Starship Krupa

Soundspot Cyclone is currently on sale for $8. It's very well-regarded and rarely goes on sale. I can vouch for it, it has a great-looking UI and the controls are many and work well. Great combination of vintage/modern. Currently my favorite bus compressor.

I knew you knew what it meant, I mean, you're you. ? I just had polished off a glass of iced coffee and really wanted to riff on my "sense of place" thing. I think I need to get it out in essay/article form. It's an odd term, but then, using a single word to describe something that's such a complex feeling/sensation like that is kind of inherently silly no matter what word is chosen? The bus compressor is giving the tracks coming in and leaving a sense of cohesion, belonging, unity....I picture sound coming from a room, it has the character of the room. I don't know if I've ever read that tip in an article on mixing, to close your eyes and see if your mix creates a clear image in your mind. Been listening to David Tipper's latest album and that man creates holograms, what he does between two speakers is astonishing, like the "id monster" from Forbidden Planet could appear. Up, down, front, back, total control of sound placement. I get that it's got something to do with delay, and mimicking reflections and tiny differences, but I don't know what yet. He's in complete control of every sound on those recordings and it's all electronic, yet it creates the most believable synthetic space.

I must check Snare Buzz.

And New Order are from Salford.

So you mean all someone needs to do to stave off their Windows 10 forced updates is have hardware with non-updateable drivers? ? See my last post for the list of peripherals that might be scaring Microsoft. As New Order's fellow Mancunians 10cc once said, "Oooooh, you'll wait a long time for me." Well, better that than killing my system or having my system work with whatever dipsy-doodle new features they want everyone to have but no longer recognize my video card or 10 channel I/O interface.

Hey, however my fellow former/present psychedelic ranger tech loonies in Redmond and Santa Clara want to put it, seriously, kudos to designing an AI that looked at a repurposed business productivity desktop that was originally designed to run Windows 7, sports a PCI (hold the "e") Firewire card from heaven knows when, a video card from 2009 with a driver from 2015, and the most crucial bit, a pair of daisy-chained prosumer audio interfaces that date back to the George W, Bush administration and said "hold off on this system, maybe it's not ready for the latest whiz-bang update."

Of course always when someone asks to change the way a feature works, there must be a consideration of "is there any use case for it working the way it does now?" Because if there is any use case, someone will be using it that way and it will break their workflow. When you mentioned this, I thought of one where someone could have a locked clip 1 measure long, then cut out a measure 2 measures directly in front of it, then, with Ripple Edit enabled, insert 3 measures somewhere further toward the beginning of the project. If the locked clip stays in place, it will end up in the gap left when the measure was cut out. But as the saying goes, when in doubt, read the manual, and since Ripple Edit Selection works that way, Ripple Edit All doesn't need to and I guess isn't even supposed to. For anyone who wants to suggest a feature request here, I recommend checking the Reference Guide first to see what it says. I've found more than one feature that's in the Guide but that was never implemented or, as seems to be the case with Ripple Edit, was implemented incorrectly, making it as much of a bug report as a feature request. You want it to work as (apparently) designed. For instance: the Ref Guide says that Quick Grouping works on take lanes, and you can select multiple take lanes as if it does, but if you select some take lanes, hold Ctrl, and then try something like hitting the Mute button on one of them, it's no go. The only thing you accomplish by selecting multiple take lanes is making a rectangle in their headers turn a pretty blue color. That just doesn't seem like enough.

Not faster than ASIO, and long supported by SONAR and Cakewalk, so it couldn't have been WASAPI.

Considering that the Reference Guide and documentation say: Either the documentation is misleading or the program isn't working like it's supposed to, because it only points out what is ignored in each mode.

I am so heartily in agreement with this request. At least for now, it would be helpful to know which operations are and are not undoable. My vote is, if the change is enough to make the "unsaved" asterisk appear up on the title bar, it should be enough to Ctrl-Z out of.

My device "isn't ready" according to my Settings page. Interesting way to put it. My computer is going to sit here, and nothing at all about its configuration is going to change between now and when Microsoft finally pushes out an update that will reliably not result in my 7-year-old Optiplex going casters-up. Yet somehow it's my device that "isn't ready" and not the update. Fascinating. I'm trying to work this out on a metaphysical level. The computer is sitting here, plugged into the internet, waiting for the update to arrive. It would seem to be the epitome of "readiness" as in "ready when you are, update." The only way this makes sense is if Microsoft's update already exists in the future in a state of readiness, and my computer hasn't yet arrived in that future. The update is waiting for my computer to arrive where it is. Not where in space, but where in time. To arrive when it is. The update and the computer will come together at the point of readiness. It's like the "bro speak" expression "I'm there!" where the bro is so enthusiastic about a proposed activity that he verbally projects himself in time and space to the scene of the activity. The update is, literally, "there." My computer is still "here." But, actually, they don't explicitly say that it's not the update that's "not ready." Perhaps it's as I have said, and "ready" describes the point of their convergence, but they only differ in that the update still remains in a state of change. Yes! The update is in a state of change, the computer is not. When the update is no longer in a state of change, it will be ready, and as yin becomes yang, it will cease to change and then the computer will start to be in a state of change. Mind. Blown. This must have something to do with that microdosing that is so popular with people in the tech industry these days. (really, really glad that they're being cautious about rolling it out after reading your tales of BSOD's and pulled expansion cards)

Gotcha. Driver support is always hanging over the heads of us audio/video production people with investments in "legacy" hardware. I, too, run Firewire interfaces on Windows 10, and the drivers for them are supposed to work with Windows 7 or 8 at the latest, I think. Still, they keep on going. For now. I have a tendency to hang on like a pitbull to functioning hardware. I had this old but fully functional Canon scanner that I could never really get to work reliably in Windows 7. Canon stopped supporting it after XP. But I never tossed it, it sort of worked on one of my Win 7 systems. On a whim I tried plugging it in after I upgraded to Windows 10 and ba-ding, my little Canon scanner is back in business. Works a treat. Windows 10 downloaded and installed a driver for it. So sometimes it goes the opposite way. A newer version of the OS starts supporting hardware that the older version abandoned. Your "corrupt driver" message would wind me up. I guess my attitude is "my hardware is obsolete when I say it is." ? I have a somewhat different attitude toward software, although if your laptop can't handle W10 you're kind of stuck there. There's nothing wrong with throwing CbB on that Windows 10 box and playing around with it. No rule says that we have to use the same program to record, edit, comp, mix, master, etc. Since they're file compatible, you can copy a project over after you've finished tracking (or MIDI note entry) and try editing or comping or mixing or mastering or whatever. Lots of people have a two or three-DAW workflow. You can have the best of both worlds, the old program you're familiar with and the new one with the improvements. What stuck me to Cakewalk like velcro after I first downloaded it was the mixing. I imported dry stems from one of my projects in another DAW and put together a ferocious sounding mix in a couple of hours using only the plug-ins that come with it. I could see myself using other DAW's for tracking, editing, comping, MIDI note entry, beat making, but for mixing....gimme my Cakewalk Console View. Most of the other mixers look like Fisher-Price toys in comparison. Harrison Mixbus looks good, but not much of the rest. Give it a shot: get the project to the point where you're ready to mix and see which program's mixing facilities you like better. If you already installed SONAR 6 on the Windows 10 box, followed by CbB, you can use all your plug-ins in both of them. One of the bits of wisdom that the SONAR Platinum crew had for their comrades in the DAW world after the Gibson announcement, and I took it to heart, is that it's always a good idea to learn our way around a second DAW. We never know what's going to happen with our favorite. And if you've already tried this, I'm curious to hear your impressions.

I would love for Cakewalk to be able to accurately list my interface's inputs rather than calling the input to my Firepod that has "4" printed on it "Right Firepod ASIO Input 3L." And I have actually armed the wrong input because I didn't interpret this gibberish correctly, fortunately it wasn't a critical recording. I'll settle for making the "friendly names" feature versatile enough to allow me to do it myself.

"Glue" means that it helps the diverse sounds that are being mixed together at the bus sound more like they are coming from the same imaginary source. Compressor off=some things poke out, some things are kinda loose, some things maybe don't feel completely in time with the others. Compressor on=poky things are brought in, loose things firmed up a bit, timing feels lined up a little closer, all these different things move together (assuming the compressor is set up correctly!). If there is "character" in the form of noise and distortion and non-linear frequency response, all of the elements are treated with that same character. What was separate recordings of instruments becomes a bundle delivered through this process that lets them share similar dynamics and sonic footprint. That's bus compressor glue. Too little and it doesn't come together, too much and the elements lose their individuality. One of my theories of mixing is that my goal is to create a picture. I should be able to close my eyes and "see" a good mix, it should create a cohesive sense of place and space in the listener's mind, even if it's a place that could never actually exist. The bus compressor helps the sounds that are coming into the bus sound like they plausibly belong to the space I'm trying to create.

Is there some reason you are trying to use that old software? Can your computer run Cakewalk?

There are only two ways that I know of to make those minimized windows go away: either click on their X's to close them entirely or open them and drag them to the Multidock. Well, a third is drag them to another monitor, if you have another monitor. All Cakewalk views are just a keystroke to open, if they're in your way just close them.

What he said about the "t," also, if that middle mouse button isn't already deliberately mapped to something by you, you can probably go in to your mouse software settings and set it to plain old "middle button" and it will do as per Mr. Cook's suggestion and bring up your HUD, very handy.

Many do. What mix engineers do at the Master bus often depends on whether they are attempting to master the music themselves or whether they are preparing it to be mastered by someone else. Another party will likely wish to have the dynamic range preserved. My mastering chain includes a "soft knee" compressor (currently I'm using Cyclone by Soundspot) right before a limiter. An important thing to do is to just try it and see what you think. Put on your headphones, put your mix on in loop playback mode, close your eyes, put the compressor on your Master bus and switch it in and out, try different settings, close your eyes and switch it in and out again a few times, see what little differences and details you can notice. Then you'll have an opinion of your own, and more experience with critical listening. Compressors in general are in my experience the most difficult and most important processors to learn how to use. You need to train your ears to hear what they are doing, what effect the different controls have on everything. Attack, Release, Ratio, Makeup. When I put a compressor on a bus, it can change the sound of everything in that bus: instrument balance, EQ balance, panning, reverb level, stereo image. They started out as a device to prevent signals from overloading other devices, like not getting too hot a signal on tape or into a mixing desk, but a funny thing about compression is that our ears have it built in, and if we apply the effect to artificially created sound, we can help make it sound more natural to our ears. As far as I know, this was an unanticipated side effect of using the devices. But that's just one of the things you can do with a compressor. You can set them up so that they make an instrument or mix pump and breathe in time to the beat, or soften sharp transient sounds or change an entire mix' perceived loudness. In the case of the bus, you can use it to "glue" several different sounds together so that they all sound more coherent, like they belong together. The compressor tricking the ear again.

My favorite: http://www.vst4free.com/free_vst.php?plugin=Unlimited&id=2843 Also if you follow my instructions for unlocking the 4 hidden plug-ins that come with Cakewalk, one of them is a very good limiter, Boost11:

That is pretty primitive compared to what a lot of people would consider "essential." But not so in my book. It belies good taste. None of your gear is sonically below par, Mackie has never designed a bad-sounding preamp circuit and I have a $20 pair of Sony cans that kinda surprised me when I gave them the "Everything In Its Right Place" test. My favorite song for testing audio gear. If I can hear the little details.... Your "cheapo" AT is probably an AT2020? Don't let that thing rot if you're recording acoustic guitar. I love mine. I have a pair of 'em, those are my drum overheads. I paid $35 each. Had the chance to compare them on the same recording with my friend's factory matched pair of RODEs. The RODEs sounded better, but not $1000 better. I did not expect to be praising cheap mics with you. My favorite snare mic is a Shure Beta Green 58-alike that I got at Salvation Army for $8 with cable. I had been using a SM57 and didn't expect much from this thing, but I tried it and it knocked me into the bay. Full round sound and insane rejection of side and rear to the point that I pretty much don't have to gate hi hat any more. Favorite kick mic is a Peavey PVM535i vocal mic a friend gave me that has, in head-to-head testing, handily beaten the snot out of: a Sennheiser HD421, Shure SM57, AKG D112, and EV RE20. And I don't mean it sounded "surprisingly good" in comparison, I mean I would be disappointed to have to use any of those other mics instead of the silly Peavey, it smoked them so thoroughly.

This is very true. It's also true that everyone has to and does start somewhere. My beginnings were much more primitive than Lum's. It's also true that all of us have some limit to the amount of money we can spend on equipment. However high or low it may be. Also true that none of us, wherever we are in the journey of acquiring tools and the skills to use them, bought all our stuff at once, nor was the first stuff we bought the very top of the line. It's also true that we don't all buy the same stuff. Fortunately for the style of vocal pop with synthesizer backing that he's doing, his Dell notebook, a halfway decent USB condenser mic, a good set of cans and a keyboard controller will do for a while, and the rest is up to whatever skills he can build as a singer, composer, engineer and producer. The things that caught my eye right away were first that Lum figured out on his own that something wasn't right with his track using speaker system referencing. Then he came to the forum with a detailed inquiry with the right information for the people he was asking. And he wasn't afraid to say that his laptop was old or that he was mixing on earbuds. Playback system referencing is a favorite technique of mine, and not incidentally, one of the ways that can help a mix engineer who is working with low budget equipment. If you don't have a good system (and even if you do), you can at least take your mix and play it back on as many systems as you can, and compare it to songs you like on the same systems. That's what he did, and my impression is that he figured it out by himself. Truth, I'm more interested in talking with a dude with $70 in monitoring equipment and an aging notebook, singing into his phone mic, who notices that it's weird that his mix sounds okay on system 1 and 2 but sucks on system 3, while the ones he's trying to emulate sound good on all of them, then takes that information to a forum of strangers for help than a guy who wants to talk about how it was only once he found the right NOS tube for his Manley preamp that his recordings started having a truly open soundstage.? (gestures to mic locker and monitors) "It is not what is in here or here that makes great mixes." (points at temple, then sternum) "It is what is in here, and in here."

Yes, a good USB microphone, it will do wonders for your vocal sound. While you are waiting for it, and you can practice with your phone mic, you can study singing and mic technique in YouTube videos. I liked your basic singing voice, but there are simple ways that you can improve your technique so you will not be making as many of those lip clicks and pops. Think about singing from farther back in your mouth/throat. If it doesn't suit you, you don't have to keep doing it, but I think you might like the result. Also, there is the trick of singing across the diaphragm of the mic instead of what people usually do, which is sing straight into it. Try setting your phone on a shelf and singing across the mic. You have nothing to lose, and every take is at least practice. ? My advice about your headphones was because they are the best you have right now, so get used to how music sounds on them. You will know how your favorite artists sound on your headphones, so you can compare their sound to yours on your headphones. Their music may sound bassy, but at least you will know that. Later you can get a pair of better Sonys or Audio-Technicas or Sennheisers or AKG's or some monitors if your living/financial situation allows it. The Sonys will sound more accurate than the earbuds at least. Out of all 3 of your "gears" they are the best for mixing. Your subwoofer system has bass, the headphones have bass, so you'll probably get a better picture. But next thing after the mic may be a better set of cans? ? You can ask our opinions here, and I am sure you will get many. For as many freeware plug-in effects as you can handle, check this out. Everything works in Cakewalk and doesn't cost anything. I don't know what your finances are, but I get the idea that you, like me, have a hobbyist budget for your music. Every month, one of my favorite software dealers gives away a free license for a plug-in with any purchase, usually it's good and useful software. This month it's a vocal plug-in. Just sign up for an account and buy one item, they have things as low as $5 US and you get the free thing with it. Every so often they give away licenses for one of the iZotope Elements suites, which are excellent, especially helpful for beginners to get good results with. https://www.pluginboutique.com/ They still have iZotope/Exponential Phoenix, the best reverb plug-in I've ever heard for $9 US, or Cyclone, an excellent bus/mastering compressor, for $8. Either of those would be a useful tool and you'd get the ERA Vocal Leveler too.

This is a known bug, the devs are aware of it, and it is in their queue to be addressed. I, too suffer from this one, and all I have is a Korg nanoKONTROL beside the MIDI port on my audio interface. If you download the Reference Guide and study the section pertaining to control surfaces, you'll see that Cakewalk is supposed to keep track of this stuff. I'm sure they'll get it sorted soon enough.

So you are starting on a very low budget, and that is fine. That's not a bad sound you're getting for a phone mic recording, although I do hear some lip and tongue noise, which is why I suggested de-essing. A phone mic will pick up more of that than one designed for singing because it has a smaller diaphragm and is designed to make the speaking voice well understood. You may be able to reduce the lip sounds by placing the mic a few centimetres further away when you sing. See if you can figure out whether your app is using the "telephone" mic or the "camera" mic, and adjust to account for that. Most smartphones with cameras have a mic on the front for taking movies that sounds better than the phone call mic. As you get more into this hobby and want it to sound more like the polished songs you hear, as with anything, you need to do what they do, and the next investment you should make is to get a microphone. I don't know where you live, but here are some suggestions that I think would work well to get you started: https://www.musiciansfriend.com/pro-audio/behringer-c-1u-usb-studio-condenser-mic/ I own the version of that Behringer without the USB interface built in and it is a very good sounding microphone. I have used it to record voice and electric guitar and it worked well with both, especially considering the low price. https://www.musiciansfriend.com/pro-audio/samson-meteor-usb-mic/ I have no direct experience with this one, but it gets good reviews and Samson markets quality products for the budget market. My next, easier, bit of advice is to start mixing (and listening) using your Sony headphones. The XBR450's are designed to have hyped bass (eXtra B*****), but they are decent quality consumer cans. Get used to what well-produced music sounds like on the same thing you use to mix it. Disable the Windows Sound Enhancements on your system and get VLC Media Player and MusicBee so that you can hear in great detail what your music really sounds like. Windows Media Player puts processing of its own on your files as it plays them. Music Bee can use WASAPI or even ASIO mode just like Cakewalk to use your computer's audio output device more directly. John, the first recordings I did were into a monophonic Sony tape recorder with a small handheld dynamic mic. This rig was pretty nice for its time, about 50 years ago, and probably cost my grandma about the same as Lum's phone. His phone mic, which is an electret condenser, is getting a better capture than my Sony dynamic used to. My options for file export and editing were....fewer. We all start somewhere, and if I had had a smartphone and the power of a 2011 Dell laptop and a pair of Sony cans to work with 50 years ago, things may have gone differently.

Lum, You are doing the right thing by listening on different systems. Also asking for advice. I have a hard time doing that myself. My mobile Cakewalk system is a Dell E6410 laptop from 2010. I often reference mixes using consumer Sony headphones similar to yours and have even tried recording just for fun using the built-in camera mic as a room mic. Not recommended for mass distribution! ? I listened to the file that you attached to your post and in my opinion there are no problems with it that would be solved by spending a pile of money on equipment. After all, you didn't even say what kind of gear you used to record, and to monitor while you were mixing, you only told us what you were using to reference listen. But that stuff only matters as you go along, and what kind of results you want to get. You didn't say what you used on your voice, but I think you're off to a good start. My equipment suggestion for getting started recording vocal pop like you are doing would be a USB condenser mic. I can purchase Chinese-manufactured ones of acceptable quality for well under $100 here in the USA. You don't say what your mix monitor system is, but I could mix with those Sony cans while I saved up for something more accurate. The IDT chip in your Dell will drive them plenty loud, undistorted, and with a flat frequency response as long as you use the Sound app in your Control Panel to disable any Windows "enhancements." Where I will agree with those who say you need to spend more money is if you want your mixes to sound just like the ones you hear on the radio and on YouTube. You will need a good quality microphone for your voice and a good quality external audio interface if you want to go that far. But you have a journey ahead of you, and you don't need to spend all that money at once if you don't have it or don't want to right now. You can have fun and learn and get pretty good results with maybe just a better mic. There's so much you will learn, about compression, reverb, EQ, and being good at using those things has WAY more effect on how your mixes sound than whether you are monitoring on the laptop headphone jack vs. the headphone jack on a fancy audio interface. At this point, your mix might even sound worse played back on a $1000 audio interface than it does through your Dell's headphone jack. So, after all my great advice ?, you like how the file sounds on the ear buds and the cans, can you describe what's wrong with it on your satellite/sub system? Too much bass, too little bass? Shrill? Distorted? Hum? Hiss? As a mix critique, I suggest that maybe you should use some FX, EQ and compression. Specifically, try a little bit of de-essing and room reverb on your lead vocal, and mastering compression and limiting on the Master bus. There are some good vocal processing tools in VX-64, you just need to enable it. (Kurre, Lum said that other audio sounded good through the Edifier system, so it seems like he's not having technical issues with the speakers)