mettelus

A lot comes down to personal preference, familiarity, and efficiency for what you are trying to do. Most tools have core features in common, if not outright identical, so it can become "six one way, half a dozen to the others" as far as usage very quickly. I got MPS6 a few months back, but Nectar 4 in particular has a massive CPU hit for its analyze function... so much so that it seems to cause audio engines to hiccup on most machines running any sort of tracking buffers. New features are becoming fewer and further between, so that upgrade train has sort of run its course for me personally. O8N2 was the biggest jump in iZotope capability IMO; not a lot to get excited about since. This comment is also the same boat I am in, so I cannot speak to FabFilter usage/performance at all. That said, I did make a joke just yesterday about upgrade trains, yada yada, and threw FF under the bus out as the first example that came to mind... synopsis was that I got the MCompleteBundle over 6 years ago, so use them as the litmus test for anything "new" I might consider... if I had bought into FF and upgraded I would have spent the same amount and been left with future paid updates coming some day anyway. As it stands, Melda has already given back rather substantially via free upgrades and new additions (over 100 plugins now) versus a handful of FF ones I "would have had" instead. Melda does have an aesthetic liability and lack of tutorials on some features that make them truly stellar, but neither of those have been an issue for me personally.

Gotcha. I have noticed a few inconsistencies with things, but rarely use any of the processes other than normalization from time to time (even that has an issue of not allowing you to type "-" in front of the number, and all values must be negative, or zero, nice "feature"). Unless you are specifically looking to find issues, things like clip gain (CTRL-left drag up/down on clips) or using a limiter and then baking it might be better alternatives. The clip gain with a mouse is probably fastest in your scenario.

OMG... I just looked at Amazon and there is a "sponsored" brand there that looks identical to Focusrite but has the name "Dacimora"... make sure the product is Focusrite!!! What actually ticks me off more with this is I specifically searched for "focusrite scarlett 3rd gen usb audio interface" and those fakes come up first. Either the Focusrite 3rd Gen Scarlett Solo or Scarlett 2i2 (a little more, but with a few more features) will do what you are asking.

Might need more clarification on this. Applying gain does just that, so the dynamic range of the track will remain intact. When you said "held consistent at -6dB," that seems more like a limiter/heavy compressor function. Unless you drive a signal into a ceiling, it will retain the fluctuations of the original.

I am glad you found the issue. Are you able to completely separate the output/monitoring and input signals without using the mixer at all, i.e., just plugging headphones and the mic into the computer itself... or better asked, to only have one of those two signal paths using the hardware mixer? Another side question is are you just recording audio from a mic, or from other line inputs (instruments) as well?

That is the GUI for the original VocalSynth, VocalSynth2 has a different GUI. I have never seen a way to re-skin 2 to look like 1. Is that what you are asking?

Another thing to check is anything (and I mean anything) that has mixing capability... DAW, VSTs, hardware, etc. I had an old hardware mixer years ago that had bleed between the channels (which was actually because the fader didn't completely zero out on one channel), so the troubleshooting on this may be more complex than just the DAW. That bleed could be coming from any of those, but pay particular attention to signal routing and every component that has a mix/monitoring function to it. If you shut the monitor chain completely off (at the DAW) does that go away? If so, you should be able to try isolating things in that signal path to see which is making it back into the input side. Even silly things like unplugging the headphones to check that connection may help. In the digital realm, crosstalk is typically more like "noise," so a signal coming back in seems more like either routing or hardware.

@Chandler pops in from here from time to time, and I am not familiar with MSuperLooper specifically. It seems you are having two issues here, 1) the loops not recording into MSuperLooper itself and 2) the loops not being seen by Cakewalk? I am not sure where MSuperLooper defaults to saving captured audio (maybe just internally in RAM), but it does have an export function (if you do not play it through an Aux Track). As far as it not recording under your situation, you might also want to reach out to Melda to ask them directly, since they are the experts on it.

I wanted to bump this one quick, because Chandler did a video when Scaler EQ came out to do basically the same thing with MDynamicEQ (currently on sale for $19 (regularly $76)). It is a little more involved to set it up with MDynamicEQ; however, this is very much worth noting since it uses functionality embedded into most Melda products that many folks either 1) do not use or 2) (more often) do not even know exist. I actually prefer videos that show this capability of the plugins over the "easy screen" overview, since the power of Melda plugins is in the editing view/multi-parameters. Unfortunately the number of tutorials covering editing view/multi-parameters rarely have "real world" examples included.

Actually docx were specifically designed to prevent that. A MS file needs to end in "m" to support macros... i.e., docm, xlsm, etc. As far as the OP, have you walked through the Quick Start tutorial on the Melda site? There are several instances where the looper will not do anything, and there are multiple ways to get it to record (a couple require the DAW transport to be in motion, and yet another doesn't start recording until bar 2). Try out the different methods in this video (also be sure the "play" button on the track you are recording to is lit up):

Boy, if they had a good set of lawyers, they could have trademarked the "subscription/membership plans versus perpetual license" long before it came into vogue! The casino aspect probably makes up for that lack of foresight and then some though.... shrewd diversification of assets there.

If those takes are really gone (i.e., you deleted them and rendered the file), check the name of the track you are working on, then see with a new cwp file if you can import an earlier version (same track name, but lower number on the end) of that track from the Project/Audio Folder. If you have not intentionally purged that folder, there should be track audio with the takes in it still there (probably the largest version of the track file in that directory). Be sure to do that search with a new cwp (project) first so that you do not mess up the work in your current project. Once you find it, you can replace the one in the actual project.

Also... two temp directories on your computer that always collect things while the machine is running, but never purge themselves on their own are: C:\Windows\Temp C:\Users\[username]\AppData\Local\Temp Everything in those two directories can be safely deleted (and ones that will not are being used by open programs... just "skip" those). Also, "AppData" is a hidden directory, so to view it, you need to change search options in Windows Explorer (View->Options->Change folder and search options... then at the top of that popup... View->then check "Show hidden files, folders, and drives"). If you have never cleaned those two folders, you may have GBs worth of temporary files in them.

Can you explain this further please? I am not sure what you mean with "link loaded files like in sound one"... both "link" and "sound one" (Studio One?) are confusing me. Also at the end when you say "it will bounce" makes its seem like "it doesn't work"... "bounce" is actually a rendering option (to bake FX permanently into a sound file), so it doesn't quite make sense in that sentence. However... That said, what I "think" you are trying to do is import audio into a project but not create a copy of it (meaning you have only one copy on your computer and Cakewalk will reference (link) it "wherever it is"). If that is it, then in Edit->Preferences->File->Audio Data... uncheck "Always Copy Imported Audio Files" at the top. Bear in mind that if you do any operation on that file that will bounce (render) it, you will get a new copy in the Project/Audio Folder. Also if you ever move the original file, when you open that cwp file later on, it will make you find that referenced file first, or it will not load into the project. This is why the Project/Audio Folder structure is preferred for housekeeping reasons.

Hmmm, so if walking only, you could either be on the "Sidewalk to Hell" or "Pathway to Heaven"?

That alone would be a reason to consider using only one Kontakt instance on SP and leave it at that. Unless you have finite control over those 5 voices, you could easily load a patch preset that is close to clipping already (a lot of presets default to "fairly hot" as it is). I do not own SP either, but if you have a solution that works, I would stick to that and not waste time trying to make it do something it doesn't want to do. There are a lot of VSTs that have quirky response under select conditions; some have solutions, others have workarounds. The ones that have neither are the ones to watch out for.

^^^^ Depending on what Kontakt is doing internally, you may just be adding sounds together (on the same output). Kontakt has its own internal routing and mixer, so even though you can literally do a lot with a single instance, it can be confusing as to what is going on unless you know the what the "guts" are doing. Because of this it is sometimes simpler limit instruments in each instance of Kontakt (and use more instances of Kontakt itself), depending on familiarity with Kontakt and how complex the project is. You just replied as I was typing... what are the meters on the outputs of Kontakt showing you?

Thanks for posting that. I had just used that as an example for someone who had no music theory knowledge to give them a visual demonstration. Getting through some of the terms initially was a bit rough, but Melodyne (Editor and above) is a useful tool to look at an entire song in a "score" fashion. That visual assist made explanation far more simpler once terms were out of the way. "Seven Bridges Road" was just the first song that came to mind, but was a good segue into more discussion.

I think Lukas owns the Studio One Toolbox site, and being a developer, he put a lot of handy tools there that are not available specifically within S1 (he just coded other tools people might find useful, like pulling track templates from other project files). Even the main page is a drag/drop interface to convert Cubase Expression Maps/Patch Scripts or Cakewalk Instrument Definition Files into S1 "Sound Variations" (which are beefed up "Articulation Maps"). He also has 400 tutorial videos linked on that site binned into applicable categories, which speeds up searching for things as an alternative to blindly YTing for answers.

^^^^ It is important to point this out, but it is also in the bold text at the top of the link in the OP in gory detail (for all DAWs). Unfortunately, folks who first came online with CbB do not qualify for a cross-grade, but S1 Artist is given away with a lot of PreSonus products.

It has been so long now that I cannot remember for sure, but didn't the demo "reset" annually so you can try things out once per year?

This is highly dependent on the original track and how it was mixed. Frequency overlaps between instruments can cause phasing issues (i.e., parts of stems end up in other stems), so if you (slightly) modify those and remix they can become transparent. However, if you remove a track entirely, that phasing will persist, and may not be usable even with more surgery. When you say "fairly dense," that is where you may find the limitations of un-mixing stems in short order. Almost every plugin that does this (and has additional repair tools) has a fully functional demo available (RX Standard/Advanced or SpectraLayers Pro), so if this is a one-off situation, you could demo one of those and see how it works for you with that specific track, and at least get that work done with the demo alone.

This is not technically a split (hence the confusion), but a lot of which method you are using depends on how far you need to zoom to see what you are doing. When that zoom makes the region larger than the track view, splits tend to be faster; but if the entire region is in view, ripple delete can be the faster method.

There is an option in Preferences for the which side of the split is selected by default. I forget what that defaults to but mine is set to left, so you can only hit the delete key every second split that way (split start, split end of silence, hit delete key). Also, bear in mind that there is a Process->Remove Silence that you may want to check out... you can set dB level/duration/tails for editing a track and it will remove all of those sections in one quick pass. It works very well for dialogue editing when you have only one track and no worry for alignment to other tracks.

The browser is text-searchable, so that will work most of the time, and a simple sort by vendor/type often gets the rest. I have a feeling that this will fall by the wayside for you over time. Getting caught up in organizing just ends up being a time sink for me.