bitflipper

I've used it. It's OK. Like Pollux warns, use it gently for best results. There are actually better solutions out there for spectral ducking, but all are more expensive and/or more difficult to use than Trackspacer.

Kontakt is a significant investment in time (learning curve) and money. You'll find that a great many users here are fans, and some of us have invested obscene amounts of money into the Kontakt paradigm. But although I am an ardent proponent, I agree with bdickens when he suggests it's probably not the best place to start - unless, of course you are wealthy and not planning on buying a new car this year. Cakewalk bundles the TTS-1, which is an excellent choice for getting your feet wet. It's actually a pretty decent sample player. There are a number of free instruments out there, enough to keep you engaged for a long time while you mull over what to eventually spend real money on. There are many lists online (example, example, example, example, example) to get you started. They're all free and don't require a sample player like Kontakt, so there's no risk in downloading and trying them out. Note that many of these lists include older VSTi's that may not have aged well, or have since become paid commercial products. If you're specifically after organic instruments rather than traditional synthesizers, I would encourage you to take a look at Spitfire Labs stuff. Spitfire is one of the best sample library developers out there, but most of their high-end products require Kontakt. However, the Labs line uses its own player and is totally free. They have been adding new instruments pretty regularly - the collection now includes strings, piano, brass and percussion instruments.

Whenever I want to replicate parts, I just select the tracks, mark the region I want to copy on the timeline, then hold down the CTL key while dragging. Works great whether doing one track or many, or whether copying to the same track or a different one. I know the new Arranger feature is supposed to eliminate the need for that, but I do it so rarely that it's never occurred to me to figure out how the Arranger works.

More likely it's just because the 64-bit option causes Cakewalk to use twice as much memory during the render. When a process runs out of memory it has to request more from the operating system, which takes a little time. Worst case, you could be running out of physical RAM and forcing Windows to page out chunks of memory to disk. The fact that it correlates to Ozone may just be because Ozone uses (I should say can use, depending on settings) far more memory than most other plugins. IMO there is no benefit to the 64-bit render option, so regardless of what the actual underlying problem was, you've fixed it.

Maybe you could edit your thread title, Larry, to avoid confusion and potentially hard feelings. I know, "Mastering the Mix Reference Free Limited-Time Demo" is a bit unwieldy, but it's the difference between helpful redirection and clickbait.

I've got a 4-year-old here who loves to twist knobs. She can't resist the mixer, so it's always a delight when I power up the PA with every channel at max volume. But wait a minute...isn't your kid about 18?

It's worth a shot. You'll still be auditioning patches long after she's had time to cool off.

I've always whitelisted the entire \program files\cakewalk tree, as well as \program files\common files\vst3, all of my virtual instruments and project folders. I also have general exclusions for all audio file types regardless of where they live. You'd think an AV program would be smart enough to skip all those wav files in my sample libraries, but not all do. Your computer may have other locations that need to be excluded but that you've never thought about or didn't even know existed. For example, I had to whitelist the Celemony folder under \users\davet\documents. I don't remember exactly why I did that, but it appears to be a repository of temporary Melodyne files. I'm curious as to how an Avast file got dropped into your VST folder in the first place. That seems like a weird place for its installer to choose. I have seen DLLs in my VST tree that aren't scannable, e.g. some Adobe Audition effects, and Waves files that are dependencies but not themselves VSTs. All of those can be disabled in the scanner's own exclusion list.

Wow. I almost blew this off, thinking it would be some beginner tutorial that ended with "...and in conclusion, buy UBK-1 if you wanna sound like {insert famous producer}". I wasn't prepared to hear a master presenter delivering clear, solid information. He could even give Dan Worrall a few pointers. And there's a level of honesty and confidence there when he basically shows you how you could totally f*ck up a mix using his compressors. Dan never does that. "Groove Management". This phrase should become part of everyone's lexicon.

^^^ Agreed. Vojtech follows the beat of his own drum when it comes to user interfaces. However, once you've grocked one of them all the others suddenly make sense. They may be weird, but they are consistent.

Robert Trujillo and Les Claypool, an unlikely duo. And the greatest ad ever for electromagnetic transducers.

I haven't seen all these gathered into one place before. Put your headphones on for this. And yes, as the narrator suggests you will want to turn the volume down as these videos have been heavily compressed for maximum loudness.

Virtual instruments can be a source of inspiration, even serendipity. In my current project, I created a temporary drum track using the TTS-1, as I often do. But then on a whim threw some distortion on the TTS-1 and squashed the hell out of it with the over-the-top LoudMax limiter. I liked the result so much that I decided to leave the TTS-1 in as the primary drum synth. But I wanted a more resonant-sounding kick so I used a Kontakt library made from plastic water jugs. Sorry, Superior Drummer, you'll have to sit this one out. As to "how can you have guitar acquisition syndrome for a vst?", the answer is sampled guitars. This project started out as a demonstration for Indiginus' latest offering, called Generation Electric Guitar, which I was reviewing for SoundBytes. The demo didn't get completed in time for the article submission, so I decided to flesh it out with a bunch of other guitar libraries: Indiginus Steel (lap steel), Indiginus Renegade Electric, and both electric and acoustic 12-string guitars from Orange Tree Samples. Maybe I'll try to squeeze in every guitar library I have, although it would take months to cycle through them all. Maybe I'll find some inspiration in Cinematic Guitars today...

Should be one of the ten commandments of forum posting.

Hungarians. Gotta love 'em. Not just about red food.

Put your CC automation on a separate track, then clone the track as many times as you need. Be sure to check the box labeled "link to original". Any changes you make to the original track will be automatically mirrored across all its clones, so you'll only ever need to edit that one original track.

No need to feel stupid. This may change in the future when everyone's implanted with knowledge chips at birth, but AFAIK nobody is born with an understanding of either expression pedals or MIDI. You can buy an inexpensive adaptor that converts the variable resistance in your pedal to MIDI data. Works for any resistance-based or switch-based analog pedal. You'd then be able to keep the pedal you've already paid for. For just a little more money you could get yourself a cheap synthesizer/MIDI controller that has an analog input for an expression pedal. That would open up even more possibilities for data input, even if you're not a keyboard player. You could, for example, pound out drum beats with your fingers. And of course, use the expression controller without the need of an adaptor.

Error 3 means "path not found". Nullproxy.DLL or one of its associated dependencies is missing. Looking at nullproxy.dll's dependencies, I see that most of them are standard Windows files, which aren't likely to be an issue. It does, however, also have the expected dependencies of the C++ runtime libraries. michheld's intuition regarding the C++ distribution may be on the mark. Normally, if the runtime libraries need installing, the application's installer takes care of that automatically. Sometimes, though, it fails, and it's usually a Windows permissions issue. I would suggest starting with a re-installation of Cakewalk as Administrator.

Something about the layering of many voices just turns my crank. It's a form of crowdsourcing. Doesn't matter if you've got a bunch of great singers or not. Some might be flat, some sharp. In the aggregate they sound great.

The reason I asked whether they were encoded files is that importing a wave file should not alter it in any significant way. Because you can not only see but actually hear distortion means it's not a subtle process. The fact that the source files are not actually clipped indicates that something unpredictable is happening to them on the way in. There are only a few processes that might conceivably be applied on an import: conversion to 32-bit wave from some other format, sample rate conversion, wordlength expansion, or conversion from stereo to mono. I can't think of anything else. Converting to 32-bit float from 24-bit integer wouldn't do it. Even though the imported file would technically not be the same data, you'd never hear the difference. SRC could also be eliminated as a suspect if the source files were already at the project sample rate. You didn't say if that was the case. But even then I'd expect any distortion to be inaudible. Wordlength expansion isn't the problem, either. Even though fc would show the imported file is not identical to the original, you wouldn't hear a difference. So my best guess is that the source files are stereo and not mono-safe, and you're importing them as mono. Just a guess, based on the process of elimination.

Are these 24- or 32-bit wave files, or are they in a compressed format?

I don't see any significant downside to sticking with an older DAW, as long as it does everything you want it to do. X1/2/3 or even 8.5 isn't likely to suddenly stop working, especially if you freeze your Windows version. A perfectly do-able strategy if you intend to always dedicate the machine to just that purpose. Tape machines from 1974 still work if you take care of them properly. That said, X1 is not the version I would have chosen as my forever DAW. Because it represented a fundamental rewrite, it predictably had more problems than any other version prior or since. Yes, obsolescence will eventually be forced upon you. But as Kalle notes, it'll be because some hardware component has failed and no compatible driver exists for a its replacement. Still, an old computer can be kept running for a very long time. Just keep it clean, keep it off the internet, and keep your backups up to date. And don't toss all of your old disk drives - store them someplace dry, in electrostatic bags.

Just automate the plugin's Mix or Wet/Dry setting. Same result, and it'll be consistent regardless of what plugin you're using. Unless, of course, the plugin has no mix control. Fortunately I've yet to see one that doesn't.