bitflipper

The problem is not with the OP's routing or export options. He's already determined that it's stereo, by playing the MP3 in Cakewalk. The problem is therefore in the playback software. I suspect that all MP3s lose their width, not just ones EmV created.

I have 73 keys on my synthesizer. I think there may be one that I've never played. I have 88 keys on my piano. Even my cat has played all of them.

Import your mp3 into a Cakewalk project and listen to it. Is it still mono?

The top one is the spittin' image of our Miss Bean. Except for the mask. Hers has a skull on it.

No. I tried, but I have no feeling in my fingers. Perhaps this is what arpeggiators were invented for.

Today it's a walk-in freezer.

Unfortunately, that won't save you much time or effort if what you want to do is shift a bunch of keyswitch values up or down an octave. It's not a search-and-replace kind of operation. More like search and add 12. It'd be a nice feature, to be able to select all articulations and shift all their values in one action. This has happened to me, where I've entered what I thought were the correct keyswitch values only to realize after considerable data entry that they're all off by an octave.

When I came out to the garage/office/studio at 5:00 this morning, I tracked in some snow. When I got up to go make a second pot of coffee at 8:00, I noticed it was still there. The band is scheduled to rehearse in this space on Thursday. The forecast is for more snow and much colder temperatures. But that'll just be acclimation for Friday night's gig, where the venue is at a much higher elevation with temperatures in single digits (-13 C for those outside the US). And twice as much snow. It's normally a 2-hour drive but will probably be double that in the snowstorm that's forecast. I don't think my rear-wheel drive van will make it, so we'll be jamming everything into three 4WD vehicles and caravanning up the mountainside. I have never cancelled a gig. Ever.

Can you point to previous reports of this? I only scan the Kontakt forum once in a while, but when I do I'm looking out for stuff like this - and I haven't seen any recent reports. There have been, however, multiple reports of long unload times (example).

Yes, I have actually seen that problem. But it was ages ago, probably Kontakt version 2 or 3. IIRC it did come down to a specific library, due to some corrupt samples preventing Kontakt from closing the files on exit. That would have been the fault of the drive, though, not the library. If you do manage to track the problem down to a library, try renaming the folder and copying it to a new location on the drive, or a different drive if that's an option. That's something I've had to do on multiple occasions, but again long ago when disk drives were considerably less reliable than they are today.

You're right, of course. And I do know some excellent singers. However, none of them seem thrilled about coming over at midnight just because I've had a sudden inspiration.

True Colors, you say. Interesting - and challenging - choice. The original performance covers the gamut, from robotic to soaring melodrama. I'll be interested in hearing your progress on that one. Most of the demos and tutorials I've heard remind me of the dancing bear analogy: at the circus you don't applaud because the bear dances well, just that it dances at all.

Here's what I'm working on today. I have no idea what "style" it might fall under. The oohs are five different patches from Omnisphere plus one Kontakt library. I've had no success yet finding a place for Blue in it. https://www.soundclick.com/music/songInfo.cfm?songID=14355696

Check out this Synthesizer V demo. Impressive.

Me with eyes closed and hands over ears: nah nah nah nah... OK, you made me look. Watched the presentation. Sheesh, are those two nerds right out of central casting, or what? Well, if there's one thing we've learned from every sci-fi epic it's that those are the guys who've figured out how to save the world and we should probably listen to them. As impressive as Mike's monumental work is, I believe he's hit the limits of what Kontakt can do as a specialty platform. I've always felt that once articulate voices have truly become a viable virtual instrument, it'll be within a framework designed from the ground up specifically for that purpose. There are just way too many possibilities when concatenating vocal sounds for even a sophisticated sample player like Kontakt. Imagine if pianos and violins had different languages, dialects, regional accents, puns and homonyms; Kontakt libraries would be many terabytes in size.

That brings my collection of "ooh" libraries up to around 16. I really could have done without Blue. Oh well, this is where intoxicated shopping gets you.

Finally picked up Blue last night, after having considered it for years. After about two hours mucking about, I was successful in making her sing "OOH" quite convincingly.

That's some scary stuff, John. Like the setup for a Twilight Zone episode scary. I'd also be inclined to take the above advice and see an ENT in addition to an audiologist. I'm no expert, but the latter specializes in identifying what you can't hear, and your problem is hearing something that isn't there, or at least isn't supposed to be there.

Or deleted. Somebody had an issue recently where all the files in one of %appdata%\cakewalk's subfolders (I forget which one) had been deleted. I have no idea why or how that would happen, though (error raised during the update?). But it's a safe bet that the symptoms listed in the OP are indicative of a corrupt installation. I know this won't help you today, but I have to mention that the best defense against this sort of thing is having a backup of the %appdata% tree. Oh, and Steve's right: rolling back probably won't fix it. Worst-case scenario is uninstall/re-install Cakewalk.

The first rule of grounding is that you minimize the number of paths to ground. Multiple paths create differences of potential between them, which defeats the purpose of having a common reference. Those differences may be very small, but we're talking about an environment in which very small voltages are our stock in trade. Before I would resort to adding more ground connections, I'd take a hard look at my existing grounding and see where I might be creating problems. Your system may have shown improvement in the basement simply because you've moved to a different circuit, or went from having equipment plugged into multiple outlets to just one outlet.

This is why I almost never insert tempo events into MIDI-only projects until I'm happy with the composition, performance and arrangement. At some point you have to take the plunge and pronounce the composition "done" and then move on to mixing. Not everybody works that way, but it's a methodology that's served me well for a very long time.

It's an old advertising tag line, "Pepperidge Farms Remembers". The implication being that their products are made in some long-forgotten old-fashioned manner, It has become a joke and a meme punchline, because Pepperidge Farms is actually a factory in Connecticut.

I should add that %appdata% is also ground-zero of much malware activity, since most other critical file system locations are protected by stricter permissions. Back when Microsoft started locking things down in Win95, they realized that there needed to be at least one place with loose security, someplace where applications can freely store their stuff. That's why %appdata% exists, and why it's vulnerable to attacks. So it's also a good idea to run something like Malwarebytes on a regular basis to root out bad stuff in there.

This is why I make daily backups of %appdata%. Being the general-purpose storage locker for all applications, things will frequently change in there that you're not even aware of, including plugin settings, presets, authorization keys and log files. And, of course, your Cakewalk customizations.

Couldn't agree more! Sadly, ever-increasing complexity is endemic to the computer world, and eventually the simple solution will no longer suffice. Pepperidge Farms remembers (tm) when an entire operating system fit on one 5.25" single-sided floppy.