is cakewalk a good daw?

[l33t4e]

Why would you even use a DAW to record and process vinyl in the first place? :p

[Steve Bolivar]

When processing vinyl records, rarely will I even touch the pan control. Only when the original recording is so egregiously out of whack, it begs for correction.

The pan law setting in your audio settings, not the pan control in the mixer.

[progmatist]

When processing vinyl records, rarely will I even touch the pan control. Only when the original recording is so egregiously out of whack, it begs for correction.

The pan law setting in your audio settings, not the pan control in the mixer.

The only thing the pan law governs is when panning right, to what degree the left channel is attenuated, and to what degree if at all the right channel is boosted. If the panner remains dead center, the pan law never enters the equation. When mixing multiple tracks, yes the pan law makes an incredible difference. When working with a single stereo track, not so much.

[progmatist]

Why would you even use a DAW to record and process vinyl in the first place? :p

Since I own the software anyway, using it for that purpose will produce the highest quality recordings.

[Smasha]

Cakewalk is bad for routing.

I find it totally confusing for routing audio from multi vstis

I tried for hours to get audio from different midi tracks routed from a multi track vsti.

NFI.

When I use Cakewalk,I just use Instrument tracks for VSTi's,too confusing for me.

And the GUI is tiny and VERY cluttered which makes for headaches moments after you use the daw.

LIke Reaper has a multitude of functions but I just want the basics,not really interested in all the bloat rubbish.

I ABSOLUTELY HATE that dialog box that comes up when you select a vsti asking you for all sorts of routing options.

Reaper is good in that way because it does not ask you ,it just makes a track with a stereo output then if you want to add extra midi channels or audio outs from multi vstis,you can easily select that in the fx options,it does not give you confusing options like "first synth audio output"

I just want my vsti in a track then I can easily select my routing options like in Reaper.

I wish they would eff that dialog box off in Cakewalk,can't stand it.

[lfm]

I have identical results with modern audio interfaces by, Steinberg, Presonus, Focusrite, and an older Native Instruments Komplete Audio 6. All are set to true 24/96. More recent versions of Cakewalk/Sonar default to 32bit Float, not 16bit.

There is a separate setting for file storage and for rendering in Cakewalk.
Not all sure myself what default is since I had Sonar Artist that I think it picked some settings from for Cakewalk now.

I likewise have never had a "problem" cleaning vinyl recorded in Cakewalk/Sonar. The effectiveness and sound quality are far superior with Cubase.

If your going from 24/96 down to 16-bit - there should be dithering involved. It makes a notisable difference what algo and possibly noise shaping you are using in either case. I just use Waves L2 Type 1 and no noise shaping usually. Never the built in dithering in daw.

Some plugins don't like too high input, and gain knob on Cakewalk you adjust level that hits first plugin.

Mistakes that happend to me - was that put mono and not stereo interleave on a track, even with stereo plugin on it and recorded as stereo. This changes how the plugin is fed from clips. There is way better control of these thing in Cubase, I must say, how a mix of mono and stereo plugins are routed.

Other things that happend to me was the Pro channel plugins were activated on Cakewalk. Both a compressor and a saturator. I noticed firstly recording track 48 or something, getting crackles due to so much cpu used, so 96 instances of those did that.

Some plugins I had disabled still did not quite get out of the way of the one enabled. All weird stereo field. So removing it - fixed that so enabled was alone on track. But think this was plugin as such being a v0.9x, not sure, it could be Cakewalk bug too. So have some lingering disabled is one thing to look out for.

And not clear if you recorded as one stereo track or two mono tracks panned. I don't know Izotope anything nowadays, so not familiar with RX stuff.

If using pan laws -3 dB center can make a difference what levels are that hit plugins. One thing to think about. I don't remember what it was in Cubase. I just know older Cubase is 6 dB difference in how a project is translated - there are some remarks on this in Cubase manual, if it was pre Cubase 6 or something.

If you have pan laws -3 dB in Cakewalk meters will show you peaks satisfying that, if 0 dB center meters will satisfy that. And yet plugin will be hit by different level.

Hitting plugins too hard has been an issue with some hardware emulating plugins, that are made for -18 dBFs or something like that. Almost impossible not to get overs. But usually not regular audio plugins, in my case anyway.

But if different pan law in Cubase and Cakewalk can make a difference which levels the plugins are hit by, and gain knob adjustment could be useful.

Some people as standard do normalizing all recorded audio - that can be a bad thing in a case like I described.

Mono to stereo component plugins is an issue on Cakewalk. I read something on that on their forum. They are working on that as I understood it.

What I wouldn't give for you all to be right, and me wrong. Then I wouldn't have to go back and re-record hundreds of records.

When an activist says they have to do this and that - does not mean they actually do that. Sorry, but you come through a bit like that.

There were some activists from Magix Samplitude forum a couple of years ago - and one by one they claimed how much better Samplitude sounded. So forgive us for being skeptics. It does happend around here.

If there is any truth in what you claimed is due to something you did wrong before. Some kind of mishap.

That the raw recorded files would have to be re-done, I seriously doubt that. A look at the process after that with noise removal and stuff is what I would go for.

The only resulting recorded file I had issues with was from Reaper actually. I tried open that in r8brain to test sample rate conversions in RMAA later to compare - and it wouldn't open - unknown format or something. But it was older Reaper 4.7x I have on my XP computer.

Will se what happend doing 20 minute chunks for vinyl at some point if files turn out bad.

I will do one song only in Cakewalk and one in Cubase Pro 9.5 - and will see if noticing anything different at all in raw recorded file.

You could do the same thing, just one song and share. Raw file as recorded - as first step - one Cakewalk and one Cubase.

I'm no savvy on noise removal on vinyl, I never bother doing that myself. But maybe I should learn that.

[lfm]

Cakewalk is bad for routing.

I find it totally confusing for routing audio from multi vstis

I tried for hours to get audio from different midi tracks routed from a multi track vsti.

Yes, it is a bit different - but for a good thing, really.
You get full audio tracks in arrange/track view as well on every out from multi out VSTi. This is really nice when doing freeze, you get full audio to look at doing automation and stuff - don't need to look at midi.

Easiest way - to check to create all outs that the plugin says it has. Then remove full tracks on those not needed later. And then make a track template of that to reuse later - so do this once for the same plugins is usually the end of that for me, at least.

But have a vague memory, have to check out, that recently there should be an options to tell how many outs exactly you want. I make track template directly on VST instruments so never redo those procedures.

[Saffran]

New update on the way. Beta tests going on.
Apart from bugfixes it comes with a new function, articulation maps.
It can import Cubase articulation maps.

[progmatist]

If your going from 24/96 down to 16-bit - there should be dithering involved. It makes a notisable difference what algo and possibly noise shaping you are using in either case. I just use Waves L2 Type 1 and no noise shaping usually. Never the built in dithering in daw.

The finished product is 24/96 FLAC files. I can't remember the last time I burned an audio CD, but it's been years.

[AKJ]

If your going from 24/96 down to 16-bit - there should be dithering involved. It makes a notisable difference what algo and possibly noise shaping you are using in either case. I just use Waves L2 Type 1 and no noise shaping usually. Never the built in dithering in daw.

The finished product is 24/96 FLAC files. I can't remember the last time I burned an audio CD, but it's been years.

Can you describe what you are actually doing (step by step) and give us audio examples?

(If you are just recording vinyl and do the processing in RX I do not get why you would use Sonar/Cakewalk or any other DAW at all as you can directly record in to RX. What is more, when recording, Sonar just stores the "original" audio files in a folder. If you set sonar correctly to your target format (24/96) you can use these files directly, the Sonar/Cakewalk engine does not come into play, no need to bounce. Bouncing just makes sense if you did some processing in Sonar/Cakewalk. If you have problems with quality you should make sure to have set the right export format (24/96) and try to disable fast bounce and/or 64 bit engine. Also make sure that your routing is not flawed. Check the master bus settings!)

[l33t4e]

Why would you even use a DAW to record and process vinyl in the first place? :p

Since I own the software anyway, using it for that purpose will produce the highest quality recordings.

Using an actual standalone software for audio restoration and recording like iZotope RX is better than using ANY DAW! A DAW would only be there to process the sound AFTER. Otherwise you run the risk of processing audio in the recording phase before even being restored, which will most likely compromise the quality, especially if you didn't set it correctly.

[progmatist]

Using an actual standalone software for audio restoration and recording like iZotope RX is better than using ANY DAW! A DAW would only be there to process the sound AFTER. Otherwise you run the risk of processing audio in the recording phase before even being restored, which will most likely compromise the quality, especially if you didn't set it correctly.

I do in fact use RX7/8 standalone to process files. Specifically the batch processor, so I can set and forget. The issue seems to be the way the files were created in the first place.

If your going from 24/96 down to 16-bit - there should be dithering involved. It makes a notisable difference what algo and possibly noise shaping you are using in either case. I just use Waves L2 Type 1 and no noise shaping usually. Never the built in dithering in daw.

The finished product is 24/96 FLAC files. I can't remember the last time I burned an audio CD, but it's been years.

Can you describe what you are actually doing (step by step) and give us audio examples?

After the initial recording, I process the audio files directly within the audio data folder, using RX7/8's batch processing. I then rename the originals with a ".bak" extension as backup, and rename the newly processed files with the exact filename of the original. When I reopen the project in Cubase, it simply redraws the waveform picture data.

The next step is to use the Cubase waveform statistics function to find the peak values of each side of a given record. Based on the loudest peak from all sides collectively, I'll set the track fader to compensate for that level. I leave a headroom of -0.3db for rock and jazz, -1db for orchestral classical, and -2db for classical chamber and solo instrument recordings. BTW: I record all sides sequentially in the same audio track, for easier editing.

Cubase makes it a breeze to edit individual tracks from a side. After finding the start of the actual music, I press "insert" to create a marker. I look at the track timing from the label and/or jacket, click the primary time display, and enter that time using the numeric keypad. I know 10-key by touch, so I enter it quickly. After pressing the insert key again to mark the beginning of the next track, I look at the time for that track. I click the primary time display again, press the "+" key on the numeric keypad, and enter that timing. Cubase will automatically add the new time to what's already there. After washing, rinsing and repeating, I simply export every track in FLAC format, set specifically to 24/96 of course. The only thing left is creating the ID3 tags for the FLAC files.

In order to provide audio samples, I'll have to re-download and reinstall Cakewalk on one of my machines for an A comparison. The end of the month is typically busy for me. I should have time this weekend.

[AKJ]

You describe your Cubase-involved workflow, however, you were complaining about Cakewalk. So, I guess your workflow was the same with Cakewalk? First of all, I have to admit that it would never occur to me to apply such a workflow for the job you are intending. Cutting audio files is clearly a job for a wave editor, not for a sequencer. For cutting files I have found that WavePad is the best solution (or use any other). However, you seem to have created a lot of "cue points" in older Cakewalk projects and after that you realized that the exported files were subpar as compared to Cubase. Is that right? Again, without knowing your settings it is hard to tell were the problem lies. One thing, is however sure: Cakewalk is as good as any DAW in bouncing clips (when set to equivalent setting). There is no difference in this regard. As a sidenote: It is imo a waste of harddisk space to record old vinyl material 24/96 as the dynamic range of a vinyl recording is less than with 16 bit. And if it is not all completely new records played on high end equipment (and, additionally, your hearing is perfect in higher frequencies) I assume reducing the sample rate will be not harm either. Your processing, as described, does not demand for any additional headroom or compensation of aliasing.

[progmatist]

You describe your Cubase-involved workflow, however, you were complaining about Cakewalk. So, I guess your workflow was the same with Cakewalk? First of all, I have to admit that it would never occur to me to apply such a workflow for the job you are intending. Cutting audio files is clearly a job for a wave editor, not for a sequencer. For cutting files I have found that WavePad is the best solution (or use any other). However, you seem to have created a lot of "cue points" in older Cakewalk projects and after that you realized that the exported files were subpar as compared to Cubase. Is that right? Again, without knowing your settings it is hard to tell were the problem lies. One thing, is however sure: Cakewalk is as good as any DAW in bouncing clips (when set to equivalent setting). There is no difference in this regard. As a sidenote: It is imo a waste of harddisk space to record old vinyl material 24/96 as the dynamic range of a vinyl recording is less than with 16 bit. And if it is not all completely new records played on high end equipment (and, additionally, your hearing is perfect in higher frequencies) I assume reducing the sample rate will be not harm either. Your processing, as described, does not demand for any additional headroom or compensation of aliasing.

Editing a long file in Cubase requires no cutting whatsoever. I simply create markers, set the left and right locator positions to those markers, and export whatever falls between the locator positions. Cakewalk, as well as most other wave editors require actual cutting. So no, the work flow was completely different.

Finding specific time locations is far more tedious and convoluted in Cakewalk than Cubase. I have to press "g" to bring up "goto," highlight the minutes, enter the new minutes, highlight the seconds and type in the seconds. In Cubase, I click in the Primary Time Display, and it automatically highlights the minutes. After typing the minutes on the numeric keypad, it automatically advances to and highlights the seconds...so I simply continue typing.

As for the dynamic and frequency range question: the naked dynamic and frequency range, as it pertains to CDs versus vinyl records is not where the actual advantages of vinyl over CDs lie. But that's a discussion for another thread.

[AKJ]

Unless they changed that (which I doubt), you can directly type in any time in the goto dialog directly. And, of course, you may set makers in Cakewalk, too (press m). There is also a marker view. However, I do not understand why you would at all do the setting of cue points in a sequencer. Clearly, it is a job for a wave editor. And your initial complaint was about the audio quality and not workflow. So what settings do you use?