Bub
Danny Danzi
Bub, is it possible you had that track frozen and then re-enabled the CE? The reason I ask, when you freeze track with the PC enabled, it disables PC completely as it is included in the freeze. Or, I've noticed that in some older projects, the master PC light at the top right, was turned off. I'm sitting here working not even noticing the master on/off on the channel was off until nothing I changed made a difference....then I noticed the light was out.
Nope, it was never frozen.
I haven't experienced any of those old anomalies we had in X1 with the on/off thing thankfully. I can say this though...older projects not created in X2 have always been a bit strange for me to where I've had to alter things. I can't remember exactly what I've had to fix, but let's just say that when I had enough of listening extra hard and watching every little thing, I started labeling my songs "name of song X1" or "name of song X2" or "name of song 8.5" so I never make any mistakes. I've found that is's best to always finish a project in the version your started it with just to keep things cool.
It's a new project started in X2. That's a good idea about naming them with the version number they were started with.
One of the things that I DO remember that always happens to me with older projects and X2 is....it always tells me "can't find wave data, so silence will be inserted". Open the project in 8.5 where it was created, it doesn't do that.
I haven't had that happen in a long time but I do remember it happening.
As for the CE, I hear absolutely nothing while using the bus CE. The channel CE just gives me a little drive and makes things a little crisper. The only thing I've found this useful on so far has been newer bass guitar tones where a client is crying for a little drive and sometimes on backing vocals to give them a little "zip" so to speak.
I don't hear anything either. I'm still scratching my head over those Craig Anderton A/B comparison's he did upstairs a while back. I heard a 'tiny' difference when I used them on strings once, but that's it.
The good thing about the CE drive is...it's good drive. One of the best "drive" sounds I've ever heard from a digital plugin to be honest. It's close to a saturation or sorts depending on which model you use. I've tried enabling one on every track like they recommend and then mixing that way. Then, when you turn them off, you're supposed to hear a pretty decent difference. There's a difference, but not one that I personally welcome. I've worked my entire life to keep drive out of my mixes....it's not something I want or need on every track and to be honest, I can't even tell it's being used unless I crank up that gain a considerable amount. I don't WANT gain on my stuff, so I've stopped using these things.
I tried setting it up the way they recommend too. I have it on all my tracks in this project, and buses and tried to A/B it and heard absolutely no difference until this happened. You are 100% right, it did sound just like a nice saturation once I backed it off.
The Waves versions of these are a little cooler as they give you 32 modeled channels to choose from and each channel has it's own distinct sound without using ANY gain at all. So that to me is a little closer to the way this stuff SHOULD be working. But to be honest, I still don't think I need that and definitely don't need it on every track. To be honest....I think some guys just think they like the sound of those things because they look so cool in your project. :)
I was trying it just to see if I could get anything out of them if you know what I mean.
BTW ... I opened up the project again tonight, now it's not working again. I can crank it all the way up and no difference.
I honestly think the people who say they can't hear a difference are telling the truth because there is no difference. I think this is a flaky plug-in and it's not turning on like we saw with the other Pro Channel modules in X1. I never would have thought this if I hadn't heard it work on this system for 30 seconds.
I'm done. All my stuff will be done in another DAW from now on. I'm cutting my losses with X2. This isn't even funny anymore. It's sad.
After all you've been through, I can't say I blame you. Just make sure you stick around and hang with us. :) Bub, I know it's silly to even bring this up, but have you ever tried a different soundcard? The reason I ask this is because, we run several different interface rigs over here and I've been seeing different quirks in each one. For example, all the Echo Audio stuff we have (Layla 24/96's, Audiofire 12's, Echo Mia) all have the same issues no matter how new or old they are. We crash when we do certain changes when buffer sizes are at 64, and we get a nice gap in our audio when using that arm on the fly option during punch-outs.
All our cards do this but our RME FF 800. We can use arm on the fly with tracks 1 &2, but from tracks 3-12 we get a big hole in the audio during a punch and these crashes at 64 samples are nuts with certain VSTi's. We can record at 64 buffers but as soon as we're done, we have to up the buffer size before we do anything.
In my case, I think Echo and Sonar don't seem to play too well together. Our RME seems to be ok though even at low latency. I know this has nothing to do with your problem....but the reason I bring it up...remember when we had that issue in X1? It NEVER did that with my RME and it didn't do it with my stupid Realtek's either.
But it did it with our Echo stuff at random and it happened several times per week. I'm just wondering if some of these weird gremlins may be soundcard related? Come to think of it, I DO recall the CE being on about 3 weeks ago and not doing anything with the knob all the way up. I closed the project, reopened and it was ok. I've not seen that since, but I really don't use those things anymore. The new plugin manager has wreaked a little havoc on me as well...but it seems to be stable finally.
What I really don't get that drives me nuts....my test boxes that have all sorts of crap on them for all the beta work I do for other companies....barely gives me any issues when I use Sonar without testing weird plugs and other strange things. How can a Dell with a Realtek maintain itself with a load of crap on it yet I have issues with my good boxes that are all clean? LOL! I don't get it.
-Danny