Starship Krupa

The exception is VSTi's like Strum Session where sending it a note triggers it to play a pattern rather than a note. Break Tweaker and any number of other drum machines are similar. They play whichever of their internal or user patterns corresponds to the note. All the user is doing is sending it different notes to trigger different patterns. The notes can be sent in any "time signature," but the patterns that get played will still be whatever time signature they are in the VSTi.

A favorite freeware de-esser of mine is Lisp. VO people usually use a leveler like Sonic Anomaly TriLeveler 3 Broadcast Voice Limiter. Sonic Anomaly dropped a bunch of great freeware plug-ins a few years ago and then sort of disappeared, but their downloads are being hosted elsewhere. Their Unlimited limiter is still my favorite master bus limiter. For excellent workhorse compressor and EQ, MCompressor and MEqualizer from the Meldaproduction MFreeFX Bundle are my favorites. They can be used for free, and there's a recipe for getting a deal on the upgraded version of the bundle in this thread: Check out my buddy Jim Edgar's JustAskJimVO site for tons of tech and performance tips for VO people.

Cool, thanks. Oh do they ever slice and dice late 70's Los Angeles on that record. Parasite coke dealers, baby boomer dudes trying to make it with teenage girls....the music goes down so nice, but the lyrics are dipped in acid. Their engineering, production and musicianship are things I will never reach, but whenever I throw in a 7th there's probably some Steely Dan in there. The first time my awareness of the emotional impact of chord changes was piqued was when I bought the "Reelin' In The Years" single at age 11 and wondered why a song with such cutting lyrics made me think of the Peanuts holiday specials?. Rock played with jazz changes. The wistfulness of the chord changes communicates a wistfulness that undercuts the sentiment of the lyrics.

I've never used it myself, so I don't know: isn't ReWire supposed to be able to do this, depending on the other program also supporting it?

Generally, yeah, the sounds themselves don't need compression to even them out or adjust attack and decay like real world drums. As the others have said, compression as an audible effect, deliberate heavy pumping with or without sidechaining to a compressor on the bass, those are the things that I hear. It's about adding things that aren't already there. The sky's the limit if you're not trying to create a virtual drum kit in a room. I've smashed the snot out of the entire drum mix using a hard knee compressor or something from the electronic-oriented plug-in houses like W.A. Production. They have a freebie called KSHMR Kick that's designed for kick, obviously, but I've put the thing on an entire drum mix and was very pleased with the results. W.A. are running a bundle sale right now. Comb filtering, like MComb from the Meldaproduction FreeFX bundle, is something I've used, delay, whatever makes it interesting. Also be sure to have Boz Digital's Bark of Dog on hand.

Trippy. CbB offers me something called "Split Instrument Track" when I click on the "+" sign above the track headers. I've always assumed that it was a proper noun, since it's capitalized, but then the dialog also capitalizes other things, and they are not the names of things so who knows. When I choose that it creates both a MIDI and a Synth track with the MIDI track already routed to the Synth track. Very handy. So if there's only one kind of Instrument track, then this command instructs Cakewalk to "Create an Instrument track, then split it before it's displayed." I prefer my Instrument tracks split, be it noun or verb. And I use Synth tracks all the time, even if they're not "basic."

Indeed, that's why I asked. It's supposed to be a "character" EQ, and oftimes those have certain sweetening tricks they are known for, like the Pultec's "bass trick," or an "air band." I figured with this thing that maybe back in the day some coked-to-the-gills hairy guy might have worked out that if you set the Low Boost on 12dB/oct. then turn the 60Hz cut to -9 it resonates with the kundalini or something. I seek opinions, because this is an area where my own knowledge and experience are lacking and there's much accumulated knowledge here. I don't know character EQ's very well. From what I read they can be kinda specialized. It could be great on bass and saxophone and weak on guitar or whatever. I ran some pink noise through it and with LOW BOOST it's putting on a slightly rounded low shelf. The bump in the shelf might be part of why it sounds so good on bass. There's something other than just EQ going on with it (which is audible). They're trying to model the response of the tubes, the transformers, etc. It has a setting for if you want to just use the pure EQ curves and bypass the analog emulation. Speaking of air bands, when playing around with the TE-100, I do kinda like what it's doing to a vocal when I hit the 4K button, switch to 12dB per octave and give it about +7. I liked what it did on bass when I set the filter to 12dB/oct. 170Hz and gave it about +3 or so. It gave it a nice presence and girth. Seems like it would also be good for "what the heck is that thing? That's my secret weapon." exchanges with people looking over the shoulder.

I twigged the thing about dragging the cursor between the buttons. So would you say that it's pretty much a bass flavorizer, or are the other nodes useful as well?

The UI looks a bit intimidating, kind of like the telephone switchboard in an old hotel. The other ones I'm considering are the Maag EQ4 and Millenia NSEQ-2. The Millenia assures me that it has a 300V tube and discrete J-FET signal path, which is pretty impressive for something that is, in actuality, a computer program.

Okay, I already have all of the Unfiltered Audio stuff I want, and then elysia mpressor, which, by the way, man o MAN. I guess it's one of these knob EQ's. I'm not that savvy with knob EQ's, but I might as well have a nice one. Lindell TE-100 has the magic pixie dust, eh?

What did you do to try this? Did you edit one of the segmented meter images?

Their site actually warns you that you already own a license when you look at the plug-in or bundle's page. There's nothing about Meldaproduction's licensing or upgrade policies that bothers me. Other companies will happily sell me bundles that contain things I've already paid for at full price. The only purchases I've ever regretted are when something better or less expensive comes along before I have time to get enough use out of it or if it turns out to be a CPU eater. And for both of those, I present Gain Match. Not an expensive plug-in, but I started noticing playback burps while using it, then shortly thereafter snagged a bundle that happened to have MCompare. And someone else recently came out with a freeware plug-in that is supposed to do the same thing. Something that does what Gain Match does shouldn't be a CPU eater, so I didn't even notice it when I was demoing it. Checking levels on two different tracks and then setting a knob so that they match shouldn't bog down a DAW. There are some that I bought years ago that I no longer use due to having gotten ones that do their job better, but they helped me learn. I can't blame SoundSpot that my ears have developed and now I want more precise controls and metering (Cyclone is still a favorite mid/side compressor).

That is a lovely piece. The flute is a great lead instrument. I like the beat, it gives it a New Age/Techno flavor. Armchair mix suggestion: push the drum machine back in the mix a little with some reverb with predelay. Freebie suggestion: Orilriver.

Okay, separate then. Different commands for undo last editing move and undo last control move. That would be great.

I suggested this when the Tempo Track was added, but then recently I noticed that Piano Roll View already has it for the Articulations Map and Drum Pane. It might not even be intentional, rather an artifact created by the presence of scroll bars, but it's at least some visual indication that there are hidden screen elements that can be pulled down to open. Looks kinda slick, actually. I'd like to see these added at either or both ends of the Track View Time Ruler.

I don't see why not. Anything you get would be able to handle that, as long as it has 8G of RAM and an SSD. You don't mention having a zillion FX or huge sample libraries.

Yes, it would be nice not to tie up double the number of i/o's when using mono processors (which I understand is becoming more popular).

I'm presuming that you were already using the most recent release version and that this isn't your first attempt at using Cakewalk by BandLab as the successor to SONAR. Yes, run the rollback installer and see if that fixes it. If it does, sound the alarm. If it doesn't, open a ticket with BandLab/Cakewalk support. I've done a few exports with the most recent EA build and they went fine.

What I want ain't rocket science: I want any action that would set the "dirty" bit (that is, put an asterisk after the file name in the header to let you know it hasn't been saved) to be Undoable. I know I said "for mixing moves," but that's just the area where I most often get bitten. The asterisk tells me that the program is tracking those actions, so I would like to leverage that. @Noel Borthwick, for whom would this be confusing? I find current behavior confusing as I find it hard to remember what actions are undoable. I came from Mixcraft, where pretty much every action is undoable, including plug-in settings. No confusion: I did something. If I hit Ctrl-Z the action will reversed. Up in the Edit menu, it says "Pan adj." next to Undo/Redo. Of course, as with all such sweeping changes to behavior, for those who only want the limited set of actions to be undoable, this would be a settable preference rather than a mandatory change.

Yes, the video was odd. It only showed the UI in action for a few seconds, the rest of the music was (presumably) a full mix that if it used the processor, had no "dry" sections to compare it to. Certainly looks worth the download, though.

It's going to be the elysia mpressor for me this round. I demo'd both it and Unfiltered Audio's ZIP. mpressor sounds like it puts me in that dbx 165 zone that I've been trying to find for years. It sounds really, really good. The control that limits the amount of gain reduction was immediately useful, and it even has a few "creative" tricks up its sleeve.

Wa-hoo! Voucher reset!

Well, I'm sensitive to topic adherence myself, so I try to make sure to mention something free in every post. ReaFir, various bits of the Melda free bundle, annual freebies from A|A|S, Pluginboutique giveaways, Freakshow Industries' "steal this plug-in." I'm fine with comparing commercial FX to freebies and talking about how we use freeware FX. I think it's helpful to hip freeware searchers to the fact that certain dealers and manufacturers run regular giveaways of payware products, or that commonly used freeware suites can be upgraded for very little money. These developers do a lot of work to provide us with loss leaders to pique interest in their commercial stuff, so I don't think it's off limits to mention their other products. Besides, it keeps the thread near the top.

In freeware FX news, today we have a couple from Fuse Audio Labs, the VREV-666 Spring Reverb and RS-W2395C Baxandall EQ. Yay spring reverb, it's like spring reverb Spring lately. Also, for Glitchmachines fans, Fracture has been updated to v 1.3 with a new UI similar to Convex, and new presets. It's also VST3, so you can keep v 1.2 around for legacy projects. I don't think they have the same plug-in identifier as after I installed 1.3, 1.2 still appeared in my fx lists. The new Fracture has a more intuitive layout, so it's easier to understand what effect the controls have. There's still plenty of the stochastic uncertainty that's part of what Glitchmachines are about. Cheers to them for giving a freebie such a nice upgrade.

I, too, got Objeq Delay in that PluginBoutique giveaway. My advice: play with it. ? I know that MTurboDelay seems like it's the last delay anyone would need to buy, but Objeq Delay leverages the A|A|S physical modeling technology in unique ways. It's not just for demolition, of course, despite abacab's and my destructive tendencies. It's funny, A|A|S' plug-ins are some of my favorites (I have many soundpacks and all of the Sessions) but the only ones I've ever paid for were part of a Humble Bundle, so pennies on the dollar. I did do a service to the user community by sending them a detailed polite request email about their installers' behavior, spewing VST2's into every folder with the string "VST" in the name, 32-bit VST3's, AAX plug-ins, ad nauseum. And they've since cleaned up their act. I like to think my note helped inspire that. OB Freeware FX content: get on A|A|S mailing list. They often give out free soundpacks around the Winter holidays.