Starship Krupa

When we first add an Instrument Track, the plug-in's UI opens if we have that checked in the dialog. I always have that checked in the dialog because there are never any situations where I want to add an instrument and then not choose a patch or whatever. However, when we Replace Synth, the UI stays closed, which in my case at least, means that every time I have to go through the extra step of opening the UI. So it would be very handy to have the instrument's UI open when I Replace Synth as well as when I create an Instrument Track.

Okay, I see. So it would just automatically omit the last lane/clip if it were incomplete by a certain percentage of the track (or punch-in region). And if you later decided you wanted to recover the few seconds of brilliance, you could just drag out the right edge of your last clip and it would be there. Sure, that seems like a convenient little feature, saving a bit of tidying up at the end of each solo tracking session. As a solo recordist, count me in. ?

First, as you probably know, do your tracking in Comp Mode with Create New Lane and Group All Clips selected, so you wind up with your multi-mic'd takes grouped together for editing. Then as you are listening to the playback, once you get the hang of it, Cakewalk's Comping tool is a really easy way to audition your different takes, because all you have to do to instantly solo a take and mute all the others is click in the lower half of a clip with the Comping tool. The tool takes care of all the muting and unmuting for you. So you can pop open the lanes on just your snare track, for instance, and let the song play, maybe in loop playback if you want, while you click on whichever take you want to check out. Cakewalk will switch to that take without you having to do anything else in the other tracks as long as your clips are grouped properly from the tracking step. Then when editing and comping, you should be able to do your work on one track while having it take effect across all the tracks due to having your clips grouped. Of course, check to make sure that this is happening as you expect it to as you go along.

You mean an option to automatically delete all lanes that don't contain full-length takes? It's probably not something I would use, because sometimes partial takes can contain segments that would be useful for comping. I'd hate to lose a take that was good until where I trainwrecked on the outro and stopped recording. I could punch in a new outro. It's not a big chore to go down the lanes and click the "x" to delete the ones I don't want.

My favorite is ADHD Leveling Tool. One caution: I've had trouble with it when I selected "64-bit double precision engine" on the Audio Driver Settings page. How have things been "changed around" that you can no longer use the VC64?

I've changed the colors for my Meldaproduction plug-ins, especially since the v13 UI overhaul. He changed the default colors to some barf-o-bits stuff. People complained about it on the forum to not much avail. It can be an issue when something is the product of a single visionary. He had an idea for how he wanted the new colors to look and it made sense to him. Fortunately he gives the user plenty of choice in color configuration. Mine are now mostly translucent darker blues and greens with dark yellow-orange scales and grids. It looks subdued and pretty sharp if I do say so. Heaven knows, once you get past the ones in the Free Bundle, I would not recommend them to everybody across the board. I do believe that you should find the UI of what you're working with attractive. Just like with a good-looking guitar, it should inspire you to grab it and use it. I love iZotope's stuff for this reason. It just looks so cool it makes me want to fire it up and do things with it. Same with Newfangled Audio. Meldaproduction was an acquired taste.

Whoa, that is a strong reaction. Plain I can get, unexciting, maybe homely, but nauseating? ?

This is most brilliant. Will it include names from drum map definitions?

This is something that I, too would like to be able to do but have not yet even tried. Maybe @msmcleod can share some wisdom?

My favorite is AIR Technology's DB-33, which Pluginboutique currently has on sale for $14. Among its charms is that it lets you use the Leslie emulation as a standalone VST effect.

The return of the JB Broadcast Processor, now in 64-bit form! And it's still free! I've long been a fan of ToneBoosters plug-ins. A nice handful of them came bundled with Mixcraft, the DAW I honed my DAW skills on, and I'm also a fan of the work of Jeroen Breebart, one of the founders, who released several freeware plug-ins prior to starting ToneBoosters. Some of them became TB products in altered form. One of my favorite plug-ins when I was first learning how to mix and master was his JB Broadcast Processor, a combined multiband compressor/spatializer/brickwall limiter/width limiter. Sort of a free iZotope Ozone. I didn't know anything except that when I put that thing on my master bus and called up one of the 4 presets (smooth, normal, loud, high pressure), my mixes would go from sounding "pretty good for having been at this for just a few months" to "dang, dude!" I had no idea what the thing was actually doing, I had never even seen a multiband compressor before, and since the manual kind of assumes you know about setting up compressors and limiters, it's heavier on the psychoacoustic aspects. I got it to sound even better once I figured out how to set compressor and limiter thresholds and actually started doing my own presets. ? Jeroen has a list of patents to his name and presented papers at the AES Convention on psychoacoustics. Excerpt from the manual: Regarding the detector in the compressor: "JB Broadcast features a 'psycho-acoustic relevance' mode. Instead of using a peak or rms- level estimation, this mode employes a perceptual loudness model to compute the loudness of the input signal. This perceptual loudness model is combined with advanced attack and release stages that model peripheral adaptation of the human auditory nerve." Enough! How do I get it? Go to ToneBoosters' site and download their plug-in installer, which is one of those things that allows you to subsequently pick and choose which of their products you want to install/demo. When you run the installer, choose the Free plug-ins. It can be easy to miss, they don't mention on the site "hey FREE plug-ins!" But they are there. You'll also get their EZ Q equalizer and Mid-Side Transformer for free. Now, issue 1: The installer, oddly enough, installs the .dll's to C:\\Program Files\Common Files\VST2, which I am 90% sure is not where you keep your plug-ins. Solution: move the folder with the ToneBoosters .dll's in it to the folder where you do keep your plug-ins. Issue 2: it doesn't come with the manual. Solution: go to the JB Broadcast Processor page at VST4Free and download the ZIP for the old 32-bit one and it will have the manual, which you will want. The UI is kinda small, and although he changed the color scheme to white on brown instead of white on light blue, it's still kinda squinty. Now all I need is for de la mancha to build One Sixty-Five in 64-bit and that will be it for 32-bit plug-ins that I miss.

I don't know that the originals had much in the way of velocity sensitivity either! ? Both of these plug-ins are fantastic emulations, and the Vox Continental one is a staple for me. The graphics are beautiful, all the controls, I can see why Arturia hired the programmer. I think he started Martinic back up again. I keep seeing a listing on KVR for something called a Kee Bass that's an emulation of the bass-only keyboards from the '60's like Ray Manzarek used in the Doors, but when I follow the link, it just takes me to the company's main page. (btw, there is a companion thread for freeware instruments that would love some resuscitation)

The sale blurb says that this started July 3rd, but I don't remember it, and anyway, it's worth a bump. Strings, Woodwinds, Brass, they're all great deals at this price. Pluginboutque, and of course, they always throw in a giveaway license, which this month is for a master analysis program.

Since arranger's workhorse Xpand!2 seems to be on permanent sale for $14 and I already had it when I came to Cakewalk land, TTS-1 has never been a big deal for me. I let it pleasantly surprise me from time to time. Some of the rock and combo organs are pretty hip if you drill into the submenus, and the harpsichord is respectable, if I'm remembering correctly. I used to be way into GM files, about 20 years ago, and I bet TTS-1 is a great player for those. We used to think of GM files as "tablature for keyboard players" because we could figure out pop and rock arrangements and put them up for all to use like guitarists were and still do with tab. Now of course we have YouTube for music instruction and three cheers for that!

Thank you. I stand corrected. I wonder if this will change with 9.

I think with most of their suites they're getting to the point where even down to the Elements versions you'll be able to use the individual plug-ins. Neutron Elements 3 is like that, every Ozone 8 above Elements is, and so is RX Elements. I agree with you on the quality of the processing, and their UI's are my favorite in the business. It's scary how much smarts iZotope is putting into their stuff. A lot of their plug-ins can communicate with each other across tracks if you want them to. I got the freebie Visual Mixer part of Neutron 3 and I love it for mixing backing vocals, might try it on guitars as well.

Au contraire mon frere! The Ozone Elements Mastering Assistant is perfect for project "Never Quite Finished" because it takes the decisions out of your hands and it makes whatever the state of the rough mix sound at least acceptable when you want to show your friends/family/significant other what you've been working on! It's the lipstick on my eternally fetal pigs. Seriously, I do find the MA quite useful for "A&R" mixes where I want a rough to sound good fast. Been having fun for a few hours doing some tracking with friends, have the basics down, I can shoo everyone out for a smoke/drink/whatever break for 15 minutes, balance everything, throw Ozone on the master bus and let the Assistant do its thing, a couple more minutes for tweaking the maximizer and spatializer and it "sounds like we've been in a recording studio." Especially if I've been engineering/playing the whole time and my ears might not be in top shape, turning it over to the Mastering Assistant will probably come out better in the short term just to give everyone something to listen to. I don't want to watch that video because if they're giving away Elements 8 for free they must be pretty confident we're all going to want to shell out for 9 anyway.

Note to those who don't own one of the following: Compatible with Studio One Artist and Professional (Versions 3.5.6 and higher) Also Compatible with StudioLive Series III Console and Rack Mixers

Sorry, should have read "your Background.bmp inspired me to experiment with floating the program browser so that I can see all the different available instruments." ? I could have sworn I tried it with the original UI. Oh well, thanks for getting me to bumble my way into it.

I doubt that any of the bundled plug-ins have changed since Sonar became Cakewalk by BandLab. They seem to be quite bug-free and work really well.

These look just great, and for whatever reason, your Background.bmp is allowing me to float the program browser so that I can see all the different available instruments, which is a really handy thing that I can't do with the stock one. I love everything about the look of the Drum Kit, but adjusting the knobs and sliders in the mixer is taking some getting used to. Not so much that I'd consider going back to the stock graphics mind you. I sometimes have trouble finding the hot spot for the volume controls for some reason. Great work. This will make me more likely to reach for these.

If only you could go back and undo all the use you've gotten out of Ozone Elements 8 since you paid for the license....

Great VO work is a joy to listen to, isn't it? I don't know how old you are, but when I was a kid, Rod Serling, the great TV writer and producer of Twilight Zone fame, had a second career in the late '60's and early '70's as the narrator for the US broadcasts of The Undersea World of Jacques Cousteau, among other shows, and at least one silly fun speculative movie called Chariots of the Gods? that was based on the "ancient astronauts" theory. Undersea World was a documentary program featuring the great diver and environmentalist and his crew traveling around the world having diving adventures. The TV show was made in France and syndicated worldwide, with only the narration changing. Serling had a wonderful deep voice and precise enunciation that gave a sense of gravitas to whatever was happening on screen, even if it was just some guy taking his fins off. "Louis-Claude removes his diving fins and places them in the bottom of the skiff." And it glued you to the (14" black and white) screen, because it sounded so heavy, like the fate of the world's oceans depended on this dude and his flippers getting back to the boat okay.

As far as DAW optimization, mostly what Robert has already said. Think about stuff that you would want to access quickly or store cheaply, and place your files accordingly. For me, that's programs, projects, plug-ins, and samples on SSD, everything else. like downloads, documentation, installation files, personal entertainment libraries, etc. on spinny. A thing that I'm adamant about is disabling anti-virus/malware programs that perform realtime scanning of whatever files your DAW reads and writes in the course of its operation. While using Windows Process Monitor, I observed that my malware protection program was scanning every file that Cakewalk was reading from the disk, including plug-ins, audio files, sample libraries, themes, and configuration files. I decided that I did not need nor especially want my CPU power to be used to give breathalyzer tests to audio files and VST plug-ins, nor did I wish the accessing of these files to be slowed down while the analysis took place, especially since nobody had asked me whether I wanted the program to do that, and resolved to put an end to such nonsense. Sometimes you can do this by excluding certain folders, like your sample folders, project folders, audio data folders, plug-in folders, DAW program folders, etc. I chose to do it by turning off realtime scanning entirely in my computer's malware program, which is Windows Defender. Defender now only runs its scans on files that are sitting on my drives, and it does it during times when my system is idle. This made a noticeable difference in playback latency in projects with many tracks/takes. Since Cakewalk reads every audio file associated with every clip in a project regardless of track or clip muting status, this can result in a lot of file reading overhead in cases where one wishes to retain many alternate takes in a project (the way to alleviate this effect is by moving the clips to a different track which you may then Archive).

Thank you, Robert, for giving greater detail regarding the "disable Wi-Fi" advice (and thank you, @John for mentioning that you leave your WiFi adaptor enabled and observe no negative impact on your audio performance as a result). Yes, the network adapter is sometimes the culprit when one is experiencing latency issues. But disabling it with the expectation that it will cause latency issues is, in my opinion, unnecessary and inconvenient. How can I hunt down freeware plug-ins with no network connection? What would be the point of even having a DAW if I couldn't install plug-ins that I will rarely if ever use? I was about to ask you to explain in greater detail, exactly why one should automatically disable their WiFi, what makes a WiFi adaptor different from other hardware devices that it should be deemed guilty before proven innocent. Did Broadcom or Intel release a crappy driver a few years back? I ran Latency Mon on my Optiplex right after I installed Windows 10 and was getting these huge spikes from NDIS.SYS. Turns out the ethernet (hardwire, not wi-fi) adapter driver that Microsoft was shipping was causing it, so I tracked down the earlier Dell version. But that's a case of a device's driver gone bad, not an entire class of driver (or brand of computer or OS, you see what I'm getting at) that I think people should shun. I might say "run Latency Mon to see if some hardware driver might cause trouble, network drivers in particular have been known to be sketchy in the past." There's another thread in which I gave my lengthy opinion about DAW security worries in general. I used to work as a server engineer for a security company and I never encountered anyone convinced that they needed air gap (that is, total disconnection) protection from the Internet until I started hanging out on DAW forums. It's baffling and a bit amusing to me, like encountering a community of computer Amish. Literally every company I can think of that produces DAW software (just about any software period) does so with the assumption that the computer it runs on is going to have an Internet connection, and there are entire genres called "Laptop Techno" and "Laptop Indie," yet I see people who would seemingly leave the keys in their unlocked car downtown before they would leave their DAW computer connected to the Internet (to avoid malware attacks), and other people who automatically suggest that for best performance you should turn off your WiFi. Me, I think if we just use common sense computer security practices like having a malware solution installed, don't visit sketchy websites, don't open executable email attachments, and most importantly back up our data and be able to reinstall our important software, we will be fine and nobody can steal the 3/4 finished Jobriath tribute album we started back in 2006.