bitflipper

Good point. I don't know that I'd waste time promoting plugins for Audacity, despite its huge install base. Plus Logic and Pro Tools users already self-identify as folks who have no problem spending money needlessly - clearly a more desirable market segment. Meanwhile, we cakewalkers merrily follow our own path, content in the knowledge that our solution works as well as any other. Just less-expensively.

I used to work at a company that sold high-end software for designing printed circuit boards. It was very expensive, but popular with many large manufacturers. One day, the company decided to switch from its proprietary OS to UNIX. There was panic in the tech community, as everyone was now going to need to achieve the same level of expertise in a new environment that had taken many years to acquire in the old one. There were seminars, training classes, books distributed. I myself took a company-paid vacation to Boston to study UNIX (I was already pretty well-versed in UNIX, but hey, a couple weeks out of town on an expense account). But here's the thing: users of the software barely noticed the switch. For them, the O/S was just a program launcher. Most of them used dedicated machines just for this one application, much the way many recordists dedicate a machine to being a DAW. For them, moving to another platform was no more stressful than buying a different brand of automobile. Vojtech is famous for having strong opinions and being stubbornly self-confident in them. Often, rightly so. He is, after all, universally recognized among his peers as a genuine expert in the field. There have been many times when users have asked for enhancements and he's flat out told them "you don't need that". Then 6 months later there's a new release and that feature has been quietly added.

RE: The Ladies Love that product. Someday you won't need to deal with egocentric vocalists at all. Someday. Not just yet, though. However, where sampled voices can shine is when augmenting live vocals, mixing them underneath "real" voices. When used subtly, even non-articulated voices such as those in Omnisphere or various orchestral libraries can fatten real vocals. I think of them as programmable reverb.

Might I suggest skiing? It takes just as long to get good at, but you can a) spend far more money and b) there is a much better chance of serious injury or death.

Enjoy it while you can. November is National Raisin Bread Month. Looking forward to witty and/or insightful observations regarding raisin bread.

That's the spirit! Extra points for the subtle double entendre. ?

If children will be the primary users, then closed-back headphones will be a must. Same goes for kids' musical instruments and handheld devices. They want to explore and that should be encouraged. But no point in subjecting your own ears to their experiments. You can get those cheap $29 cans that studios buy in bulk for handing out to drummers and bass players.

Hey, this is my thread and I have to insist on keeping it on-topic. Just as Jeopardy requires all answers to be in the form of a question, this thread requires all posts to be sarcastic. The Coffee House has a reputation to preserve!

Ironic, given iZotope's long relationship with Cakewalk. Some ex-CW employees work there today. Usually, it's not a show of disregard for any particular host, but rather a practical matter of how much time you can devote to thoroughly testing your product within many hosts. You've got to do that before you can actually claim "support", even though it's a safe bet that any DAW that conforms to the main plugin interface specifications will be compatible. Tracktion isn't on that list either, but is fully VST-compliant.

My favorite Hammond emu has long been the original VB3 - not the more recent VB3-II, which is one of those products I alluded to that I elected not to write about. Sadly, the old VB3 is no longer available through legal channels. Its author needed to completely rewrite VB3 so it could be embedded into hardware units such as the Crumar Mojo (which I have). Along the way he left out something. Perhaps a call to the MakeHammondMagic() function. Arturia's B3-V is OK, adds some interesting modulation features and fx, but isn't particularly authentic with its baked-in distortion. Its Leslie emulation sounds good on slow rotation but its fast mode doesn't sound quite right. I got decent results by using other peoples' Leslie sims such as L'otary and MVintageRotary from Melda. GG Audio's Blue3 is a good value for, IIRC, a hundred bucks. The Leslie is just OK, but has the advantage of being a separate plugin, so you can throw it on a guitar or vocal if you like. The new UI is a big improvement over their previous synth-style interface. They seem determined to keep enhancing it until it's best-in-class. Even if not quite there yet, it's definitely in the same league with IKM's. IKM's B3-X is the first one I've used that gets both the organ and the Leslie right in the same package, sounds good clean or dirty, and gets the Leslie fast tremolo effect right.

We apparently have no formal rule's for those floating comma's, so we just throw them in anytime a word look's too empty. We like to blame it on the French.

At least I didn't spell it "Indiginus".

Here's what probably happened...when you booted Windows for some reason the interface didn't respond and therefore never made it onto the list of known devices. It may have been the interface's fault or a USB port that didn't initialize. Then when you tried to restart SONAR, it was probably still running as a zombie process, waiting for the nonexistent interface to respond. Whenever SONAR refuses to start, go to your Task Manager, see if it's already running, and kill the process if it is. Most of the time, the interface will come back after you reboot your computer. Make sure you turn it on first, before the computer, so that it's had time to boot itself and therefore be ready to respond when Windows comes calling. I'll bet once you've rebooted you'll be able to go back to ASIO with no problems. If not, look for a hardware answer, hopefully something easy like an unplugged USB cable.

I hope you're all celebrating National Indiginous Peoples Day properly - by dropping some cash onto a roulette table.

Been getting some good tips from the What I'm Listening to Now thread, so I thought I'd invite folks to talk about what new gear/instruments/effects they're just getting their feet wet with. As you may know, I review music software as a hobby. It's a lot of work for zero compensation, the only perk being that I get to keep the software I've reviewed. And I sometimes get to talk to interesting people. Often, products just get dropped into my lap. That sounds great, no? Free stuff! Well, sometimes it gets awkward because said products aren't always good. Then I feel bad. But I refuse to write negative reviews, so if it's not something I'd actually use myself or recommend to a friend, then it doesn't get considered. This thread isn't about that. This is about things that fell out of the sky and were great. Here's what I'm playing with now. Stuff I'm not an expert on yet, but that I am digging so far... First there's Indiginus' electric lap steel guitar, which is a blast. Not a big surprise, because Tracy's stuff is always good. But I didn't know it was even in development until an email appeared saying "come get it". Granted, guitar players are not likely to swoon over this, but if your fingers are trained for keyboards but you like to throw guitars into a project, then it's pretty awesome. Slides that sound natural because they are sampled, not scripted. I've become immersed in a surprisingly deep Kontakt library from SampleLogic called Cinematic Guitars Motion. I had mixed feelings at first, because while I love Cinematic Guitars (and everything else from SampleLogic), I'm an old-school type who's not big on loops and sequencers. But underneath the fancy modulation and sequencing there are some really great sounds - all made by guitars, but often unrecognizable as such. I've just begun my deep dive into this one, but already it's way more fun than I thought it would be. But the biggest surprise this year was a product from IKM. Some of you might recall that I've had sour words for IKM over the years. As soon as a vendor starts putting "i" in front of their products' names, I'm outa there. No, I will never record music on my phone, sorry. I don't care how cute your rig-in-a-pocket is. Then this thing comes along. I approached it with skepticism, ready to hate it. Long story short: it's frickin' amazing. IKM, all is forgiven. I'm talking about B3-X, their Hammond emulator. Not kidding, it's the best I've heard yet - and I've got a diskfull of 'em to compare. Not only have they nailed the tonewheel sound and all its subtleties, they've put in features I didn't even know I wanted. Like the ability to replace the Leslie amp with a Marshall head, a la Jon Lord. (I believe it uses the same Leslie that you can buy as a separate plugin for Amplitube or T-Racks.) So what new stuff have you recently added to your toolbox? Stuff that you maybe haven't fully figured out yet, but are optimistic about.

Hey, let's stay on topic, guys. Sarcasm is the theme. Kenny, you're only as old as you feel.

Thanks for posting this, Noel. I've got an overseas trip coming up. I'll be taking a laptop, as always, so that I can continue to conduct business while away. This thread has convinced me to try putting Cakewalk on it again. Last time I tried that (Windows 7 + SONAR 8.5 + Studio One), it was a disappointing experiment. I decided back then that a stock laptop just wasn't DAW material, even for jotting down ideas under a palm tree. Gonna give it another go this time.

Oh, there's nothing wrong with using BWAFs. It just seems to be a common source of confusion among users, and the OP appears to be at the steep end of the DAW learning curve. Think back how many times users have posted here that they can't import a wav file, only to have their mysteries resolved when someone suggests scrolling right. Way right.

I gave some of them a listen. Not bad at all. I'm always suspicious of live 60's-era recordings, which are typically pretty awful - poorly recorded, weirdly mixed and retrieved from tapes that probably haven't been stored in a climate-controlled vault for the last 50 years. But these are pretty clean recordings, if a bit band-limited.

Tom's right. The only time you need to export tracks is if you'll be sending them to someone else for mixing. That's pretty common for collaborative projects in which multiple performers submit their tracks to one person who handles the mixing. Different collaborators will almost always be using different DAWs, or at least different configurations of the same DAW. In that scenario, audio files are the only universal currency. BTW, the synchronization problem is solved in that scenario by exporting every track from 00:00:00. You can also export files in Broadcast Wave format, which includes timestamps, but I don't recommend it. Just having every file start at zero is the simplest solution, with the only downside being larger files. But if yours is a one-man show and you intend to do all the mixing and mastering yourself, then there's (usually) no advantage to exporting as an intermediate step. You don't even have to freeze the tracks if your computer's got enough horsepower. The only preparation you may need is to simply bump up your buffer sizes.

Clowns bring joy and humor to the world. They have never prompted anyone to seek therapy.

No doubt a rare and valuable historical document. But the cynic in me wonders if it isn't just some animal acupuncturist cashing in on his dad's name. Don't know what the price is for the 7-disc set, but I'd want to hear some of it before buying.

Plugins can reside anywhere. Easiest way to find out where they are is to open the Cakewalk Plugin Manager, click on the Options button under "VST Configuration". That will provide you with a handy list of every directory you'll need to copy onto your thumb drive. Unfortunately, as pointed out above, that won't be enough because installing plugins often involves more than just copying DLLs. In some cases you'll need the original installation files, and in many cases you'll have to re-authorize the plugins. I'd advise maintaining a folder dedicated to holding all your plugin installation files, the ones you downloaded from vendors originally. Keep all those in one place and back it up so that if disaster strikes you'll know where to go to reinstall everything. Keep that backup someplace far from your DAW for extra insurance. I speak from painful experience.

That's the spirit! Keep telling yourself it'll only take "months". That optimism will keep you going for at least the next ten years. ? Seriously, though, it is a fascinating ride. I won't tell you how long I've been at it, and how much I still don't know despite my longevity, lest you be discouraged. Let's just say that the learning curve is endless and no matter how long you've been doing it there will always be something new to learn. That, of course, is what makes this such a great hobby.

1. As a general rule, you are correct: it is usually unnecessary to layer ensembles. That doesn't mean it's never done, though. Layering ensemble samples from two different libraries can fatten a track. The larger libraries will offer different variations, e.g. close- and far-miked versions or ensembles of different sizes. 2. It's not unusual for a rhythmic ostinato to repeat the same articulation over and over. Think Ravel's Bolero. Or superhero movie trailers. However, the technique can be very boring, and I'd suggest avoiding it for more than a few bars. Best way to learn articulations is to listen to each one in your sample library so you can recognize how they are being used in classical music. You'll find that even cellos and basses alter their articulations often, even if it's just for one note in a phrase. 3. I prefer to use effects in Cakewalk's fx bins over the built-in effects in a Kontakt library. They are usually more configurable and can be left in-circuit after freezing the track. If you use a lot of big sample libraries in a project, it's likely that at some point you'll want to freeze some tracks to conserve computer resources, mainly RAM and disk I/O. If you use the intrinsic effects in Kontakt, they'll get frozen too and therefore be un-tweakable. Beware of effecting each instrument differently, though, as that can create an unrealistic sound. You want the orchestra to sound like they're all playing in the same room. That means using aux busses so that any delays or reverbs are shared by every instrument. You can still exaggerate the effect on particular sections, though, e.g. more reverb on solo violins and less on basses. All of the above assumes you want your orchestra to sound realistic. Maybe you don't, and that's OK - it is, after all, a creative endeavor. If a flanger sounds cool to your ears on that cello ensemble, go for it!