RexRed

Well, I figured it out... The problem was not Cakewalk, Windows, Izotope, Codecs, Plugin incompatibility, Vst3 vs Vst2, Melodyne... The problem was I put Blue Cat Gain in the bins of all of my tracks and did not set the unity gain right and the track volume was acting like the moon in front of the sun during an eclipse! The corona was the static spikes, the spikes were coming from all of my tracks when they would peak. After getting the gain in the right ballpark, Cakewalk returned to its wonderful, beautiful self again giving me 96khz of pristine perfect flawless audio. It is good sometimes to create artificial problems so you can go searching under the rug and lifting every stone to find things that aren't broken. I need to learn how to set unity gain with the blue cat faders and the track faders... I understand the concept of unity gain well, unity in and unity out... but this particular task has got me a bit overwhelmed. I will let all of this sink in a bit. At least I know what was causing the problem. Thanks for the help on this Cakewalk peeps!

Thanks John Vere for your suggestions! It is going to take me a while to figure this out and until it is fixed I cannot export my songs. I have ascertained that the problem is not observed in Windows when I play videos from YouTube there is no static spikes. I will disable Izotope and some other plugins and see if the problem goes away. I am wondering if maybe somehow the audio files were corrupted on the hard drive. I need to try some other projects and see if the problem is there. I already had Izotope ozone, neutron, nectar and number of other splice apps and Izotope support said it would not hurt anything to install the subscription without uninstalling the rent to own apps. It seemed to start when I clicked this "loudness standard preset" in Izotope Insight, did that change Cakewalk somehow? It is either corrupted wave files or an incompatible or corrupted plugin. I uninstalled all of the Splice Izotope rent to own apps and removed all of the dlls from the VST folders then installed the subscription Izotope apps. Static spikes are still there. It is like the loudness standard preset lowered the ceiling of acceptable Cakewalk loudness. I will shut off plugins and see if that works maybe safemode would reveal some things. Like if my files are corrupted. How do I access safe mode again? I will google it, I was up all night now I am exhausted. I will try the buffer lower at 256, I have 128 gb of ram and 12 cores but a lot of plugins and instruments in the project.

Since the latest Windows update and installing Izotope's pro subscription service I am now getting static in my playback stream and the static is also in my exported files. In all my years 34 years of using Cakewalk I have never had static in my exports... I was up all night trying to figure out what is happening. It is like something is too loud and it hitting the ceiling and creating a large digital static sound. I can't for the life of me figure out what it is. I have also had the problem another user has had of Cakewalk occasionally not being able to read Melodyne files and playing them as blank. My AI buffer size is at 4096. I have a 3090 Nvidia GPU and i just got a message from Nvidia that the latest Nvidia Studio driver is "not compatible with this version of Windows". I am suspecting Windows 10 is having it bad right now... I am all updated too.

I have always done this by sending multiple tracks to a single bus and then adding bus output volume envelope to that bus then I automate that volume output. I really like the Blue Cat Gain grouping app!

This is all very great info! Awesome awesome awesome! Thanks! The Blue Cat's Gain is a great tip too!

I think the send idea is very nice! I could create and array of tracks with post sends they could be routed to tracks or a bus with an output set to none. This is all quite complex but it is completely workable.

Ahh ok, and since the volume bin fader would be pre Neutron its envelope would also be pre Neutron. Fantastic! What do you use for a simple bin volume plug-in?

Thanks for you help SCook!

So I would need to add Neutron to a bus to see post fader results. This is where bus folders would help alleviate the clutter.

Oh I see.

Yes this is what I thought too. But, when I place an instance of Neutron in the effects bin and I put a volume envelope fader on the track and the envelope goes to zero Neutron (through Insight Pro) does not show this. The volume remains constant as if it is seeing the pre fader volume instead.

It seems that Cakewalk is passing pre fader information to izotope meters rather than post fader information.

When the track envelopes automate the track volume, the volume automation is after the effects bin. This seems like volume envelopes should be before the track effects bin.

I am trying to meter my tracks in Cakewalk with Izotope's Neutron and Insight Pro. When I place an instance of Neutron into the track effects bin then I look at the instance of insight in my master bus bin I select the Neutron tap from the track bin in Insight and it is showing me the content of the track "before" my track envelopes. How do I get Neutron to exist in the track bin after my track envelopes? I know I could create a bus and then send my track to that bus but then I have to create a bus for every track, this becomes messy. I don't know why Neutron is picking up the track before my envelopes... Any thoughts on this dilemma? And how about bus folders to simplify the bus area?

Hey awesome Cakewalk peeps! I have made a lot of changes with the song starting with a new Leslie organ. The Leslie organ is a retro organ, I bought these organs about a week ago when they were on sale. https://www.uvi.net/en/pianos-keyboards/retro-organ-suite.html The organ is not prefect yet but it sounds more like what would be expected with this type of song. Thanks for the suggestions they were very helpful! I switched the drums from Addictive Drums to Native Instruments 60s drums. I also placed each drum beat in its own track so I could adjust them individually. The drums are coming through the mix better, they may not be perfect but they now sound improved and not like they are just, "muffled". I changed the underlying pad of the song to something more transparent and with less sawtooth character. I think it is an improvement for the song with less banding. I also changed the bass to a the Beatles bass from, Come Together. It has a warmer lower end, I hope it translates well in the song. http://www.soundsonline.com/fab-four Let me know your thoughts Best!

You bring up some interesting points. Usually I never use multitimbral mode with instruments, I like to isolate even each drum patch into its own track. But with these news synths that have "sequences" they output several sounds at once. Most of the time the keyboard is split. I still like to isolate each patch to a separate track. I am not sure how that is done with the Vengeance Avenger synth yet. I assume each note has a channel assigned to it. many sequences even have drum along with a split keyboard. I prefer using the sequencer in Cakewalk much better in most cases. I suppose If I can isolate the midi sections, high and low parts and switches events and paste these into separate tracks and then isolate the Vengeance patches then I could break these sequence parts up into their own isolated tracks. Thanks for your insight on this! Is there a Cakewalk switch that forces each track to output to its own assigned instrument channels? Thanks for you help David. Lots of great info here!

Wow, I had Echo Current Midi Track enabled. It seems that is a global setting. I do know better than to output midi to my synth controller though (snicker). Problem seems fixed. Setting up channels is not really that complicated but I have not had to do it for years other than occasionally setting native instruments tracks to channel 1 to get them to function sometimes. I have forgotten a lot about channels. Not sure how to tell which channels and ports my instruments are outputting on. Capturing instrument sequence/arp/switch midi is a very useful thing when you are trying to do that specifically. When not trying to do that and having data coming from everywhere into the midi stream that is very confusing and frustrating. Thank you David, your response has been very helpful indeed! Best to you!

My midi tracks used to be self contained. Now if I have midi on one track in the project it plays in other tracks too. I did not used to have to fuss with channels... the tracks seemed to be self contained. Now if i don't freeze every track in the project the midi tracks wreak havoc with each other. I record midi and my recording is filled with misc events from other tracks and it seems the instruments are feeding sequence events also into the midi stream. So what ever I record is obliterated by events simultaneously streaming into the record chain. How do i fix this?

Okay awesome Cakewalk peeps, this is a new version. The organ is more standard in the beginning and the drums are up more and a lot of other changes. There is more bass too, I EQ'd the bass so it is flatter and more present. Added some more harmonies, resung a few lines and fixed a lot of vocal areas. Final critiques still welcome.

Hey Kurt, Luckily for me this song has not been placed into a music video yet so I have time to apply your suggestions. I will switch the organ in the beginning to something more standard and crank up the drums more. I feel that your suggestions are very well stated and they are also very helpful. And David, I have never had anyone refer to my voice as having, "gravitas". What a fantastic compliment! I thank you for such a flattering comparison as Elvis and I hope this song does marry a few lovers sometime. ????

Hey awesome Cakewalk peeps! Here is my latest song, "Precious Time". Critiques are welcome. Best regards! Rex

Thanks Jack, much appreciated compliment buddy! ?

Hey Jesse, I bought all of the vocals on splice.com I am still working up the courage to make my own vocal adlibs for my techno/dance songs. Thanks for the comment!

Pretty song, lovely sentiments...

Thanks Bajan Blue for the really nice compliment! It is a real honor having my song compared to that of Depeche Mode by Jack C. and yourself! Best to you! Thanks peeps!