mettelus

I am with @57Gregy on this one. An interface conflict like in the OP is very common when it is in use by another program (even Windows). It seems from the OP that you have both applications open, and since Guitar Rig does have recording capability (for the looper), I am assuming you opened Guitar Rig first and it locked your Scarlett on you. Guitar Rig should only be used as a VST internal to SONAR in this case. Windows is also the gatekeeper, so another thing to verify is that both "Allow applications to take exclusive control of this device" and "Give exclusive mode applications priority" are unchecked in the Properties->Advanced tab for the Scarlett in the Windows Sound Control Panel. Even silly things like browsing YouTube or such can cause Windows to give control of your interface to the browser with those options checked. Windows is very much "first come, first served" so I even go so far as to explicitly assign the RealTek chip as the default sound device in Windows so that most apps won't even see the interface unless you assign it within the app itself. The first app that sees that interface and uses it can lock it on you.

There have been various iterations of pop ups/warnings over the years to varying degrees of effectiveness for missing components, but this situation warrants a pop up when the transport is started. A pop up with "You currently have no output device selected. Would you like to select one now?" and a button that either drills them directly into the preferences page or a routing blurb would help new folks a lot. A routing map of the current project would be true icing on the cake, but this particular one is a (not-so-obvious) showstopper. Even something as simple as highlighting the drop down in the Master to RED when "none" is selected would make people take notice (they could be monitoring a buss instead, but it would make the situation more obvious just in case).

+1 to the above. Another thing to be cognizant of is that many "solutions" are static in two regards... 1) they assume collapse to mono, and 2) they often apply a solution that will not change during the duration of a song unless you actively intercept that. While neither is inherently "bad," they tend to ignore two other important elements, panning and faders. Another thing to keep in mind is to focus on elements in the same way that you want the listener to track them (even with simple faders/automation) to give space/focus when introduced then move them more into the background if they are repetitive. Even with frequency collisions, the louder will take precedence at that point in time, so EQ may not always be the right choice for the situation. While many "unmasking" tools can be super helpful, just beware of things that give you a static solution irrespective of the dynamics of the song itself, verse, chorus, yada yada, across an entire track.

Did you add the other "recommended" things by accident? On checkout all you need is an email, name, and zip code to claim it, it is free. You are required to create an account with them after that or it will not activate.

I was pleasantly surprised that it automatically finds installed apps and embeds itself as a plugin. It even found Photoshop from CS5.5 (failed to install automatically, but it added manually just fine). It is rather rare to find apps that support the "pre-CC" Adobe products.

iZotope Ozone 9 Advanced. The stem separation is also available in the Standard version.

As rsinger noted, this isn't a device issue, this is indicative of a routing issue. You may have opened a project without the initial Master output connected so it may have defaulted to "none" on you at that point. If you saved it after that point, the routing will continue to have no Master out until you assign it manually to something that Cakewalk can see (via Windows). It is always good practice to have devices connected and online before launching the app that needs them.

Exactly! Some bean products even come with warnings for good reason!

Frequency masking is a psycho-acoustic effect whereby frequencies only 2-3dB lower in volume begin to get "drowned out," so the EQ approach is much more surgical to mixing. Many compressors affect the entire frequency spectrum, so ducking can "pump" frequencies that were never an issue to be unmasked anyway and become obvious very quickly. If you are using instruments with a wide frequency output (particularly synths), the EQ approach allows for the rest of the spectrum (that has no masking issues) to shine through without affecting it. An extreme example for clarification... ducking a bass track from a vocal would be moot and actually cause the bass to drop out with every phrase being sung.

This was actually a side issue in the situation I had mentioned above. She had had minimal exposure to recording/DAW usage and not developed an ear for listening at that point, so I found myself constantly searching for visual aids to drive explanations home. I ended up having her Bounce to Track(s) fairly frequently when she started out so that she could visually see those changes on her own till she developed an ear for them. Barring a few exceptions, waveform changes due to tweaks, and especially FX, can only be visualized by baking them in on a Bounce to Track(s). For real-time monitoring, SPAN is also a good tool to monitor changes since you can use instances side-by-side to "straddle" the FX in question, as well as it being light-weight enough that you can use it pretty much anywhere and everywhere you need to "see" in a project.

Be VERY careful about making assumptions like this. This comment stuck out for me so much that it is worth jacking the brakes on for a second. In order to use compression, you need to understand compression... how it functions, when to use it, and when it can become your worst enemy. This link is a good reference, and particularly of note is the "Anatomy of a Compressor" graphic near the top. It is good to get intimately familiar with those parameters, and they are common to any compressor (whether you have adjustments for them or not). To Alan's point, a "heavy" compressor is typically to tame plosives or spikes, and often set with high thresholds and high ratios (similar to a limiter), just enough to bring those spikes down into a reasonable range without affecting the "core" audio. After that, a "lighter" compressor with a lower threshold and low ratio (typically 2:1 maximum) would be used to even out the bulk of the audio content, and is often used to then feed more elements of an FX chain (which in turn can have thresholds as well). As Craig mentioned, this is highly dependent on the actual material, what you are trying to achieve, and what the rest of any FX is doing. To the points above, it is worth reiterating that there is no "one size fits all" solution. Just be cautious of this mindset. **** As to what options to use, that can be 100% personal preference. Several months ago someone had asked for vocal help with the caveat of buying nothing new. For her situation, TDR Nova was used, in addition to CbB's Sonitus Multiband. For free options, Nova has the advantage of being a dynamic compressor (as well as the visual aid of seeing the output as you make adjustments), and Sonitus Multiband was useful on a sibilant issue she was facing. Again, everything is content-specific, so learn to reach for the right tools for the job at hand and adjust accordingly.

Have to be mindful of serious posts in the CH. Just the title made me half expect to see this Now I am not sure if I should be disappointed or not.

Zero experience with these, but a generic "best [whatever]" will often yield a buyersguide.org link near the top worth perusing. Best Portable Keyboards give this one, and the Blackstar models seems to hit the top of that list for foldable variants. Once you dig into review on things, I find the negative reviews tend to be the most useful (if they took the time to actually write something substantial in it). It is also good if you can put the price point into the "expendable" category, so if it gets dropped into a lake you won't freak out about it.

You are almost destined to come to grips with this one if using a 256GB C drive. Once you start working with audio/video files, the temp files alone go into GB range quickly (most apps allow for directing temp files storage locations, but few purge them on their own). Some installers also leave rather massive files in the Windows/Installer (hidden) directory for each version you have installed... that directory alone can take up 10% of the C drive if not monitored. Even uninstalling can leave orphans, and PatchCleaner is the only utility that comes to mind in dealing with those easily. The advantage of a smaller C drive has always been with imaging. xcopy/robocopy are quick ways to archive data files, but when safeguarding the OS, an image is required. Oddly enough, the reason I stepped up to a 512GB C drive was that the Recovery partition defaults to 500MB, so when I swapped drives, I increased that to 1GB. Once that partition went over 90%, the boot ups started getting funky, and the drive was being degraded due to usage anyway. Even after that swap, I still keep the C drive small (210GB for 804 installed apps) for imaging reasons. When things start bubbling over the 4GB range, I start considering if it is worth a junction or outright uninstalling.

This is wise advice. A quick alternative to populating the background track is to shift-drag clips from take lanes into another "Background Vocal" track. Shift-drag preserves timing (CTRL-drag makes a copy, CRTL-Shift-drag does both) so in your case, just using Shift-drag will move them out of the original track (leaving holes from where you took them) so you are not confused by what remains in the original track. Quick edit - You could also construct the Lead Vocal track the same way to avoid confusion. Have the original track with all of the takes, then shift-drag clips to the appropriate (Lead or Background) track... then when you are done, everything left in the original track can safely be deleted.

As silly as this sounds, I had this happen a while back and seemed to be during the acquisition by NI. Both Native Access and the Product Portal had updates that didn't automatically prompt the update, but did affect the installs. I cannot remember the exact recipe I used, but be sure you have the most recent Product Portal version installed and try a re-installation from within that. IIRC, there was some fruity log-in requiring me to log into Native Access (with my iZotope credentials of all things) to get the Product Portal to log back in. I would hope that was fixed by now, but it is possible that is what has happened. If that and a manual VST rescan doesn't work, try shooting an email to iZotope... they are pretty responsive there.

As long as the audio wasn't clipped during recording (i.e., it was not clipped at the interface) and you are only seeing it from FX during mixing, you can isolate that section of audio (split it at both ends), then use clip gain (CTRL-mouse drag down) to reduce the gain on that region specifically to make it better match prior sessions. But if that was clipped by the interface during recording (i.e., the 24-bit audio written to disc), then re-recording is a better consideration.

Just to clarify this for you (I tend to send one-liners from my phone in posts), the only channels available on a stereo interface are left and right (front). Even the center channel in a surround system is a separate speaker channel, so panning anything "center" when using surround pans (those pan knobs are a quick giveaway) is telling the DAW to mono output on that channel. In a stereo environment that will output the same volume from both speakers, but in surround that is its own channel that doesn't exist for you. Unless you are mixing and playing back on a surround system, channels like center, right-rear, left-rear, bass, etc. won't be available. Stick to the channels you have available in the environment you are using, which are stereo in your case.

Why are you using surround on a stereo interface? One reason you can be losing sound is because you have channels set up in surround that the interface doesn't have available.

The only two things I have noticed that will cause these issues are 1) using junctions for the main apps (things like Battery are highly sensitive to this one) and 2) some registry cleaners will clear the registration data on libraries.

That second video you posted is very well done. The only thing to note is he used needle-nose pliers on the jack nuts on the face... it is much better to use a ratchet (or even adjustable wrench in a pinch) on those so you do not scratch them (same for guitar tuners if you ever pop them out).

The other thing that came to mind is @John Vere may have already claimed the demo in the past (even V6 has been out almost a year and a half now). If you already claimed the demo previously (whether you used it or not), as soon as you log into your account, your only option would be to buy it. IIRC, just by logging into your account, there should be records of everything downloaded for that account (including trials). I do, however, find this odd propensity to promulgate disinformation rather entertaining. It seems to rear its ugly head any time "self-interest" is involved.

Just from the overview, VEA has "most" of the easy screen from Nectar 4 on it, so it makes me wonder if it is simply a lesser version of that section. If so, that is actually driving modules behind the scenes (you just cannot edit them), but may be a very viable alterative to Nectar 4 for some folks.

You shouldn't have to take off any components (possibly the knob on the top itself if the pot is actually mounted to the bottom half... you'll know as soon as you take out those 6 end screws, but I'd wager that pot is mounted to the top plate). Most components are mounted, then wired, so you just need access to the contacts from "inside." I suspect it has a single printed circuit board (PCB) mounted to the bottom half (and should not need to take this off). Unless they did something funky, just opening it will let you access what you need to clean. Quick update for clarification: The slot behind the wiring tabs on the back of pots is direct access to the wiper internally.

Gibson has their nostalgia kicks, but the market they need to appeal to only have grandparents who would remember these. Weird tidbit on the wiki page for the originals... "according to Gibson's records 204 were sold in 1961." As these cost more than a HELIX Floor, it does baffle me about the price point as well.