Amberwolf

for years, where i work, we've received some stuff (that we're not supposed to put on the shelf) for the holidaze sneazon in the middle of summer or earlier. but we start getting serious shipments of it before halloween, and often the halloween stuff starts going clearance even before that week. 😕

part of that isn't just the caps; it's the other parts not being chosen or the circuit not being designed so that it may survive / "work" even when the caps no longer perform as well as designed (since all liquid electrolytic caps will eventually fail from electrolyte decomposition and/or fluid loss; they all have a time-rating for how many hours of operation they're guaranteed (or expected) to work for under a specific operating temperature or other conditions). but without well-made caps, anything that does require them will not work correclty or at all, and the worse they're made the faster that will happen. i used to have some test equipment (oscilloscopes, nixie-tube multimeters, etc) that were made before i was born, more than 5 decades ago (one of them would be more than 60 years old now if it was still around), and they all still worked without any part replacments. before i lost them in the housefire a decade ago i had planned to go thru the ones i used most and test caps, etc., and replace anything that was out of spec, see if they got better readings afterward, but that didn't happen. but i've also had stuff of all types from the 50s, 60s, 70s, and 80s that required cap replacements to be usable. my 1930s simpson multimeter doesnt' have any caps, just resistors, so it seems to be ok. (though it requires a diy battery since they don't make the kind it uses anymore :lol: ).

version 8 with the changes above. https://www.soundclick.com/amberwolf/?more=14896411 trying to figure out kerovee to more naturally retune the segments of the vocal clip samples that are a different note / key than the song is at that point, since the present retuning is very unnatural, having been done by just splitting that section of the clip off and using the clip properties note +/- to set it to a different note. (which works fine to test them, but in most places isn't suitable for the result I'm after.

that's what the big foam blocks that used to be couch cushions do for me in my windows. (sometimes canine destruction leaves useful remains)

Your post doesn't say what monitors you have, so we don't know what connectors they have. This page found with google via your interface description https://www.native-instruments.com/en/products/komplete/audio-interfaces/komplete-audio-6/ has this image Which shows both digital and analog options for output. Are you using an analog cable, or digital? If analog, are you using the front or rear connectors to go to the monitors?

Then I'd guess my issue is specific to the laptop. I'd have to take both drives out and put them in a desktop motherboard with enough SATA HDD connections to mount both simulaneously directly to it and retry. It's certainly possible--quite a few manufacturers did stuff outside their normal ways since that started (some still are, and some have had to redesign products because of "permanent" unavailability of some components). None of them are likely to publicly discuss any of that; it might open them up to legal issues (don't know how) and that's a can o worms companies never want to open.

I'm not an expert, but I can't imagine any way to make that happen. If they want it to sound like a cohesive mastered stereo track they're going to have to actually cohesively master it as a stereo track. Not really any way around doing work to get work done. If you process all the stuff as individual tracks it won't sound like (probably not anything like) the full masterbus output would, for reasons others stated. You should just tell the client the reality of how it works, and let them decide what work they are willing to do, and give them what will let them do that. If they don't accept that, well, can't help everyone.

Yeah, I've dealt with bad caps problems since the 90s because companies kept making cheaper and cheaper stuff; it just got exponentially worse when they did the bad formula thing. (been doing this stuff since the 80s ::creaking sounds:: 😆) When I was in still in computer repair the first several years of this century (still wierd to say that) we had many many blown caps on all sorts of things (motherboards, psus, inside monitors, etc) and way too many devices were destroyed by the cap failures (unfiltered spikes taking out other parts after the caps stopped working, even when they didn't explode). I lost count of the number of things I was given as junk that just replacing the caps would fix. (today that includes things like ebike controllers, too, but that's because they often use parts not rated for the usage, like caps not made for high temps put inside motor controllers that are inside other things so all the heat stays right there and cooks the caps). The really sad thing is that a couple decades later, there are STILL companies using those bad parts to build things with, as they still keep getting re-injected into the supply chain. Plus there are companies still making crappy caps, though those are easier to avoid by always using good brands like Rubycon, Panasonic, etc, and only buying them from reliable suppliers like Mouser, etc that actually check their supply chains. Not to mention the bajillion counterfeit parts out there. Unfortunately on this it's not (just) a cap problem (that would have been too easy; the cap failed and then other stuff died downstream), it's the main switching transistor, plus the resistors that fed it's gate, some diodes (I think; hard to tell from the remnants), and some other bits. There's not enough left of some of the parts to tell for sure what they were, much less which part number or value. Some bad pics of some of the carnage are attached; I apparently don't have them all on the computer. I poked around for a schematic or service manual, but this old Westinghouse (IIRC) didn't get one uploaded that I could find so far. IIRC it was made in 2013 or 14, but I'd have to go look in the other room at it's case to be sure.

You'll have to pick one way or the other. If you need the master bus fx to be on all of the separate ones, you'll have to actually put it on all of them, and whatever happens when summed is going to happen. The same thing will happen if you export one track (or bus) at a time thru the master bus (by muting or archiving all the others temporarily). If you don't want that to happen, then you have to leave it off all of them, and then let whoever sums them back together put that chain on their master bus. If you need some of the fx on some of the buses (or tracks), then you'll have to put them only on those, and not on the master. Then you can choose to export as separate files per bus or per track to do it all as one export pass.

If you've actually lost the files somehow, you can put your own wave files in the folder. For my very old version, that's in this path: C:\ProgramData\Cakewalk\(programname)\Metronome but you can browse to wherever your version has stored them and stick them there: This is what I use (IIRC, I originally gave it to the bakers way way way back (sampled from my Ensoniq ASR88 (or the EPS16+, don't recall which as it's the same sound either way) as Metro Click 2). EnsoniqMetronomeClick.wav I use it because I can clearly hear it thru anything else I'm playing, for those times I need a metronome (not usually).

I guess that means it has clean enough sound input if ti works for this purpose? I have one that I have not used yet, only connected to verify it worked, picked up at Goodwill for a couple bucks a while back (kept as a spare interface "just in case"). If it's decent and actually has a real (low latency) ASIO driver, I can use it on the old HP rack server I'm currently setting up as a new main system. A quick google finds a "64 bit" version of the driver here https://gearspace.com/board/music-computers/1316473-behringer-asio-driver-lower-end-interfaces.html that I've attached to this post in case it is useful (but I have not tried it yet!) and goes away on the other site. It says it is for the "UMA25S, UCA200*, UCA202, UCA222, UFO202, UCG102, iAXE393/624/629 and many more." There is a note in the thread After getting that one, I used it's filename wiht 32 in place of 64 to google for the othe rone and found ithere https://www.driverguide.com/driver/detail.php?driverid=1689325 I've also attached that (but again, haven't tested it). BEHRINGER_2902_X64_2.8.40.zip BEHRINGER_2902_WIN32_2.8.40.zip

That's why when I setup a system, the first thing I do is disable all updating "features". If I find a problem I can do whatever specific updates are needed to fix that problme, and just that problem, but having a system just do it's own updates for whatever is *always* going to cause problems of it's own that would not happen if it didn't do that. Before I started doing that (a long time ago), every system I ever had, for any purpose, would get screwed up because of autoupdates. Problem might be tiny, or catastrophic, but eventually they would always happen. So, if something can't be prevented from doing this, I can't allow it on my system. (Many users may not "have problems with updates", and that's great--but they might just not be problems you notice, or that affect what you do, but any change to a working system has a chance to turn it into a non-working system. The more changes there are, the exponentially more likely a problem that affects you will show up, because of all the interdependencies of things. It doesn't even have to be a bug that causes the problem--it could be a *fix* to a bug that did something that some other program actualy depended on (was designed around) that then makes that program not work right that then makes the other programs that depend on that program...etc.).

What specific things are you worried about? I have a couple of 1TB 870 Evos bought around a year apart (june22 and oct 23) from here https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B08QBJ2YMG I bought the first one to clone my laptop's regular spinny type 1TB hdd to, and then keep the spinny one in a drawer as backup and use the faster SDD, but I was never able to get any of the free cloning software to actually work. Failures were various, from not even being compatible with SSDs (which doesn't make sense; it's just files I'm dealing with!) to being unable to complete the clone (with no useful error messages or codes). I'm sure there's software I haven't tried yet; somewhere I have a list of ones I did try but don't recall ATM, it was a while back now; I had given up on trying a couple months after the first purchase, though I retried the same things after getting the second one from a super-deal offer. (the stuff for cloning and monitoring that came with (on!) the drive from Samsung doesn't apparently work with SSD's, which is *****; neither does any newer version of any of the Samsung software I tried since, which is even more *****--if they sell SSDs they ought to include software for them that works with them). The spinny source drive passes the tests I can throw at it, but I haven't yet found something that can do a real test of the SSDs; they just look at it's SMART and say "sure, its' ok" and won't do an actual test, or else just says "sorry, I don't do SSDs". The SSDs format (even full version) fine, and I can write and read the entire drive fine just copying files to and from it till it's full. So...there doesn't appear to be anything wrong with the drives, just that I can't use them for the purpose I intended. (I have not had the money, time, and energy to try a different brand of drive yet, because I don't expect to get different results as I still haven't found the reason the clone doesn't work with the softwares that will even try. I expect the problem has to do with the way I have to connect the drives up--the internal laptop SATA connector is only for one HDD, and the optical drive bay connector, even with an adapter, is not able to talk to anything other than an optical drive--the laptop firmware simply isn't created to allow it (which seems ***** to me, as it prevents using that drive bay for extra storage instead of the almost-useless optical drive (these days). So I have to use a USB external SATA adapter for one of hte drive (tried it both ways, too), and I have several--some on a cable, some in a case, and a couple in desktop holders reminiscent of the personality-imprint-chair usage in Dollhouse. I was recently advised of a program called Macrium Reflect Free, so I have to look into that; if I'm lucky it will be compatible with the SSDs and correctly work to create a full image of the spinny to the ssd. That said, I have run across more than one webpage that discusses failures of the controller chip used in SSD / NVME drives, and there is one called "Phison PS311" that turns up in failures more often than any other by quite a lot. This page https://www.exalab.cz/en/blog/explanations-and-tips/ssd-controller-failure-satafirm-s11-sataburn-s11-data-recovery says "Among the SSD models with the Phison PS3111 controller, which may be affected by the SATAFIRM S11 or SATABURN S11 issue, are Apacer AS340 or AS350, Gigabyte GSTFS31, GOODRAM CX300, GOODRAM S400U, GOODRAM IRDM, Lite-On MU3, Lite-On PH4, Lite-On PH6, Patriot Burst, Patriot Spark, Seagate One Touch, Silicon Power Slim S55 or S60, Silicon Power S56, Smartbuy Revival 2, or S11T. Please note that this list is not exhaustive, and some brands may use this controller under their own designation."

What kind of projects do you usually create? All audio recorded in? All MIDI with hardware external synths? MIDI with internal synths in the project? Some variation(s) on these? Something different? How do you usually save your files while working? Do you just save over the file and only have one per project? Do you always use SaveAs and make a new version of the file? Do you use per-project audio folders, or just one giant audio folder for everything? Some variation(s) on these? Something different? Do you want to save projects so you can always reproduce them identically whenever you work on them, no matter how old they are? Or do you only care about the current project while you're working on it? Etc? How you create, use, and save the projects makes a difference in the backup strategy, partly because there is different data generated (and different amounts), and partly because some of them may require saving the configuration of the whole system (with some form of manual notes) to be sure you're able to reproduce the project later.

At least two things could do it: If the pesky track is still armed for record, then it will also record any inputs. Disarm the tracks you don't want to record to before starting a recording session to prevent that. If the setting "allow MIDI recording without an armed track" is enabled, and you have selected that track, then it will record on that track even if it isn't armed (as well as any that are armed). This will happen even if you have set the port to "none" because Cakewalk will change it to "omni" so that it can record per the setting that's been enabled, during the recording. Only select or click on tracks you want to record on to prevent that, if you need to use this setting.

FWIW, if there is only one way to get a feature to work when you need it, and you do need it, then it doesn't really matter what effort or resources are involved--it's "worth it" because otherwise you can't do it at all. So, if someone does need the view that only works with hardware ports but has a synth that has to be hosted in a track inside Sonar/CbB that they require that view to work on...they'd have to use this workaround (if it does indeed work, as I haven't tried it for that). While it would also then work with external synths (hardware or software standalone units), external stuff won't be loaded with the project, none of it's settings will be saved with the project, and the only way to "know" what the tracks that feed out to the external stuff are supposed to do (other than remembering all the details forever which I probably couldn't do even later the same day 😊 ) is to make notes in the File-Info/stats window (if you want them to stay with the project and be there when you open it) about all the routing, patches, etc for that external stuff. (this is also true of hardware synths/etc., and is really why I only use internally hosted stuff for quite a long while now). If there's some other easier way to do it, then sure, that easier way would work...but if there isn't....there isn't.

I use that setting to ensure I never lose a recording because I forgot to arm the track.... (all my performances are unique; I'm not a musician so whatever comes out when I play is the only time I will ever get that; some of them are good and useful (most are not)).

Years ago, after ToysRUs at Metrocenter shutdown, and had been the last business in that center, a guy learning tuba used to park there and practice; I'd see (and hear/feel) him as I rode thru there to work every day in the morning; sometimes he'd also be there in the evening. He did this for years until Conns moved in there, and later a few more businesses, but I haven't seen him since then. I don't know enough about tuba to tell if he improved in that time or not.

I've used nerds.de's loopback to feed data out of a MIDI track back into another MIDI track within the same project, to record things that can't be bounced (or don't work correctly when done that way, but work fine if you just send it out and back in). Can't recall specifics of why I had to do that ATM, but Iv'e done it numerous times over the years. For this purpose, it's no different than connecting the out of your hardware midi port to it's in, and setting up the tracks so the outputting track is not getting input from that port (at least not on the same channel(s)) to prevent feedback. But I don't have to recable my setup to do it if I use the loopback. (the nerds.de loopback has an autodetection for this so it won't cause a problem, and automutes the loopback if it happens; I know that works because I've made the usual mistakes now and then 😊 ). I just don't know if it will help with the drum display issue; I don't use that type of view so never tried it.

When some of htose go they can be as loud as some (small) gunshots. But blown FETs can be even louder. When i lived as a kid in smalltown farm country in north texas in a literal pink house, people were often more reasonable about most things, though some stuff was just plain non-negotiable But i've been in the city for almost my whole life other than that, and the last few decades here in phoenix, az, where there are nice people, but lots of assholes and violent people. I used to love nighttime walks, especially after everyone would have gone to bed, in the "hour of the wolf" as Ivanova called it...then i was mugged at gunpiont by a bunch of kids (none of them taller than my shoulders) walking home from work about two decades back, and i've been afraid to be out in the dark alone; it's not so bad in my yard with the dog(s) but i could never go for a walk again. (my life is full of nightmare food for my brain to use, unfortunately, so i don't sleep well; my brain isn't normal to start with so this only makes it worse)

I think the whole point of what they are doing is to piss everyone else off and subject them to whatever they feel like. Power trip. If you ever politely ask anyone with a system like that and they actually turn it down instead of telling you to ***** and turning it up even louder, I'd like to see a video of that so I would be able to believe it. Around here you can end up with a gun in your face if you ask them to turn it down. If it was because they wanted to hear it loud, they wouldn't need anything like the earthquake-level systems they have. The only point to those is to assault other people with. Just because they can.

The above may already cover this, but just in case: Assuming the widescreen is an external monitor plugged into the laptop--does the display settings in the laptop have the option to use that as the primary monitor (if it's not already doing so), or even as the *only* monitor (disabling the built-in screen)? I ask because I have found lots of stuff over the years in all sorts of software that just doesn't work right in multimonitor setups; either has a problem being on a secondary/etc display, or has a problem if there *is* a secondary/etc display. Most things work fine regardless, but not everything does (and I have no idea what they're doing that would have anything to do with which monitor it's being used on, especially the ones that fail *if* there is more than one monitor even if it's on the primary). I can't actually see anything useful on the 17" laptop display at a resolution that's usable to fit things on, so I have to use an external 32" (minimum) monitor with it's max resolution of 1920x1080 (it's really a TV, but I could afford it from Goodwill, unlike an actual computer monitor in this size; I was using a 42" but the power supply blew up inside it so until I figure out what the parts used to be and replace them, or hack a different PSU in there, I'm stuck with the smaller harder-to-read one). I used to try to use the built in 17" for stuff like effects/synths I wanted to keep open but out of my way, but I have had so much wierdness with programs (some in music software, some in everyday stuff) that I gave up a while ago and just disabled it so the whole system uses only the external; no problems since then.

I have had this problem in my area for the last 20+ years, and have tried a bunch of "cheap' things. A decade ago I had a housefire so there were a few upgrades I couldn't afford to do on my own, such as the double=pane insulated windows. Those will keep out the low-mid and higher parts of their sonic assault, but do nothing for the sub and main lows. I kept the thick (6"+) and dense foam blocks from all the couch cushions that the dogs (especially the St Bernards ) have...customized...over the decades, and by a wierd coincidence, they perfectly fit the insets of the windows (they are not only the same depth, but the same "width"!), and the closet doorway...so I use them stuffed into those, and that reduces leftover rattling of the windows (and closet door, and the echoes of the space in there) themselves to nothing. But it doesn't stop the bass and sub: All the earthquake-level sub booms and rumbles are conducted direclty into the structure of the building via the ground, so unless you can physically isolate the room from the structure and ground (probably very expensive, and probably requires special construction permits from the city to structurally alter the building that way), you probably can't get rid of them. The outside walls here are all cinderblock, but the inside ones are typical wallboard on woodframe, as is the cieling, so those all are vibrating to the conducted subbass crap. Adding mass helps (rubber mats/sheets, screwing heavy blocks to the wallbaord in the middle of the expanses between joists and studs, etc) a little, but I could only use whatever scrap came my way to do this so it was not consistent materials and not all that effective for all the work done (and all this was lost in the fire; I haven't been able to do it again in the decade since then, or most of the other soundproofing/trapping stuff I had done). Multiple layers of stiff wallboard, well-secured to each other, will help minimize the vibrations of the wallboard itself. If the room is already bass-trapped and shaped to keep the standing waves to a minumum, it'll help, but if yours are as loud as the assholes in my area, it's not enough. Here, some of them are so loud that from a block away they will still shake things off your walls and countertops; it sounds like an army is outside kicking the doors and walls in. Thankfully they usually only drive (slowly) thru the area with that, and don't sit there with it all day and night anymore, but sometimes one will jsut park their car or truck in the middle of the street, open up all their doors/hood/trunk/etc., and turn it all the way up and go in their house. It's pretty awful.

- Does a midi loopback driver count (to Sonar) as a hardware port for this purpose? If so, you could set the port output for that track to a loopback ouptut port (I use the Nerds.de one, but there are at least a few out there), and then set the synth's input to the loopback input port. (assuming your synths operate as required when "wired" this way; they should, but....)

Are you running low on space? If not, there's not really any need to do anything about the unused clips. If you really want to do it anyway, and your'e not low on space, you can first backup all of the data to some other drive (external to the computer, preferably, so you can disconnect it before doing any cleanup) as discussed above, then decide how you want to keep your projects around. If you use per-project audio folders, then open a project, and then SaveAs a new file in a whole new project folder. Say it's called Project1, you could SaveAs, and create a new folder called Project1Consolidated (or whatever), and SaveAs whatever you want to call the file like Project1ConsolidatedVersion1--112124.cwp. It will automatically create an Audio folder inside that folder just for the audio in *this version* of the file, and copy over *only* those files from the old version to the new one. Then, if you're sure you dont' want any of the old stuff, you can delete the old version including it's audio folder. (but I would only do that after doing a backup to an external drive, in case a mistake is made). You could also SaveAs a new file in the CWB format, the bundle, where it puts all the audio and file data all inside a single consolidated file. Then you can delete everything other than that file, for that project, and when you open this file it will separate stuff out as needed. But since it's a monolithic file, if anything gets corrupted in it, you can't just pull your audio clips out of it and start over--it's all trashed now. If you don't need to preserve all the little clips and just want access to the whole tracks, then select each track in a project and bounce all the clips together, so you have only one clip on each track. SaveAs the project as a new file name (don't save it over the top of your old file). Even if you aren't using Per Project Audio Folders this creates single larger files for each track inside your audio folder, which will have the current date and time in the file properties. When you're done doing this for all your projects, if you do it all on one day, then you can remove all the audio files that don't have today's date and time, and all the old project files not saved today. There are variations of all these you can experiment with to find your best strategy that works with your workflow, etc.