Lord Tim

Man, that was me for years. I had my current system sitting on the studio couch behind me for nearly a year before I either had the time or the inclination to actually do the work setting it up. I have to say, though, as painful as that first week was, life is SO much easier now with this new system. The amount of crazy workarounds I had to do to get my bigger projects to work on the old system were not only now a bad memory, but I was suddenly able to load in like a whole orchestra's worth of VSTs, synths, amp sims, with crazy low latency and this system didn't budge. It really opened up so many options and just eliminated that last barrier between brain and computer - I wasn't problem solving anymore, I was just creating. But I hear you, that first night especially downloading all of my old SONAR content, putting in my sample and IR libraries, reinstalling my plugins, redoing my paths... argh. Horrible. 0/10. Would not recommend.

That's why I also mentioned this: Like I said, I have no doubt if anything is panned it likely wouldn't null completely because of the different pan laws, and there'd be dithering, and you'd have to make sure your tracks are exactly the same level, no effects running, etc, etc, which obviously isn't a real world thing, but it's focussing on how the engine is summing the tracks only. Doing a live recording to another machine or audio recorder would definitely introduce more variables into the mix (your interface definitely would come into play a lot more here for a start) but I'd still wager that with a good interface and good drivers, even doing this wouldn't be enough to be particularly audible to anyone without teenager's ears and good speakers. Genuinely happy to be proven wrong if anyone wants to give this a go and finds other repeatable results, though! But I'd really suggest there'd be more of a backlash against a lot of DAWs if they were changing your audio in some way unknown to the user, either in a good or bad way. Surely we can't have been the first people to go "Heyyyy... hang on, what if I test this?" and tried out the stuff I've mentioned. (Shh! Don't tell my ego, but I don't think I'm smart enough to be the first to think of this idea )

There's a big discussion about it here: It turns out it's a lot more complicated than it first seems once you look into it.

HAHA! I remember doing the visual effects for the smoke coming out of the sneakers and starting to do a camera track in After Effects to embed it into the shot, and got about 10 seconds into setting up the scene and went "Dude, really? Everything else is super low budget, why are you doing this properly? Just eyeball it!" I'm surprised it looked as good as it did. It's a funny thing, we did a bunch of pretty cool clips prior to that one with actors, VFX, proper storyboards, and this dumb thing we did in an afternoon got a much bigger reaction than all of them. Go figure! Cheers for all of the awesome comments, guys! It's been a fun wander down memory lane!

Check out Dan Worrall's YouTube channel, he does a lot of plugin testing that includes antialiasing and phase shift tests - despite knowing about both of those things, it was still a real eye opener seeing exactly how much this affected the audible frequency range! I don't believe this is something we'd run into on a modern floating point DAW engine, but there's definitely a lot of variables out there in an actual real-world mix that could add up, depending on what plugins and processing you'd use.

Haha, I answer to most common names and swear words ?

My answer to that is: does the exported WAV null? Taking effects and pan law out of it, if the resulting WAV nulls or is very very quiet, so much that it'd be pretty much imperceptible in a blind test, that pretty much eliminates the audio engine as being the difference. To take that one step further, set up 2 computers and have one recording the output of your audio interface while the song plays back in realtime from the DAW. That will definitely introduce more differences, but so long as you're sample accurate, with a decent interface I'd wager the difference would be tiny.

I'm wondering if your project got into a state that's confusing things in the current version? Like Bit said, there's been some changes to the track visibility since 2020.09 so your older project(s) may have something tangled somewhere that's only exposed by the new version. Might be worth getting a copy of your .cwp over to a Baker to have a look at and see what's going on.

That's the thing though, that's just text. You can have great swathes of text on a clipboard without much of an impact. Now imagine this in CbB - you copy a chorus section of 3 tracks, all of which stretch out to the duration of the entire 7 minute long song (hey. it's prog rock, this is the short one on the album!). What it does currently, according to what was mentioned in the other thread, is say "right, you want THESE tracks, from THIS point to THAT point" and just references the original files. If you were to copy this to a clipboard, like I was suggesting earlier, if would have to copy these WAV files. And not just the section you've copied from (because if you think about it, if you pasted in a chorus somewhere else and you think "you know, I really need that slight lead-in" it just wouldn't be there, since the WAV would have been bounced to a new clip. Or instead, it would be copying several 7 minute long WAV files to a clipboard, and pasting them back in with the ends slip edited. Anyone who has done a Save As with Copy Audio Files checked will know how long that can take. Even a bounce to clip operation to do the cropped clip thing is fairly expensive with time and disc space. Really problematic, and I can see what it hasn't been brought in now. That said, Erik has a point too - how do other DAWs (in particular) handle this kind of thing? I haven't done any testing on this myself as yet.

Probably the dumbest thing about this (besides the outtakes) is the one note bass solo. When I wrote it, I actually had a video with that gag in mind, and we actually released the bass tabs for that section (for anyone playing along at home, it's 0-0-0-0-0-0... ?) You know you have your priorities exactly right when you write jokes into a future video clip before actually finish the song ? Good fun though, and ESP were pretty happy about the big plug we gave them. ?

Bandlab is a commercial company, and despite Cakewalk being free, it's not open source, nor is it just being treated as a giveaway product. Bandlab have a strategic plan for their products and it's not in their interests to telegraph these plans to competing companies, much like almost every other company in this space, much like everyone else has said so far. While we may not like it, it's clearly the model they've used since 1987 and it's apparent this is how they're moving forward. Throwing insults and accusations against users won't change this, it'll just stop people interacting with your threads.

Hmmm... you know, sometimes it actually helps to actually go read the original linked thread instead of just wondering. ? Turns out Mark actually answered this: Yeah, so that guess was right @User 905133. I can see this being a huge headache to do if it's just pointers. Any number of operations could be performed since the original copy, making this unpredictable at best. To get it working like I was suggesting with the Clipboard Browser idea, that would essentially need to have copies made of each thing as their own saved WAV / MIDI files, which would be a really slow process if you're doing a lot of editing, and potentially disk filling if you're not careful. Mega Worm Can ahoy!

Yep, this is great advice I think what I was getting at is sometimes you may want something fairly low in the mix (say a glockenspiel sound to go along with a guitar arpeggio, just to add that little bit of high end sparkle). You'd ideally want to mix that pretty quiet so it's not really a sound unto itself, but more there as enhancement. Swap this out for click on kick drums, low polysynth with a cello, etc. etc. Yes, you could absolutely turn down the input gain and leave your volume fader at unity if that suits your workflow - and like I said, this is a valid way to work, having a visual representation of the faders together in the same place is a good way to get the mix straight in your head - but the moment you start adding anything that deals with dynamics into the FX Bin... it all starts getting a bit complicated. This is where Bill's idea of using the last effect in the bin's output gain is a good alternative to using the track gain controls - it's coming after any processes are done. I think we're all more or less on the same page with this, though. Get your gain right into your effects, then it's all really personal preference as to how you want to approach the actual mixing part of it next.

The biggest problem using gain rather than the volume is that affects what goes into the track effects, so if you're using, say, a compressor or a amp sim on a track, the gain will really affect how that plugin will respond to the audio, and often won't really change the output level at all, just the character of the sound. If you're not running effects, then yeah - absolutely, this is a valid way of working for sure.

I'd also be a little wary about using a "normal" EQ to get rid of 50/60Hz hum too. Aside from potentially gutting your kick drum and sub bass, most EQs introduce phase shifting around any boosted or cut frequencies, and for something like this, you'd need a fair bit of cut, and likely some stacked bands to really narrow in on the hum (and possibly even some extra EQ if there's overtones too). You'd have better luck with a Linear Phase EQ which stops that from happening, but that also comes with is own gotchas, like pre-ringing, especially in the lower frequencies. A de-noiser is definitely the way to go for any of this stuff, be it a plugin or in a standalone editor.

Yeah, that's Win+V (if you have it enabled in settings). Just gave it a go then by copying a bunch of clips in Cakewalk and checked the clipboard viewer, and it says it's empty, which is consistent with nothing actually being pasted outside of Cakewalk when I use CTRL+V. That's got me really curious now. I think we need to call for a Baker to get some real answers! @msmcleod @Noel Borthwick - where/how does paste work in CbB anyway? Is a multiple item clipboard a realistic FR or is it going to be a huge can of worms to try to implement?

I never did find out if he ****'d my mum.

Nah, I'm definitely from the old mixing desk school where I mix with the faders (but in this case, it's the track volume faders in the Track View, rather than using Console View). So long as I have the gain structure set up right going into the track effects, I'm cool just to turn the fader up or down if it needs it, and automate using volume envelopes, etc. Having said that, though, I've definitely automated effects outputs in lieu of adjusting the faders if I know I'm doing something specific that requires it in a particular section. So, say, I have a harmony vocal line, I might actually adjust the level using an effect output first to get the intent of the track down but then I'll use the track volume fader for the overall track blend in the mix. But yeah, 95% of the time, it's all volume faders or volume envelopes for me

Well there you go! The old memory actually works! I'd love to have a Clipboard View in the Browser where we can have multiple copied items on there so we can go back and refer to them whenever we want. I do get the "moving the clip is seen as a cut / paste, so therefore clears the buffer" operation thing, but it'd be nice at least to have that temporarily store the previous pasted item somewhere and restore it later - it always seemed to be an odd limitation.

... album, that is. ? 10 years ago today, we released our Digital Lies album, which was a pretty rough one for me on a lot of levels (tour and recording burn out, and just the sheer amount of tracks and silly stuff we do every time just gets really old sometimes). It actually took me months after this thing was done to actually sit back and appreciate what we created. Turned out to be our most successful album to date, so I guess the hard work paid off. I'd change a few mixing decisions if I did this today, but it's something I think still stands up pretty well, all things considered. I definitely got my money's worth out of SONAR that year! I thought you guys might like to have a wander back a decade and check out a couple of tunes. Probably the one we're most infamously known for is actually an instrumental guitar battle between me and our other guitarist, Mark. Just to add to the silliness of it all, we filmed an intentionally low-budget video clip one afternoon of us battling it out to see which guitar model was the best. In the end, we all got ice cream so everyone won! ? The rest of the album isn't QUITE that silly... but it's here if anyone would like a listen: https://open.spotify.com/album/5g6AfRaaIwYkBrTWEdDUCl?si=uL558KLySumvBPgu0RUADg We have a bit of a sale going on to grab this album and a 12" extended mix vinyl (remember those things?) for a great price if anyone would like to snap it up. From now until Friday night (or while stocks last), you can get both the Digital Lies album on CD and the Extended Mix vinyl release for only AUD$10 plus shipping. Only 20 units available! https://lordofficial.bandcamp.com/album/digital-lies SOLD OUT. Hope someone nabbed a bargain first! Anyway, hope you guys dig the stuff and had a chuckle at our dumb video!

One thing I've found in the past is if you copy a section, you can paste it as many times as you like and it works as expected. However, if you just move or nudge some other clip (so not actually doing a Cut or Copy operation, just shifting the clip around in some way) it'll clear the clipboard. Not in front of the DAW to test that at the moment, so I can't remember if this was solved or is still a thing in the current release. Give that a go and see if you get similar results - it might be something we can track down and give some repeatable steps to the Bakers to look at.

We'll need a fair bit more information than this to be able to help. "HP Laptop" could really mean anything. Just for starters, can you tell us what CPU and amount of RAM you have in your laptop? It's unlikely going to be your problem if this is a fairly modern laptop, but that at least will eliminate that as one of the problems. Next, it looks like you don't have an audio interface and you're using the inbuilt audio of the laptop. This can work fine for just playing tracks back or using softsynths, but if you ever want to record, this will be a big limitation for you, and I'd suggest a proper audio interface. You can get one of those for under $200 that will take a lot of problems right out of the equation. Which version of Cakewalk are you using? If you go to Help > About Cakewalk, you'll see the version number in there. Finally, a screen shot of your Audio preferences would definitely help. Open Cakewalk, and go to Edit > Preferences (or press P) and look for the Audio section. A screen shot of the Devices, Driver Settings, and Playback and Recording screens will tell us a lot. I'm going to take a guess and say you have a Realtek audio chip, and you have the output set to one of the digital outs instead of a speaker out. But we'll be able to give you exact information when we see how you have it set up.

The horns are the highlight of the track for me, they're great!

If you hear a difference with audio engine quality between any of the major DAWs (not counting ones that are designed to emulate hardware circuitry) then that DAW that sounds different is broken. Aside from pan laws, which can differ between each DAW quite a bit, and - to a very small degree - dithering, you'll get more or less identical results from any DAW, that can be demonstrated in a null test. Audio hardware can make a difference, but in 2023, it's getting harder and harder to find anything other than the cheapest entry level gear that sounds bad as such. Bad drivers can certainly affect the latency and track count though. You may even be able to use the interface's ASIO drivers and do YouTube at the same time, depending on the device. WASAPI is always an option, but if you use WASAPI Shared mode, it'll introduce an automatic 10ms latency, which is not going to be an issue with mixing at all, but will be if you play live synths or live effects, etc. Your specs are a little old but you'll most definitely be able to get more out of a system than 6-8 tracks for sure. I was doing fairly big mixes on an ancient Core2-duo laptop with 8GB of RAM without too much trouble, until I started to really load it up. A SSD most certainly helps things though. You can customise the look of Cakewalk either by changing the Workspace and hiding the things you don't need to look at, or visit the UI THEMES forum and grab an entirely different look. It's very flexible. The faders thing I don't really have much of a suggestion with since I do most of my mixing in the Track View or with envelopes, but I'd suggest a control surface might be a great idea if you like to mix using Console View faders - it'll be a lot more tactile than using a mouse on a screen. Maybe other people might have better suggestions with this area though.

OK, I was having a bit of a think about this and here's a kind of workable solution, although it's a little backwards and a bit of work to set up. (Bear in mind I'm mid-massive project right now and my brain is fried, so no doubt someone will come along and go "dude, why did you go to all of that work when you could have just done....." and give a much more elegant solution ?) So you set up your project like this: Have all of your tracks together and the outputs going to the Master bus. Create a second bus called Monitor. Both of these go to different hardware outputs, eg: main out, headphones. For each of these tracks, add an Aux send, set it to PRE rather than POST. Those Aux sends will essentially be copies of your tracks** (see note), and the output of those sends will go to the Monitor bus. It's probably easiest to put them all together in their respective folders, like in the screenshot. Since this is PRE fader, you can adjust the levels of the tracks and Aux tracks entirely independently, effectively creating a separate submix. Now here's where it gets a bit backwards. If you solo something, it'll just mute everything else, so that's not real. But if you mute the Aux track group, and then selectively unmute the tracks you want to hear in the Monitor bus, it more or less does the same thing, but without muting anything else. You can select multiple tracks and hold down CTRL to quick group them, so you can toggle a bunch at a time, mimicking what Solo does to a degree. ** The big caveat here is that if you're running any effects sends or have any crazy routing, you need to take into consideration what the outputs of those sends are doing. Plus, if you solo any of the main tracks (not the Aux tracks) you're back at square one because that'll affect everything downstream from there, including the Aux track sends. If you have a track template set up with all of this stuff already in there, it's going to save a lot of grunt work recreating things each time, and it's pretty flexible, but there's a lot of gotchas here. You'd have to really need this kind of routing to go through all of this trouble. Definitely open to hearing any better suggestions from people, though!