bitflipper

Depends on what time I get up. My bedroom radio is permanently tuned to a jazz and blues station. If I'm up before 6:00 AM, that's what I wake up to. It makes me feel positive about the coming day, and musically inspired. But because it's an NPR affiliate, later in the morning they switch to news and features. I don't like waking up to the news, as it sets a dark mood for the day. Fortunately, I'm an early riser.

Most of the time, there is no penalty for setting a mono track's interleave to stereo. The exception is when you have a mono effect that must see a mono input in order to work correctly. Companies that provide both mono and stereo versions of their plugins do so for a reason, and you can get unexpected results by using the wrong version. But as long as you consistently use stereo plugins, your strategy should be OK. That said, I much prefer to keep mono tracks mono throughout, and avoid stereo tracks unless there is a compelling reason to use them. It's counter-intuitive, but too many stereo tracks will actually make your mix sound less wide.

I'd forgotten about the old picture cache issue. You naturally assume that a disk-write error would involve the saving of audio data, but that's not the only writing to disk that occurs. You're also saving pictures of the waveforms for your audio tracks. Over time, these can end up consuming a lot of disk space. That's why CW lets you specify where they're stored (the "picture cache") and to set a maximum amount of disk space for them. Corrupt files in the cache or insufficient disk space in the cache location can result in an error. That's why you'll often get the advice to delete everything in the cache folder as a possible resolution. You've already done that, so that's not your problem, but I just wanted to clear that up.

While some applications, e.g. disk diagnostics, are able to tell you exactly why a disk write failed, a speed-optimized program such as a DAW isn't going to perform a detailed analysis. It's only going to report the failure and assume the most common explanation, insufficient space. What's actually going on is that you may have a failing disk drive, one with unmapped dead spots, a flaky cable or even some bad RAM. Try copying the entire project and then renaming the original and target so that the files are physically moved to another location on the drive. If these messages persist, start shopping for a new drive.

I don't have a ***** account. Can you elaborate? Are these contacts via this forum?

Short answer to your not-silly question: yes, you can record any automatable parameter in real time. It's not an uncommon practice. It's called "automation recording". You'll find it much more ergonomic to use a hardware control surface, but that's optional. You can do it with just a mouse, it's just a little awkward. Here's one reference to get you started.

Jim's right - the version on baselines.com sounds much better. Like comparing flac to 128 kb/s MP3.

Power Pan Pro is probably the most sophisticated panner around. A bit pricey, though. Then again, if you're among the elite who can afford VSL in the first place, then I'm gonna guess you're probably not too concerned about that. No jealousy here. Much.

Yes, but pan laws only apply to mono panning. Unless, of course, you're using something like Boz's panner, which implements pan laws internally.

bvideo raises a good point, especially in the context of classical orchestration: there's more going on in there than just panning. Sometimes, you have to also take into account reverb. That might be natural room reverberation baked into the samples, or added via a reverb effect plugin. In the case of the former, that reverb is also going to shift along with the instrument, possibly sounding unnatural. In the latter case, you may want to use a "true stereo" reverb plugin and pan the sends. Or not. Sorry, I know any discussion of "true stereo reverb" could derail this thread even further. But it's been awhile since the topic was batted around here, so what the heck. After all, reverb (and delays in general) are very much a part of the whole stereophonic conversation.

Damn, this is so good, Jerry! Jeez, I wish I knew how to make brass that expressive.

WOW. You even nailed the vocal EQ to capture that 60's U47 tone with just a touch of tube grit. Please consider tackling some of the lesser-covered tracks from that album, such as You Won't See Me or Wait.

You have to reassign those 4 tracks to 4 of the new tracks. Check out the Cakewalk Reference Guide, page 1225. If you don't have a copy, download it here.

Yes. Yes indeed! That's really what a stereo panner is doing, since a stereo track is just two mono streams interleaved together. You can avoid the whole problem by recording your stereo guitars into two mono tracks rather than a single stereo track. The downside to that method is it makes automation, compression and EQ more complicated because everything's duplicated.

This fellow made a choir library with his wife and kids while stuck at home during the pandemic. The result is pretty novel, most likely unlike any other choir library you already have. And it sounds surprisingly good. It's free (requires full Kontakt) for getting on his mailing list. It would appear that his ambition is to start a commercial Kontakt library business. The Meyer Choir

Imagine a true stereo source on stage, such as a drum kit. I call it true stereo because sound emanates from more than one place. Now imagine scooting the whole kit over to one side of the stage. You still want it to be stereo, just moved over. The floor tom that had been panned 10% right might now be in the center, and the kick that had been centered is now 10% left. That's true stereo panning.

I spend a lot of time with my head cocked like a curious German Shepherd, visualizing the notes as if I was looking at a keyboard. Still, the standard orientation is much less confusing to users. Think of it this way: the vast majority of graphs show time in the x-axis and amplitude in the y-axis. Imagine how confusing it would be the other way around, e.g. looking at interest rates plotted over time, but with time as the vertical axis.

Yes. The standard balance control on a hi-fi consists of two ganged volume potentiometers wired in reverse of one another. When you spin the knob, it turns one side up and the other side down. Its purpose is to compensate for asymmetrical speaker placement. Cakewalk's pan slider works the same way on stereo tracks. That has limitations, because if there are significant differences between the content of the left and right channels, you could lose important information. For example, a Leslie speaker in stereo would lose some of its effect with a balance control. "True" stereo panning means you treat each side as a mono signal and pan them in a complementary fashion. Pan to the left, and the right channel moves to the left but does not reduce in volume. The result is still stereophonic in nature but now shifted toward one side. In the Leslie example, it's as if the speaker is situated to one side of the stage but still broadcasting in 360 degrees as expected.

My favorite for bass is Meldaproductions' MDynamicEQ. It's a great static EQ, but being dynamic as well, it's useful for dealing with bass resonances. The dynamic action also lets you add some high-frequency boosts only on the notes that need it. These qualities also make it well-suited for vocals.

Grab the Pan Knob from Boz Digital Labs. It has two modes, balance and pan, with the latter being a true stereo pan function. There are other stereo panners out there, but this is the best one I've found. It keeps low frequencies centered (you can set the crossover frequency) and lets you specify the pan law. It's an essential plugin for me and goes on every stereo track. If the $49 price tag puts you off, just be patient; Boz has frequent sales.

Chrome has more extensions available than any other browser. But there are some that are specific to Firefox. I used to use a video capture plugin with Firefox that was better than anything on Chrome. It could download YouTube videos. Chrome was never going to allow that, since they and YT have the same parent company. Eventually, YT flexed its muscles and got every video downloader to exempt YouTube, including FF.

These are some pretty obscure bugs, none of which I was aware of. Typical for FF updates. Goes to show just how stable their initial releases are, when you have to reach to find any problems.

Brave, I think, is not open-source. It is built on the Chrome API, which is not open-source like Firefox. That allows it to run all the Chrome extensions, but because it lacks a mechanism for vetting them, any time you install one it shows a scary warning about how they can't verify it's legit.

Good idea, thanks. However, I think I'll uninstall Chrome and leave it gone. Brave looks and works like Chrome, even supports Chrome extensions, blocks tracking cookies, and preserves anonymity by using DuckDuckGo as its search engine. It even seems to perform a little snappier. If you actually like ads, you can enable them and get paid for watching them. As for what's wrong with Firefox...it used to be my go-to browser until they went through a rough period of nasty bugs and daily fix releases. That's when I switched to Chrome, which had the advantage of running a little faster. I just wanted reliable software, and wasn't thinking back then about Google tracking my every move. I do, however, still use Thunderbird as my email client.

I've done that, too. Embarrassing. When I joined my current band 5 years ago, I brought the VoiceLive along to the first rehearsal. The singer reacted with horror, demanding I never bring that "thing" back again. All our vocals will be live, she said. Fast forward to four years later, and two of the four singers in the band have gone, leaving only her and myself as vocalists. One day at rehearsal, I quietly set up the VoiceLive and started using it without her knowledge. That went on for several months. She never noticed, other than to comment on how great our harmonies were sounding. The trick was keeping the fake harmonies -12 dB below the dry signal and turning off effects and auto-tuning. You couldn't actually hear the generated harmonies, just a general fattening of the real ones. I came clean after about 4-5 months, after which she became considerably more amenable to the idea of electronic reinforcement. I also had to break it to her that my synth doesn't have any violins inside, either.