Starship Krupa

I've been trying off and on for years to figure out how to use my Korg nanoKONTROL2 to control plug-in parameters. Of course, as is often the case with Cakewalk, there seem to be a handful of different ways to go about it. This time around I decided to try ACT, based on a YouTube video by @Simeon Amburgey where he sets his keyboard controller mod wheel to control T-Racks Leslie. It takes him seconds, and it works great, of course. Super spiffy how the ACT window gets automatically populated with the automatable parameters. However, when I try following along, I can only get as far as seeing that the fields are populated with my plug-in parameters. The issue is that my controller doesn't actually control them. I twiddle knobs and sliders to no effect. And yes, I do have the plug-in in focus. I'm sure I'm just missing a step, any idea what that step might be? Here are a couple of screenshots showing my setup. I first tried it with MChorusMB, then T-Racks 670, then did it with MEQualizer, which can be downloaded for free:

Yeah, half a dozen licenses for Berzerk over here. Want another freebie license for Metafilter....

Woo-hoo! Thanks for posting what the solution was. Good on MSI for getting a new set of drivers out there. I suspect that you'll not see this problem again (as long as you don't let Microsoft "update" your USB driver ?).

What Robert's getting at is that Cakewalk might be having trouble dealing with an effect or multiple ones. To this end, also try enabling/disabling plug-in load balancing and see what happens. But you don't mention whether the tracks are audio or VSTi's or a combination, or whether you even have any FX enabled. We need more information. What was the CPU in your last system? Since it looks like some kind of weirdness going on with the CPU and its many cores, you can also mess with the Thread Scheduling Model. Do you have Hyperthreading enabled in the system BIOS? Just some shots in the dark.

Hmm. this sounds like it might be one to report to the devs. Curious to know how it goes with the other time stretching algos.

Does Audacity allow you to specify bit depth for .MP3's and other lossy formats?

Oh, if only the Console had been scrolled down enough to see the FX bins. What Reginald said: bypass ALL the FX. If that makes the problem go away (which there's a 95% chance it will do), then turn them back on one by one until the problem happens again.

My favorite method is Alt+2

Okay, when you say "group," what do you mean by that? "Group" in Cakewalk, to my knowledge, refers to two things: grouping clips and Quick Group, which is when you select multiple tracks, then hold Ctrl while manipulating their controls.

This is a common task around my house, but with different source material. I do ambient instrumentals, and dialog samples are a staple in that genre (and fun to collect). My issue is that since I sample them on my computer, direct from Netflix, Disney+ or Amazon Prime, they come through sounding really high fidelity. Which is wonderful for actually watching shows and movies, but unfortunately sounds like crap when used in the context of ambient music "dialog samples," which typically fall just this side of "telephone" as far as tonal balance, dynamic range, and noise. There's a reason that speech is so intelligible even on a cheap telephone, and it holds true for full mixes: make it sound like a phone call and it'll cut right through. If I don't process it, it sounds about as appropriate as hard rock electric guitar with no distortion. It's not "dialogue," it's just someone talking over the music. Cymatics Origin is a popular freebie that allows you to add noise, wow, and sample rate reduction. I used it for a while, but finally ponied up for the industry standard, XLN Audio RC-20 Retro Color, and it was worth every penny. I found exactly the sound I wanted in seconds with RC-20, whereas with Origin, I could get pretty close with a certain amount of fiddling. If you have call to make things sound "dusty" on a regular basis, it's RC-20.

Well, if you are trying to go by what Jacques suggests, render with Elastique Pro.

No, it just means that someone named the track "Clean Reverb." You can double click in that field and it will allow you to change it to a less confusing name. It seems that most of the tracks in this project have the names of common effects as track names, which I would find really confusing. As you have. If you didn't name those tracks, then you must not have created the project yourself. Maybe you downloaded a project or template that someone else created? Typically, tracks are named after which instrument is (or will be) recorded on that track. Buses, on the other hand, are often given the names of particular FX they host, like "Reverb" when they are used as sends. Perhaps the tracks in this template are intended to be renamed that way. When you want to add FX to tracks, you do so with the FX rack, which is toward the center of each Console strip or to the right of every Track Header.

This, unfortunately. The problem with continuing to rely on deprecated software technologies like 32-bit VST plug-ins is that yeah, maybe they'll work for a while, but eventually they won't. It's not up to you when that's going to happen, and when it does, it'll be hard to find help because tech savvy people will have phased it out years before. The last time I installed a 32-bit plug-in was two presidents ago. Consider yourself lucky that it still works for you using WASAPI and start shopping for a replacement. Once you get the replacement, bounce any tracks you recorded with Mobius and kiss it goodbye. The Overloud TH3 amp sim that comes with Cakewalk has a built-in looper. Never tried it, not sure what features it has, but it's guaranteed to work with Cakewalk.

Um, yeah, I mean, from my perspective, there ain't that many loops out there that AREN'T dance music in some form or other. I haven't checked Bandlab Assistant lately, but last time I did, dance music made up the largest percentage of what was available. Maybe you need to drill down into more specific subgenres when you hit the search engines. Deep house or trance or whatever specific flavor of loops you are seeking? W.A. Production has tons of dance music loop packages, Computer Music issues a handful of loop and sample packages every month for free download....

I got a used iPad Mini in absolutely pristine condition for $65 on eBay, complete with an Otter Box. I had a first generation iPad mini and too many apps stopped working with it (although plenty still do, I can play my Mellotron and Arturia Mini Moog on it). The 2nd gen iPads are a great deal because places like doctors' offices use iPads for check-ins, stores use them for inventory, whatever. And they dump them the moment Apple declares that they will no longer run the latest iOS. There are starting to be some apps that won't update on my 2nd gen, but the older versions work. I figure it's good for a few more years. Regarding using MIDI keyboards with Android devices, in my experience, the audio driver latency has been a problem. I hope that some clever developers come up with a better MIDI/audio subsystem so that Android tablets and phones can join the music making party. For now it's kinda true to its Linux roots, unfortunately.

I got the track control buttons on mine to trigger Matrix cells, which is fun.

First off you need to give us more information. All I get from what you've posted is that you have apparently made some recordings, a good chance in Cakewalk because you're posting here, and when you play them back, again, presumably with Cakewalk, they are playing at the wrong speed. Is this what's going wrong? Answer the questions that @Lord Tim already asked you: what audio hardware (interface) are you using and what driver mode? Project sample rate? You say that you've "poked and cajoled." I assume you mean that you've tried different settings? What specifically have you tried?

Make sure that you have the correct folder locations set in Preferences/File/Folder Locations.

That tends to be an issue with the decade-old VSTi's I like. All of the AIR stuff is now, with my 1920x1280 23" displays, at about the limit of what I'd consider legibility. Massive at least has those nice big knobs.

This. Considering the excellence of their sound quality, it's unfortunate, but they do seem to eventually get things sorted, even if it takes a while.

Meldaproduction MReverb has similar features; of course, it probably doesn't have your ONE sound. You can demo it, though, and if you wait for it to come around in their Eternal Madness rotating sale (or one of their likely upcoming 50% off everything sales), its price drops to $19. (and if you've never bought anything from Meldaproduction, use my referral code, MELDA1923165 to knock 20% off your first purchase, sign up for their newsletter for a $10 credit, and you'll end up getting it for $5)

I used to have similar issues with MSF (usually when browsing presets), but the recent update to 16.01 seems to have cured it, at least on my systems.

So much for speculation about the incipient demise of Massive. If they were going to set it adrift, I doubt they'd go to the trouble of porting it to Apple Silicon. As of right now, I'm still sorting out where Massive fits in my collection of synths. It's too iconic and well-supported by tutorials and presets not to take it seriously, but I still like Hybrid 3 better. @abacab's advice to use the genre browser in Komplete Kontrol was good. I discovered quite a few usable pads/soundscapes in the Expansions. Not so much in the original factory presets, which tend toward turn-of-the-century Car Alarm Trance. First-world problem I'm running into: the humongous amount of free presets available for Massive. I've downloaded thousands. After the years of my favorite synth being Hybrid, with far fewer free presets available (although I find the factory set more useful than Massive's), I'm like a kid in a free candy store. Since I find a large amount of my inspiration in timbres, I browse the presets in search of that, but with this number of presets, it's days of doing that, and then I find yet another source of them. It occurs to me that for someone just getting into working with DAW's, the amount of freeware plug-ins must feel like that. I'm keeping good freebie hygiene, though: if I can't find a good sound in the package, it gets deleted ASAP.

Swatches has been updated with a selection of sounds from this new soundpack. It's up to 636 sounds now.

Tactic for $5. I'm building entire songs around it.