Lord Tim

Yeah, low(ish) spec gaming laptops are usually decent for audio work. You're not going overboard on high end GPUs but you'll normally get a pretty decent lot of hardware and options like extra drives. Really, like I said before, if you get a good laptop that only has a single drive, any moderately fast SSD will likely be up to the task these days, even if you need to rip out the stock SSD and throw in a Samsung 980 Pro or something for the extra speed and lifetime.

I use an iRig HD live (albeit with an iPod running my amp sims, etc.) and it's really solid. This is all good news for me, because I'm eventually planning to run it with either a small laptop or a NUC or something rather than the iPod.

@Rico Belled My point there was I was generalising and that a dedicated DAW builder would give tailored advice for that specific task. I've done huge recordings on a dual core i7 from a decade ago, and successfully used it for live triggering without an issue. Do I recommend that? Absolutely not, you'll get better performance from almost anything these days. But "almost anything" can mean a wide variation in quality and gotchas on lower end gear especially. It *can* work grunt-wise, especially compared to far more powerful machines of yesteryear, but it's a crap-shoot as to what kind of quality you'll get, which is why I suggested the headroom. I think we're agreeing here ultimately, though. Choose/build your machine wisely to save yourself a bunch of headaches.

I'll keep this one short then, since you didn't actually come up with anything to counter what I said other than snark. 1. If your idea is so good, then someone should go out and do it and clean up at the bank. Never forget you're someone. 2. You might get more people on board if you had more constructive replies, rather than insults. Good luck, yeah? Let me know when your app is out.

Really, almost anything fairly recent will work fine for most things, but I'd suggest if you want the best performance and getting the parts that you really want to prioritise for audio rather than gaming, either have a chat to @Jim Roseberry to either build or consult with to make a dedicated LAPTOP or go the Clevo route (I use Metabox custom laptops myself, who are a Clevo reseller). You'd want 2 drives in there, preferably - one for system, and one for your sample libraries. This is getting less of a thing now that there's super fast M.2 drives now, but I always prefer to split things up between drives regardless. I'd personally go at least an i7, but if you're just triggering stuff, I think you'd be able to get away with a speedy i5. That said, definitely consult with a specific laptop DAW builder like Jim - you'll get the best advice there.

So you want to add a chat function to the forum and turn it into an app? This forum is mobile friendly and could easily be a PWA if anyone wanted to spend the time and resources to do so, and then deal with getting it into stores, etc. and for what? You'd basically be getting exactly the same experience (minus chat) as a native web page. If you're talking about embedding music, this forum already auto converts links from YouTube, Soundcloud, etc. to players, and even has native embedding for Bandlab built in, with a dedicated button on the reply box toolbar. How does that help your other point of monetizing things? If you're not adding advertising to things, how do you offset the extra bandwidth charges by giving everyone an additional messaging app and music hosting service, in what is pretty much a peer-to-peer support forum? Sorry, long reply coming. I'm all for thinking outside the box. I've been doing music professionally for over 30 years, both on the artist side signed to labels, and as a label manager. I've been through all of the various permeations of what it's like to work in this industry, from "I made a record, I sold that record, I made some money" to "my music is now a jingle I give away for free to advertise my T-shirts." We now handle our own PR and do PR for other artists as well. The first thing we say is that you need to adapt or die, and don't be scared to try something a little nutty to get attention. But with that being said.... Reinventing the wheel benefits nobody. As an artist or label, why would I create a file sharing service when there's Soundcloud/Bandcamp/YT Music, etc. etc. that already has a built-in userbase to exploit? Why would I start a social network when there's Facebook, Twitter, etc. out there to share my PR to a much larger userbase? If the core style of my band is, say, gothic rock, just thinking you're hip and adding sub drops and loops into it won't automatically get you the under 26 demographic. There's absolutely NOTHING wrong with introducing elements into what you do to expand your style, and possibly pick up a few fans along the way, but people can smell desperation, and when a brand is changing specifically to go after a new demographic. It takes time to reorient yourself when you do that and you risk losing your core user/fanbase in the meantime. And if it's just a blatant grab to get cred from a new crowd, it's selling yourself out anyway. Relating that to this forum app idea, why would Bandlab make ANOTHER file hosting platform for a free product in their portfolio to compete against their existing social network that they're drawing an income from? Why would Bandlab want to make an app to replicate the functionality of an existing forum that's already working well for its intended purpose, that you need to upkeep on mobile apps for the sole purpose of adding in a chat client? And as a user, why would I even want to use something other than the plethora of existing messaging apps out there that already have a substantial userbase? I'm no fan of Facebook, but I'm on there because a great number of people I know are on there too and it's a good way to stay in touch. Kill that aspect and I don't need another chat app - you'd hop over to Whatsapp or iMessage or Hangouts or whatever. Not trying to rain on your parade or be overly negative or combative (don't take my tone as anything aggressive or angry here, it's not ) but I genuinely can't see any benefit for Bandlab to do this. It's all the right tools for the job, They already have a file hosting social network with chat that's free for us to use where both parties can make money from it, they don't need to turn a support forum into the same thing. On the other hand, should there be better integration between the two platforms? Now THAT I can get behind. Having the SONGS subforum somehow linked in with the Bandlab social network (and being your choice if you share with their platform or from Soundcloud, etc.) would be killer. But I know that the signal to noise ratio would deteriorate really quickly if the main forums here turned into some kind of social thing. There's a wealth of info being shared in these forums, and people/devs making CbB better all the time, and that's really down to how focussed everything is, which is the primary purpose of what these forums are, as opposed to the primary focus of the Bandlab social network.

Have you looked at the Bandlab app? CbB allows songs to be exported to Bandlab, which in turn has tip-jars and media hosting, very much like Soundcloud. This forum is also mobile compatible so it's not like phone posters miss out by not having a dedicated app. Yes, it's a little disconnected from the Bandlab social media thing, but it also serves a different purpose here, primarily peer-to-peer support, with the addition of things like the Coffee House, etc. From everything I've understood since Meng came on board with Bandlab, the focus is really about providing a great DAW experience for free, with no catches. Why is it free? Partly because Bandlab is well off enough to go "I love this thing, let us fund it" but also partly because it drives traffic to the social network where they DO take a revenue share. How many people outside of Singapore or product distributors had heard of Bandlab before the takeover? Not me, and I use a few of their other products they distribute too. If the goal was to recoup the cost of purchasing the cost of IP and hiring devs to keep things going, the priority would have been to immediately monetize all of the add-on stuff (Dimension Pro, LP EQ, Adaptive Limiter, CA 2A, etc.) and not to mention merch as well - there's a good market for all of that. But they haven't, so that clearly isn't the short-term goal. We can speculate all we like here, but ultimate the only people that really know the roadmap are Bandlab and the Bakers themselves. I know I'd certainly love to see some of the old plugins be released for sale again (coming from SONAR, I own a lot of them already and they're fantastic, and would definitely sell well) and I have a few ideas where this could all be exploited a lot better than it is right now, but it's really up to Meng at the end of the day.

Not necessarily. If you're just using a single instrument synth, then sure - the MIDI volume and the softsynth volume can be more or less interchangeable (this isn't including things like pre-fader sends and things like that - you'd adjust your workflow if you're doing something a little more advanced like that), but you might have a multi-instrument synth with a single output that requires a bunch of MIDI tracks to feed it, eg: an orchestral player or a General MIDI player, where you'd have a different instrument on each MIDI track playing through a single softsynth output. In that case, the softsynth out would act as the master for everything and you'd adust the levels of each instrument on the MIDI tracks.

It's all good - the number of times I've sat looking at some mess I've gotten myself into in front of my DAW or NLE and went "F#%K IT, I'M GOING TO BE AN ACCOUNTANT INSTEAD ?" and yet somehow managed to restrain myself from ranting online is far too many to count! HAHA! (Also, I really don't want to be an accountant. ?) Both the blessing and curse of CbB is there's so many ways to get to the end goal. It's great for adapting the workflow to fit the individual's needs but when it's something off of the beaten path that you have to do to get there (even if the actual act of it is super easy), that can trip up even experienced users. I think I've said in another thread that I'm pretty competent with Cakewalk stuff and have been using it for decades but this forum still surprises me when someone goes "oh yeah, but you can also do that like THIS" and it completely changes how you work with a tool. It's awesome!

Get both. Cakewalk is free, REAPER is free for 60 days. You have nothing to lose by trying them both and making a decision about the one you like best in 2 months time. Both programs are capable of anything you want to use them for, but have very different workflows. Most people here would say Cakewalk is the best for that (me included) but if you ask on the REAPER forum, they'll tell you the opposite. There's no right answer - get both and find out which one is the right fit for you.

I think what Noel is getting at is that if you're just running a line level in (say, a hardware synth out or an out from a guitar effects processor or whatever), you're not going to notice the average quality of a modern Realtek chip. It's good enough. And for playback, it's going to be fine. But I don't think anyone would recommend that over a proper interface if you're recording a mic level signal or DI guitars or things like that. If nothing else, you get the right input impedance and far better input gain stage control. I still have PTSD flashbacks thinking about recording through a Creative AWE32 card in the late 90s. There was so much hiss and crud on every channel, I had to de-noise everything first before it was even close to being usable! ? We've come a long way...

Id suggest trying WASAPI mode first. That'll save you messing about with wrappers like ASIO4ALL if it works. I know there was substantial work done a year or so back to get the WASAPI mode working well with Cakewalk under Win10, and I can certainly vouch for that. 5ms latency on a pretty old machine, and playing without hiccups.

For playback, the Realtek is fine. Use it with WASAPI and the latency is easily good enough to play VSTi instruments with barely any lag at all, and mixing is fine too. I've taken my machine out on the road to do some editing and it's been great. But that said, I'm with John - recording anything more than a quick demo through a $10 audio chip is asking for trouble with the quality you'll get. When you can get a cheap USB interface with solid ASIO drivers that also gives you a great mic preamp and instrument input on there, it's a no-brainer. Spend $150 now and save yourselves thousands of dollars of workarounds getting it to sound good later.

Actually a LOT better than the first couple of releases, at least on my system. It's up to version 4.x now, if I remember rightly?

I use a 16x08 here with no problems at all, so it definitely works well with CbB. Are you able to post up some screen shots of your settings from the audio settings in Cakewalk's Preferences? What is your latency slider set to in the 16x08 mixer? If it's too low, that can definitely give you drop-outs or engine stops.

If you drag up on the waveform height scale (see item C here: https://www.cakewalk.com/Documentation?product=SONAR X2&language=3&help=EditingAudio.13.html ) you can increase the height of the waveform so you can better see the quiet parts of the audio track to edit breaths, check for clicks and pops, or really quiet material you'd need to process later but is hard to see in its raw form. Currently you can only do that one track (and indeed one track lane when it's open) at a time. It'd be great to select a bunch of tracks and CTRL+drag on one of them and change the scale on all of them at once.

Yeah, I'll +1 that. I'd love to be able to CTRL+drag on the waveform zoom on one track and it adjust the zoom on every selected track.

Can you show us how you do it in ProTools then? I'm failing to see the difference between something here that's literally designed to do what you're saying you want to do, that you're saying CbB is sorely lacking, and how it's done with everything else that does have it. Again, genuine question here - if there's something super basic that we're missing here, it's worth chatting about so we can pass it on to the Devs to get their take on it, and hopefully added. Edit: In case you mean "these clips need their gain adjusted entirely to set up the correct gain structure before hitting the track", you can actually ctrl+drag on them from the top of the clip without changing the edit filter to Clip Gain and it'll automatically add an envelope for that clip and change it to where you've dragged, and then kick you back to regular clips mode. I can't see how this could be easier. If you need yet MORE control, you can drop a VST on each clip and adjust its settings on a per-clip basis. Quite a lot of power there!

Is this what you're after, @Craig Reeves ? (Genuine question )

Yeah, I'm with Kevin - I'm not following this one either, I have to be honest. Set your Edit Filter to Clip Gain and every clip gets its own envelope. Add points or do a selection and drag that part down as needed. You're only really going to be editing one clip at a time when you're cutting out breaths along a single track, right? But the envelope is there for all of them in the track, and if you mean stacked, then you can multi-select the tracks and the envelopes move all together. This is something I do all the time myself. Are we misunderstanding what you're trying to do?

This is where one of us (probably me) goes "It should be easy enough to... [insert ridiculous idea here], right?" ?

*SWISH!* Yeah, that's killer! It's the simple things, hey? For a while there I was doing something similar to the stock Tungsten theme myself, but once all of the new features started rolling in that needed more and more upkeep, I just learned to live with it.

I actually do, mostly when I'm on a single screen machine (usually I have a 1920x1080 laptop screen AND a 3840x1080 main screen so real estate isn't a big deal here, but sometimes I'm using a 1366x768 single screen). It's a little frustrating because you don't have a clear indicator of which recording mode that you're in like the Large module does.

Glad you got it sorted There's plenty of things that can make a project go weird like this, especially anything that manipulates the stereo field or plays around with phase, or some console emulators like @Gswitz mentioned. It could also be a dithering thing as well. The worst one I've had is having a headphone send going to output 3/4 on my TASCAM 16x08 and for whatever reason, if I didn't have those hardware outputs muted when I exported (and in one weird case, even actually in the project at all - I had to delete anything sending to 3/4 entirely), exporting 1/2 would clip the output. Wot ? Got to love wonky projects, hey?

If there's nothing being exported in the final WAV then that rules CbB out, pretty much. The only other exception is if you've got multiple outputs and the WAV you're exporting isn't including them. Eg: You have an interface with Stereo 1/2 and Stereo 3/4 outs. Your master is set to output on 1/2 and that's the WAV that gets exported, but you might actually still be hearing 3/4 as well. What audio interface are you running and how is it hooked into your speakers / headphones?