bitflipper

I think about this every time I see a classic band who've had to play the same songs over and over for 40-50 years. Especially the one-hit wonders. Even though the audience eats those oldies up, it's gotta be a chore. And they're really not allowed to take too many liberties with arrangements, lest the audience turn on them. My own philosophy is that you're an entertainer, period. Your one job is to entertain. Whatever makes the audience happy should make you happy too. If you don't feel that way, stay in the garage and entertain yourself. That said, the list of songs I won't play is too long to enumerate here.

I saw Deep Purple in Frankfurt in 1972! They performed the entire DP In Rock album, which I hadn't actually heard yet at the time. Blew me away, needless to say. Went and bought the record the following week. It was a Saturday night, which I remember because we'd gone to see ELP the night before, at their very first European gig, and only their second public performance since forming. Both concerts were at modest venues, no opening acts, no fancy lighting or fog machines, just straight up music. Cost of admission was ridiculous, something like 5 DM apiece (about $1.25 at the time). What a weekend that was! And I remember it vividly, despite having prepared for the show via some delicious gooey black Afghan for Deep Purple and more sensible Turkish plate for ELP.

For me it was a Jupiter 6. It cost more than my first band van. Still does today at current prices. I sold it along with a Juno 106, a Yamaha TG-33, Roland drum machine and a Pioneer reel-to-reel for $1,000 in the 90's. I can live with that today because I still remember the grins on the faces of the four young fellows, an aspiring band, who hauled it all away.

Yay! Feels good, don't it?

Those kinds of hangs are normally hardware or driver related. It happens when a process is waiting for something to happen, e.g. waiting for the MIDI interface to reply "got it!". After awhile, if that thing doesn't happen within a reasonable amount of time, you get a timeout. That means that either the software has decided that the driver isn't going to respond or the driver has decided that the hardware isn't going to respond. Either way, it's actually a useful safety mechanism because it avoids the kind of hangs where the process (or even the whole system) becomes unresponsive and you have to reboot. That doesn't necessarily mean your MIDI interface is at fault. You can get the same symptom from a weak spot on a conventional disk drive (this doesn't apply to your SSDs, though; it's just an example of how other hardware components can be at fault.) It could even be a faulty USB cable or USB port, assuming your interface is connected via USB (a long shot, though, since you don't seem to be having other USB-related problems such as dropped notes when recording MIDI). Sorry this is vague. It's just that there are many potential suspects. First thing I'd do is see if there is any relationship between the hangs and what's going on in the project. Does it happen with an empty project, where you just open CW and then close it? If not, see if it happens with just non-Kontakt instruments, or with just audio and no MIDI tracks (just import an audio file from another project to test). Try with a normal project but close CW without playing it back first, then try again closing after a full playback. Try it with a fully-rendered project (you can just freeze everything) and see if it makes a difference whether VIs are loaded or not. The idea is to look for any repeatable correlation, e.g. it hangs after I do this, but not if I do that. If there are no correlations to be found, start looking beyond Cakewalk. I'd test immediately after a Windows restart (not shutdown), and with/without first running other audio software. Some process unrelated to CW (but using shared resources) could be causing the problem. I assume you're not running antivirus software on your DAW, or if you do that you've whitelisted all folders having to do with audio work (sample libraries, plugins, the entire \program files\cakewalk tree).

It's completely normal that whenever you learn something informally there will be annoying gaps in your knowledge. I'd been using MIDI for years before finding out about SysEx dumps and suddenly realizing what I could do with them. Discovering hidden features of a synth via NRPNs. The revelation that MIDI plugins existed. MIDI over a UART and 5-pin DIN made perfect sense, while MIDI over USB made no sense at all, and I'm still not entirely sure why it even works. Finding out that I could record CC events on a separate track from the notes was an epiphany. Finding out that I could program lighting with MIDI, ditto. Being a technologist and a software guy, you might do well to attack MIDI like you've probably approached other technologies: from the bottom up. Just the opposite of how subjects are usually presented in books and academic settings. Download some formal specifications for the MIDI standard and MIDI file formats. Lots of good information at The MIDI Association's website.

Better than thinking about the vintage gear that you bought new but then sold for cheap because you thought its value was dropping because it was getting old.

Everyone who uses MIDI in any capacity owes a debt to Dave Smith.

Now, does anybody have any ideas about what to do with all my excess disk drive capacity?

Of course, you are absolutely right about that. But be careful. You're jeopardizing an entire industry built on false promises and emperors' clothing.

I wonder, too. Maybe in the next version you'll just have to grunt into a microphone and it'll spit out poetic lyrics.

Yes. I was on the fence for a long time, too. But eventually they offered a $79 upgrade so I went for it. Very glad I did. There are some useful new features in ver. 5.

Well, you're not wrong, Byron, but "garbage" is perhaps a bit strong. ASIO4ALL does serve a (rather specific) purpose. It's just that 99.9% of DAW users do not need it and should probably avoid it as an unnecessary complication. As for the "unable to open..." message, that can be misleading, as the problem often isn't any of the reasons the error message suggests. Key question: is it a specific project that won't open, or do you get the message simply by starting up Cakewalk with no project? You should be able to use WASAPI with the Realtek. I'm guessing a proper ASIO driver might exist for it as well, given the Realtek's ubiquity. But I'd suggest trying WASAPI Shared initially. That will avoid any potential conflicts with multiple devices trying to own the audio interface. Unless your "oldish" laptop is running XP or something, in which case you might need to use WDM/KS.

r8brain is great for batch conversions, e.g. you want to convert a whole folder full of files at one go. It's also a very good converter, perhaps the best out there. There is a free version, which is open-source if you want to totally geek out. Cakewalk's conversion is also one of the best out there. Although it's not included in the SRC comparisons that bvideo linked to above, I don't think the algorithm has changed since SONAR. I have r8brain and several other applications that all do great sample rate conversions, but I never bother going outside Cakewalk to do it unless I've got a whole bunch of files to convert. Bear in mind when comparing SRC converters that being able to see artifacts in the graph does not necessarily mean you can hear them. You will not hear artifacts from Cakewalk's SRC. The difference between CW's and r8brain's aliasing is about 5 dB, with both down around -170dB, well below the threshold of audibility. Bottom line: let Cakewalk do the conversion, it'll be fine.

Sorry to hear that, Shane. Unfortunately, viruses don't care that you had other things planned. I've been lucky so far and haven't contracted it - yet. The CDC says eventually we all will. Some days I feel like one of the survivors in a zombie apocalypse movie. But at least those remnants of humanity have the advantage of being able to identify the infected. Which is why I don't fear the monkeypox. I will keep my distance from even a pretty girl if she's got oozing pustules all over her face.

I don't think we can say for sure that the access violation is being raised by Pentagon. Could as easily be bitbridge or an effect. Unfortunately, I no longer have a copy of it here so can't test it for you. However, as old as Pentagon is you aren't the only one in the world using it, and are one of thousands who have used it over the years. Alex, try opening the project in safe mode (hold the SHIFT key down while the project loads) and when prompted whether to load Pentagon, answer "No". If the project then opens OK, try re-inserting the instrument. There's a decent chance that'll resolve the problem. If it doesn't, then congratulations! You've found a true unicorn: a new bug in a very old product. (You could also determine whether it's Pentagon raising the error by looking at the crash dump. Here's a very old thread where I posted the tldr; version of how to use Windbg to view crash dumps. ) Worst-case scenario is that Pentagon no longer works in Cakewalk. Unlikely, but not impossible. In that case, we can suggest plenty of comparable free or cheap synths to replace it with.

Hate to be the bringer of bad news, but CW has been getting a lot of complaints from the EDM crowd and will be responding with a Cheesifier plugin. Apparently, bit-crushing, lo-fi-ing, robo-quantizing and extreme auto-yodeling aren't cheesy enough and occasionally a catchy melody slips through, upsetting the MDMA-addled ravers and shaking them out of their trance.

You can find the paths to plugins - as Cakewalk understands them - by looking in the system registry. Open REGEDIT and press F3 to pull up the Find dialog. Search for Cakewalk Music Software. Under that key will be a subkey called Cakewalk VST x64, and within that another subkey named "Inventory". Lots of information in there, some of it obvious, some of it obscure, but worth an examination. That method works to locate registered plugins, meaning all plugins that were found and successfully initialized by the VST scanner. It won't help you find duplicate instances, though. I usually resolve that challenge with a global search, but I don't use the Windows Search feature because it's so slow and doesn't produce results I can refine my search within. Instead, I open a DOS window and run something like this (in this example, to find all FabFilter plugins): c: cd \ dir FabFilter*.dll /s > fabfilter.txt & notepad c:\fabfilter.txt This will create a file called fabfilter.txt that lists every DLL named "FabFilter[something]", and then open it in Notepad. To find every instance of Kontakt, just substitute "kontakt" for "fabfilter".

But it takes at least ten minutes. 3-minute songs don't work unless you play them over and over. This fellow has probably given more thought to the subject than any of us, certainly more than I have. When I'm entertaining an audience, I worry that long songs might bore them. But maybe by pandering to the short attention span of the social media generation we're robbing them of a transcendental experience. I remember back in the 60's when the consistently most well-received song my band played was Inna-Gadda-da-Vida. It went on for so long that even I'd start to get bored with it. But there was something about the tempo and the repeating riff that put people into a hypnotic state. Granted, that state was also encouraged via chemical assistance, but I remember achieving that state of consciousness by listening to She's So Heavy, even without benefit of drugs. Let's bring back the ten-minute song!

Yes, you could do that but I wouldn't recommend it because you'll end up with multiple copies and the next time Kontakt is updated you'll be left wondering which of them actually got updated. That's what's great about symbolic links - you still have just one copy of the file, but now the O/S can get to it multiple ways. You create a symbolic link using the mklink command, which you run in a DOS window. This command creates a pseudo-folder that's actually a pointer to somewhere else. Let's say you have a project that references c:\VSTGone\VSTGone.dll, but either that DLL isn't there anymore or the whole folder is gone because it's been moved to the D: drive to free up space on your system drive. You can use mklink to create a fake c:\VSTGone folder, and tell it the real location. The mklink syntax is: mklink /d {new_folder} {old_folder} Let's say Kontakt was originally installed at C:\program files\Native Instruments\Kontakt but that folder's no longer there, and has since been moved to D:\Kontakt. In this case, you'd use mklink to create a dummy folder that points to the actual location: c: cd \program files\Native Instruments mklink /d D:\Kontakt Kontakt Now you have a pseudo-folder named c:\program files\Native Instruments\Kontakt. Any program that references it will be automatically redirected to D:\Kontakt. This happens at the file system level, so Cakewalk need not know of this sleight-of-hand and existing projects need not be modified.

The best solution I can think of would be to recreate the original paths using symbolic links. This, however, requires that you know the original locations of the Kontakt executables, and possibly also the original locations of the libraries if they've also been moved. The beauty of symbolic links is you can move programs and data to a new file location without the DAW or VSTs knowing you've done it. They continue to look in the previous place and the Windows file system quietly redirects them to the new folder. But again, this fix does require that you first know the old pathnames.

Don't try pitch-shifting stereo tracks. Don't try it on guitars that are heavily effected. It won't work well on anything that has a lot of unpitched content, such as tuned percussion. Clean mono tracks only. Make sure you're not over-thinking it. If the vocalist struggles to hit a few high notes, for instance, it would be a lot easier to pitch-shift just those problematic notes on the vocal.

If you're a) Canadian and b) a Rush fan, Beyond the Lighted Stage is a must-see. I was neither when I saw it, and came away still not Canadian but definitely a fan. Another rockumentary that changed my view of a band was Rammstein in Amerika , about the East German band Rammstein. That particular genre normally ain't my cup o' tea, but the film made me respect those guys a lot. Anvil! The Story of Anvil. About a band that almost made it. They should have. Most of their contemporaries made it, and their style was popular at the time. But things didn't break their way. It has a happy ending, though. One of the most emotionally impactful films was Heavy Metal in Baghdad, about a band's struggles to survive in a country that morally despises their style, while a war is going on. Then there's Gimme Shelter, which covers the disastrous Rolling Stones concert at Altamont. I saw that at a drive-in while high. It was upsetting. Should be a more comfortable watch in the safety and comfort of your own living room. Here's a list from imdb that I found while trying to remember the name of the Rammstein doc.

Yeh. What I'm saying is don't worry about the overall levels while mixing, as long as they're reasonable (e.g. peaking at -12 dB). If it sounds too quiet, turn up your monitors to hear what it ideally should sound like at commercial levels. If you subsequently master with a gentle hand, it'll retain much of the punch and dynamics in the pre-mastered mix. If it still sounds weak with the limiter, disable it and revisit the tracks, which may be in need of additional compression to make them sound fuller. This, btw, is not universal advice. Many insert a limiter early in the process so that they can hear its effect on the mix in progress. I prefer to hold off on that step until late in the mix process. If the mix doesn't stand on its own pre-master, then it's not ready for mastering.

For a long time that was standard practice, and for good reasons. With digital audio, however, gain-staging becomes less important. (Not unimportant, but less important). There is really no benefit to maximizing individual tracks, not like when we were battling noise in the analog domain. In a DAW It's perfectly OK to have your tracks peaking at -12 dB or lower. It preempts other potential problems down the chain. And yes, if you need to turn the vocals down you'll likely also have to turn instruments down by the same amount. That's OK, even if the signal going into the master bus seems low, even if you have to turn up your monitors. Don't worry about the full mix volume while you're mixing. Wait until the mix sounds good, then as a final step use a limiter to bring the overall volume up to your final target levels.