David Baay

What would you have the Track Inspector show when more than one track is selected? And what would you have the various controls do if they weren't hidden/locked? Yes, I know that the Clip and Track tabs of the Inspector will show 'multi' when more than one clip/track is selected with different parameter values, but there's a very limited set of situations in which this is useful, and that behavior wouldn't be applicable to the main Inspector view of the track/bus widgets or the Prochannel tab.

After a while, the separation of selection and focus becomes so ingrained that you don't even think about all the things it makes possible. Here are a couple that I'm aware of using regularly; - A selected track is the source for a copy/cut while the focused track is the target for a paste. Separating the two functions facilitates copy/cut/paste from one track/lane to another with keyboard shortcuts. - Separate focus lets you inspect and modify parameters on any track/bus without losing a selection you've made on another track or multiple tracks. If focus and selection were the same thing, the track inspector could only work when a single track/bus was selected.

Not sure this merits an exclamation point given that it's only a display bug, and that it's not typical to have a sustain controller at time zero (?). More problematic in my view (but still not really a big deal in practice) is that a sustain controller at the end of clip (the much more common case) is generally not visible in the clips pane. EDIT: Oops. Was thinking you meant the clips pane because it's a longstanding issue there with controllers at the end of a clip. EDIT 2: Now that I understand what you're talking about (the controller 'shaddow' disappearing), I think this was brought up a long time ago in another thread. Again, a pretty uncommon situation for sustain controllers, but more common with some others (e.g. setting initial, fixed values for Volume, Modulation or Expression). EDIT 3: Found it on the old forum. OP was wrong about there being any functional problem; it's only a display issue: http://forum.cakewalk.com/Midi-Controller-data-quotforgottenquot-after-about-1-12-minutes-m3255463.aspx

Timebase=Absolute only affects the start time of a MIDI clip, not the length, timing or duration of events within the clip. The only way to change tempo and have MIDI maintain its absolute timing in Cakewalk is to use Set Measure/Beat at Now. I've requested the ability to lock the absolute timing of a MIDI clip several times over the years, but never got it.

As I'm sure you know, MIDI Gain (Velocity Offset) is not a controller message. It will be applied to all notes in a track dynamically during playback, regardless of what channel they're on or what output channel is being forced by the Channel setting on the track. The Channel widget, labeled 'C', is visible when the Track Control Manager at the top of the Tracks pane is set to 'All' or 'I/O'. MIDI Volume, Pan, Chorus and Reverb controls are disabled by default until they've been moved. The disabled state is indicated by parentheses around the value displayed in the widget. This allows messages embedded in the MIDI track to take precedence. If no output Channel is set, Cakewalk will default to sending the relevant CC messages for these controls on channel 1 whenever you move them and every time playback starts. If you set a specific output channel, the messages will be sent with that channel.

No, changing the time signature is just going to divide the total number of quarter-note beats in the track into smaller or larger groups without affecting the absolute timing of playback or removing any material. To squeeze four beats of notes into three beats without removing any material you would need ot change the relationship between tempo and absolute time in a separate step. With audio, you can simply change the tempo of the project directly, but with MIDI, you would need to either drag-stretch (actually compress) the MIDI clip to fit the smaller number of beats without changing project tempo, or use Set Measure/Beat at Now to have Cakewalk re-calulate the start times and durations of note events to make them fit with a lower tempo. For example, to go from 4/4 to 3/4, after changing the time signature, snap the Now time to the note that used to be at 5:01 (Now at 6:02), hit Shift+M to open the Set Measure/Beat at Now dialog, and enter Measure 5, Beat 1. This will make what was previously 4 measures of 4/4 (16 beats) play back in the space of 4 measures of 3/4 (12 beats) with a project tempo that's 3/4 of what it was to start (e.g. 90bpm instead of 120bpm). If you actually want to throw away the notes in the last beat of every measure, you'll need to manually select and delete that material, with Ripple Editing enabled to close up the 'holes'.

Where people often get in trouble is when they using MIDI-generating plugins like Cthulu. If a track is set to Omni, it will respond to plugins generating or passing thru MIDI from the track driving them. Like you (apparently), I don't use such plugins, but I still consider it a 'best practice' to limit a track to respond to a specific source, and always make it a point to do that when setting up a new track.

One clue is that the noise seems to be getting processed by the reverb. So whatever the source, it's getting injected before (or at) that reverb . I agree it really sounds like a plugin in demo mode.

In addiiton to disabling Zero Controllers, proactively set a MIDI Volume level in the MIDI track (or on the MIDI tab of the Track Inspector for an Instrument track). By default MIDI volume is disabled, and the synth volume is free to change in response to CC7 messages from other sources like your keyboard controller. that can stil hapen, but every time you start playback, Cakewalk will reset it. Also, to prevent stray MIDI messages from sources other than your controller from being echoed to Kontakt, always set the Input of the track to the specific port and channel on which your keyboard is sending rather than Omni - All. If all else fails, create flatline MIDI controller envelopes on the track for CC1 Modulation, CC7 Volume, and CC11 Expression.

Cakewalk is not the right tool for this. It can be done with MIDI-driven synths, but for audio, there is no recording configuration that will replay previous takes while loop-recording without restarting the transport. As an experiment, I found I could pull it off using a delay FX with a very long delay based on the tempo and number of bars in the loop, but it's awkward to set up, and you can't arbitrarily define the length of the loop while performing; you have to set it in advance, and play to a click. Better to use a DAW that's optimized for this kind of thing like Abelton Live as rsinger suggested... or a hardware looper.

Since the main burden on system resources of running a soft synth is due to the processing and memory requirements of the synth plugin itself, using a different host is unlikely to significantly reduce the overall CPU load or memory footprint. As a point of reference, Cakewalk with TruePianos running with a WASAPI buffer of 3ms takes up less than 200MB and about 8-10% CPU while playing (realtime or existing MIDI playback) on my crummy i5 laptop with the UI minimized to the taskbar to remove the graphical load. TTS-1 takes up only about half that - 100MB RAM, and 5-6% CPU.

Arpeggiator inadvertently enabled on the track?

I had the same issue with the VST3 version of Chromaphone. The VST2 was fine. Sometime after updating my Nvidia drivers I saw the thread below, and tried the VST3 again, and found that the problem had gone away:

Some of this post is specific to the OP's case (like the starting tempo), but the steps are generally applicable to aligning a timeline to existing audio or MIDI. In your case, you can stop at "When it sounds good throughout":

In Cakewalk, a 'beat' is always a quarter note. A 6/8 measure is only 3 beats long. The metrome will click on 8ths, but the tempo is quarters/minute, and you can't tap a tempo in 8ths. Three simple ways to match the tempo are: 1. Import the audio, and use Set Measure/Beat at Now (Shift+M) to tell CbB where the bar lines fall. Or 2a. Disable Stop at Project End so that the transport can run with no content in the project. 2b. Hit spacebar, and count out 4 measures as you listen to the recording. 2c. Hit spacebar again to stop the transposrt on 5:01, and set that measure and beat with Shift+M. Or 3. Import the audio and drag-drop the clip on the timeline, and let Melodyne extract the tempo. This last option may not work well with a 6/8 tempo. Melodyne may read it as 3/4, and sometimes it will set a double-time tempo even when it gets the beat value right. Higher versions of Melodyne can be tweaked to address this, but the Essentials demo that can be installed from Bandlab Assitant doesn't have those features. If you're just looking for an approximate match to re-record everything from scratch, option 2 is the easiestl (easier to do than to describe). This is what I often use to match a new project to something I've been improvising, and am ready to record. Or, since I record mostly MIDI, I'll record without a click, and set the project to the MIDI with Set Measure/Beat at Now, and then flatten any tempo variation that I don't want to keep - also easier to do than to describe in detail. I can point you to a previous post if you're interested in that approach. You can make the metronome click on 8th notes,

Oh, c'mon... - Ability to run a lower ASIO buffer in a given project without crackles/dropouts? - More even load-balancing across cores? - Faster/smoother GUI response? - Faster edit/bounce/freeze/export processing? - Projects open/save/close more quickly? - ...?

I would suggest it's just common courtesy to share the bandwidth of the front page of the songs forum, and not post so many individual threads so quickly that one is taking up an undue fraction of the available 'slots'. If one really has no interest in self-promotion, gratification or getting feedback on individual tunes with the goal of improving them, why not just link a bunch of stuff in a single post or just link the top level of your site? I would also suggest that one needs to be doubly conscious of this when posting stuff from a large historical body of work. It seems to me that the primary intent of the forum is to showcase, celebrate and engage in critiquing what people are actively working on at the moment.

Define "better".

It probably is time it came up, given how the thread has evolved, but the OP was asking specifically about acoustic guitar VSTis for parts he had already transcribed to MIDI from acoustic guitar. I assume guitar trackers are optimized to work with DI signals from e-guitar pickups.

Sounds like a plan. A big part of making a sampled/synthesized patch of a real instrument sound convincing is playing with articulation, voicing and melodic countours appropriate to the instrument. Rhythm guitar strumming patterns are difficult or impossible to simulate in real time on a keyboard; finger-picking is easier.

Is this an audio loop that's been rolled out or a normal audio clip with looping enabled in the timeline? If it's looping in the timeline, possibly you're hearing a phasing shift against another track/bus as the timing drifts with each iteration. Otherwise it's pretty hard to envision a mechnism by which the pitch of a 'loop' would drop with every iteration.

Wow. Nice work there, ZincT. Guitars sound great, and vocals are not too shabby, either. ;^) I'm still resisisting buying a full version of Kontakt, but some of the libraries do sound pretty dang good. EDIT: I see OTS supports Kontakt Player. Will keep it in mind.

I'd be interested in having a go at helping you analyze the timing of a track. I mostly record without a click now and snap the timline to the performance after the fact if necessary to quantize or add parts that need to follow a rubato performance. The rhythms of my stuff also tend toward jazz/swing and odd time signatures with inter-mingled triplet and straight 8ths or 16ths. I've gotten pretty good at figuring out what's going on after the fact, often not even being aware of time signature or oddball tuplets (e.g. 3 in the time of 5 16ths) that I'm playing while improvising. PM me if you want to share something.

Which MOTU? I run a 2408 mkii with a PCIE-424, and have not seen this. You might also try resetting the config file completely, using the Reset button in Preferences. A backup is made automatically so you can restore if the reset doesn't help, or compare old and new files if it does. Could also be something about the specific project or template from which is was created.

If I'm understanidng correctly that the clips are not showing any note 'lines', the only think I can imagine is that the track is scaled such that they're not in view. Double-click the scale between the tracks pane and the clips pane to restore full scale. I don't have any bright ideas about the staff view.