Starship Krupa

As the author of a Tungsten-based theme, I'm kind of puzzled about how in PRV, the only themes where I can notice the effect of View/Show Clip Outlines are the lighter ones. Mercury, MIL-SPEC Alpha, other lighter themes both show the clip outlines as an overlay. There seems to be some way to set this, as I see that Flat White Matcha and MIL-SPEC Alpha differ slightly, but I can't find it in TE or TYLIP. Also, in PRV, when a track is armed for recording, the view background and clip take on a pinkish hue. This seems to be universal, in every theme I can find, but has anyone figured out how to change it?

I finally fully grasped how routing works in TAL Vocoder-II, so posting it here as a public service. The basic concept of a vocoder is that you're using one audio signal to modulate another. It's a form of sidechaining, you have one audio source and you're using another one to affect it. The audio signal being affected is the "carrier" and the one affecting it is the "modulator." Many vocoders, including hardware ones, include simple internal synths to use as a carrier. TV-II has one, but may be used in a way where you may disable the internal synth and feed it both audio signals. My initial confusion with TV-II was that in order to use it with its internal synth, you set it up backward from the usual sidechain arrangement. The plug-in is installed on the modulator track, not the track actually being modulated. That was the biggest thing to get my head around. There are two ways to use it. 1. You want to use its internal synth (as the "carrier") with other audio controlling it (as the "modulator," traditionally a vocal). This is fine for the bread-and-butter Tupac/Daft Punk effect where you want a "robot voice." 2. You want to feed it carrier from your own synth track, and another audio track as modulator. This was my ultimate goal with a vocoder, because I want to use breathier pads for the synth input than the TAL Vocoder's simple internal synth is capable of. More Kraftwerk "Autobahn" than Tupac "California." We'll begin with case 1. Start with a MIDI track with the notes you want to send the synth, and an audio track you want to use to modulate it (usually a vocal). Insert TV-II as an effect on the audio (modulator) track. In the plug-in UI, at the top, click on the VST2 button and enable MIDI input. Go to the MIDI track and set its output to TAL Vocoder. That's it. Now, you'll have to fiddle with the controls in the plug-in, adjust the synth to get a sound you like, etc., but the routing will be set up. (The confusing part here is that you're inserting the plug-in on the modulator track, not the carrier. That's what I mean by backward.) For case 2., you'll be using a stereo bus. You will be sending audio only, not MIDI, to the plug-in. Create a stereo bus. Name it "Vocoder." Insert TV-II as an effect on the bus. Click the button in the plug-in UI that's labeled "Input Mode On." In the audio/synth tracks you wish to use, create sends to "TAL-Vocoder-2." Set the sends to Pre-Fader. Pan the send on the track you wish to use as the "carrier" to hard left. Pan the send from the "modulator" to hard right. To mute the dry sound from the carrier and modulator, just pull their faders down. If you want some dry sound, bring them up There are alternate ways to accomplish case 2, but this is the easiest I've found. Send a nice hot signal from the modulator to the right input of TV-II and again, do some fiddling with the vocoder controls. The internal synth is inactive in this mode, so leave it alone. General tips for vocoding: on your modulator track (usually voice) fire up a good 1176 emulation, set it to 12:1 and smash the snot out of the signal before sending it to the vocoder. Also, if using a vocal, a tuning correction/pitch changing plug-in can add another dimension. I use Meldaproduction MAutoPitch on the "Man To Woman" setting to bring my voice up (for the AIR Talkie Walkie sound), and set it so that it "glitches" a little bit. Feed the vocoder a nice, hot modulator signal.

I finally fully grasped how routing works in TAL Vocoder-11, so posting it here as a public service. The basic concept of a vocoder is that you're using one audio signal to modulate another. It's a form of sidechaining, you have one audio source and you're using another one to affect it. The audio signal being affected is the "carrier" and the one affecting it is the "modulator." Many vocoders, including hardware ones, include simple internal synths to use as a carrier. TV-11 has one, but may be used in a way where you may disable the internal synth and feed it both audio signals. My initial confusion with TV-II was that in order to use it with its internal synth, you set it up backward from the usual sidechain arrangement. The plug-in is installed on the modulator track, not the track actually being modulated. That was the biggest thing to get my head around. There are two ways to use it. 1. You want to use its internal synth (as the "carrier") with other audio controlling it (as the "modulator," traditionally a vocal). This is fine for the bread-and-butter Tupac/Daft Punk effect where you want a "robot voice." 2. You want to feed it carrier from your own synth track, and another audio track as modulator. This was my ultimate goal with a vocoder, because I want to use breathier pads for the synth input than the TAL Vocoder's simple internal synth is capable of. More Kraftwerk "Autobahn" than Tupac "California." So, we'll start with case 1. Start with a MIDI track with the notes you want to send the synth, and an audio track you want to use to modulate it (usually a vocal). Insert TV-II as an effect on the audio (modulator) track. In the plug-in UI, at the top, enable MIDI input. Go to the MIDI track and set its output to TAL Vocoder. That's it. Now, you'll have to fiddle with the controls in the plug-in, adjust the synth to get a sound you like, etc., but the routing will be set up. (The confusing part here is that you're inserting the plug-in on the modulator track, not the carrier. That's what I mean by backward.) For case 2., you'll be using a stereo bus. You will be sending audio only, not MIDI, to the plug-in. Create a stereo bus. Name it "Vocoder." Insert TV-II as an effect on the bus. Click the button in the plug-in UI that's labeled "Input Mode On." In the audio/synth tracks you wish to use, create sends to "TAL-Vocoder-2." Set the sends to Pre-Fader. Pan the send on the track you wish to use as the "carrier" to hard left. Pan the send from the "modulator" to hard right. To mute the dry sound from the carrier and modulator, just pull their faders down. If you want some dry sound, bring them up There are alternate ways to accomplish case 2, but this is the easiest I've found. Send a nice hot signal from the modulator to the right input of TV-11 and again, do some fiddling with the vocoder controls. The internal synth is inactive in this mode, so leave it alone. General tips for vocoding: on your modulator track (usually voice) fire up a good 1176 emulation, set it to 12:1 and smash the snot out of the signal before sending it to the vocoder. Also, if using a vocal, a tuning correction/pitch changing plug-in can add another dimension. I use Meldaproduction MAutoPitch on the "Man To Woman" setting to bring my voice up, and set it so that it "glitches" a little bit. Feed the vocoder a nice, hot modulator signal.

I, too, would like to see this. Mixcraft, my other DAW, has it built right in to clip properties. I even suspect that BandLab already have licensed algorithms that could be put to the task, given that there are multiple stretching and pitch shifting algorithms from zPlane and iZotope. In the meantime, the freeware Cockos Reaplugs ReaFIR works really well. Also, iZotope RX Elements is often available at deep discount from various retailers. It contains most of the basic noise removal parts of RX, and they may be used as individual FX. I believe I got my license as a "free with any purchase" at Pluginboutique.

Okay, we're up to v.3, now with matching Track Header and Clips Pane backgrounds and some cleaned up odds and ends, more green arrows, and a couple more sort-of-hidden surprises for those who go poking around opening things and watching for the glint of green. Yes, I've gone to the trouble of altering some things just for the sake of altering them, and what of it? You only thought you didn't need a transparent green background for the Tools HUD. Racing Green means to continue to delight with unexpected surprises as you use it more. It's not just a pretty face.

Ha, I finally found at least some of them by poking around in the Cakewalk directories. C:\Program Files\Cakewalk\Rapture Session\Resources\Instruments\Thumbnails contains the 22 images used for Rapture Session's patches, and they are all in the nice overhead lit, vignetted style of the stock templates' images. Some are the same images, some of the Start Screen Template images are missing (the mixing consoles), and there are images there that aren't on the stock templates. Now I just need to figure out how to reliably make them "stick."

Right you are, sir. I just picked out a nice color for both of them and it looked great until I realized that the creators of TE don't appear to give us access to the equivalent colors used below the Track View Bus Pane (which would be "Background" if it existed). Nor do they give us access to the equivalent areas below the Track Pane in PRV and elsewhere. As I am known elsewhere as the Konsistency Kop, so must I go with 1F1F1F in v. 3 in order to have all of these areas match (also on a practical level I agree with you, Kevin, that it pulls the eye away from the action) . And I had such a nice dark (almost black) green. I have other plans for it, though. Anyway, as I continue to notice small un-green items, as one does, I'll be updating Racing Green, so if anyone has any suggestions, or spots a blue button where it could be green (I didn't want to go overboard, so stayed close to the Tungsten defaults for MSRW), please let me know. Thanks to TYLIP, there is a nice handful of tiny changes in v.2 , like the lock icon in Hardware showing an open hasp when it's not locked. And changed a bitmap or two that nobody ever touches. Same with wallpaper. In order to see the XKE, you must set it to Default.

I think Kevin's saying that his PRV looks like that regardless of theme. Even in Tungsten. Tungsten on my systems respects the darker colors that were introduced a year or two ago.

Is it possible you have a stuck custom color set? That's not normal, stock Tungsten doesn't look like that. I figured out what you meant by the colors below the Track List and Track Pane, I agree and will get on it. Thanks!

I'm not sure what you mean, even with the illustrations. Do you know where in TE I can find these colours? I'm definitely up for less jarring. (speaking of colours (sic), have you found the Easter Egg that honours the theme's British heritage?) I just updated it to add some more green in the menu bar arrows, as well as changing the backgrounds of the Color Picker and HUD. Also made some of the greens more unified and removed the gradient from the menu bars to further flatten things.

Is that how the PRV looks on your system? That is indeed heinous. On all of mine, it's like this:

You will get better help in the Instruments and Effects forum. The first thing I would do is open Cakewalk Plug-In Manager and check to see if they have been excluded, and if so, enable them. I have multiple SONIVOX instruments myself, and they work fine in Cakewalk.

C'mon, no jokes yet about "Mesa by BandLab?" I'm sure that Meng is excited about this development.

My favorite is Speedrum Lite. Sitala is another favorite. Both are freeware and quite simple to use. As for how to do it, it couldn't be much simpler: set up Speedrum or Sitala as an instrument track, then drag and drop whatever audio sample(s) you wish to use onto the pad(s). You can drag and drop from Windows Explorer or from within Cakewalk (clips). They both have 16 pads, so it's straightforward to create an entire drum kit if that's what you'd like to do. From there, trigger the note(s) with a MIDI track. They're great for "one shots," but neither of them does velocity layering with multiple samples (yet).

I don't have Studio One, but I can vouch for major improvements in stability and performance since the SONAR days. I've been using CbB since the very first issue, and 3 years ago, that program had some issues. Crashing, lots of having to restart the audio engine, but that stuff is long gone. Lots of under the hood optimizations have happened in addition to the new features. The new features seem focused on usability rather than license grubbing, which makes sense given the licensing model. There is ARA2 support for tight integration with Melodyne and whatever other software uses it. Hardware integration seems to be behind the curve, according to what I read in the forum. As it is now, I would choose it even if it weren't freeware, but I wouldn't have said that back in 2018. It looks and sound great, and it isn't lacking in any features I can't Rewire in. I love the way I can float and reconfigure all the windows on my 2 monitors. I'm a believer in keeping proficient in at least 2 DAW's (my other one is Mixcraft), I saw what you all went through when Gibson pulled the plug. Download it, keep it around just in case. See what your old buddy is up to these days.

I'll chime in and say that I always leave my hardwired or wi-fi connection enabled as I have found this to have no impact whatsoever on audio performance or dropouts on modern-day systems. When I run Latency Monitor or other performance measuring tools, the NIC drivers are way down the list of impactful interrupts. It's not necessary for me to turn my network connection off and back on every time I want to do DAW work. The optimization that has had the largest impact on performance in Cakewalk is disabling realtime malware scanning for the various folders where Cakewalk does most of its reading and writing of files. On systems I configure I exclude the Cakewalk projects folder, plug-ins folders, and Cakewalk program directory. On my own systems I have disabled realtime scanning entirely, but I realize that's not an option for some. The reason this has such an impact is because when Cakewalk is playing back audio, it streams it from the disk every time, and that includes muted takes and tracks. The only way to keep an audio file from streaming in a project is to archive the track it's in. And without disabling realtime scanning, every time Cakewalk uses the disk, whatever file it reads or writes will be run through the anti-malware software's scanning program.

Meant to evoke the experience of going for an evening drive in a classic British sports car, Racing Green uses green buttons and arrows, with brown and gold accents. It's a darker theme, meant to be easy on the eyes at night. It's green, the greenest you've seen, never was a theme so green, except for Green Glow. Thanks to @Colin Nicholls for the Primer and use of his Browser folders image, thanks to @Matthew White for the bright red buttons that indicate my FX racks are disabled. Thanks to both and all for inspiration and assistance. It uses the alternate convention of a keyboard to indicate a Synth track and a keyboard/MIDI sandwich to indicate a Simple Instrument track. Why it's the other way 'round from the factory is beyond me. There are also some things meant to ease confusion about such matters as "does that button mean PDC is off or on?" The state of something being enabled or disabled should be clear. If it's turned off it's either visibly darkened, red, or has a red line across it. If it's enabled it will be lit up, usually in green. It also uses my dark theme convention of selected clips having a dark background so as to better see the data within. Unselected clips revert to displaying their standard backgrounds (or as you choose). It's my first custom Cakewalk theme, Racing Green. Let me how you like it! UPDATE: the Racing Green folder now includes an optional custom color preset file which may be imported and extends the customization, including greater visibility of grid lines in the Piano Roll View. Update: 5/18/2021 Added images for Meter/Key (and related) dialogs, minor image changes and recoloring Update: 5/24/2021 Redesigned arrows and buttons, replaced EQ grids, many other small art changes

Been saying this for a long time: have separate email addresses for software purchases/downloading and for security-critical sites such as financial institutions, insurance, etc. They're still free at yahoo.com, and they even let you create multiple addresses for the same Yahoo account, so you don't have to hassle with different logins (or messina for that matter). This isn't because small plug-in houses are likely to swipe your info, it's because (as you say) their security is softer. One of the reasons that it seems like large institutions are the only targets is that hacks against credit reporting agencies and so forth get reported and hacks on Audio Masterclass don't. Another thing: if you can, use a unique password at every site. There are various ways of accomplishing this without the need to memorize dozens of passwords. Even if you just use the form mypassword*plug-ins or mypassword&banking or whatever, mix it up. This will go a long way toward thwarting dictionary attacks and social engineering attacks (fans of Mr. Robot have seen Elliot successfully use social engineering hacks to pwn everyone).

I will vouch for the usefulness of Fender Tune. Even the free version has a library of fun alternate tunings, like "Raga."

The default mousewheel behavior is to zoom tracks horizontally, if you have something similar to a Logitech Marathon with the super fast wheel turned on, it will zoom very quickly.

Another heads-up: I'm not an iLok hater, although I see no advantage to using it with iZotope products; even if I'm taking a project to another studio, they're probably going to have the same iZotope plug-ins that I do anyway. I have 4 computers, so their multiple seat licensing works great here at home. I decided to finally buy a used iLok dongle in order to be able to use certain licenses on my extra, third system. Unfortunately, I bought an original iLok thinking that the only difference was capacity, and it's now possible for companies to make their plug-ins require an iLok 2 (or PACE driver), so two of my most important iLok'd plug-ins, Phoenix Stereo Reverb and Excalibur (both iZotope, both single seat licenses) don't work with my iLok.

Thing is, I'm pretty much okay with how Drum Maps work once they're set up. The drum names show up over on the left, they don't disappear after you close the project, and unlike doing it the "note names" way, they don't usurp the note names for other MIDI tracks you may wish to edit. It's the obscurity/hassle/complexity/uncertain results I'd like to see reduced.

I don't have a "worst" purchase to share, but I got slightly "chumped" on one of my favorite purchases, Sandman Pro. In late November I remembered the $25 voucher I had for them from filling out a survey, minimum purchase $39. Since I'm getting more into in-the-box glitchy weirdness, I downloaded the trial for Sandman Pro/Instant Delay and it was love at first mix. $49, but I figured with a 15-day trial and all the sales coming up I would sit tight, worst case scenario it never goes on sale and I drop $25 on it. Sat out the "most plug-ins $29" sale, then a few of their subsequent ones where they were putting selected products on deep discount. Finally decided to just say the heck with it, Unfiltered aren't participating in the Dec. sales, my voucher expires on the 30th, so $24 for a pair of insanely great tools it is. Christmas comes and goes, and I get a no-minimum voucher for $20 and Sandman Pro drops to $19.99, making it effectively free. No skin off any body part, I paid the price of a trip for 2 to Burger King (or half the price of discount admission to Six Flags Marine World) to be able to use a great tool for 3 weeks, and I got Fault for free instead (oh did BYOME call to me). Still, worst deal on a favorite plug-in. But considering that I got enough plug-ins for free (Including the $29 Fault) this year that I will be literally unable to explore all of them as long as I live, I'm fine with supporting one of my favorite manufacturers. Now I hope that they don't renew that dang voucher code again so I don't have to struggle over whether to get BYOME....

Also access to the reverb parameter either via knob or automation. Their reverb algorithm is fantastic, but the presets tend to drench the sound in it. It was fun to go through Arturia's free pack of "ambient" sounds (and thanks to you, mate, for listing all the free packs) and hear the classic ambient synth sounds without all the modulation and reverb that those sounds are usually draped in. The silliest fun may be had in the Present to Future pack, where they nail a bunch of synth sounds from classic songs.

I mentioned this in passing earlier. There is even another way to get the drum names showing, which is to use alternate note names. Unfortunately just now that functionality is a bit broken inasmuch as applying those note names is not persistent across closing and opening the PRV. That's what led to this most recent match with the drum map demon. The other DAW's I've used also put the two things under one feature called "drum maps." If you want to see your drum names in Mixcraft, you use a drum map. If you want to do the MIDI note and port remapping, you use a drum map for that, too. I mostly just want to see instrument/note names, but of course I want to have the other part of the feature available. The instrument names part is why I think there should be access to the feature from the PRV/Drum Pane. If all you want is to see the drum names, it can be a heck of a lot of bother to go through. All I wanted was drum names and I wound up with a spurious patch/bank message in there somewhere.