bitflipper

In that case, you're stuck. Frozen means frozen. Maybe you can identify other tracks that can be safely frozen and thus free up resources for the harmonizer. I deal with this conundrum often. My favorite drum synth is Superior Drummer, which is a huge hog. But I like to be able to tweak the drums right up until I'm done with the project. Consequently, I freeze everything else first and leave that one instrument for last. Sometimes my computer just runs out of steam and I have no choice but to freeze the drums, too. After that, if I need to make a change I have to un-freeze, edit, and re-freeze. Just a fact of life until we all have supercomputers.

You can freeze just the audio portion and leave any effect plugins active. Right-click on the track header and choose Freeze -> Freeze Options" from the context menu. Un-check the "Track FX" option. This assumes it's an effect in the FX bin, as opposed to an effect within a synthesizer or sampler. Those kinds of effects always get frozen.

This happens all the time to me, receiving mono tracks as stereo files. First thing I do is determine which, if any, of the files are truly stereo. You can usually figure that out just by looking at the waveforms. What you don't want to do is convert one to mono that needed to be stereo, e.g. drum overheads, synth pads or orchestral ensembles. But individual kick and snare tracks can almost always be assumed to be mono. You can select all of them and use the Convert to Mono utility. Here's the catch: what Convert to Mono does is combine the left and right channels. Most of the time, it's perfectly safe. But if there are L/R phase differences you'll end up with a track that sounds noticeably worse than it did in stereo. To check for that, simply change the track's interleave to mono first. If you don't hear any change, then the track can safely be converted. So why bother converting them in the first place? Panning is why. The pan slider works differently on mono vs. stereo tracks. Trying to get a nice, wide mix with only stereo tracks is an exercise in frustration.

I'd be very surprised if this was SONAR/Cakewalk version-dependent. This is a system problem and as such likely to affect any DAW. Something is eating CPU cycles, resulting in buffer starvation. To verify that assumption, raise the buffer size to the maximum supported by the interface (on my old MOTU it was 4096) and see if it gets farther before giving up. Next, think about any changes you've made to the system since it was last working OK. New software, updated drivers, replaced hardware components. Run LatencyMon to try and pinpoint a driver that's too greedy. Try disabling the network and see if that makes a difference. Try the Why So Slow utility for grins. It's from Resplendence, the same folks that gave us LatencyMon. And of course one possibility that has to be considered is malware, e.g. something that keeps a network connection open to the mothership, or that scans files in the background. That can even be anti-virus software. A diagnostic tool that lists active network ports can identify spyware, including "friendly" spyware such as tools to continuously monitor for malware.

This is where the oldest guy in the room says: "I remember when a 300 Megabyte drive cost $50,000". Have patience.

I clicked it just to increment Larry's referral count. But my DAW is Pace-free and I intend to keep it that way.

Devil's Advocate: gain staging isn't nearly as important in the floating-point digital world as it was in all-analog days. Back then, it was a big deal. Truth is, digital audio is extremely forgiving about such things. It's entirely possible to complete a project without once thinking about gain staging. At least, I think that's so, because I almost never think about it. Granted, I'm sure I do a lot of things unconsciously, ingrained habits acquired over a half-century. But I have also experienced problems with audio quality precisely because I violated a gainstaging principle. Bad on me for being complacent. I don't recommend complete complacency.

This is how all posts should begin, e.g. "I used to be normal but then learned what a DAW was and never looked back". Your point is valid about how normalizing peaks won't make two tracks sound the same volume-wise. However valid, it's not germane to this thread because the complaints are that the feature doesn't work correctly, not about whether the feature should be used. It's reasonable to expect it to work as advertised, and even more reasonable to be angry if it broke a project.

The TTS-1 is sample-based, and like any sample player it does not have the range of sound-shaping you'd get in a synthesizer. But it is entirely capable of accommodating you in this case. There are several approaches you can take. EQ is the most obvious and easiest solution. Any EQ will do, e.g. ProChannel or the Sonitus EQ. Use a low-pass filter, or in some cases a tilt filter. Modifying your MIDI velocity is the second-easiest. Most, if not all, of TTS-1's instruments respond to velocity. Lowering velocity is a good technique for any sampled instrument, e.g. even fat sounds like big drums sound more epic at low velocities. All of the TTS-1's parameters are automatable. I used to manually drop in some CC events at the front of a TTS-1 track to bake its tone settings right into the track. I don't use the TTS-1 for much beyond click and temp tracks, but I can tell you that it's a surprisingly capable instrument if you're patient and willing to experiment.

I'm surprised that so many people normalize. Honestly, I thought it was a long-discredited practice that only existed in SONAR/Cakewalk as a vestigial feature. As an admitted non-normalizer, I'm curious as to what normalizing multiple tracks does. Does it just normalize each track individually, one at at time, or attempt to normalize them as a group? And what kind of corruption occurs? Is it a corrupt file header, or is the data trashed? I'm trying to imagine how multiplying each sample by a constant could corrupt a file, given that mathematically it's no different than using a fader. I agree that it should be nondestructive, though. I wasn't aware that that was the case.

Tracy Collins is the real salesman here. Peter says "here's a new product, cool, huh?". Tracy says "here's what you can aspire to if you practice". He's a true master of the faux-guitar.

Nah, that's always been the case. Nothing new there. What's changed is the dearth of humor and the ability to see it. It's up to folks like you (and me) to help keep humor alive. Like Steven Wright said "I think they should attach pies to the front of trains. That way, if a train runs into something it's at least a little bit funny". Someday, we may look back fondly at the times when guitars were hard to come by and food wasn't.

Insight for $39. I can't recall ever seeing it that low before. Granted, not everybody needs it. There are plenty of cheap or free metering plugins out there. Technically, I don't need it either, and certainly would not have coughed up $200 for it. But it came with Ozone Advanced, so that's how I ended up with it. I'm glad of that happy accident - it's great and it goes into every project here. Caveat: I am using Insight 1, not Insight 2; version 2 doesn't seem to have anything new that I'm interested in.

That's encouraging for ST4 users. Dave was responsible for much of the content in ST2. Question for Peter: will the Sampletank version be capable of all the key-switchable and velocity-triggered articulations of the Kontakt version? How about chording, harmonies and alternate body IRs?

I saw that video. It was an eye-opener. The scope of international shortages is quite surprising. The container issue, at least here on the west coast of the US, seems to be because China is no longer taking our garbage. That's what used to fill the containers that returned after delivering Chinese goods, so they sit unused in US ports. Nobody's going to pay to send them back empty. This may be the video you were thinking of...

Ah, so you've simplified! My solution is even simpler: spend gobs of money on a single instrument that's a sampler, synth, sequencer and audio interface all in one. Yeh, it cost as much as late-model used car, but it's just one thing to drag in and hook up. Unfortunately, it's also a backbreaker, weighing 88 lb. in the flight case. I've often wondered if I shouldn't have gone with a laptop and a MIDI controller; even after buying a second laptop as a backup, that would still have been thousands cheaper.

One of the ways local mom 'n pop retailers get screwed is by sweetheart deals between manufacturers and big retailers. Years ago I went to order a synth through my local chain, paid for it and waited. And waited. I went in and asked what the holdup was. They called Yamaha and let me listen in. The message on the phone: "If you are calling from Guitar Center, press 1. All others, please hold." Basically, GC and others like it get first dibs on everything. Small dealers often don't get products directly from the manufacturer, but through a middleman wholesaler, whose deals with manufacturers work the same way. Another way small retailers get screwed: being forced to buy things like guitars in bundles so they have to take mostly slow-moving products and just one or two of the big sellers. And they can't just re-order the top sellers, only another bundle. It's the same reason there are fewer independent drug stores, automotive supply stores or lumber yards left. I realize this probably isn't why you can't get your guitar. But it's definitely a supply chain issue. The pandemic has revealed many weaknesses in the global supply chain, for many, many products. Like new cars. Who'd have ever thought we'd run out of new cars?

Good advice and FU, Glenn!

Cantabile is really good. I have used the full (paid) version in live performance. I wanted to have Omnisphere and VB3 on stage. It worked well, although I eventually gave up on it because of the extra time and hassle of setting up a laptop. I have also used Gig Performer, which takes the idea even further, letting you define custom UIs for instruments and effects and making set lists. There is also a free version available. Of the two, though, Cantabile strikes the better balance between flexibility and ease of use. Next up on my list of products to test is Camelot, from Audio Modeling. It looks very interesting. There is a free version, an iOS version and a full version that runs on a Mac or PC. At $150 it might not be what the OP is looking for.

Yeh, some people are really good at duplicating a performance. So good that you don't even notice it's double-tracked. David Gilmour was one such performer, both on guitar and vocals. But the overdub will always only be close, never perfect. And that's kind of the idea. Our ears are really good at discerning differences, even when those differences are very small. As John notes, it's most noticeable on headphones. But beware, many things sound great on headphones but get thin on speakers, where the channels can blend in the air before you hear them. Headphones don't have that crosstalk, and can hide things like phase cancellation. Years ago I did an experiment. I double-tracked a vocal and then used V-Vocal and AudioSnap to make their pitches and timing match very, very closely. It didn't just kill the double-track effect, it sounded awful. Like it had been recorded in a concrete pipe. To my surprise, I'd gotten the two tracks so similar that they were suffering from comb filtering. Something that can also happen with guitars, especially when you use the same acoustic guitar for two tracks, with the same mic position in the same room.

OT: I clicked the link in your sig out of curiosity. Mark, that is some good stuff.

No, dither is only necessary when changing bit depth from a higher one to a lower one. (btw, the correct term is bit depth or wordlength; "bitrate" refers to sample rate, e.g. 44.1KHz vs. 48KHz, and only affects frequency response).

Short answer: no. At least, not in the way you describe it. If you simply copy a track and then pan the two opposite, it will sound like it's one track panned center, just a little louder. That's because our perception of stereo depends on each ear hearing something different. Now, if you clone the track and then do something to make the two tracks sound different, cloning can work. EQ and delays are the most common methods for differentiating cloned tracks. However, as lapasoa notes you will get better results by actually recording a second part with a different tone. This is because you get additional differentiation by virtue of the fact that the two separate performances will not be identical.

Hey, lighten up guys. I know neither of you are mean-spirited, but Marcello came here looking for advice and encouragement, not ridicule. OP: what folks are trying to say is simply that yes, work on the mix first, then apply mastering as the final polish.

Make sure they are assigned different MIDI channels. That's how multiple MIDI devices and/or multiple MIDI instruments keep track of which notes are "theirs".