Audacity features that Cakewalk is missing.

[Mark Morgon-Shaw]

6 hours ago, scook said:

Or Project > Insert Time/Measures... which works with or without an active selection.

Cool.  Usually there's multiple ways to do the same thing in Cakewalk. Personally I now use a project length Arranger section and move it with that as I also use it to set my export selection.

 

[imstre]

On 12/11/2021 at 2:57 AM, John Bowles said:

Put these features in Cakewalk and I will stop using Audacity. For now as stated above I will use Cakewalk for these items at the very end (Audio Snap, maybe Automation and maybe Chorus as well and maybe reverb (Audacity reverb is limited but pretty good).

By the way, I use Audio Snap by setting threshold to 100% so it places zero vertical lines then I place them all myself. I find that much faster. It does a poor job of finding the start of the notes I find. But is is for sure at least twice as fast as trying to quantize in Audacity and better too. So it is Cakewalk's star feature in my mind.

Thanks,

John

Everything is even better and easier with Wavosaur.
This is very suitable for you!
But if you don't like Wavosaur, work with Audacity.
  Cakewalk is challenging for you and your team.
this app is for hardworking musicians but not for those who want a quick result.

Edited December 12, 2021 by imstre
Everything is even better and easier with Wavosaur. This is very suitable for you! But if you don't like Wavosaur, work with Audacity. Cakewalk is challenging for you and your team. this app is for hardworking musicians but not for those who want a quic

[imstre]

wow

Edited December 12, 2021 by imstre

[msmcleod]

8 hours ago, scook said:

Or Project > Insert Time/Measures... which works with or without an active selection.

This is my go to method for moving stuff along, especially with larger or more complex projects. Comparitively speaking, from a code point of view, the implementation is very simple and therfore much quicker than moving sections or using ripple edit.

[John Bowles]

12 hours ago, bdickens said:

Audacity is not a DAW It is an audio editor.

Interesting and somewhat useful. It appears Google search "What is Audacity" returns "Digital Audio Editor" so it agrees with you :-) I guess it is a DAE.

I am still processing everyone's wonderful and helpful tips and putting them in my notes. Thanks so much!!!!!

For me both Cakewalk and Audacity are great and both keepers. Audacity is a keeper because I run the Jazz Jams Club and my members use Audacity and I send them the two label tracks (see attached format) and a click track along with the Band In A Box Backing tracks . My guitar solos, melody and rhythm parts will be recorded in Cakewalk and song participant tracks will come into Cakewalk and I will do the final mix in Cakewalk. I will use Cakewalk Audio Snap a fair bit and its Volume Automation, its reverb, compression, chorus, etc. You can hear our shared recording music here and our last live jam here. You can hear my guitar playing when I was 22 years old and teaching guitar and practicing 6 to 12 hours a day here.

I think Audacity may be the only program I have use that literally has never crapped out on me and it is free. My Multicharts trading program that cost me $600 in 2007 for a life time license and now costs $1497 USD (although not recently) has crapped out many times. But it has over 5 million lines of code so I guess that explains it. The brokers also throw it new unexpected curves which does not help. Its the best programmable TA trading platform IMHO (it won a competition several years in a row). MS-Access craps out on me every so often. I use it and its VBA programming language a lot. It cost me $100 USD. So we musical folk are getting some nice breaks here.  I can't complain so I doubt I will ever complain about Audacity or Cakewalk.

 

Labels_Chords.txt

Edited December 12, 2021 by John Bowles

[John Bowles]

As the attached picture shows someone on the "Band In A Box" forum suggested I might want to try the Reaper DAW because he is using a BIAB VST plugin that can create a DAW midi track in Reaper that contains the chords that I punch into BIAB song file to be used to create the Jazz Jams Club backing tracks. Later I watched this  2021 BIAB VST plugin video and it says this plugin works with Cakewalk and any other DAW that accepts VST plugins. This plugin can also create a count in or a full click track on that same midi track .  So I can move the Midi track up and down and its count in is built right in (I like to record my guitar tracks at the bottom).

The person who turned me on to this 2021 BIAB VST is a more advanced programmer than I (a C-Language programmer I think). He gave me some scripts I can use with an MS-Access program I will write to get chord labels and section labels into Audacity which I may still use and some of my Jazz Jams Club members use. These Club members may not have the time to learn a new more complex program.

I am in the process of creating a MS-Word document of Reaper notes which will directly parallel my Cakewalk MS-Word document notes. This will help me decide which to go with. So far it is looking like I will go with Reaper but maybe I will use both.

Edited December 15, 2021 by John Bowles

[John Bowles]

I made some significant update to the above post.

[Mark Morgon-Shaw]

Remember that Reaper is NOT free

[John Bowles]

On 12/16/2021 at 1:11 PM, Mark MoreThan-Shaw said:

Remember that Reaper is NOT free

Thanks Mark. Yes I am aware of it. My understanding is below.

Reaper is $60 US for a personal licence. You can go indefinitely ignoring the 5 second warning which they want you to ignore for only 60 days. They have decided on that policy apparently. Assuming what one video said is correct, paying the $60 gives you 2 years of free updates and support stops after 2 years. I am not sure if the 5 second popup warning restarts after 2 years. I doubt it because I bought a web site builder software for $40 and its support ran out after about a year but I get to use it without annoyance forever.

What am I going to do? I am likely  going to pay the $60.00 because that is so cheap for such a good program. Another reason is Reaper still supports users using XP (assuming they pay). So I assume I am less likely to get nasty surprises with my Win7 use. I also like the program's old style boring interface. Having said that the final decision will be during the next week after I process the next member song with Reaper (give it a reality run). So far it is all videos, help pages notes with lots of video jumps for review and a few experiments hear and there.

Although Cakewalk and Reaper are both great programs realistically trying to use the best of both is unnecessary for me, too time consuming and also far too mind consuming :-) Continuing to use Audacity because members use it is doable. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Edited December 18, 2021 by John Bowles

[Clovis Ramsay]

@John BowlesRegarding visual compressed waveforms, this can be achieved on the buss’s and through the use of aux/patch point tracks that are being fed a group of channels such as multiple mics on an acoustic guitar or drum overheads.  Go to the track view and then all one needs to do is to enable the wave preview button on the aux channel and/or buss which will create a waveform in real time that reflects the audio being processed by compressions…etc.

 

Also, with all due respect, why should one need to quantize if one is recording Jazz?  That seems very un jazz like to me…

 

?

Edited January 3, 2022 by Clovis Ramsay