Craig Anderton

Is the track interleave set to mono?

The "nuclear option" is a Thunderbolt interface or a PCIe card interface (e.g., RME, ESI), either of which can have lower latency than USB. For USB, MOTU claims 2.5 ms round-trip latency for their M2 interface at 96 kHz with 32 sample buffers.

I've used both since 1995, with the percentage spent on each varying over time. If price was no object, I'd buy the best Windows 10 desktop for Vegas and Cakewalk, and the best Mac desktop available for Studio One and Ableton Live. AFAIC both platforms have roughly reached parity. In theory Windows gives you more for your money, but if you go to a really good Windows system integrator for audio and get the best components, then the price is around the same...although the system integrator will likely give more personalized support. The Mac downside is you have to buy into their ecosystem. The Windows downside is that it doesn't have much of an ecosystem. A lot of your choice depends on what else you do with the computer. If you do graphic arts, you pretty much have to get a Mac. For scientific applications, it's Windows. For keeping your personal life in order, I'd choose Mac if you have an iPhone because the two work so well together.

Reaper users tell me it not only has a hovercraft, but a talent plug-in and language support for Klingon.

DAWs are like cars. All cars have engines, wheels, a body, brakes, and doors, and can accelerate or decelerate. But you can choose from sports cars, vans, 2-door sedans, 4-door sedans, hatchbacks, SUVs, luxury cars, etc. You choose a car based on what you need to do with it, and (hopefully) you choose a DAW the same way. I also feel that just as some people have more than one car, it often makes sense to have more than one DAW to handle different needs.

If it opens fine in safe mode but not otherwise, it seems that would be plug-in related. You can try a few things. 1. First, the easiest, most obvious but also maybe not likely...make sure there's no hidden splash screen from a plug-in that wants to be authorized or updated or whatever. Check the Taskbar to see if anything is asking for attention. 2. After opening in Safe Mode, do a reset and rescan. The reset part is important. 3. Check your file paths to different folders that contain plug-ins. Rename the folders, like putting an x in front of the name, so that Cakewalk doesn't recognize the path and therefore doesn't try to load any plug-ins. If (3) solves your problem, enable/disable various plug-ins until you find the one that's causing the problem. Good luck!

I wasn't trying to minimize what Noel did with you, just saying I'd love to see a Zoom session with him playing.

Save the presets for the DSP-heavy effects, copy the audio tracks, and render then with the effect. Mute the tracks you copied. Now you can delete the effects, but if you need to edit the sound, you can always delete the rendered tracks and try again using the original ones. Another option is to premix the song except for the track you want to process with the external effect. Create a new project with the premix and the track you want to process. Process the track, export it, and import it into your original project. Hope this helps

Noel is an extremely dedicated individual, to say the least. What people sometimes overlook is his killer jazz guitar playing. I would prefer that as a Zoom session, I already know how Cakewalk works

The Sonarworks Reference 4 software that compensates for headphone anomalies is very cool, and doesn't cost as much as the version that can also tune your room for monitors (the headphone version is $99 IIRC). But - and you'll thank me for this - if you go the site, they offer a downloadable free guide that covers headphones for mixing and mastering. They've analyzed around 800 headphones in order to generate compensation curves, and chosen the ones they feel are the best. If you click on a headphone to read the associated review, you'll see the headphones' frequency response curve, as well as info about weight, durability, etc. The uneven response of most phones is scary, but at least you'll know what you're dealing with. I have several sets of headphones. The true test of Reference 4 is I tried their compensation with multiple headphones, and they all ended up sounding pretty much the same in terms of response. However, be aware the frequency response curves are averages. Curves vary for different production runs and even models within the same run. If you really want to go down the rabbit hole, you can send Sonarworks your specific headphones. They'll do an analysis and provide a custom compensation curve. I highly recommend this software if you have to mix or master on headphones.

Computers are a house of cards - when one card goes, the whole computer falls over. So many times, the "problem" with a DAW relates to something that has little, if anything, to do with the DAW itself. For example, for several weeks I tried to figure out why Windows was suddenly taking so much longer to boot. Turns out there was a blank CD in an optical drive, and removing it solved the problem. I guess Windows was trying to boot off the CD, which of course must have been a highly unsatisfying experience for the operating system

Create the fades, and then bounce the clip to itself at its native tempo. This removes the looping properties, but "bakes" the fades into the audio. Then, enable looping, and you'll be able to roll out loops that incorporate the fades.

Also, don't forget that you can just transpose the guitar down an octave and use some EQ to make it sound better. Not ideal, but it can do the job.

You may want to use the version for Bass instead, although I found it less reliable than the Guitar version, for some reason. I'd be interested in your experiences, I did some pretty extensive experimentation with it but ultimately, found it needed too much cleaning up to be fun. You might find Melodyne's pitch-to-MIDI conversion is all you need for doing bass lines.

It doesn't look like the Sound on Sound column will be coming back any time soon, they said not enough of their readers use Cakewalk to justify the space. I miss writing it, so I was hoping MusicTech would want to pick it up (Meng's company owns the magazine), but that didn't pan out. At the moment, the only place I have to put Cakewalk articles is on my craiganderton.org web site (although the Cakewalk by BandLab tips book is still available on craiganderton.com). I do continue to post in the forum, but basically, I just scan the threads and see if any have topics where I might be able to help. It seems the regulars have everything under control, and of course, Steve Cook is a national treasure for Cakewalk users.

Sometimes I've fixed issues by doing a repair installation, which is an option in Waves Central. It's faster than a full install and cleans things up nicely.

You won't be a great guitar player by screwing around with one for four hours It's been mentioned previously, but I can't emphasize enough that Cakewalk is a complete recording studio whose capabilities dwarf what used to require at least $100/hour, a professional engineer, daily maintenance, and a tape op. I can say with certainty that if you spend a month trying to learn Cakewalk, you'll be much further along than if you'd spent that month trying to learn how Record Plant worked many decades ago.

I wrote an article called VST 2.4 vs. VST3 - Who Cares? You should that you may find helpful. Bear in mind that VST3 is a set of suggestions, not rules, and it's a crap shoot as to which features a plug-in company will support. VST3 is loaded with potential, but that potential has not always been realized. The only truly annoying thing I've noticed is that sometimes I have to use a VST 2.4 version because it can receive program changes commands, while the VST3 version cannot. Huh? I've asked software companies about this, and apparently, there's no technical reason why VST3 plug-ins can't support program changes so I don't know why this is a common problem.

Fixed the typo, thanks! Note that the tips apply to Sonar as well.

Hey all - I posted a new Cakewalk tips article on craiganderton.org. I hope you find it helpful. Since Sound on Sound discontinued the Cakewalk column, and I have a few articles that weren't published, I'll probably post them on my site when I get a chance.

The variety of responses as to what is "best" should give a clue about how subjective this all is. You can always try just adding a low-frequency boost in the same range as a head bump for your speed of choice, and add a bit of saturation. Frankly. I the only time I use "tape emulation" is (sometimes) on acoustic guitars to saturate the pick transients, and bass so it cuts better on mixes played through crappy playback systems. And for acoustic guitars, a transient shaper is often better at taming pick transients. There's no "magic bullet" to make a mix sound wonderful, other than an awesome song. and the ability to hear all the instruments clearly.

At least you got it working! Sometimes you just have to accept that something will work for reasons you don't understand, and likely never will

Tape exhibited a low-frequency "head bump" that added a low-frequency boost; this was different for different tape speeds. Also, tape softened transients and added distortion. Even sine waves as low as -20 dB would start showing a tiny bit of distortion, which increased as the level increased. The distortion also meant you could get a higher average level. But bear in mind that there's no such thing as "universal" tape saturation. Tape required interacting EQ and bias adjustments that had an effect on frequency response, distortion, and level. So for example you could have better high-frequency response if you were willing to trade off for more distortion. Also, different tape formulations had different characteristics. Tape Emulation plug-ins should be called "emulations of particular recorders, using particular tape, calibrated in a specific way, and which may or may not have been well-maintained." I wrote a comprehensive article for the Waves web site comparing their J37 and Kramer master tape plug-ins. It does not go into marketing-speak, it's about what tape did and what tape emulation does. It also has a couple audio examples, and I think it will answer pretty much any questions you might have about tape emulation.

In my experience you have to learn a control surface by working with it over a period of time. Until your muscle memory gets to the point where your fingers go automatically where you want them to go, a control surface can get in the way of your workflow. However, once you get proficient at it (which can take a couple of months, or maybe I'm just slow), you can move a lot faster. (I think the best, but most frustrating way, to learn a control surface is to go cold turkey on using the mouse for anything that can be done with the control surface.) Another factor is being able to control multiple functions at once. For example I use my mouse left-handed, and work the control surface with my right hand. Keyboard shortcuts get you partway there, unless you need to use both hands to hit a combination of keystrokes. Not odd at all!! When I was a studio musician one of the most important lessons I learned was watching the mix for "Brandy (You're a Fine Girl)." The engineer closed his eyes and moved the eight faders (yes, it was that long ago) with very subtle rhythmic movements. Those little movements added life to the song. It would have been difficult, if not impossible, to make those changes one fader at a time with a mouse. Also, if you use a control surface, try turning off the monitor...it's an interesting experience

@gswitz - thanks for the name check The tip was originally about creating perfect pad loops, but it would apply here. I searched for the Sonar Friday Tip of the week that described this, but couldn't find it. However, I did "recycle" the tip for my Studio One blog, and I think it's obvious how this would apply to Cakewalk - it's just waveforms.