Starship Krupa

Is there an Easter egg in Cakewalk? I was referring to the image I added to the EVA 01 about box. I pasted in an image from Neon Genesis: Evangelion to fit with the theme.

Woo-hoo! And for irony, it appears to be derived from the gaudiest theme in the pantheon. ? You may want to revert About Box to the original. It shows an Evangelion Angel getting ready to attack Boston. I'm glad it follows the Nicholls/Krupa icon choice for Instrument and Synth tracks. A suggestion: in keeping with the black-and-white look, replace the note durations in PRV with the ones from Tungsten, and black-and-white the #2 cells: I may go back to that green gridding in the PRV. I since changed it to have red lines for the measures in some of my dark themes, but having them be a brighter version of the theme color still looks pretty nice. It goes well with the Midnight Blue color preset to brighten up the grid lines in Track View. There's one issue with your Smart Grid button. It looks the same as your Standard Grid button, so I can't tell when Smart Grid is enabled. Something like this maybe?: I've already made these changes to my copy of the theme, let me know if you want to incorporate them. Also: it looks like you're working from an earlier version of EVA 01 and/or Yellow Submarine. I've tuned up many of the images since then. Sometimes I slipstream updates without making a big announcement.

Both of my dark themes have been updated with many changes, primarily to Control Bar modules. Here's the current complement:

I've just updated both of my dark themes with lots of work on Control Bar modules (as well as various other smaller tweaks). Here's the current complement:

Sigh. I'd love to check out Premier, but I just can't do subscriptions. This is because I'm just a hobbyist who doesn't make very many videos. Generally, at the end of a music project (and ends are few and far between, as many know), I'll do a video for the song. Another reason is that I'm pretty broke a lot of the time, so having another bill to pay just wouldn't work. I can save up, I can wait for deals on licenses, I am a hound for freeware, but paying the same price monthly or yearly as someone who uses the software professionally on a daily basis is not realistic.

One issue about changing is that I have some nice video FX plug-ins that came with Vegas Pro. I don't know if video plug-ins are like VST's in that they might work across multiple video editors. They aren't showing up in Movie Studio. Of course if I can't get Vegas to render, it's moot.

I'm glad that this discussion is here, in 2021. Obviously there's a lot of confusion about these matters. Obviously there are people who don't understand it. I mostly understand the processing principles involved, but I'm a former IT engineer. Where I've had trouble is that the CbB documentation doesn't go into the possible cons of using the 64-bit engine and/or plug-in upsampling. Reduced available memory? Audio engine load increased? If there are any possible issues, it would be nice to know what to watch out for. For me, a memory hit is not really an issue, as I don't seem to run into any trouble, even on my systems with 8 Gigs of RAM. In the scope of modern systems with loads of RAM installed, how much of this sort of memory hit is likely to be an issue? If it takes a Gig, I have that to spare. I've run into one plug-in that doesn't like 64-bit processing, which is the ADHD Leveling Tool, an otherwise excellent plug-in, sort of an LA/2A with greater control. The combination of 2X upsampling broke it. The issue is that with 64-bit engaged, its output drops drastically. Works a treat otherwise. I just did a quick playback test of a current project that's all synths, multiple FX. No dropouts in either 64-bit mode or regular, audio engine percent seems about the same. This is on my notebook with 8G RAM and an i7 860 processor.

I'm in video editor hell right now. I have both Vegas Pro Edit 15 and Movie Studio 16, and Vegas Pro locks up on rendering, Movie Studio doesn't load all the FX I want to use....bleah. Not a fan of MAGIX, at least based on my experiences with these. There is nothing about my system that is exotic, it's a friggin' Dell with an nVidia card. I'm trying to use their presets for rendering. Just awful. Never heard of this Movavi brand, but I'm up for something that doesn't crash, lock up, etc.

After that Make Europe Great Again/no minimum vouchers fiesta last winter, I scored so many PA plug-ins that it's hard for me to find ones that I want. TRIAD for sure (I blew it, could have gotten the BYOME/TRIAD bundle in that sale, somehow missed it), and maybe the bx_panEQ. Getting things for next to nothing opened my eyes and ears to plug-ins that have now become staples for me. elysia mpressor pretty much immediately knocked MModernCompressor off its previously held individual drum processing throne. It does what I love about the dbx 165 even better than the dbx 165. Anyone have experience with bx_panEQ? I love spatial effects, a la Telefon Tel Aviv ("Sound In A Dark Room" is a masterpiece of spatial sound design), Tipper, etc. Being able to carve out space for individual elements across the stereo field sounds very handy.

Ah, this information is gold. An issue that I've had with the 64-bit options (and others) is knowing whether they are harder on the audio engine. I understand the benefits well enough, but not all of the possible drawbacks. By "modern processors," how modern are we talking about? Is the Core 2 Quad in my office system new enough to benefit? The i7 870 in my laptop? The i7 3770 in my main DAW? Is it a matter of more cores? The extended multimedia instruction sets?

After checking out many virtual pianos, the best I've heard yet is Meldaproduction's Monastery Grand. Best news: it's free.

Here's a version of Logical that I updated with the current browser tabs and other artwork. Now updated to 2021.12 compliance: Logical.zip

I don't touch the Gain knob unless the virtual instrument on the track isn't putting out enough signal (or putting out too much, but I like to tweak this with the instrument's own output control) to allow me to keep the faders in their usable working range. So your Step 1 is alien and puzzling to me. There is no "gain staging" that needs to be done before I engage my FX (unless, as I say, I need to get the faders in their sweet spot, which doesn't mean "sweet" as far as audio quality). Gain staging in a DAW is done for different reasons than with hardware sources and mixers. In the hardware realm, you want to feed each stage with a signal that is neither so low that you get noise or so hot that you get clipping. In the DAW realm, the levels are virtual. So only processors that are level-dependent such as compressors and things that emulate the distortion characteristics of analog hardware care much what virtual level you send them. What this means is that if you find that the input and/or output meters of a plug-in are "in the red" or barely registering, then adjust the input level accordingly. If you have to adjust the controls on a plug-in to extremes to get it to sound good, then you should adjust what level is feeding it. If you hear raspy distortion, gain staging is one thing to examine. I find that it (and not only it) is something that novices tend to worry about out of proportion to its actual effect. Here is a good article on the topic. For the kind of work you are doing, I'd suggest that one of the best things you could do is buy a license for XPand!2, which is currently on sale for $4.99 at Pluginboutique. It's not a General MIDI synth, but it has all of the sounds that you would find in a GM synth, so if your MIDI tracks are split into individual tracks, you can use whatever sound you like. For the 2,000+ sounds that you get, which include some pretty decent drum kits, five bucks is the proverbial no-brainer. Bonus: it's really light on resource use. I'm not sure why you want to or think you need to "convert the audio back to MIDI." Presumably you already have the note data in MIDI form. Why convert it back? To get a track in audio rather than MIDI-to-virtual-instrument form, just get it to how you want it to sound, then freeze it. That creates an audio file with all of the track effects applied and disables the plug-ins on the track, both instrument and effect. Unless your system starts to bog down from a high number of plug-ins, there should be no need to do this.

Ah, that's very good to know, for people like me who sometimes use FX and instruments that have randomized elements. Something I'm curious about, for instance: if one is using an S&H modulator, and one does two separate renders, will they come out sounding the same (within the constraints of the formats, of course)? I don't remember exactly how S&H does its thing, but it's supposed to be deliberately randomizing, isn't it? Or does it just sound like it is?

I am a big fan of their processors, especially Dumpster Fire, which I have in the category "Enhancer" in my plug-in list. After that, Backmask is really fun, and has some features I've not seen with other reverser plug-ins, like a randomizer. MISHBY is a combination broken cassette deck emulator and grain delay. I think. The cool thing about them is that they are made to turn tracks into smoking wreckage, but they don't do it in as jaggedy a way as similarly-intended FX from Glitchmachines and Unfiltered Audio. You might have to try them to hear what I mean. And the UI's are a treat for the eyes, with happy Lovecraftian horrors. Sure, this or that plug-in may be ROLI-compatible, whatever that means, but these have tentacles and levers that plead with you not to push them further and knobs that frown if you turn them toward their less destructive range. I think I got them all for $20 each in a Pluginboutique sale, so $30 for the set is a great deal. I like them so much, and also like their marketing anti-style so much (okay, videos that don't actually include demonstrations of the sounds?? That's so wrong that it folds back around and becomes right) that I am perfectly happy with having paid double. I know that our thing here in the Deals subforum is to squeeze maximum software for minimum bucks, but I get so much enjoyment out of Dumpster Fire alone that I thought they deserved compensation. The marketing, the website, the FX, they remind me of the feeling I got after seeing Devo for the first time on Saturday Night Live, doing "Satisfaction." Like lining up your homemade dragster at the wrong end of the strip, putting it in reverse and stomping the throttle, but then turning a decent 1/4 mile time. It's also fun to gently troll discussions of snake oil-y enhancers (whoo, it boosts the level and upper mids, Fletcher and Munson would be proud) by mentioning Dumpster Fire. It sincerely really is my favorite "enhancer," although I do also like Slate Fresh Air. Sometimes I put it on a track when I'm feeling frustrated, then after demolishing it for a while, remove Dumpster Fire and get on with my project. It lets off steam. Maybe I should put a Dumpster Fire bus in my templates so that I can do this more easily. The weird thing is that I don't think that, despite my obvious fanboy attitude toward them, I've ever committed any to a final mix. They're just fun to have around. Especially when other sick-minded people visit the studio.

This is what I do, except I export FLAC and then the freeware Mediahuman Audio Converter. I use MP3Tag to add tags before conversion, which Mediahuman passes through to the converted files.

Does MIDI export respect a track's mute status? If not, that seems like a snag.

As someone who's been deep digging into custom themes, I've become more aware of color choices in the Cakewalk UI. One small suggestion: the "toast" notifications have a background color that is seen nowhere else in the program (which may be deliberate so that they stand out). I suggest that the background be changed to "BandLab orange," which would be just as visible and would match the "by BandLab" branding. I don't have the color exactly right, but this is the idea:

Hidden gem.?

It looks like what you accidentally undocked was the Control Bar. Your Multidock is empty and docked at the bottom in your screenshot.

Spent some more time with it, and I guess my earlier impression was not fairly obtained. When testing a creative effect, I often fire up a MIDI file with some long Xpand!2 pad chords playing and run through the presets. This usually works pretty well, but sometimes it doesn't for FX that reward more abrupt envelopes. While SILO can bring something to the table with that kind of source material, if y'all ain't entirely sure what it's good for (and how could you be), put a rhythmic loop through it and stand back. I think the presets may have been designed around drum loops to put you in that "give me this thing NOW" frame of mind. Because doing that made me very happy for my $14.99 purchase and turned it into something other than just a possibly fun card in my Unfiltered Audio Pokemon deck. Tips: go to UfA's SILO resources page, where they have a bunch of videos that aren't on the PA site about how to use this thing. The "Oddiction" presets that they link to from the page are already included with the install along with the Richard Devine set. However, this YouTube review includes a collection of 40 presets free for the downloadin'. Although the guy seems to think the plug-in is as well-suited to mangling Ali G impressions as I think it is for drum machines, his presets sound great. He gets some cool Dumpster Fire-ish sounds in his demo after he gets past Da Ali G.

The logic of this little blue outline appearing when you hover a MIDI or Synth Icon: it appears when you hover your cursor over a track icon that when clicked, opens a synth UI. This can be one of three things: as you pointed out, a MIDI track whose output is pointing at a soft synth, a soft synth track, and a simple instrument track. @Colin Nicholls describes it on p. 49 of The Young Lady's Illustrated Primer to Creating Custom Cakewalk Themes. It looks like its color may have once been controlled by the Theme Editor color choice Track view / Track Pane / Open Synth Properties but isn't anymore: "Even when we edit the element to be bright pink, the button highlight on mouse-over remains blue." (because everyone was dying to know, this blue outline doesn't appear in the Piano Roll or Staff View track panes, only Track View) It's so subtle I never even noticed it until I read this topic. What Cakewalk usually does to make a button "change color" is replace one button image with another button image. When you hover the buttons in Control Bar modules, that's what it's doing. Each button image usually has 5 or so cells (or "imprints") and depending on the control's state, it displays the correct cell...most of the time. There are places where Cakewalk changes an element's appearance by altering hue, luminance and saturation (muted clips, selected data, header and strip colors, backgrounds, etc.), but for button-y things, even if it's just a plain round orange disk that turns green, they usually do it by swapping images.

From The Cakewalk Reference Guide: "You can also render at 64 bits for greatest precision." Now as to what precisely is meant by "greatest precision," the documentation seems to be silent. ? Also, from the online documentation, "If you don’t usually run Cakewalk in 64-bit mode in order to save CPU, you can turn 64-bit mode on when you export audio by enabling this check box. Remember to turn it off after you export your audio, if you don’t want to use it during tracking or mixing." No hint as to why you would want to do this. I usually select the option because, hey, it's free and it doesn't seem to affect anything in a negative way. If the feature didn't exist I wouldn't miss it, because I have to trust my ears that my mixes sound like I want them to. If I heard aliasing distortion in my mix, I'd do something to get rid of it at that point (like enabling oversampling in the plug-in itself), not rely on oversampling in the rendering engine to clean it up. There's the possibility to consider that a plug-in might not function the same way if you feed it 88.2KHz. I've only run into one that didn't behave, and it was obvious.

This is how it looks on my system:

I know, huh? I've been participating in online discussions for over 30 years and this is the first place I've seen it happen where someone started a rant that deteriorated into to a level-headed discussion. This isn't the first time, either.