Starship Krupa

Wow, glad to see some activity with the Focusrite Collective after such a long period of none.

Oh that T RackS installer. If you don't have T Racks MAX you are blessed with demo (unregistered) versions of every plug-in you don't already own. If you delete them, the next time you get a T RackS license you'll have to run the installer all over again, at which time they'll all be back. So instead of deleting the demo versions, I created a T RackS bullpen folder and move them to it. If I get a license for one of them, I copy it back to the VST3 folder and register it.

I guess you've already figured out: the tone control is a lowpass filter. You're only going to notice its effect when there's enough high frequency information to "miss." Round wound strings are WAY brighter than flat wounds, and what's coming from that bridge pickup also has more high-end frequency content.

It's now become something to consider when deciding whether to buy (or keep in the case of freebies) software: how much crap does the installer shovel vs. the thing I actually want to use? I don't mind installing installation managers, but I won't allow services that aren't needed by the plug-in.

+1 I usually avoid "forum no votes" on feature requests, but the clip context menu is already HUGE.

I was puzzled at first about what you were referring to in the "track view." Then I realized you were talking about the pair of console strips that by default appear to the left of Track View. That box to the left of the Track View has its own name, Inspector. I believe you're talking about Inspector. It's already possible to choose which console strip modules to display in Inspector, and a cool thing about it is that this setting can be different between Console and Inspector. Click on the Display button at the lower left of Inspector and you'll see the options, which include the ability to disable module resizing.: As you see, you can remove Sends and ProChannel, per your request, along with everything else except the track name. Unfortunately no matter what other modules you remove, FX Rack is still limited in the number of FX it can display, So there's your feature request: allow the FX Rack to show as many FX as space permits.

There's an aspect of this that still constitutes a feature request: there should be a way to also suppress display of notes that are in muted lanes, not just muted clips. It's easier to mute an entire lane than it is to mute all of the individual clips in a lane.

Word of caution: the installer includes the "Universal Audio Helper Service," which is set to start automatically. I disabled it and the plug-in is still functional. And it is a pretty nice 1176 clone. I think at the moment, I have at least 5 services set to manual start that were originally installed by some plug-in manufacturer or other and invariably set to automatic start. Native Instruments (2X), Arturia, UA, Antares, Softube. Two more that I allow to run, the PACE service and Waves Local Server. None of the disabled services prevent the associated plug-ins from working, although most of the companies' installer programs will complain if they're not running. This seems silly to me. There are plenty of services on my systems that the programs that need them start on demand.

Yes

I believe that the Pro 40 can be used as a standalone powered mixer, if that's what you mean by "passively." With a 2i4 you wouldn't be able to simultaneously route its individual channels to the DAW to get more than the 2i4's 2 tracks. However, if you get a USB interface with ADAT input, such as the Scarlett 16i16, which by itself has only 2 inputs, the Pro 40 can be used as an expander to add 8 more channels via its ADAT output. This is how I plan on using mine if Firewire finally does go away, or if I switch to a computer that can't accept expansion cards. In this scenario, all software chores are handled by the USB device's driver and control panel. The Pro 40 would be sending data to the USB device, which would pass it on to the host device using its USB connection. This is already in common use, Focusrite's OctoPre is one of many ADAT expanders designed to be used that way. Another development that might be an extinction-level event for me and Firewire would be if Microsoft's planned audio-optimized USB driver for Windows 11 actually does what Pete Brown thinks it can (shown by independent testing). At that point, I might get a 16i16 or an Audient iD14, a USB interface similar to the 16i16 but less expensive, also only 2 preamps of its own, with channel ADAT input. Brand doesn't matter, to the Audient, or any other interface with ADAT in, what comes in via ADAT is just raw data, it doesn't care who the manufacturer was. One caveat is that you might need to use a Firewire-equipped computer one last time to configure the Pro 40's routing, so that all inputs are routed straight to their corresponding ADAT outputs. If you haven't changed the routing from stock, that probably wouldn't be a problem. Yet another possibility would be a USB interface that also has S/PDIF input, since the Pro 40 has S/PDIF out. That would only add 2 more channels to whatever the new interface already had, but it would still be a worthy use for a Pro 40. So you see, whatever happens, there's no reason to toss a working Pro 40 or any other recording interface that can output its channels via ADAT. It should still have plenty of life left in it switched to expansion duty. While it's true that a new Scarlett 16i16 costs about $150 more than a 2i4, even Behringer's cheapest 8 channel ADAT preamp is $150. Focusrite's OctoPre is $500 and has similar preamps to the Pro 40. The 16i16 also has 8 pin DIN MIDI, which is a must-have feature for me. I wonder how many working 8 channel Firewire interfaces have been chucked due to Firewire fear that could still be in use as 8 channel ADAT expanders. I hate to see anything go to waste.

This. If you want to know more about Thunderbolt 3 to Firewire connections, I believe that @Jim Roseberry has experience with that.

It doesn't seem to be working in Cakewalk Sonar. But you say it used to work? Really, if it worked the same as with audio clips, that would help a LOT. Sounds like a fresh bug report is in order?

I think that it could work better than it does now with even some small changes. When doing splits using the Split Tool, there's an option to "split any underlying MIDI notes when you split clips, and insert MIDI chase events (such as continuous controllers, Pitch Wheel, and Patch Change) at the split position." Assuming that this works as advertised, perhaps it could also apply to the automatically-created splits that Sonar creates in Comping Mode. edit: Hmm, I just tried that and it didn't work the way I expected. Of course, my expectations for this seem to be out of whack with how things actually are....

Until such time as we relinquish control to our AI overlords, I usually make my loop section a bit longer than it needs to be in order to help avoid this. MIDI recording seems to get more fidgety the further I get from doing one take at a time and stopping in between, but hey, gotta love those editing tools!

I think what you need to do is expand your take lanes (the button is in the lower left corner of the track header, as highlighted in screen grab): This should show you all of your takes, organized as clips in each lane. As you see in the screen grab, take lane headers include Mute and Solo buttons. Your clips also have their own mute, in order to toggle a clip's mute, click on its upper half to select it, then press "K."

Yes, you have answered it for me, but only in regard to audio takes. And for audio takes, it makes sense (not that I wouldn't love to be able to switch it off as in Sound on Sound recording, but that's another matter). I was specifically trying to get clarity on how it works for MIDI. Although they mostly work the same, there are some important differences that I'm trying to sort out. I can only defer to their greater understanding and agree that as currently implemented, it doesn't appear to be suited for MIDI. What I was experiencing was a feature, just one that doesn't work as well as it might. This was actually my goal. I want to record a series of takes, in loop mode and/or one at a time, and then edit the parts into one finished part, by doing manual cut, paste and copy moves on the clips, along with individual note editing and drawing in the PRV. I wasn't recording MIDI in Comping Mode because I wanted to use the Sonar comping workflow on MIDI data, I recorded in Comping Mode because I didn't want to hear the previous takes. Now, thanks to your input and assurance that yeah, it's supposed to work that way, it just doesn't do it in a way that accomplishes what I want to do, I've worked out a method for doing what I want to do. My solution is to record the first, looped takes in Comping Mode. This way, previous takes are muted, and the notes are within nice, full-width clips. Then if I want to do a shorter take, I switch to Sound on Sound and mute the previous lanes (oh Smart Swipe, how I do love thee) before recording. Simple, no hassle. I suspect that if I were to flip back into looped recording, I would run afoul of the automatic clip split feature. I always use separate synth and MIDI tracks when working with MIDI. While I understand the value of the Simple Instrument track type in keeping things....simple, whenever I tried to use one I somehow always wound up splitting it anyway. And yes, Sound on Sound Mode is now part of my MIDI workflow. I concur. Sonar does MIDI so well (with a couple of exceptions cough drum maps cough) I was puzzled as to how things could go so pear-shaped. Turns out it's a feature, not a bug; I was using it incorrectly.

Yet the mode exists, and as far as I can tell, there's no description of what to expect in the documentation. Doing the editing manually is exactly what I want, but I also want to record takes without hearing all of the previous takes. As I said.... I've brought up similar issues in the past with Cakewalk/Sonar's recording modes, getting splits that I didn't ask for and other oddness, with both MIDI and audio recording. One of the questions that I've never gotten an answer to is "why is Sonar making these splits in the first place?" If I understood the logic behind it, I might be able to avoid it, or at least it would seem less like the program is fighting me. Since the behavior looks arbitrary (to me), I have a hard time working around it. From the way people talk about it, it seems like Sonar is designed to do that, automatically make these splits at certain points. Does the program assume that I always want to make an edit at the beginning and end of a newly-recorded clip? So it tries to help by making splits in all the existing clips? I can't find any description in the documentation of how these automatic splits are supposed to fit in a workflow. That is not working here. When I swipe across either in the top half of the clip (I-beam cursor) all it does is select the clips, when I swipe across the lower half (comping cursor), it selects them, unmutes them, and mutes all of the clips in the other lanes. No healing. In neither case does it stitch the clips back together. The only thing that works is deleting all but the leftmost clip in the lane, then dragging the remaining clip's right edge out until the notes are restored. This gets tedious when I have to do it for multiple takes. It gets out of hand quickly with a higher count of takes. It's not just a matter of tidiness, if I don't get it right I can wind up with truncated notes as well as duplicate notes sounding simultaneously. I know how swipe-to-heal is supposed to work because I do it all the time with audio takes. It doesn't work for MIDI takes. At least not for me. I tried swipe-selecting all the clips in a lane and performing a Bounce to Clip, and that was even worse, all of the clips in that lane vanished.

And here's an example of what the PRV looks like using Addictive Drums 2 with a drum map applied. See the M and S buttons next to each instrument. Very handy. Note to OP: applying a drum map and getting it to make the PRV look like this can be....challenging. Especially the first time you try it. So if you run into any snags with this, just ask. First clue: The only menu command in the Piano Roll View menus that relates to them is "Show/Hide Drum Pane," but there's other stuff you need to set up before it will display a drum editing grid. In order to use a drum map, you'll be visiting either the track header or console strip of your drum machine's MIDI track.

This evening while recording MIDI from my keyboard controller, I had the following happen, and am able to reproduce it every time, at will: First I recorded 2 takes in loop record mode (settings: Comping, Create New Lane, New Takes on Top is unchecked) resulting in this, which is expected and fine: Two takes, clips the full length of the loop, all data recorded and intact. Then I had the idea to try playing another, shorter take that overlapped the existing ones, and that's where things went sideways: As shown in this screen grab, I have my new take in its new lane, data intact, but the original takes have been split where the new clip begins and ends. If I had to bounce them back to one clip, that in itself would be a hassle, but a worse problem is that where the splits are, the MIDI notes have been truncated, thus ruining the first two takes. The 3rd clip in lane T3 is completely empty. Also, the first bit of T3 is unmuted. I was able to salvage the first 2 takes by deleting the newly-created clips and dragging out the remaining clip edge to reveal the MIDI notes (fortunately still there), but this seems like a lot of trouble and risk to go to (especially if it happens multiple times) and I'd rather just prevent it from happening in the first place. With the first bit of T3 being unmuted like that, it sort of looks like a punch-in, but I didn't use Punch-in because I wasn't correcting anything, I just wanted to see if a different, shorter phrase would work in the track. It's not a punch-in, it's a whole new alternate take. I'm not sure what the "Auto Punch" setting does, but I have it unchecked. I didn't want the old takes to be split and slip-edited, I wanted to keep them in place so I could audition them and hear what works best. This isn't an unusual task, I try out different parts all the time. I've had projects get messed up like this before, was fortunately able to salvage them. I'd rather not be breaking them in the first place. What am I doing wrong? Are there settings I can change to prevent it?

It helped a great deal, actually. Although I prefer to work with "Create New Lane" selected, I usually use templates modified from the stock ones, which have "Reuse Existing Lane, Unless Takes Overlap" selected. I'd forgotten to change it before I saved this one. Hence the expected unexpected results. I'm still testing it, because I've seen other strangeness with how Sonar is handling MIDI in lanes, but for now, if anyone's having trouble with getting newly drawn MIDI to draw in its own lane, make sure that you have "Create New Lane" ticked under Preferences/Project/Record. The way it works is that after you've finished playing your takes, open the lanes. Your takes will be in clips in lanes. Should be one lane and one clip for each take. In order to drawn new notes into any given lane, click on the upper half (the Smart Tool will be in Move mode) of the currently unmuted clip (which should be in the last recorded lane), and press "K" to mute it. Then click on the clip you wish to edit and press "K" to unmute it. At this point, in PRV, you should see the notes from the clip you unmuted. You will be able to freely add notes, delete them, or perform other operations on them and have those changes apply to the clip rather than creating new clips or having your changes appear in the wrong lane. To add notes in a completely new lane, first make sure that all of the existing clips are muted, then draw them in the PRV. A new lane will be created with the new data appearing in a new clip. Note: sometimes I had to collapse the lanes and reopen them for the new lane and clip to appear, but they did appear. That last step only works once. If you wish to create subsequent new lanes and enter/edit notes in them, the only way I could find to do it was to create a new lane, arm it for recording, record a couple of notes in it and go from there as you would with any already-recorded take. Open up PRV and the existing "scratch" notes you played will be visible, and any editing will be written in the new lane. For the people in this topic who are unable to enter notes in the lane of their choice, I'm not sure what's going wrong. Do you have the lanes open so that you can see which one has the unmuted clip(s)? I tried this both in Comping and Sound on Sound recording modes. Along the way I found some oddness in the way that Sonar reacts to new clips being recorded in the same track (my old hobgoblin, Sonar creating unwanted splits in the clips), but my army has had to retreat from that hill in the past and and I won't charge it again until I have better ammunition.

I at least think that it will write to a lane of your choosing if clips in all other lanes are muted and the track is selected and highlighted and editable in the PRV. I'll try it again with more lanes and see what happens. I only created 3 lanes when I tested it before. Was T2 the first lane that you played into when you started the track?

As do I. My eyesight only gets worse as time goes on, and I'm starting to have to make educated guesses about where to click. I don't have these problems when using CbB. Just re-enabling color settings for Vertical Beat Lines and Vertical Measure Lines would help so much. My CbB Track Pane grid colors: My CbB PRV grid:

I did a bit of experimenting and determined that if you start the track by playing in real time, notes added manually will be added to the first lane that you recorded. The workaround for entering subsequent notes in their own lane is to create a new lane and add a clip to it. Then you can enter notes into that lane. The way I'd like it to work is that you can create a new lane and then record arm it, and subsequently new notes will be entered into the armed lane.

This is a great way to put it. Especially when composing with MIDI, lanes allow for all kinds of scratchpad stuff, alternate ideas, etc. I kept my description more editing oriented, but these days, the editing process has aspects of composition. And I must remember when discussing this stuff: working with recorded audio tracks and with MIDI tracks are two different, yet similar, beasts.

There's the obvious one, which is taking multiple tries at recording, either looping or one at a time, each of which generates a lane. Then when you think you have a good one, you stop recording. Then make sure the best take is unmuted and the lesser ones are muted. I'm referring to audio takes here, there is a distinction, audio and MIDI differ from each other in some ways. So each instrument gets a track, and different takes get lanes beneath that track. Or there's comping, where you have enough takes to use parts from 2 or more to stitch together a good one, and you stop recording and set about using the various editing tools to do that. There's the Speed Comping workflow, which can be really swift when what I'm doing is recording full takes and stitching together the best parts, and then there's a more manual workflow where I kind of use it like a word processor or image editor, copying, cutting, pasting. I usually end up doing it the latter way, with clips getting copied, moved around, etc. So for instance I'll use the best take of the verse and/or chorus and copy and paste it. Having multiple lanes to work with allows me to create one or more empty lanes to use as scratch space, so instead of having to paste things into the same lane one after the other, I can paste into an empty lane. And then what started out as an empty lane ends up having all the clips I want in the proper order. If you're not moving anything around, you can also just leave clips where they are and mute the ones you don't want to use and leave the ones you do want to use unmuted, assuming they don't need crossfades. If you were to look over my shoulder for 15 minutes, you'd get it straightaway. So for instance there will be a Bass track with multiple lanes, each of which has a different take of a bass player playing the song. Let's say I did 3 tries. Take 1 is entirely too sloppy to use, so I just delete the lane. Take 2 is mostly good, but there's a glaring mistake in the 2nd chorus. If the 2nd chorus from Take 3 is good, I can use that, or if Take 2 has another chorus that will work, I can try copying and pasting a section of Take 2. Another aspect of using lanes is in situations where I'm recording an instrument with multiple mics, usually a drum kit. A track for each mic, and then the multiple takes go into lanes. Any comping or editing is done with the clips grouped so that each of the bits eventually used will be from the same take. I can't really imagine doing this using multiple tracks. The biggest advantage to having all of the takes of a given instrument in one track is that when it comes time to mix, all of that audio (or MIDI) can use the same effects, level, pan, etc. I don't know how this would be accomplished with each take being on its own different track unless eventually all of the good bits get pasted from multiple tracks into one. With MIDI, for each instrument again, there's a track. If I am recording the MIDI live from a controller, each attempt to nail it will get a lane, and things proceed similarly to audio comping. Lanes can also be handy even when all notes are entered in the PRV. I sometimes find it easier when copying and pasting multiple measures at a time to do so in Track View. Sometimes when say, a bass part has 3 variations, 2 within the verses and then the chorus, I'll give each variant its own lane. This can make it easier to keep things sorted when I want to extend the song, I can do the copying and pasting of the measures that are variant 1 individually from those operations on variant 2 and so forth. I can also do things like muting the entire lane to mute one of the variants, maybe try different variants and audition them by muting and unmuting the whole lane, etc. This is why I (and others, like David) would like it if the option to hide muted clips in Piano Roll also applied to muted lanes. Because as it stands, in order to hide unused takes from the PRV, you must mute the individual clips. If a clip is in a muted lane, it won't be hidden by choosing that option. From a composing standpoint, I may want to try different parts in different places, and having an extra empty lane can make it easier to keep things in order when moving parts around. Again, I could show you this in a matter of minutes and it would make sense. It's much more difficult to describe the process. Doing all of this using separate tracks for each take seems unwieldy to me. Seems like there would be some visual overhead involved in having the takes spread across multiple tracks, and it would especially make comping more difficult. I do understand being put off by using take lanes. The editing tools make certain assumptions about workflow that may be different from how the user is used to working or expects it to work. Such was the case with me when I first started using Cakewalk 7 years ago. But then the devs made some changes that made it easier to override some of the mechanisms for when I want to just cut, copy, paste and stitch. I did eventually learn the Cakewalk comping workflow, and it lives up to the "speed comping" name. When the project I'm working on lends itself to that workflow, I can really fly, but before I figured it out, I made some messes with it. With great power comes great ability to turn one's project into chutney. The workflow doesn't necessarily work best for every comping situation and I was happy when the devs made it easier to do more basic operations without it getting in the way. I suspect that the bulk of antipathy toward the take lanes system may have come from these advanced comping features being so front-facing. Before the changes were made, I often had the feeling that CbB was fighting me, that it was assuming I wanted to do things a certain way that was different from the simple cut, copy, paste, and move operations I was trying to do. Figuring out where the different hotspots are and what I get when clicking on them took some time. At first I didn't realize that there were different hotspots on clips that would yield different results depending on where I clicked and that was WAY frustrating.