Starship Krupa

Receiving that email tainted my admiration for Vojtech and his products. All of us have probably been around long enough to remember when it was development for Windows that was the grudging afterthought for cross-platform A/V software companies. It was no fun being on the other side with the lagging releases and bug fixes and documentation that said to hit "Command" this and that. I say that if you are going to develop for whatever platform, either suck it up and deliver excellence or have the grace to do what Cakewalk Inc. did and admit that you don't really want to be MacOS developers. Sending out an email like this suggests to the user base (which is something that Meldaproduction relies on more than other companies of their type) that you're playing favorites. I've seen speculation on the user forum about future commitment, and that's no good. Microsoft's most recent major release of Windows 10 made my audio drop out and crackle, just like it did with a lot of users'. The truth is if we use Windows 10 or OSX we are all at the mercy of Apple and Microsoft. Suggesting to your customers that they change platform because one of the companies just pulled a jerk move on developers seems petty to me.

My saturation secret weapon I tend to forget even exists. It can be had for free and hides in plain sight in Meldaproduction's MEQualizer. Dry/Wet, Output, and Saturation are the controls other than the EQ-related ones. I suspect that they include the same algorithm with their other EQ plug-ins, but you can get MEQualizer for free in the Free Bundle. Of course if you don't already have the Meldaproduction Free Bundle, there are many other treats within.

I'm no expert, but I like the sound of my SONiVOX Harpsichord better than any other I've tried, and like any other SONiVOX Single, it may be had for very little money if one is willing to hunt and lay in wait. Reverb has had some great deals on SONiVOX Singles since they started carrying software licenses.

Reafir is part of the free Reaplugs bundle, and I found it quite effective it is once I got the hang of it. It's a little bit tricky at first to get the analysis profile, but just follow the instructions, and if you don't get a good one, try again. I've not used it on ambient noise like wind, but I've used it on buzz, hum, and hiss from microphones and it got them dead quiet without molesting the program material.

I have no wisdom to impart here, but I have been reading this and wondering about Mix Recall. My impulse would be to split the set into project-per-song just because it seems so unwieldy the other way, and I am wondering if one did it that way if Mic Recall can be used across projects. The idea being that yes, there should be an overall consistent sound, but individual songs may need different EQ, compression, transient shaping, etc. The players may switch instruments and so forth. So set up a mix with the most representative song, then use Mix Recall to apply it to the rest of the song/projects, with whatever tweaking is necessary. Is this doable?

I hope that non-destructive normalization comes along someday. I'm of the opinion that as few operations as possible in a DAW should be destructive. That's what freezing is for. Along those lines, I'd also like to see Undo cover everything, including console adjustments like faders, pan, muting, etc. I've slipped with the cursor during a mix and was dismayed to find that my unwanted knob adjustment wasn't in the Undo list.

filo, that's a great deal. Anyone who picks up Xpand!2 for that price (or even the $14.99 price) will be amazed at the sheer number and quality of sounds. I think the list is 2500 or so and don't know if I've made it all the way through auditioning them. Now that would be a nice thing for synth plug-in manufacturers to supply, a file that contains short auditions of each factory preset so that we don't have to go through the process of increment/noodle/increment/noodle to find our favorite sounds.

If you're going to start learning a bitmap editor, I would suggest at least downloading and installing GIMP and going through the first couple of tutorials to see if you can get a handle on it. If you can't, so be it, something simpler like MSPaint or Paint 3D come with Windows and will get this job done. GIMP can do so much that it's worth learning your way around it if you want to dabble in Cakewalk's Theme Editor once you get a taste for customization. If it ain't for you, uninstall it, it costs nothing. If all you want to do is scale an image down to 96x96 and save it as a PNG or BMP, IrfanView will do that handily and easily.

Haven't tried it yet, but I reeeeaaalllly like the logo.

Solid gold advice. When confronted with hugely varying signal levels coming from multiple virtual instruments, rather than wasting your time trying to get them in the same range, fire them all up with whatever's coming out, whether they're almost pegging your meters or barely audible, and use your ear and your creativity to make that mix happen. All that other speculation about gain staging and whatever, it's just superfluous. Who cares? It's all digital. Same with compressors and limiters. Even if you've never used them before and have no idea how they're supposed to work, or even what the function of any of the knobs is, just use your ear. Keep adjusting the controls until it sounds like you want it to. Then you're done. You think I'm kidding? Darn straight I am.

And this means what?

I knew it referred to note names, it's just that my note names are all the good ol twelve tone rather than Bass, Side Stick, Snare, etc. and I have no idea how one would get those to display. Much as I would love to try it. It's probably something obvious like editing a plain text file that associates MIDI note numbers with whatever friendly drum names I want to use and then invoking a command to apply that definition file to the track on which I wish to display the drum names.

Um, no wonder I missed it, I still have little idea what you're talking about; I'll have to dig into the Reference Guide. I presume I will be editing a text file to make MIDI notes correspond to drum note names that Cakewalk will then display in the Piano Roll View. Somewhere along the way I will apply this file to my MIDI track. You said "old method," is there a new one? Thanks to anyone who wants to help a brother out and give me a hint as to where in the Ref. Guide this process is outlined....

What do you mean by this? I'm not seeing anything different in drum maps.

I use the Korg nanoKONTROL2 on a long USB cable method that @msmcleod uses. Works a treat, and you can bring the nanKONTROL2 back to your desk and use it for mixing as well.

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.

Oops!

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?