msmcleod

Put the volume automation fade on the Master bus.

I think it's worth considering why the big names in mixing use templates in the first place. From what I can tell convenience is by far the main reason. Although sound comes into it, I don't think its a case of using a template to get a specific "sound" of an overall mix - it's really just an extension of convenience. Some thoughts come to mind: 1. Track / bus ordering - using the same tracks and buses for every track means you know which track everything is on. If for every song, you always use track 1 for kick drum, and track 20 for lead vocals, then you're not searching around looking for them. 2. A lot of big names use outboard gear. Using outboard gear usually means at least some things are permanently patched into certain ports, so having a bus set up ready to go for your 1176 or LA2A makes sense. 3. Most of them use ProTools... I'm no ProTools expert, but when I have used it I got the impression that it can do anything, but everything has to be done the hard way. Complex effect routing (at least before they introduced bus folders), means inserting various aux tracks/sends and routing them via numbered ports. This all takes time. Having this set up in a template means it's there for you when you need it. 4. Really just a follow on from (3)... mix engineers are listening to a mix solving problems, then using creativity to create a particular sound or emotional impact. So if they know that putting a kick drum through a particular set of compressors routed in some crazy way gives them "that sound" or using a particular chain of effects is good at getting rid of hi-hat bleed into the snare, having that routing set up ready to go means it's there for them. The point is, it's set up in their template as a go-to tool for solving a particular problem, not because they put every track through it on every mix to get an overall sound. The big names in mixing work on some wildly different genres, and there's no way they'll be treating every mix with the same effects on every track. What they will do however, is use tried and tested tools/techniques to solve problems as they come up... the most common aux track/bus/effects combinations for achieving these techniques will be in their template. A lot of this is evident by the signature Waves plugins that have been released over the years. CLA ( CLA Drums, Guitar, Mix etc), Schepps (Parallel Particles) are plugins that replicate the complex routing of several effects and wrap them up in a simple to use plugin. The more complex setup would have been in their templates at one point... but now they can just use the plugin. So with regard to things like track ordering and the buses you use, definitely pick a set of tracks & buses that works for you and put that in a template. Having everything always being on the same track/bus for every song, will mean that muscle memory will take over in time, and you'll get through mixes faster. If there's things you genuinely use in EVERY mix, then yes, put them in your template. However putting everything in your template just in case you need it is just going eat up CPU. CbB has FXChains for commonly used chains of effects, and track templates (which can include buses) for more complex routing. I'd recommend looking into building up a library of your own toolkit of these so you can drag them into your project when you need them.

Check out Band in a Box by PG Music: https://www.pgmusic.com/ Although it's a separate app, it comes with a DAW plugin that integrates well with Cakewalk. The DAW plugin is also far easier to use than the main application.

I've actually done away with templates, with the exception of my "band" recording template which is set up for my mobile rig. I used to use a template when I used exclusively hardware synths, which made sense as it saved me having to remember which port everything was on. However, I found that pretty much everything I wrote started to sound the same. Nowadays I add things as and when I need them. I don't do mixing for clients, but if I did I definitely would use a template - but for writing I find it puts me in a rut.

I guess it depends on which keyboard shortcuts! The main ones I use are essentially the same as they've always been. The views shortcuts were constantly changing however, which meant struggling to find keyboard stickers that were up to date... I've since given up on keyboard stickers though, as my aging eyes can't read them!

I found the transition from SONAR 8.5 to X1 extremely difficult - the only saving grace was that the keyboard shortcuts were the same. However X1 was just too unstable for me, so I continued using 8.5 pretty much until X3 came out. When SONAR Platinum was released I took the time to actually learn it properly by watching the SONAR Platinum Groove 3 tutorial. This was the real game changer, as there were so many things introduced that I was unaware of. There are a bunch links to video tutorials in the Tutorials section of this forum. One of the most comprehensive is the SWA Sonar X2 complete series: There's also an X3 follow up series:

This is how I do this:

If you set the Automation time-base to absolute, it won't change when you change tempo:

Frozen clips can be moved about using the mouse primarily to move/copy the audio to a different track. It's important to note that moving the frozen clip has no effect on the unfrozen clip in the background. So any edits you do will be lost when you unfreeze.

You're not stretching the clip, you're trimming the beginning so that the clip starts after the start of the note. Use CTRL + SHIFT to stretch.

The ASIO driver spec was devised by Steinberg, which places a limit of one ASIO driver per process (e.g. an application such as a DAW) in Windows. Some ASIO drivers allow more than one process to open the same ASIO driver, but no process can open more than one ASIO driver in Windows. Some ASIO drivers also allow more than one ASIO device to be seen by a single driver - RME is an example of this. However as @scook says, there aren't any manufacturer's ASIO drivers that will talk to different ASIO devices by different manufacturers. The only way around this is by having separate processes each open a different ASIO device, then having an aggregate ASIO driver "talk" to those processes to mix the audio. The DAW then opens the single aggregate ASIO driver. The only one I've seen that does this is ASIOLink, which is unfortunately no longer maintained as the original developer passed away. It does work, but it's extremely complicated to set up and use. However, even if you do manage to get several ASIO devices being shared, you still need the word-clocks of each device to be synced up. If this isn't done, then the audio playing on one device will start at a different time from another. This involves one of the devices being a word-clock master, and the rest being slaved to it. This is usually done by connecting the ADAT, SPDIF or BNC word-clock output of the master device to the corresponding input on the slave, and telling the slave to sync via that connection. Such a setup is so ridiculously complicated that it's really not worth the effort. I had a setup like this for a while, and it took 20 mins to get it stable every time I switched everything on. There are a bunch of audio interfaces that will give you 16 input channels (using an additional 8 channel ADAT mic-pre for 8 of the inputs). If you need more than that, the Tascam Model 24 or Soundcraft Signature 22MTK will give you 22 channels. Personally I opted for the RME Digiface USB, which has 32 inputs and 34 outputs via four ADAT ins, four ADAT outs, and a stereo analog out. At the time it was a bargain at around £300. Of course I had to buy pre-amps / ADAT converters to plug into it, but you can start off with cheaper ones (e.g. Behringer ADA8200, ADA8000 or Fostex VC-8) and upgrade as needed.

One way I guess is if you save that sentence in your default template, it should be picked up by any new project made based on that template.

When you use the fade handles on audio clip, what you're doing is fading out the clip. Using automation on the audio track volume, fades out the track:

Yes No - it's in the works: https://www.kvraudio.com/focus/amei-to-fund-open-source-midi-2-0-driver-for-windows-56224 Cakewalk is waiting on Microsoft supporting it. Too much to mention. But the main points are: - higher resolution velocity / controllers - devices can now "ask" which capabilities another device has You can read about it here: https://www.midi.org/specifications/midi-2-0-specifications

Per-Output Instruments are a type of Instrument track in Cakewalk, not a type of VSTi,. In Cakewalk you have three types of Instrument tracks: Simple Instrument Tracks - a track strip that contains an Audio Track and a MIDI Track, but shows as one strip. The output of the MIDI track is set to the VSTi MIDI input, and the Audio track input is connected to the first stereo pair of the VSTi outputs. By default, the MIDI track is set to transmit on all channels (i.e. it plays back exactly what you recorded). Split Instrument Tracks - one or more separate MIDI tracks / Audio Tracks. The MIDI tracks outputs are set to the VSTi MIDI input, and the Audio Track inputs are connected to the output(s) of the VSTi audio output(s). The MIDI and Audio tracks appear as separate tracks in the Track View. Per-Output Instrument Tracks - These are a special type of Simple Instrument Track, where you have several combined Audio/MIDI tracks connected to a single VSTi. For each MIDI/Audio track pair, the MIDI output of the MIDI track part is set to a specific channel, and the Audio Input of the Audio track part is connected to a specific VSTi audio output. This allows you to have several "Instrument Tracks" playing different sounds (and each having their own audio fx bin), but using a single VSTi instance. For this to work correctly, you normally have to set the MIDI inputs and Audio outputs of each instrument within the VSTi itself. In essence, a Per-Output Instrument Track is exactly the same as a Simple Instrument Track with the exception that it has it's MIDI output channel set to a single channel. As MPE requires the use of all 16 MIDI channels, you can't use Per-Output Instrument Tracks, because they're set to transmit on a single channel only.

AFAIK Ear Master & Band in a Box are also written in Delphi... although they may be using FreePascal/Lazarus for Mac support. CbB is Microsoft Visual C++.

MPE requires the use of all 16 channels, so for MPE to work in CbB, make sure the Track MIDI channel is set to None - this will ensure that on playback, each MIDI event will be played back on its original MIDI channel. For VSTi's that support MPE, you can use either a Simple Instrument Track or a Split Instrument track (with a single MIDI track / single audio track). Per-Output Instrument tracks are unsuitable for MPE instruments.

Double check your OneDrive settings... the enabled devices are stored in TTSSeq.ini, which is in %APPDATA%\Cakewalk\Cakewalk Core\ IIRC, %APPDATA% is one of the directories backed up by OneDrive by default. It can get itself in a bit of a muddle sometimes though, forcing a re-sync to older versions. If you've got more than one machine logged in using the same Microsoft account, this can also cause OneDrive to get confused as to which machine it's restoring to. Personally, I just disable OneDrive... but you can also change the OneDrive settings to leave this directory alone if you wish.

Just an observation, but you really shouldn't be using .wrk files in 2023 - these were deprecated over 20 years ago when Cakewalk Pro Audio 9 was replaced by Sonar 1.0. Sticking with .wrk files will mean you're potentially losing a lot of things added to your project, simply because they don't support all of the new features. A while back I went through a process of upgrading all my CWPA9 .wrk files to .cwp files in SONAR Platinum. It only took a couple of hours to do around 150 projects.

@Rok TheKasbah - the Arranger Track was specifically designed to be both as an edit tool as well as a traditional arranger. There's no need to create an arrangement to use it - quite often I'll create temporary sections to move or copy things around in a project. There's things it can do that normal selection/drag can't do, such as work on both your tracks & buses at the same time.

@Rok TheKasbah - I've just pushed a fix for this - it'll be available in the next release.

Wdf0100.sys is the Windows Driver Framework - which means some driver is taking up most of your CPU time. Try disabling your WiFi drivers. This makes a huge difference on one of my old Dell Laptops. Battery life in itself shouldn't affect performance, however a lot of laptops will default to slowing the machine down when running on batteries in order to preserve battery life. This will definitely lead to dropouts. You can change the profile used for on-battery/plugged-in in your Windows power options. The laptop should always be running in "High Performance" mode when you're using it for audio. Of course, this will mean a drastically reduced battery life - probably less than an hour on most laptops. If you really need the battery life, you might get away with it on a reduced power mode but with your ASIO buffer size set to maximum.

Personally, I never noticed it because I always have the dialog set to show. I almost always either use Simple Instrument Tracks, or more often Per Output Instrument tracks, but since I normally want to set the number of tracks for per-output instrument tracks, I have the dialog showing. The extra "click OK" step never bothers me.

Take a look at some of the suggestions in this thread:

I personally use CloneZilla which is completely free. I burn the ISO image to a CD, then boot off the CD to make the images. Because CloneZilla is Linux based, it doesn't get upset if you've got multiple drives with the same Windows partition on it. This animated gif is a bit old, but AFAIK the instructions are pretty much the same in the latest version: Drive Backup: Restore: