John Vere

It is my long standing gripe with Cakewalk is any of the audio editing tools like this and Normalization leave you guessing as to what the results will be. I own a few wave editors and the tools are very easy to use. we just “get used to it “ and stumble along. This is why I mostly use the tool copy into Wave lab so I can work more efficiently. My guess is that 50% is like 100bpm becomes 150bpm and 100% would make it 200 bpm or double But there’s an example that I am only having to guess it’s nice that they include some audio editing features but it’s like the developers never use them and have not seen what tools a real editor has

@musikman1 I used the tool found in the Process menu. Length. I didn’t know it existed before. I too though you use Audio Snap.

People and possibly the manufactures are obsessed with RTL specs. What does it matter if you track using direct monitoring? I think stability is way more important to me. Lower RTL is only needed if you want to use things like Guitar SIMS playing live in real time. My system had a reported RTL of 27 or so for most of the last 12 years. It's only recently down to 9ms. I have always kept my buffers at 256 and everything always sounds great. And because I have always used direct monitoring I experience bang on timing as I play. Funny story about the real world latency situation. As a bass player I always felt I played tighter with the drummer if I stood right there next to the kit. I'd often have one leg right in front of the kick drum. When I first started recording ( analog days) I found I could not get that bass to lock in to the timing unless I put the studio monitor next to my ear or used headphones. So to me that 5ms delay when you are ? feet from the speakers/ monitors counts. For live music one huge benefit for modern performers using In ear monitors and not much talked about, is no more latency on stage.

The correct driver to use is WASAPI shared, ASIO4all is not needed anymore since WASAPI came out a few years ago. Asio4all was a good alternative until then. But it tends to interfere with proper ASIO drivers so is avoided by most. The OP does not need to stop using proper ASIO drivers. That is a bad idea in general. You need ASIO to have proper sync between overdubs. Don't believe,, me, try a loop back test in ASIO and then in any other mode. Those other modes will come back late or even sometimes early on the time line. As I said, I have used up to 3 different ASIO devices in turn with Cakewalk. I simply turn on the one I want and keep the others shut off. What's so hard about that? I have also used them together for recording multi track live bands and then I switch to WASAPI shared and I can have about 20 tracks recording. Recording and working with editing and playback is no problem in WASAPI or WDM mode but do not attempt to overdub new tracks. An aspect of this thread is the OP mentions Yamaha, I used to do above said recordings with a Yamaha USB 2trk. mixer in tandem with my Tascam us1641 without issue in WDM mode. This was before WASAPI came out. That Yamaha used Steinberg's ASIO driver and was very good. But I think some Yamaha gear like the Modx might use the Steinberg Generic USB driver which is really asio4all in disguise. It is another nasty beast that will take over your timing master in Cakewalk. This might be part of the problem. To the OP- You should use the Scarlett for everything possible. Mine is even my windows playback, its all I use. Only use the Yamaha for recording it's audio. If your just recording midi, then you don't need it as your audio interface. The midi is a seperate driver. Yamaha makes good stuff and they usually have audio and midi figured out. My Yamaha gear all still works and some is from the 80's . And Scarletts are one of the best interfaces and ASIO drivers on the market right now. Unless you feel like spending $1000 on a RME..

Air's Xpand2 is my go to for things like that. You can populate 4 channels with different instruments and the Effects are top notch. The price goes as high as $99 but I got mine for $9 on sale. It is also included in their Expansion Pack which is well worth grabing on sale. I think that ship has sailed. Black Friday and Boxing week sales are done. I have a few add packs for Addictive drums given to me by Focusrite. I have claps, blocks, tambourine and COWBELL! TTs-1 has a good collection but they don't cut through in a mix and are sort of unconvincing.

I switch interfaces all the time. I just turn off the one and turn on the other. Depends on interface but most if Cakewalk is running will tell me I just disconnected ( ignore) and when the second interface is turned on asked if I want to use it. This is dead simply. Number one reason to make sure the interface you buy has an on/ off switch

Well the V Vocal doesn't show on the list of options during custom install so I unchecked everything and installed 8.5. I ran the scan in CbB and nothing shows but VVocal appeared in the project so I guess it's really imbedded in the software. Man check this old beast out. Talk about a clean interface.. I tried to navigate and I am now totally lost.

Did some digging and I think I found my answer V-Vocal was integrated with theinstallation of Sonar 5 thru Sonar X2. looks like I better find those old 8.5 files

I’m trying to set my upstairs office computer up with every my Studio machine has I’m almost done but I just opened a old project and the vocals are silent because they show as v vocal tracks. I guess I didn’t render them I thought if I installed x3 it should be there but my version was X3c studio and has Melodyne single track. I think I tossed out my X1 LE disk. I have 8.5 somewhere hidden on a back up hard drive. Questioneas there ever a download file for this or was it always embedded. Is it hidden in X3 studio ?

Delete information because it is now outdated and would be incorrect.

Didn't you see my post, Here's the diagram he uses in the video which was in the links in his comments section.

We now use Ripple editing.

So out of curiosity I took a finished song and rendered it from 155 BPM up to 170 in Wave Lab and save as " Song 170 BPM " I opened the original Project and dragged this to a new track. This way I could listen to both and also see the ending point change. I then dragged the unaltered version to a second track and rendered it with Cakewalks Default algorithm. Cakewalks interface is sort of crude compared to Wave Lab so it only offered a percentage, not a Tempo. I went back to Wave lab and it showed tempo and a percentage of 91.17 % So I used 91 % . A very tiny bit of sibilance on vocals in the Cakewalk version, not sure why and it only noticeable to me because I just spent 40 hours working on this song!! But it works fine. I will still use the Wave Lab version because I'd rather think in terms of tempo than a percentage. Under a microscope I think it does less damage. But the Cakewalk time stretch is right there ready to use, so nothing lost by trying. Not sure what happens if you highlight all the audio in a big project and render and not about to try I do have a song with only a few audio tracks so might try it track by track and see if everything stays synced. But I see right away the big issue is because it doesn't use a tempo I will have to guess at what to change the midi tracks tempo to.. I guess can open wave lab and it will tell me, right.

I just watched a video a few days ago that showed this

Laptops are a pita because of the way they optimize them for power. I always have upgraded the HD and fresh install of windows. This has become tricky because the laptop comes with the OME software on the recovery drive and if you use it you right back in do do land. so your almost forced to use a cracked version or go pay for the real thing from MS. my laptops are still W7 for this reason. I had bought an actual disk copy and mine all have stickers with serial numbers that work. I’d hate to think what happens now with W10.

Yes well worth owning but time stretching is not available in elements for $30. Only in Standard and Advanced $300 plus

In my signature is a link to my tutorials. They are real easy to follow and take you through the basics of using midi. It easier than you think.

So that more or less answers your questions. But do you understand what they are saying?

What driver mode and audio interface are you using?

The foot switch I use cost about $30. It’s dead simple to program. it’s cheap plastic but so far held up for a few years. For my live gigs I have a Stealth Switch 3. It’s just a box with USB and five 1/4” jacks that you can use any sustain type pedal with Anyhow look up USB foot switch you’ll see dozens of options. the software lets you record and store any keystrokes. The software for the cheap ones is crummy but works. The stealth has really good software. The thing is you don’t need to use midi or act or nothing. If you program for a space bar that will work in all software. I’m forever typing a R or W into my lyrics cause I stepped on the pedal

I have been a big fan of Wave Lab since version 3. I have logged thousands of hours mastering and editing everything from songs to funeral services with it. I forgot about the time stretch function so out of curiosity I just fired it up. I think last time I used it was on Wave Lab 4 and Windows XP with a Celeron and 500MB of RAM and it was glitchy so haven't tried since. Anyhow I took a song from 120 BPM all the way to 140 BPM expecting artifacts. Could hear ( or see) nothing. It seems to work perfectly. I have Wave Lab 7 elements it cost only $100 Can. There is now Wave Lab 10 which I imagine is even better. I think the Pro version can do a even higher quality render, as you see mine only goes to Standard. It especially endear itself to me a week or so ago when I found out it also can create DDP files for mastering CD's. Of note is you can set Cakewalks tool menu to include any WaveEditor like wave Lab. So this just got me thinking of the few songs I've had that I played great guitar parts on and wanted to speed it up just like the OP. What I can do is tool copy the 4 or 5 audio tracks one at a time and re set the tempo. Will be interesting to see if they all sync up. My songs are more Midi than Audio so it is a good option. Thanks for bringing this up this made my day!

My observation is that generally a well behaved DAW will go hand in hand with the Quality of the ASIO driver supplied by manufacturers of interfaces. 10 year ago USB ASIO drivers seemed to suck if you had a lower price interface. And PC specs used to also matter. Notice that there’s no point asking “ What are your computer specs?” anymore when troubleshooting someone’s issues. It will be rare to find someone with an under powered machine these days. And generally you can get away with breaking the rules we had 10 years ago like shut down the internet as it seems to make little difference with modern systems Seems most mainstream audio interfaces have good drivers now. And I’m impressed by company’s like Focusrite who upgrade drivers for their older units. Seems very few people have issues anymore and when we do they are that much harder to pin down

Somebody else was recently having issues and turned out the USB cable supplied with the interface was the cause. My main DAW is a HP and yes they come with bloatware like all off the shelf computers so it's always the first thing anyone should do is go into the Apps tab in settings and start uninstalling as much as you can. But that said when I first used the computer it worked perfectly without tweaking but that's a desktop, laptops seem worse for using as a DAW. It's sometimes in the BIOS where the problems hide. My son bought a Dell laptop and it was just unusable for recording. It was the BIOS.

There is a toggle for now position behaviour. CTRL W this toggles between stop in place and rewind for the spacebar. I use a cheap Chinese 3 pedal foot switch and you cannot program that toggling unless you waste a switch that would macro ctrl W it’s no big deal to set it by hand and then the foot switch behaves correctly while recording.

You should not need to check ms wavetable. in my signature is a link to my web page and I have both video and text based tutorials on using midi. You don’t list an audio interface which is the most important piece of gear for anyone who wants to record audio to a DAW.