Starship Krupa

Well, there is a page in the official Cakewalk documentation about improving audio performance, but I'm not even going to link to it here. It's so out of date that I started a lighthearted humorous thread about it called "Wisdom of the Ages." It looks as if it has not been updated in decades. There are men and women reading this thread, using CbB, who were literally not yet born when that document was last touched. I would like to compile a Windows 10-appropriate list that the new devs could incorporate into the current documentation if they wish, but that's another thread. Anyway, when I first upgraded from Windows 7 to Windows 10 (I'll now call it an "upgrade"), my system was not 100% happy. So I rolled up my sleeves and looked at what was going on using some analysis tools. I learned two important things. First, Cakewalk's playback engine streams from every clip's associated audio file every time you hit Play*. That goes for muted clips and tracks, too. The only tracks and clips that don't stream are ones that are Archived. (*Not all DAW's do this. Some have logic that figures out which is the audio that needs to be streamed (that is, clips that are unmuted) and streams only those files, and some may even do dirty tricks like compress or bandwidth limit on playback (on PLAYBACK, I stress, not mixdown) in order to provide that coveted glitch-free mixing experience. With so many people believing that "all DAW's sound the same," they can do whatever they want, because, after all, it's impossible for a DAW to sound different. ?) Second, Windows Defender Antimalware Service is set up by default to scan everything in real time. That is, every time a program reads or writes a file to or from the drive, Defender is sitting there waiting to jump in and scan it. That includes VST plug-ins, samples, audio files and all the dynamic linking libraries that any Windows program like Cakewalk loads during runtime. Just think of a whole extra program between Cakewalk and the drive that's scanning your vocal performance for malware on the fly.... This is not theoretical. In both cases I sat here and watched Windows Process Monitor as I ran a project and did a Keanu "whoa." In @Robert Bone's worst suspicions I doubt there's a wi-fi adapter driver around that could eat up as much overhead as I was seeing, and I was getting clean DPC scans. ? But enough of my prattle! What can we do about this? Windows Defender allows you to exclude certain folders from realtime scanning. Get thee now to Settings/Security and exclude your Cakewalk project folders from realtime scanning. I also recommend you do it for your plug-in and sample folders. None of these folders are likely to carry a malware payload, and if by some chance they did, Defender would pick it up on its systemwide scans. Be aware that Microsoft loves to revert your security settings, so once you've excluded folders from realtime scanning, check that setting every couple of months to make sure that they haven't switched back. Also, in projects with many unused takes that you're keeping around for possible later comping or alternate versions, etc., consider moving them to other tracks and then Archiving those tracks so that they don't all get streamed unnecessarily while you're mixing and comping your main "keepers." Try these and report back if you see an improvement in performance. They work for me, on my system, but as always, YMMV.

I was enthused when I saw that Cakewalk came with a MIDI plug-in effect for chord analysis, less so after I tried it out and found that it was not as useful as I had hoped. I must investigate the program that you linked to.

In my experience it's been more a matter of the plug-in than the computer. These days, most compressor plug-ins have provision for doing parallel compression built in via a "dry/wet" knob or something similar. There would be no delay because the processing would be handled by a single plug-in. I am curious about your signal flow. I'm not 100% what "a Kick/Snare crush with a lo-fi & dbx160" is. Probably a destroyed sound using a dbx-type VCA modeled compressor and a bit crusher? You should be running them comp>lo-fi rather than the other way. Here is one possible way to set up Addictive Drums (or any drum machine with multiple outs) up for parallel compression, plus what I assume is a bit crusher. Create a bus. Name it "Kick Snare." Create another bus. Name it "Drums." Route the kick and snare from AD to "Kick Snare." Route "Kick Snare" and the rest of the AD outs to "Drums." Put your compressor of choice in "Kick Snare's" FX rack. Mine might be the Signal Noise SN01-G VCA Compressor*, which has a "dry-wet" knob. Then put the lo-fi in the rack after it, because it's easier to get a slamming drum sound and then destroy it rather than the other way around. Set the compressor up the way the YouTube parallel compression video guy said to. Set up the crusher until it sounds appropriately sikk. Set the fader on "Kick Snare" so that it blends in with the rest of the drum kit. The idea here is that I'm using the plug-ins' own Dry/Wet controls for my parallel processing rather than doing it the hard way, which is not only harder, it can result in things like missing playback delay compensation, which it sounds like you've been experiencing. I like to compress my kick and snare independently of each other, so they might each get their own bus, then another with the bit crusher, but that's me. YMMV. *for really slamming drums, there's nothing like Audio Damage's Rough Rider, which is free and just came out with version 3

Drum Maps don't have anything to do with how you record MIDI data, or adjusting your timing or groove, are you thinking of Tempo Maps? Drum Maps (among other things) assign friendly instrument names to MIDI notes so that Cakewalk can do things like display a list of drum names along the left side of the Piano Roll instead of piano keys. It makes editing MIDI drum tracks easier by not having to remember which piano key corresponds to kick drum, snare, etc. Erik "Rests" Miller

It depends on what is meant by "needs," but if, in your way of thinking, Cakewalk SONAR "needed" an Internet connection, then so does Cakewalk by BandLab and I would pass on it if I were you. As previously noted, to install and operate CbB, you must connect to the internet to: 1. register with BandLab with a valid email account 2. Download the BandLab Assistant program, which includes functions for downloading, installing, and validating the newest Cakewalk. This process should take about 5-10 minutes 3. At some point before 6 months passes, connect the computer with Cakewalk on it to the internet, run BandLab Assistant and let it re-validate your copy of Cakewalk. This process should take less than a minute. Then, before another 6 months passes, do this again. That's it. If you wait more than a few months to do step 3, BandLab Assistant will probably ask you to let it update both itself and Cakewalk, and you may choose to do so or not. Cakewalk does not need to check with any licensing server in order to run. Its license is validated via BandLab Assistant contacting BandLab's servers when you install it, and then whenever you run BandLab Assistant with the computer connected to the net. If not connected to the net, it doesn't care. Once validated, it will run for 6 months without needing to be validated, at which point, at startup it will warn you that you will soon need to validate it or it will switch into an "unregistered" mode where you can't save projects. It will not do this in the middle of a project. You will have plenty of time to plug your computer into the network for its 60 seconds of "phone home." The license is a free subscription, like Tape Op. We get to use Cakewalk for free, all we have to do is let BandLab Assistant say "howdy" to the BandLab server every 6 months, just like we have to fill out that form every 12 months to keep Tape Op coming.

Annoying "You Can Already Do This" Man to the rescue! As you have said that you're a longtime Cakewalker, forgive me if you already know this, but you can already add notes to each Track down in the Lanes. It's not immediately obvious (I found it by accident one evening), but open your Take Lanes and double-click in the empty black rectangle on the right end of the header and start typing. I use it all the time to make notes about just the things you mention: which mic I used, places I might have blown a phrase or note, which synth patch I used or what alternate synth patches might sound good if it's a MIDI track, etc. Since each Take Lane has one, you can make really detailed notes on every take, not just the track. If you want to have global notes about the track itself, you could add an empty take lane for that purpose.

I would like to at least be able to invoke "Narrow Strip" like I can with similar strips in Console View.

Excellent news! Boogex and Voxengo fan here. I have to admit to only ever using Voxengo's freebies, and really good stuff it is, but their UI's, oh man, it's as if they exist so that people can say that Meldaproduction don't have the least attractive UI's in the plug-in market. If they would just make them skinnable, anything to get away from that "Windows 3.0 with the Hot Dog Color Scheme" look. I think Crimsonmerry will work for cheap and does great work.

Are you saying that hanging on in quiet desperation is the English way? ? I'm also with Tezza, maybe with a different spin. Creative professions attract nuts. I've pondered why my comrades and I even bother to do what we do, with so few of us even getting any material gain. One conclusion I've come to is that I think, there's having something to express or communicate that we can't communicate in "normal" verbal ways. That can come from emotional pain or suppressed joy or anger. Just in music, how many people have you met that were dissimilar from their personae? In my practice as an amplifier repairman, I can tell you that the nicest, most soft spoken mellowest dudes are the ones who play paint-peeling death metal. Some of my closest musical chums are Eeyore-level depressed at times, yet musically, they often produce joyful pop. The joy they can't find in day-to-day life bubbles up in their music. (ob deals content: I self-medicate by getting my new plug-in dopamine shots)

At the moment it's slapped right across the Master Bus of the first mix I tried it on, and ?. I hope everyone was able to get it is all, and thank you Larry for turning me on to it. I'm not usually one who's much for vintage emulations (Meldamoonie), but this thing sounds great, at least right now.

Dang, I didn't even notice it, maybe because to me, that Windows 7 look is still the "right" UI. The rounded corners, all that, it really did not need "improvement." It's a known psychological phenomenon, human beings feel more comfortable looking at things that are rounded than we do things that are pointy and square. Walt Disney believed that this was part of why Mickey Mouse outlasted Felix the Cat. Felix has pointy ears, Mickey has rounded ears. If you look at guitars that have staying power on the vintage market, it's the ones that are all curves. We make fun of the '80's pointy ones. No matter how well made they are, they'll probably never have similar long term lasting value that a curvy guitar will. Now, no matter how much I appreciate and admire how well Windows 10 runs, I have to stare at those danged square corners for hours at a time. Ouch! Let me have the earlier look as a theme, please! But yes, Cakewalk should look like Windows, whatever the current version of Windows is. Floated Inspector and Browser etc. windows have the W10 look, and so should the Track View.

(tl/dr in parens) #1 by a long shot: Non-destructive normalization. (Why is this one process destructive? Like @Craig Anderton, I'm used to normalizing dang near everything so that my FX gain staging is simpler, etc., etc., but I don't want destructive processing. At. All. I know, it's probably a throwback to Ye Olde Cakewalke. But for heaven's sake CbB can shift pitch, reverse entire bars, replace my entire drum performance so that it's perfect and played on a Roland 808, all without touching a single 1 or 0 of the audio. Yet if I want to normalize a clip to -1dB, bang, churn, grind, whole new audio file. YAAARRRRGGGGHHHH) Next, setting up Drum Maps could be made a lot easier and more intuitive with some menu additions, documentation additions and maybe wording changes. (For instance, there is currently no way to start the process of applying a Drum Map from the PRV Drum Pane. Once the user has called up the Drum Pane in the Piano Roll, they must leave it to go to a MIDI Channel Strip or Preferences to invoke the Drum Map Manager, then go back to the MIDI Channel Strip and apply the Drum Map. There is no indication in the program, no prompts telling them they must do this, they just have to know it. The documentation does not lay out a step-by-step process. There should at least be a menu item in the PRV for "Drum Map Manager" when the Drum Pane is showing and a right click menu item in the Drum Pane for "Drum Map Manager." In lieu of a larger overhaul of the Drum Map, a "wizard" or prompts or something similar could help. There could be tooltip help in the Drum Pane or in the Drum Map Manager indicating the user's next step. As it stands, the user is "stranded" at a few points along the way. It literally took me months before I got the process "down" to the point where I could start from scratch and get a drum map to work right away, reasonably understanding what I was doing at each step. It pains me to say it, but more than one promising beat got lost while I was flailing about trying to set Cakewalk up for drum editing. Beats are important, yo.) Last, what others have already said about the potential of the Matrix. (I don't have a "Morpheus" around to explain it to me, but if it has the ability to become integrated as a compositional tool (which the similar feature in Mixcraft is), that seems like it could be a killer feature for EDM composers/producers. My understanding is that these audio/MIDI loop grids are meant to give Ableton Live-esque functionality, and I would love to have that to mess with. Sounds inspiring.)

User, I'm not 100% certain because I don't use your workflow and only open EL for troubleshooting and only open SV for printing, but I think what you want might already be there (classic Cakewalker answer to a feature request, I know ?). I tried your request and right now on my 2nd monitor I have separate floating Staff View, Event List, Piano Roll and Console windows. I had a hunch that you, as I was until several weeks ago, may not be aware that you can drag Multidock'd tabs out onto the desktop and they'll be free of the dock. You'll still need to click on their headers to switch to them (or Ctrl+Tab to cycle), but they're all visible. Just open your views and drag their tabs out. Voila! One view will still be Multidock, and if you want the rest back in there, drag them back. The independent ones may be dragged on top of each other without re-docking. Or did you mean something else?

I have the benefit of blissful ignorance of the pre-SONAR features that many users found to work better. I do feel ya about it sticking in the craw when a much-touted "improvement" seems to result in the program feeling clunkier and much-used features being replaced by ones that don't work as well. Yet here we are in Cakewalk by BandLab Land, but it's one where the devs do pay attention to what we users would like and make an effort to implement it when it's within reach. ? Y'know, the lack of having the "narrow strip" function for the strips in the Inspector is so obvious now it almost seems like an oversight, and fodder for a separate Feature Request here in this forum. Why can't we right click on the strips in the Inspector and get "narrow strip?" I think you're the man to make that request. Also, it occurs to me that I suspect I can create a Workspace with no (or floating) Inspector or Browser if I want to run in audio edit mode, and another one for MIDI edit mode, and another one for mixing mode. I say "suspect" because I haven't yet, but that's because I haven't dug into the Lens/Workspace feature since it was overhauled. Maybe if I set it up just right I'll be able to click back and forth.

You can float it and close it with the "x" in the upper right corner and get even more TV space, and then call it up only when you need it. I do this with the Help window and the Browser when I really want real estate in the TV. Undock 'em, then close 'em with the "x." They don't re-dock. Then when called back up, they come back undocked and can be moved where convenient.

It looks like your system "Programs" folder is in a location that may have changed since you first installed SONAR or CbB? And as you no doubt know, despite the fact that Microsoft allows it, and they should be able to handle it, some programs have trouble with being installed in any path other than C:\Program Files. ?‍♂️ Since the CLSID's may actually be different between the last SPlat versions and the last (older) CbB versions, maybe yours don't match? TPTB remain silent on this matter.

Here's a temporary workaround: it only sticks if you have the AA line enabled when you drag and drop the Instrument or Effect from the browser, so if you hit "X" and switch the line off before you set up your synth(s) or FX, you can switch it back on. A bit of a pain, but I think the devs are on it and it should be fixed soon. Good shootin' finding the reproducible condition!

Thanks, Mario, this is most helpful. I tried it and it's also true for dragging and dropping audio FX from the browser to the Track Header FX bin.

To reiterate what everyone else has said and point something else out: iZotope Ozone already has an algorithmic mastering wizard. I don't know how it compares to any of the online services, but I find it useful as a starting off point, to compare my progress as I learn more about mastering. The traditional thinking on mastering is, as @bitflipper says, putting your mix in front of a pro who knows how to get the best out of it. The idea is that the mix engineer and artist may also be too "close" to the mix after working on it for weeks. And that the processes of mixing and mastering use different tools and have different goals. Mixing (to me) is at its essence getting everything sitting pretty in a sonic space. Mastering is applying final compression and limiting and EQ and maybe some spatializing to give an overall polish and loudness, coherence and depth. Depending on the genre, punch and/or warmth. I personally subscribe to the traditional thinking, but my problem is that I can't afford to hire someone, so I try to separate the processes as much as possible. I do my mix as a mix, with no effects on the Master bus, only channel and submix effects. Then when I have everything in its own space sonically, I start with one of my mastering chains. The mastering process may reveal a need to revisit the mix. If so, I do, but I turn off the mastering effects. One of the most important techniques is, of course, referencing to other professionally mastered material that has the sound I would like my piece to have. I think the online services would be useful inasmuch as they are another algorithm to compare my work to, but they are still just algorithms, like the one in Ozone. There was an algorithmic one I downloaded a couple of years ago, AAMS or something like that? Anyway, I ran it against one of my mixes and liked my own results better. There's no need to get redneck-y about mastering wizards. To use bitflipper's analogy about the houses, it's as if they gave you a beige house but left out the part that says you're not allowed to change the color. Ozone at least is just a set of the same FX that we all use manually. Some of those FX can be set up by robot, some not so much. Limiters, for instance, can do pretty well with an adaptive algorithm. An EQ curve can be applied based on what genre. I notice that Neutron is utter poo when it comes to setting compression parameters.... Heh, maybe at some point, we'll see a "John Henry" or "Big Blue" type mastering competition to see if an algorithmic mastering program can outdo a human. "Bob Ludwig was a disk masterin' man...."

I don't completely understand what you mean. Ozone Elements 9 is a small suite that has only the EQ, Maximizer, and Spatializer modules. Yes, it does have the Mastering Assistant, no you are not forced to use it. It can only be used as a plug-in inside a host. It can't be used in standalone form and the modules can't be used separately from the main suite.

I'm not a fan of "this doesn't answer my question," answers but I'm going to follow in Sidney's footsteps and offer an alternate/similar/complementary suggestion. I have no experience with online mastering services. However. Pluginboutique is currently running a promotional deal where all the iZotope Elements packages are $8.88, including Ozone Elements 9. It includes the aforementioned "good EQ and limiter" in addition to a spatializing tool. Somewhat controversial advice: it also comes with a very useful set of presets and a "mastering assistant" wizard that can analyze your track and apply suggested settings that you can then tweak to suit your taste. I have found it to be a valuable tool for learning my own mastering techniques. It's also great for quickie use when I've just recorded some stuff, thrown together a rough mix and want it to sound good right away. $8.88 is the proverbial "no brainer" just to get the EQ and maximizer/limiter. They also have Neutron Elements for the same price, which I would snag as well, if you don't have that, and RX Elements. I'd skip Nectar Elements, as it doesn't allow access to the parameters, but they have Stutter Edit and Breaktweaker if you are into EDM. When I first got Ozone Elements, it was a bit heartbreaking, because I had been trying to learn mastering for some time, and then I slapped a few presets on this thing and they sounded so much better. But it challenged me, and I eventually got to where I like what I can do as much or better. Sometimes I use Ozone, sometimes other tools, sometimes a combination.

It's weird that the BA installer/uninstaller continues its downward spiral (if you hadn't noticed, it's also started to leave behind references to previous versions in the Windows app list), considering that it's pretty obvious that (while the Cakewalk devs have nothing to do with BandLab Assistant development) Cakewalk development has certainly not been scrimped on. I haven't spent as much time with the other BandLab DAW's, the Chrome, iOS, and Android ones, but they're sharp, modern-looking apps and haven't crashed on me. BandLab Assistant itself is a good-looking, stable utility with features that go beyond just being an installation manager for Cakewalk (no, really). But this one specific component of BA, its own updater/installer, they just can't get that thing right. And the "check my own version, download and install update if needed, restart myself" problem is not one that is new or unique to BandLab Assistant. Which is....unfortunate, because I have a hunch that most Cakewalk users are like me and only start BA when they need it, which is usually to update to the most recent build of Cakewalk. And the first thing BA does is try to update itself, which fails, giving the subsequent proceeding an air of fail. We all know better intellectually, but it's still like having a baggage handler bang a cart into the side of your plane loud enough to hear it before the plane takes off. From what I read on the forum, BA is not the most popular feature to start with....?

And I apologize in return, it was my ***** attempt at disingenuous humor, I didn't think that you meant it as a mean joke. I was in a weird mood and posted after I had been up many hours. The more I thought about it, though, it is kind of odd to see an obituary in with "deals," isn't it?

I hope that someday the installer/updater for BandLab Assistant reaches the high standards achieved by other BandLab software.

I agree! Welcome to the community of Cakewalk users! The company who own Cakewalk don't spend much to advertise it, so tell your friends how much you like it, what a good deal you think it is.