Starship Krupa

1 hour ago, MusicMan said:

Thanks Erik! You have touched on an interesting point for me too.. I think part of the reluctance to share on here, is partially because of all the experience and knowledge everyone else has and that there are a lot of accomplished musicians here as well.

I do understand a lot of the techniques and can easily hear what I like when it comes to all of the tools, instruments and everything, but I'm still very much green and just starting out with production, so I just tend to feel it's not good enough to share if I'm being fully open.

But maybe this is one of those growth moments where I just need to push myself out of my comfort zone and rip the bandaid off!

Here's my Linktree if anyone did want to give it a listen on whichever streaming platform they prefer. It has socials too if anyone wanted to follow along as well ?

https://linktr.ee/disorderlyconductor

I love your story too Erik and I really hope that happens for you too!

It's great! Yeah, upbeat funky vibe. Something about the vocal production and the bass tone reminds me of Eddy Grant.

Even people on here who aren't much into EDM, I'm sure they'll appreciate the performances, mixing, and cool production flourishes.

And of course, because we're plug-in hags, wanna know what goodies you used. As for FX, there's a nice sparkle on there, and of course we need to know what VSTi's were not harmed in the making of this tune.

2 hours ago, PavlovsCat said:

This forum needs to let us add  ❤️  for posts.  

Ha! I just recommended that in the Feedback Loop. Inspired by this thread.

10 hours ago, kitekrazy said:

OT - does anyone find Beat better than CM?

Hmm. Not yet. They're catching up, though.

The language translation sometimes makes things a little odd, and I prefer CM's British cultural focus (with the interviews with the classic 80's synth pop pioneers), but as far as technique articles, they're doing fine.

There is one reaction I think is missing from the forum, which is "love." There really oughta be an extra level of "like."

Someone posts about a good freeware VSTi, that's a "like" (or thanks, depending).

Someone gets their music on the radio, we get an update with a long-requested feature, that's a "love."

The blue heart icon is already used for "like," how about a red one for "love?"

Congratulations! And for heaven's sake, post a link to where we can listen to the song. I guarantee everyone in this thread is dying to hear it. You can't be shy any more, it's been on the radio! Not a popular genre? We're musicians, we can hear the quality in any kind of music.

And I'll chime in with saying that the times I heard my band on the radio (or being played by the DJ in my favorite bar) were very special ones. And I hope to do it again, as indie rocker turned electronica guy. Soma.FM here we come (I hope).

On 12/2/2022 at 1:49 PM, PavlovsCat said:

Starship Krupa offered to mix one of the first songs I ever shared.  I thought about taking him up on his offer, but didn't think it was worth his time. But I'll never forget his kind offer and encouragement and every time I see his posts, I always feel  like this man is a true mensch.

I'm very moved by this. I'm facing some pretty difficult challenges in my life right now and it's really great to hear.

However, I have to say, I saw it more as my asking a favor of Peter than offering to do one for him. The track is a well put-together take on "Strawberry Fields," and he actually has a cool-sounding raw rock 'n' roll singing voice that I envy. Some EQ carving and creative compression to give it space and make it pop in the mix  (and maybe some trippy reverse reverb and automatic doubling to give it an update to that late 60's Beatle/Martin feel) and I suspected he wouldn't be so down on his singing ability. Lennon's vocal performance on the original isn't exactly virtuoso, he's sort of "talking in tune."

I haven't mixed someone else's material in years. I enjoy mixing as much (sometimes more) as I do composing, playing and recording, and I haven't done a rock song of my own in years. I offered because I liked the material.

So there. ❤

How could I forget Orchestools? ROMplers and Sampletank instruments based on the VSCO2 libraries. Strings, Brass, Woodwinds and more.

Made with love by @ilir bajri.

I have never seen anything like that. The worst issue I've had with cursors in Cakewalk is how often a cursor will "stick" in one mode. All I can offer is a few troubleshooting suggestions that you may already have tried.

Try setting custom cursors in Windows, or if you have already done this, go back to the standard Windows set.

Completely uninstall all Kensington (or any other) mouse/trackball control software and let Windows use your pointing device as a class-compliant device with the Microsoft driver. Sometimes mouse software gets cute with adding its own cursor set, and that may have somehow gotten corrupted.

Other than that, wow, mystery.

Is it the Windows system error beep or is it coming from Cakewalk? Does it still happen if you mute your hardware outputs (over at the right hand side of Console View)?

6 hours ago, aidan o driscoll said:

This uses the AAS PLAYER where you can play and listen but not edit. Which is great for free.

Sigh. Yeah, the biggest drawback to having only their soundpacks. As synth presets often do, they have tons of baked-in reverb so that they sound amazing right out of the box.

I usually turn off an instrument's own reverb in favor of using one of the top notch reverbs I already have, such as Exponential Nimbus (or Stratus) or MTurboreverble.

If A|A|S allowed only that, I'd have all I need, but I'm sure A|A|S know that it's an incentive for people to grab their full products.

This is a great list.

I'll add Soundpaint's Free Angels and ASMR. If you're doing ambient drone, these plus the 1928 Steinway will give you some amazing sounds.

Also, the Meldaproduction MSoundFactory Player has the excellent Monastery Grand piano.

For anyone who wasn't aware, there's a (curated) topic on this forum for favorite freeware instruments in general:

The latest one has patches from the new Multiphonics CV-1 Currents soundpack.

https://www.applied-acoustics.com/swatches/

640 high quality sounds, and they ain't kidding about the high quality.

The title selection of these MAGIX Humble Bundles always makes me scratch my head.

Music Maker Premium, well, okay, but why bother with Music Maker EDM if all the EDM version has is EDM-oriented soundpools? Why not just bundle the soundpools?

Vegas Pro AND Movie Maker? I'm not complaining, I have Movie Maker on my 14" laptop, but isn't it kinda superfluous for most people who have Vegas Pro?

36 minutes ago, Tezza said:

I would say that if you want to get into video editing having at least 2 drives with Vegas is a must

Interesting. I do have 2 drives, but why is it a must? I want to make sure that I'm getting the benefits you allude to.

Is there a configuration step I don't know about that pertains to multiple drives?

1 hour ago, Jeremy Oakes said:

still, not bad for the price

This would upgrade my Vegas Pro Edit from 15 to 18 and my Sound Forge Audio Studio from 13 to 16.

Too good a deal to pass up, although I don't necessarily trust MAGIX' updates. The first MAGIX version of Vegas Pro I got was a huge improvement over the previous Sony version, but subsequent updates haven't been as stable for me. I do recommend to anyone using Vegas Pro that you go on YouTube and check out the videos about how to deep dive into the settings to make Vegas more stable and efficient.

My last Sound Forge update added more support for plug-ins, which I never use in Sound Forge. The unfortunate side effect (no pun) of this was that startup ground to a halt while it enumerated every plug-in. Looks like 16 has some interesting features like Explorer context menu format conversion.

I'd like to check out the controversial overhaul of Movie Studio as well.

10 hours ago, mettelus said:

I really liked the fact that turntable had 4 speeds to it (not sure I have ever seen a 16 1/2 rpm record in my life, but playing records on the wrong speed was fun as a kid).

I have a story about that. This experience is burned into my mind.

When I first got mine, at age 5, my mother also gave me a kid's record called "The Ballad of the Headless Horseman," which sounded "fun" scary to me.

It came on a 7" with a small hole, and I had the Show 'n' Tell set to 33 1/3 because that was what I was used to from playing my mom's Sinatra records on her console (I was a weird kid; I really dug Sings Only For The Lonely and September of My Years).

The Headless Horseman record, though, was cut at 78, so when I put it on, all by myself upstairs in my bedroom, this terrifying "BWWWOOOOOOOAAAAAAAH" sound came out. Terrifying as in "I remember the details 56 years later" terrifying, and I ran out of my room not even stopping to turn it off. Fortunately it wasn't set on auto repeat (if the S+T even had that feature).

It was a great introduction to the power of raw sound to stir emotions, I gotta say.

On 11/23/2022 at 7:56 PM, mettelus said:

If you can find an old vintage Show'N Tell, that has the filmstrip display too!

I had one of those! The filmstrip part broke early on, but the record player lived for a few more years. Until I started....experimenting on it.

11 hours ago, Mark Morgon-Shaw said:

Seems baltantly obvious to me. Where else did you think it would come from ?

I thought "Master Bus" was one possibility.

I was coming from Mixcraft, which doesn't have such a thing as "hardware outputs." Last stop on the line is a stereo "Master Track" that has the same function as Cakewalk's Hardware Outs. It also has both "submix" and "send" tracks. So with Mixcraft, it doesn't really matter so much; there's only one place it can be taken from, and selection only matters as far as time selection, not track selection. If you don't want a track in the mix, you mute it.

I had to learn new techniques, which is all in the game when learning a new DAW, it just seemed as if it took me an inordinate amount of time and effort. But that was then and we now have a dialog box that I think spells out better just what's going on. So does the documentation.

I like Cakewalk's more flexible mixer, but would most definitely be fine with clip or track selection not hijacking the whole Export. In my mind, that's what mute buttons are for, but I'm not going to suggest any changes be made in function. This DAW exports whatever you have selected, unless that's nothing, in which case it exports everything.

(It's fun to imagine Nigel Tufnel explaining that to Marty DiBergi: "Why not just mute the channels you don't want to hear, like with a hardware mixer?"....pause...."This DAW....")

What we have now is fine, I have my Select None button and I check it before and after and when I get a bounce with all intended tracks the first time, it's a pleasant little surprise, kind of like building a new computer and having it boot cleanly right off.

I'm still kinda dizzy from somehow having snagged the iZotope Music Production Suite 5 for $149.

The only other sales I took advantage of were cashing in some Meldaproduction referral credits for MFreeformEqualizer, and using someone else's referral credit to get Soundpaint's Supercluster for $5.

Considering the individual components in the MPS5 acquisition, that's probably the most plug-ins I've ever bought in one season. Due to the great cabal, it also included some nice PA FX.

I forget about MIDI Magnifier as well.

X-Ray seems to be a thing designed to help with working on single smaller screens than are now standard.

(typing this on 14" laptop)

All I have to do is switch the output in the bus strip; it's not a burden. I refer the heavy lifting to the hardware switch.

But I used to have my 4 sets of monitors all with their own power amps. The cool thing about it was that it forced me to really get my hands dirty with Cakewalk's mixer. The mixer is absolutely my favorite feature.

4 hours ago, Phoenix said:

Let's share this to social media. Maybe we can increase the reach. yt fb, Twitter etc. 

This forum is actually the best venue, as the devs pay the most attention to it. The more people who chime in and bump it to the top, the more attention it gets.

Apparently, Matrix View was derived from another Cakewalk product called Project 5, which did have this functionality, so maybe there's existing code that could be dusted off and incorporated.

I'm far from an expert on it, but I think that after the inclusion of a stock sampler, updating Matrix View to allow live recording to cells would be something that could kick Cakewalk into gear for Ableton/FL Studio type live improvisation workflows.

9 hours ago, Glenn Stanton said:

....my "print" buss (a buss defined to take the master output)....

So I'm not the only one who sets up a dedicated bus for this. Mine's named Export and is pleased to know Print. ?

I have yet another bus that comes after Export, called Output that basically serves as my speaker switcher, so I can just flip its output around to various outputs on my interface. I finally did get a dedicated hardware speaker switcher, but still switch around among 3 different outputs.

The Output bus is also where Mastering the Mix' LEVELS sits, and any other full mix metering or analysis as necessary.

12 hours ago, Praveen Kumar said:

when I tried to use the track input for analogue 1+2 (2-Focusrite USB audio) R it's not working whereas the analogue 1+2 (2-Focusrite USB audio) L and analogue 1+2 (2-Focusrite USB audio) S is working.

I don't own a Scarlett Solo, but I do know that it has 2 analog inputs that may be used at the same time. One is a mic input and the other an instrument input.

It sounds like you're trying to record single mono tracks from either the mic or instrument input and one of those is not working, but they both work if you enable them at the same time. Is that so?

Sometimes the input names that the driver reports to Windows (and thereby Cakewalk) are confusing. Ideally on a 2-input interface, you'd see choices for Input 1 (Mic), Input 2 (Inst), and Input 1+2 (Mic+Inst). It looks like Focusrite's driver is using more confusing language.

(Fortunately, once you get it working right, Cakewalk allows you to set names for the individual inputs, which reduces future confusion.)

Again, if I understand what you're saying, you can record in mono with the "L" input, and you can record in stereo (or two separate mono) using the "S" input, but when you try to record with the "R" input, you get no audio.

I don't know which of the Solo's 2 inputs they call "L" and "R."

The standard things that can go wrong are using a condenser mic that needs 48V phantom power, but not turning on the phantom power switch, and accidentally having the channel input level control turned down, having the guitar's volume knob turned down. I know these seem like obvious silly errors, but everyone on this forum has made them. Including me. They don't seem likely in your case because you say the inputs are working when you use them at the same time.

As Tim said, use Cakewalk's ASIO mode. Most interfaces are designed to work best with their own ASIO driver. What do you get when you do that?

On 11/27/2022 at 5:43 AM, Mark Morgon-Shaw said:

I think this is a case of PEBCAK

I agree, inasmuch as the "problem" is exacerbated by dialog(s) that multiple experienced users have chimed in to agree are confusing.

For that matter, it took me months, YouTube videos, and input from experienced forumites, to figure out that "Entire Mix" meant that the export comes from the hardware outputs. I couldn't figure out why I had such variable results with levels. I use multiple hardware outs (to drive headphones and different sets of speakers). I couldn't figure out why, when my signal was nice and hot at the Master bus (where I thought Entire Mix came from), it wasn't nice and hot in the exported file, and my headphone mix caused some mixes to sound "off." So the levels at the hardware outs needed to be good and hot, and all hardware outputs except one needed to be muted.

And all this was after I gained access to the Reference Guide and refer(red) to it religiously.

I wound up just creating a "mixdown" bus and taking my mixes from that instead of messing around with "entire mix."

Even with the new amazing Export dialog, "why does my exported mix sound different from playback?" still pops up in the Q&A forum.

Mixing a song down to a stereo track is one of the most basic functions a DAW can do, and it doesn't need to be confusing. I don't subscribe to the notion that a confusing UI is remedied by "just getting used to it." It can probably be solved or eased with a slight rewording of the dialogs.