Lord Tim

Cheers, gents! I really appreciate the comments!

Hey guys, I've been giving CbB a hell of a work out over the last few months and came up with... well, this thing: And yes, I did get a blister from my solo part! ? I think my poor video editing machine fared worse though, buried in After Effects hell. But we got there. For those playing along at home, obviously the mix and master was done in CbB. About 85% of the plugins were actually Sonitus, and a liberal amount of Pro Channel stuff, like the console emulator and the tape sim module - that was magic on the drum and guitar busses. Anyway, enjoy!

@David Owen - if you check out the bottom 5 posts HERE you can see the ones that were chosen from us users. I was blown away by Silverlight by Eric Hansen - some seriously great playing on that!

+ 1 to what @Grem said. Anyone who can't get world class results out of the Sonitus suite needs to look at their skills rather than the tools. I've got a pretty fair list of international releases behind me now and they're still my bread and butter plugins because they just work. Of course there's other plugins that sound great which I also like to use, and if you're after a "character" plugin, these aren't for that - they simply do what's written on the tin and get out of the way.

Wow, some really great choices there! Nice!

It's all a trade-off in the end. I've gotten great results with stretching for most things, and like Jon said, choosing the right algorithm is super important, and so is bouncing down the audio when the stretching is done, so you're not using the less CPU costly online algorithms that have less quality than the bounced offline ones. I've found that slicing and crossfading on guitars does all kinds of weird stuff to note decays. If you're most of the way through a sustained note and you crossfade at the wrong point, not only is the level going to be an issue but the whole timbre of the note can change dramatically over a couple of milliseconds. It can sound super stuttery. If the timing is so bad that it's hard lining up a start time of a phrase, you're going to run into huge issues trying to fade between stuff that's so far off the beat, IMO. Stretching, while it'll never be as good as actually playing the part, will mitigate that to a point, especially with the right algorithm. But some great suggestions in this thread! I definitely agree that pre-roll to get into the groove and comping the best of many takes will give you the best results, I'd say.

This is true, but what you can do is enable Desktop Site mode and you get everything:

It really comes down to the goal. If you like the challenge of trying to troubleshoot this kind of thing, have at it. It's interesting learning about a new system and trying to overcome issues. But if the goal is to have a working system where you can just get on with it, and not have to second guess if it's your migration that's causing issues or not, you really need to weigh up how much time you're willing to spend on this. In the time it's taken to get to this point, a clean Win10 and a complete software reinstall could have been done, with far less chance of some other hidden thing you might have missed popping up later to cause you headaches. I'm all for fixing problems and understanding my system completely, but there's just a point where it's just better to cut your losses and get on with making music.

Happy to have this one (or parts of) included: 25+ minutes long. and stuff ranging from AOR piano ballads to melodic rock, to orchestrated film score sections and up to extreme metal, mutitracked live drums on a big kit, actors, dozens of vocal and guitar tracks... it actually had to be split over 5 different projects and then comped together in a master project because it was so tough to manage! ? Getting the CbB project(s) of this would be tricky at this stage, though - my machine has gone through a rebuild a couple of times and a lot of the plugins I used on this have long since been replaced or retired but I can probably get some screenshots of the project itself. The other one that might be interesting is this: This was a clip I shot for an extreme metal band that I work with, but we ended up filming all of the concept footage so it made sense in the edit. When it came time to cut it all down, it felt like a shame to drop 50% of the clip, so I decided to do a movie score version. Again, this had to be split over 8 different projects so I could score it to the video, and then brought together in a master comp project. From memory, Rapture Pro was what got the biggest workout on this, with a few other cinematic booms and fun things like that. All good if this can't be used without the original project files, but if this is workable, I'm happy to include them! ?

No, in fact if you're just doing an export, you can just do your edits and processing and just export - no need to freeze or bounce down to new tracks at all. ?

As a guitarist, I whole-heartedly endorse the "more practice" suggestion ? But as a producer, sometimes: The end justifies the means, in that if you want to get to a certain point and you don't have the ability to do it at the recording stage yet, we luckily have the tools to help get a vision realised. Sometimes the goal is to get a song written or demo'd rather than having to become a competent player first. There's some things that even a great guitarist might not be able to do, like sample-accurate locking in with loops and sequences, where if you quantize your part, you can get a level of tightness that a certain style of music might need (I'm all for the excitement that a human element can bring to a part but sometimes you need it to sound super tight). I personally wouldn't use the slice/crossfade method on this, I'd be inclined to use stretching instead, just so you're not getting odd artefacts as notes loop over each other. That can work for drums but for guitar it can be really iffy on the sustain of notes. But this all said, quantizing is great and will get you over the line, but there's a magic in someone just nailing their part. It's those little human variations that add so much excitement and thickness to a part that makes it something special. I'd definitely recommend doing a bunch of takes and editing together the best parts rather than quantizing once you're up to the ability to do that. The part will really come to life!

@Kris Olin - sorry, I should have explained. Boost11 is a limiter plugin (which I'm fairly sure CbB has by default and wasn't carried over from the old SONAR days - there were a lot more extras bundled back then when it was a paid product), but really any compressor (such as the excellent Sonitus Compressor) or limiter will allow you to control your dynamics. If it's not already open, press B to open the browser. Then make sure the Plugins > Audio FX tab is selected. Have a bit of a look through there. If Boost11 is installed, it'll be in there somewhere, likely under dynamics or compression if it's set to display by categories. Drag whatever effect you choose over to the Effects Bin on the track you're working on, which is that space next to the meter. There'll be some good presets in there to get you started but it's a fairly easy plugin to use when you spend a bit of time with it. The other thing I mentioned was doing clip gain adjustments. You'll see in the track Edit Filter it's set to Clips. If you set that to Clip Automation > Clip Gain, you'll get envelopes on each clip where you can alter the volume on everything. This is great for getting things even, lowering breath noise before a phrase (if you don't want to delete it entirely), etc. Combined with a compressor or limiter plugin, this can give you super even results. When you're all done, the icon that looks like an asterisk is the Freeze function. Click that and all of the effects in the track Effects Bin and all of the gain you drew into the clips will be bounced down to complete clip with everything applied. But since this is non-destructive, you can just click that again and get back what you had at any time. Pretty neat. Non-destructive means no regrets the next day when you open your session and you realise you really should have had that extra coffee before signing off on things in your last late-night edit. ? I'd definitely suggest having a quick look through the online documentation - it'll open up a world of options if you've come from destructive wave editors. ?

There is but it's a bit fiddly (but works great if you can bear with it). Audiosnap is what you're after: https://www.cakewalk.com/Documentation?product=SONAR&language=3&help=AudioSnap.01.html I'd tend to spend the time dropping in your own manually inserted markers rather than letting Audiosnap try and detect things. It's more work in the beginning, but you'll get much better results in the end.

That's weird, they shouldn't have. I'd tend to adjust stuff non-destructively there too - set your edit filter to Clip Gain and do adjustments there, rather than using the process menu. Or throwing a Boost 11 into the effects bin to control overall dynamics that way. Once you're happy with it all, freeze the track and you're done. And if you decide you want to make changes later, simply unfreeze the track and you have all of your decisions there to adjust again.

Actually CbB works like this also: Better yet, unlike a lot of wave editors, this is non destructive too, so if you got a little over-eager with the cut and you sliced off the end of a word, it's trivial just to nudge a clip forward and roll the edge back, apply crossfades, etc.

Big tip: turn the damn thing off the moment you're done with the edit that needs it! You can turn a project into a massive disaster area very quickly if you forget, trust me... ?

Ripple editing is what you're after: https://www.cakewalk.com/Documentation?product=SONAR&language=3&help=Arranging.22.html

As a benchmark, why don't you image your drive, and then load a fresh version of Win10 on there (doesn't need to be activated for this test), drivers, etc. and CbB. If you have performance issues with that, you can look at Win10 itself and the drivers. If this works fine, then something else is borked - I'd say the upgrade process has gone badly at some point. Just restore the drive image and you're back to how you were before you did this test.

There are so many great amp sims out there now. I think there was a thread in the Coffeehouse where people asked what was the biggest innovation in the last 5 years or something like that, and a few people mentioned the realism of amp sims. You could always get something usable in context (which is really the only thing that matters at the end of the day - what does it sound like in context?) but the stuff that's out there now is in a whole different league. It's good to be nostalgic about a cranked tube amp (which, of course, sounds fantastic) but given that vs. the convenience of turning up with a profiler or even something like what I use live, which is an iPod running Amplitube into a little 200w class-D power amp... I know what I'd prefer to lug around. ? I think also people would be really surprised at what actually ends up on a record, even if it was a real amp being used. Sure, that might be a great old Marshall JCM800 into Vintage 30s, but which mic? How many? Placement? And when it's recorded, what processing is being done? Sometimes it's slamming it down to tape that gets the sound, sometimes it's through a multiband to shape the tone and tame stray frequencies... Not to mention the sound might actually be a blend of several amps. It's fascinating and if you're inclined to experiment in the studio, it's super rewarding getting amazing tones doing that. But then there's days you just want the job done - plug in, get a good tone first go, every time... yeah, I'll take the profiler/modeler, thanks! ?

For the sake of clarity and words not being put into mouths here, let me explain my statement. ? Like you saw, your machine with 8G of RAM "flew like a bat out of Hades" and that's my experience too - to a point. Unless a project has corrupted itself somehow (which does happen, in fact I have one particular project with almost exactly the same specs as 10 others I did at the same time that would take about 6 seconds to save, while the others were more or less instantaneous. It would also glitch up in a particular area for no good reason too), I would be able to run dozens of tracks without too much of an issue. The GUI would be snappy, the audio would be glitch free. However, start piling effects on that, or running sample libraries where both CPU and RAM become a big factor, the only way such a low-spec'd machine can cope is by careful project management. Archiving non-essential parts of the project if they're not necessary to the section you're editing, freezing instruments and effects, or in some extreme cases (as was the case of a huge 25+ minute long concept thing I did), actually do it in sections, and assemble that as a single song later, similar to how you'd master an album or EP or something like that. Any relatively modern system would negate the need to do most of that, Win7 or 10 or otherwise. Just because I can do big productions on this kind of machine isn't an endorsement that one should. Believe me, the next chance I get, I'll be upgrading (if, for no other reason, to wipe the smug smile off the face of the new 8700k, 32G, NVMe M.2 powered computer I just bought for for video editing ? ) Ultimately it's down to your needs first of all - are you using a lot of real-time effects? Softsynths? Sample libraries? Are you running more than a couple of dozen tracks? On even an old dual core system with 8G of RAM, this is fine. But a bicycle with a basket on the front will also get your shopping home from the store too quite adequately, although you may need to do a few trips and it's slower going. Sometimes it's best to just get a car. ? But this all said, the crux of the issue is that going forward you're going to find less situations where Win7 is a good idea now it's EOL and less companies are testing on that platform, so there's more chance of your software not working as expected. New hardware especially is going to be designed to work better with Win10 (and hardware will always need to be replaced eventually). I was one of those guys who held on tight to Win98se, and then XP, and 7 (since 8 was such a mess when it launched) for all of my work machines, and dabbled with the latest versions of everything on my non-essential computers. Win10 was the first OS for me out of those where it just worked great out of the box and was every bit as snappy as Win7. I'll echo the good advice in this thread again - if you're finding this isn't the case for you, start fresh. There's just too many variables with in-place upgrades to make a proper judgement call on how well this should be running on your particular system.

The specs of my long-suffering audio laptop is in my sig below. This is running Windows 10 and doing some pretty big productions. Absolutely agree with Jim in that 8gb is much too small for a DAW in 2019, but I've found Win10 to be at least as snappy as Win7, even on this ancient hardware.

Absolutely high up on my feature requests list too!

Seems to be working OK here - I have mine set for daily digests for the places I follow and indeed I've been getting daily e-mails.

When I did my first really big production, I had the same issue. And the biggest problem was listening to stuff in isolation and getting a sound I liked and then moving on to everything else. Put it all together and... mud. ? I obviously didn't get the memo about making space in a mix to fit all of the instruments together. The tone I love on bass is rarely what I have on the recording once I've finished doing all of the work, but! what I hear in context is the key. You'll find that a lot of things you think you're hearing in the final tone are actually a combination of everything else working together and your ear filling in the blanks. So the first thing I'd try is this: work backwards. Mute everything, and then put something like the excellent Voxengo Span over your master out so you can see what the frequencies are doing. Unmute your kick drum and make a note of where that sits in the spectrum, then unmute your snare, and do the same. Then mute the drums, unmute your bass and see where that's sitting. I'd almost guarantee there's frequencies fighting for the same space as the kick drum. Unmute the kick and snare and listen to it all together, while watching the frequency spectrum. You're likely going to either need to EQ the bass or the kick drum to carve out a space for the other instrument. Sometimes it means cutting the EQ on the bass track at the frequency which is the most prominent on the kick track, and boosting a lower frequency than the kick if you like a really low bass, or doing the opposite where you want a good throaty bass and you'd prefer the kick drum to handle all of the sub-sonics - the song will dictate what feels right. The next thing I'd do is umute the guitars. If it sounds like crap at that stage, the most likely culprits is too much low end on the guitars, and too much snap in the upper mids on the bass. In a mix, it's pretty common to high-pass the hell out of your guitars. In isolation, that sounds AWFUL. Really thin and powerless. But in combination with the bass guitar, your ear fills in the frequencies and the guitars sound just as thick, but with no overlapping frequencies causing mud build up. If you have too much pick attack on the bass, you might find that's fighting for the growl of the guitars - again, look at the frequency spectrum when this stuff is muted and take a note of where things are peaking out, and try cutting one of the instruments that's fighting for that space. This should all get you 90% of the way there if you systematically go through your mix and carve out only what you need to hear from each instrument. EQ in context when everything is playing together, and take it as far as you can before it starts to lose too much of what you want to keep in the particular instrument. You'd be surprised at exactly how much you can lose before you notice it gone, once everything is playing together. After that, there's a few tricks with compression and distortion that can even things out enough, or more advanced things like side-chaining to let stuff dynamically make space for other things. But I'd almost guarantee that you'll never need to go that far unless you have a specific reason to do so. Good luck!

Did you upgrade from 7 to 10 or did you do a fresh install of 10? It's been my experience that any kind of migrations are iffy at best, and it's better to start with a clean slate if possible.