John Bradley

If I'm reading you correctly, the tip of one of your 1/4" plugs broke off, and is stuck inside a 1/4" jack in your interface? If that's the case, open that bad boy up and see what type of 1/4" jacks its using (there's only a couple possibilities that everyone uses). If the jack is open in any way, you might be able to easily pull the tip out the other way (essentially pulling it all the way through the jack, rather than trying to pull it out the way it came in). Possibly pushing it out the back of the jack by inserting something thin and pointy (say, a wooden kitchen skewer, or a small screwdriver). Worst case, if the jack is completely sealed and there doesn't seem any way to open it up to get the offending broken bit out of it, you could just desolder the jack and replace it entirely, with a new, less-broken-off-tip-inside-of-it jack. I mean, the fact that the jack (apparently) ate one of your 1/4" plugs would seem to indicate that it's gone feral, and needs to be put down for the common good...

But the real question: Is it pronounced "BEE-can", or "buh-CAHN"?

The articulation doesn't apply to a whole clip. If you watch further you can see a part where he's got an articulation that's one note long in the middle of a phrase played in a different manner. I can see some utility in that it gives you human readable indication of the play style, rather than you having to remember "why is there an F# two octaves below the lowest note in my G chord", and "which particular articulation is that, anyway"? Also of potential interest to those who aren't using string/horn/orchestral libraries with many types of articulation: the 'articulations' don't have to output midi notes, but can do various 'soft' transforms to the existing notes (octave up, arpeggiator, etc.). Not in my top 10 list of features, but all improvements to software that isn't costing us a penny (other than Larry's deals!) are to be applauded.

If the midi data was deleted by truncating the beginning or end of a clip, yeah it should still exist if you stretch the clip back. On the other hand, if you delete individual notes from a clip via the PRV, those are gone once you close the file (ie, can no longer ‘undo’ the deletion).

Yet another copy... Briefly played around with the one I got for free from PluginBoutique, never even bothered to install it on my studio computer. Sounded fine, but I'm already drowning in VSTs and VSTis that don't require me to come to grips with a whole new 'way of life'.

I'm sure we've all accidentally deleted bits in other tracks by having more tracks selected than the one you think you're editing... Can you just go and drag the right edge of the relevant clips back to where they should be? When you delete things in Cakewalk it's generally non-destructive; the data's still there on the disk, it's just a matter of telling CW it should be playing it (again).

There's a command "Go To Thru" that does what you want, though by default it's not bound to any key. Go to Edit | Preferences | Customization | Keyboard Shortcuts and bind it as desired.

I'm not certain the "Default setting for New Projects" can override or change your ASIO settings - that setting predates the existence of ASIO, and may only be able to control the sample rate for the other two audio driver modes. But don't quote me on that. In any event, the line below Buffer Size says "Effective latency at 96kHz", indicating that that's the sample rate your interface is running. Go to the ASIO panel and change it as desired.

See Preferences | File | Audio Data to set the bit depth of any recordings. The unchangeable '24 bits' in Driver Settings indicates the bit depth for all communication between CW and your audio driver. If you record at 16 bits* recorded data (coming in at 24bits) will be scaled down to fit in the +/-32K range of 16 bit data, (presumably) expanded during playback (CW mixes internally at 32 or 64 bit floating-point), and those floating-point values will be scaled down to fit the allowable 24 bit range when sent to the audio interface. * Don't do that. Disk space is essentially free, and the added dynamic range of 24 bit recording is well worth the tradeoff. If we record and mix at 24 bits we expect that to be what is indicated. Your recording always comes in from the interface at 24 bits, though you can throw some resolution away and write the files at 16 bits if so desired. Mixing is always done internally at 32 or 64 bit float, and is always going to be played back at the 24 bits that the interface supports.

I ran into the same problem in the past (and for a while, stopped using Elastique Pro for the offline render, as that seemed especially problematic). I've recently gone back to using Elastique (Efficient / Pro) for realtime and rendering. I use it on all my guitar tracks -- given the latency of my system and/or my sucky playing, I'm invariably 'hot' to varying degrees. Anyway, the secret I've found to having it work without introducing huge random timing shifts: use as few markers as possible. I'll typically use one marker per bar (or one every couple of bars, if I can get away with it) and disable all the others. I always visually/audially inspect the render (by bouncing to another track and then dragging it right below the original and listening to it 'dry') before tossing the original. Haven't had any problems since I started doing that. --- Another tip to anyone playing with AudioSnap: if you're working on a signal that's 'clean' (like a vocal, or an acoustic guitar), make sure your markers are moved to slightly before the transients. That way, if there's any difference in the amount of stretching/shrinking going on before and after the marker, the change won't be as noticable. You can sometimes hear weird phasing issues if the marker is in the middle of a chord. Put it right before the attack and the sound of the attack will cover up any such issues. Probably. This isn't as much of an issue if, say, the audio is dry guitar (feeding into an amp sim in the FX bin), and the amp is heavily distorted.

I'd find it handy to display over the top of the PRV, just so I can remember what the chord was supposed to be when I'm doing string or horn harmonies and arrangements. Start inverting the notes, spreading them out over a couple of octaves, and adding random suspensions for flavor and it's easy to lose track of what chord you're were working on. Especially if the chords change frequently and/or you're working in the higher register and can't see what the bass is doing.

I just downloaded the demo (of the full Soundtoys 5 bundle, including the EffectRack). It would appear to do what I want. If I select Automation | EffectRack in CbB, it gives me a nice long list of Bypass, Slot [1-6] solo, and then all the parameters for each module in the rack (e.g. "S2: EchoBoy: Feedback"). Assuming they don't braindamage it in some way if you only own the EffectRack, but I'm betting that they don't. Wouldn't exactly be a fair/accurate demo if they did! Interesting Bug: If I load up a rack-level preset and go to the Automation pulldown, all the entries are shown as 'Unnamed'. But if I drag any module into the rack, it correctly updates the list of automatable parameters with their proper names. Not an issue if you start with an empty rack and populate it by hand. A minor annoyance otherwise. There's a gear icon next to each module you throw in the rack (on the right side, above the power and solo buttons). Clicking that opens a preset chooser for the module in question. So, I'm thinking this falls roughly into the category of 'no-brainer'.

Question for any of you who have the Rack version: can you automate all the individual effect parameters of the various units in the rack? I'd assume you could certainly do so with the standalone effects, but question whether the Rack exposes that full functionality.

I'd comment, but y'know, I'm a woman's man... no time to talk. --- Also, the lyrics to You Should Be Dancin' get kind of depressing when you're playing the song at a gig and hardly anyone is dancing. Ask me how I know.

And if I buy $100 worth of those drives, I expect them to throw in two more for free! Of course, they'll only let you install them in a single machine at a time, so that's a bummer...

'X' will toggle Aim Assist on and off. When it's off, you'll lose both the time display and the vertical line. Alt-X will toggle whether the time display is shown when Aim Assist is enabled.

I bought Babylon a couple of months ago for $9 all by itself. I'm pleased with it, certainly for the price. Does all the virtual analog/subtractive-synth stuff that one gets from the classics (Moog, Prophet, Juno, Prophet) in reasonably clean single-screen UI. Lots of presets, built-in fx, etc. It's a fine thing to buy for under $10 next time Plugin Boutique has a freebie-with-purchase that you want to get your hands on. Know nothing about InstaChord and InstaScale, so no comment on those. FWIW, I made extensive use of Babylon on my "Too Much Time on My Hands" Styx cover a while back.

This so-called 'metric system' is more complicated than I was led to believe.

FWIW, I was using a "DIY Eyeball" thing for a while - basically some acoustic foam wrapped around my RODE NT-1 with a hole cut in the front and a pop filter in front of the hole, but decided I didn't quite like what it did to the sound and went back to bare mic + pop filter. Need to play around with isolation techniques some more, though like most of us, it's complicated by the fact that I need to see and operate the screen from wherever I'm singing. So standing in a closet isn't exactly feasable.

Cool, a shoutout from actual Cakewalk Forum Royalty! Thanks, glad me and my femmy alter-ego could make a respectable go at it... even if by the end of the song we want to kill each other. ?

Very cool. Reminded me of some of Adrian Belew's more avant garde pieces, e.g. various tracks off of Desire Caught by the Tail. Thanks!

Fair enough. I take "very digital" as a complement! Big fan of clarity. Wasn't especially trying to emulate the sound of the old recording, just the various performances. I love the (admittedly artificial) sound of big crisp drums, and use them on pretty much everything. FWIW, if Mr. Loaf & Co. were to perform (or re-record) the thing live, I suspect the drums would sound closer to what I went with than those on the original recording. Different time, different expectations. And thanks for listening and giving some feedback - most appreciated!

And in my particular use case, where the track/automation lane is the size I like it to be when working on it, the volume change per pixel is 0.4db, so I can boost or cut a particular phrase or whatever by 0.4db, 0.8db, 1.2db, etc. And those are audible differences. And doing so requires sticking my face up to the screen and carefully only moving the node by 1 or 2 pixels, which is both less precise than I might like and requires an overly fiddly bit of mouse precision. Brain cycles better spent on listening. Haven't personally needed very precise horizontal placement/adjustment but can certainly see the use for same if I was carefully trimming tails, as per your example. And a "precision node drag" modifier key would be a welcome addition as well. Could live without keyboard adjustment if I could get full precision dragging within the existing track height and horizontal zoom level.

FWIW, "Bad" was much later (1987), after "Thriller". You might be thinking "Off the Wall", which was his first solo album, released in 1979. Suspect you're a few years older than me. First 'new' album I believe I had (that wasn't the Beatles, "Hair" or "Jesus Christ Superstar" albums I swiped from mom) was KISS Alive II in 1977.

Thanks! Hey, it was only 43 years ago... we're just getting warmed up! Didn't buy Bat until much later, but I do remember buying The Wall the day it came out in 1979. Sides 1 and 3 spent the subsequent 2 months on my turntable.