bitflipper

Which in turn is a stripped down version of anything we'd have called a sampler post-20th century.

Yes, it is entirely possible to create a mix that's too dynamic. We just don't talk about it as much because it's not nearly as big a problem as over-compressed music is. But you do have to think about where the listener will listen to your music. In the car barreling down the freeway, on an airplane or a train, running on a treadmill - all way more likely than someone sitting in a quiet room listening on a high-end hi-fi.

I have to imagine CW isn't the only DAW that works this way. Could be that Spectrasonics just tests Logic and Pro Tools and calls it a day. But QA aside, I am surprised that the coders didn't anticipate this, as changing a DLL's interface almost guarantees broken backward compatibility. That's Programming 101. Then again, the whole reason for VST's existence is to implement standardized interfaces, so the programmers might be forgiven for forgetting that rule. OTOH, that's why QA exists - to test if what the programmer thinks will happen really does.

Checked the release notes, and sure enough there it was, the smoking gun: I asked Noel if changing the number of outputs in a VI update could corrupt a project, and he said yup. Bottom line: do not reopen any Omnisphere projects created before June 2021 and you'll be fine. If you must revisit an old project that has Omnisphere in it, be prepared to perform extensive repairs. And if one of the affected tracks is frozen, leave it frozen to avoid subsequent crashes.

Interesting observation re Spotify. I'm not a Spotify user, so I can't confirm, but I've heard that they don't treat all artists the same. Could be something to that, I don't know. Spotify, however, is not a big moneymaker for most artists. I can tell you that major artists don't break the rules if they want their music heard on radio, TV or motion pictures. Well, first let's be clear that artists themselves rarely have any say in the matter. There will often be separate masters for different applications. For example, the movie soundtrack will typically have a wider dynamic range than what's broadcast on radio/TV. A point that should be made here is that it's not just about average levels (integrated LUFS), but also dynamic range. You could, in theory, have a master at -6dB loudness but still be sufficiently dynamic that even if playback is automatically adjusted downward, the mix will still sound good. Oh yeh, and those adjustments can go both ways; if your master is quiet the streaming services will turn it up - and it'll sound better than one that was turned down to match. Yeh, it's complicated. There's a reason folks pay specialists (MEs) to handle this stuff.

"Too loud" is really a subjective thing, and somewhat dependent on the genre. Many popular releases are far louder than -8.3 LUFS. But streaming services and YouTube will automatically turn them down, so for them yes, it's too loud. For a CD, no problem. For me personally, that would be too loud. I usually shoot for -14 for my own stuff. I'll go as high as -12 (integrated, -10 short-term) for aggressive rock that I'm mastering for someone else. If -14 sounds too quiet, turn up your monitors. Seriously, that's how it's done. Google the K-system and speaker calibration, it'll be a game-changer for you.

If it's intermittent, does it depend on where you stop playback? If you happen to stop playback after a pedal-down event but before the corresponding pedal-up event, the piano will keep playing the note until it decays.

Do you have full Kontakt?

My go-to solo violin these days is the SWAM violin from Audio Modeling. It's a modeled instrument, not a sample library, and I like that for its small memory footprint and quick load times. One of the things I like best about a modeled violin is the ability to do slides of any length or speed, something that doesn't work well in most affordable sampled strings. Here it is in action. It's a project I made while writing up the SWAM instruments for SoundBytes Magazine. It features several of the SWAM instruments: violin, clarinet, flute, cello and double bass. The string ensemble you hear in there is another nice but very affordable ($35) string library, Arctic Strings from FrozenPlain.

Update: I have now seen this problem in at least six recent projects, with mis-routed audio inputs on many dozens of tracks. All of them had been last opened before I updated Omnisphere. I wouldn't have thought that updating a VI could screw up a project's routing, but that does appear to be the case. In at least one instance, the routing change was to a frozen track, which could not be un-frozen without crashing the synth (Zebra2) it had been connected to when frozen. I was able to salvage the project by removing the synth and inserting a new instance.

Deprecated AND depreciated. Seriously, though, we all have favorite plugins that were officially retired long ago. Nothing inherently wrong with older 32-bit plugins -- as long as they still work. Sounds like this one's got some issues, and Steinberg is never going to address them. I'd starting poking around for a replacement. Sorry, I have no suggestions, as I've never used this specific one. I'm guessing it's a bass instrument with some canned MIDI or loops/phrases? If you're just using it as a soft synth, try SI-Bass that came with Cakewalk.

Much ado about nothing. I wonder how many irony-deprived people were scared enough to relay this information via Facebook.

Sorry, not a pun but I saw this on Reddit and it was just too funny not to share. It's amazing how music can take you to another place. I was in a café, they put on BTS. Now I am in a different café.

Yes. For the most part, you can freely mix 'n match VST2 and VST3 plugins. Even if it's the same plugin, e.g. Omnisphere.

Sorry, no. It's inevitable that a new bug is going to creep in once in a while, but it's been a long time since I've seen one that caused a plugin to crash. Coincidentally, I recently experienced a surprise crash in what had long been an extremely reliable soft synth, Zebra2. There hasn't been an update to Zebra in years, so I at first suspected a new bug in Cakewalk (I am a beta tester). But it wasn't CW's problem, just an obscure Zebra bug that had taken this long to see the right circumstances to reveal itself. The white fog of death is almost certainly a plugin problem. At least, that's been my experience. Whenever it's happened in the past it has always been resolved with a plugin update.

Better yet, open the project and DELETE all the fx. It's a quick way to determine whether it's a plugin problem at all, and I don't trust any plugin to go turn into a straight wire when it's bypassed.

I hear ya on the matter of fragility. I'm old. I remember when everything was vacuum tubes. You'd carry spare tubes. And you are preaching to the choir regarding what's really important: a genuine, heartfelt performance. Hopefully, one that that also doesn't suck.

I missed this clue on first read. If task manager can't kill the process, that raises the likelihood that it's a hardware problem. It means a very low-level process is waiting for something to happen that isn't happening. Something that times out after 3-5 minutes, a common practice in software that routinely waits for hardware to respond, such as a network adapter or disk controller. Could be a lot of things, but whatever it is it's probably hardware. Q: Is the behavior consistent, every time, so you'd know if and when it changed? Q: Does the problem occur when you save a new, empty project? (I assume yes, because you don't see it with a MIDI-only project) Q: Does the problem persist if you disable your network? Q: Are all your virtual instruments local, no network-connected VI hosts? Q: Did this just start happening suddenly? If so, what has changed in the system since it began, e.g. new hardware or updated drivers? Q: Does switching to WASAPI make a difference? Q: Do you have any issues saving projects, like having them take an unusually long time? Q: When you say it only happens with CW, does that mean you use other DAWS? If so, do you use the same virtual instruments in the other DAW(s)? Sorry for the blast of questions, but perhaps a clue will emerge from them.

Something is keeping Cakewalk from shutting down. A hidden dialog could be one explanation. However, dialogs usually don't time out after 3-5 minutes. Whatever's holding up the shutdown is probably not directly part of Cakewalk, but something external. I've seen interface drivers cause this, as well as antivirus products, network adapters and faulty disk drives. Maybe some more information about the computer system might shed some light. Laptop or desktop? Internal or external audio interface? Wi-fi enabled? What audio driver (ASIO, WASAPI)?

Good guess, Terry. But probably not what's happening. If Dim Solo was on, he'd be hearing all the other tracks, not one specific track. My first thought was if these are soft synth tracks it might be a MIDI routing issue, but that doesn't seem like a good explanation, either. Muting an audio track should mute the audio regardless of any routing or channel assignments. Still, I'm guessing it's a routing issue of some kind. schnibbelkram, are these maybe Instrument tracks?

Thanks. I'll be sure to pass along that advice at tomorrow's rehearsal. Sympathies for having to be in Oklahoma. At least it's not on fire.

What an inspiring essay, Reid! btw, "1492" is one of my all-time favorite soundtracks. I have so many virtual instruments on disk that I don't use often enough. Many of them I've had to look up on Wikipedia because I didn't know what the heck they were. Kontakt has been a musical educator, a window onto the larger world. Who knew there was such a thing as a bass balalaika? And that it sounds awesome in a jazz or prog rock context.

It's 3:45 here on the left coast. What are you doing up at this hour, Tom?

Tie. Sorry, Robert. I had an abacus in grade school, and was proud of how quickly I could operate it. My dad had brought it back from Japan c. 1957 after being impressed by the agility with which shopkeepers there used them. It would be many years before I went floating-point and upgraded to a slide rule. I even had a miniature one that I carried in my shirt pocket - with a pocket protector, of course - at all times, to augment the fancy one holstered on my belt. Yup, I are a Nerd, and make no apologies for it. But I'm afraid neither counts as a musical instrument, so apologies to the OP for drifting off-topic.

Well, I went ahead and ordered something different from everything discussed here so far, on the advice of my guy at Sweetwater, who said it blows away the Champion. Fingers crossed he's right. He hasn't steered me wrong yet. It's a Fender Blues Deluxe. 40W, 1x12 and real glass vacuum tubes to keep my comrade happy. It'll arrive next Friday. Got a gig that same night, but don't know if he'll want to chance using it immediately.