Olaf
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Everything posted by Olaf
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Sure, but giving up the "it's all plugins' fault, all the time" attitude would be a good place to start. Last night I had a crash after trying to close several windows in short sequence, and a short hang up. At least it wasn't five crashes, and I haven't noticed my Tape reset randomly a few times a night either, recently. I'll give a thumbs up on that - getting conditioned to low expectations ?. Sphere won't start after the update. It worked before, didn't touch it in the meantime. And my WA Prod plugins won't visualize anything - I mean not even the knobs moving or the number values changing, let alone the waveforms. They work, audio wise, I can hear the changes, but not visually. Close them, open then up again, I get the updated values and new knob positions - which I adjusted blindly, but no movement in real time. A million and first confirmation that it's connected somehow to the graphics/visualization/multimedia core in CW, or to the integration with that part of Windows. I'd bet on CW for some strong reasons. My latency buffer if 512 samples - 10 ms one trip latency - I can mix fine, no hangups, no stutter, plenty of CPU headroom (but no engine headroom, strangely, which overshoots), until I record - and there's half a second of latency, on that setting - or any other. I'm sure I can reinstall and it will go away - but I'm tired of reinstalling and migrating my settings all the time - pretty much after any update. In a year and 4 months I must have reinstalled around 10 times. The same orphaned automations which you still can't delete, 16 months later. And lots of workflow "longcuts" and strange behaviors. EDIT: The WA Prod visualizations worked last night on a different project, until adding the plugin that topped the CPU load, when they stopped. It seems they stop responding visually when the CPU is full - the same conflict I was talking about. -
Yeah, I know, but wouldn't at least acknowledging the problems - and the fundamental causes - be a required step towards solving them?
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Good description. Moral, even on a decent configuration, anything that resembles real life and not an aseptic configuration, where you don't even look at the screen and tread very lightly, leads to crashes, and, even with that, performance issues. Direct monitoring recording is basically not being able to record - other than maybe vocals, but not helpful for a good performance even then. https://www.facebook.com/groups/333570523387557/permalink/3698301283581114/
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Don't bother, I'm not even gonna read it. You don't actually read what is being written, you fly over the points, so basically you repeat yourself over an over, with stuff that's been already answered, but somehow you missed it. I'm gonna return the favor and not read it, myself. Besides, the first phrases already show the more-sterile-theorizing over using your ears approach, even though even the theory is wrong, because it's oversimplified theory - that doesn't involve psychoacoustics, principles of physics, etc. There's not point to it, and I don't really care what Ethan said. Besides, somebody who enjoys saying "you're wrong" so many times - while a decent guy actually tries to avoid saying it, I could have said it, and maybe more than that - clearly has an emotional agenda behind his "certainties", so I suggest solving that first, and then having certainties. But once you do, you'll probably find you don't need "certainties" and to dizzy yourself with talk, as much, and you'll probably become more open to understanding and (somewhat) objective assessment. Again, we're all subjective, but not everything is entirely subjective. And I see a avoidance mechanism here, so...
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No, I agree they are smoother and more polished now - I've nuanced this is my original comment. But, yeah, all natural quality and emotion is lost, exactly, and they have a stock, one size fits all timbre, that you don't even know who's singing anymore. You used to recognize a well-known singer from the first word, before. Now you need to flip a coin. Absolutely, that's what I do, and I'm very happy about it. I've recently discovered that I need a DI box, I thought I didn't because I already have instrument/Hi Z inputs on my interface, but I've tried an... emulation ?, and it makes a big improvement in the transient quality. So, I figure I need one after all. Turns out, beyond the theoretical manufacturer reassurance, that maybe USB cannot push enough voltage in the preamp. I want to buy a new interface, change my setup, and revisit the issue then.
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Absolutely agree, but I think many have a defense mechanism against doing that - that is attached to finding out they're wrong and/or they're not necessarily the bee's knees just for the amazing merit of being born in the 2000s/90s. It's the same thing as the censorship and intolerance on the Left - they just can't find out they're wrong, because they have their ego attached to it, and their identity - in the absence of another. Yeah, exactly. They are smoother and more polished than ever before, that's true, but to me they're far from being perfect. That more unnatural than ever before, too. You can hear any lisp, plop, lip sticking, it's like the singer's got their mouth right in your ear, and it's very unpleasant, and aggressive. That's not how you hear people. Add to that the dryness of the sound which gives it a flatness and is, again, unnatural, and the, many times, exaggerated highs, and it's... uugghh. I agree with you 100% on the performance. It's amazing to me - and this is something those of the younger generations who don't spend the time listening, cultivating themselves - instead they just prefer projecting ego - and understanding what they see/hear, the level of mastery you needed to have to record that way. And, paradoxically, that's why you'd have flawed pitch, sometimes, out-of-sync, so on - they did it all in full takes. Not piece by piece, like today, word by word, etc., but just going through it. It got more fragmented going towards the 80s, technology allowed for easier comping, but still. You had to have great chops to do that, even if you occasionally f... up, it's inevitable, but they pulled it off. And when you had somebody with flawless performance, like Coverdale, or Sting, that was the mark of true mastery. Precisely. Not just analog gear - although the very act of miking things up, and running through circuitry had a beautiful effect right of the box - vibrance, variance, compression, saturation, hi-end roll off for tape - but beautifully crafted analog gear. But you need to take time to listen without bias, and not attach your identity to some words. Not have a nervous breakdown if someone calls you "unmodern" or anything of the likes.
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Actually they wouldn't, as it turns out, it's ironical, isn't it ? They thought they did until they made the comparison - I've already answered that - and realized you can actually sound even worse than you did with distortion and noise - you can sound "digital", that is. That's why they invented the term. And you can clearly see it, in the ton of analog emulations, noise and saturation plugins that they use now. It's not hard to see it everywhere, beyond blank in-vitro considerations without applicability, like "compromise", "limitations". What you may fail to see is that they overcame those limitations, in a way that works best with our ears, whereas all you have to offer for the lack of good sound is sterile considerations that actually come from a distorted theoretical perspective - 0 Kelvin - a so called neutral point that no one can use or needs. No, digital sounds harsh because it sounds harsh - and that's why I prefer analog sound. That's the correct logical sequence. There's no "fetish" for analog sound that you're freely and baselessly attributing to people that you don't know. By the way, great way to turn a conversation on principle into personal attacks. Do I sense you becoming defensive? Hint: when you feel you do, it might be a sign you need to rethink the things you're defensive about. If anything I could say I see a fetish for digital from those using uninsightful and sterile considerations that they attach their ego to, instead of their ears. While there is a margin for personal interpretation and taste, obviously, you can't "subjective" your way out of everything - while the speaker still sounds the way it does. There's also a right and a wrong, and it pertains to the natural quality of a sound, and the timbre of the source. For instance this below is not "clear", it's harsh - and it comes from a bad instrumental mix. And it's easy to tell the difference, beyond the bullshit: ask yourself if you've ever heard a human voice, anywhere, sounding like that. While we improve clarity, hype-up and change the natural sound all the time, apply cheat-codes - it's what we do - there's a margin for that before you lose touch, and things actually start to sound bad. I'm not gonna go into personal considerations of what I can and can't do ?, it suffices to say that this very sentence should have made you think, if you had the inclination - it's a sentence that actually says analog sound is better, if you took the time to take it in. With good sounding analog you don't need to make anything sound good, it just did - obviously in relation to the source - by running it through the gear. What you would do is make it sound different, as needed. That's actually a good sign to recognize good gear, you can't make it sound bad - you can make it sound different in many ways, but not bad, tone wise - and you don't need to "make it" sound good - it already does. That should tell you a lot right there. Anyway, I'm withdrawing from the conversation, don't feel like engaging in a personal to and fro. Suffice to say that, for all the incredible tools that we have these days, I've never seen a larger amount of bad sounding mixes on commercial radio than these days - and it seems to be the norm. That's another thing that should tell you a lot. And they come from sterile considerations like that, that miss the point from an attachment to words.
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Beautiful. Actually cool to watch, who would have said the production actually had a great sense of humor, too. Very British, reminded me of Droopy - that little dog that had a long face when he said he was happy. The near/far - whisper/screaming examples are an illustration that I use when speaking about the the necessity to pass every dry sound/sample through a room emulation/IR, to recreate the natural behavior of sound playing in a space, without which to me it sounds flat, and artificial. It's a big part of generating a three-dimensionality that's missing in digital mixes, it helps you define the size of every instrument, it helps you organize the sounds, depth wise, and it also contributes to reducing harshness even while actually livening up a sound - in connection to the mention about "air", before. And it has a huge role in defining a mix's character. Another thing that's missing in today's everyday digital mixes, even though all the tools are there - because of some false equations developed in consequence of attaching ego to labels like "modern", etc., and not putting in the hours to listen to great music from the past. It's the first time I've ever seen something like that delay loop cassette. A lot of high level thinking and precise engineering went into the electro-mechanical devices of those days. My hi-fi stereo with autoreverse on remote, loop playing, tape counter, and CD changer, with programmable recording from a multi- CD customizable playlist. Lots of pressure sensors, mechanical arms, gears... Even a simple VCR. Everyday consumer products - a lot of complex engineering went into those, with very little room for error. Thanks for the video.
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I haven't said digital can't emulate analog, it's already past evidence that it can, and in one software generation I don't think you'll be able to tell the difference for the better makers out there. Analog can't do digital. Sure. So? We don't want digital, anyway - in terms of sound. Convenience wise, sure, who wouldn't? Soundwise... nah. So, if you have no problem committing to a sound, how is not getting digital sound bad? That's not what you want to get, anyway. I think calling it "defective" really restricts understanding and prejudices your approach and your assessment on analog. Don't get me wrong, I don't want to go back to pulling out the dozen of cables, and moving things around, and bla-bla. I don't fetishize analog. But the sound is unbeatable. Because here's the thing - the gear that you used, even low quality, wasn't just any old analog gear - you wouldn't record on a cuckoo clock - but the one that - by accident or craft, or both - was optimized to sound great to our ears. So "defective" in relation to what? To a "pristine" flat recording? Sure, but that doesn't exist. EVERYTHING is "defective" in relation to a perfectly flat recording - which is an absolutely useless theoretical consideration, more of an ideal referential than anything. The question is not whether a recording is flat or not - which, again, now that we can compare, is actually bad, as a final sound - of course you'd want the input to be flat, to allow yourself options in "unflatness" later, as a cheatcode, but not the end result - but rather, does it sound good or not? From that perspective, what can label analog as "defective", instead of "beautifully optimized" for instance - even if by accident or limitation, in a number of features? It's only "defective" from a useless theoretical perspective no one cares about, when you listen. Flat eq curves is white noise. You don't want that. Once you agree your signal shouldn't look like that, the rest is just choosing which curve you like best. It's as easy as that. It's like "efficiency" - you always need to ask yourself "efficiency in relation to what" to make sure you're not doing more harm in the name of a word. Different topic, anyway, but I don't like sterile, unapplied theoretical considerations - they make for the biggest judgment and logical mistakes ever. Again, harshness has nothing to do with the volume. It's digital, it doesn't change tone according to gain. That's not what Bob Clearmountain was saying. He was saying engineers - this is a good example of the classic "apply formulas instead of common sense" that engineers sometimes excel at - were pushing the treble, in digital, the way they did on tape. You see that to this day, on all kinds of tutorials, and you wonder "Jesus, don't these guys have ears?". They call it "air". That's not air. That's horrid. That's screeching. Air is pushing the treble on the room reverberations that you'd have embedded in a recording and that would tame the highs of the main, anyway - in addition to the taming the tape and preamps did. That's why they called it air. But regardless, even if you don't, it still sounds harsh. Try it. I record guitars. Bass. I have once recorded drums. They always do. They have a fizz. Here's the thing, guitar amps naturally sound a little harsh, so they need to be tamed - in that regard, tape was just a match made in heaven. But more than harsh, they sound flat and lifeless, without vibrance. And if you use amps sims, like a I do, you'd cringe without warming. Watch this, I loved it. All tracks are obviously tracked to tape - listen for any noise, but before anything listen to how they sound just by being run through the gear, before any active processing. Listen to those hats. Listen to the bass. And it's a J console, which is supposed to be a lot cleaner than an E, for instance. Too bad you don't like Waves, I'm a big fan of the CLA Mixhub, I'd recommend it to anybody. New generation stuff sounds amazing. I've made my first synth sounds using Element 2. In relation to digital signal damaging your ears before you can hear noise, that's what I was trying to tell you about analog - it's the same. You couldn't hear the noise until you amplified to insane levels - again, on a good recording, good tape, etc. The noise was well below hearing levels. Anyway, gotta sign out for the night. We can resume. Have a great evening!
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Digital recordings sounds thin, flat and harsh by default, regardless of the input volume, unless you warm them up. The input gain doesn't have much of an effect on that, at most it can clip and stutter. The reason why they sound harsh is exactly that they don't have those "defects" which correspond to - and have been optimized, for decades, to match - our natural hearing preferences - and the way sound naturally behaves in a physical environment. Also, in my experience you can't hear tape noise - unless you amplify the playback through the roof and/or you use very worn-out tapes - even then, you get more wobble and high end rolloff, before you actually hear the noise. You can feel tape noise, now that you are able to make the comparison, but not really hear it - on a good recording, anyway. I have recorded on cassette tapes, which were a lot lower in quality than reel tapes, and could never hear the noise, if I had a good input volume going in, and didn't try to break the volume knob afterwards. And I've listened to thousands of reel tapes and cassettes, many recorded from a third-fourth hand copy, and I was never bothered by noise - except for very old tapes or very poor copies. To hear the noise, you'd have to crank the volume so much that you'd have to get out of the room when the playback actually started - and maybe protect your windows, too. Fe oxyde formulations were better, noise wise, than Cr, which were hissier - favoring hyped highs - but even with those, for a new tape recorded with a high input, you wouldn't hear it. It's not hard to check for yourself - do a simple test: take a song recorded on tape and listen to it ?. Crank it up, wait for a moment of silence/low instrumentation - even then you won't hear anything. Maybe on "I'm not in love", but that's an intentional effect. It wasn't that bad. It wasn't cave man recording, and the world wasn't invented in the 2000, as many - who usually don't know anything about anything before the year 2000 - seem to believe. The problem with tape appeared when you had to comp, bounce and transfer repeatedly, that's where you could actually compound the noise to become a problem. But even then, on good machines, with good tape, there was hassle, but it was actually doable - as proven by millions of recordings. These are just things people say on the web, repeating stuff they, many times, have no idea about, based on misunderstood theoretical considerations made "in-vitro". People - back then - thought noise was bad altogether because they had to be concerned with not getting too much of it, and they had no way of knowing how things would sound without it. The 90s, however, gave us the answer to that one: reaaaally bad. Noise, in itself, is not something to avoid - TOO MUCH noise is. Again, that's in-vitro prejudice resulting from theoretical considerations overamplifying the concern of avoiding getting too much noise. On the contrary, in the right amounts, noise has a beautiful effect. Try it for yourself, it's a lot better than taking web comments for granted. It adds punch, depth and glue, it smoothens out the transients - exactly that harshness - it's a big part of it. It's not just "saturation", it's also in-built EQ curves, it's gentle compression, there's a ton of things going on. I think most people who worked in the analog era prefer recording to tape to this day - if they have one available, bar the technical hassle - analog preamps, which are noisier, etc. If not, they at least use emulations. To me, not just recordings, but even digitally generated sound sounds flat and lifeless, unless you add noise, non-linearities, saturation, so on, to it. It doesn't have the same weight, punch, all the rest. The reverb in Echosphere emulates a Lexicon plate algorithm, from what Waves say, but I don't think the Lexicon manual will help you much, since the plugin doesn't have the same controls - besides, the controls are so simple, that the manual can only waste you time. But I think it will help you a lot more in making assessments if you remembered how it sounds rather than what somebody on Youtube said about it.
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Good advice. I've been saying for a while now - including to the developers - that a lot of the problems CW has seem to be related to the way the engine interacts with the Windows graphic processing, and the way it interacts with audio processing - since a lot of the audio problems seemed to also have a visualization related component - and how updates overwrite the registry - stability wise. Can't tell how or what, I'm not an engineer, but your problem seems to confirm that. Actually, I agree with that one. I can say from experience that analog emulations make a huge difference - if you're into the response they have - and I'm a huge fan. More weight, more depth, width, smoother transients, less mud, more punch - all that you get just by running sound through a good emulation - separation, if there's summing involved - without actively doing any processing. But you need to pay attention to gain stage your signal right, that can make a huge improvement, or on the contrary, muddy things up, distort or mellow the attack, etc. - just they way analog hardware works. The problem Epic has, in my view, is that all the delays in that "palette" are tape, so they sound relatively the same - which makes for not much of a palette, delay wise. Plus, it's rather heavy on resources. Someone measured a single instance at about 2.5% CPU - don't know what setup he had. But I like the concept, and the sound is high quality - if it had more variation in the delays, and in the dampening times of the reverbs, it could become my go to for effects - very convenient for choosing the sound - and also building combined effects.
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Waves just busted 12 myths... See what we're up against... ☺️ https://www.waves.com/eq-myths-busted-audio-myth-busting?utm_source=wnletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=weekly-content-jan-16-eq-busted
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Since I already have half a second latency irrespective of buffer size, I wouldn't mind a 7 ms increase to at least solve the crash problems . Besides, who of us runs 100+ tracks on a regular basis? I use around 100 plugins, some pretty heavy, but I don't see myself getting to 400 - they don't even fit in my bedroom. I'd say, if you're running that kind of numbers, you're not a home musician, but a pro, so you should (at least afford to) buy a fast computer. So, seriously, that as an argument... Let it crash, cause pros might wanna use it to record on a 386 - and they don't mind the crashes, but they mind buying a new machine. That doesn't fly too high, in my view. Plus, a 7 ms latency is nothing when mixing - you don't even notice it when you press your Space key, as far as I can tell. And while tracking, if you record 100 microphones, that's probably an orchestra playing at once, so, again, 7 ms latency is not a concern. It's not even a concern with duplex track-by-track recording, for that number, let alone simultaneous recording. Besides, there're several DAWs that don't have those problems - and they're pretty fast, too. So I call bullshit on those explanations. All that said and aside, getting a little philosophical, I can't see the deep reasoning behind letting a DAW continuously crash until all plugins... become perfect ?. It's like not getting out of the house until all people become nice. The DAW won't wrok well until all plugin behave. Is that a valid philosophy ?? How would anyone imagine - with the standards continuously evolving, new technologies always being tested, and new plugins coming out every day - that plugins, generally - let alone all plugins - will ever be perfect? Ever. Like, ever. In this very imperfect world ?... Why do all developers come up with version after version after version? Is it because the plugins are perfect? Does that even exist? I'd like to take this opportunity to call for some realism ? ... It's like crashing you car at 150 mph, and saying the problem is not the driving, but the brakes had a bug, the tarmac was an older generation, and the road lines should have been clearer, and the traffic was not properly optimized... If someone told you that, how would you look at that guy in about 20 seconds? Have you noticed that in CW every user reports a different plugin in the crashes - for me, it's been a few dozens so far, at different stages? So we are to believe that ALL plugins have a crash inducing problem. That's what really turns me off - the lack of logic, it's like Kafka. And, on the other hand, those same plugins don't crash other DAWs - constantly overlooked in these savant considerations, although these two things tell you a lot more than all the savant considerations put together. As a side comment, the necessity of that article on the Ardour site actually tells me that their users are pretty displeased about it crashing, too. And you can see how much market share Ardour is picking up... Just thinking, why don't these complains happen in Logic or PT - not that I like those, I'm sure they sound great, but I don't like the graphics, the menus, layout - Logic and Ableton least of all - but just as a standard of performance? Does PT crash every time a plugin craps out? Would CLA use it if it did? Or do they use some magic plugins? Cause I see them using pretty much all we use. Basic questions. And when, as a developer, you miss all that - pretty much common sense - for savant considerations, it's not seeing the forest for the trees. It has a name, "engineer analysis". Not getting the point, the big picture, or the essentials, but knowing all the formulas. Not to say all engineers are contaminated with it, or that they're not necessary, salutary, and life saving sometimes - especially in this business - but it's a general observation. Besides, many crashes are not even connected to plugins. What's the explanation when there's no plugin ?? Tracks that don't play. So on, so forth, I've talked about them so much, there's no point in repeating them. So the pick up from this "plugin philosophy" is that the DAW will always crash, and there's no intention to make it stop. That's what I see, explanations aside. It's either fix it or not - that's the bottom line. Knowing why it crashes doesn't make it not crash, and therefore doesn't keep you warm at night. What would help is all this knowledge being actually used for a solution - that would be revolutionary.
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Yeah, exactly. Or resetting plugin settings when messing with the transport. That hasn't happened in a while, with the latest updates. If it didn't crash, it held settings, and had a few dozen to a hundred workflow operations improved ?, CW would be a great program, one of the best out there.
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I think it's safe to say it's not your setup. Just by looking at the number of reports in this forum, or the Cakewalk by Bandlab, or Cakewalk by Bandlab Talk groups on Facebook, there's all kinds of configurations and hundreds of issues reported. On a normal day, there might be 5-10 issues reported in each group. So that's hundreds each month, only on those two groups. I can understand that a plugin has problems, it's fair - 10, 20, ok. But that all of them are flawed, and only in CW, while CW doesn't have a problem, that's cult programming ?. And how are PC module failures explained, in that case, driver issues? All VSTIs output going silent at once, on some random operations, until Stop - I forgot to mention that one. Look at the comparison link I've posted above. I don't like Reaper at all, I dislike the interface. But the point remains about CW stability. So don't have guilt over the setup. Even on a poor setup, the behavior still needs to be linear and intuitive. If it's not, the host at least plays a part in it, it's logical. For instance Reason doesn't play with crackles. When pushed to the max it slows down for a couple of secs, then it stops and it says the resources are insufficient. And that thing with the latency on recording being the same, in CW, no matter the buffer, never happened somewhere else. Weird thing. When I click on TH-U, the latency instantly recovers - so I can play fine then, it's like the Twilight zone. But only when I click on it and highlight it. Then I press Record and it gets back to 1/2 second - or when I click on something else. It's similar to the crackling noise appearing when I deactivate a selected plugin - on the Master bus, I forgot to mention that. So I sometimes keep stuff in there, that I'd otherwise remove, just for the playback to be smooth. It seems plugins directly affect the engine, for some reason, in unpredictable ways.
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I don't think they've changed something in the engine, but CW updates usually mess up the registry - problems with recognizing plugins, some may stop working and need all their registry keys deleted manually before reinstall, etc., authorisation fails, all kinds of random stuff like that - and the most annoying part is that it is random. Some DAW settings may be reset - for instance after the last update, any time i click on the bottom right double arrow, in Tracks View, to open the Console, it always opens half-screen, which I hate, instead of full view, which is how the project is saved. It always does that on first view switch after open. So it might be caused by something like this, I have no way of knowing... Another thing that seems very random is that every time I open the PRV or Melodyne, from the Tracks view, after I close the window, I find myself in Console view, for some reason, and I always need to switch back. I don't know why it doesn't revert back to the view they were opened from/over, which would be logical. The VU meter resolutions in the Track view NEVER get saved - and neither do the Show Velocity, and a couple of others. But at least, for a while now, it's saved the show time setting for the timeline cursor. Check out what this comparison says about stability and crashing. https://www.slant.co/versus/6431/26342/~reaper_vs_cakewalk-by-bandlab To be honest, it doesn't crash now 5 times a night, as it did in the good old days, but it still occasionally freezes, crashes on open, or just shuts down on opening a plugin - stuff like that. If something is wrong - or it even imagines it's wrong - with a plugin, it crashes almost as a rule, etc. I deleted the .esr file of a Slate compressor, at some point, to see what that does. So that the plugin didn't open afterwards didn't surprise me, but what I can't understand is why Cakewalk crashes. In Reason, you can go nuke on a plugin - on open it says plugin doesn't work - it usually says why, which is nice and warm, you close the dialog and go on with your life. Not in CW. Thanks. I have a few tools that I use myself - to deactivate services, remove useless startups, etc., but I'll look into those, too. You're going full monty on it . I usually leave the antivirus on. I sometimes even have a tv window in the background ? , but that's only a couple of cpu points. Weird thing is that the engine is overloaded when the overall CPU usage may be at 60-70%. Don't know why that happens. While that's true for WIndows, they've implemented optimizations for AMD multi-core, it may not necessarily be true for CW optimizations. That's true, I know they test and run almost exclusively on Intel. Which is a big shame, cause, even if Intel have the highest performance (and price) with their tops of ranges, two steps down and lower, performance wise, AMD have the best price-performance ratio. Unless you're running NASA servers and need to max out, I think you're better off, bang for buck wise, running on AMD. True. Conversely AMD are rated in many benchmarks to have the upper hand in multi-thread, provided the processes are optimized for their architecture. So that's a big if.
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Hey, @Teegarden, thanks a lot for your extensive answer. I'm thinking about switching to Threadripper myself, the 5000 series on the Zen3 architecture I've heard makes a huge performance difference versus the FX, and even earlier Zen1 and Zen2 architectures. But, obviously, in order to do that I'll need to buy every other component anew, and it adds up to a pretty penny, so I think I'm going to start buying the components one by one. The issue with the plugins that make the sound smoother when activated has started relatively recently - with one of the more recent updates, though - don't remember which - probably the one 2 or 3 versions ago, and it's really strange. Makes me think of processing algorithms rather than CPU power, in itself. I'm gonna look at the links you've posted and see if I can find any optimization I've missed. I've made all the optimizations I've found on the net, but there might be something new. @Bruno de Souza Lino You said you've had no problems in CW so far. So, in the end, you, too, have dropouts. Do you have crashes, and how often? I don't know if the CPU is not supported properly, I was only noting the only hardware component that hasn't been changed, and has remained a constant. I forgot to mention that I've also changed the boot drive to a SSD, and probably gonna upgrade again tomorrow, since my storage spinning plate drive is starting to crap out.
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I disagree, that's another thing, in my opinion, that's not well thought through. I, for one, have maybe around 100 plugins on a project, and individually allowing each one of them on load, for 100 plugins, on the third or fourth crash of the night, to get to the problem one, is just one of the few things that can make you think about slashing your wrist for the first time in your life. You should have "allow all instances" and "deny all instances" options in the load dialog, for each specific plugin, instead of having to go though every single instance of the same plugin. That way you can skip everything that works in 10 seconds, and not spend 5 minutes clicking - for the third time in half an hour. It's not like one instance won't load, but the others will. It's not even that hard to think about, that's very frustrating. And there's many of these things that are not well thought through. Some things are brilliant - and I've said that - some are just... ? I didn't even add it to the suggestion list, because my recent impression is there's no point, Besides, since this list, I've gotten maybe another 15 suggestions on things to change in the workflow. Like two takes not being compiled together in the track clip, when you collapse the take lanes ??? resulting in an inexplicable monster wave that you only realize was in there after you've exported - because it shouldn't be in there. Or the previous take clips being automatically split underneath the edge of a clip recorded on the next lane, and needing to be rejoined every time, for reasons beyond understanding. That in a workflow that doesn't allow you to select a very small split, anyway, in a condensed view. Or like rejoined clips missing information because you've resized them, or partially overlapped them, and rejoin is not rejoin but "bounce" - which is stupid as hell. Before you rejoin, you need to move things around, make sure nothing overlaps, then move them back in. And you have to do 20 rejoins. Useless worrying and time spent for concerns that shouldn't even exist. There's nothing to get you out of the mood faster. Right clicking to do something you do with a left click in another place. So on, so forth...
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Exactly. I didn't even believe that what was a possibility to be allowed.
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@murat k. Thanks for the offer, in theory I agree with you fully, but I don't think this is something that can be mended by settings, adjustments, etc. I've tried many things, and the issues seem to remain constant though the changes. They've always persisted. Things stop working after an update, etc., plugin crashes, CW crashes - which I cannot understand, regardless of plugin behaviors they shouldn't happen, that's a CW philosophy that's mesmerized me - freezes, failures to open, track audio stopping playing - al the same things so many report. The crackling is not owed to the ASIO settings, it's probably connected - like everything else - to the way CW interacts with Windows and the audio drivers - the reason it reads some 24 bit cards as 16 bit, etc. The behavior I've described to you is not a normal ASIO problem. That when you activate a plugin, the static goes away, and it starts when you deactivate it. It's exactly the opposite of what should normally happen because of CPU load. And it's not even the same plugin, it's different ones at different moments. Trust me, it's not about the plugins. I've never gotten anything similar in Reason, or Studio One, which I've tried, for instance - or other problems like plugins that fail to load, loaded in there. But beyond that, it's common sense, you can't report hundreds of plugins as flawed, all only in CW, while they work in other DAWs. When you keep blaming a list of hundreds of plugins, that work in other DAWs, for the problems... seriously, who believes that? Besides, many of the problems are not even plugin related. Since I've started working with CW, I've changed my mother board, my graphics adapter, installed a new sound interface, changed the RAM modules, changed the Windows version twice, updated, etc. And the problems have always been the same. The only thing I haven't changed is the CPU - that's the only thing that could be personally specific, if CW didn't know how to work with FXs. I was talking to Noel, at some point about that, and he said FX-8350 was 4 core, not 8, although it's 8 with 4 floating points, and every application recognizes it as such, including Windows - even CW's performance meter shows 8 cores - but that's the only constant remaining that could be configuration specific. On the other hand, people have problems on all kinds of configurations, with all kinds of plugins, or not plugin related at all. So... what's the only constant remaining in all this? When you say you encounter almost no crashes, what crash frequency are you experiencing? @Bruno de Souza Lino Do you have crashes? If you do, how often?
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i haven't changed the driver, it just started doing that after an update. the only other alteration might have been a windows update, but frankly, it's of no consequence. no other program i've tried has any of these behaviors, while cw has them even with no changes to excuse them. and it's all kinds of problems, there's no point in chasing each one separately, while they keep piling up. sometimes it starts, sometimes it freezes. etc. any cw update almost always causes problems with the plugins and the registry, with no other change. i figure there's a reason it almost went bankrupt, and large part of it is pretending there's no problem. talk won't solve any of this. the only thing that solves it is seeing it work. these are the settings that i have, except for the sample position.
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Essentially it's still a DAW, but these things I was noting you can't do in CW. I haven't even looked at recording and editing. And the biggest sticking points are crashing, and retaining settings. Not to mention that since one of the latest releases, I, for one, have the same almost half a second latency regardless of the buffer setting. You click on a plugin, it disappears, but only on playback. You deactivate a plugin, it starts crackling like crazy, even though the load should be lighter. Plugins stop working. It's random, crazy stuff like this, all the time. I'd have been a big fan otherwise, but this is too much, and I don't see it getting better.
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I wouldn't mind selling my current interface and buying a UAD, if the program was good, since I'm in the market for a new interface anyway. For now there isn't a WIndows version. The problem is that, while the DAW is free, the console emulations/summers that are among its main strengths cost $300 each, and the second tape is paid, too. It's gonna be worth waiting for a sale, or something similar, and it's probably not gonna happen very soon, but I think it's an option to keep an eye out for. EDIT: it already seems to be doing many of the things that I've suggested for Cakewalk, in terms on console workflow - mass same type plugin on/offs, collapseable console modules for an adjacent button, instead of a million labyrinth menus, mouse options for some shortcuts, etc.
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Yeah, it's based on UAD software, but from what I know it allows third party AUs, too. I have no doubt a Win version would bring in VSTs, as well. It doesn't look very basic, I've read the description. Jaquire King said he switched to Luna, from Pro Tools, and he was happy about the choice. He said there was still stuff to be implemented, but that's still the case with Pro Tools, to this day. On the other hand, Luna is just starting, not decades old, so for an infancy period that's understandable. But they look like they're moving fast. My personal impression is they aim to become a standard, just like Sequoia does - although on a different market - or like Cubase did. I like how it looks, I like the directly workable mixer interface, I like the diversity of the included options and the analog emulation direction. And UAD have a reputation for good sound, so that part looks good, too. The next thing is for it to be reliable and intuitive, workflow wise.
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it's something that looks analog, it's got the consoles - for now neve and api, but uad already have ssl emulations, too, and among the better ones, so that's probably gonna be in there, too - it's got the tape, and i've heard it sounds very well. it's free with uad apollo interfaces - and some others - and i believe it's paid if you don't own one. but it's only for mac, for now. well worth a look into the workflow, i believe. https://www.uaudio.com/luna.html