John Vere

Just to clarify, audio drivers have no impact on midi data. That is handled by the midi driver which is either MS generic or supplied with your controller. Example Roland and Yamaha supply a midi driver. The only time you will notice midi latency is because the soft synth you are triggering is affected by the audio system. So you can be using low quality on board audio and have almost zero latency when you play a vst from a controller. The only latency would be the delay from the output of the VST to your monitoring system. Basically half the RTL. On my system at a 256 buffer that shows as 10ms. But start adding effects that requires more processing and that latency will increase. And if you lower your buffers too much, your audio will cut out or crackle. This is your computer, not the audio interface doing this. Good ASIO drivers allow lower buffer settings by design but then your computer needs to be fast enough to optimize the available performance. My Motu is a good performer, but my computer is not capable of much under 128 without crackles. As far as recording goes it is best practices to bypass all effects while tracking to avoid timing issues. Midi or audio. If your interface has direct monitoring, use it, and audio latency won't matter. Do not use input echo while recording audio. The only exception is when you what to monitor something like a Guitar sim.

Your best bet is to watch a few tutorials on Mastering in Cakewalk. It's to complicated to explain properly in a paragraph as Dave just found out There is a tutorial sub form here or quicker is just do a google search for Mastering in Cakewalk. Creative Sauce are my go to videos. He's easy to follow and uses mostly free plug ins.

I see what I have is Ozone 9 Elements and I got it from same deal at Plug in Boutique last fall. But as I said it is gathering dust as I didn't like what it did. As Bitflipper said lots of free plug ins including what comes with CbB, can do the same but just not automatically. That said it's this automatic thing that trashed the OP's song. It even LOOKs bad. No dynamics just 50% slammed to the roof. And yes my screenshots above were from this same spot in the song. As said it has quiet spots too. That does make it that much more tricky to master.

I happily paid for the pro version for the drag and drop feature. I have used it hundreds of times on just about every track I record as well as my masters, my videos and testing old files. It’s a tool I couldn’t work with out now. The paid version also can be set using presets or your own custom peak levels. Those red lines tell you when both the peak or the LUFS exceeds your settings. It all adjustable in the settings. I bought Ozone on Black Friday sale and it made my mixes sound worse than if I do it myself. It is a good starting point for beginners but takes more work for me to get it to sound right. Collecting dust now

I agree with Bit. The Lander master is sort of what I'd expect they slam it to a limiter make it overly compressed and punters will think this is good because now they are loud! You can do this yourself with things like the free Loud Max or Boost11. What a waste of money if you ask me. No doubt your left /fright balance will not be even when you hard pan guitars like that. If that's the mix you wanted don't worry about it. Oh, I can't really hear much of the drums at all. And Span confirms my theory. See all the low end in the Lander version, right around 150. And look at all the low mid that's missing which on most playback systems is the most important.. your version was much better but looks a little peaky in the higher end. You're better off to use these tools and master yourself using the compression/ limiter and EQ of your choice. I'm always experimenting with different plug ins. Last go round was the Loud Max for limiting and the LP Multiband to dial in a frequency balance looking at span and the LP meters. Your version Lander Version

And right away there is information needs updating as you say you need the Bandlab assistant updated before your can update Cakewalk. See how fast stuff becomes outdated

From the download page: Note: After this amp simulator, you need to put the cabinet simulator (IR). Well I can't find any cabinets on the web page ,, and that seems odd that its a second vst you run. @reginaldStjohnThey are both 32, 64 and Mac stuff. http://nalexsoft.blogspot.com/ I downloaded Amplex. I had same issue as you. no sound when enabled. It says to click on information line,, nothing there, looked back in the zip folder and found the documentation folder so put it in the folder that seems to open. Clicked on one of the txt files and got sound,,, but real quiet, I turned it up full and its not loud and the tone seems boring. Not sure its worth the bother. Lots of interesting stuff. Sort of free but asking for a donation. Mabey it's louder if you pay for it Edit- I found this in the J800 folder: You can use the PowerEnd plugin as poweramp: https://nalexsoft.blogspot.com/2019/03/powerend.html Edit #2 -- I just installed the C2 compressor and it seems to work just fine. A new toy.

Probably master bus was set to the digital output. By default Cakewalk uses what is at the top of the output list and that is usually the Digital out. Other common problem is on board audio and not using WASAPI mode.

Sounds like a hard drive issue. Full? Cakewalk takes at the most 2 minutes to install. One trick is don't install the additional content at the same time you install core program. Do that afterwards.

Maybe you should post the song or part of it so some of us can analyze it for you. It might just be the mix making it somehow quieter. Possibly you have to many sub frequencies pushing your levels but not sounding loud on most playback equipment. Example a kick drum can be almost peaking at -0.1 true peak but the LUFS are only -28. A kick is a very transient instruments. But a bass which is more of a sustained sound, might be peaking at -3.0 and the luffs are -16. In the mix through smaller studio monitor or headphones these two instruments together sound correct to your ears. Your not hearing everything they are producing. Low frequencies can push your readings to the max and on a cell phone which doesn't play those sounds, the mix will end up quiet. I use SPAN and a sub woofer to check my low end. Its a common mistake to have too much low end in a mix and be unaware that this is why your mixes "sound" quiet. All that low end energy is pushing the meters and the readings. Slap a hi pass filter on your master buss and start moving it up towards 100hz and watch those levels drop.

External drives are cheap

So far this purchase is unconfirmed by any one but the OP. One person even mentioned they think the OP is the same person selling the videos. Possible I guess. Nobody here can answer your question and you would need to contact the owner of the videos. I'd certainly not want to use my credit card on a iffy web site. . I'd keep a close eye on your accounts now you've submitted your personal info from 3 credit cads to an un known entity. Pay Pal would sort of protect you,, That or an E transfer. As said it's odd that someone would make a Cakewalk video and not show themselves as a member of this community and personally post the videos like everyone else does.

How can your song sound quite if it it -14 or louder? I think your using the meter somehow wrong. It should be the last thing in your master buss effects bin

I just googled the question and ever hit said-14 https://www.masteringthemix.com/blogs/learn/76296773-mastering-audio-for-soundcloud-itunes-spotify-and-youtube?currency=CAD

I edited my post to add something I thought of while you were posting

Youlean loudness meter has pre sets to match format standards. The free version I don’t think you can change this. But with the paid version you can make custom or choose a preset. if you file goes over the pre set value then you get the clipping red marks. You can Google what the true peak and LUFS maximum amount is for different delivery systems. I’ll say that -8 LUFS is super loud. I use -12–14 LUFS. Possibly your reference tracks are suffering from the loudness wars. Either that or your feeding it through a system that has added gain. This is why the paid version is well worth the price. You drag and drop the files directly for analysis. It also has the presets

For guitar as said above you'll get better tone if the impedance is correct. My solution to that was a $75 Zoom G1on. https://zoomcorp.com/en/ca/multi-effects/guitar-effects/g1on/ I don't know if they still make it, but there are 100's of guitar multi effect boxes out there and real cheap used. Then any audio interface will be ready to roll. The effects box will handle the impedance issue. And the Zoom pedal gives all sorts of goodie like a tuner. I actually like a lot of the sounds it makes. I wasn't excepting that as I am old school stomp box and tube amp guy. If you plan on using In the Box Guitar sims you do need a low latency system. Most of the new interfaces are good enough these days but your computer needs the processing power to take advantage of low buffer settings. Laptops rarely fall into that category unless you pay $$$, I solved that problem by only adding the Guitar VST effects after I record the track. I made a video with tips on what to think about before you buy an interface. Most important choice is how many inputs and outputs you'll need. Sounds like you'd be fine with a 2x2 interface. Just make sure it comes with ASIO drivers. There's a few low end Behringer's that don't.

There is something weird happening to me as well. In comping mode. Record take one. Rewind record take two. there are two lanes and they both play at same time. Never had that problem before? Also old takes are underneath but greyed out and don’t exist in the audio folder. It will say Record 31 on the greyed out track but In the audio folder are other numbers but no 31? No problem if I use overwrite mode and just change lanes. So does this issue happen in comping mode only?

What was the topic? ❓This ones more interesting

I leave mine at 256 24/7. Everything works and has for a long time for me. The only case I would ever lower this is to use a Guitar Sim.

This depends on the interface. Some do , some don't. My Motu doesn't if I use 3/4 i get blasted out of the room and reaching for the big knob does nothing, I have to use my power amp.

When looking at interfaces the OP could purchase I was reading Tascams promo info and it clearly said no drivers needed class compliant. But further digging shows that they are also still making a ASIO driver as well. Built into the US-16x08 is a DSP Mixer for low-latency digital mixing. Each channel has four-band EQ and compression for polished-sounding monitor mixes. In addition to interface mode, the US-16x08 can be used as a standalone mic preamp. Mac and Windows drivers are provided, as well as USB Class Compliant 2.0 drivers for tablets like Apple's iPad. MIDI input and output are also available on the rear panel.

I assumed these came with CbB that's why the warning. Possibly they came with one of my older versions. I just checked and they are only on my main studio computer. If I open the media browser there is a list as below If you open the Audio Library that's where I find the Backing tracks folder But ya, it's only this computer, on my other 2 machines this is empty, So must be from older version. But it's defiantly not 3rd party as I don't use loops so have never selected them as part of installation. I have Sonar 8.5 and Splat but I thought I only did bare bones. Any how the Youlean loudness meter ( paid version) is worth it's weight in gold for me. I have been using it for everything, including videos.

I used an Atari, first the 1040st then later a Mega st2 from 1984 until 2004. I'd still be using it if the monitor hadn't died. I dragged this to 100's of gigs. The Hard drive I do believe was 20 MB. I never came close to filling it as it was all midi. With the 1040ST you had to load from floppies which took a good 3 minutes. Sucked if the power flicked out. A floppy held about 20 songs. You had to be careful to create midi files that were real small, no fancy stuff then.

@Kevin PerryIt's not worth the bother, I was just curious and love a challenge. I probably could have gotten it to work but its summer and the swimming hole is close by.. I have my Tascam us1641 which has 14 analog in and 4 outs. It works great but the driver is 2014 and I do not expect it to survive to much longer. Tascam was writing good drivers for a short while and I see they have returned to the lazy method again. They are selling large expensive interfaces that use "class Compliant drivers" ,, no ASIO?? But I still have a system with W7 on it so I have that as my mobile live recording rig. If I keep it in a cool dry place I could get 10 more years out of it. I love the Motu so far and it's very happy with ASIO. It would have been cool to switch on the 6i6 and grab some extra channels but seems much easier to just plug the Tascam in and bingo, 14 channels of ASIO.