Starship Krupa

Well, the thing is it's impossible to know what actually solved the problems because you did at least two big things. Usually when we're trying to fix things we do multiple things while trying to solve the problem because we are more interested in having the damn thing work than figuring out why it wasn't working. Poor connections in the RAM socket can cause those issues, and heat may as well. The big issue usually with dust buildup in electronics is that dust reduces cooling efficiency, so you get overheating. The components inside computers are usually designed to slow themselves or shut down entirely when they get to a certain temperature (to prevent permanent damage). So, yeah, could have been the dust. Bad connections between component and socket can also cause that behavior, so, yeah, could have been the reseating the RAM. When I start to see weirdness on my system, I usually start out by monitoring what it's up to, if it's getting hot or whatever. My favorite tool for this is HWInfo, which is free and has both a system summary mode where it will tell you in great detail what components your system is built from, and a sensors mode which lets you see what all of the sensors in your system are reporting. And there are hundreds of them, for processor usage, temperature for various components, fan speed, and so on. It's a good idea to take the computer out on the porch every so often, open the case and blast the dust out with an air duster can. Don't neglect to do this to the power supply unit. It has a fan, and that fan moves a lot of air, and I've seen some DUSTY power supplies.

Prince, Andy Gill of Gang of Four, Thurston Moore and Lee Ranaldo of Sonic Youth, John McGeoch of Siouxsie and the Banshees, Bernard Sumner of New Order, Steve Stevens (with Billy Idol, not so much solo), Johnny Marr of The Smiths, Robert Smith of The Cure, Billy Zoom of X, Andy Summers of The Police, and the almighty Michael Hedges (Windham Hill Records).

Would it be possible to do this with just a marker? Set a marker where you want to skip to and then use Alt+right arrow to skip to the marker? I don't know if Cakewalk allows that during recording, but it might.

Okay, after many years of leeching off of IK Multimedia's GENEROUS freebies (at least one of which, their Fairchild 670 emulation, took my mixing to a whole other level), I finally crowbar'd open my wallet for SampleTank 4 MAX. With JamPoints that I "earned" by simply registering freebies over the years, the total outlay came to $50. Right now I'm in the process of downloading the 680GB+ sample data. There's no way that will fit on any of my SSD's, so either I figure out how to be selective with what actually gets installed or I pop for yet another SSD to be able to use this powerhouse. I know that there will be instruments, most likely including the sampled grands, that I already have covered. I've read on here about the Miroslav orchestra samples being kinda old, but the orchestral instruments I'm using now are based on even older libraries. One of the first things I plan on doing is replacing the instruments on one of my orchestral pieces with what I'm about to be getting with SampleTank. We'll see how it goes. Kudos to those at IK for providing such value over the years. I've had my share of issues with the authorization and installation software, but that seems to have finally been smoothed out in the most recent builds.

Um, well, yeah. Cheaply sold does tend to equal cheaply made. IME with them, MXL mics are good mics for the money, They also lend themselves well to DIY modding. Although they may now be using SMT components, which makes modding more difficult.

Seems like it would. Why not try it?

Yeah, the none more dark UI. Has to be a preference of BT, the guy who came up with Stutter Edit and Break Tweaker.

I agree with you on the first point for sure. It should have an easy mode. As for the second point, well, it's a very specialized tool. If you want to do those controlled stutters and glitches, it's the thing. The alternatives are Gross Beat and MRhythmizer, and MRhythmizer at least is no picnic to figure out. Never tried Gross Beat, but it looks similar. A lot of trouble to go to to learn this one effect that's really only a seasoning, but if you wanna do that sort of thing, hey. Usefulness >0.

The $12 is Stutter Edit 2, well worth it.

As already reinforced by other (sometimes terse) comments, it is worth checking, but it may or may not improve the sound. You can use Cakewalk's nudge feature to get them all lined up, then listen to how it sounds. If it's better, yay. If it's not, fine. The tricks and so forth that are on YouTube are great things to try and see if they work for you. Initial compressor settings, etc. Unfortunately, too many YouTubers have click-baity headlines and attitudes that say something like "Do THIS simple trick to improve your drum overheads!" It gets more attention than "This may help your overheads sound better." If they make your tracks sound better or not, your ears will tell you. The phase police won't pull your track over for violations if it sounds better a little out of phase. After all, in live situations, the sounds from the various pieces of the kit arrive at our ears at slightly different times. To help train your ears, phase problems tend to sound whooshy or thin out the sound. Listen for that. Paradoxically, sometimes a little bit of phase shift can improve the sound. I have long preferred MAutoAlign for multi-mic'd instruments like acoustic guitar and drums. Sometimes it sounds better without it, but usually it opens up the stereo field in a pleasing way. As far as drums go, if you're getting so much bleed that your hi-hat is getting into the snare track or the snare is getting into the kick track, you need to first adjust your mic positions. Assuming you're using cardioids on the kick and snare, you can tweak their positioning. Keep in mind that the drum sounds that we have absorbed as "classic" were recorded at a time when the engineers couldn't adjust phase by any means other than moving mics and listening. When it sounded good, print it. Since there will always be some bleed, getting cozy with a good noise gate is a good idea. You can still get Unfiltered Audio's G8 CM for free with any issue of Computer Music, which you can pick up for $5 online. It's an excellent gate. A great drum-specific one is Boz Digital's Gatey Watey. Once you minimize or eliminate the bleed, phase issues become less important.

You're looking at a very old website there. Cakewalk By BandLab comes with SI Drums as well as a other SI plug-ins (strings, bass, electric piano), all free. TTS-1 has drum kits as well. I originally installed the Studio Instruments via the BandLab Assistant, but I thought that they automatically install with the current version of CbB. If that's not the case, maybe try installing BandLab Assistant and looking for the SI install there. There are also many free drum VST's. Do a search on this forum for favorite freeware instruments and a big topic will show up that lists many of them. Spitfire's Labs series has a nice one.

I'm not having these issues. This sort of thing is why it's a good thing to do to list your system specs in your sig, as I do. In addition to what's listed in my sig, I also use the Realtek onboard in my laptop (WASAPI Exclusive) and a Presonus Studio 2|4 (ASIO, natch).

Finally tried yet another debit card and it worked. Thanks for your diligence in helping me out with this! $41 for Studio One Artist is a heckuva deal.

This. After I first jumped in, I spent at least as many hours with Theme Editor as I did with Cakewalk, all of it just as enjoyable. And fine with me, I suspect there are more people who checked out and enjoyed the themes I made than who did the same for my music (it helps that the themes actually got released). My compulsive desire to theme every possible element got me to delve into features I had otherwise ignored or been unaware of. None of that would have been possible without TYLIP, as well as the inspiration @Colin Nicholls provided with his Steampunk theme. What a revelation! Themes can also reference pop culture! I hope that there are enough themeable elements in Sonar that we get to have our fun again. Although I doubt I'll ever have a theme I like using as much as I do Green Flat Dark and Blue Flat Dark. Here's hoping that the features of the new UI make up for that.

Don't worry. I think I understand what you have and what you are trying to get it to do. Check with Alesis, check with BFD. You just need to find a virtual drum instrument that knows how to interpret what your Alesis drum brain is putting out. The DAW's job is to record whatever MIDI messages the drum brain is putting out. Then to play that information back either to an external unit or a virtual drum instrument. Unless the DAW is set to filter out polyphonic aftertouch data, the DAW will be out of the troubleshooting equation, and you've already pointed out that Cakewalk is successfully recording it. The only matter of concern is that the virtual instrument knows what to do when it gets those key aftertouch messages. There's a terminology issue in this thread, I think. The term "choking" usually refers to setting up a note so that playing a certain note event immediately after it cuts off its sustain. The classic example is that the open hi hat note will be choked by both the pedaled hi hat and the closed hi hat notes, and the open hi hat and pedal hi hat notes will both be choked by a closed hi hat. In the case of your Alesis, the thing that's supposed to cause the note to get muted isn't a subsequent note event, it's a polyphonic aftertouch event. Polyphonic MIDI aftertouch isn't seen too often in the world of MIDI controllers, so it's interesting to me to see it being used in this way.

Since it works well with your BFD Player app, I'd check with BFD themselves. They make a popular series of virtual drum instruments that can be hosted by Cakewalk (and other VST hosts). I'll assume that BFD Player came bundled with the kit. It's even possible that the BFD Player itself is available in VSTi form? BFD may even have an upgrade path from the Player to their full-featured drum software.

"An unknown error has occurred." Similar to what I was getting from Best Service.

That's what we usually think of when we hear someone talk about "choking" with MIDI cymbals, but having one note cut off another note's sustain isn't what @rin is having trouble with. If I have it correctly, rin has an electronic drum kit that supports transmits key aftertouch when the player physically pinches the edge of the cymbal pad. This lets them do a move that drummers do where they whack a (usually splash or crash) cymbal with a stick, then quickly stop or mute the cymbal by grabbing the edge with the fingers of the other hand. This is different from the hi-hat (or triangle) type of choking. A drum VSTi would have to be able to interpret key aftertouch correctly for this to work. I suspect that Cakewalk's Studio Drums isn't sophisticated enough to interpret aftertouch messages and turn them into cymbal chokes.

Could you post the paths that it's complaining about? It could be that you have an extra, broken installation of Z3TA that's failing to get deleted.

The first question has to be about what virtual instrument you're trying to control. The instrument has to be able to interpret key aftertouch events as cymbal chokes for it to work. It looks like your pads are putting the events out correctly and that Cakewalk is recording them correctly, so the next place to look is at the instrument. It looks like it might be the Studio Drums that comes with Cakewalk? If so, it's possible that it's not able to interpret key aftertouch as choking. It's a pretty simple instrument.

I'd say that it leaves us in the same place where we are now. Bandcamp as a business is being bought by another company. They could leave it exactly as it is or make changes. They may wish to integrate some of the functions of the parent company with Bandcamp or they may not.

I've been trying off and on for 2 days to buy this and every time it fails on accepting the payment, both with PayPal and MasterCard. Maybe the deal is done for.

I've used Bandcamp both as a creator and consumer of music and I agree. I'd also add that one of my favorite things about it is that if I buy someone's album for $10, the person receives the great bulk of that. Selling 10,000 copies of an album back in the record company days meant you owed the record company a fortune and if the next one didn't sell at least 10X that you'd be done for. Selling 1,000 copies of your album through Bandcamp means that you've got housing covered for a year. Bandcamp rules my musical world, it's the first place I look when I want to buy the music of someone I just heard of. Also, 2 different times, I've asked an artist how I could buy a song or album that wasn't listed for sale on Bandcamp and the artists I asked just sent me a free copy of the single (Chris Zippel) or album (Under The Radar) I asked about.

Is there anything about this announcement that makes you think that's no longer going to be the case? Bandcamp strikes me as something that any company who owned it and screwed it up would face a ton of ill will. If there are now to be tools to help people license their music, I think that's a good thing. As long as they don't do something stupid like making a rule that if you want to sell through Bandcamp, you have to stick to their licensing company or whatever.

It depends. The message could be "we're going to have a complete solution for people who want to start in easy mode and move to a mixing powerhouse, so this would be superfluous" or it could be "this is an idea whose time has come, and as a matter of fact, we've already set it up in our own products." Project transfer from a starter DAW to the same company's top-of-the-line DAW has been around for many years with Garage Band and Logic. What hasn't been so easy is transfer between DAW's from two different companies. There have been project interchange formats introduced in decades past, and Cakewalk supports one of them.