John Vere

I guess it’s this “ I don’t want to learn about the craft of audio engineering, I just want to push a button and get the same results a well trained engineer would get”! Achieving a balanced , dynamic mix as well as achieving a target LUFS involves listening and skill. All an AI based plug in can do is squash your mix to oblivion. It’s like those Izotope plug ins always make my mix sound way worse than I can by using my ears and knowing what to do to get what I want. I’ve been mixing and mastering music for over 40 years and I’m still learning. Best new tool for me is the You Lean loudness meter. I’ll have to test the Sonar concrete limiter and see if it is as good as the Loud Max.

Look at the screen shot.

Generally if a plug in causes a issue then you move on to plug ins that don’t. I think this is a freebie right? There’s lots of free compressors that work. Check out the thread down below for 100,s of free compressors or watch this

99% of the time this is caused by the Master bus being set to output “None”. Change it to you audio device.

T30 GP. Isn’t there known issue lately with NI plug ins? Just a long shot. Troubleshooting 101 Swap out parts unit things work. Most VST instruments have a built in preview like a piano keyboard you can use to check the instruments are routed properly. If that doesn’t generate sound then check the routing. Do other tracks/ instruments play?

Sonobus. Exactly the tool for the job. Free! https://www.sonobus.net What is cool is it’s both an App that can be installed on any computer or mobile device. It is also a VST plug in you put on the master bus. This uses you internet network to send the audio to any device anywhere in the house or the world. Audio quality depends on bandwidth and settings. I use it to send my mix to my cell phone the ultimate proofing device for a mix. Also unless you audio interfaces have Loopback I don’t think Cakewalk audio will be available to other apps

There’s 100’s of free VST’s. https://youtu.be/LI040J9apwU?si=ZhOGpCsPCKhaZzh5 And you are yet another victim of thishttps://youtu.be/Zw-UqrMmF0A?si=ljby3CJGkm4T7D7l Which can be fixed by this https://youtu.be/kF3tEttGdIQ?si=Dvw93kfK3wD-645U Nobody seems to think that removing the GM players both GS wavetable and TTS-1 within a few months of each other was a big deal but it is. Cakewalk was considered the king / queen of midi and this was one of the big reasons. I believe there was uncountable users who created music using those 2 players who were totally unaware of alternatives. You want to make a good first impression with your DAW? Include a great sounding default player. Example Mixcraft, Cubase. Bad example S1.

They really need to remove those old web pages. It’s always caused confusion and it will just become wors

That’s because this is an old thread and I deleted all my videos a year ago for various technical reasons. I have since updated some of them and I updated the links just now this is the playlist

Instead of destructive editing by applying the process/ gain it is better practice to use the track gain or clip gain first. I will only use process gain on material that is out of the range of those tools. But that said I’ve never had an issue with processing/ gain or normalization.

I’m not very up on this stuff but wouldn’t you use midi learn in the effect? Like I can easily change a lot of parameters of both effects and VSTi from my Roland keyboard which has a couple of knobs for this. I just choose midi learn and wiggle the knob. Of course I’m using specific channels for this. I use one knob to control level and the other is for the effects send. I have 6 instruments each on its own channel.

That button is why.

My midi tracks are normally on the grid. But the issues I encountered were all to do with using normal editing to remove or copy paste parts of tracks or whole sections of songs. Once you add the arranger these edits will go south on you. I also noticed the commit arrangement to project never seems to work.

Just personal update to this. First I avoided Music Maker in my shop for DAW video and received a few angry comments and emails. So I downloaded and installed it and what a s—t show of bloatware and yep, had to remove the generic driver from Reg Edit. It has adds built in and just very annoying stuff. Then once you finally deal with all that the DAW itself is possible the most lame useless piece of poo out of the 14 others I’m demoing. Anyways the good news was while I was on the web site I saw the demo link for Vegas Pro so downloaded it and just installed it today. It is exactly like MS 17 I’ve been suffering for the last 4 years. But hopefully with out crashing every 5 minutes. I’m just going to take it for a spin after lunch. But wow was it nice to not have to learn something new. And it opens all my MS 17 files perfectly. To me it’s like I was stuck with Sonar X1 for the last 4 years and just discovered Sonar 2024. At least I’m hoping.

I gave up on the arranger a while back as I found it totally buggy. It’s only function for me is as more visible markers or for placement of lyrics. But even that screwed up a song one day that I wanted to cut out a chunk. So it’s off limits for me until they fixit. It seems to work properly in Cakewalk Next. As well as they copied my idea for the lyric display track. Grab yourself a Backstage pass and try this in Next. It’s a perfect DAW for simple Midi and Audio stuff.

What the Aural Exciter did was add harmonic distortion to higher frequencies. Many coloured compressors do this, I think the Molotok by Tokyo Dawn is one. Free.

There’s no big difference if you have the TTS-1 installed already. You still have to make sure nothing is selected in your midi outputs. And if the tts-1 is added after you have midi tracks loaded just add the TTS-1 and then select all the tracks and use the tracks / selected tracks output to choose the TTS-1

Example for me two that are very important Smart tool. And tempo map created by a simple drag and drop to timeline. Actually the whole of Sonars PRV I think is one of the best. I didn’t see one that had the built in track selection inspector which also allows layers as well as soloing muting of midi and audio tracks. I think the people who find no difference are just people who don’t use all of Cakewalk/ Sonars features. Fine. The smart tool alone is a deal breaker for me. It totally depends on your personal workflow. Some of the DAWs I tried you can see would be way better than Sonar if you are using only loops as example. Some DAWS have much better tools for manipulation and randomly changing stuff around for creative composing. As a musician who can play a wide variety of instruments and sing I need totally different tools than people who are just experimenting with sound. Modern DAW’s are mostly aimed at non musicians. Cakewalk/ Sonar has just about everything to record and more importantly edit midi and audio. This is what I found lacking in most of the others.

I have been demoing about 10 top DAW’s. Sonar blows them all away. Trust me. Each DAW might do a few things better or different but not one of those has the features Sonar has. And don’t forget that they are not finished with building it! In 2 years I bet it will have some long awaited features added like chord track, sample player etc. Im most definitely purchasing it when made available.

The only way I’m aware of is to open a bunch of Projects that are stored on that computer. I think it only keeps about 12. I’ve had issues in the past when opening projects from a storage drive that was now disconnected.

If you don’t own a keyboard controller then use the virtual keyboard. But the downside is it only sends one velocity. Anyone who wants to record midi should purchase a keyboard controller.

SonoBus. A free app that can be used as a plug in on your Master Bus. It is also a stand alone PC, OS and Android app. I use it to send Cakewalk playback to my cell phone as a proofing tool. It uses your network. So I could play my latest mix for you anywhere in the world. Sound quality is subject to settings and bandwidth. So in my home using CAT5 networking, computer to computer, I can have higher sound quality.

I have converted possibly over 100 bass tracks to midi so here’s what to expect. Yes it will be an octave lower for most VSTi like SI and AmpleP Bass. Yes the duration will be overlapping which can cause the following note to be cut off. Yes there will be missed or additional notes. Tips: Record the bass loud. Don’t worry if you go red as it won’t matter in the end. It is best to be max at -4db. If it isn’t then use Normalization to -4 db. Use only 1 PU that is the cleanest sound. Muddy sound won’t give good results but a brighter clean sound will. Those false notes are caused by unwanted notes being played or harmonics. So focus on clean and simple. It’s easy enough to add the fancy stuff later. Yes no matter what editing will be required. My routine is drag the bass audio track to AmpleP bass track holding Shift to keep it in time. Use melodic setting. Select all - Transpose 12 then pull duration back about 1/32 or until notes don’t overlap. Still selecting all, grab the lowest velocity tail and drag it to max. Let go. Now drag them all back to around 106. That’s a sweet spot for AmpleP bass which is definitely the best I’ve ever had. Now start playback and edit duration and move notes around etc. I can do this pretty fast now. I might also open the drum track and then open the bass lane while holding CTRL so I can see the kick drum placement ghost in the background.

THIS! I the process of trying all these other DAw's this is something you start noticing. Some of Cakewalks plug ins are a no go in the other DAW's and this creates a small/big issue for being future proof. It made me realize that one should avoid using any of these "locked" plug ins on your projects so you are not tied to that one DAW. It seems a lot of DAW's are priced based on how many of these goodies they dangle in front of you. Sonar is about to do the same thing, Most of us have all that stuff already. I found it humorous they dug up Session Drummer.