marcL

There is a lot of free and affordable stuff on the internet available that is quite good. You have to download and install them (either using their installers or extracting their dll's into the VST directory of your choice that has to be defined in CbB's preferences). By the way IMO the instruments and FX plugins coming with DAWs are 1) often also not so great and 2) not the ones that you like. So many people using DAWs buy a lot of additional instruments and FX plugins anyway! ?

I have used Dominator and HellBeast a little bit, and I like them (also their interface) although I am more a vintage guitar player! Once when I had tested and compared overdrive and distortion stomps (real boxes and plugin stuff), I was positively surprised of the stomps included in Dominator, one of the best overdrives (everything from gentle warmth up till real distortion is usable). But some months ago I bought a Boss Katana 50 for recording guitar (and even bass), IMO the real stuff sounds better and is easier to set up. ? But this does not mean that I will never use my plugins again! ?

I bought them some years ago when they were on sale. IMO they sound fantastic if you finetune the velocity and duration for each note, but that requires a lot of patience! I used them for some solo duos, but with background accompaniment.

It is exactly this "shell beast" that stopped me buying and using Waves plugins. This uncommon idea is the source of a lot of problems (e.g. scanning performance, version compatibility of single plugins, Daw compatibility ...). It is also the reason why I am not interested in even FREE Waves plugins! ?

@cclarry And I just thought I had outlived BF! But I cannot pass this one! Thanks, Larry!

I think drum sound is a matter of taste. Everybody has his own vision how it should sound. So I have to curb the euphoria of AD2 (even if it is also my #2), IMHO their kicks sound awful, much too roomy. With all of their endless processing possibilities I don't get rid of it, seems it is attached to the base samples. It's a pity, because I like the rest of AD2 (okay, the snares could also sound better!).

Me too! But as far as I can see the ticks depend on the interleave setting (stereo/mono). It looks as if 2 ticks show a stereo and one tick shows a mono signal path. Depending on the track mono/stereo setting CA-2A shows 1 or 2 ticks here.

Believe me, it is not just America, but it is the 21st century! Here in Europe we have the same troubles, even if we pay skyscraping taxes (in my country, I think the highest of the world)!

This is exactly what happened to me a couple of days ago in an old project, but I used Kontakt 5 and Addictive Drums as synths (I don't have Omnisphere). As the project was not so important, just to draw an arrangement idea, I simply recreated the synth tracks (I always have a text file with notes for each song, in there I write down all synth settings, just if something goes wrong or if I want to recreate the same sound in another song/project).

This^, I do the same, I export my final mix and then create a new project for mastering with that single stereo track. Like that it is very easy to make fade in/outs and save them!

@Noel Borthwick Link: https://drive.google.com/open?id=19j1zZ_JOABHimiqBLy2x-WZ6FYVykQ-S I included also a folder with the exported files from all 3 track variants.

Volume Problems with Exporting Frozen Synths I noticed several times that there are volume problems exporting frozen synth tracks. There are differences whether they are stereo or mono tracks/sources. Usually I was using Kontakt or Addictive Drums with a folder, a midi and some audio mono and stereo tracks (mixed!). Because of the trouble I began to create a separate "mono export track" and I copied the frozen audio for export (very cumbersome!), but lately I noticed if I create export audio tracks in a folder then there is an additional problem! For simplification and to reduce the involvation of 3rd party plugins I have created a small test project today: Virtual instrument = SI-Electric Piano 3 tracks in a folder: A Midi input track A stereo output track A mono output track (interleave=mono and input=only left output of Electric Piano). Detections: Direct export of the 2 frozen audio tracks: mono=~ -12dB, stereo=~ -18dB(each L/R) Copy the frozen audio clips to 2 new toplevel audio tracks (stereo, resp. mono interleave set): mono=~ -15dB, stereo~ -15dB The same as 2, but the tracks are under a new folder: mono=~ -15dB, stereo~ -18dB The original tracks in the project audio folder: mono=~ -15dB, stereo~ -15dB Additional Information: I did not use any additional plugins The pan in all tracks stay center The faders are all 0.0 I exported without any Automation & FX

Be honest guys, the holy DNA Direct Note Access polyphonic recognition is very poor! I was very disappointed when I upgraded to the Editor and tried to open very simple polyphonic instrument tracks (yes, no piano! ?). I had to change the whole stuff in assignment mode to have something half-baked. Sometimes I really regret to have paid for the upgrade, therefore I would never upgrade to Studio, it is not worth the money! IMO the Melodyne development has become too sophisticated, they should have paid more attention to the issues they have instead of increasing the functionality! Just look how strange and unintelligible are the pitch differences in assignment and edit mode! It makes no sense and makes working really difficult! How can you find the correct note start if the pitch is totally different in assignment mode than in edit note, very very weird!

Each time when I read in the "Deals" section of this forum I feel that there are many people that have much more plugins than me (although I think for myself I have too many to use! ?). So most likely a lot of them have even more pitch shifting tools! By the way, 4 of my pitch shifting tools come from Sonar.

Thanks Colin for your offer! But as you mentioned V-Vocal can't be purchased anymore, aimed more for pitch correction and there are so many other pitch shift plugins/programs on the market. I don't think that my simple test can include any plugin around, it was/is more the objective to make people aware that there maybe problems using pitch shifting, that you have to check the results properly and you probably have to use different plugins. Not like me, who shifted a whole bunch of takes with Cakewalk's "Radius Solo (Vocal)" (I was so confident!) until I noticed that many of them failed due to the introduction of pops and clicks. ?

Yep, I started with Sonar X3! I used another DAW and diverse hardware before.

@TheSteven Thanks for the info! Although it is interesting how many changes for the 4 plugs that I own are only related to the installers, Mac OS, Avid, ... Nothing that I need, so I downloaded only one of them! ?

I rarely use the Blue Tubes stuff of Nomad Factory (although it is not bad). The value setting is not so convenient (no scroll wheel support and fine tuning is difficult). On the other hand their "Limiting Amplifier LM-662" and "Cosmos" are quite good, I like and use them.

In a recent project I wanted to use vocal pitch shifting for one song. As usual I was working with CbB's "Radius Solo (Vocal)" until I detected some really ugly clicks and pops in some of the phrases. First I thought it may have to do with the Windows 1903 update, but further investigation proved that it is either a problem of the algorithm or its implementation. For I tested one of the failing takes in CbB, Sonar Platinum, Sonar X3 on several computers, one even with Windows 7. In CbB and Splat the result was everywhere the same, whereas in Sonar X3 the clicks were in other positions. When I was zooming in I could see the cause of the click in the wave form: I was very frustrated, because I really liked the quality sound of the "Radius Solo" algorithm, but like that it is unusable in my project, because it failed not only on one phrase, but on many. My song has 9 choruses with each 7 takes = 63 phrases and I was not doing extreme pitch shifting, only 1 half-tone up. So I decided to try some other programs and plugins to do the job. This is where I thought others maybe also interested in my results. What surprised me generally, was that all pitch shiftings resulted in minor note movings, i.e. the note start points are not exactly the same! Supposedly this is caused by the nature of the physics. No-Go Alternatives IMO: Radius Solo (Vocal): Very good quality and sound, but often with clicks and pops. I tried also the "normal" Radius Solo algorithm, but there were the same clicks and the sound was not that good. Common Elastique algorithm (even Pro, in several programs): This algorithm resulted in a reverb-like, unnatural sound for vocals. Audacity: Reverb-like sound, a lot of clicks and pops Mixbus: Reverb-like sound, with or without "Preserve Formants", loudness change Tracktion 7: Very much reverb-like sound, loudness change TB_VoicePitcher: Sounded okay first, but a more detailed look revealed big quality loss (you see it in the wave forms), major start point shiftings and loudness change. Better Alternatives: Here I also checked the precision of the pitch shifting. I opened the results in Melodyne and moved the note start/end positions exactly at the same positions (because this influences the pitch). Then I calculated the average deviation. Again I listened to the sound compared to the original. Magix Samplitude Monophonic: Good sound (like Radius Solo), rarely with clicks Eventide Quadravox: Although pitch shifting is not the main purpose of this plugin it surprised with a very good quality, but I had to choose the "Soprano" preset for a male vocal to get best results. It is the only plugin/program that never had any artifacts in my tests. So I could use this one for 2 or 3 problematic phrases. Melodyne: Good sound, rarely with clicks, but some notes had more deviation to the original melody. élastique Timestretch: This is a plugin delivered with older Sonar versions, @scook recommended it once to me, the "Monophonic" setting had quite good quality, "Speech" was also acceptable, but it had more shifting deviation than the others above. Sound Forge: Preset "A01 Music", good sound, but even more shifting deviation, bigger start/end point shiftings than the others above I am aware that there are many other programs and plugins on the market for pitch shifting and that my tests are individual to some degree. Nevertheless may them give some ideas about pitch shifting.

I have fixed the issue. I wrote down all my preference settings (just to be sure) and uninstalled CbB and BA. Rebooted the system. Redownloaded BA, logged in and let it download CbB again (it took much longer than in John Vere's case). And voila it was fixed! Even my preferences were still there! ? But still I am working on some changed configuration caused by Windows update 1903. Also I have an issue with CbB (same with Sonar) with transposing audio files (Radius Solo Vocal). I never noticed this before, but in some cases I have nasty clicks (even visual when zooming in). Maybe it is caused by Windows 1903, but I have to do additional research!

Here ?: I would prefere even this! Concerning the copy of the installation files: I have used now Sonar/CbB for many years and I was used to copy installation files. With the old Cakewalk installer it was official where it stores its downloads and you could copy them to another system and it used them to install those versions; or if you wanted you could start the installers manually (there were even special parameters). The installer was/is also capable to go back to an older version! It was very user-friendly, the most user-friendly installer IMHO! ? There are many reasons to use a Daw pc offline, here are some of them: To avoid performance issues when Windows 10 is downloading updates (I had this several times and this was the first and foremost reason why I set my desktop offline. In some cases I had even problems with the drivers caused by Windows 10 Updater and I had to reboot first before I could resume my work. Not to be forced to do updates during a busy time, i.e. have the freedom to the updates when you are ready (also this is essentially a Windows 10 issue). Generally can network background processes affect the performance and cause dropouts. In rural areas you can lose the internet for some days or even weeks (once our connection was broken nearby, only 2 houses were affected, so it took 3 weeks until it was fixed! In such a case you are glad if you still have access to Sonar Platinum!). Okay, this is more a reason to have products that do not have online usage. Once our router was hacked and the more your Daw is online the more risk you have that it is also hacked. Lightnings: My network switch was destroyed when a lightning encountered our telephone cable, although it is in a completely different location in the house than the router (that was also dead and the incoming contact was brown). I am sure there are many more reasonable arguments, but I don't mind if someone thinks they are no issue for him.

It seems that you are a prophet or something even superior! Where is this said? I never read about that! Not true at all, it is just a fxxxxxx guess of you. I had updated the BA to the newest version! You repeat yourself and it's still not the truth! You are very blunt! I just want to tell you one thing: All those "modern" ways of installing software by some halfhearted installation programs has some issues. First, you have to download on each pc again, a total waste of resources and time (and it is not only CbB, there are many other installation managers, too)! Second, this blind townsfolk like you get on my nerves, because in rural locations you don't have the same internet connection at all! I don't like to comment the rest of your ...

Thanks Promidi and BRainbow for your responses! I already had done this and a lot of other things (like starting BA as administrator, ...), no success! On my laptop I also never had an issue, but it is almost always online when I use it. So it seems to me it has something to do with offline computers, but maybe it is just a silly guess! Concerning the support request I have no more time to lose at the moment, so I will use Splat instead!

Today I received the reactivation message on my Daw pc (within n day(s)), even I had installed nearly the latest release (09 build 68). Because I like this desktop pc to be offline I always copied the installation files from my laptop. So it seems the reactivation purpose that users have a current version is not true for this one! Okay, I grumbled and decided to connect the Daw pc to reactivate CbB. They always told us that it is just a little thing! WTF, until now I have not succeeded! What does it mean "just login to the BA"? I logged in several times (first I had to update the BA), even signed in to the bandlab site via the assistant, because it was not enough to login to the assistant. I even updated then to 09 build 70, because I thought this is the only thing that helps! No success! And even worse, because I made the pc online the Windows 1903 update was in queue (it had costed me already a lot of time, because it failed 3 times). But I let it run now. Result: 4 hours of frustration and CbB is still not reactivated! Just a small thing! There is a thread "Still using SONAR?", I think this is still a big advantage of Sonar over CbB!!! But I think I abstain from a comment in there!

I picked this offer, because I am also interested in such plugins. The ones I have now: ERA4 Voice Leveler, TBProAudio DynaRide, Waves Vocal Rider, SonicAnomaly TriLeveler (free) and SonicAnomaly VOLA2 (free). I demo-ed some others above-mentioned, too. I made a lot of tests in Audacity, because there you can see the result very quickly in a visual way and that's extremely interesting. With some settings many of those plugins increase the esses and such stuff immensely and that's not what you want! That's why I compared "usual" compressors to them and with some of them I got better or equal results (TokyoDawnLabs Kotelnikov (free), PSP FETpressor, Lindell 254E, Nomad Factory LM Amplifier LM-662, Cakewalk CA-2A). One of the positive surprises was TriLeveler of Sonic Anomaly, although free it is one of the best Levelers around IMO! Though I have to do deeper tests once more, because the results are extremly setting dependable and I am not yet satisfied with any of those plugins. Yes, you are able to match one short phrase with some of the above plugins, but it is rather difficult to have generalized settings that match the vocals of one song or album, even if you first adjust the loudness (LU) of the phrases. The best levelling is still "doing it manually", but it is so time-consuming! ?