my default and it was saved as a preference for all projects. Then I would always use drag and drop. I guess the other option is they could add the input/output option to the old dialogue and I could return to my old habit with 2 more things set up for me now.

I would argue that a new workflow once learned is going to be much quicker and easier Select the section of notes and holding shift drag to blank space of clips pane This Inserts a new midi track Set the output to the instrument Enter the channel, bank and patch in the dialogue boxes That just took me 30 seconds

Not as much a problem now but back when my Atari used 1.4 MB floppy disks it sure was.

Other than hardware midi guitars the Midi Guitar software seems the only one out there. Seems to work fine but the demo version is annoying so never got to far into it. As said by others easier to use Melodyne which I already paid for. I also have a Godin guitar with hex pu built in and the Roland GR50. To lazy to hook it up. But when I do it’s a lot of fun. But even though it tracks nicely and sounds very cool and retro, the recording of the midi needs way to much editing . Probably 3x that of a Melodyne audio to midi track. If I use it I record the stereo audio of the synth as well as a separate track for the guitar. I drag and drop that to a midi track. Lots of possibilities

+1 to Latency Monitor While you’re on their web site also download WhySo Slow. I just did this and wow it really shows you what’s happening under the hood on your system. I was having distorted audio and stuff taking forever to open on my laptop and its conclusion was my lousy 8 GB of RAM and the duo core 2.5 hz processor. Everything else got a green light. It was nice to have all that info with in a minute.

Got that right. Storage is cheap. I have literally 100’s of CWP files and some go back to Guitar Studio 2005. They all open all the time with only a warning about missing plug ins. Here’s my tutorial on how to back up your files

There are dozens and dozens of posts same issue and same answer “ Use the Web installer “ How is anyone supposed to figure that out on their own? It would be nice if they actually get this sorted out. I believe it started in mid August. There are dozens of tutorials on installing Cakewalk and all use the obviously broken Assistant. Cakewalks web site also directs you to use the Assistant. I wonder how many people who thought they would try Cakewalk have given up and moved on? I know I would. If software is funky to install I normally assume it must be funky to use and leave it be. I sure hope they get this Web Installer going and PUT IT ON THE WEB SITE!

@Starship Krupa just brought this up in a similar topic, but I thought a fresh thread requesting a few changes to the new Insert Instrument dialogue might be the best solution. Hopefully we get the attention of developers here. This is were we do that , right? On making a tutorial about adding VST instruments to projects I explored the different ways you could insert a soft synth and found a total of 10. ? The worst issue, to me, is there are now 2 very similar dialogue boxes as seen in my screen shots below. Most common methods of inserting still bring up the old dialogue and only the Add track and right clicking a blank space in the track pane open the new one. Then there's the issue with old one that people might have un checked the "ask every time" and forget it even existed. The location of the button to push to get it back is in the synth rack and many people never have that open. Only a very experience user, or a newbie who actually reads the documentation would know it existed. So A request for a control bar module that opens the old dialogue makes sense from that perspective. I'm guilty of having the box uncheck because in the past I always used one setting so it does speed thing up. Anyhow the proposal here is why why not add all the functions that are missing to the new dialog and scrap the old one? And possibly leave the "ask every time" with the option of when I insert using the Add track button only. It seems however the new dialogue forgets your preferences once you close a project. This is another reason people liked the old one. You could set it up and uncheck the box and then drag and drop was super fast. Seem there's very few options missing from the new dialogue and those must be a ten minute job to add by the developing team. But the retaining of settings function I'm not sure if that is as easy to accomplish.

That must be that revision number. I see mine said 4 which seems correct. It's one of those older problem child projects that I finish, listen to, hate it, leave the original as a back up and save as under a new name and go at it again, and again,,. So ya, might keep track of that and then the 77 hours makes sense.

There are at least 4 inserting methods that open the old dialogue box which has the check box for the add the associated midi track. The synth rack, drag and drop, double clicking instrument in browser and the insert menu. This is the one box missing from the new insert instrument dialog but they could easily add it, right? The other way to work is have track templates saved for each "go to" synths you commonly use. I have one for the Acoustic bass in Dim pro as example. Templates can be saved for any of the combinations of instrument and midi tracks.

Same here seems dead accurate. 70 hours of editing! I guess I wander off a lot and leave stuff running. But your post just made me discover something they have trashed. I don't think many people use the notes but I always have. And a long time ago I discovered a cool little trick. What ever I named my Song in the title in the notes dialogue was what Export called my Song by default. This is now not working, ☹️ Guess the new export feature killed this. It was a feature probably only I will miss. I often have weird project names that don't match the actual name of the song. Like when you revise a song and re name the CWP "Dog Fart with cowbell " . or "Dog Fart with Banjo" the note pad would retain your correct title.