Starship Krupa

Hey Byron, I am actually of the same belief as you, despite not being the world's greatest singer myself. If I hit a bum note I record the line again and either use the new take or comp the line in, but I am also a skilled recording and mix engineer. It's free for me to do that. I enjoy the challenge and it makes me a better singer. It's practical for me to do this, I record my songs for myself, under no deadline, I may put them on YouTube and BandLab someday, I recommend not holding your breath for that day to come. I also play drums, I love playing drums, I'm proud of how far I've come in the 6 years I've been doing it, but I don't think I've ever recorded a take that didn't need at least one kick hit nudged. I could go back and record the track again, play until my arms fall off, but with drums, there's a point of diminishing returns, it turns into a chore, I lose the energy of the early takes, so why not just nudge that one thump? I'm still using my art and skill, just a different skill. But really, this is a discussion among recording and mix engineers, not singers. V-Vocal is a tool for manipulating audio, which is what we do with our Cakewalk. Lots of us record ourselves, but lots of us, me included, record other people too. I made my snarky comment because I grow weary of hearing the same grumpy grouses about the use of this tool. It's not funny, not helpful. People can't be shamed into wanting to be better musicians! We get people who bring us bad recordings. We get singers who go out for one puff or beer too many and come back and blow a note or two. I did a song at my house for a friend who just friggin' hit the wrong fret on the bass track, dropped SuperClam right there and we didn't even notice it until after he left, perfect feel, timing, the guy was a touring pro for years and just fscked it up. I fired up Melodyne Elements and dragged the golden blob up one half step and it sounded great. John Lennon had the engineers at Abbey Road invent automatic double tracking because he thought doubling his lead vocals was a chore, and soon, every pop song had the "chorus/flange" effect slapped on everything. Was it cheating? Heck yes it was. Fortunately it sounded fantastic. Personally I detest the notion that every note that comes out of a singer's mouth needs to be in perfect tune anyway. I think that good singers, like good speakers, vary pitch slightly to convey emotion, and that gets lost when pitch gets over "corrected." When I play guitar, even with chords, I bend notes a little to make the guitar "speak." I do it without thinking. So if I ever use Melodyne, I use it to fix a note that really sticks out, if the singer or whoever drops a serious clam. Other people use it in different ways, ways I may not like, but as a recording and mix engineer I can only force the talent to do another take and sing in pitch to a certain degree. Then what? Kick them out? In this economic climate for studios? People always have and always will show up for recording dates unprepared. Under-rehearsed, undertalented, underfunded, under-whatever. So now we have a little software thingie that makes the singer sound in better tune, who is harmed? I went out to see one of my favorite bands from the 90's on their reunion tour, was blown away by how good they were, everything spot on, vocals perfect. Then I watched the phone videos, and good heavens, I don't think she hit a good note the whole night! Just awful. I don't know if my enthusiasm created a pitch corrector in my head or what.?

Ha, haaa, ya know that joke just never gets funny!

Yes, what Brian said. iZotope have a number of freebies. If you click on Products on the main page and select Ozone Imager and Vocal Doubler you can get those. Both are excellent, not surprisingly. The Vocal Doubler is their advanced take on the "automatic double tracking" effect used by the Beatles at EMI Abbey Road. If you download the trial version of Neutron 3, after it expires you get to keep the rather mind-blowing Visual Mixer. The way this works is you put a plug-in on each track you want to control with the Visual Mixer, and the plug-in controls level and pan. Then the Visual Mixer shows all these tracks on a screen as icons, which you drag around to place in the mix wherever you want. It's the direct opposite of "mix with your ears," I guess, but it's frickin' awesome for songs that have a lot of backing vocals.

I like that idea. I presented the idea of a sticky, but the powers that be seemed lukewarm on the idea, and are probably at Summer NAMM right now anyway. They don't seem to like sticky posts and threads. I really want one for the topic "I have Sonar. What happens if I install Cakewalk by BandLab?" but no go on that one and it seems like I answer that question in one form or other several times a week. My strategy is to start these two threads and see if people are interested. Then if it stays popular we can ask to make it a sticky or subforum or whatever. On the old forum, it seemed like people were more interested in commercial plug-ins, and even some finger-pointing when people would experience crashes, an assumption that freeware licensed plug-ins were more likely to be buggy. People would say "are you using any freeware plug-ins?" if someone was experiencing a crash. So it's good to have a list of plug-ins that are known to work well with Cakewalk. That helps with the uncertainty and prejudice. Cakewalk is free, and has become more stable since it became freeware licensed, as I hoped it would. We should ask about this in another week, maybe? It's a good idea. P.S. I don't know if I'm a freeware expert. Maybe I'm just broke!

The SFZ instrument that got me to start using the format was Sforzatron, which is a sampled Mellotron. Being a fan of the Moody Blues going back to high school, I'm also a fan of the Mellotron, specifically the string sound as showcased on "Nights In White Satin" and "Watching And Waiting."

If you install Cakewalk alongside Sonar, all of your Sonar FX, including V-Vocal, should appear and work just like they did in Sonar. As a matter of fact, the current Cakewalk Reference Guide has a chapter on V-Vocal to support people who upgrade from Sonar to CbB. So, no kluge at all, it should work seamlessly. If it doesn't, post back here and the forumites will help you out.

Now that's great info. Thanks. Obviously your system is more than up to the task of running any level of project you want with Cakewalk, so we can eliminate resources as a possible issue straightaway. It happens with a very common instrument plug-in that used to ship with Sonar, AAS Strum, so it's probably not that. That lets you narrow it down to maybe an issue with how the program interacts with the ASIO driver, which it seems to be. I'm curious, just as an experiment, whether it happens if you use the Focusrite in WASAPI mode? Sometimes there can be problems with the way Windows is talking to USB devices if you've disconnected a device from one port and then plugged it back in to another port. The way to check for that is to run Device Manager and select View/Hidden Devices from the menu and see if you have duplicates of the Focusrite. If there are any, uninstall all entries pertaining to the Focusrite. Then unplug it, plug it back in and let Windows reinstall it. As for the clips issue, please do try the EAP release and report back. It is packed with fixes and feature updates to Take Lanes and editing, and even if it doesn't solve your issue, you'll find it a big step forward.

We're talking about sforzando, but I don't think there's been a link to how to download it yet. For those who don't already know, it's a a sample player, specifically for the SFZ format. If there's anything else to explain, I'll leave it to the experts! What I know is that there are a lot of free sampled instruments in the SFZ format available for download and this VSTi plays them like a champ.

One of my favorite compressors for the drum bus is Audio Damage Rough Rider 2. I think you can get an idea just from the name, but if you want to get all squashy on a drum mix, this is a very good tool. There's also an interesting fuzz plug-in for free on the site.

There's also the Windows 10 Fresh Start, which keeps only your personal files and starts your system with a fresh copy of Windows. Something to try before getting a whole new computer. It gets rid of all of your apps and settings, though, so it's a last resort.

Ugh, the Dell Touchpad. While you're at it, see if you can figure out how to get Windows 10 not to turn my desktop into little shrunken versions of everything whenever I move the cursor diagonally upper left-->lower right. Since down at the lower right is where the Synth Rack shows up, imagine what fun I have whenever I happen to invoke Synth Rack view from the menu, which is in the upper left, then try to zip the cursor down to the lower right to interact with the Synth Rack I just made visible. And anyone thinking of offering the suggestion that I instead invoke it with Alt-9, just don't.

This issue must be something that is occurring when the Channel Emulator is used in a certain way. If it weren't, the forum would be full of complaints and the development team and beta testers would have noticed it a long time ago. The Console Emulation is a commonly used module. There must be a plug-in, module, way of routing, something that is happening on your system. If it's a bug, it's one that's exposed in combination with these other factors, so please post more about what other plug-ins and ProChannel modules you are using, where the track is routed, etc. The Console Emulator adds a bit of gain, so it may even be that the gain inherent to the module is causing something to go into oscillation. It also has its own resonant peak.

I think it's becoming clear from the responses in this thread that reverb, depending on how it's applied can be both a special effect and a means of creating a virtual space, even in the same mix. I tend toward creating the virtual space, because I like to end up with mixes where I can close my eyes and picture just such a virtual space with everything placed in it. Having said that, I loved Robin Guthrie's production with Cocteau Twins where everything was just doused in reverb. I turn off synths' internal reverbs because I find they muddy things up, especially VSTi's that are based on sampled instruments.

One big feature that Cakewalk by BandLab is still lacking, in my opinion, especially for EDM work, is inclusion of a software phrase sampler. While there are a few choices out there, the one I've found that's closest in functionality and workflow to the ones I'm used to in other DAW's is TX16Wx. It has such a rich feature set that I'll probably never delve deeply enough to really find out what all it can do, but it quickly and easily does the bit where you get some phrases in there and trigger them with MIDI information, and that's what I want my phrase sampler to do. It has good tools for editing and pitch shifting as well, so I look nowhere else. They recently updated it with a bunch of new features like a more scaleable GUI.

Also, don't get a copy of Eckhardt Tolle's The Power of Now expecting it to have anything to do with Cakewalk.

If you can list as much of your system specifications as possible, as I have done in my signature, it would be most helpful. OS, processor, audio interface, disk(s), RAM, etc. In this case, I'd like to know what kind of disk(s) you have and how you have them set up. SSD? Spinny? 7200RPM? One single drive? Projects on one, system and programs on the other? We don't know what operating system you are using. Windows 7, 8, 10? How much RAM? Since you mention that the problem has gotten worse over time, it suggests to me that it might be helped by defragmenting the hard drive where your projects are stored, if the drive is not an SSD. Your PreSonus AudioBox is a fine interface and should be able to run in ASIO mode, and since that is the optimum mode for it, my first order of business would be to get it working in ASIO mode. If you can't get it working in ASIO or WASAPI mode, it indicates that there are problems elsewhere that need to be corrected before you proceed. MME is a "last resort" to be used for legacy and oddball hardware, not currently supported products like your AudioBox. You won't get full capacity from your interface running it in MME mode. It's like running your car with half of the spark plugs removed.

I agree, but my hope for now is that they'll be "virtual stickies," that is, people will keep finding good freeware and posting them, which will bump the thread to the top. And if we keep the quality of the recommendations high, and stay on topic, we may very well wind up getting stickied anyway. Or the content may be used in a sticky. Maybe there is so much great freeware available that you can get close to putting together your own "Cakewalk Platinum" by substituting freeware for the premium content. Maybe not, but it's a fun idea. Cakewalk Aluminum, maybe? This, for sure. I see people asking about where to find a good Rhodes or drum kit or strings plug-in, and wonder if they've even tried them. The Rhodes is really good, the drum kit is good if you go through the sounds and find the sampled kit you like and then fiddle with the onboard FX and most importantly for any canned drums, mess with your velocities! Especially on the hi hat. The strings are good enough that I might not have bought the Sonivox Orchestral Companion if I had already had them. One of the problems with the Studio Instruments may be the interface, which I find makes it difficult to audition the soundsets. It's not immediately clear how to get at all the different kits or basses or pianos or string sounds. The Strings for instance, has synth pads and other different samples included, not just the default chamber orchestra, the Bass has synth basses, acoustic, fretless, and so on. There are at least a dozen different sampled drum kits, both acoustic and electronic.

These are some great links! Who needs a sticky when this keeps getting the bump? Of course I cheat it a bit by not posting the masses of links like mibby did! Boz Digital Labs has some good stuff, especially Bark of Dog, which is a bass management/enhancement tool that used to ship with Sonar Platinum as a ProChannel module. It's now up to Bark of Dog 2, which unfortunately doesn't come in a ProChannel module format. Boz is a good guy, though, and if you tell him that you're running CbB and ask him nicely, he might let you download the original, which will install both the VST and the ProChannel module. Another note about the Computer Music plug-ins, one of them is Sidewidener by Boz Digital and Joey Sturgis Tones, and it is my hands-down favorite way to stereoize and enhance mono sources like iPhone recordings. One challenge I take on for fun is to take mono rehearsal recordings, like where someone set their phone down at band practice, and polish them up as best I can using things like Sidewidener, iZotope RX, proximity eq+, iZotope Neutron's transient shaper and so forth. My friends marvel at the results and it's a fun challenge and a good way to learn what the tools are capable of. Sidewidener is the best.

Since the freeware FX thread is doing well, how about we have one for instruments? Razor already mentioned the huge collection available free for registering with Native Instruments, and I followed up with the free Kontakt drum instrument DrumMic'a. If you're into combo organs, the first two I recommend are Combo V and Combo F, excellent modeled Vox and Farfisa organs. The developer went on to work for Arturia and expanded both of them into commercial products. Dead Duck Software, mentioned in the Free FX thread, first released instruments that were the classic mda instruments with nice GUI's, one of which is one of my favorite Rhodes emulations, then came up with their own original synthesizer for last year's KVR competition. Laptop Musician Blog recently released a trio of cool tiny ROMplers, my favorite of which is Padspheres, sort of an ambient-in-a-box. There are also a couple of treated pianos. That's all for now, just a taste to prime the pump. All of my suggestions are going to be 64-bit and thoroughly tested with Cakewalk. The freeware repositories are littered with 32-bit VSTi's thanks to Synthedit having been a dominant development tool for so long, but I no longer even bother with them due to the extra overhead and extra potential for issues. Cakewalk is a 64-bit host and I suspect the developers are no longer paying much attention to compatibility with legacy 32-bit plug-ins. As you will see, there is a cornucopia of 64-bit freeware.

Just basic audio editing, I guess. Getting rid of spikes and clicks.

I should set this up. I have both Sound Forge and RX Elements. Anyone tried both of them and have a preference? I've been using Sound Forge outside Cakewalk and like it well enough, just haven't messed with RX much.

The stuff that Native Instruments gives away for free? Just crazy. They're more about instruments than FX, so I guess we should have another thread? And on a related topic, since it uses the Kontakt Player from NI, my favorite sampled drum plug-in, Sennheiser DrumMic'a. It really belongs in another thread, because it's an instrument, not an effect. DrumMic'a is a Kontakt Instrument that Sennheiser released several years ago as a demonstration of the use of their microphones for recording drums. To register and download it, you need to complete the process on a German website, but it's not hard to figure out how to fill in the blanks to get your registration code. It's very powerful, has its own mixer, allows you to use individual outputs for each of the 8 microphones, to try different microphones for each drum and overheads, bypass the internal mixer's processing, etc. They must have spent a fortune on the thing, but it works as they intended, it's an effective demo of how their mics work on drums and I hope it has sold a lot of product over the years. I've fooled some experienced ears with it. Unfortunately, DrumMic'a is no longer free due to some licensing changes between NI and Sennheiser.

My complaint about the Antress Modern collection is that contrary to the name, all the ones I saw were 32-bit. The Tokyo Dawn Records freeware plug-ins have an amazing amount of functionality, although I still haven't gotten my poor head around Proximity! And yes, just as with Klanghelm and Meldaproduction, you will probably end up shelling out for the extra features. But the thing is, in all these cases, you aren't shelling out that much, and these developers deserve the heck out of it for putting up tools that broke folks can use without being tempted to use cracked plugs. As a matter of fact, I don't know if the whole "cracked plugs" thing is even what it was 10 or 15 years ago, which may be down to the freeware scene. Why bother with cracked Waves or Softube or whatever and take the virus/trojan risks associated with downloading cracked software when there's so much legit stuff available for free? There's a really inexpensive way to get access to all of the Computer Music plug-ins to date, and that's to purchase a digital single issue of the magazine, which last time I checked was about $4 at Pocketmags. There's usually enough reading material in one issue to last about a year, too. You get the plug-in that goes with the issue you buy, and then all of the plug-ins from previous issues, which to date totals around 90.

If it is possible in your location, try using Google Chrome only for this, instead of Brave. I, too, had trouble with authorization using the browser Firefox, but then I switched to Chrome only long enough to register, get the BandLab Assistant working, and download Cakewalk. Since then, everything works fine with Firefox. If you must use a high-security browser, perhaps you can try one other than Brave. I hope that my suggestions are of help to you and I wish you luck.

Also, if you already have the old Sonar and you leave it installed when you install Cakewalk by BandLab, you should be able to use all of your Sonar ProChannel and VST plug-ins. If for some reason you are not, open a service ticket or just ask here in the forum. It's usually an easy fix, as easy as setting a path in Preferences.