bitflipper

Ah, so that's what's been happening! Fortunately, my glaucoma is totally under control. Unfortunately, font size is often dictated by the amount of screen real-estate available. You can't just make everything bigger without sacrificing some other information. And Cakewalk has no control over plugin vendors' font choices. Just don't get your expectations too high is all I'm saying. I hate to say it, but for those of us with sub-ideal eyesight the best solution is indeed a bigger monitor. I just replaced two 22" monitors with a single 34" screen. Even though the total display area has been reduced, I can now read the text much better. No more sliding things down to the main monitor just to read them. Pretty happy now with two matching 34" displays. Unfortunately, they are mounted one above the other rather than side-by-side (not practical, as they'd block my speakers) and my neck gets sore after doing a long editing session on the upper screen.

It's funny - I take a minimalist approach to everything except vocals. If I have more than two plugins on an instrumental track I worry I'm doing more harm than good. In a typical project, half my instrument tracks will have no effects at all and most of the others only EQ. But when it comes to vocals, I exercise no such restraint. It's not unusual to have 5 or 6 effects on a vocal track or bus. My first priority is always dynamics, trying to keep vocals level. So the first plugin on any vocal track is a gain control, specifically Blue Cat Audio's Gain plugin. This I automate to smooth out large volume changes, plosives, sibilance and excessive breath noises, lip smacks and background noise. This always precedes any compressor. I'm a fan of EQ early in the chain, since more often than not I'm high-passing the vocal. Doing this before any compression makes the compressor's job easier. If the vocal was not recorded in a neutral space, I'll pull out Meldaproductions' MDynamicEQ to address things like room resonances and window reflections. Otherwise, it's almost always Pro-Q3 from FabFilter. Next in the chain will be a FET-style compressor, usually PSP's FETPressor, often followed by an opto-style such as Cakewalk's CA-2A. Sometimes with a lot of scrunching, sometimes with very little, depending on whether the vocalist used proper mic technique or whether it was me singing. After that, if it's a lead vocal an optional extra will be some kind of distortion. That'll usually be Noveltech's Vocal Enhancer or FabFilter's Saturn, but there are no hard and fast rules. If it's an aggressive rocker I might go with Redopter from D16. Next are modulators. For BGVs, I like to use a subtle chorus. Which chorus plugin almost doesn't matter, but Valhalla's UberMod often gets the nod. I love BGVs because you can have a lot of fun with them, effects-wise. Last in the chain are delays and reverbs. I'm a fan of delays, especially on lead vocals, but delays are usually very subtle and tempo-synced to remain subliminal. Delays can often negate the need for any reverb at all. Notably missing from my list is any kind of de-esser, which I use only in the most extreme cases. P.S. My newest vocal effect is Melodyne. Oh, I've been using Melodyne for years and years, but this latest version introduced a new leveling feature that's quickly become a standard step in my vocal processing.

I was a college student in the late 60's, when the hi-fi movement was reaching its apex. Stereo was still a new thing (I still have a vivid memory of hearing my first stereo recording - Magical Mystery Tour) and every kid wanted at least a Kenwood bookshelf system in their dorm room. I couldn't afford one, having spent all my excess pennies on a guitar and a mandola. And drugs, of course. For the next 30 years, owning a high-quality stereo system was not a priority. I bought synthesizers and amps for them, PA systems and vans to haul it all in. I spent the price of a decent used car on reel-to-reels for recording. Multiple $4k computers, then more keyboards and guitars. I would never have predicted that my first truly high-fidelity playback system would come in the form of a computer accessory.

If you think about it, no stereo system can sound better than the gear employed to make the record in the first place. Any content that might be revealed, which is to say sounds that had not been audible to the engineers, isn't likely to be good information. The extras you're going to get will be pedal squeaks, trucks passing by, conversations from the control room, horn spit, footfalls, gurgling stomachs and hum from the fridge next door. A more realistic goal is to hear it like the engineers heard it. That's doable and it won't take you 30 years and a quarter-million to achieve it. Respect for his determination and appreciation for music, though. Sadly, that's dying out. As I am reminded every time I see a teenager rocking out to a single Apple earbud.

Homeland of my ancestors. All of whom collectively cried "F*ck This! Let's go to England."

Any plugin that fully conforms to the VST3 spec is expected to implement preset folders as described by Steinberg: [Users/$USERNAME/Documents]/VST3 Presets/$COMPANY/$PLUGIN-NAME/ (user-specific presets) [Users/$USERNAME/AppData/Roaming]/VST3 Presets/$COMPANY/$PLUGIN-NAME/ (per-user factory presets) [ProgramData]/VST3 Presets/$COMPANY/$PLUGIN-NAME/ (global factory presets) [$APPFOLDER]/VST3 Presets/$COMPANY/$PLUGIN-NAME/ (DAW-specific presets) Note that many (most?) vendors ignore this recommendation, preferring to keep their pre-VST3 scheme for backward compatibility. Personally, I would surrender and let them go where they want to go. I long ago gave up trying to impose my will on software vendors because it only causes complications such as redundant copies and missing dependencies. I let vendors install files wherever they want. They're small, so it's not like I'm wasting a lot of disk space by making such a concession. My exception to this policy is large files such as virtual instruments that reference samples. Even then, I let the main DLLs go to their default destinations and just relocate the samples to another disk. The original paths still exist so the software doesn't get confused, but the sample folders are links (created with the mklink command). You could do the same for presets, but it's probably not worth the bother.

^^^ Agreed. Then stack that amazing voice three times and layer her sibling's voice, and you've got Enya before Enya was a thing. She was a pretty good drummer, too. As you listen to this, keep in mind there is no Autotune, no thickening plugins or exciters. Just some plate reverb, LA-2A and a vintage Neumann. This song was originally recorded by the Toronto band Klaatu, who many thought were the Beatles incognito. They weren't, but clearly were Beatles fans as evidenced by the Mellotron flutes, slapback slide guitar, Lennon-esque vocal backed by some "whoa whoa yeh"s.

Ah, yes, that makes sense. IR files can take up a lot of space. They are, after all, wave files.

I'm curious...what kinds of file extensions do you see in there? I have only a handful of Waves products, but there is only 71 MB in my \program files (x86)\waves folder. That includes old install bundles going back to 2015 (IIRC, the year Waves first offered a non-iLok option, and consequently the year I bought my first Waves product). The plugins themselves are typically half a megabyte in size, and though I don't follow Waves anymore I'm pretty sure their catalog hasn't expanded to 20,000 plugins.

Best album, IMO, is Songs from the Wood...the epitome of prog. Why do I think it represents the best of prog? For starters, it's musically sophisticated but not pretentious. Like all good prog, it has a theme. It blends diverse instrumentation and styles. The musicianship is outstanding, clean and free of cheap gimmicks (e.g. no deedly-deedly triplets or kick hits that sound like a Harley idling). No Autotune. It imitates no one, follows no trendy formulas, dares to stand entirely on its own. This, to me, is what defines great prog.

Sure you can bypass your room. Just open the door and step outside. Snow is a great acoustical absorber.

That error is most likely caused by a plugin in your project that didn't register properly. And it may not have registered because something went wrong during its installation, e.g. a dependency is missing. Unfortunately, there wasn't anything helpful in the log. There were a lot of "deleted registry key" entries for various VST3 plugins. I don't know if that means they couldn't scan. Check a couple of them, see if they're in your plugin list, e.g. bx_limiter or Maag EQ4. If they are there, then those log entries don't mean anything. Normally, my next step to determine which plugin is blowing up would be the crash dump. However, I'm assuming you haven't analyzed a crash dump before (here's an old post of mine about using WinDbg to do that), so the next best thing is the Windows Event Log. It should have a corresponding entry to the error shown in your screenshot, and if the error was raised by a plugin, it will show the internal name of the plugin. In the end it may turn out to be a plugin that didn't install and/or register properly. Of course, you can always narrow it down by deleting plugins one-by-one until the project plays. However you do it, once you find the suspect plugin you can re-install it and if that doesn't do the trick, take it out of your project and substitute it with something else.

If all your plugins are showing up, disable the automatic scan-on-startup. There's no need for it until you next install a new VST. What's probably happening is that one of your plugins isn't initializing during the scan, and may be what's raising the access violation. There is a debugging feature in the scanner that can help you zero in on which plugin is having the problem. Press "P" to open the Preferences window and scroll down to VST Settings. Under "Scan Options", select "Manual Scan" from the dropdown list. That'll prevent the automatic scan. Check the box labeled "Generate Scan Log". Click the "Reset" button, then click "Scan". After the scan completes, the debug log will be in %appdata%\cakewalk\logs. You can open it in Notepad. Feel free to post its contents here if you can't make sense of it.

I'd be concerned about the device being powered exclusively via USB, having myself encountered intermittent problems with multiple bus-powered devices caused by the port not being able to deliver enough current. My laptop has four USB ports, two of them USB-2 and two of them are USB-3. If yours is set up like that, make sure your interface is plugged into a USB-3 port. You might want to try a powered USB hub. Interface manufacturers usually counsel against hubs, but that's because most hubs are just passive splitters. Even if that doesn't fix your problem, you might still appreciate the hub as it helps keep cables tidy. But before spending money, I'd investigate the LatencyMon report further. It's telling you that there's an issue with network interrupt latency. That's a common problem with wi-fi adapters. Step one should therefore be turning off the laptop's wi-fi. That's actually standard advice for laptops in general if you want to use them for audio. Power management is another area to look into. USB ports are sometimes shut down after being idle for awhile, and sometimes don't come back to life without a reboot. This doesn't sound like your problem, but it won't hurt anything to disable that feature anyway. You do this through Device Manager, not your power settings. You'll find the ports under "universal serial bus controller" in the device list. Right-click on each of them and select Properties -> Power Management. There should be a checkbox that says "allow the computer to turn off this device to save power".

Before anyone gloats over his post count, especially here in the Deals neighborhood, you might want to compare cclarry's numbers. To the topic: I think I'm done buying hardware altogether, at least for 2021. I've got a good controller, decent speakers, functional interface, SSDs and two big monitors. Pretty much set for the studio. Now, if live music ever makes a comeback, I might actually open that Sweetwater catalog again.

I dropped a big one this morning, but didn't report it. Oops, thought I was still in the CH... I'll second the motion to acknowledge Larry's efforts. I get most of the same emails he does, but am not always diligent about actually reading them. So thanks, Larry.

Collin, you've probably gathered that there are a "zillion" (to quote CJ) possible reasons for not getting any sound. With some additional information, I'm sure we'll be able to help you out. Both Kalle's and CJ's posts ask good questions. Let us know if you don't understand them.

Collin's new here and was unsure which forum to post in. He made the mistake of first asking this question in the Coffee House, with predictable results, lol. But yeh, it's best to post just once, and the main Cakewalk forum is indeed the best place.

Don't replace your interface just yet. When you hear the volume jump, do you see a corresponding rise in the meters on the master bus? If so, it's not your interface. Is it repeatable or random? Does it happen at the same point in the playback, or is that random? If it's repeatable, globally bypass all plugins and see if the problem goes away. If it does, you can then start looking at plugins. If not, disable all automation and see if the problem goes away. If it does, you can start looking for stray MIDI CCs. Is it specific to one project? Does it occur with a new, minimal project? Does it persist if you freeze all tracks? I doubt it's Cakewalk that's boosting the gain. We'd all have noticed such an obvious bug. The challenge is to narrow the focus of investigation to a specific project, synth, sample or track and drill down from there.

Sadly, a square room can never be acoustically flattened, only deadened. That's your best strategy: absorption, lots of it, and then artificially un-dampen it with reverb. But before you trap yourself in a fiberglass coffin, arm yourself with knowledge. There is a lot of free information available online, starting with Ethan Winer's RealTraps website. Ethan sells acoustic treatments, but he's such a great guy that he freely tells you how they work, why they work, and even how to build your own if you can't afford to buy his products. If that whets your curiosity, grab a copy of the Master Handbook of Acoustics by F. Alton Everest. It's an intimidating tome, but written very clearly so it's quite accessible. Another good one that's actually more targeted to your own situation is Floyd Toole's Sound Reproduction, especially if you're considering adding a subwoofer to your rig.

All self-respecting monitor makers strive for neutrality and full-spectrum response. That's what qualifies them to be called reference monitors. Expensive models do better at that, but there are diminishing returns as you raise your budget. Spending an enormous amount on monitors is truly a waste of money unless you address the real reason speakers lie to you: acoustics. The primary reason you can't trust your monitors isn't their fault, it's the room. The influence of room acoustics is easily 100x greater than the effect of limitations in the speakers themselves. Every room has a distinct signature, which means no matter how hard you try, no one else will hear exactly what you hear. If your space has too strong a personality you are doomed to forever chasing the neutrality that's so important for a universal balance. This phenomenon cannot be avoided through room EQ, no matter how sophisticated. At best, you can only partially mitigate it, and only in one small area. That's because acoustical anomalies differ in different parts of the room. A peak you measure in one place may be a deep valley just a few inches away. Systems such as ARC try to calculate corrections based on multiple measurements, not a bad idea in itself. However, what that really accomplishes is to dial back the adjustments so that helping one area doesn't make another area way worse. My advice: buy whatever well-regarded speakers you can comfortably afford - don't mortgage the house - and reserve half your budget for acoustic treatments.

I'm a sucker for Scandinavian epic symphonic metal. Always gets my heartrate up. This crew does it the better than anybody.

Yup, it's all about the performance. I'm sick of this song, but I've watched this performance at least a dozen times and get a lump in my throat every time.

Monark is probably the most broadly representative of classic synth architecture, and thus will give you a solid foundation for learning other, more sophisticated synths. In any case, John's advice is good for any VI or FX plugin, namely learning all you can about each one, one at a time. With that large a collection, you won't get bored for literally years.

Here's what Adobe Audition shows. Check to make sure that before MP3 encoding there is sufficient headroom. The encoding process can increase your peak values by up to 3 dB. Min Sample Value: -32768 -32768 Max Sample Value: 32767 32767 Peak Amplitude: 0 dB -.01 dB Possibly Clipped: 12 14