Starship Krupa

I like the vocorder'd backing vox. Reminds me a bit of Sparks.

The Cakewallk Reference Guide refers to this variable in the Cakewalk.ini file. When set to "1," which is the default, "Global and view toolbars are drawn with a background gradient. If you prefer a flat background, set the value to 0." I'm not even sure what they're referring to with "global and view toolbars." I tried setting it to 0 and then back to 1, and could see no difference anywhere I looked in the program. Anyone? Is it deprecated?

It works the way you say it's supposed to on my system.

I think so. CHKDSK /F

You have set up a very nice input stage indeed. The input you were running into is designed for a hotter signal, so right there you were at a disadvantage. It's always best to feed whatever input on your card/interface the kind of signal it expects. And with as few cable adaptors as possible.? I get a red light when the adaptors start piling up, it can be a hint that there is a mismatch in the signal as well as the hardware. The Cakewalk Reference Guide suggests that you can run a 1/4" to 1/8" adapter to play your guitar into a computer's onboard mic connector. I tried to get them to take that out, but I think it's still in there. Big no-no.

Too low an impedance load for magnetic guitar pickups, those are line inputs, so you either need a breakout with hi-Z instrument inputs or a direct box to go between your guitar and the inputs you have. As far as doing tricks to reduce noise resulting from your tracks being recorded at too low a level, the solution to that issue is to not create the issue in the first place. Record a healthy, strong signal where the guitar's level is plenty far above the noise floor and you should be fine. The noise-killing technique I use when I am stuck with a source that was poorly recorded is to use ReaFIR, a freeware plug-in that allows me to sample the noise profile in an otherwise silent part of the recording and then process the recording to reduce it. Used only in circumstances where I can't obtain a good audio capture.

Nice track. Relatable lyrics. I agree with what has been said about your voice being attractive. Just the right amount of your gentle Ghanian accent comes through. And just enough electronic processing on it to sound interesting. I like the birdies on backing vox! Rather abrupt ending, though. Maybe a few more "fe-e-els" with a fade? Care to share what reverb you used? Sounds great.

Great sound! It's huge. When the big pad comes in, it's quite emotional. Agree with PhonoBrainer about the bass. Doing the same part, but on the grid in Piano Roll using a P-bass sample, would really improve it.

Here's a screenshot of the current Logical:

I'm kinda leaning toward nvelope. I downloaded both of them and the only thing the SPL Transient Designer + has that nvelope doesn't have is the external sidechain input. nvelope has that dual band mode, which I think I'll get more use out of. I was having fun putting it on drum loops and bringing the snare or kick up and down. Now that I know the trick for getting at the VST3 presets that PA ship with their stuff (at least Lindell, bx and elysia), it makes it easier to demo things. Picked up TRIAD yesterday. What a monster.

There are some "little" ones that would help me every day, in the "driving me nuts" category: A "replace effect" in the context menu like we have "replace synth." (I made this suggestion on the old forum almost 4 years ago and Noel liked it) The option to have new synths' property page automatically open when you replace another synth with them. Who doesn't want to immediately see the new synth's UI when they replace another synth? (this would also apply to #1 above) As much as I'd like having a built-in sampler (I don't know what chord tracks and VCA faders are), having these 2 would make me happier and impact my use of the program over and over in every session. I know that many people work the way I do, swapping multiple plug-ins and synths in and out looking for the one that best suits the song. Especially with creative FX like delays, I'll go through 3 or 4 of them before I find the right one.

You mean across the entire length of PRV rather than just the piano keys as it is done now?

I made one humongous change, which came after I actually looked at some Logic Pro screenshots: I gave the Piano Roll a Tungsten-style dark color scheme. This matches the rest of the dark UI and more closely resembles Logic's piano roll. I hope the change is welcome. If you want to revert to a light PRV, just open it in Theme Editor and remove the PRV colors.

Basically, what can be done with Theme Editor is change the colors and sometimes, the look of the buttons. So yes, the icons and time display are going to look very similar to Cakewalk, just in different colors. Logical is someone's idea of the Logic color scheme, applied to Cakewalk. I don't even know their name. If you want a dark theme that is more complete and IMO, even improves the clarity and legibility of the Cakewalk UI rather than just changing colors, try my Racing Green or Midnight Blue. Or one of Matthew's many dark "M" themes. They go further than just changing some colors. We put thought into legibility and visibility of control status as well as making it more attractive. I especially pay attention to making gridlines more visible, via the custom color presets that go with my themes. I find the stock gridlines difficult to see. Tungsten RS adds the clarity features without changing the Tungsten colors.

Okay, the ZIP in my post up there has the update for 2021.12, plus a few RS features. @Brian Nixon, if you would kindly edit your message to me to remove the quote that includes the link to the old file, I'd appreciate it.

I guess I could....let me see.... If I'm going to be the unofficial keeper of this one, it may get a few RS features....?

From what I understand, Command Center should allow you to download, install, and authorize CA-2A and Z3ta. I don't know about TH2, things are different for the 3rd-party pieces of the bundle.

The switch distortion is the most versatile.

This is the first I've even heard any reference to any "SSD Read/Write limitations," for audio or any other application. Rather, I've seen so many people recommending them for audio production rigs that I started making jokes about it on the old forum. When I Google "are there limitations to using SSD's for audio production?" I get nothing but people asking and being told "no, they're way superior." Therefore, I am going to stick to the belief that they are superior in every way to spinners except for cost per gigabyte. In my personal experience, my SSD's read and write the ones and zeroes way faster than my spinny drives, and they don't discriminate based on what kind of file the ones and zeroes belong to. Media production (and anything else with large file sizes) is probably the #3 task where a user is most likely to notice a performance improvement over a spinny drive. #1 is system startup and #2 is program launch. However, for anyone who has any SSD's that they feel might be holding them back, either now or in the future, I volunteer to help out and save you electronics recycling fees. For the cost of a 1st class stamp you can send them to me and I will dispose of them properly. If these limitations exist, I'm certain they would be worse for higher-capacity SSD's, so if you have any over 1TB capacity, I advise sending those right away. Seriously, though. I have seen people talking fidgety about the fact that SSD's have a finite number of reads and writes in them, as if that's unique to them, as if HDD's have unlimited rewrite capacity. Well, the Easter Bunny was our parents, and HDD's have a finite number of reads and writes in them. In this, the SSD again has the advantage, although not by as much as it does the speed advantage. SSD's are way less fragile, though, way less subject to failure by external forces (impact from your computer falling off the desk, being near magnetic fields, etc., SSD's can survive conditions like flooding that mean instant death to a HDD). The only advantage that HDD's have as far as reliability is that in some of their failure modes, they give warning that they are becoming flaky. So if you are using proper monitoring software, you will find out and maybe be able to replace it before it goes completely dead. Most people don't. When SSD's go, it's usually with no warning. They just suddenly won't be recognized by your controller. HDD's sometimes fail without any warning too. We shouldn't choose one or the other based on whether sometimes one will warn you when it's about to croak, with the idea that this makes our data more secure. The solution to concerns about data security is not in choosing a more or less reliable primary storage medium (they're both pretty reliable and they both eventually wear out), it's in making appropriately regular backups of your data. Disks fail, therefore we make backups.

Despite having participated in the sack of PA last year and taking advantage of Meldaproduction's 60% off everything sale, there's one type of processor that I don't feel I have the "right" one yet: transient shaper. I have WA Production's Imprint, which is supposed to be a multiband transient designer, but it's so far resisted my attempts to get results with it; perhaps starting with a multiband one isn't the best route. Imprint has about 3x the number of controls. It seems like the PA choices are either SPL Transient Designer Plus or elysia nvelope. Leaning toward nvelope because of the way it can narrow processing to certain frequency bands. I have fun with "turd polishing," taking the worst phone-recorded live small gig or practice recordings and turning them into something halfway listenable, and this would seem to be a useful tool for that as well as the usual transient shaper-y tasks. If anyone has any wisdom to share regarding Transient Designer Plus vs. nvelope (for instance some special feature of Transient Designer Plus that I'm not aware of), please share.

You're referring to the ones you access by opening the "VST3" menu in the plug-in properties page. Funny, I had Plugin Alliance plug-ins for years before I figured out that most (not all) of them come with presets installed in that canonical (according to Steinberg's VST3 documentation) location. I'd been expecting them to show up in Cakewalk's own preset saving box.

Yes, likely. Shut them off one by one until you find the bad one.

I wonder if there's some way to shuffle core affinities around so that Chromaphone, when running as a plug-in, could have one mostly to itself. Someone told me that VSTi's were not included in Cakewalk's plug-in load balancing.

Blew the dust off! I did some experimenting with turning off layer 2. Since you can "solo" them, I found that in the incredibly dense sounds Chromaphone is capable of, the second layer wasn't contributing that much. Their sound designers create these sculptures using everything available, and sometimes in the context of a piece, they're too dense. I was following the conventional wisdom on that for a long time, then tried enabling it and my processor clock shot up to 3.8 GHz (stock is 3.4) and stays there. This is on a Dell, which are notoriously clock blocked. So I'd encourage folks to experiment with that setting, monitor it with HWInfo, see what you get. The trick was to turn on the turbo boost, but keep the power saving one off. Must confess at this point: I'm not (at this point anyway) much of a "synthesist." I call myself a "preset jockey." Mostly I turn off synths' internal reverb so I can replace it with R4 or Nimbus. My compositional process often involves browsing patches, finding an inspiring sound, then building the piece around that sound. It used to cause me a bit of shame, like "real" synthesists dive in and create their own unique sounds, blah blah. But then it struck me: some of my favorite composers' keyboards only had one "preset," and it couldn't be tweaked at all. ? If A|A|S Player would only allow me to turn off reverb, I'd have much less interest in Chromaphone, which is probably why they don't allow it. Hybrid 3 (great arps and sequences) is actually my most-used synth, and Vacuum Pro is up there too (some nice basses in there). XPand!2 is great for the kind of workflow you describe, and of course has sounds that can stand up to being used in a final mix (basses, arps, and pads). As Cakewalk itself has gotten more nimble and resource-friendly over the last few years, I guess plug-ins have gone the other direction. AIR will probably never develop my favorite workhorses into the resource hog zone.?

A|A|S licenses may be transferred, so if you wanted to flip your full licenses, you might be able to find a buyer and recoup your cost. You'd need to surrender the full upgraded license(s), though, as I'm pretty sure the upgrades themselves aren't transferable. So if you still want to be able to use your version 2 stuff, that wouldn't be possible. I am very glad that I ran the trial before paying for a license. I started out very enthused and ready, and then became less so. I still want it, just not now. I think there's a tradeoff that media software companies (I used to do software QA) have to keep making: hold back functionality from the latest version in the hope that they'll sell some licenses to people with older hardware, or put in the features and hope to more licenses to people with newer hardware. And the answer is often to do the second thing, because people like me who squeeze every last bit of use out of older hardware tend to spend less money in general, which includes for software (especially upgrade licenses).