Starship Krupa

I rather suspect that at this point in time, the reason so many YouTube videos have folks using SM7B mics is because so many YouTube videos have folks using SM7B mics. ? Which is neither to say that they are not superior mics for spoken work nor to invalidate the idea of using industry standard equipment. It's just that they are a path of least resistance for would-be YouTube talking heads and podcasters. This person who is doing what I want to do uses THIS critical bit of gear, so I'll get one too. The other option would be to try out a bunch of mics to see which one sounds the best with your voice, but that is a more difficult path, deciding which mics to audition, where to find those mics, how to audition them....just get a 7B and 7B done with it. Plug it into your Scarlett Solo or 2i2 and you'll have a hardware chain capable of any level VO task (after which the next frontier is working on the recording environment). I watched a YouTube video the other day of some guy testing (IIRC) an old Shure Beta Green vocal mic for VO. He hated it because among other stated reasons, it had a problem with picking up plosives. I got the idea that he had learned the word "plosives" in the last week or so and wanted to take it out for a spin. He had the obligatory SM7B-on-a-boom behind him and was eating the poor Beta Green, straight into the end, lips within an inch of the grill. If he had taken the huge foam rubber ball from the SM7B and stuck it on the Beta Green, his plosive issues would have vanished. Not surprisingly, he also thought the mic was boomy. I didn't see his technique with the 7B but my guess is that he speaks across the diaphragm at an angle rather than straight into the end. Most YT 7B users I see speak into them at an angle, probably so the camera can see their faces, and I don't doubt that speaking into the mic in that off-axis way helps it to sound "clearer" than other mics. Disclosure: my vary favorite snare batter mic (and I have tested multiple of the industry leaders in that category) is a Beta Green 3.1 (similar in features to an SM48 in that it looks like a 58 with a mute switch). That thing has so much off-axis rejection that my snare recordings after I started using it need much less gating to keep out the hi hat bleed. I think I paid $6 for it at the local Salvation Army. I am predisposed against those who would make sport of lower end gear, as so much of sound recording is about placement and the environment the mic is placed in. I generally like cheap unsung "sleeper" mics. My preferred kick batter mic is a Peavey 580i dynamic "vocal" mic that a friend gave me (he wasn't using it). When I first checked it out, I gave it the "hey check one TWO" test and my voice sounded like it was coming out of a Marantz receiver tuned to an FM station and driving a nice pair of Advents in 1974. I had hunch that if it sounded like a classic FM jock talk mic that I should try it on kick, and I was right, by golly. It has also fought off some tough challengers costing multiple times its original sale price. My search for the best mics in those categories long since ended. And I am a gear hound. If I thought there were better mics for my application I would get them.

The deal breaker is that the Solo only has a single input. Hence you'd not be able to record your voice and your guitar at the same time. The M-Audio Duo would do the job you ask of it.

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The best interfaces that I could find that meet the criteria of costing under $100 and allowing simultaneous recording of 2 tracks, 1 guitar and 1 vocal, are the PreSonus Audiobox USB 96K at $99 and the M-Audio M-Track Duo at $69. Personally, I'd go for the PreSonus. I have a similar model, the PreSonus Studio 2|4 and the sound quality is excellent. My larger interface is a Focusrite. They're both great, really. Can't go wrong with either brand, but CAVEAT: Focusrite has saved costs on the lower end models like the Scarlett 2i2 by omitting a MIDI interface. PreSonus still make theirs with the standard 5-pin DIN MIDI connectors.

I know I am way late to this topic, and there's already been a lot of helpful advice, but had I noticed it earlier, I would have suggested that 75 tracks seems about 65 tracks too many for a first lesson. Maybe someone reading this in the future will take my suggestions. A better idea would be to start with the standard rock band configuration of drums (kick, snare, overheads and toms), vocals, guitar, and bass. Keyboards and/or 2nd guitar. Replace instruments as necessary to fit genre. I've been at this for a while and I believe I have yet to have a project go over 20 tracks. Learning how to mix is, IMO, like learning most things: it's best to start with a simple task and work your way up. You wouldn't have someone learn to drive by starting them on a cross-country trip or entering them in an autocross. You start them in an empty parking lot learning what all the controls do. You wouldn't start someone first learning to read on Moby Dick. Go from a simple project to a more complex ones as you learn the basics. Otherwise there's a danger of getting bogged down for days or weeks at various steps just trying to juggle that many elements. Gain staging a project with 8 tracks is much easier than doing one with 48 tracks, and the same with applying effects, panning, setting levels and so on. The level and tonal balance of every sound in a mix interacts with every other sound. Rolling off bass in one sound makes another sound bassier and so on.

We're not supposed to do anything. Unless we set that specific goal for ourselves. If the driving motivation is to have fun playing around with sound, there's nothing less "valid" about this use of the tools. Part of the fun for me is to produce finished pieces that I like enough for other people to listen to, but it doesn't have to be. At age 62 I have no reason to front like I'm gonna be a music star someday. If I spend $80 on Chromaphone and put on headphones and spend a few hours going through the presets and having my mind blown, I've gotten my money's worth, just as if I'd spent that money on any number of other fun (and probably non-repeatable) activities. Not wasted time any more than 6 months of Netflix.

MusicBee. or AIMP. They let me use ASIO and event-based WASAPI to play back my FLAC's and internet stations. Using those drivers for audio playback isn't just about latency, it affects the sound quality (a lot, actually).

Nice. Might be a good thing to link to this in the Tutorials forum.

So I see. The only thing left to do is to contact Cakewalk support.

The OP is having trouble with Sonible's Smart EQ. Cakewalk's Sonitus fx are a different thing. Smart EQ has a special feature, inter plug-in communication. If you put different instances of it on different tracks, they can talk to each other. That's a more difficult thing for a host to cope with because it's outside the VST2/3 spec. If the Cakewalk devs know there's an issue, they can work with Sonible to get the programs to stay out of each others' way. Testing them with another host like REAPER or Waveform would help eliminate or confirm that the problem is specific to Cakewalk.

Whoa whoa whoa, if this is the case, please report it to the devs, per the instructions in this forum. Sonible's products are popular among Cakewalk users and if there are compatibility issues, the devs need to know. Have you tried contacting Cakewalk support and Sonible support to see what they say?

Yes, a full rescan is in order. If the new scan finds them again, it means that the uninstall process left the DLL's in your plug-in folders. Look in C\Program Files\Common Files\VST3 and whatever folder you use for VST2's to see if the zombie plug-ins are still there, and if they are, remove them.

This issue has come up on the forum since the deprecation of support for the Microsoft GS synth. Since TTS-1 seems headed for deprecation (it's getting buggy), I've been looking for GM substitutes. I haven't tried it yet, but this looks promising: https://www.midkar.com/SoundFonts/coolsoft.html

Those are fine products, and there are many Cakewalk users who use them. When the iZotope installers ran, did you choose the option of installing the VST2 or VST3 versions or both? There's usually no reason to install anything but the 64-bit VST3 version of a given plug-in. I sometimes do because I run a couple of non-Cakewalk hosts that don't yet support VST3. There's nothing bad about installing both, but it can make the initial scanning of the plug-ins take longer. Since you've already double checked the vst folder paths in Cakewalk, and you've checked the folders to make sure that iZotope's installer populated said folders, you've ruled out the most common reason for plug-ins to fail to appear in Cakewalk. After that, it could be that for some reason or other, Cakewalk did find the plug-ins but ran into an error while scanning and disabled them. The solution to that is to force a complete re-scan of your plug-ins, and Tom has given you one method for doing that. Scanning options are also accessible from the Preferences/File/VST Settings page under Scan Options. There's a "Scan" button that will initiate a re-scan and a "Reset" button that will discard the information from previous scans and do it fresh. If the first doesn't help, the second should.

This. Back in my pedal building days, aside from my commercial line, I made a few MOSFET boosters for friends. At least one of them went to a studio owner who was having issues with recording a bandmate's stand-up bass via the piezo pickup. The MOSFET booster was the miracle cure. One of the features of the preamp pedal (I used the Jack Orman MOSFET boost schematic verbatim) is a whopping 10M input impedance. Apparently, with piezo pickups, the more the merrier as far as input impedance.

Brave comes with its own built-in crap-blocker called Brave Shields.

This is kind of "over my head," but the first question I have to ask is whether you've enabled MIDI Out on the VST. I know that Cakewalk is capable of sending MIDI back and forth in real time to such external devices as control surfaces, but have never tried exactly what you are trying to do. Given how much of Cakewalk's underlying code goes back to the pre-VSTi days when making music with a computer meant hooking it up to external synths, my hunch is that it should be able to do it. Have you checked in the Cakewalk Reference Guide?

FaderLube is what you need.

For those who want a free dynamic EQ, TDR's Nova is well-respected.

Not sure what you mean. The iZotope Mastering EQ has multiple frequency bands.

I've found Neoverb to be underwhelming, but $26.50 for Stratus is a deal. Best-sounding natural reverb I've ever used, rivaled only by MTurboReverb.