Helios.G

You've gotten a lot of great advice here already, but I'd like to add this one thing. Many novice producers/artists/musicians don't actually know what a good mix sounds like. Most people are accustomed to what the final product of a major label release sounds like, and they compare their mixes to that. Don't do that. Beyond the fact that you're comparing a finalized project to your still unfinished one, there are usually tons of people who work on these songs, with lots of knowledge on arranging, sound choice, recording in optimal conditions, probably with top notch gear and more importantly with years of know how in implementing all of these advantages. Your first/early projects will sound bad, that is part of this process. You're going to go through some growing pains, but if you do lots of songs, and stick to it, eventually, you'll start getting better, and hearing things you didn't before. Before you know it, you'll start to understand what people mean by the gear doesn't matter, only your ears do, cause fundamentally it's true. Once you get your ears to a level of proficiency where you can hear what a song needs and what may be extra fluff that it doesn't, you'll be golden. Then you'll start to make production, mixing, heck even gear acquisition decisions, based on what is actually important and not what you think makes you sound "professional". Good luck man.

Or just have it's way of working built in, I'd love that. But I'm not complaining too much, at least it exists 😂

I know this comment is old, but just wanted to thank you for sharing this plug here. One of my biggest bugaboos with cakewalk has always been getting a mix to have space and width and translating both in cans and on monitors/speakers. This plugin is amazing, I honestly can't go back to the way I used to mix. Thanks again!

Why don't you just delete the offending sections and fill it in with copy paste from a section without the problem?

How old is your ssd/hdd? Could be that, but would need more info.

I thought you said in that other thread that you were going to let this go? ?

Same ?

Thanks for the reply Jonathan, I was holding up updating my main rig till I understood it, appreciate it.

I'm not understanding this regression... does this mean the option is grayed out, or does it mean they've simplified the process? To be honest, I rarely if ever use the flyout menu to add tracks/synths, I've always used the programs top menu to do most of everything except things I know keyboard codes for. Anyone care to explain in simplest terms what this change means? Thanks

Don't feel too bad, AI is coming for all of our ideas anyway.

I can't help you with your specific project, but I'll give you this. Think about your most common workflows, whatever that may be, and set up a template with the tools and tracks you know you'll need. I personally have a few templates ready to go at all times for my projects. I have a folder, with several sub-folders split into 5. 1. pre-production 2. production 3. vox 4. mix 5. master Each one of those has the exact tools and layout for the specific task at hand. In pre-production I have basic keys, drums and chord instruments set up, and this is where I write song lyrics and figure out structure, before I commit to any specific sounds. In production, I go about choosing sounds and fleshing out the direction of the arrangement sonically. Vox I lay down tracks for vocals, etc you get the point. If you have projects that went well for you flow wise, I'd start there, and just delete all audio and leave behind the project setup and call it what you want.

If you put your'e configuration setup in your signature, we can see what else you got and maybe help point you in the right direction.

I'll tell you what I do. I make a folder for 3 songs that are in the vein of what my project is going to be. Look for similarities in tone and production. Then I find them on amazon and buy them from there for about a dollar and change. Once imported to cakewalk, I compare and contrast and pick the one that I think is the closest tonally to my song. After that I use a program I have called UVR 5 (ultimate vocal remover) that is free and open source. This program splits songs into different parts, bass, drums, music and vocals. Once I do that, I import the split stems, and the orginal into a folder in cakewalk which I call reference. Make sure to route the output of these 5 tracks to the main output of your interface and not your master bus. Lower the level of all the reference tracks so that they roughly match the song you're working on. Once I start my mix, I work the static mix first to sound roughly level with the individual stems of my reference. Once that's done, I do some light eq on the master to match the tone (brighten, darken, whatever) of my track to the reference, then add some bus compression to glue everything together lightly, one to two db of compression should do. Once that's done, I work down my busses and compare and contrast by section, using the split stems of the reference to measure how far off or not I am tonally. I work this way for about 75% of the way, then I mute the reference and finish the mix on my own. By this point you should have a reasonable enough facsimile of your reference tonaly, but still have enough wiggle room to give it your own flair. The idea is to get it in the ballpark, so that it sounds professional, not identical. Good luck!

Good catch John, I delete all audio drivers that aren't going to be used for my work. That would definitely interfere, especially if you don't choose asio off the bat.

I think it has more to do with cpu, motherboard, storage, ram combo than people realize. Everyone thinks that high ram and cores is always better, but you have to know if your components work together. I recently got rid of my previous rig, that had 64gb of ram. In theory, it should have handled whatever I threw at it, but it couldn't. Now my system, like yours, has 32gb of ram, and it breezes through everything, even though my core count is the same (4) and the ram is half as much. Most of it though has to do that I did my research on what I needed and tried to pair everything so it worked well together. I'm happy with my current setup.