Starship Krupa

I'm working on the next version of Racing Green and am having a hard time identifying one certain image. I want to change all of the QuadCurve EQ grids, and I've finished all of them except the one that shows when a Console strip is narrowed. Thanks!

Another endorsement of Process Lasso here. Some have accused it of being snake oil, but that's in regard to its claims about what it does in its default behavior. What I like about it is its ability to kill processes that won't stay down when killed in Task Manager or even Process Explorer. Even the difficult ones that respawn immediately, like Xbox Game Services and Apple Mobile device support, you tell PL that they're not allowed and it's like putting out a mob hit in the movies. I once watched Process Lasso deliver a beatdown on Apple Mobile device support that was epic in computer terms. I had it set to kill all three components, which if any of the other Apple service see that one of their fellows is offline, they will start it back up. Process Lasso just kept hammering away on all three of them until for whatever reason, the Apple stuff gave up. The Apple stuff would respawn in a matter of microseconds, and this went on for about 45 seconds, so an eternity in computer time.

Archiving of take lanes is a feature that has been requested by me and others, mostly due to the fact that muted or not, in playback and recording, Cakewalk reads every file referenced by a clip in a project, including clips in muted lanes. I'd like to keep multiple takes for possible future remixing, but without the overhead on the audio engine of streaming them all. I can wind up with 10 takes of my drum kit, which amounts to 40 files the length of the song. So a song with 12 tracks, 4 of which are drums and the rest individual voices and instruments, can end up streaming 50 files depending on how many takes of the other instruments I have. Sometimes I'm not 100% sure which takes are going to work best until I get a halfway decent mix put together. Right now I solve this by moving the unused takes to other tracks and archiving these tracks into a folder named Archives, but, y'know, extra steps.

People don't seem to realize that a search function even exists. This forum has been going since December 2018 and we still get "Can I use my SONAR plug-ins with Cakewalk by BandLab?" "Will my SONAR projects work in Cakewalk by BandLab?" etc. ?‍♂️ Forum search engines often befuddle me, which is odd considering how good I am with Google. In this one, I have yet to figure out the syntax for searching for ALL terms in my query or a specific string. Everything I try ends up returning results that are as if I just entered the words at random.

Sigh. I think it was originally supposed to work the way you expect. According to earlier versions of the Reference Guide, Quick Groups were supposed to work on Take Lanes. Just as with tracks and buses, where we are able to select multiples, then hold Ctrl and whatever operation we perform (such as mute, solo or delete) would be performed. I can't find it in there any more, so I assume that the decision was made to alter the documentation rather than implement the feature. It's still confusing because you can highlight multiple lanes but it doesn't mean anything. Remove Empty Take Lanes is fine for just that, deleting empty lanes, but I'd like to be able to do it in one step across multiple tracks. Since I record live drums, I wind up with 4 tracks, often with a useless take or two. In order to get rid of those takes, I have to perform what I think is too many steps. Open all the lanes and delete them one by one? Delete the clips and then Remove Empties? Does Quick Grouping work for Remove Empty Take Lanes?

Double post

Which part of my experience? I'd be happy to further clarify. My issue with using the Cakewalk Plug-In Manager to do my custom layouts is that when I install new plug-ins that are "Uncategorized (which means that the developers didn't set the "category" string in their vst code), those don't show up in the Browser. My issues with making my own layouts using the Browser itself are that it's clunky. To do anything, one must right click and work in a menu. No drag and drop, no renaming from the Browser itself. I'd like to slow click on a plug-in name to rename it. I'd like to drag a plug-in from one folder to another. Something I just thought of: I'd like to select multiple plug-ins (using Ctrl) and be able to either drag them to another folder or to an FX rack. Wouldn't that be slick?

@Colin Nicholls, do you have a single link that points to all of your custom themes? I want to recommend them, but I can only find links to the individual ones.

If you're using one of the factory themes (Mercury, Tungsten), look closely at the small icon to the left of the instrument's name. It's different for each type of plug-in, VST2, VST3 or DX. If you use one of @Colin Nicholls' themes or my own Racing Green, they feature a more differentiated set of icons in this location which Colin created and kindly allowed me to use. Each icon also has its own color, making it so that you don't have to squint to see right away. And I do recommend using a custom theme if you can find one you like. A good theme can make Cakewalk easier on the eyes, more inviting to use, etc. I chose green because my eyes "relax" better with it. I go back to the green-on-black monitor days and still like that color combo. His themes (and mine) also feature more contrasting colors for the names themselves, which is a themeable item.

Oh man, I love my MRythmizer. This is so very temptatious. Thing is, I haven't figured out how to make much use of their MB thing. Well, as I say, if it is a good idea, it will still be a good idea tomorrow. Note to the Meldaproduction upgrade policy h8r: here's an example of something I'd pay €25 for that Meldaproduction would credit me for having spent €50. It's not always best to avoid buying from dealers. Also, I notice that Gross Beat is on sale for $49 at Pluginboutique. Makes me wonder about the timing on this. Meldaproduction puts their version on sale for half that.

See, I am a befuddled geezer.

I have the Lite 10 license, and I drop in and mess with it every so often. Maybe I'm set in my ways with my Cakewalk and Mixcraft and REAPER and Music Maker and Waveform and Vegas and....well, pretty much every DAW and NLE I've ever tried. But when I fire up Live! Lite and try to start off by writing a tune in their piano roll, there's this feature that Ableton seems to lack that is standard in all of those others, which is the Rewind button. A button that returns the playhead to the beginning of the project. This function is handy for things like when I enter a few notes or chords and want to listen to what I just did. I hit play and it plays, then it keeps going on into infinity, and I can stop it, but then just sits out there. I can find no option to have it go back to start when I stop the transport, I can find no keystroke that rewinds, so I wind up clicking back at the beginning and hoping that my click was accurate. I know there are some fab features that Ableton Live! has that Cakewalk lacks, but really, being able to rewind the transport is not something I'd ever expect to have to do via clever workarounds. Is it that the music produced with Ableton is expected to be so inconsequential that even the person making it isn't interested in listening to it? That can't be, some of my favorite artists use Ableton Live! Adding some kind of rewind would be my #1 feature request for Ableton.

And at least in my case, they have failed entirely. Double-shot $20 voucher+already owning all the UfA licenses I want=digging around in the bargain bin. Next sale I'll probably pick up Mo-Verb so as to have the set handy. I haven't tried it yet, but I do realize that it's more transient shaper than something like proximity eq+. I like transient shapers, especially for salvage work. You know, those times when my TARDIS won't let me go back and record the material over again with better equipment or mic placement. If I were to encounter myself in my own time stream, it might do irreparable damage to reality, and an impromptu jam session that turned into everyone playing way above their abilities isn't worth risking existence itself.

As a public service, I'll post a link to my A|A|S wiping tutorial. On my systems, The number of of AAS Player locations in its various unnecessary forms is in the teens. I do the cleanup after installs of any of these products, I have a folder on my desktop with shortcuts to each of the folders so that I can clean them out.

Here's one of my recipes: open an instance of that MCompressor you upgraded a couple of months ago on whatever material you want to compress. Try a vocal or guitar track where the player isn't already using tons of compression. Set it up for 4:1 ratio, 5mS attack, 100mS release. Hard knee, peak not RMS. Now adjust the threshold so that the vertical line in the MCompressor metering window is "dancing" back and forth across the angled horizontal line, right at the knee. Switch it in and out of bypass and adjust the output gain to compensate for the compressor's overall gain reduction. You're looking for about 4dB or so of gain reduction. Then park your cursor arrow on the bypass button, close your eyes, and click it a few times, listening for the difference it makes. That's one of my starting points for when I want to use a compressor to make something "pop." Another thing: They have multiple uses. Compressors were originally designed to pack more signal into limited bandwidth, but they're also used to alter amplitude envelopes in sonically pleasing ways. It was important to me to distinguish between those two uses when I was learning, because I needed that to understand the advice people gave me. There's a psychoacoustic effect, our ears have their own built-in compression that clamps down on transients, and compressors can be set up to mimic that and trick our ears into getting the impression that we're being exposed to a louder sound than we actually are. Think of an explosion in a movie, it sounds really loud, but it doesn't hurt your ears because there's a compressor (a limiter, too) on it smoothing down the spikes. I found/find MCompressor to be the best for understanding compression because it's designed to be as free as possible from character and coloration. When I click back and forth I'm not digging the "mojo" it's adding. It's a favorite of mine for individual instruments for that reason, when I don't want "mojo" to build up. Here's a video that I've watched multiple times. It's about using them for sound shaping, how to listen for what they're doing:

SPL De-Verb Plus, you are now mine.

Waves score points for using a non-proprietary dongle, for sure. It does make up somewhat for the single-seat license. And I, too have shelled out (WavesHell loading system is another PITA) money to WUP a few plug-ins, first to 10 to bring them into the Windows 10 era, then again to 12 to get the scaly gooeys. I didn't mention single-seat iLok'd companies now that I have a fiiiiiine iLok2 to use with them.? (Next time I go to LA I think I'm going to get a chain to wear my iLok around my neck)

Of the biggies, only Waves stick out as far as not being cool. It's about single-seat licenses and grubbing for WUP fees. I'm not scared about my v.11 plug-ins being "unsupported," if they work fine now it's likely they'll work fine in the future. Charging more than $10 to transfer a license is unnecessary, so Plugin Alliance takes a hit for their $20 fee. Otherwise, hey, good discounts, 3-seat license, what's not to like? I'll chime in with Meldaproduction love, the one hitch is that there's no discounted upgrade path for individual plug-ins in a bundle. For instance, if I wanted to upgrade my Essentials Bundle MSpectralDynamicsle to the full version, I have to pay whatever the going rate is for it. Whatever, I've benefited greatly from their generous upgrade policies and referral credits to get some really great top quality plug-ins.

Excellent advice from John regarding the Maximizer or similar harmonic enhancement tools on old recordings. Something I neglected to mention earlier, since you're trying to give the old mix a better overall tonal balance, reference it against a better-mixed song while using a spectrum analyzer on each. My choice for spectrum analyzers is Meldaproduction MAnalyzer (nice because there's fully functional free version), and Voxengo SPAN is another popular choice. I prefer MAnalyzer because it shows numeric readouts on the peaks, which would help with that midrange lump. MAnalyzer also comes with presets that allow you to overlay analyses of tracks in a variety of genres for comparison. And your analysis can be copied and pasted into MEqualizer for direct reference while you're working on it.

I've done a bit of polishing of challenging material like phone captures and old cassette recordings. I actually find it great fun to see how good I can make a poor recording sound. The tools I turn loose on them are EQ (using a plug-in like MEqualizer that can do mid, side, left and right independently is the best) stereo image processing (Voxengo MSED, and JST Sidewidener or Polyverse Wider), and transient shaping (I've used fairly simple ones in the past, but I acquired WA Production Imprint multiband transient shaper several months back and am looking forward to deploying it on one of these someday). The transient shaper can bring up or push down various elements in a mix by emphasizing attack and decay.

Regarding p. 44 of TYLIP, it describes the Plug-In Tree Icons image (which I gratefully swiped from you for Racing Green). It also halfway down the page states "These are also used for icons in the 'Add Track' instrument selection drop-down menu." I can't find that, or maybe I just don't understand it. Colin, can you clarify?

I don't have personal experience with DIY home NAS systems, but I have set them up in a pro environment, so perhaps I can offer some suggestions. FreeNAS looks pretty good, thanks for making me aware of it. I like that it's based on FreeBSD (as is Mac OSX). It looks like FreeNAS comes with SAMBA out of the box, which takes care of connecting to Windows peer networking. If I were doing this, I would set up a RAID1 with two drives, and yes, set it to RAID in the BIOS. I don't know if your HD controller would support hardware RAID, but I'm sure FreeNAS will let you set up any kind of software RAID you want. RAID1 stripes all data to both drives, so if you lose a drive, no problem, it's there on the other one. It also has the traditional RAID benefit of faster read times. The only issue with it back in the day was that you only wound up with the storage capacity of a single drive, but these days, TB drives are ridiculously cheap, so who cares. Get a pair of 3TB drives and get read speed and data protection for cheap. I assume that your home network is all Gigabit, so that won't be a bottleneck. Even if it were 100M it would still be fine. On the streaming side, you will have more speed than you need by orders of magnitude (consider that Netflix and Amazon stream 4K over the internet). For backups, it should fly. Schedule incremental backups every day for a time when you won't be on your system and you'll be secure. One thing: after you get your backup all set up and running the way you want, try a test restore. It has happened more than once that someone has set up a fab backup plan that somehow fails to restore properly due to a misconfiguration somewhere. This has me thinking that my old Core 2 Quad could be put to NAS use after I retire it from second desktop duty. I have one terabyte drive, just need another and I can set up RAID1.

In my observations, most thrones outside of the low-budget zone use a very similar base that's compatible with (or identical to) the ones that Roc-n-Soc uses. The differences are only in the seat, not the bases. So you can get just the top and it should slip right on to a decent quality Gibraltar (or Pork Pie or whatever). Gibraltar also sell replacement tops for much less than the equivalent Roc-n-Soc. A friend gave me his Roc-n-Soc tractor throne because after trying it, he wanted to go back to a round one. I tried it and also decided that I, too prefer a round one. Where the contoured motorcycle seat bothers me is when I change how far apart my knees are when playing. That seems odd, because one foot on the hat pedal, one foot on the kick pedal, but still, for whatever reason I wind up running afoul of the contours. The round one also allows me to park my tush farther back if I want. When I rewrapped my first kit in sparkle vinyl, I took my round throne seat over to the auto upholsterers up the street and had them use a remnant of the sparkle vinyl to recover it. So when I haul out the old CB700's, I have a matching throne. It looks pretty cool behind my daily players, a vintage 1970 Slingerland New Rock outfit. One advantage that the tractor has is that I can fit a backrest to it, and as I get older, I'll probably end up getting one. Tip: the top of the line Gibraltar is very similar to the Roc-n-Soc at about half the price: https://www.amazon.com/Gibraltar-9608MB-Cordura-Throne-Backrest/dp/B000BZIYY8/

Glitchmachines Palindrome for $10, Subvert for $5 at Pluginboutique until April 18th. I can vouch for Palindrome having one the coolest-looking UI's of any plug-in, in contrast to GM's usual businesslike arrays of knobs. Reminiscent of the arcade game Tempest.

Wound up with Backmask and Mishby. Re the Levels freebie, yes, make sure you uncheck the products you don't own licenses for and the formats you don't need. Otherwise it gives you demo versions and .AAX's.