mettelus

I have a couple of these and they are quite useful (the colors make it easy to track which is which too). I scratch my head at times with these reliability reports. There is not a lot mechanically going on in an HDD (most use the same vendors on piece parts to boot), and about the only way to fail it is to park heads on the media (even on loss of power, the inductive kick would park the heads on power loss 20+ years ago) or to get a nice 100g head slap from dropping it while spinning. I have yet to have a drive fail (even an SSD, and I trust SSDs far less), so seeing stats of less than a year make me really wonder. By the time they are assembled into drives, all of the piece parts have been tested out, and the drive banks run them for a bit to write the sector markers before they ever get packaged (and not a lot of run time is needed on the board to make sure the components don't smoke). That said, the smaller drives were also the ones where we got challenged to make price points way back when. Extremes (either low or high) with capacity I would be wary of due to the "price point challenge" or if the areal density (and bit rate at the outer cylinders) is being pushed. I had to chuckle writing this... the cash cow I ran years ago was 1G per PLATTER (4 max)... boy we have gotten spoiled!

^^^^This is an issue with multiple media-editing programs, and usually linked to the Undo History, or more specifically how many revisions are maintained in the Undo History. That is something to check on each program that can be adjusted (I have noticed some default to 100+ actions). When working with massive files, the Undo History will chew up RAM quickly and begin writing to disk, so you can see things either slow dramatically or become not responsive for extended periods (some recover, others do not). Setting the Undo History to 25 or even 10 for many programs is definitely something to consider. "Saving often" seems to clear that RAM out for most programs (you can no longer "undo" after the save), which is why they run more smoothly. Saving prior to a CPU/RAM-intensive operation is also good practice for this same reason.

Another consideration I didn't notice is if you intend to use plugins. Different vendors cater to certain platforms, but most include PP simply because they are the standard. You should be able to find that readily on FX vendor sites, but PP has always been on the compatible list that I have seen.

Woe to the poor guy that buys this without already owning 7! Forum will get flooded with complaints soon about having to buy 7 to install 8...

Don't overlook other options as well. Local hospitals, police and the phone company are also resources that can be reached out to. You may not be able to get into direct contact via these sources, but you can give them enough information that they can pass on your information (name, contact info, and why you are trying to reach him) to either Terry (hopefully) or his emergency contacts/next of kin. Certain things cannot be divulged to a stranger, but finding out if so-and-so is a registered patient, explaining the situation and asking them to pass your information on is not uncommon. Police do similar with wellness checks, but be conscious of things that might be perceived as invasive by his family.

Yeah, they had a 14-day wait on that first survey, but it came without issue for me. Installed it but never used it ?

+1 I got the V63M years ago cheap. They can be a bit finicky for setup, but once you get how sensitive they are (and/or noise print reduction software) it has been surprisingly good. It is a good idea to keep it boxed when not in use anyway. The diaphragm would not take well to dust.

Nicely done Gary. I am partial to the less reverb version as well. I like this mix a lot. This particular song is difficult to listen to on the first go for me because I will forever link it to the opening scene of "Blazing Saddles." I always anticipate the interruption for the second verse! One of those "rewind, start over" things. Ironically, I grew up 4 miles outside of Camptown, so when I told someone that once they burst out laughing for the same reason (next part of the same scene).

Anything by Yoko Ono...

Giving both of these guys a quick bump because I have been referring them to others. The easiest way to find them now is by sorting the Instruments and Effects forum by "most viewed." They are #1 and #2 now, so stickies are not really required to find them anymore. ?

Giving both of these guys a quick bump because I have been referring them to others. The easiest way to find them now is by sorting the Instruments and Effects forum by "most viewed." They are #1 and #2 now, so stickies are not really required to find them anymore. ?

The OP is faced with audio stretching regardless, the difference is in how many errors are going to be introduced with the process(es) chosen. If adjusting each track/clip separately, it can introduce compounding errors into the result. Once "too deep" into a mix, it is much simpler to finish the mix and apply the audio stretching as a one-time process to keep everything relative. Audio stretching is audio stretching whether is it pre- or post-mix; some programs just do it better than others.

Check out the "Step Sequencer" before passing judgement on yourself (Chapter 27 of the above video set). The fact is that many parts of songs repeat in one way or another, so the copy/paste capabilities of working with MIDI can greatly speed up the initial composition phase. With the Step Sequencer, it automatically enables "Groove Clip Looping," which allows you to drag the right edge of your simple beat to repeat for the duration you choose. Then you can add details by right clicking that track and "Bounce to Clip(s)" allowing you to surgically edit it in the Piano Roll View (PRV). You can even create initially in the PRV, right click a snippet to enable "Groove Clip Looping" and drag it out from there (or even the old standby of copy/paste). The Matrix View (Chapter 26) is another way of looking at repeating loops in a song (similar to how Ableton Live does things), and can be used in tandem with the linear track generation of other tracks, or even recorded to linear tracks. Being primarily a guitar player, my first experience with Cakewalk (20+ years ago now) was to create the drums from "Jack and Diane" in the PRV. Once I got the hang of things, it took me longer to figure out the nuances of the drum fill than to create the rest of the entire track, and I was brute forcing copy/paste wherever it applied.

With being new, importing and tempo mapping audio might be more of a challenge. Joe's recommendation of using default instruments would allow you to do much of the work in the MIDI realm. The Studio Instruments that come with CbB cover most of the bases (soft synths), so you can sketch out a lot of material fairly quickly once you get the hang of things. The other advantage to MIDI is you can replace the soft synths the MIDI is driving at will, so sketching with something that doesn't sound "perfect" can be resolved later on (even collaborating with others can be helpful for this, since you may not own a soft synth you would prefer but someone else does). Working with MIDI, the Piano Roll View (PRV) will become your best friend. Drum beat creation is simpler there, and many of the editing tools allow you to modify your work as notes, rather than as printed audio (which can be trickier, depending). For composition, MIDI tends to be quicker in some respects, then you can flesh out audio tracks as the song structure takes shape. There is no defined method to do things, so play around (and ask around) with things you specifically want to achieve. Many of the folks here have been around for years, and it is incredibly rare to not find someone who can answer a question. Sometimes it is as simple as knowing the term to search for. Another resource that came to mind that you may find useful is a tutorial set from SONAR X2. It was called SWA Complete SONAR X2 and was made freely viewable on YouTube (9 hours of stuff); and the vast majority of it is applicable. Unfortunately, the chapters have no titles, but ShellstaX (from the old forums) posted them here. The nice thing about those is that they are structured by topic, so they are in more bite-sized chunks.

Does the track sound okay and just "look" flatter? If you expand the height of that track, there is a zoom on the left edge of the waveform section. You can expand the waveform visually there (I forget what it defaults to, but you can click and drag the displayed dB level vertically). As far as mixing, yes it is same as any audio track. In fact, most just add FX to that track without "printing" it first to allow them to adjust the MIDI performance. This means the soft synth needs to run each time to get its audio output, but may be preferred depending on the situation. In cases where the CPU is getting taxed (some soft synths are CPU heavy), you can also "freeze" a track which is similar to what you just did (makes an audio file from the MIDI/soft synth and disables the soft synth to free up the CPU).

AAX... What dat?? ?

I just ran through the mechanics, and part of it may be in how you are setting up/recording the instrument track. Try this and see if it works for you... Right click in the left pane of the Track View and select "Insert Instrument..." (this "instrument" is the soft synth I mentioned earlier) In the "Add Track" popup, it defaults to TTS-1 as the Instrument, and Omni as the input. Leave those as is for now, but expand the "Advanced" area at the bottom and choose "Split Instrument Track." What this does is separate the instrument into its MIDI (input) and soft synth (audio output) components. Select "Create" to close that. TTS-1 will open and you will have two tracks, the audio output (icon with MIDI port and keyboard) and below that the MIDI track (icon of only a MIDI port). The Arm (Record) buttons in those tracks are independent, so can record the audio, MIDI, or both. Arm both tracks and play the keyboard to ensure you have sound from the TTS-1. Hit the Record button on the transport (at the top), and record a bit. You should see the upper track recording an audio waveform, and the lower (MIDI) track light up after the first note is played. Stop the transport. That upper track is recorded audio, which I think is what you were seeking? If that works... You can delete the clips in the tracks of what you just recorded (select the clip contents and use the delete key to delete them). Next select your MIDI track from previously (the one you asked about earlier with no audio), and shift-drag (shift preserves the timing ) that MIDI into the lower instrument track (the MIDI track). Arm the upper TTS-1 (the audio) track only, then hit the record button on the transport (top of window). As it plays the MIDI, the audio waveform will record at the top. Play it through till the end, and stop. That top track is now an audio file.

Just to make sure (I am not sure how new you are so do not take offense), MIDI data is simply note information (no audio), so to be able to hear it, you will need to output that MIDI track into a "soft synth," which takes in MIDI and outputs audio. That soft synth is an important middle man to the process. When you record MIDI, that is all you will get (MIDI), but you can then bounce that information to another track (with it being played by a soft synth), which will create an audio track of the performance. You can also create an Aux Track listening to the soft synth, which will allow you to record the soft synth output (real-time). When you record MIDI, you can use that to drive any soft synth (so you can change just the instrument on the synth without affecting performance), so "just recording MIDI" is not a bad thing. Did you use an "Instrument Track" when you recorded your performance, or were you listening to the keyboard output? Based on what you are doing you may want to research "instrument tracks" to get a better feel for how they work.

Frequency masking is what you are dealing with (when sounds compete in the same frequency, just a couple dB advantage in one will make the other(s) lose focus). You do not need to be overzealous with this, so in a live situation a few dB might do the trick. You also might not need to HPF, when a -6 dB shelf may suffice (depending on lower end mud from the guitar), or you can use a combination. Dynamic EQs (where you can lower guitar frequencies based on what the bass is dishing out) is another option, but this is not a must. As far as the "90Hz"... if you jack up the Q on a parametric EQ, this will give you an "audio microscope" that lets you find where the meat of an instrument begins (by adjusting frequency of the "microscope"). Depending on how you are set up, this can vary, but is where you want your shelf/HPF to cut into the signal. As far as the mixing part, if you have 10 minutes this video from 2010 runs through a lot of mixing information in nice detail. It is Dan Worrall doing a promotion for FabFilter Pro-Q, but what he discusses can be done with any plugins. He actually discusses both of the above in the first minute of the video.

Yeah, that was what I was alluding to initially... you would *think* their own media division would actually write a review of the program rather than link some old feature. But then again, the "review" for SO is also just a bunch of links (4 pages of them), with the newest being May 2019 as well.

Um... that "Read our full review here" link for CbB is a link to an article from 21 May 2019 titled "Cakewalk by BandLab adds support for ARA 2 in latest update"???

The Windows/Installer folder is a protected folder, so will not typically be on people's radar. I do images monthly, so as that image file began to grow, I took a closer look at the C drive. I use junctions quite a lot (not a solution for this particular folder), so after the Windows/Installer folder crept up above 20GB, I began researching in more detail. Because of the particular status of this folder, I wanted to give folks some insight on what I have found to be the most elegant solution (leaving it in place, but identifying what is in it and why). There is some info for this folder online, but solutions such as moving the contents is not elegant since you need to move them back for certain installs/uninstalls and you cannot readily identify what programs the files are for. Creating a junction actually breaks the ability for some (msi) installers to work, so that is messy as well. The simplest path for me was the following: First, how big is it? Although you can show/hide protected folders in Windows Explorer, this becomes a pain doing it each time. I use TreeSize Free (run as administrator), and in that application Home->Select Directory->C Drive. The tree defaults to biggest to smallest, and expanding the "Windows" element will probably have the Installer folder listed at the top. I saw a post of a person complaining theirs had gotten to 90GB, but 20GB was enough for me. When all was said and done, mine is still at 12.5GB, with DaVinci Resolve being the biggest offender (at 1.42GB). Second, what is in it, and why? There is a utility specifically focused on the Windows/Installer folder called PatchCleaner. This has two useful functions. First is the obvious one that it will find orphaned installers and allow you to move them to another location (another drive is preferred). Although this gets some, it barely put a dent in what was in there (a mere 200MB for me). However, when you run that program, in the upper right there is a "details..." link next to the "files still used." That pops up a list of what is in the directory by owner, so clicking the top of the "File Size" column twice, you can get a listing of the files largest to smallest. If you click on a file, the "Product Details" in the lower right will help clarify what it belongs to, and you can decide from there. The eye-opener for me was that numerous upgrades had duplicate listings, some not only for the program (old version left in place), but for their additional content (duplicates, but tied to different versions). From there I went in and uninstalled previous versions of things I never use anymore (Corel was the biggest offender for me, but there were others), but there seemed to be a common pattern of upgraded items having more than one file in the list (whether it be the previous version's installer, or duplicate content files). Not all programs put hefty files in the Installer directory, but those that do are the ones to be aware of. I didn't go beyond files smaller than 300MB in size, but the ones bigger than that got scrutinized. I hope this can be of help to some folks. I have 530 programs installed but try to keep C drive images to 100GB or less. When images start creeping above that, I go into create junctions, but junctions do not work on this particular folder, and this folder won't be obvious to most unless you actually go looking for it.

Wow, I guess I haven't checked for a while; I had 6 things to install/update but found out you can do them all at once (yay for that app updates). 12.1GB of LABS stuff (so far)... this has really grown since it all started.

Back in the hands of the people who care most is never a bad thing... This is all new to me, so I have no knowledge of history but been having a lot of fun with things. Odd turn of events for me... are you familiar with Reallusion? Corel (of all people) had "Crazy Talk" (LEGACY product - you do NOT want this, since Cartoon Animator 4 has everything it does) in their store, but that made me go take a look at Reallusion. The 3D stuff (iClone and Character Creator) piqued my interest, but found out quick that I needed to learn Blender to make props. Not necessarily terrible, but certainly not a quick path to anything. After a couple weeks of this I went back to look at their 2D Cartoon Animator 4 in more detail, and looks like they stole the bones (literally, they added the same bone layouts) from MOHO for their last upgrade. I did not get the LEAP (hand control) package (yet, but their 50% off sale goes through 4 JAN), but did get the bundle with the Face3D tracker, and that little gem is awesome (tracks your face on a webcam to record animations). They are constantly making it easier and easier to just create on a computer... just made me respect the Disney animators of old manually flipping through frames, when today you can do what took them months in "real time" and lip sync audio to boot. Unreal what you can do these days...