Starship Krupa

@azslow3 is a hero, to be sure. I don't use REAPER, but for people who do use both REAPER and Cakewalk, his utilities are invaluable.

Cakewalk has a very powerful built-in arpeggiator that (I suspect) is one of those Cakewalk features that people either don't know about or forget about. It's slightly hidden, in order to access it you use Track Inspector, the pair of strips over to the left of Track View. If using a MIDI track, it's right there, if using a simple Instrument track, in order to see it you click on the MIDI tab down at the bottom of Inspector. In its presets, there is a large variety of guitar strum patterns that sound pretty realistic, which is often a problem with keyboard players trying to imitate guitar strums and picking. W.A. Production also sells a plug-in called Instachord, which generates full chord arp patterns using just two fingers, one to select the chord and the other to select the pattern.

They are included because they are part of the "back end" to the ProChannel Style Dials. @JohnnyV: SONAR Professional, the version of SONAR that Cakewalk by BandLab most closely resembles, included the Style Dials, but not Vocal Strip, Percussion Strip, or Tube Leveler. Nor of course did the versions below it on the feature list, Artist and Home Studio, all of which had the Style Dials. I suspect that anyone who bought SONAR Home Studio, Artist, or Professional back in the day would have been able to use Plug-in Manager and enabled them just as we do. Unless they came with a hobbled version of Plug-in Manager, which I doubt. I stumbled upon them years ago when messing about in Plug-in Manager ("hmm, Show Excluded, what does that do?") and wrote up a tutorial for how to enable them. Others have done so as well, notably Craig Anderton in Sound On Sound, Mike Enzo in one of his Creative Sauce videos. People pointed out that since using them isn't "officially" supported, they could have been taken away at any point, but they're just regular VST's (they work fine in other hosts, I've tried it), and we always back up our VST's, don't we? ? Also, if they had ever been eliminated, seems like Style Dials would have stopped working. PX and VX are really nice plug-ins that for some reason I tend to forget about, so thanks for reminding me. People ask about the best de-essers, vocal doublers, compressors, expanders, EQ's, saturation and all that, but those are all right there in those plug-ins. Cakewalk, Inc. only allowed full access to them in the Platinum package, so they must have considered them to be premium. Maybe I have some resistance because in the back of my mind I think they're supposed to be only for the program material in their names, but obviously, they'll work on any program material. ?

Surely possible. Unfortunately, with some monitors, when they go to sleep, they shut down enough that the OS can no longer detect that the audio device is present (which the OS doesn't care about, but Cakewalk seems to). So if you walk away from the computer for what gamers call a "bio break" (eating or other bodily functions that unfortunately get in the way of the computing experience ?) long enough for your monitor to sleep, you get the annoying message. Also, and I'm not sure about this, but maybe if you tell Windows to allow applications to have exclusive access to the audio device, they might be doing just that and kicking Cakewalk out. Since Cakewalk is probably speaking ASIO, whereas Windows doesn't know ASIO from a hole in the ground, this might happen. Anyway, @Ted Franklin, I'm not sure this will work, but it's something to try: Cakewalk has a setting under Preferences/MIDI/Devices for "Warn About No MIDI Devices." That should not be checked. Really, though, I think this is a feature request. Cakewalk shouldn't complain about not being able to see audio devices you're not using anyway.

TH3 comes with many presets, so as with any other plug-in, that's a good place to start. Classic rockers didn't have access to amplifiers with built-in distortion, so to get their tones, they usually used either Fender or Marshall with a boost or overdrive stompbox. This signal chain is available with TH3. Presets that use the Bassface, Darkface, Overange, Tweed Deluxe, and Rock models of amp are appropriate. If you want to roll your own, one of those, then the Tube Nine overdrive would be a good place to start, with your choice of cabinets. The RSS Compressor is worth a look, too. A phaser pedal is an effect that many of them used. With stompboxes and modulation effects, they would always have to go in front of the amp, so try that first. Of course there are no rules except "if it sounds good, it is good." Each of the classic players in those bands worked for many hours to craft guitar tones that they liked. Now that you know where to start comes the fun part, experimenting and finding out what inspires you. And don't necessarily stick to trying to emulate your heroes (although that is a solid place to start). Tone is part of the electric guitar's voice, and things sound better (IMO) when we sing with our own voice. With your DAW rig, it's easy to import a track from our favorite artists, then listen to it while we work on the tone. As John is implying, the way that those players got their sounds was/is from playing through a physical electronic amplifier, usually using tubes, into a wooden box with one or more paper cone speakers, mic'd with a variety of microphones (condenser, dynamic). While emulations of this are getting better, it's still hard to beat an actual physical amp for sounding like....an actual physical amp. It gives a better monitoring experience for the player as well. That said, I'm an amp designer myself and I still use emulations sometimes. If it sounds good, it is good and all that.

It's a compromise, of course. With all of them, and I have RX 10, ERA, and MSpectralDynamics, I always have to fiddle with the balance between how much reduction I get vs. gurgle. Plain old gating and/or editing is something I often forget about when doing restoration work. The film and TV industry used to rely on that before we had all this computing power at our fingertips. But if the program material is loud enough, it can mask the underlying noise pretty well. Of course, my attention is drawn to the fancier solutions (smile). It sounds like an interesting project. I'm curious about what you're planning to do with the sounds you record.

No idea about its accessibility, but Cockos' ReaFIR is free and works very well. It's one of the ones that samples the background noise and then cancels it. It has a very simple UI, so maybe good for a screen reader.

Good thing we have Cakewalk by BandLab, which does work, and it works better.

Anything that helps for people with eyesight issues, I'm for it.

Hw are broadcast wav files different from regular wav files, and why would they be preferred for import to a different DAW?

Remember to breathe, eh? My bad, I guess. I went to a site for a program called Ultimate Vocal Remover, where the only description of what the program does is "The best vocal remover application on the internet...." and no hints that it does anything else. I came away with the impression that what it did was....remove vocals. I stand corrected. GitHub....GitHub is an awesome platform, we owe it much for the service it provides programmers for sharing code.....when I suggest that maybe programmers who do supply precompiled executables with their projects could make the download links more prominent, some folks push back as if I had insulted their grandma's cooking. Not only do I RTFM, in some cases I have written TFM, I have created build systems in my home just for fun, I am no stranger to having to put effort into understanding things. What I don't like is having to put needless effort into hunting for things on a website. If someone's trying to sell or, bless their heart, give away a program and there's not something near the top telling me how to purchase/download it, that creates needless effort. With the other 2 sites you posted, I spent about 15 minutes on each of them hunting for whether and where I could download compiled binaries, or whether the project was a Python script or what. Then I had to admit defeat. Are there programs there that one may download and run? I've seen GitHub repositories that were well-organized and had reasonably prominent links to precompiled binaries (if they existed), so I know it can be done.

What I meant by the 1:05 (or close) was that I was seeing 1:05+/- 5 seconds, and the date stamps on the dll's on you computer tell me that you live somewhere in the Eastern US Time Zone. I live in California. Windows' timezone settings affect how dates appear on Windows systems. As for the incomplete downloads, I've seen this before on MeldaProduction release days. Wherever they host their downloader gets overloaded. With this one, where the Windows installer would either result in a loss of all the dll's or a mismatch between the dll's and the engine, no surprise they're getting pounded.

Okay, can confirm that the installer is working correctly as far as I can tell. If you don't tell it to clean up it overwrites the .vst3 files, if you do tell it to clean up it deletes the old ones and installs the new ones. The date/time stamps on the .vst3 files are 8/10/2023 1:05 (or close, depending on when they compiled them), so if the dates on yours are earlier than that, you have an incorrect installation and should download the newer, larger installer. This means you, @TheSteven and likely @Philip G Hunt.

I did try there and it says it's a "vocal remover." I'm interested in instrument isolation. Specifically, I want to be able to hear nothing but the vocal sometimes for the purpose of figuring out lyrics. Other instruments, too. I'm familiar with GitHub and yes, I know that (theoretically at least), many projects have ready to use installers. Trying to figure out whether or where a project has pre-compiled binaries with or without installers is the needle-in-a-haystack proposition. GitHub has much in common with Linux and REAPER, in my mind. You don't have to be a programming freak to navigate them, but programming freaks have an easier time with them (and can't understand why other people don't?). I've had people tell me before that GitHub's function isn't to be a place where you download programs, and hey, I have to agree that they have done a great job of keeping to that, but then why do people post GitHub links as a way to obtain this or that program? I'm not going to compile binaries myself. The last time I did that was almost 10 years ago when I decided to see if I could build Audacity on Windows with ASIO support (I was eventually successful after a few days hacking at it, although I realized that if I wanted to stay current on Audacity-with-ASIO, I'd have to build it again every time Audacity came out with a new release). I'd also rather not have to install a script interpreter on my computer.

Yes, before August, and 16.08 came out on August 8. On the system where I opted out of the cleanup, the plug-in UI's say 16.08, but the .vst3 dates are 6/27/2023 8:38 AM. I've done it on 3 different systems now, with similar results: if the .vst3 files are not already on the system, the Meldaproduction installer won't put them there, and I'm pretty sure it's not overwriting old ones either. I'm not going to trust it 100% until we hear from Meldaproduction that it's been fixed. Running with dll's from a previous version and an engine from the current version may appear to work fine (and it may even work fine), but it can't be intended behavior from the installer. I don't know if everyone went on summer vacation the minute that 16.08 shipped, but they rely heavily on people being able to download and try their plug-ins (and using the mighty FreeFX bundle). If Windows users haven't been able to do that for a couple of days, that's potentially lost sales ("I downloaded their installer and I guess their stuff won't work on my system").

Ah, GitHub, the place where the hope that you'll be able to just download a program goes to die. I still fall for it, though, because I can't resist the temptation of something free. Gave up in this case, like many others. Is there actually a downloadable program there somewhere or is it just code that people can incorporate into their own programs?

I think that the way it's supposed to work is that the cleanup just gets rid of the old dll's (both .dll and .vst3) before installing new ones. If you opt out of the cleanup, the old ones get overwritten. I usually just go with the quick cleanup because it takes about 2 seconds, and it seems like the installer is kind of nudging me to use it. There's no difference in amount of disk space at the end of it. The MDrummer/SoundFactory files don't get touched by the cleanup operation. I suspect that the only people on Windows who this installer is "working" for are ones who opt out of the cleanup. Check the dates on your .vst3 files and I bet that they will be from earlier than August. It's not really working as intended, it's installing the new "engine" in ProgramData and leaving the old dll's in place. Who knows if this will work....

Part of a flash sale. For Ultra Analog VA-3 and A|A|S Player: https://www.applied-acoustics.com/sounds-from-blkrtz/

The Windows install failure has been brought up by several people on the Meldaproduction forum, including me. Confirmed that it only "works" if you tell it to skip the clean-up. Which results in the previous versions you had installed staying in place, although the UI says that they are 16.08. That's probably due to the Meldaproduction core not being a part of the .vst3 files. It's a mess, and it's uncharacteristic of Melda to fail to address it within 24 hours. It's an installer, that ain't rocket science.

One of the things that has put me off from the company is the apparent "in your face" snotty locker room bro attitude. Naming the company "Cockos?" Calling their plug-in language "Jesusonic?" That indicates (to me) limp high school rebellion. People are supposed to outgrow that crap. I have a hunch that you won't find many women working there.

He was kidding, hence the laughter emoji.

The bakers actually recommend nVidia over AMD. I've been on "Team Green" for over 25 years, going back to when I was doing desktop support for Windows systems. nVidia's drivers worked well with Win 95 and made things a lot quicker. Many years later, a friend gave me his old Radeon 5770, a very nice card, which I installed in my main DAW system. I was using Mixcraft at the time, while they were transitioning from 32-bit to 64-bit. I had them both installed on my Win 7 system and the 64-bit version was unusable. Switched to an nVidia card and 64-bit Mixcraft ran great. The difference was astonishing.

Sure. I also remember that the people who came up with those UI's revised them to look better, to keep up with the times. The appearance of the tools I use to create audio and visuals is important. It affects the amount of enthusiasm I feel for using the tool and my mood while using the tool. This is true for instruments, software, etc. If I have to shield my eyes from a program that looks dated/ugly, I'm less likely to want to use it. I definitely don't mind functional UI's; my favorite plug-in house is Meldaproduction, but they have also made many changes over the past several years to their UI's, based on customer feedback. They're never rude about customer suggestions. If they don't like them, they dismiss them politely or just stay silent.

You have a truly astonishing background! Please forgive my musiciansplaining ?. I went back and watched/listened to a couple of your CBBTV videos and your voice is GREAT. It gave me an opportunity to hear your vocals as recorded. So I gotta question, even more now: why are you applying Melodyne to such a beautiful instrument? Your raw takes I would consider "perfect" if they happened in my studio. I have the same astonished feeling I get when beautiful women of my acquaintance mention that they want to get "work" done: why would you pay someone to take a knife to one of the prettiest faces I've seen? Human voices do vary a little in pitch. IMO, at least, that tiny variation is something that our ears like. It makes a sound more interesting if it varies a little from "perfect." But in matters of taste, I suppose. You must be of the opinion that music like you want to make needs to have vocals that are as perfectly in tune as technique and technology can make them, and if that's the sound you're going for, I'll leave you to it. One last suggestion: maybe you've hit the point where Melodyne is unable to improve upon what you already have.