Anderton

Beepster
Another thing that would be cool now that I understand Craig Anderton's Advanced Workshop entry about frequency filtering with the VS 64 Multiband Compressor (or whatever it's called) is if the PC EQ had a setting to filter out bands in a similar way. The VS Multiband is pretty resource intensive so to have multiple instances of it just to portion out parts of the frequency spectrum might bog a project down. The current band filters on the PC are curved in such a way it wouldn't be the same thing. So if there was a filter setting that didn't actually process anything but just created 4 or 5 blocks that could be individually bypassed/silenced all that would have to be done is clone the tracks. This way if I'm working on a guitar part I can set up my sims and other effects based on a specific range without using a plugin to filter the frequencies and/or screw around too much trying to isolate the bands.

Basically what you want is a crossover, not a parametric EQ, which would require a completely different architecture compared to that of the PC EQ. However, the Sonitus multiband compressor works just fine and doesn't use as many resources; in fact it's almost always what I use. Where the LP really shines is in the very high frequencies, but as soon as you throw a cab on an amp sim, the frequencies aren't there anyway. I think that if you inserted an LP64 Multiband and a Sonitus with identical settings and A/Bed them, you would hear no significant difference.

Thanks for the explanation and terminology correction (still learning). Very cool. I think you even mentioned the Sonitus in that vid and I had been meaning to try them both out for this purpose. Not quite sure what you mean about the cab removing frequencies. You mean it yanks out the top of the spectrum? But you see what I mean how it might be useful to have that right on the PC strip somewhere. Then again that technique probably isn't all that common (if it is your vid is the only place I've seen it mentioned). I'll be trying it out today or tomorrow now that I've fixed the complete routing hack job I did on my tester project (my first attempt with X2 over a year ago). I can also see me using this for other instruments and doing some creative effect type stuff with it. Something like that new BiFilter mangling up the different freqs in different modes could sound pretty crazy or delays/choruses/whatever might create some interesting stuff.
 
hmm... I just had a thought that it might be useful to filter out overtones when using Melodyne to extract midi for a bit more accuracy. Definitely a lot of possibilities. I hope with your new job you can still find time to put together tuts like that for us. Cheers.

Beepster
Thanks for the explanation and terminology correction (still learning). Very cool. I think you even mentioned the Sonitus in that vid and I had been meaning to try them both out for this purpose. Not quite sure what you mean about the cab removing frequencies. You mean it yanks out the top of the spectrum? [1] But you see what I mean how it might be useful to have that right on the PC strip somewhere. Then again that technique probably isn't all that common (if it is your vid is the only place I've seen it mentioned). [2]

[1] The high-frequency response of most cabs tops out around 5kHz.
[2] You're right. Not that many people do multi-band processing, let alone feel the need for a crossover. But try it with the Sonitus, you'll be hooked. It does amazing things with distortion but also multiband delays with different delays in different parts of the spectrum can be VERY cool. Chorusing, too.

STinGA

Anderton

cheezSorry for being a wet blanket here. There number of bug fixes in X3b and X3c are so numerous and extensive that it made me wonder why these weren't discovered during the beta stage. Or perhaps the product was released as a beta product and the early adopters became the beta testers. Don't get me wrong - I'm glad that Cakewalk is releasing patches quickly and faster than compared to previous versions. But there shouldn't be so many fixes needed on a finished product. I hope their beta testing/QA team get their act together.

If you think the number of bug fixes is "numerous and extensive," that list is nothing compared to the list of bugs that get tracked and fixed during the development process. It would be like a batter who hit .987, and all people could focus on was that he didn't hit the ball the other .013 at-bats. 
 
Perfection is rare. For example, there was a typo in your post ("There number" instead of "The number") and a grammatical error: When used as a noun referring to an arithmetical value, the word number is singular so you should have said "The number of bug fixes in X3b and X3c is..." Now, that's only two errors out of an entire paragraph, but if you knew they were there, why didn't you fix them? And if you didn't know they were there...well, that's exactly how bugs happen!
 
It's also important to realize that the number of permutations and combinations of how people use software is in the millions. There is no way to test all of those possibilities prior to release if you expect to release something before the sun collapses into a dwarf star. When you have bugs like "Double-click maximize and 'Fit Project' would not work correctly in projects with hidden tracks" you had to have someone test a project with hidden tracks and then wanted to double-click maximize and 'fit project' and found out that it crashed...then be able to reproduce how it happened, and make it happen repeatedly. Or a bug like "Resolved a crash when selecting 'Selected Track inputs...' menu item in a project with no tracks." I would NEVER find a bug like that because if a project had no tracks, I would not select Selected Track Inputs. Then are the bugs like "Resolved a hang that could occur when dragging tracks and folders." The "could" occur bugs relate to various different conditions, so kudos to whoever tracks down the "could" bugs.
 
X3 was very stable for an initial release, the forumites have confirmed that. Some of the bug fixes in X3c are pretty esoteric. Even a crack beta team with dozens of people are going to have a hard time finding those. This isn't being an apologist for Sonar, I would say the same for any software manufacturer. Frankly, I'm really proud of the Bakers for being so relentless about tracking down bugs. They could have said "well people seem pretty happy, I guess we can take off for a month." But they didn't. Besides, you had better hope the day never comes when a software company does an initial release of a piece of software and it contains no bugs, because that will be a sign the world is coming to an end.  

Brilliant..... This should be s sticky!

Wow, you read the whole thing!! I'm flattered.

Anderton

Beepster
Thanks for the explanation and terminology correction (still learning). Very cool. I think you even mentioned the Sonitus in that vid and I had been meaning to try them both out for this purpose. Not quite sure what you mean about the cab removing frequencies. You mean it yanks out the top of the spectrum? [1] But you see what I mean how it might be useful to have that right on the PC strip somewhere. Then again that technique probably isn't all that common (if it is your vid is the only place I've seen it mentioned). [2]

[1] The high-frequency response of most cabs tops out around 5kHz.
[2] You're right. Not that many people do multi-band processing, let alone feel the need for a crossover. But try it with the Sonitus, you'll be hooked. It does amazing things with distortion but also multiband delays with different delays in different parts of the spectrum can be VERY cool. Chorusing, too.

Great stuff, man. I obviously would have noticed the lack of high frequencies but I would never have known it was because of the cab. I'll have to experiment with this. Cheers.

Brilliant posts from both Anderton and Noel Borthwick.
Thank you for explaining software development principles so patiently. :)

*low* observable / actual bugs ratio.
 
.....mmmmmm.....this was exactly why i posted my remarks in some thread and why people were acting crazy on me ....
 
Observable is the key word here ...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agile_software_development

Anderton

STinGA

Anderton

cheezSorry for being a wet blanket here. There number of bug fixes in X3b and X3c are so numerous and extensive that it made me wonder why these weren't discovered during the beta stage. Or perhaps the product was released as a beta product and the early adopters became the beta testers. Don't get me wrong - I'm glad that Cakewalk is releasing patches quickly and faster than compared to previous versions. But there shouldn't be so many fixes needed on a finished product. I hope their beta testing/QA team get their act together.

If you think the number of bug fixes is "numerous and extensive," that list is nothing compared to the list of bugs that get tracked and fixed during the development process. It would be like a batter who hit .987, and all people could focus on was that he didn't hit the ball the other .013 at-bats. 
 
Perfection is rare. For example, there was a typo in your post ("There number" instead of "The number") and a grammatical error: When used as a noun referring to an arithmetical value, the word number is singular so you should have said "The number of bug fixes in X3b and X3c is..." Now, that's only two errors out of an entire paragraph, but if you knew they were there, why didn't you fix them? And if you didn't know they were there...well, that's exactly how bugs happen!
 
It's also important to realize that the number of permutations and combinations of how people use software is in the millions. There is no way to test all of those possibilities prior to release if you expect to release something before the sun collapses into a dwarf star. When you have bugs like "Double-click maximize and 'Fit Project' would not work correctly in projects with hidden tracks" you had to have someone test a project with hidden tracks and then wanted to double-click maximize and 'fit project' and found out that it crashed...then be able to reproduce how it happened, and make it happen repeatedly. Or a bug like "Resolved a crash when selecting 'Selected Track inputs...' menu item in a project with no tracks." I would NEVER find a bug like that because if a project had no tracks, I would not select Selected Track Inputs. Then are the bugs like "Resolved a hang that could occur when dragging tracks and folders." The "could" occur bugs relate to various different conditions, so kudos to whoever tracks down the "could" bugs.
 
X3 was very stable for an initial release, the forumites have confirmed that. Some of the bug fixes in X3c are pretty esoteric. Even a crack beta team with dozens of people are going to have a hard time finding those. This isn't being an apologist for Sonar, I would say the same for any software manufacturer. Frankly, I'm really proud of the Bakers for being so relentless about tracking down bugs. They could have said "well people seem pretty happy, I guess we can take off for a month." But they didn't. Besides, you had better hope the day never comes when a software company does an initial release of a piece of software and it contains no bugs, because that will be a sign the world is coming to an end.  

Brilliant..... This should be s sticky!

Wow, you read the whole thing!! I'm flattered.

Just for fun... or easier reading..., next time publish it in a 2 or 3 volume set.  

Thanks for the explanation people, esp the link to "Agile software development". That's certainly enlightening. Seeing that the patches contained mostly "fixes", it gave the appearance that bugs are being fixed. If nothing is wrong, nothing needs to be "fixed". That's quite different from "enhancement". That brings to the assumption that the released product is buggy. However, if this is part of the standard process for software development, that's fine. I can accept that explanation.
 
I run organizations that stresses heavily upon processes. We don't do software - we deal with people and lives. Hence our margin for error is extremely narrow. So do pardon my lack of understanding for processes involved in software programming. And thank you Anderton for alluding me to my grammatical errors in my previous post .
 
As I said, I'm still glad Cakewalk is releasing patches quickly - at a much faster pace than before. As a long time Cakewalk supporter and user since CWP7 (and religiously upgrading almost every version), I must say it's still a great product. This post has been helpful in giving us an understanding into the inner workings of the software industry. 

cheez
And thank you Anderton for alluding me to my grammatical errors in my previous post .

I'm glad you took it in the spirit in which it was intended. I'm a recovering ediholic.