In 8.3 you can select if you want silent bus warning with the WarnSilentBuses switch, in cakewalk.ini add:

[WinCake]
WarnSilentBuses=0

See this thread:
http://forum.cakewalk.com/tm.asp?m=1648597

[Edit: The reason for the warning is the Left/Right split using 2 sends and no regular output.]

I'm very glad that so many have gotten some value from this. Unfortunately, I don't have the time for tech support! That said, one would probably learn more by poking around on their own and doing some 'reverse-engineering'.

ORIGINAL: jsaras

I'm very glad that so many have gotten some value from this. Unfortunately, I don't have the time for tech support! That said, one would probably learn more by poking around on their own and doing some 'reverse-engineering'.

Fair call, I guess I'm just being lazy! I will see if I can work it out for myself.

Thanks.

Video on Monster Island
1. Buss the drums to a stereo compressor

2. Buss the drums again, to another stereo compressor and buss the returns of this 1st compressor to the second one as well

3. Use the returns of the compressor as the final drum sound

jsaras setup
Drum bus split (do not touch) sending to drum bus comp-stage 1 soft and drum bus comp-stage 2 load.
Drum bus comp-stage 1 (Soft) is routed to drum bus comp-stage 2 loud.
Drum bus comp-stage 2 (Loud) to the sub master buss.
Both the compressors are set at default and the sound is just passing through them is it meant to have some presets. Is this correct?

ORIGINAL: jsaras

I'm very glad that so many have gotten some value from this. Unfortunately, I don't have the time for tech support! That said, one would probably learn more by poking around on their own and doing some 'reverse-engineering'.

Exactly, it's a great resource packed full of useful every day presets and some insights into bus and send routings...blah, blah, blah.

Studio Editon owners that don't have the Vintage Channel can look up 2 stage compression and use alternative compressors (I really love the $49 Stillwell Rocket for this kinda thing) and why not try adding your own parallel drum bus compression set-up which is fed by a send from a track (room mics would be a good candidate here) to a bus with some really heavy compression (the Sonitus Drum Destroyer preset is a good start point here) and perhaps some monster reverb too and feed it back into a main drum bus as an alternative or as well as going through the two stage process? Your scope is unlimited this is a great guide to set you on your own path.

This is a cool gift from Jonas and even though I'm not a total newb it has been an excellent reference, or starting point for developing my own mix set-ups which vary from project to project anyway. The beauty of this little baby is that all the most common workaday requirements are all skillfully set up in this one little bundle.

Another tip which may be of interest to some is while you have this project in front of you save out the contents of each track folder to a Track Template so when you are just dealing with drums for example start with a new blank project and just load the Drum folder into the blank project and all the required tracks buses and sends are all set up and ready to roll.

For me this is one of the most useful user donated contributions I've seen on any forum.

So pick it apart, enjoy and lets give the man a break here... even if only to give him time to come up with something else as cool....

ORIGINAL: jamjar

The confusion I'm having is that the SUB MASTER BUS has sends to MIX LEFT and MIX RIGHT, but also appears to output directly to the Firewire 410 outs. Is this a mistake, or is it my misuderstanding of how busses work?

Thanks,
Stuart.

Notice that the Submaster Bus has its volume fader all the way down, so it's not sending any signals to the audio interface. The signal is only being routed to the Mix L/R through the use of Sends set to Pre-Fader. From there it goes to the Master Bus and finally to your audio interface. You can set the Submaster's output to 'None" if you want to and it won't affect the results, except you'll get the annoying message saying that the Submaster Bus has no output routing everytime you open this project.

HTH

That's a good question, and I hope I can answer it correctly.

First thing you have to understand is that sends are nothing more than extra outputs you add to a Track or a Bus. For example, you have Track 1 who's output is being routed to the Master Bus (and from there to the soundcard). Then you insert a send in Track 1 and point it to the Reverb Bus (which also outputs to the Master Bus). What happens here is that the audio from Track 1 is being sent to both the Master Bus (via the regular output of this track) and to the Reverb Bus (via the send you inserted). So it's like you added another pair of outputs to Track 1. This is aking to using a Y-cable on a guitar to split its signal, except we're talking about Stereo Routing (unless you use Mono Buses). So far so good?

Alright, so in JA's template, the Submaster Bus is receiving everything and splitting it into two mono signals that go to Busses 'MixL' and 'MixR' via sends. From there the two hard panned mono signals are brought back together to the Master Bus, which outputs to your soundcard. Turning the Submaster' volume up would be like sending everything that's going into this Bus twice to your soundcard: once from its output (since it's set to output to the Soundcard) and once again from both MixL/R sends (which again, send the signal to the Master and finally to your soundcard). This is why the volume on the Submaster Bus is turned down and the sends are set to Pre-Fader so that you can do that. Otherwise, if set to Post-Fader, you would get everything twice to the Master Bus.

Use Post-Fader when you wanna blend two signals together (i.e. when using FX Busses). This is why you set the Bus FX to 100% wet, so that you can blend the direct signal with the wet signal without adding another layer of direct signal. It effectively becomes a MIX control like those found on FX plugins. You use Pre-fader when you want to route audio and ignore the Bus fader (i.e. on Headphone mixes or JA's crazy routing scheme :-P). In the case of headphone mixes, having sends set to Pre-fader enables you to adjust the volume of different tracks without affecting the overal balance of the mix. This way you can have a mix where the drums are louder than everything else so that the Bass player can lay his track, but the mix coming from the Master Bus is intact. In the case of JA's template, setting the sends of MixL/R to Pre-Fader enables him to split the signal without adding extra signal from the Submaster Bus to the final output.

The best way to understand Pre and Post is to experiment with it. Try this:

- Load JA's template and turn the Submaster's volume up to unity gain (0dB); The overall sound should be louder.

- Now set the MixL and MixR sends to Post-Fader; You should hear no change in volume.

- Turn the volume of the Submaster Bus back down to -Infinity; You hear silence.

- Change the sends back to Pre-Fader; Volume is back to normal.



HTH

Jonas' template link isn't working for me ... is it just me?

ORIGINAL: mwall

Jonas' template link isn't working for me ... is it just me?

Just checked, working here.

Jon

ORIGINAL: Jose7822

That's a good question, and I hope I can answer it correctly.

First thing you have to understand is that sends are nothing more than extra outputs you add to a Track or a Bus. For example, you have Track 1 who's output is being routed to the Master Bus (and from there to the soundcard). Then you insert a send in Track 1 and point it to the Reverb Bus (which also outputs to the Master Bus). What happens here is that the audio from Track 1 is being sent to both the Master Bus (via the regular output of this track) and to the Reverb Bus (via the send you inserted). So it's like you added another pair of outputs to Track 1. This is aking to using a Y-cable on a guitar to split its signal, except we're talking about Stereo Routing (unless you use Mono Buses). So far so good?

Alright, so in JA's template, the Submaster Bus is receiving everything and splitting it into two mono signals that go to Busses 'MixL' and 'MixR' via sends. From there the two hard panned mono signals are brought back together to the Master Bus, which outputs to your soundcard. Turning the Submaster' volume up would be like sending everything that's going into this Bus twice to your soundcard: once from its output (since it's set to output to the Soundcard) and once again from both MixL/R sends (which again, send the signal to the Master and finally to your soundcard). This is why the volume on the Submaster Bus is turned down and the sends are set to Pre-Fader so that you can do that. Otherwise, if set to Post-Fader, you would get everything twice to the Master Bus.

Use Post-Fader when you wanna blend two signals together (i.e. when using FX Busses). This is why you set the Bus FX to 100% wet, so that you can blend the direct signal with the wet signal without adding another layer of direct signal. It effectively becomes a MIX control like those found on FX plugins. You use Pre-fader when you want to route audio and ignore the Bus fader (i.e. on Headphone mixes or JA's crazy routing scheme :-P). In the case of headphone mixes, having sends set to Pre-fader enables you to adjust the volume of different tracks without affecting the overal balance of the mix. This way you can have a mix where the drums are louder than everything else so that the Bass player can lay his track, but the mix coming from the Master Bus is intact. In the case of JA's template, setting the sends of MixL/R to Pre-Fader enables him to split the signal without adding extra signal from the Submaster Bus to the final output.

The best way to understand Pre and Post is to experiment with it. Try this:

- Load JA's template and turn the Submaster's volume up to unity gain (0dB); The overall sound should be louder.

- Now set the MixL and MixR sends to Post-Fader; You should hear no change in volume.

- Turn the volume of the Submaster Bus back down to -Infinity; You hear silence.

- Change the sends back to Pre-Fader; Volume is back to normal.

Brilliant, thanks Jose - you defintely speak my language!!!! In other words, cut through the jargon and just give me a simple example that teaches me exactly what you're talking about.

Well done and thanks

Thanks, Jonas. Interesting stuff in there!

I am finding that I am becoming very happy using the Jonas Template along with primarily Cakewalk's included fx. I still like or feel the need to use a few of Voxengo's great plugs along the way. I have also turned to the Kjaerhus Classic Chorus so I can simulate Cake's fxChorus which does not work in 64bit. I still like the sound of Cake's better, but the classic chorus is close. Jonus also tweaked the pantheon to emulate the EMT Plate setting he had for the fxReverb so I could work with his template in 64bit. What a guy!!!

I can honestly say that my tracking/mixing final products hold up very well to what I might expect at a more expensive studio. I am sure that some of the hardware the larger studios use - do make a difference. But Cakewalk has done of great job of including good sounding and useful plugs. Hats off for that. The 64 series plugs are great! From my perspective their primary job is to create a solid recording daw. Plugs should be secondary - but with Sonar, that is not the case anymore. I am very content. I could not have reached this level of satisfaction without the great template Jonas provided. A real step change here once I started using that template a couple of years back.

IMHO - Jonas is without a doubt the most respected forum contributor!

Thank you for your kind words.

Like many musicians, I have a bit of a masochistic streak within me.  Although I do have "better" tools available to me, I found that limiting myself to Sonar's included tools to create the template was a useful exercise.

The Sonitus EQ and compressor work very well for individual tracks.  I think CW would do well if they combined several of the Sonitus plugins into a channel strip (EQ, comp gate).  It sounds great and the CPU hit is minimal.

The Cakewalk FX Reverb can hold its own with reverbs that are far more expensive.  It is very competitive with CSR Plate and even the UAD 140 plate.  I think that the reason why it still sounds great is because of its modulation capability.

I think the larger point is that everyone now has the tools necessary to get a very acceptable sound.  Hopefully the template provides some ideas on how to use them. 

Compression, EQ and reverb properly applied can create magic!

J

Hi Jonas,

I happened upon your template whilst looking at information on the lastest version on Sonar and I am so glad I did! I loaded an old track into it which had previously sounded dull and lifeless and now after some tweaking it sounds great. For a novice like myself this is an awesome tool that has helped me learn much more about the mixing process and I will use it as a starting point for a long time to come.

Thanks for sharing with us both your time and knowledge with this template!

Oh yes, one question if I may? I loaded the template into Sonar 8 and read the release notes which mentioned that the Master Out was set to RMS and as such the mix should be around the -20 mark. I noticed that the demo song provided was peaking at just under 0db on the meters and wondered if this could have been reset by me using a new version of Sonar? Is there an easy way to set this back?

Cheers

Spence 

Thanks Jonas!!!!! Especially for the Ozone Presets!!!