bitflipper

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.

Truth. It's been a staple here for years, on pretty much every vocal track.

Yes, yes I did. In addition to the ThickHeadOfHair variable, my aud.ini also includes: HairColor=0xFFFFFF and StrongBackMode=0 and LPFCutoff=13000

Surfing around the webosphere I see a lot of love for the Champion. Comparing feature-by-feature it appears to offer far more bang for the buck over the Marshall while being 10lb lighter. I'm going to suggest this one, and suggest that we order it today so it'll be here before next week's gig. Thanks for everyone's input!

I think it just comes down to the reality that much of what exists in the loop world is amateur-made by folks who just don't know that loops are more akin to samples than to finished mixes. Plus anything identified as a "backing track" is probably meant to be used in a live situation, which would suggest being mastered loud. Just a guess. I have rarely experienced this problem myself, which is most likely because the few loops I use are from commercial Kontakt libraries. I assume the loop you're talking about is one that's bundled with Cakewalk? If so, I'd guess those were not made by anyone at Cakewalk and probably sourced from a third party.

Hey, that's the same guy who sold me on the Marshall. I have a feeling he likes every amp. But I'll take the word of an actual owner/user over any paid presenter and if you say it's awesome then it's awesome. I'll have my guitarist watch both the Marshall and the Fender videos when we get together for band rehearsal on Sunday. At $400 the Champion is half the price of the Marshall. I'll just have to sell him on the idea that not having tubes doesn't make him any less of a man.

OK, then. That's a definite "maybe" from Craig. Thank you.

The price difference is large and the solid-state equivalents are usually far more powerful than their tube equivalents. For example, the Fender Twin Reverb solid state version is 200W and $1000, while the tube version is 85W and $1700. If I was certain this claim was valid about a modeling amp sufficiently emulating tubes, I'd press for that option. But not being a guitar player, I lack the authority to make such a claim to my friend. So how say the guitarists here? Do you agree with Greg's assessment?

My first amp was a Kustom in "Cascade", a sort of metallic turquoise pleated naugahyde. 100W head and 3 (!) 15" Jensens. No horn. Not a great amp for a Vox Continental, but everyone in the band had matching amps, including the PA, so at least it looked cool.

OK, got it. I'm thinking in terms of how I use tempo changes, which are never that severe. It's not just MIDI-driven synths that are affected by fast tempo changes; tempo-synced delays also have problems. So I generally avoid them. On the rare occasions that I do need a drastic tempo shift, I'll build the ritard into the performance and leave the tempo alone. Again, it's just my own way of doing things - all my MIDI parts are played, rarely hand-planted into the PRV. But regardless, the answer is still no, you cannot specify offsets in fixed time intervals. Seems that would introduce CPU overhead as the DAW continuously recalculated the number of ticks required to maintain a consistent absolute time. Tempo resolution can be as low as 3 ticks, so you could be recalculating offsets 320 times a second -assuming you haven't changed the number of ticks per second. I'd be looking at why MIDI timing offsets were needed to compensate for a sample library in the first place, and if there might be another way to approach it. Many synths let you change the starting point for sample playback, for example.

Wouldn't the time offset still be wrong after a tempo change whether you specified it in ticks or milliseconds? Assuming, of course, that the "negative delay" required by your sample library is dependent on tempo in the first place. Usually, when an offset is required, it's to compensate for a baked-in slow attack time in the samples, which would remain fairly consistent across a wide range of tempos. Just thinking out loud, as I've never had an issue with MIDI offsets. I usually set the time offset by ear anyway.

Well how 'bout that? I had no idea. Not sure why you'd want to do that, but good to know. Are you next gonna tell me I can load a ProChannel module into the fx bin?

I agree. When you're seriously into recording, you naturally become very nit-picky about even the most trivial of factors ("should I choose the linear-phase option on this tambourine EQ?"). Some of that attention to detail is bound to leak into other activities ("what, your bedsheets are only 400 thread count? Amateur!"). Truth is, in a live performance all you gotta do is make sure your beer doesn't rattle off the bass cab. (True story: a bartender once thought it was a good idea to put a Jack 'o Lantern atop my Leslie. I was too stupid to object, and midway through the second set the bottom rotor and amplifier were splattered with pumpkin guts, resulting in a repair bill that cost more than the gig paid.)

Thanks, CC. I wouldn't have even thought of Boss for amplifiers. Every Boss product I've ever owned ran on 9V batteries.

Oh, that wasn't my first computer. Just the first one I made music on. My first computer was a COSMAC VIP testbed. Came with 1KB of RAM; I had to etch my own circuit board to upgrade it to 4KB. It saved data to a cassette tape, sometimes. But it did have a nifty 9" monochrome monitor. And I walked 10 miles to school, uphill both ways.