Amberwolf

Thanks! I'll try them out; there are a number of Splat UI things I find hard to see/use, and was going to start experimenting, but if yours save me time with that it would really help even if I still have to change stuff. I'm still using older versions (7, 6, etc), partly because Splat's UI is...less than useful for me, and the toolbars are pretty much all wrong my usage and needs (I need things to be in the same places so i can just use it and not have to fix mistakes from doing things that "always" worked...don't see a way to do that in Splat, so will have to just disable all the toolbars to keep them out of harm's way and do things with keybindings). But at least I can see how much of the UI can be fixed with your themes. Splat has useful features not in my versions, so I can at least use them if I do it this way, and still do the majority of my stuff in the versions that work the way I need them to.

I'd like to try some of htem out on my old Splat, if you still have them up somewhere. (I thought there was a link in your signature for them, but I must be thinking of someone else as I don't see it now).

When you open the previously saved versions of the same file, are the tracks still in their folders?

Colors and customization is *essential* functionality for various users (the percentage of which I wouldn't begin to guess), including myself. People wouldn't be asking for it if they didn't need it.

I used to have this happen on a system I used for watching videos / dvds / tv shows, where for constant output volume I used Hermann Seib's VSThost program (which itself doesn't have a problem) to host just hte MDA multiband (which itself doesn't have a problem) using the computer's onboard audio...over time a delay would build up and build up, desyncing vidoe and audio , and crackles would get worse and worse. No driver version or method would make a differenc,e neither did buffers, etc. HS'VST host has an Engine restart button, and I just learned to use that to resync things. Later I used a different host LightHost, problem remained but LH doesn't have an engine restart button, so you have to exit it and restart it. Both setups use VBcable audio virtual cable to connect between the host and whateve rprograms were being used, then the onboard audio driver was the direct output of the host. VBcable has a number of settings, but none of htem made a difference either. I never used a different VC, so maybe that would've fixed it, but I doubt it--I expect it was just something in the audio driver itself. A few different audio interfaces were tried, to no change; a little USB "behringer" thing from goodwill, and the audio of an external display box by Targus (actualy two different ones) I never figured out for sure what the issue was; just had to use the workarounds. EDIT for clarity: That system wasn't used for DAW work, just general use. Later I tested on the DAW system, but not with the DAW audio interface, or at the same time as using the DAW itself. Same results if I used it long enough (hours, days, etc).

l;et us know if those didn't work so we can figure somethng else out

A layout is just a way to choose how the plugins in any particular place youc an insert them (fx bins, synthrack, etc0 will be displayed, and which ones, so you could folderize them in various ways, etc. It does not change which kinds of plugins can be inserted into which bins--that's determined by the plugin itself. EDIT: see below the stricken-out stuff below for probably better instructions: Hopefully I'm wrong and this has changed with modern versions of Sonar, but AFAIK you can only insert "MFX" into a midi fx bin, so if the plugin you want to use there does not show up in the plugin manager under the MFX category, it can't be inserted into a midi fx bin, so VST's can't be used directly in midi tracks. You can insert a VST that has a midi out into the synthrack as a synth, choosing to enable it's midi out in the process if it isn't already. Then in the midi track you want to record it's output in, you set the input port to that VST's output. If youw ant to hear it live you'd have to enable the input monitoring on that track. I don't have the plugin youve got there, so I can't give you routing specifics, but you might be able to make it work like this: go into the plugin's own settings / etc and set the input to come from a speicfic port, as I don't think Sonar outputs MIDI to a VST (unless modern versions now do this). Use an external midi loopback driver outside Sonar, (like Tobias's loopMidi, etc), and set the midi track(s) to send to that instead of whateve rsynth they're driving, and then set the VST's input to read that port. Then the VST outputs to it's own port, and that feeds whatever tracks or synths you want it's data to be processed or used by. I'ts been a while since I experimented with it, but I think I had to do that with hypercyclic? Sorry i don't recall all the details anymore. EDIT: Google's Ai thingy says it's simpler than that:

Well, the point was that if you are using 2-prong wall connnections, then you probably won't experience the issue with them, beause the problem is probably a ground loop via the third pin on the regular comptuer's ac cord. (since the problem went away when you used a two prong adapter for it). So ther'es something in the grounding of the overall electrical system, probably of the room itself, that is likely the root cause. Could be in the pc itself, but it "takes two to tango" for msot of the ground loop problems I've run across so something else at the audio end would also be involved.

While making a milkshake in the kitchen, and using a vintage hand juicer as a strainer to get the strawberry powder out of an oatmeal packet into a bit of tupperware, the sound it was making begged to be percussion, so I took it into the quietest room and recorded it with my phone, transferred those to the computer, and edited bits of them into this project here and there. Bonus points if you can find them. 073025: 073425 000001 200148z -- added oatmeal tupperware shakers and vintage juicer percussion, other tweaks, etc. EDIT: apparently it's not actually a juicer, it's a potato-ricer.... :lol: :oops:

Somebody told me that the AI likes it too 😆

Thanks! I'm still adding touches here and there (like the servo sounds (from the servos for my wolfy-bot) as a subtle underlay for the weird neurofunk-bass sound I used in the beginning and here and there throughout the song). Still working on making the "orchestral" percussion pieces more realistically played. Don't really know how to do it so am just experimenting until it sounds right--some of it's done, some still in progress. Any bits you happen to hear "off" if you can post a time for them I can fix them. Still taking tiny pieces out, too, or turning parts down (or individual notes) to better smooth things out where needed.

Do the mini pc's use two pronged ac adapter cords? Or do they use a 3 prong cord directly to the back of the pc case (no external ac adapter block)?

The most likely problem is a driver, probably an audio driver, that auto updated to soemthing broken or incompatible with something else. Not much, but a place to start, perhaps. Noel Borthwick just posted this thread https://discuss.cakewalk.com/topic/89074-using-microsoft-windbg-to-capture-crash-dumps-when-one-is-not-automatically-saved/?do=getNewComment that shows how to setup to capture crash logs, you may be able to use those to find out which thing is causing the crash in each case.

FWIW, holding down a key causes the keyboard to repeat the key. Some keyboards, like the tecware rgb I use (found at goodwill for a few bucks, is worth every penny ), can have their repeat rates programmed. If you have one of these types of customizable keyboards, and can slow the rate down it may help you make an impossible thing into something much more normal. If you don't have this kind of keyboard, you may be able to still decrease the repeat rate in the Ease of Access panel in Windows.

Before my housefire over a decade ago, this house was wired such that some outlets in some rooms were wired to one side of the junction box, and others to the other side. Some had grounds, some did not. Some had hot and neutral or even ground swapped. Some had one outlet in the pair actually disconnected inside the box, where the little snip tabs were cut, but the other outlet was wired to "nothing"--it had romex to it, but it only went a foot or two up the wall, and ended.... All sorts of wierd stuff. (in the decades prior to my residence, it had been rewired by an "engineer" 👀 according to the landlord (why the LL hadn't fixed all that, knowing it was there, I dunno)). I fixed all those pretty quick as soon as I found them, but I found them because wiring up my computers and audio gear and stuff in my room would pop breakers (becuase they were interconnected via various grounds in the cables, or even some old gear (or it's ac adapters) that had the neutral wired to the case and internal grounds, effectively connecting neutral to ground....so outlets wried backwards were effectively shorting across hot and neutral and ground! (at least it was better than the previous place, which literally had a single 20A screw in fuse for the *entire house*...it had probably been built around the early 50's, while the place I'm in now was probably the late 60s or early 70s. I don't really remember the details of the farmhouse I lived in before that in rural texas but the power went out all the time and was shared with a water well pump for the landlord's cattle ponds so we had to pay for that electricity, and resulted in more than one impossible bill when the pump failed (shorted? dunno, I was too young and didn't know enough electrical stuff then).

Files that suddenly change which folder they're in is usually a sign of the tables on the drive that store where things actually are vs the pointers that say where they are vs where all the little piece of the actual file data are, are corrupted. In this event, you can often "find" files by name, but when you attempt to open they methey are often damaged, corrupt, or unreadable because they dont' actually contain the data that is associated with that filename. That's usually a hardware problem, usually a drive issue. Very occasionally it is an operating system issue. Regarding the upgrade...I highly recommend first cloning your entire harddisk to an entirely new harddisk (that you first run a complete surface test of). Then remove your existing harddisk completely, and put the clone in and boot it up to make sure it works. *then* upgrade *that new drive*. You will have a working copy of your old system and data in the one you removed, and you will have a new working system with whatever changes you want to make to it, so youc an swap between them if necessary to troubleshoot issues. Most computers these days support OS boot from a USB device, so if you use a good external USB case for the new drive during the copy process (instead of one of those transfer-only type cables without a case), you can then swap the two drives so the old one is now external, and can be kept safely in a drawer somewhere when not actually in use. But when you need to test someting old OS vs new, to figure out what's going wrong (even though that *never* happens ), you can just set your computer to boot from external USB and connect that old drive up. If you're lucky enough to have eSATA connectors on the computer, you can get a drive case that uses those instead of USB.

Given the response to my last thoughts I posted, I'm not sure it's good idea to even reply, but I'll put it out there: I don't know what drivers expose or what apps can actually see internally....is there a way to code Sonar to tell what the audio driver actually is, and simply "firewall" out all the known problem drivers, so that when Sonar is about to enumerate / test / etc all the drivers, it simply ignores any that are in the problem list. The list could be kept in the aud.Ini file instead of being hard-coded so that if a user actually has to use or test one of them for some reason, that line could be commented out. I'm sure someone has already thought of and discarded this idea, but in case not.... (puts firesuit on)

Does the track correctly include when you do a non-realtime-export? If not, it might ebe a synth that doesn't respond well to fast bounce function, and you might have ot temporarily turn that off when you freeze it (IIRC in freeze options) so that it does a realtime freeze, which is essentially the same as playing it back live and should work normally.

If it's helpful, there are a bunch of threads already discussing this, with clear answers in them. Most are titled clearly enough to find by just that.

Keep in mind that every moment you use the computer, the OS and programs are potentially writing files to the disk. Since it doesn't think the space where your stuff is is being used, it is allowed to overwrite that space. So in a data loss situation, the first thing to do is not to use the drive your stuff might still be on. Get a recovery program you can run from a USB stick, or get the drive to a different computer where it is not a drive the system would write to, and run the recovery from there. If you don't have a separate computer you can do these things with, see if any of your friends are willing to let you use theirs, or take it to a data recovery specialist (will likely not be cheap). The most likely issue is the drive itself has a problem, and the system slowness is from it having to repeatedly try to read areas that are failing or damaged. Plenty of other things could be wrong instead, but that's really common.

My brother says it's Depeche Mode meets Amberwolf meets some other band he doesn't remember the name of.... I started out just messing around with sounds, as usual, and ended up with this. I'ts now undergone extensive editing, recomoposition, mix, added vocal tracks, accents, environmental fx and transitions added, reworked percussion, mix, etc. and is definitely ready for public listening and feedback is desired. https://amberwolf.bandcamp.com/track/even-if-i-could-tell-you I'd guess I have about 24-26 hours total into editing this one, over the last three days. Not as much as I've spent on some good tracks, but this one has turned out pretty good. Might still be some changes coming here and there, but probably only tweaks to timing of certain bits of percussion and adjsutments to some note volumes here and there. For those interested in the process: There's almost none of hte orignal clips I started with left intact in there. Most of them have been seriously chopped up, stretched, squeezed, pitch shifted, processed, etc. The "weird" bassline sound at the beginning was from some Neurofunk collection at BlackOctopus that came free with something else. I can't stand the NF stuff in there, but the sound was interesteing, so I cut out all the glitches and wierd stuff, and reassembled the pieces into my own bassline starter. Some of the wierder short bits ended up as tiny "distortion guitar" hits, though it isn't a guitar, you can hear them quietly in the background of the slower part of the intro a couple of times. They also underlay a couple of points in the early vocals to help with the character. The early vocals, especially the middle-deeper phrases just over a minute and a quarter in, are not male vocals, they're some operatic-style stuff from I tImage Sounds - Cinematic Choir, chopped up and pitch shifted down almost two octaves, with other pieces less shifted in parallel with them on a different more reverbed track. The super shifted stuff sounds AWFUL and completely unvocal like on it's own, but it sounds exactly like I wanted it to in the mix...wierd. The rest of the parts were only shifted down a few notes after being chopped/stretched/squished. The later vocals are from antoehr Ghosthack bundle, Origin - Arabic - Kit 06 - Ghosts Of The Past, again hacked and chopped and shfited etc. The end vocals are from a different set, I think some of them are from a Ghosthack bundle "Alley" in the adlibs part. Some of the really deep almsot growly throat hums that start it all off were also from Ghosthack bundle, Origin - Arabic but were from the "male vocals low throats" section. I prefer using Ghosthack stuff because they provide wet and dry for most things, so I can use the dry ones to chop up cleanly for pitch/etc changes. The ones with fx already in them are really hard to do this convincingly, so there are a lot of especially vocal bits in other companies' libraries that I eitehr have to use as-is, or hide the transitions in changes with a lot of other stuff going on, etc. Some I can't use at all unless I use them whole. I think most fo the orchestral percussion started out as a loop in one of the Shymer packs from Ghosthack, but it didnt' fit any of the bassline I ended up creating, so it's completely chopped up and rebuilt to fit the various parts of the song, so it changes a lot throughout. Some other parts I used for pieces of the bassline were from Ghosthack's Cinematic Essentials. The main pulse bassline that begins maybe halfway thru startted from there, then was run thru Bifilter2 with various automation to help it fit around the other parts I'd already made. Same with some of hte other background "synth" parts chopped up into bits to stick behind things to give me the sound and notes I wanted. The main "arp lead" is actually an ostinato string part from Ghosthack's Cinematic Essentials, that was made for a lower tempo, so when I stretched it to fit this project's 140bpm it ended up grainy and wierd, but it fit the style. To get rid of the worst of the high end harshness from that process, I fed it to the bass2 buss that isn't filtered as heavly as the main bass buss, which results in the sound you hear in the first half. In the second half I copied it to another track that feeds a "normal" bus but has all the bass filtered out with Sonitus Multiband compressor by turning off the bottom two bands. (becuase these are the bands left audible in the other track). Then I crossfade between the two, neither going completely in or out, to change the sound for various parts of the last half of the song without having to recreate the part in a different instrument. The secondary intertwining bits that sometimes sound like pizzicato strings, sometimes like banjos or whatever, are celli pizz string bits from the same bundle as the above. There's quite a few little sounds and transition FX that came from various parts of the SampleTraxx bundles, though none of them were used as the original clip; they were either mangled or thye were overlaid with others from other places, or other sounds I had or made. There are some muted-sounding sections, like under the intro...those came because when you solo a track, it also has to open up any busses that it feeds to the mains thru, and when I soloed one track to hear it, I found that sound,w hcih was perfect for those places. I just left the track soloed, muted it's clips temporarly, and exported the whole project as just that mostly-muted and quiet to a wave file to keep as a "knocks and ticks" track to bring in for certian parts of the whole thing. Then improted it into a new track that feeds the master bus as-is, though I also put an eq on it to filter some bits out in places, and automated volume eerywhere to turn it on and off and fade it as needed. Orignal version (just a sketch of the idea from a couple hours into the process) still over at: https://soundclick.com/share.cfm?id=15064964 For the cover art, my trusty "AI" image creation tools failed me completely on this one, so I resorted to the ancient paintshop pro 6 to first make very dark one of the oldest of the orignal AI images I had made sometime last year, that didn't make the cut for anything else because it was totally wrong for whate I was doing then, especially since the "wolves" it made for the stage performers were weird versions of humans with sort of screwed up wolf like heads and extra limbs and whatnot. It's still wrong now, but darkened more than 90%, then erasing all the stuff in the top third, and the sides, leaving just bare outlines so you can't see all the wierdness then I used lots of dodging, burning, selections, hue-to-target, etc, to eventually get the image you see above. So this one has at least a couple of hours of actual art creation in it. If I'd had time I would have done a much better job, but it will be seen at the size above for most viewers looking at the bandcamp page, or even smaller, so the detail didn't really matter. The fullsize version can be seen by clickign on the alburm art whiel on the bandcamp page for the song itself. When I figure out what to call the present track, :oops: I'll add a title in a similar style at the bottom across the audience, but instead of glowing fire it will be shadow just back-edge-lit by the blue stage lights and fiery Amberwolf sign over the stage. . Edit: now has a title, so updated artwork below It also potentially has lyrics, if the rest of the story can be coaxed out of my brain. What I have so far (not much): I could tell you everything xxand it still wouldn't matterxx xxwouldn't matter at allxx i could tell you everything and it just wouldn't matter even if i could tell you I wouldn't know how even if i could tell you wouldn't believe me anyway even if i could tell you I would never get it right even if i could tell you tell you tell you tell you tell you tell you tell you even if i could tell you the difference would be slight in how you would see me in whether you would care in how that you'd treat me in how that I would fare I could tell you everything and it still wouldn't matter even if i could tell you there still be nothing there If I could just keep you in the dark If you didn't know the things I do then maybe i could join you there and peace could come to me Even if i could tell you I'd still just walk the line between life and death that lies between us between me and the rest of you even if i could tell you how would i achieve anything of value because i know you see you see you see you see you see nothing in this face nothing in these eyes nothing that is me reflects in your mind your mind your mind your mind your mind )

Exactly....that is the kind of problem I run into everytime I use virtually anything. I just used PSP6 to create this, and when trying to create the Amberwolf "sign" on the stage, I started out trying to do it by vector on a separate layer, but it simply wouldn't do anything (other than create an outline, in black, never taking the color I assigned it); I guess I've forgotten how to do that. So I just used the regular tool on the actual image layer to create a selection mask, then inverted the selection and used dodge, burn, hue to target, gamma, etc until I got what you see there. The spotlights were done the same way, but no selections were made for those, I just kept using the tools in dots and streaks until they gave the right impression, and idd some dodge on each of the players I'd darkened to hide all the wierdness, etc. (see below). The line in the middle was a hue-to-target with the brick wall texture, to try to look like a really dim bank of lights behind everything. I was going to detail it with stuff but you couldn't've seen that in the result anyway., so I didn't waste the time. Summary from my "variety mix" thread over here (which is really for the song the cover art is for). The idea was to get across the start of the song as the completely dark stage below the sign begins to be lit as the deep sounds come up, then as the beat begins, some of the other backing lights would slightly light with the pulse, and everything begins to brighten as the song continues, lighting each player more as their parts come in, etc. (you know, a typical show). But, like the song, kept a little on the dark side.... It's still wrong now, but darkened more than 90%, then erasing all the stuff in the top third, and the sides, leaving just bare outlines so you can't see all the wierdness then I used lots of dodging, burning, selections, hue-to-target, etc, to eventually get the image you see above. So this one has at least a couple of hours of actual art creation in it. If I'd had time I would have done a much better job, but it will be seen at the size above for most viewers looking at the bandcamp page, or even smaller, so the detail didn't really matter. The fullsize version can be seen by clickign on the alburm art whiel on the bandcamp page for the song itself. When I figure out what to call the present track, :oops: I'll add a title in a similar style at the bottom across the audience, but instead of glowing fire it will be shadow just back-edge-lit by the blue stage lights and fiery Amberwolf sign over the stage. .

Does changing the preset to something different on the Breverb help with the noise? I have occasionally had various plugins over the years suddenly develop some wierd sound that they shouldn't be able to generate....saving my preset as a new one, then changing to some other preset makes the noise go away, and then changing back tot he saved preset still works. Once or twice I've had to actually remove the plugin from the fx bin then reinsert it instead.

Easy to fix in the Keybindings in preferences.

Best guess is WU changed how windows works so the driver for it doesn't work with your version of windows anymore, or WU automatically updated the motu driver to a different version that doesn't work right. Or WU updated some other driver for something else that is now interfering. Or WU resurrected some previously uninstalled or disabled driver for something else that is now interfering. Etc. You can try going into device manager and reverting relevant things there, or if your version of Windows allows it you can try rolling back the update(s). (but any of those things could break the system, possibly to the point it won't boot, if something goes wrong, so backup your stuff first just like you would (should) before any updates are done). Stuff like that is why nothing on my systems and devices is allowed to update itself, ever, if it's working it's working. (if it's a program that doesn't disallow this, I won't use it).