John Vere

I’m pretty sure that the pre sets for any 3rd party effects and instruments are stored in a folder that belongs to the VST and has nothing to do with Cakewalk. I know this is where I found my pre sets for Addictive drums.

The problem here is you don’t actually use a reference track in a mixing project as a comparison to a master. You use it to compare your mix balance. As in the balance between the different instruments. This is not the point in production that you are mastering so it is normal not to have processing on a master bus if you choose to do so. It is possible to mix and pre master a song so many of us do have some basic processes on the master like a bit of eq and a limiter. So that’s why the reference track bypasses the master bus. I read about how many studios set up a pre mastering bus so that they can give clients a better idea of how things are going. I never realized that this was how I was working too. Proper Mastering is a completely different process. This is where you export the song(s) and create a mastering project which is now where you do go to town on the master bus as well as using a reference track to compare the loudness and eq and in this case it will for sure need to bypass the master bus. I actually use my own songs as reference tracks. I pick the one that I like the best and use that. I have zero interest in sounding like something I’m not.

This is a $80 interface possibility the least expensive one you can purchase, but unlike the others in that product line, it doesn’t have ASIO drivers. It is class compliant which results in Cakewalk having no control over adjusting for latency. Audio will be out of sync. I would get your money back as it is more or less useless when used with any DAW on a PC. It would probably work fine under OS core audio on a Mac. Only option is to run a loop back test and then adjust the timing offset. This might drift on you if you change other settings so it’s not something I recommend. The Focusrite Solo is best bang for the buck in the bottom of the price range.

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Any vendor of midi clips that added blank measures to the start of a clip is garbage and don’t waist your time with them. It’s basically unheard of so not sure where you got those but move on. There better way to spend your time.

The midi volume was sort of a half solved mystery for me. In my zillions of projects with midi instruments involved I never touched the slider in the midi track. I normally set the volume in the instrument GUI. But occasionally if I was using a download midi file that setting would not stick. The infamous hidden events issue. Example I always set Ample P Bass at its default of 1.0. The mystery event would change it to 2.0 on playback. The easy solution was set the midi tracks volume at 64 and the Ample Bass would now stay at 1.0. Reading this I am now assuming that if you leave the midi volume at it’s unity no cc7 event is created. But if you move it elsewhere it does. That event will override hidden events. So back to our test does every DAW also behave this way? As I hinted at already and not sure people caught it. Play 2 examples of a song. Don’t change the mix. Just add + 0.5 db LUFS to one. Everyone will say it sounds better. So I was thinking one test will be to use only audio as that will have a known Loudness and peak level. Then using analytics and ears see if there is a difference.

If I'm correct your interface doesn't come with an ASIO driver. If so you will have out of sync audio tracks. ASIO corrects the timing and adjusts for system latency. All other driver mode including asio4all don't. Watch this video for details https://youtu.be/nlSr3Ab6jj8

When I made the video about testing 50 free compressors I also made the claim in the intro that this is only for my own curiosity and is not bench testing or scientific. I'm just sharing my observations and I even posted how I made the tests. Which was using Melda's Oscillator, Span and a few other basic analyzing tools. Mostly I listened to different material and tried to use the exact same settings etc.. But I still ended up with dozens of comments about how my results were useless. I don't think so. I certainly was able to sort out which plug ins would defiantly not work for me. I found it very interesting. We are nerds and nerds will poke around with things nobody else even bothers to think about. Your finding that the LUFS came out different might be at the heart of why some people claim their DAW sounds better. I need not state why because everyone involved in this thread knows the answer.

It’s not clear to me what you are exactly trying to do? The x32 is a very capable board as far as I am aware. You should have no problem live steaming directly from it as well as recording the show into Cakewalk. But those are 2 entirely different tasks. We use a x18 and it’s also very capable Are you actually trying to use Cakewalk as a effects processing system? Otherwise I fail to see why you are passing the audio though it? Normally you would use Aux send returns through an interface and laptop if wishing to use VST effects live. SOme digital mixers are VST hosts. The live stream would not go through a DAW. Zillions of people are doing live streaming of shows and the mixer is the tool for the task not a DAW. A DAW might look like a digital mixer and it is most certainly a great mixer but not for live applications. It is for recording. But you could pass the streaming audio through it with no issues other than latency. You cannot avoid latency when using plug ins. And feeding 32 channels of audio!! and adding effects ?? That adds up to lots of latency.

Exactly, Any transient at the start of the filming will do. Of course real long sessions will drift but for a few songs I've never had an issue lining up the audio in the video editor. I often will use my Tascam DR 40 to record the audio and that becomes the final audio track. The camera audio is only used to line up the videos. And as far as anything I've ever read about XML it never is anything to do with Audio? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XML

Just a tip. You obviously don't regularly use 1,000 plug ins. Like while testing compressors I had over 80 l installed and loaded. I chose the dozen I felt were the best and to get the rest off my list all I needed to do was go into the plug in Manager and "Exclude" the ones I will probably never use. This way they are out of harms way, Cakewalk doesn't scan them ( I think? ) and if I change my mind they are 2 clicks away from being active again. This most certainly would be a way to solve the OP's issue without actually removing plug ins from the folders. Most take up very little room. A good example of this way Melda had installed ( my fault) about 50 demo versions along with the free bundle and the demos expired as I slowly found out. This was becoming very annoying so I excluded all the demos. Some of them I will probably purchase someday so the activation will be very simple if I do.

https://plugins4free.com/plugin/2315/ https://plugins4free.com/plugin/2333/ Not an electric but it's cool sounding - https://plugins4free.com/plugin/1348/ Another free acoustic https://plugins4free.com/plugin/1065/ Take note I have not installed or tested any of these yet, I just watched the demo videos for the 2 acoustics. The other place to search for free VST's is KVR https://www.kvraudio.com/plugins/effects/hosts/newest

took me 20 seconds. https://plugins4free.com/plugin/3067/

I stopped using them over a year ago. I don’t miss them. I found many others that are not such hogs. I personally think they are not well designed if they need that much CPU

You have my curiosity I still have 8.5 on my old W7 DAW. I export dozens of projects in a day sometimes when updating my backing tracks. Those are all similar and only midi. But there’s a minimum of 5 instrument tracks and then some processing on the master bus including the LP multi band which is a CPU killer. Those projects at the most takes 1 min. To export. 48/24 dithering on. Only thing I noticed that slows down the export is this one organ I use sometimes called Colla B. It’s also slow to load. A quick test would be open a basic template project and drop a 3 min audio file. Now export that. I just did this and it took about 30 seconds. And my computer is 13 years old. But I do use SSD drives.

Dell laptops are particularly notorious for screwing up audio due to bloatware and weird BIOS settings my son gave up on his. Dell said it wasn’t their problem. Good luck and next time buy an Acer?

You guys go on Gear Space and this discussion has been gone over for probably 6,000 pages. As I said above I read a lot of it and the results are down in the . 00005 % difference zone. It’s all been done before buy lots of us audio nerds as well as way out there hi fi freaks. It’s really a waste of time worrying about it. I’d rather worry about how fast my fridge can cool my beer. And anyways it all ends up on a cell phone speaker anyway ?

The important question is what effect is this? When testing free plug ins I’ve definitely found some that bomb Cakewalk if dragged into projects. They can be inserted using the add dialogue but not dragged. But who wants a plug in kicking around that has that potential

I have to agree with @Byron Dickens The OP is staying they don’t like how their vocals sound. That’s an example of extreme difference in say compared to commercial recordings. in the dozens of threads on this topic I’ve read in the past it is stated that each DAW has a very very tiny little difference that only the best ears or measuring tools will reveal. That is not a extreme difference by any stretch. If I remember correctly it is something to do with panning laws that will be a tiny bit different in each DAW. Bottom line is great sounding vocals comes first from a great performance. Those performances don’t require much processing to finish nicely. A weak or terrible vocal performance might be made listenable By using turd polishing. The tools for turd polishing don’t really differ from DAW to DAW. So changing to different DAW will make zero difference other than you might find better tips on turd polish for certain DAWs over others.

This. But be aware that system latency will be present at the output. This can be substantial if effects are used to process the signal. This is OK for streaming as the person listening is not in the room. But that signal would be very late if playing in the performance venue

This. But be aware that system latency will be present at the output. This can be substantial if effects are used to process the signal. This is OK for streaming as the person listening is not in the room. But that signal would be very late if playing in the performance venue

Ample Guitar is an acoustic guitar and is not something you normally run through an amp. I can't think of anything that sounds worse than my Acoustic guitar with overdrive! If you are looking for metal guitar tones you need to use an electric guitar sample like Strum Session or ( sorry, don't flog me ) TTS-1.

The problem is with the mixer set up and not Cakewalk. You are taking your signal before it can be processed by the mixer. This is actually a desired method for live recording as it gives you unprocessed audio in the DAW. Just set the gain so there’s no danger of clipping and then later you use the DAW to mix and process the tracks. My question is why do you need the DAW for the live stream? Normally you would use the mixer and stream either the main mix or an auxiliary mix.

Are you opening this dialogue on a Midi track?