Starship Krupa

Okay, more diving in the Reference Guide yielded this pearl: "If you want to use tap tempo during playback, first right-click the Tempo track and make sure Update BPM Display During Playback is disabled." That seems confusing, as I'm tapping I want it to update the BPM display, but I guess it refers to updating the display to show the current tempo at the playhead.

I just tried to use the Tap Tempo to set the project tempo to match a clip I recorded. When I started the project, tempo was set to the default 120 BPM, but the clip is actually slower. At first I tried dragging it to the timeline, but the detection failed miserably. Then I tried opening the Tempo Track and tapping along with the song while it was playing. No go, because the set tempo (120) was overriding what I was tapping in. Is there some way I can accomplish what I'm trying to do using Cakewalk: manually match the project tempo to an existing clip? Or do I have to I use a 3rd-party app or plug-in?

If there's a way to set it in the plug-in, I can't find it, but Cakewalk's internal plug-in system handles VHS' settings. I have the profiles for each of my headphones in the Cakewalk preset list and when I select one, VHS switches over to the correct settings.

You didn't ask for advice, but speaking as someone who has given up making music for years at a time, then come back to it with greater enthusiasm and a different approach, yeah, don't sell your gear. The expensive mics, well maybe. But at least hang on to the minimum. I approach making music these days like a model railroad. It's fun to do in and of itself, and if someone else hears it and likes it, that's a bonus. To me, it's a way of communicating thoughts and feelings that can't be expressed in other ways. Nostalgia, grief, joy, serenity. I "hear" things in my head, or on the radio (mostly Soma.fm and KALX, the UC Berkeley station) and I want to make those sounds. So I do. When I finish a piece, it goes up on Bandcamp and YouTube. One thing I tossed off half a dozen years ago is up to over 600 views on YouTube. Woo-hoo! It's like dropping messages in a bottle. Before the rock star myth descended upon the world, music making was something that was just a part of people's homes. Have a piano, learn to play it, or have friends over who play, sit on the porch with the guitar, making music because it's something cool to do, like painting. You never know when you'll hear a new (to you) form of music and have it trigger a desire to MAKE SOUNDS LIKE THAT (as happened with messrs. Cobain and Mascis). I'm enjoying your album right now....

Well, you can now get Fallout 76 for free on Amazon and see if it's any good. I love me a good MMORPG, so I'll give it a try. I usually use the handle "Superabbit" these days....

I think they're just busting their hinies getting Sonar ready to ship.

Isn't it kind of a rellik?

I'd like to SEE them do it. I didn't technically say I'd actually buy it. ? I, too have way too many drum machines. Between Boom, Break Tweaker, Tactic (I use it as a drum machine), and the ones included in Komplete Start (not to mention SampleTank 4 MAX and MDrummer), everything I want is covered. Yet every time I spot a new free one, I am compelled to try it. It's a disorder.

Add me to the UnAbashed Unfiltered Audio fanboy list. I think I have their entire line up to this point. Yeah, I'll have it in a couple of years when it drops below $30. The company I REALLY wish would put out a drum machine is A|A|S.

They had me at Walton Goggins. Also Michael Emerson. Haven't played the game, my MMORPG is another Bethesda property, The Elder Scrolls Online.

I'm glad it works for you. I still contend that the stuff from the Insert menu rightly belongs down on the Track View's own menu. Where the action is, so to speak. Those items are in the Console's Track (sic) menu. Should be the same for the Track View. Well, in the Tracks (sic) menu....

Wait, whut?? Why on Earth would it have been changed? I've always thought that it being there was some sort of oddball leftover. Moving it was deliberate? I've been lobbying for the things that are in the Insert menu to be moved down to the Track View menu and all of the insert operations that are now on the Project menu to be moved to the Insert menu. So far it looks like nothing's going to change in the Global menu with the new Sonar.

What is the plugin you're trying to modulate? One possibility is to use a drum machine plug-in and send its kick to your plug-in's sidechain input. That's the traditional way to do this sort of thing anyway. Also, there's Cherry Audio's Voltage Modular synth, and by its nature, it includes LFO modules. The Nucleus version is free from Plugin Boutique: https://www.pluginboutique.com/product/1-Instruments/4-Synth/5594-Voltage-Modular-Nucleus

If you don't find other highly useful FX in that bundle, I'd be very surprised! I use at least one Kilohearts Essentials plug-in on every project (KHs Limiter, if nothing else, set to -3dB to prevent synths from pegging Sonar's meters). A good resource for discovering freeware effects is this thread on this forum. It's coming up on 5 years of recommendations by Cakewalk users such as myself:

I dunno, Boog, not sure if he's a "making fun of" kinda guy....

Kilohearts Essentials includes both pitch shifting and slow-down FX (along with over 30 other very useful plug-ins). There are also features of Cakewalk apart from Melodyne that can be used to slow down audio while maintaining pitch. The Loop Construction view has facilities for changing pitch, but I find it easier to just use the one in Kilohearts Essentials. What I'm still looking for is a plug-in or utility that can analyze music and tell me if it's tuned to A=440 and if not, by how much.

Y'know, I should have one of those already but I don't. I know you're a resource editor user, can you recommend one? Not that I would run a program with a hacked DLL mind you (that could lead to unfortunate consequences), just for educational purposes.

My mistake then.

Based on his posts in the wake of the Sonar/Next announcement that he wasn't too excited about the prospects in Cakewalk land.

Relaxxxx. Why do we get this kind of thing when people suggest adding a new way to accomplish something? "Nooooo, pleeeease, I like it the way it IS! Don't force me to learn a new way to do it!" Nobody has suggested that the current way of doing it should be removed. We're just saying that it's clumsy and nearly impossible to figure out without deep-diving the documentation or Googling or asking how to do it on the forum. Maybe you were able to intuit how without research, but I wasn't and I've seen plenty of other users who also found it obtuse and frustrating. Me, I hate deleting markers in Cakewalk because I'm always afraid that I'm going to hit Del at the wrong moment and delete a clip or a plug-in or something. Every time I do it, it makes me clench up. This is 5 years and 11 months after I learned how to do it (it took me a month of using Cakewalk to get around to learning how to do it). I've been asking for years for Delete Marker to be added to the dialog that pops up when you right click on a marker. For those people who like clicking on a marker, holding, then pressing Del to delete it, nothing would change. You would be free ignore the fact that there's a way for new users to figure out how to do it without Googling. Which is how I figured out how to delete a marker in Cakewalk. Gave up in frustration, Googled it. Found a post on the old forum responding to someone else who also wasn't able to figure it out. If anyone reading this thinks that experienced DAW users needing to use a search engine to figure out an operation as common as deleting a marker is just par for the course, you're wrong. Yes, there are many operations where it's not out of line to have to consult the manual. Things like setting up Groove Clip Looping and such that exist in every DAW, but usually in different forms. Deleting a marker? C'mon. It doesn't have to be a complete overhaul of the feature or a rethink of the UX philosophy or a retool of the Markers module or view or any such thing. Just add Delete Marker to the context dialog. It's the very kind of thing that context dialogs are meant for.

I've been complaining about this for years. IMO, it should be in the Insert menu. Project would be the last place I'd think to look. I hoped Sonar might be an opportunity to clean things up in the Global Menu, but so far, no go. BTW, I like your theme. ?

The comedic genius of Desi Arnaz:

Ah, the legendary Sandy Bridge. Plenty of those still in service. If I had it, I'd be tempted to see if it would take an i7 2600 (making sure to update the BIOS first). $30 on eBay. But I like polishing the 'tater. Your system is fine as long as you do what you're doing, which is vet your plug-ins thoroughly. My philosophy is that if a plug-in is eating up too many resources on my computer, it ain't the computer that needs to be replaced. At the upper right corner of the forum page, click on your name and select Account settings. Then on the left, you should see a link for Signature. I suspect you're right. Either MODO Drums or MODO Bass (can't remember which) was the first plug-in that ever refused to install on my old laptop (1st gen i7) because the processor was too old. Yours has the AVX instructions that they were asking for. The constant crunch might have been a matter of graphics (if you're using the onboard HD 2000 GPU or same age external card). Software that makes heavy use of DirectX can have problems with certain older GPU's. Lotsa good pianos and drums in the Freeware Instruments topic. As you say, Hammersmith is a good free piano, so is the Monastery Grand that comes with the free MeldaProduction MSoundFactory Player. Here's a tip for keeping older systems viable: download HWInfo64 and use it to monitor your CPU speed and temperature. Sometimes cooling issues can slow an older system down because heatsink paste is getting old and/or the case is filling up with dust. Both have easy fixes. HWInfo can tell you if your system is throttling due to getting too hot.

What are the exact specs of your "humble" PC? Processor? RAM? My favorite virtual piano is MeldaProduction's Meldway Grand, which is 60GB of samples. It runs with no issues on my laptop system with 16GB RAM. Correlation vs. causality. What exactly were the bad problems that MODO Drums caused? Plug-ins may be written to make efficient or inefficient use of RAM and CPU resources, they may have bugs or be bug-free. The size of the install file has little to do with either. In the case of Meldway Grand, they are obviously not loading all of the piano samples into memory at the same time or it wouldn't be possible to use it on my 16G laptop system.

Have you ever read a description of headphones or speakers that referred to them as "revealing?" That may be what you are experiencing. Your Adam monitors may be more "revealing" than your Grado headphones. The criteria for pleasant listening vs. mixing are different. People have made multiple suggestions, but I'm still not clear on whether it's your vocal tracks you are unhappy with or just your vocal tracks when you play them back on your monitor speakers. And I'm not clear on whether it's any of the monitor speakers you own or just the Adams. Do your vocal tracks sound bad on all of your 3 playback systems (Adams, Avantone, Grado)? Or just the Adams, or just the Adams and the Avantones? You say that Boz Scaggs sounds good while Mike McDonald doesn't. Is that true across the cans and both sets of speakers? Or just the Adams, or just the Adams and Avantones? We need to eliminate some variables before I can make any suggestions.