Glenn Stanton

someone mentioned a PCI-e x16 riser card where you could install dual m.2 drives, so if looking to create RAID or simply expand storage maybe look for that as well...

yes, i have a couple of projects coming up which need steel drums, so i bought them. they sound so much better than the SF2 i have been using over the years, and the hand tapping articulation is excellent. so for $28... the soundpaint version (also 8Dio) seems like it uses the same samples base (12.3GB) but the options and articulations is fewer. $15.

it looks like you're using sends in lieu of directly routing things: 1) vocals being sent to master (track output) + vocal buss (send) -- maybe set the vocal output to the vocal buss, then route the vocal buss to the master buss. eliminate the vocal send. 2) same for any other tracks going to busses - drop the send, and use the direct output routing. 3) if using a buss for shared usage (like reverbs, delays, parallel compression etc) then a send from the track (or buss) is ok. 4) all outputs eventually make it to the master either via a buss or via a direct output. sends are generally not your main routing to the master (from my master i have sends to my monitoring and print busses but all things to the master are direct outputs). it's one of the fun things about having nearly infinite routing options ?

there are some SF2 steel drums, but finding good quality simulations are (as you note) not cheap. and the cloud drums (which are cool) are not steel drums. https://github.com/jlearman/jSteelDrum1 (decent) https://musical-artifacts.com/artifacts?formats=sf2&tags=steel+drum (this is one i've used, it's ok) and one of the best ones: https://www.indigisounds.com/ (but $99...) ?

i don't really use groove clipping very often any more but in the past, i would set my loop recording to record however many measures i wanted, and then perform against that loop until i had the timing and performance right. then select that loop and groove clip it, then tweak beats if needed. using the looping record and making the effect to get clean performance on the beats (etc), gave me pretty decent groove clip results. one option is to use a MIDI clip of the beat trigger a sampler which you carefully have collected the sounds from your kit. sitara etc. will do the trick when you need an audio sample from something you own (and cannot directly trigger it with MIDI or control voltage simulating the pad strike into the controller)

W11 Pro has a number of better configuration options including using policy settings and services etc. that said, i've been using W11 Home on a laptop now for about 6 months and once the A/V exceptions added, and a few services turned off, the performance has been excellent, and in few cases, i simply use airplane mode to shutoff networking if i find some project/plugins are sensitive to the network interrupts happening (very few) when i'm rendering.

thanks for the script! ? i was being snarky though... i'll definitely try it out

hey! can you write a CAL script which removes HiHat note which is parallel to a Snare note to help thin down the drum MIDI ?

i got a positive grid Spark mini for a birthday present and it included the license for Prime OEM. of course this is a limited version. i don't see any option to view plugin details so i'll assume it's only in the Pro version. and for $399 i can upgrade to the Pro version ? or use the limited time Pro demo... or use my paid version of Plugin Doctor...

what's weird is i know some folks have heinous problems with iLok. for me, after nearly 20 years? the only problem i had was a number of years ago having a nearby lightning strike fry my iLok. lost a few licenses but managed to recover after much finagling with the vendors (and i could re-register on iLok). but the iLok (for me at least) has been some of the least troubling aspects in modern computing and licensing... but it's been indispensable for traveling and switching between systems. same for the Waves key (and i recommend a super premium USB key if you do that)...

EZK2 is working fine in my Cakewalk by Bandlab. latest version. W11.

yep, this ^^^^ my desktop was stable for 5 years before i bought the Abbey Road Chambers plugin. put it into a known working project. boom. stuttering, clicks, performance meters in the red... didn't think for a second it was my stable system since when i unloaded the plugin and used the Abbey Road Plate reverb, it was all fine. tried again on another project same issue... ? so, in general, if my system is stable, and i introduce a new or updated plugin and suddenly things are not right - i pretty much always assume its the plugin. so far, out of 100 tries: bad plugins: 0, stable system 100. ?

HA HA HA! yeah i'm going to reinstall an older OS and DAW in order to work around the bad plugin coding the company did... i would use the word f*cktards but that's not fair to the really nice f*cktards in the world. so. after buying their whole suite, basically i've mothballed them and in projects i had in progress, i replaced them with virtually no audible differences. so SoundToys will no longer be a part of my projects going forward.

yeah ASIO4ALL is valid, but only as a last resort. if the device company doesn't build or support an ASIO driver, or it's an older one no longer supported in the OS of choice, or the application you want to run has problems with buffer boundaries and cannot use regular ASIO or WASAPI drivers, then ASIO4ALL may be the answer.

thanks for this tip! i probably never encountered this since when i'm done with something like MIDI or Melodyne edits, and groove-looping etc, i always close the window before going on to the next thing (mostly same for effects windows as well). just habit after 20 years...

when i need to be surgical on an audio clip, i just use the right tools like audio file editors (SoundForge, Acoustica, RX, etc etc) and leave the DAW stuff for the, er, DAW stuff... nice that the paid $$$ version of Adobe Premiere Pro does that, but why not just use tools meant for the job?

and since that day is when Hades freezes over, my suggestion is for VST which don't support it (and anytime soon unless the developers have it in their roadmap), is to leverage things like templates, FX groupings (Waves, Cakewalk etc), and preset naming to enable rapid work. at the end of the day, if you're using something consistently in every project, just add it to your template and be done. oh, and nag the developers of your VST to get with the program, the, ah, erm, default program... ?

ah, good old hard coding makes the world go 'round (and 'round and 'round until you're dizzy and fall dead) ?

the "default" preset - actually a fair amount of my plugins have a "set as default" for presets and even the Pro Channel as a "set as default" option. and if you name your presets with ## <PRESETNAME> you can force sorting on the presets so even if there is not "default" find your own default in the list is super easy and fast - 000 DEFEAULT is at the top of my list even if i have a "set as default" option -- why? -- because after i select another to see if i like it better (and perhaps a better request is all VST have A/B option) i can rapidly switch back to my default...

i save presets all the time. not sure why it seems to be a struggle. in fact it's a good habit to save a preset once you find a setting you like for a given FX or instrument. i only have maybe 3 or 4 FX and VI which don't support saving them. and within a project, and whatever your last settings were when you saved it, generally, will be there when you re-open it. of course for safety's sake, making copious notes about the project (prefer in a text file and/or modern note taking app which may allow screenshots) is future proofing (and in some cases, mandated by clients and professionals downstream of your work).

did you have ripple edit on or off during the cut/delete operations? Cakewalk - Cakewalk Documentation - Ripple editing https://legacy.cakewalk.com/Documentation?product=Cakewalk&language=3&help=Arranging.33.html

you could plug the audio out on the keyboard in your IO unit, or, you could, with the right drivers for your keyboard, use a USB connection (sometimes it's audio, sometimes MIDI, sometimes both options). depends on your keyboard. and that choice will depend on your skills and expected use - piano -- people who play piano often like weighted keys, organ and synths, often prefer semi-weight or synth weight keys. MIDI controller vs keyboard w/ audio which has a number of sounds etc. and lastly -- budget for said device.

i gave up the Air products about 6 years ago because of lack of support and painful installs. Kontakt has two modes: Player and Full. if you have a "free" library which is for Full only and you try to play it, it typically will stop playing after 10 mins and you need to reload the instrument. so paying attention to the free libraries which support Player (and there are a lot and not - in terms of types and quality). so after a few years, i broke down and got the full version on a sale for $179 (including a bunch of the NI synth stuff and libraries). so, now all the worry about the free libraries which i would have to needed to try and render to audio within the 10 min time slot has gone away ? for Organ - CollaB3 is ok, the Arturia Lite has a limited B3 which is also ok, but also has some transistor organs which are nice (i finally bought the Pro package and the selection is quite nice). VL-122 is ok but 32-bit. not so much on the Kontakt side without paying some $$$. VB3 is my goto B3. I have the Vintage Organs library but it's not as nice (imho) as VB3. some nice free libraries: Heavyocity Sonicouture Hammersmith Free is nice grand piano Project Sam free orchestra my main investment in Kontakt has been the Session Guitar series (acoustic and electric ones + basses), the Hammersmith Pro (which sounds amazing), and the AAS Strum has libraries compatible with Kontakt. with Komplete Kontrol i can play with everything directly from my keyboard (S-49 Pro). so probably about $1000 worth of libraries over the past 2 years. look into Sine Player has some nice freebies.

yep, setting up your primary set of instruments all preset, routed, effects, etc etc in a template is the fastest way. i also use ## PRESETNAME to get my presets sorted floated to the top (a lot of the plugins seem to sort them, or stick them in weird places). so when i have a song with presets that i want to the top i'll use something like "00 AGUIT RHY 1" or "00 VOX DESS 1" etc etc saved to the top level of the presets (if it's an option). sometimes it very song specific (like a rhythm guitar) and other it's fairly generic to my vocals.

in general, unless i'm recording, i just set my buffers to 2048. make no difference to me when mixing. if i'm recording, i'll go as low as 64 or if i have FX on (rarely) then 128.