John Vere

I was just thinking that a great way to make a song more Natural would be to start with a live fee time part like guitar and vocals. Then drag that to the timeline to create a nice tempo map that breathes. I'm working with a bunch of live recording right now and I just love the way the tempo map is always moving up and down by just a little bit. You can actually see the choruses speed up a hair.

Don't own a set of digital drums? You don't need one. We have Drum Replacer = free. All you need is a surface to hit that sound remotely like the drum part you want and any microphone. Works best if you use real drumsticks. ( $ 10 ) Record the part and then use Drum Replacer to turn it into a midi track. I 100% agree with what Bitflipper just said and I was going to say the same. All those Humanizing features do is make it sound like you played real bad and forgot to edit it. Not sure who's idea it originally was but I think it's been responsible for a lot of real nasty sounding drum tracks. So the best way to humanize IS to play it in real time. Example is when I often use my digital drum kit I notice the snare is just a hair early and this pushes the song. I like to make my Kick right on time as well as the Bass to match. But you can certainly push the snare a little.

As Glen has pointed out. WASAPI is the best choice for an audio driver when using on board audio. It has made those other bandaid drivers obsolete. Of coarse you should use the Focusrite ASIO drivers when in use. But you cannot use your laptop audio jacks while using the ASIO audio interface (Focusrite). Just use a 1/8”-1/4” adapter into the Interface headphones jack. I would totally remove the not needed drivers including from the Registry or you will have conflicting drivers. WASAPI out performs those drivers as it is optimized for windows 10 if you do use you computers sound chip instead of you interface.

Yes. Always work with short clips and then render them or bounce.

As far as live recording of audio goes you don’t need much but the interface is the more critical part of the system. Example I can record a 1 hour set of 14 tracks with my Tascam us1641 into a 2008 Sony laptop. It does have a SSD drive and running W7. You need the computer horsepower for processing with plug ins and what not. But live audio recording needs the fast hard drive and of course the interface to get the mikes hooked up.

Here we go again. I actually agree with Steve. Everything was well covered in the last thread. And the one before that and the one before that.

There is no legal way to get 8.5. It’s not for sale by the original vendor anymore. They are long gone. I doubt if there is a legal unopened box sitting around. There will be lots of ripped off copies on eBay. But what sort of fool pays for an old version of free software? If you liked it that much you should have backed it up. I have mine as an ISO file. But it’s registered to me and it’s illegal to resell or copy for any one but me.

Where the confusion comes from is Cakewalks audio engine needs to find an audio driver or nothing happens. It can’t run. it’s an audio program after all. It’s the engine and processing that renders the export data not the actual driver, but the engine does need the driver to run. @Noel Borthwick could hopefully shed some light on this and correct me if I’m wrong . My understanding is the audio engine runs exactly the same in all driver modes. The only difference I’m aware of is the timing offset. Only ASIO reports Round Trip Latency accurately and therefore adjusts the timing offset correctly. At this point in time cakewalk seems optimized for ASIO and WASAPI modes.

Not sure I understand what you mean? You turn off your interface and choose WASAPI mode. I guess some people totally disable the on board audio, I used to but that was back in the dark ages ? Im not sure Cakewalk would even run in that case.

Yes I work a lot on my second computer which uses on board audio. I often export to make proof CD to play in the car. I used to be a none believer in on board audio but since WASAPI mode came along I get very good performance on at least this particular computer. I have 4 Interfaces but I found I don’t need one for this set up. I never record in that room so no need for one. it confuses other family members if I have complicated systems hooked up in the office. But crackles are usually due to CPU and buffer overloads. To many plug ins and VST instruments can do that easily. That’s why many people freeze up as much as they can as you can have a zillion audio tracks as long as there’s no active processing

As said an audio interface has nothing to do with the export. You could use your on board audio and get exactly the same quality file. Have you checked your system with Latency Monitor? Do you have background apps running that could interrupt you processing?

The short answer is yes. I open old projects from 8.5 and even 6 and 7 all the time. I still have 8.5 installed because it came with a few things I still use. So old projects work as expected. CbB is a very much improved version of Sonar. They have focused on bug fixes and you'll find once you get used to the new workspace it's like riding a bike. It is recommended you install your older version first and then install Cakewalk.

Just curious What are the 2 interfaces your testing?

It actually wasn't a Client, It was the other way around I think as he called him "The Hired Gun" so in that case you do have the right to dictate the way you want things. I do believe Michael has payed a drummer to do these tracks. It is different if a client brings tracks to you and askes you to add stuff or mix them.

Just to add, I totally agree about AD mixer interface and how it's limiting. I too have yet to find a Kick or Snare that sounds like what I'm used to in a real kit. I too bought additional kit pieces only to never use them. I do use it in 90% of my tracks and just fudge it into something "OK" For my backing tracks it's perfect as it's simple to use and with the same pre set on all the songs it keeps the live mix in line. I also use Session Drummer which I can plunk my own samples into. I sampled my little drum kit and it's freaky to have SD play my kit. It's very real sounding. I have about 20 snare shots using different sticks and velocity. Too bad I can't layer those but I use the Pad thing for those. But it is an option for you as well. I'm sure your neighbor's won't notice random whacks, bashes and crashes in the middle of the day as you sample your kit.

Well here's a simple solution that will do all 80 (minus the overheads) in one pass. Gold Wave , its free to try but only something like $50 for a lifetime license. Just make a sub folder and point the output to that. It keeps the originals and the mono ones will be in the new folder. I have used the Batch convertor for over 10 years now and it's rock solid. Edit: I just tested this and it works perfectly. Took 10 seconds for 10 stereo songs. The Mono version is exactly the same peak level and LUFS as the stereo version as tested in the YouLean meter. . Check out all those options for the conversion. I don't even think Wave Lab has that many. http://www.goldwave.ca/

80 track! . I would guess this is an album of 10 songs ? Yep. Sometimes it’s a lot of boring tasks to do the job right. Hey. I just actually thought of something I use Gold Wave to batch process wave files to MP3. I think it could also convert stereo to mono. I’ll go look

Glen and I seem to share a lot of common workflow habits. I was going to say more of less the same things. Wave editors have better tools and for me do a much faster and better job when working with wave files. For sure when ever someone hands me anything in wave format it’s going to be looked at in Wave Lab first. That way I can check for things like artifacts, peak level and overs. And in this case I would also save as mono all tracks heading for a multi track DAW. Even the overheads I would save the left and right separately. I find it very odd that engineer would think anyone would want to work with mono sourced tracks that have been exported to stereo. Everyone I know exports mono stems.

Akai does not supply drivers as far as I can tell. I have a little Akai Synth Station 25 which looks like it is very similar in design. Yours just has more knobs. I bought it for travel. It doesn’t have a midi driver it uses a class compliant windows driver. Generally it works fine. But the biggest problem is Cakewalk won’t register it unless it’s all plugged in and running before you boot up windows and cakewalk. The keyboard and joystick part works but I’ve never gotten the pads or even the volume to work with Cakewalk. My Roland A series came with a midi driver and I can plug it in with a project open and Cakewalk recognizes it right away. So to me, any midi device that uses class compliant drivers is going to cause problems from time to time. Best to check before you buy on a manufacturer web site and see if the device your going to get comes with midi drivers. I think the issue is class compliant drivers both midi and audio, work perfectly fine on a Mac. So manufacturers cheap out and don’t put any money on development of proper drivers. Would I buy another Akai- no.

That explains why then as I would have used command Center to install SI instruments and Melodyne is from using the installers supplied by Celemony web site. Thanks.

I am in the habit of always saving a mix scene and name it with the date after I export a mix. Because it might be a few months before I get back to work on it again it Helps me confirm that the CD with the same date is that version. That way if I carry on and make a mess of the nex mix it’s easy to return to ground zero. Very useful feature that I’m not sure other Daws have.

Funny that if I open Bandlab Assistant it has all the add ons available for download. I just was there because I realized I hadn’t installed the Theme Editor. But Melodyne and Studio Instruments were also available even though they are installed already.

Did you check your master bus output?

You would have been better to start a new thread but not sure what you issue is because generally if you have The older Sonar version installed all of the goodies work in CbB including vvocal. But I think you need x3 or earlier. Read back in this thread and that is covered

You totally lost me on that one. If it what I think you mean then you computer needs a tune up.