marcL

It just depends what you call "write a song" ! ?

I am full, too! Sometimes I should better keep my trap shut! Hell, I am married!

At that time a lot of the arrangements with classic instruments was done by the 5th Beatle! ? I don't know why so many people say this! Most of the harder songs are McCartney songs: I'm Down, She's a Woman, St. Pepper, Oh Darling, Helter Skelter, Why Don't We Do It on the Road, ... Often I heard someone believe that some of those songs were sung by John! Very strange! But I guess this is because Paul made also those "softy songs" (I don't like most of them, especially in the Wings time). Also most of my favorite songs are from John, but in the last years I understood more and more that most part of the good arrangements came from Paul, even for John's songs and it is not only the bass! Think of "Come Together", the composition of Lennon is not so special, but the instrumentation is brilliant and that's more Paul's work! John was always more interested in his political/social message and in special effects, not in a good instrumentation and in a good mix. You can see this very well on his own albums! But quite a lot of his songs are ingenious. I do not comment the 2nd part of your statement!

This would be cool! Additionally, I would like if there was the possibility to reduce the notes visible, because most often you do not need all drum notes and the ones used are too far from each other (always scrolling up and down needed)! This would also improve the working with other instruments, 'cos sometimes you have big gaps that you do not use.

It seems that this is wanted behavior. When a plugin is selected in the FX bin (you can see small angles around the plugin square box), then it has the focus/priority for key actions. If you want the selected clip gain focus again, then you have to click on the clip again (the plugin loses the focus then). After that the key input goes to the clip. A lot of such misunderstandings with CbB/Sonar's focus handling happen when you begin working with it. I just remember how I struggled years ago when I started to work with Sonar. It took me years to come used to the focus handling, but today I see some of the advantages with this implementation! ? In CbB/Sonar selected is not always equal to focused!

I am waiting for PSP85 or PSP42 going on sale ... I fear "never"! ?

It is very good that there are now several products in this area! Surely there will be some competition! But I bought DrumsSSX from Fuse Audio Labs this year. It separates drum instruments in a stereo drum mix. It is the best that I have found in this area (there are not many). I plan to use it in 2021 to separate the individual drum instruments of some poorly old stereo drums recordings (tape, sloppy), then convert them to MIDI and finally recreate the drums with a Vsti. I had invested in some other tools, some more expensive even, but I was disappointed that they do not serve for this purpose. E.g. XLN Addictive Trigger, it is extraordinary in detection, but regrettably there is no possibility to manually fix incorrect detection and 2nd you can only extract kick, snare and toms, it is nearly impossible to extract hi-hat and cymbals (especially overlapping hits). That's why I have great expectations in DrumsSSX, 'cos my tests showed very good results with some tweaking.

Regrettably this is not only true for plugin providers and software companies, but for the whole industry, all politics and even society! ? And it does not help that they all are not being left behind, rather it makes that we all are left behind! ? 21st century!

If they would make their products similar to the installer, then I am glad they do not update the products! ? The new updater looks really ugly (Facebook style). How often do you open the installer? Me, I can live with that, 'cos I rarely use it. I use their products more often than the installer! ?

XLNAudio Addictive Trigger is really good, 'cos it uses "Audio Fingerprints" that can include/exclude the hits your after. Like this you can even do replacement in a drum stereo mix. This works quite convincing! The only thing that's missing (like in many other so-called "intelligent" programs) is the possibility to correct invalid detection manually! ? In this area is the old Cakewalk stuff like Drum Replacer and AudioSnap exceptional and much better IMO. It is a pity that they do not get enough attention currently! ?

As far as I know this is only true for "online" computers, i.e. if you have to reactivate an offline install, then you still need BA! ?

I had the same problem. Tried on 2 computers, no result (and I used Kontakt, not the player). Now I have found out the clue: Hammersmith requires Kontakt/player 6.2! (I have only Kontakt 5.81). The message of Kontakt that it belongs to a library that is not installed (when I want to open the instrument) is very confusing! ? Why the hell can they not tell the true reason?

Thus I will skip these updates, most is anyway for macOS ... And I never used Softube Central, always used the single installers! Whenever possible I avoid those central installer programs, they do a lot of s... on your systems. One strange thing with all of them: Each time when you want to update, you lose a lot of time waiting until the installer program has been updated. ?

That's exactly how I thought in the beginning of my mixing trip! But in the mean time I learned a lot from professionals and the internet. There are 3 things I want to add to the roll-off subject: Usually you do not reduce a lot of frequencies during the recording (only in the mix)! Maybe only the low end a little bit to avoid rumble (that's the reason why a lot of professional microphones have a low end reduction knob). If you have a song part with pure vocals (e.g. opera singer) or only with skinny instrumentation (e.g. only piano), then you may leave more of the low frequencies, because it is not overcrowded in the low end. But even in this case some minor roll-off of low frequencies may improve the vocal sound, try it! If there are a lot of instruments, then it is definitely not possible to make all the overlapping frequencies of vocals and instruments hearable in a recording. That's a fact. (it's alike being in a room with many people that are all talking, you are not able to hear everything.) So it is you, the mixing engineer who decides which frequencies of each instrument/vocal has to come through. The overlapping frequencies are unhearable, so taking away the same frequencies of other instruments makes them raising on the targeted instrument (e.g. vocals). Test it in a mix, taking away frequencies of instruments will make your vocals louder without raising the volume slider! Surely, you should not overdo the roll-off, otherwise it may sound too thinly. And as others said, the amount and frequency you roll off depends also on your taste and on the instrument/vocalist's frequency spectrum. Somehow the mixing engineer does something similar to a painter that has to decide what is visible in the foreground. He cannot paint multiple persons/things at the same position (analog to frequency). It is not visible what is behind the object.

There are also some DAWs that can export a DDP file (e.g. Samplitude), maybe you have one of them. Myself I did the DDP export always with the Hofa CD-Burn & DDP Plugin (I grabbed it some time ago for 50 EUR). You can use this plugin in any DAW.

I totally agree with this! My way to get a clear mix and all instruments and vocals audible is: Liberally roll off low frequencies of nearly everything (70 - 250Hz, depending on the instrument). Even if it sounds strange, but rolling off about 150 - 250 Hz of the vocals itself will makes them cut through much better. Define the prominent frequency range for each instrument/vocal that does not overlap with something else. Lower the other frequencies for the instrument/vocal or increase the prominant frequency range just a little bit. Define whether the bass or the kick drum gets the lowest range, reduce about 50Hz for the one and 140Hz for the other (this is very important). Place all instruments in a virtual semicircle. The vocals are usually in the center a bit away (reverb), the kick is normally also in the center, but nearer to the listener (only minimal reverb). Most of the time also the bass is near the center. Regard that there should be some instruments a bit to the left and right near the listener (minimal reverb) to achieve some deepness to the virtual sound image, to get some sort of room! Normally the first step alone makes your mix much better and easier to handle, but also the other 2 are necessary to achieve a satisfiable mix. Note: One mistake that most beginners tend to do (I did the same once), is that they try to get a balance with the volume level only (and maybe pan settings)!

To be honest, my experience in the last decade regarding timing of vocals is very disappointing. I found out that it is nearly impossible for a software to find the note starting points (transients) correctly. This is possible for sounds like acoustic guitar and piano tracks, but not for vocals at all. See the results of Melodyne and CbB AudioSnap to understand the problem. There are so many possibilities for a singer to set note accents (transient) that it prohibits automatic timing correction IMO. Currently I am working manually on vocal timing correction of an album and it takes about 10 times more time than I thought! Some of the phrases are nearly perfect except the latency shifting that the vocalist heard during recording, but it takes time to be sure what is right! I would pay a lot of money for a software that really could deal with that, even if it only could detect vocal transients correctly! ?

This is exactly why I regret that DAWs do something weird with mono and stereo tracks (just look at mono outputs of Vsti's in CbB)! In the old days there were only mono tracks in a mixer and if an effect had a stereo out you had to feed it to 2 mono tracks. That way everything was much more transparent and more equal independent of the suppliers! No such sophisticated hidden stereo rules! ?

I have their Marimba and the Clav. Yes, I agree they have good quality instruments ?, but the prices even on sale are not so interesting if you don't use those instruments often enough! ?

Strange, here it shows $18 ! For $7 I would have bought it ?!

It is also available on the Boz Digital Labs site! I picked this one, like it! ?

To me it looks like someone has cremated Kermit the Frog! ?

Cool, I didn't know this! ? In such cases I always did it much more complicated (with cut, set now time, then paste). ?

I tell it once again: The Middle Ages have just begun! (about 10 years ago) ? Fortunately there is music (and software) that was produced before! ? Thus I can live in the past and stand the modern times!

I wonder if there is a way to disable the zooming function of the now time marker? I am not so skilled moving my mouse and therefore many times I zoom accidentally when I try to reposition the now time. I think generally that it is difficult to set the now time with the mouse, because the line to click into is very small and usually my focus is on an audio wave form to find the proper position. And so it happens all the time that something unexpected is the result! ?