My 3 wishes

[Funkfingers]

I guess its been wished many times before.

But anyhow.

1   Audio gain adjustment  in clips.

2  Tuner up front. Its a fundamental feature that should have been implemented 20 years ago. 

3  Tempo adjustment with tap-tempo. Up front. Not in any menu or sub-menu. Away with the current "fiddely" tempo adjustment.

 

Thank you for keeping the best DAW alive. I love it!

[Michael Vogel]

Don’t understand what you mean by “up front”???

As far as I’m aware you can adjust clip gain in the Process menu but it’s destructive. Make a copy first. 
 

As for the others, like any frequently used feature you can create a key binding which will save you drilling into multiple menus.  
 

Not sure if that answers your question. Hope so. 

[RBH]

You can do an audio gain or reduction  per clip by holding the ctrl key and dragging upward or downward with in the clip. Bounce to clips will render the gain offset.

I use a very simple tuner ( G-tune ) and place it first in an effects bin. It would be useful to have a readily available one that you could quickly drag into a track. That's one use for track presets though - just have it already assigned.

I'm not sure how I would use a tap tempo. How would you use one?

[Bill Phillips]

On 12/29/2019 at 9:57 AM, Funkfingers said:

1   Audio gain adjustment  in clips.

@Funkfingers You can add clip automation and drag it up and down to adjust clip gain. I use this to reduce peaks and raise the level of quiet parts. You can also add a gain plugin on each clip which will act like a clip fader.

[Jim Fogle]

On 12/29/2019 at 9:27 PM, RBH said:

I'm not sure how I would use a tap tempo. How would you use one?

One example, I want to record myself.  Prior to recording I mentally do a count-in while tapping the requested "tap tempo" button.  The tempo switches from the 120 bpm default to my "tapped" count-in tempo of 102.37 bpm.  I'm now ready to record.

The Transport Module has three metronome buttons just to the right of the tempo window.  The buttons turn on the metronome during playback, metronome during record and opens the metronome settings window.  Perhaps one of those buttons can perform double duty as a tap tempo button.

Edited January 1, 2020 by Jim Fogle

[chuckebaby]

Tap tempo can be added to the custom module and pulled up for recall with 1 click.

[Kevin]

I moved from Pro Tools 12.6 to Cakewalk by Bandlab and really miss the way clip gain is implemented in Pro Tools, with the waveform adjusting according to the amount of clip gain applied. This makes it easy to match individual clip volumes by sight.

I also miss VCAs and would love to see them in Cakewalk in the near future.

Apart from those couple of tools that I miss, I think Cakewalk is a truly excellent DAW and long may it continue! 

[Davydh]

19 hours ago, Kevin said:

I moved from Pro Tools 12.6 to Cakewalk by Bandlab... ... I also miss VCAs and would love to see them in Cakewalk in the near future.

Hi Kevin, I've been watching lots of mixing videos and I hear VCA periodically and I'm always wondering, do they mean an automated fader??? What is it?

[Kevin]

A VCA is a Voltage Controlled Amplifier (VCA) and provides a means of easily controlling a group of faders, allowing the overall level of the grouped tracks to be brought up or down whilst maintaining the relative balance of the group members and retaining the individual track automation. VCA's work differently to aux faders and make it much easier to control group volume. 

[Starship Krupa]

A tuner would be an excellent addition to the ProChannel modules.

In the meantime, my favorite tuner plug-in is Meldaproduction's MTuner, which may be had as part of their Free Bundle.

[Sonarman]

20 hours ago, Kevin said:

A VCA is a Voltage Controlled Amplifier (VCA) and provides a means of easily controlling a group of faders, allowing the overall level of the grouped tracks to be brought up or down whilst maintaining the relative balance of the group members and retaining the individual track automation. VCA's work differently to aux faders and make it much easier to control group volume. 

I do the same using  aux tracks. You mentioned VCA's work differently to aux faders. But in CbB I could do the same procedure you mentioned using Aux tracks. If I am wrong or missing something do correct me.

[wunderbier]

On 1/2/2020 at 3:40 PM, Kevin said:

I moved from Pro Tools 12.6 to Cakewalk by Bandlab and really miss the way clip gain is implemented in Pro Tools, with the waveform adjusting according to the amount of clip gain applied. This makes it easy to match individual clip volumes by sight.

I also miss VCAs and would love to see them in Cakewalk in the near future.

Apart from those couple of tools that I miss, I think Cakewalk is a truly excellent DAW and long may it continue! 

I don't believe it can be automated, but you can toggle the Offset Mode in the Mix Module and adjust levels without disrupting automation.

[Davydh]

Do VCAs affect the level of the channels before they hit the plugins?

E.g. you have SSL compressors on every drum track and all the drum tracks are routed to a VCA, so you can control how much level is sent into the compressors?

[LarsF]

47 minutes ago, Davydh said:

Do VCAs affect the level of the channels before they hit the plugins?

E.g. you have SSL compressors on every drum track and all the drum tracks are routed to a VCA, so you can control how much level is sent into the compressors?

Most have fake VCA in the sense it only handle faders - and in that case post fader insert effects, like a compressor would be affected by VCA.

This is the case for Cubase, StudioOne, Reaper and Samplitude.

In Cakewalk you can freely group any individual control, like gain on each track that hits the compressor if first in chain on tracks.

It is only ProTools, I believe,  that has true VCA that you can group for VCA on any controls.

 

But VCA means parent/child or master/slave relationship between VCA control and anything else - that does not exist in Cakewalk, but highly wished for. In this case you can apply automation to a vca and also apply in a relative way to all the controls that are part of that group.

 

With Cakewalk grouping you can move one control part of a group - and in write automation mode you can have to applied to all controls in that group. Both as absolute or relative(offset mode in Cakewalk).

 

Through extensive testing I managed to move a bunch of tracks automation the same amount, full length over track, by this procedure:

- have all tracks in Track View visible with automation lane visible

- select them, this will quick group them

- then on one of automation lanes hover mouse in upper part of lane, press and move automation up/down.

 

This worked really well, and if having post fader sends on those, those will also be correct in level - so dry/wet relationship does not change by this operation. So would be the same effect as moving a vca the same amount of dB and have that relative movement be applied all over.

 

But true VCA would really be nice, to have parent/child relation from one vca track to all part of that group. Also ability to nesting vca into controlling other vca groups - really nice.

 

But Cakewalk control grouping in general is better than most daws I tried for extensive time, which ProTools was just a short while trialing.

 

Most daws work strictly between the same control being grouped - like pan - and moving pan all pans in group move. In Cakewalk you can use a fader to control pan in a group if you like - you set min max stuff, and can even have reverse on one. Like button maintain the state they are in when put in a group - so some buttons can be on and some off, and flipping one will flip all of them to other state. This is really useful.

[Bill Phillips]

1 hour ago, LarsF said:

Most have fake VCA in the sense it only handle faders - and in that case post fader insert effects, like a compressor would be affected by VCA.

This is the case for Cubase, StudioOne, Reaper and Samplitude.

In Cakewalk you can freely group any individual control, like gain on each track that hits the compressor if first in chain on tracks.

It is only ProTools, I believe,  that has true VCA that you can group for VCA on any controls.

 

But VCA means parent/child or master/slave relationship between VCA control and anything else - that does not exist in Cakewalk, but highly wished for. In this case you can apply automation to a vca and also apply in a relative way to all the controls that are part of that group.

 

With Cakewalk grouping you can move one control part of a group - and in write automation mode you can have to applied to all controls in that group. Both as absolute or relative(offset mode in Cakewalk).

 

Through extensive testing I managed to move a bunch of tracks automation the same amount, full length over track, by this procedure:

- have all tracks in Track View visible with automation lane visible

- select them, this will quick group them

- then on one of automation lanes hover mouse in upper part of lane, press and move automation up/down.

 

This worked really well, and if having post fader sends on those, those will also be correct in level - so dry/wet relationship does not change by this operation. So would be the same effect as moving a vca the same amount of dB and have that relative movement be applied all over.

 

But true VCA would really be nice, to have parent/child relation from one vca track to all part of that group. Also ability to nesting vca into controlling other vca groups - really nice.

 

But Cakewalk control grouping in general is better than most daws I tried for extensive time, which ProTools was just a short while trialing.

 

Most daws work strictly between the same control being grouped - like pan - and moving pan all pans in group move. In Cakewalk you can use a fader to control pan in a group if you like - you set min max stuff, and can even have reverse on one. Like button maintain the state they are in when put in a group - so some buttons can be on and some off, and flipping one will flip all of them to other state. This is really useful.

Nice, detailed description of VCAs and the related capabilities of other DAWs. I used VCAs a long time ago on a live sound mixing console where we'd use VCAs to control drums, backing vocals, horns, etc. But don't have a clear memory of their function or uniqueness.

I'm pretty sure that I've seen this batted down as flawed before, but right now can't understand why routing the outputs of tracks that you'd control with a VCA in Protools (drums for example) to a group aux track or bus in Cakewalk wouldn't accomplish the same thing.

With the aux track or bus approach, you could control the level of all selected tracks by adjusting or automating the aux or bus fader, and you could control the relative level of each selected track independently by adjusting or automating the individual track faders. What am I missing?

[LarsF]

29 minutes ago, Bill Phillips said:

I'm pretty sure that I've seen this batted down as flawed before, but right now can't understand why routing the outputs of tracks that you'd control with a VCA in Protools (drums for example) to a group aux track or bus in Cakewalk wouldn't accomplish the same thing.

With the aux track or bus approach, you could control the level of all selected tracks by adjusting or automating the aux or bus fader, and you could control the relative level of each selected track independently by adjusting or automating the individual track faders. What am I missing?

Yes, live movement of those works grouped in Cakewalk.

What you don't have is parent/child relation to just write automation on one channel and apply to the rest in group.

And you don't have nested groups to have one track control other groups - like vca usually work(unless Reaper and Samplitude which are fake and don't do nested).

In Cakewalk now you can only do live write of automation to those and they will follow - not just draw automation in one lane and all will follow. Not record write automation on one track and then apply to others either.

As I see it, calling it vca or something else, what is missing is parent/child relation between tracks automation. And in arbitrary levels, that one become master of the others.

 

But if to, in Cakewalk, just do relative movement on arbitrary number of tracks automation - all over the track as they are - the quick grouping thingy I explained above work well. And doing it live with write automation works too - but all is applied that instant and undo will work if to redo again right then .

If to draw and nice fade in or out as a ramp is what I do a lot - and to apply that to a number of tracks with vca is nice. So you can work your way to have 6-7 vca's that control like a stem how you want it. You adjust the ramp over and over and when you feel it all is set - burn/freeze/merge that into automation on all tracks as you please. During this process you have double automation lines everywhere - one with final result and one with relative applied by vca.

[Davydh]

The reason I bring this up is all the top sound engineers at Puremix & MixWithTheMasters use VCAs.

Furthermore, they translate their templates into various DAWs and make them available for download, but I kept thinking how am I going to translate the VCAs into Cakewalk.

Let's say I want to adjust, specifically lower all the individual levels of the kick drum, snare, etc BEFORE they hit all the plugins, how do I do that in Cakewalk?

I hope one day it's added.

I'd say it's an industry standard feature for audio production like midi is for keyboards.

[Xoo]

Track or clip gain.

[Davydh]

@Kevin Perry

Let's say you have track gain for kick drum at -2db, snare -3db, overheads +2db etc. and you want to turn up or down all the gains without changing their relationship i.e. you turn down 2db and now kick is -4db, snare -5db, overheads 0db. 

How do you do that in Cakewalk with a single fader?

[Bill Phillips]

26 minutes ago, Davydh said:

@Kevin Perry

Let's say you have track gain for kick drum at -2db, snare -3db, overheads +2db etc. and you want to turn up or down all the gains without changing their relationship i.e. you turn down 2db and now kick is -4db, snare -5db, overheads 0db. 

How do you do that in Cakewalk with a single fader?

Route their outputs to an aux track. Use the aux track fader as you would a VCA fader and use the individual track faders to adjust the relationship between the drum tracks.

Edited March 22, 2020 by Bill Phillips
Clarification