msmcleod

Pressing the Plugin button should give you access to the plugins. The control surface up/down arrow buttons will navigate through the plugins, whereas the left/right will navigate through pages of parameters. Pressing F1 on the MackieControl control surface dialog will bring up the Mackie Control help - I strongly recommend reading it, and practicing going through the different modes. It takes a while for muscle memory to kick in, but when it does, you'll appreciate the increase in workflow speed. Plugin parameters that are available are either shown in order as published by the VST, or can be defined in MackieControl.ini (see later on in this post about how this can be edited more easily). ACT Learn does not work when using the MackieControl control surface. Assuming of that the X Touch has a one-to-one button mapping with the Mackie MCU, if you hold down M1 (Shift on the X-Touch) while pressing the plugin button, it should switch it into "Synth Rack" mode and you can use the control surface up/down buttons to navigate through the synths, and the left/right buttons to navigate through the parameters. Pressing the Plugin button without holding the M1 (Shift) button will put it back into normal plugin mode. Originally, there are essentially 3 strip modes using the Mackie, which essentially mirror the three sections in the console view: Track Strips Bus Strips Main Outputs (your hardware outputs) Synth Rack is an additional strip mode which was introduced for the Roland V-Studio 700, but until recently wasn't accessible via the Mackie control. To be honest, I've always found the plugin control on the Mackie MCU (and especially those that emulate it) a bit clunky/restrictive - even before we allowed Synth Rack access. Having only 8 parameters in view, and a 6 character display isn't that great for modern plugins - I guess when the MCU came out, plugins were much simpler. Personally I use the Mackie C4 along side the MCU, as with 32 rotaries it's far easier to use for plugins. If you do manage to get the X Touch into Synth Rack mode, be aware that the number of parameters for VSTi's is usually overwhelming to the point of not really being useful at all. Even on the C4 which has 32 rotary controls, navigating through 100's of parameters with a 6 character label for each isn't really useable. It takes forever to locate the parameter, which could have been found almost immediately using a mouse on the plugin UI. Attempts at creating sensible synth layouts in the MackieControl.ini file haven't been particularly useful either, as what might seem an appropriate set of parameters for one sound are not always appropriate for another. If you do need hardware control of a synth, you're much better off using a separate MIDI CC controller along with ACT Learn for VSTi's. This way you can limit the number of parameters to the ones you find useful. The Korg nanoKONTROL 2 (in CC mode) or the Akai MIDIMix are good examples of CC controllers. Personally, I avoid synth control altogether and just use the mouse... but then again, I don't generally do any real-time control on synths apart from the standard pitch-bend/modulation. On the rare occasion I need something else, I'll just manually draw automation. If you want to edit your plugin layouts, you can use my C4 Mapper utility which will edit MackieControl.ini for you using simple drag/drop. You can download it here: https://msmcleod.co.uk/cakewalk/C4Mapper.zip : BTW - the reason I've duplicated the controls on the top/bottom rows is so I can use the bottom row on the C4 (which is easier to reach), and the top row will show on the MCU should I want to edit things there instead. On the MCU / X Touch, just remember to limit yourself to only the top row of controls, and set "Number of VPots" to 8 for each plugin. The M1 - M4 checkboxes give you an additional 4 pages of control mappings, which can be accessed on your X-Touch by pressing the Shift, Option, Control and Alt buttons. A few caveats for using this: 1. You must have used the plugin at least once in CbB after you've been using MackieControl, and closed down CbB cleanly for it to show up - this ensures it has an entry in genericpluginparams.xml, which C4Mapper uses to read the available parameters. 2. As MackieControl.ini resides in a sub location under C:\Program Files, you will need to run C4Mapper as administrator for it to have writable access to it. Each time you save, a backup of the previous MackeControl.ini is saved along side it... bear this in mind, as these backup files may build up, and you may want to delete them periodically. 3. C4Mapper reads both Cakewalk's plugin inventory in the registry and the genericpluginparams.xml file to get its list of plugins & parameters. If you have a large amount of plugins, it can take up to a minute for C4Mapper to start up.

Really, unless you're a professional mixer, I would say the best thing to mix on is what you listen to music most on. Thinking back to when I used to do record demos in my mid teens to mid 20's - everything was done on 4 track or 8 track tape-based porta studios. Some of my friends tried treating part of their bedrooms and mixing down recordings on fairly decent speakers. However there was one friend in particular who looked like his headphones were a permanent attachment. His mixes were truly awful on speakers, but when he mixed on the headphones he wore 4-6 hours a day they translated incredibly well. The point is, if you're constantly listening to music on headphones, you know exactly what a mix should sound like on headphones. So mixing your own music on those headphones may be a far more familiar environment than mixing on a speakers. Obviously there will be potential issues with the low end (simply because the headphones may not be able to reproduce those frequencies) but a high-pass filter should remove those you can't hear. In any case, I've found with some consumer headphones the issue isn't lack of bass, if anything it's too much bass as they've quite often over-compensated in the design. I also don't completely buy into the whole "headphones don't give you a true stereo image" thing. If you always listen to music on headphones, then that's how you're used to hearing it, so your brain will likely adjust accordingly. Whatever you decide to mix on, the key is to listen to as much well-mixed music as possible on them, and over a long enough period (e.g. weeks to months) to truly get used to that environment.

I can comfortably say that 99% of the time, the ProChannel EQ is my go to EQ for mixing duties. With 4 different EQ curve styles, if you can't get what you want from that then I strongly suspect that it's not the EQ that is the issue (i.e. it's a recording, arrangement or skills issue), and changing to a different EQ won't help. That being said, there are times when you need an additional EQ, either because you need EQ both before and after compression, or there is some detailed correction/shaping you want doing first and you want to leave the ProChannel EQ available for later. But in these cases a "colour" EQ probably isn't what I'd reach for. Personally, if I want the sound of a console, I either record through one or stick Kazrog's True Iron on the channel.

It's not clear exactly what you want to achieve, so I'll outline a few scenarios: If you just want to record your piano, and play it back through the piano speakers: 1. Ensure both the Piano MIDI inputs and outputs are checked within Preferences->MIDI->Devices 2. Within Preferences->MIDI->Playback and Recording, uncheck "Always Echo Current MIDI Track". This is important, because otherwise you'll get MIDI feedback. 3. Create a new MIDI track, setting both the inputs and outputs to your Piano ensuring echo is OFF (it should be if you've unchecked the setting in step 2). If you want to also record audio and/or play other software instruments: 1. Do all the steps above 2. Take the audio outputs of your Piano, and plug them into the audio inputs of your audio interface. Leave echo on on this track. 3. Create an audio track, setting the inputs to whatever audio inputs you have your piano plugged into. 4. For recording other instruments, you'll need to manually turn MIDI echo on to hear them. 5. When you've finished your song, and want to mix-down to a stereo file: 5.1. Arm the piano audio track for recording, and solo it. 5.2. Press Record and let the whole song play through. 5.3 . Mute the MIDI track your piano part is on. 5.4. Do your export. If you don't want to use your internal piano sound, but just use your piano as a controller for a software piano VSTi (or other synths) 1. Ensure both the Piano MIDI inputs is checked, and the Piano MIDI output is unchecked within Preferences->MIDI->Devices 2. Within Preferences->MIDI->Playback and Recording, ensure "Always Echo Current MIDI Track" is checked 3. Insert a piano VST as a simple instrument track. 4. For export, just export as normal. There's no need to mess around with your piano track, as all of the sound is being generated inside Cakewalk. As a side note... even if you're ONLY recording MIDI (and by MIDI I mean pure MIDI, and no VST synths), it's always best practice to have at least one Audio track. This ensures that the audio engine is engaged, and Cakewalk can get its timing from it.

I abandoned my first journey into PC DAW land (with a "borrowed" copy of Cakewalk Pro Audio 5) due to the quality of sound-blaster audio, and promptly went back to using my MT8X and Amiga with Music-X. I tried both an official sound-blaster card, and the Guillemot Home Studio 64 card - both were awful. I couldn't believe how bad the audio quality was - if 8 tracks of audio squeezed on to a cassette can sound better, it must be bad. A couple of years later, when I got my Yamaha DS2416 card and bought CWPA 7, I heard how good digital audio should sound.

Tip - holding CTRL + SHIFT when clicking the expand/collapse button on any folder will collapse/expand all folders. If for some reason the folder expansion state gets corrupt, this will sort it out. The folder expansion state can get corrupted if you open a CbB project with subfolders in SONAR Platinum or earlier, re-arrange tracks and save the project (if you don't re-arrange tracks, the folders should be fine). But if it does get corrupted, this method will sort the state out.

The SSL channel strip is a faithful emulation of a complete SSL channel strip, which includes an emulation of preamp (with its saturation), the compressor, and the EQ. The ProChannel EQ will give an SSL E or G style EQ (AFAIK it's not a full emulation, just in the ballpark), and you can use the "S" mode in the console emulator to emulate the preamp saturation. If you've got the "PC4K S-type Channel Compressor" Pro Channel module, that gives you the SSL channel compressor, and the PC4K Exp/Gate gives you the rest of the SSL channel dynamics processing. So yes, basically they're doing the same thing. I wouldn't call the ProChannel a faithful emulation though, but it's definitely in the ball-park. Then again, no real SSL channel strip is the exactly same, even on the same console. You can see more than one Pro-Channel at once in the console view by expanding it. Using the mouse wheel when the mouse is over the Pro Channel will scroll the modules:

It does look like something is interrupting processing somewhere. I'd start by disabling all antivirus & cloud-sync apps, disable your network adapter, make sure plugin scanning in Cakewalk is set to manual, and auto-save is off. If none of those make a difference, start looking at other things running in the background. If you can get to the place where it's no longer happening, start switching things back on until you find the culprit.

One thing I always do after a Windows update (after the restart), is: 1. Open up an admin PowerShell session (Windows Key + X, then press A ) 2. Enter the following: sfc /scannow About 50% of the time, there's some corruption it has to sort out. It's also a good idea to do this before you do an update too.

I'm envious! I get 80Mbps / 20Mbps here... mind you, I do live in the middle of nowhere.

At dialup speeds (assuming it's a 56K modem), it'd take 20 hours... I remember having a 14K modem, which would have taken 3 days, and a ridiculous phone bill. It's amazing how far we've come with broadband speeds! @Razoryhoney - given the time it's taken, I'm assuming you've got a speed around 128K? FWIW, the Cakewalk installation is a drop in the ocean compared to some of the VST instruments out there. If you're not in a position to upgrade your connection (and you've got a laptop), I'd consider doing future downloads at a cafe that has public wifi. At least for Cakewalk, there should be a Cakewalk folder in your download folder where the exe's go, and you could copy them over to your main machine.

My DAW machine has a Win7 64 boot as well as my normal Win 10 boot. Audio performance is exactly the same (which makes sense - it's exactly the same machine), but for some reason, Win 7 feels much snappier than Win 10 for me... I suspect it's graphics related, but the difference isn't enough to make me want to go back.

If you use either WDM or WASAPI Shared, then Cakewalk will allow input from/output to multiple interfaces. Don't expect them to play exactly in time though, as only one can be timing master. If this is just to give you a different headphone out for mixing, that may not be an issue. For tracking though, you'll get a false set of timing - not completely insurmountable, as you can adjust the recorded audio afterwards by simply moving it, but something to bear in mind. It is worth mentioning however, that these timing differences could be very small, and in some cases not much different from the latency incurred when using microphones at different distances. But just as with the microphone case, you should be aware of possible phase issues. You really have to try it to see if it's suitable or not.

Like I said, even if the DAW could generate some SMPTE audio code for striping, it wouldn't make much difference - the audio SMPTE striping devices generate/read is not standard in any way, only the SMPTE itself is. As an analogy... I take a 1K text document and save it on to tape in an old Commodore 64.... I take exactly the same 1K text document and save it on to tape on an old ZX Spectrum ( Timex 2000 for you guys across the pond ). The 1K text is exactly the same, but there's no way the ZX Spectrum will load it from the Commodore 64 tape , or vice-versa. In this analogy, the 1K text is your SMPTE, and what is on tape is the striped timecode.

The point is... what is generating/reading the SMTPE timecode audio? You need something to generate that SMPTE audio to record it in Cakewalk, just as you did on your tascam - and it has to be the same device, or a compatible device, that will be read by the lighting rig. The SMPTE audio code you use for striping is not standard across devices.

MIDI to DMX is more common in prosumer devices, where the lights are being directly controlled by MIDI ( I so wanted one when they first came out! ) The more high end lighting rigs use SMPTE, as they have their own light sequencer software built in, controlling literally hundreds or thousands of lights.

You can't "stripe" timecode in Cakewalk as such. SMPTE time-code requires the same device to both generate the timecode audio, and read it back. The way this used to work in the tape days was (I'll use my old PPS-100 SMPTE converter and MT8X 8 track as an example): I'd sync my PPS-100 to Cakewalk using MTC (MIDI Time Code) - i.e. Cakewalk is sending MTC over a MIDI cable, and the PPS-100 is receiving it - and and set the PPS-100 to generate a SMPTE time-code signal. I'd arm track 8 on my MT8X, start recording on it, then press play within Cakewalk. The PPS-100 would generate a time-code audio which was then recorded on to track 8 of the MT8X. I'd then set the PPS-100 to read mode, and take a direct audio out from track 8 into the PPS-100. The MIDI output of the PPS-100 was then plugged into the MIDI IN of my MIDI interface for Cakewalk to receive. I'd then set Cakewalk to slave to MTC. So at that point, my MT8X is now the master. I could FFWD to any part of the tape, press play and Cakewalk would automatically go to the correct position. Cakewalk has no need for a SMPTE audio generator/reader, as it has an internal digital clock (either from the PC, or your audio interface). Cakewalk does however transmit MTC, and MIDI Song Position Pointer information. This is basically the same as SMPTE, except over a MIDI cable. First, I'd check with your lighting guy to see if the rig will accept MTC over a MIDI cable - if it does, then all you need is a MIDI interface/cable, and to set Cakewalk to transmit MTC and MIDI Song Position Pointers. If it doesn't, then you need a hardware box (such as the JL Cooper PPS-100) that will convert MTC to SMPTE. Bear in mind, the PPS-100 is very old now and no longer in production... I'm not sure you can even get the equivalent of these devices new nowadays.

A word of caution regarding software that migrate your C drive... make sure you have the option to also copy over the drive partition id, or at least change it once you've copied it over. If the software doesn't do this, then expect to have to re-auth a bunch of your software, as it'll likely see it as a new machine. Personally, I use Clonezilla to clone the whole drive to a new one, then PartitionWizard to resize the partitions as necessary. Both apps are free, but for this to work your new drive will need to be at least as big, or bigger than the original.

It's an option when you Save:

As it stands, you pick "Arranger Sections" from the source category then choose which arranger sections you want to export in the sources area. You can easily do separate tracks / buses by using the selection fly-out, soloing the tracks/buses you want (or muting the ones you don't), and adding separate tasks for each one. With your suggestion, there would be no way to chose which arranger sections you wanted to export.

It may also be that your articulation map isn't set up comprehensively. In more complicated VSTi's it can take more than one keyswitch to properly apply the articulation - e.g. it takes one key enter a particular "mode", then another to apply the correct articulation. In these cases it's important to ensure that each articulation sends all necessary notes to ensure it's entering any such mode before sending the articulation note - regardless of what mode it could be in beforehand, and optionally "ends" with exiting whatever mode it entered. If you play in the middle of an articulation, the current articulation should trigger. There's code to ensure this happens. Articulations are always sent out before the notes in each track, although some VSTi's require a small amount of time to actually do the switch.

When you freeze tracks, the resultant audio file is written to either to the project audio folder, or your global audio folder - depending on your per-project audio setting in each project. If your projects are on already your D drive, then I suspect it's going to the default global audio folder on your C drive. You can specify a different directory in Preferences: However - it's important that you move all of the existing files in C:\Cakewalk Projects\Audio Data to your new audio folder. Otherwise, you'll get missing audio in your projects.

AFAIK, to record external synths in an export, all you need to do is: 1. Ensure both Audible Bounce and Live Input is checked in the audio export dialog: 2. Create an Audio track, with it's input set to whichever inputs your synth is connected to, and have it echo enabled, e.g.: If you find latency is an issue, then record the audio track first, and disable the input echo on export. This is what I did when I used hardware MIDI synths exclusively - I always recorded audio track versions of each synth before doing the export.

If you're also using your main audio interface as your Windows audio device, although it doesn't matter what bit depth Windows has your interface set to, most interfaces don't support different sample rates between Windows and ASIO. So it is important to make sure the Windows sample rate is set to your Cakewalk project sample rate. Also, although Cakewalk will attempt to set the sample rate of the interface to match your project, not all interfaces support this and will require opening the ASIO panel to change the settings. Of course all of this can be avoided by using your on-board sound device for Windows audio, and your audio interface exclusively in Cakewalk. If you need both to go through your speakers, get a Big Knob to easily switch between them...

FWIW - I'm still using a 3rd gen i7 with the integrated graphics, and Cakewalk runs absolutely fine with it. In fact, the only apps that seem to struggle are NLE's, and that's only during export. Of course, most modern games are out the question too.