Sailor55

I like this a lot. Goes interesting and unexpected places. Real drums too. That kick can't be missed. Perfect mood for hanging around the house while it hammers down rain outside. Cheers... -Dan

Thanks for the fabulous feedback everyone! I assure you all that it's very much appreciated. I put a lot of work into my productions and to have them so positively received by others in the same creative community is most rewarding. And I shall let John D. know he is appreciated. - Daniel

I once lived in a rough neighborhood... https://www.taggerband.com/Music/FITBH/RedTide.html Dimension Pro: acoustic bass, drumbeats, strings Addictive Drums 2: additional cymbals Lead Guitar: John D, current player in my band Vocals: a singer from StudioPros.com whom I hired long ago - Daniel

I quite liked this. Very well composed and produced. Great picture too. Facts are facts Steve, and this certainly is good work. - Dan

Wow! A remarkable achievement. Very reminiscent of Zappa at his most tasteful.

Thanks for the great feed back everyone. KSband: I agree. A little crispy. I've tried to address that somewhat in the multi-band eq on the master bus. Bjorn: I also agree. Those toms really are (were) a bit over the top. I've now dialed them back some. treesha: Thanks so kindly. The lead guitar was played by a friend. I did the rest. Except, you can thank Melodyne for the background vocal bits. Cheers all... - Dan

Thanks for commenting and even more thanks for pointing this issue out. Although the tune was mixed in stereo it sounds quite mono because of three really dumb mistakes on my part (which have all been fixed with a new mix now uploaded). I was using a mono VU meter on the drum track (AD2) which I'd neglected to remove. That rendered the whole drum track as mono. One of rack effects in 'Guitar Rig 5' was set to mono, thus, the entire lead guitar track was rendered as mono. The CLA vocal effect was using the 'mono/stereo' version rather than the 'stereo' version. Thus, the whole vocal track as rendered as mono. And there's the biggest reason to post things. One gets so hung up in composition that glaring production mistakes get overlooked. Thanks again!

Concerning a kid who accidentally went wrong in a place where that kind of thing is frowned upon... https://www.taggerband.com/Music/FITBH/BillyRanOff.html

I'm not a great singer, yet good enough to make a demo that gives a real singer a concise idea of what I'm after. I don't like take lanes either. I sing vocals one line at a time. Take after take. I usually know when I've done a keeper. Of course, that's almost never. Thus, I save a ton of time by not bothering to listen to a dozen takes that I know are weak (i.e. most of them). After enough takes (followed by ctrl-Z), my vocal delivery improves to the point where I have something that's worth examining in Melodyne. If the Melodyne tweaking is not too extensive, I'll do the necessary editing, then render, then move on to the next line. After I've finished the whole tune I'll take a serious listen to entire vocal in context of the entire song. Invariably, I find there's always a few few lines that could have been better. I will correct these by the same method detailed above. And yes, it take ages. Did I mention I'm not a great singer?. Why bother if I plan to hire a pro anyway? Well, I don't necessarily hire a pro for everything and I don't want any of my demos to be cringe-worthy. A good singer would find the above to be pure madness. But I am a pragmatist. I tend to work with what I've got. But I'm always alone when doing thirty takes of the same line. Nobody wants to hear that. The trick for me is to be ruthless. If I know I've flatted (or, more likely, wavered) on the last word of an otherwise reasonably good take, I'll delete it and keep trying. The worst thing about comping is the process of deciding what is "best" from dozens of takes. I prefer to decide that on the fly.

A complete remix & rearrangement of something I posted a few years ago. I had some fun with this. - Daniel https://www.taggerband.com/Music/DBH/BillyAndDiva.html

I found two things confusing: Why does the extra 0.6 dB only occur in the right channel? And why does "render in real time" fix it? As I said, I've tried it both ways many times and the results are perfectly consistent. I can think of only two possibilities: This is a problem specific only to my DAW and only under specific circumstances, or... This is a bug. If it is a bug, it's fortunately one that very rarely manifests itself. I've never noticed it in dozens of other projects. I usually only bounce entire mixes to a track at the end of a project, but in future, I will be doing it in real time when I must be confident of the result. Perhaps someone could shed light on why the "real time render" option exists in the first place. Anyway, thanks to everyone who commented. I hesitate to update this thread to "solved". But there does seem to be a usable workaround. - Dan

John Vere, I appreciate your suggestions regarding snare compression but this simple fact remains: What is happening on the master bus does not get duplicated when bouncing the "entire mix" to a track. That should not happen. I have completely cured the problem by checking the "render in real time" box. Then there is no extra 0.6 dB in the right channel. Granted, it takes longer to mix down, but it actually work correctly. This observation is completely consistent over many tries. I'm about ready to declare this a bug.

Thanks for the replies. I tried muting the master bus, but there seems to be nothing bypassing it. I had originally 5 tracks. Rhythm Guitar, Lead Guitar, Bass (midi), Drums(midi) and a Vocal. I've narrowed the problem down the drum track (Addictive Drums 2). With all effects in the project disabled, and all other tracks muted, the drum track peaks at -7.9 dB in both of the stereo channels. That is can be seen on both the drum track and on the master bus. But... after "bouncing to track" (entire mix) the resultant track (which is now only drums) peaks at -7.9 in the left channel, but -7.3 in the right channel. It is happening on snare shots. Actually, on the very first one and every one thereafter. It seems the mix down is adding 0.6 dB of volume to the right channel whenever it encounters a snare shot. Very odd.

I'm having a weird problem where the output from my project's master bus is not what I get when I bounce the "entire mix" to a track . Both channels are hard limited (as shown) on the master bus meter but only the left channel is limited in the mix. Never seen this before. I've tried many things but the result is always consistent. Running 2021.11. Any ideas?

I've had a similar problem. Maybe this will help...

Today I was recording a vocal track. Nothing special. Just some typical clips in an ordinary audio track. When I tried to create a Melodyne region effect on one of the clips, Cakewalk (2020.11) crashed in an odd way. Suddenly, it froze and the entire Cakewalk window greyed out. Usually, at this point Win 10 recognizes a non-responding application and offers to close it (and send a report to Microsoft etc.). But that didn't happen. Instead, Cakewalk began stitching between a greyed-out window and a normal window every few seconds while still remaining completely frozen. The only thing I could do was terminate Cakewalk with the task manager. Naturally, I assumed it was some Cakewalk + Melodyne issue. I re-opened the project and this time I didn't try creating a Melodyne region effect. I just tried to bounce to clips into one single clip. Same problem. I was able to repeat th crash scenario consistently that way. And, I could also do it by making a Melodyne region effect on that track. I'm running the very latest Melodyne version 5.1.1.003. Here's how I fixed it: I created a fresh audio track, dragged the clips into it, then deleted the original one. All problems gone. Melodyne works fine. Bouncing to clips works fine. So, can a track become corrupt such that it's simply broken and needs to be deleted? Seems like this has happened to me before in the distant past.

I know what it means to 'normalize' a track, but I'm not sure what you mean by normalizing tracks ' to each other'. A normalized track is one where the loudest peak is moved to exactly 0 dB (or some other specified value) and the rest of the signal is scaled according to that. Thus, if you normalized every track to the same value I suppose you could say they were normalized to each other. Somehow, I don't think that's what you mean. If you want each track to have the same loudness then you'd need to use a loudness meter (say like the Waves WLM Plus meter) to help you adjust the loudness to some LUFS (Loudness Units Full Scale) value. I usually target my full mixes to -14 LUFS.

Glenn Stanton had the right idea in the beginning, I think. The monitor is really two monitors in one. (Hence the fat price). Therefore, twice the data must be sent through it in a given time frame. Formerly, that data was shared between two ports and two cables. Now, it all travels through only one port and one cable. If a cable is at all marginal (as my original one probably was) then it makes sense the throughput just couldn't quite be maintained. Running Cakewalk in full screen mode on a high resolution monitor with a 32x10 aspect ratio is probably a big ask. One would imagine Asus has tested their cables extensively. Anyway, I can report there have been no problems whatsoever since I started using the cable packed with the monitor. And there's the lesson. Cheers... - Dan

I may have a resolution. When I installed my monitor there were already two displayport cables being used for my two Dells. Rather than unpack the new cable that came with the Asus monitor, I just used one of the ones I already had. And that almost worked. That is, every application except Cakewalk worked fine (and Cakewalk only had problems intermittently). This morning I replaced the old cable with the new one from the box. Since then, I haven't any issues with Cakewalk or anything else. The old cable was about 8 ft and about 3/8" thick. The new cable is 6 ft and 1/4" thick. Or maybe it was just a slightly flaky connection. I know that doesn't seem likely but..., Or maybe it's all just black magic. Anyway, I'm really hoping this is a fix. Note to self: If you get new cables, then use them. BTW, I highly recommended the Asus XG43VQ for anyone who prefers a 16x10 over a 16x9 aspect ratio and wants to replace a dual monitor system. It's designed for gamers, but since I'm not a gamer, I just ignore those extra features. It can be had for about $750 AM (or $999 CD, which is what I paid). Thanks again everyone. I'll bump this post if I have any further problems. - Dan

First, let me thank everyone who responded for the great help and suggestions. All I really wanted to do was get rid of the bezel gap between my two Dell monitors (although, having a curved 32 x 10 display is pretty nice too). My PC has a Small Form Factor and so if I wanted a video card to replace the onboard video I'd be hunting for a half-height card which might limit my options. My thought is now this: my PC has only two DisplayPort outputs which formerly ran two 16x10 monitors quite nicely. My new Asus XG43VQ monitor has only one DisplayPort input, but it has two HDMI port inputs. This allows the monitor to support a 16x10 display on either side. In other words, I'd be back to the way it was before except there would be no bezel gap. It'll cost me two DisplayPort to HDMI converter cables to find out if this would work. I'll probably give it a try. I hope I don't burn $100 to find out that won't work either.

Just checked with HP. Sure enough, Windows wasn't lying to me. The latest driver HP has available is the one that's currently installed. Guess I'm out of luck. Nice monitor too. So far the only thing that won't run properly on it is Cakewalk. But I'll probably discover other stuff, in time.

No luck. Windows won't allow me to install that driver. I ran Intel's Driver support assistant and got the message below. Guess I'll try to see if HP has a new driver, although Windows assures me the very latest video driver is already installed in my PC.

Thanks Glenn. I think you are on to something. Your explanation would account for the intermittency of the problem too. My PC is an HP 800G (i7) using an onboard Intel chip based video driver. I was having the problem in full screen mode but I think I still had it even with a smaller widow. I'll grab some screen shots the next time it happens, if I can. That probably won't shed any more light on the cause, but it might be interesting.

Hi Colin, The resolution is 3840x1200. I just tried these: 1920x1080; 1920x1200; 2048x1152. All of them seemed to work. Then I switched back to 3840x1200 and it started to work too! That doesn't give me too much confidence though, because 3840x1200 has worked before a few times (for a while). So, it's kind of an intermittent thing and I don't know exactly how to reproduce it. I'll investigate further and see what I can find out. - Dan

BTW, I still have SONAR Platinum installed. It seems to have none of these problems.