John Vere

First I do believe the TTS-1 is more or less identical to the Sound Canvas as far as GM midi goes. In other words there's not much point in using the Sound Canvas anymore. And most folks use the Sample based instruments like the Studio Instruments that come with Cakewalk or the 1,000 of free VST's available from places like https://plugins4free.com/ But your title say's Roland Sonic Cell? So is this what you are using? If so, the answer will be in the user manual. Possibly there's a setting that allows for PG changes and they are being blocked. A downloaded GM midi file will show it's Channel, bank and patch in the midi track header, check there to see if the patches are correct. In my signature is links to tutorials for all this stuff to do with TTS-1 and using downloaded midi files.

This sort of belongs in the Songs sub forum. That’s the best place for advice on mixing which is what this tread is about.

Updated video and added better instructions.

It's also a design flaw with a lot of interfaces. The 2i2 lacks a blend control so you can adjust the difference between input direct and DAW playback. You see the Tascam has the input/Computer blend control but the Scarlett doesn't. Little details on interfaces make a huge difference. SO now the OP has to turn down the MAster in the DAW.

No I didn't watch the video. And all I'm stating is I don't like the mix choice. I have mixed 100's of albums in my day and yes it was mostly pretty traditional stuff, I did a few Rap albums and a didgeridoo however. But if you goal is producing POP music then that mix need a little work. Bottom end is over the top and Span is showing this clearly. And I have nothing against panning hard left & right IF done a certain way. It was real common for me to do this with 2 guitars but they were always done by re- playing the exact same part as close as possible to create 2 tracks. I often used this with acoustic as well as overdriven electrics. My approach to mixing comes from doing live sound for years. I am a huge fan of live music and that is what I try to capture in the studio as well. I think a few others have already mentioned this. IN the real world you would never hear any sound just come from one side. And this is what it comes down to, My mixing goals are to recreate a live sounding stereo field. You goals might be more experimental which is fine by me. I got in trouble once for panning a 3 piece horn section. It was just a little bit too. I thought it sounded bigger. They said no, they are a horn "section" one thing, not three. .

I had this as my first recording studio! I bought it because it was one of the only 4 tracks that would record all 4 tracks at the same time. I had to sacrifice track 4 for stripping with time code to drive my Atari midi. So it was sort of only 3 tracks. It used DBX? noise reduction which made vocals sound sort of out of phase. I don't miss it one bit. I see idiots selling them for $400?? are people that hung up on analog?

Simply put a bad mix that doesn't translate to most playback systems. As said way to much panning hard left and right.

My solution is I test all VST’s on my office machine. If I like a plug in ( rare) I then plunk it in my main DAW computer. I’m showing about 90 right now in my main computer and most of those are junk that cakewalk installed and I should get rid of some of them but this is time consuming stuff My office computer became a huge mess of plug ins so I did the smart thing and re did it with a fresh OS and SSD drive

Because most of the songs I record end up on. CD or as mp3 I’m totally fine with 44.1. Ain’t nobody going to tell the difference. And 16 bit is nothing you can improve on as changing it to 24 will only add more zeros to the data. What’s more important is the quality of the content.

Right click on the catagory, open the list and at the bottom is Reset category. If anything was in there it goes to the uncategorized folder.

The OP doesn't want a stereo track, read what they say carefully. They have recorded to a stereo track by accident now they want a mono track.

It’s weird but on my computer it’s right at the top of the home page but your right as when I use my phone I can’t find it at all. I was going to post the link I’m on my stupid phone way to much these days.

If you record using only one input on your audio interface then it’s mono. You are implying you have recorded to a stereo track and therefore the recording signal is only left or right and asked how to Centre it? Is this correct? There’s a few ways to fix this but bounce to track is the fastest Highlight the track and go to Tracks look for the bounce to track and follow directions

@Craig Anderton Funny you give the analogy of a mixer as I was going to use that as well. But I was thinking The Pro Channel and the effects bin are where the insert jacks are on a mixer and then the track sends are like auxiliaries that go to outboard gear and are brought back to a return buss

Yes as always right under my nose.

And you just ignored two posts that gave you the solution

Well thanks everyone I think it’s clear to me how this works now. my reason for posting is it was not clear to me with the research I was doing because the internet is full of very outdated information about Cakewalk. A lot of the tutorials are also outdated. Then crazy things like this Pro Channel Context menu. How on earth would anyone find that? After Steve mentioned it’s existence I had to totally dig around before I found it buy using logic.

I opened a midi file I had just been working on. I've never opened the pro channel or changed a setting and this is a fairly new fresh install. Anyhow the question is I find this toggle misleading as I would assume POST EFFECT RACK means "after the effects rack." At least post always meant after in my world of audio. Hmm, I just opened a Basic Template and the Post effect rack was unchecked. I also opened a random project and it too was unchecked. So weirdness. My advice will be that you better check this if you plan on using both the track bin and the Pro Channel.

@Colin Nicholls @scook Is this where you are saying you can change it. It would seem so, My setting by default shows Post or after the track effects or is this just badly labeled?

Thanks Steve, that was exactly the info I was looking for. Man you really have to dig around Cakewalk as there seems to be endless places to customize. I've always stuck with using the effects bin as it is more visible in most views. But the importance of placing certain effects at an exact point in the signal path makes the Pro Channels effects chain indispensable because it gives you full control of this. One really needs to understand exactly where the compressor is in the signal chain or it might be pointless to use it.

I'm working on a tutorial for using effects. I can't really see a different in signal path between the track effect bin and pro channel modules. Example, what is the difference between putting a reverb in the Track Effects Bin or putting it in the Pro Channels Effects Chain? This diagram is a little confusing as it seems to show a switching point hat chooses one path or the other which we know is not correct. Anyone have better information about this detail of the signal path in Cakewalk? @Noel Borthwick @Craig Anderton and a whole bunch of you of who I know are much smarter than me.

The virtual controller is found in the views menu. You can choose a piano or QWERTY keyboard. It does seem to disappear sometimes but if you choose the piano version then pressing computer keyboard won’t toggle terrible things don’t use the computer keyboard. It’s dangerous!

The only thing different was in the new video I showed the console view. As a result of this and other similar posts I’ve now made a simple tutorial about work spaces

Sometimes there are corrupt projects and very hard to know why. And the solution often is to just make a new one and copy the data over from the old to the new in hopes that the corruption is left behind. one thing you could have done with your song was save it as a midi file and Open it to start over.