John Vere

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.

So in WDM mode things are worse. The Motu just does not like anything other than ASIO and WASAPI shared. Look at the gibberish I get in WDM mode..

The test was a total failure. I could select both interfaces in preferences under WASAPI exclusive. I could also select either interface in the 2 tracks I set up but when you hit record it tells you the old pop up that the device in use does not support the currant driver mode. So testing individually it turns out the Motu does not support WASAPI exclusive. The Focusrite works fine under WASAPI exclusive. So once again every manufacture has a little bit different coding in its driver.

This was good information , something I actually know about but always forget. Syncing is important and this is why I use ASIO so that it is correct. Dang audio is complicated! Anyways I guess it's back to a 4x4 interface and possibly a little mixer to do duty as the second volume control. I guess I got away with 2 interfaces for live recording because live recordings have a ton of latency anyway due to leakage. One could do a latency test easily buy splitting a signal to both interfaces and comparing the 2 tracks. I might just do that! I wonder if Cakewalk would always use the interface that is at the top of the device list for the clock?

Ya agreed, The SPDIF is for my Yamaha 01v digital mixer and it is just to big to keep set up, even though it blows the Mix 8 out of the water with options, the mix 8 is super small. I will someday build a under the desk slide out tray for the Yamaha. But the other issue it has is then I'm stuck with 44.1.

I'm glad you brought this topic up because I had never done this and tried WASAPI Exclusive. I always use ASIO and just turn off the interface I'm not using. I have to keep my Scarlett alive as it has SPDIF and the Motu doesn't. Funny how WASAPI mode is calling the digital ins and outs analogue. But this gives me 8 analogue inputs if I need them without dusting off the Tascam. There are lots of small mixer around I used to have a little Yamaha too. I have the Mix 8 for the studio and then a Mackie Pro effects 4 that I used for my solo gigs. For it's size the Mix 8 does a lot. Especially useful is the Tape input which you can send to your headphones or to the Main outputs or both. If I want to do a loopback test all I need to do is push the Mains button if I have the mixer running back to inputs 3/4. I have used it in many configurations. I have a Lexicon MX 200 hooked up and when I was tracking clients I would use it to give them a different cue mix than I was hearing. As I said my Scarlett could do all that but was always confusing because of software.

Out of curiosity I hooked up my Scarlett. You can see by the screen shots that in ASIO mode it took over from my Motu which I believe is Cakewalk's system of using Alphabetical order for in/out defaults. Example " digital SPDIF" often takes over as the master bus output. But as you see in both ASIO and WASAPI Shared I can only use one or the other interface. But in WASAPI Exclusive I can easily use both.

I have nothing against it if your using W7, and 4 years ago I was using it on a W7 laptop exclusively and it was fine. But WASAPI is integrated into windows and has made asio4all obsolete. We did some testing and WASAPI exclusive got better RTL on loopback tests than asio4all. Asio4all performance is just like WDM mode and WASAPI is more up to date with W10 inclusion. Both would require loopback testing and timing offset adjustments to work perfectly. If your not overdubbing it won't matter. I guess the only case where something like asio4all might work better is when an audio interface doesn't support WASAPI, like my 14 year old Tascam. Asio4all at least would show all the ins and outs.

Sounds good. I never think to look for used gear. But interfaces become outdated so fast therefore I like to keep mine no older than 5 years. My Tascam us1641 is 14 years old and still has drivers that work. But last update was 2014 so that is going to die someday. I have always bought interfaces with 4 outputs because of my set up where I use a small mixer for headphones. The small mixer ( Mackie mix 8 @ $ 80) can also be run to a second pair of speakers and therefore has that volume control your looking for. So that's another option. Right now that's patched to a sub woofer I rarely use. But one thing for sure I agree that the reason I have that small mixer is due to wanting those physical controls handy. My Scarlett 6i6 has a software mixer and it's a royal pane to use. A lot of interfaces cheap out and don't have controls on the front panel. I avoid those. Give me lots of knobs I can see. I think the ultimate answer for your question is as Noel said and it really depends on the manufacture and the ASIO driver. I know I've read a few times of people using 2 Roland interfaces together. But getting back to using what you have, I still would avoid asio4all if you can as you really don't need to stack that on top of the already available WASAPI. We did some test a year ago and WASAPI is a very good alternative driver and you need not contaminate your audio system to use it. I used to record our band and I would use WDM mode as WASAPI wasn't really there yet, I used my Tascam us1641 and a Yamaha mixer that had 2x2 USB. Worked great gave me 16 analog inputs and midi...Used this set up for a long time without a hitch. I would easily switch back to ASIO for overdubbing etc. I often switched between WASAPI shared and ASIO when I was making tutorials but then discovered my Motu M4 has a loopback so I can use other apps with Cakewalk running now. So I think your easiest rout might be the 2 interfaces you have in WASAPI mode.

I actually agree with what @bdickens is advising. For the price of another "wrong" interface you could purchase a 4x4 interface like the Scarlett 4i4 or the Motu M4. Those are both solid reliable interfaces that have 4 outputs and not expensive. I see another Presonus iTwo would be $230 ( can) and the Motu and Scarlett are only about $75 more. If you need 4 outputs you should purchase the proper device. Simple logic and good advice. ASIO4all is bad advice. It is not ASIO, it is WDM mode in a wrapper. So your actually worse off than WASAPI which has much better performance.