Question about Blue Cat's PatchWork and Cakewalk.

[Misha]

Hi Folks!

For a couple of years I was considering of purchasing Blue Cat's PatchWork for some stuff outside of Cakewalk. Still can not decide if I need it or not.

One of the things in Cakewalk that I do not like, is that even if VST FX is turned off, but present in the bay, it will use CPU resources, because if I remember correctly it is called "hot", meaning it is always on standby.  Unless global FX is turned off of course.

The list of features and possibilities of BC Patchwork is astonishing, but I was wondering if somebody with experience with this plugin can help me to understand if it will work the way I hope it will in real world.

Workflow I am after:  Usually I work with about 15-20 tracks.  I want 2-3 FX scenarios, that I can recall/change easily.  

FX light, with 1-4 FX instances for tracking

FX heavy, for mixdown

FX sketch pad, medium FX load to try out different FX stuff. 

Is this possible to achieve with BC Patchwork? To have these "FX scenarios" and change them quickly depending on situation?

Thank you!

 

 

[martsave martin s]

have you tried scenes?

[Craig Anderton]

6 hours ago, Misha said:

One of the things in Cakewalk that I do not like, is that even if VST FX is turned off, but present in the bay, it will use CPU resources, because if I remember correctly it is called "hot", meaning it is always on standby. 

Are you sure that's the case? I just loaded a bunch of CPU-intensive effects and watched the Performance CPU meter. If I turned off the effects with the bypass button, the CPU consumption went to almost nothing.  It seems you could load up a track will the effects you wanted to use, and turn off effects as needed when you wanted to save CPU power. 

You couldn't save individual presets of effects that are on or off, but it sounds like this is something you wouldn't have to change often, just when going from (for example) tracking to mixing.

[Misha]

Martin, I think you are totally right! This seems to be working almost exactly as I wanted. I only played with it a little today, but seems it will do the trick. I was worried,  that it would not save "scenes" to  Cakewalk's "Template", but it seems to be working fine.  Thank you!!!  Blue Cat items  have very powerful features, but for this  I will stick with Cakewalk's "scenes".

Craig, I was talking about "selective" FX off/on from the audio engine. It does not work by turning a single FX on or off.... It is all or nothing (global FX).  My main issue was having these "scenes" for different purposes in single project,  which I totally forgot about and thankfully Martin reminded me where to look.  Having 2-3 FX for tracking works fine on my system, 20+ FX slows everything down in unwanted direction.  With "scenes" it lets me choose how many and type of FX I want to use almost on the fly, Instead of deleting and inserting or turning off globally... it is one button operation once you set everything to your liking.

 

 

Edited December 16, 2019 by Misha