As you may know many people use timestretching software in their day to day operations, and it is common that people use timestretching for various things from setting an audio file to a specific tempo or fixing the timing such as in a drum recording, or even for creative effects.

However, not all timestretching systems are created equal. Some timestretching systems are significantly better than others, and this is evident if you have used something like Sound then you are fully aware of how terrible timestretching can truly be. There are also other naive timestretching algorithms that are complete garbage.

The most common timestretching algorithm is Elastique which is used all the way from the lowly Bitwig up to Cubase and Pro Tools.

There is a new algorithm on the market when it comes to DAWs, and that is ZTX. Digital Perfomer added ZTX and their 9.5 update recently, and it’s interesting because it is the only DAW that currently uses this algorithm. They had a choice of many things and they chose ZTX over Elastique.

MOTU isn’t fueled with a bunch of morons, if they chose ZTX over other algorithms (many of which are licensed), then you would expect that they feel that it is superior over the other options.

WELL IS IT?

I recently had an opportunity to interview one of the Software Developers and UX designers at Steinberg.

Often it is easy to forget that the people behind the software use are real people that are excited about working on the software and are truly trying to put out the best product they can under the circumstances of time and resources.

So this is just a short interview with one of the fantastic people working there.

(I’m not Steinberg biased, every company has similar people. This is simply the company that I choose).

FLStudio 20.1 is out. The official change page is here. I’m going to be going over the changes, see if I notice anything extra, and wade through a bit of the hype to see how cool this update is.

I wouldn’t call it ‘Exposed’ for no reason though…

Other posts in this series:

• Part 0: Introduction to this series
• Part 1: Introduction to FL
• Part 2: Recording and Editing Audio
• Part 3: Piano Roll basics
• Part 4: Advanced Piano Roll
• Part 5: Piano Roll Tools
• Part 6: MIDI Controllers
• Part 7: Modulation
• Part 8: Performance mode and Video FX
• Part 9: Workflow
• Part 10: Effects Review
• Part 11: Instruments Review
• Part 12: Conclusion

READ - This Review is out of date. I do not suggest viewing it as anything more than a historical artifact. Please check the comments for potential corrections and criticisms.

Ok, you should know by now that I dislike Windows. As such I decided to get this all out of the way as fast as possible.

So what follows is my thoughts on nearly every aspect of Cakewalk. I intentionally left out some parts that I didn’t think warrant mention, and I’m certain I missed a few things.

This post is 12,530 words, 71,893 characters and has 118 images/videos. Not to mention all the code I write to create media, extract information, cross-check the manual and other bits. I’ve spent countless hours (200+ now) digging into the software in the last month, reading the manual, scouring the forums, cross-referencing, etc… If I’ve made any glaring errors please leave a comment or contact me and I will fix it. If you disagree with my opinions then feel free to let me know and we can discuss it. I’m pliable and can be convinced by a rational well-reasoned argument. I will also update the post.

There’s some things shaking up at Bandlab, so this may not be my final post in the series for now, but I intend it to be. My thoughts on Cakewalk as a whole are at the end.

The DAW Chart is updated with Cakewalk as well. As of publishing this, I don’t even know what the final score is (that’s calculated client side). I avoid looking so I don’t subconsciously try to smidge an overall rating ahead of another DAW.

Without further ado let’s hop into it.

READ - This Review is out of date. I do not suggest viewing it as anything more than a historical artifact. Please check the comments for potential corrections and criticisms.

Other posts in this series:

• 30 days with Cakewalk
• Why I hate Windows

Anyone that reads this knows that I hate Microsoft Windows. I get questions fairly frequently about why, and the reasons require their own post.

This is that post.

• 30 days with Cakewalk
• Part 1: Almost Everything.

This is a big one for me. Cakewalk is a Windows only DAW. I HATE Windows (which I may explain why, in depth, later).

I’ll be spending 30 days working with Cakewalk as much as possible and leaving my thoughts as usual.

Other posts in this series:

• Why I hate Windows
• Part 1: Almost Everything.

This is a bit of a meta-video that I suspect 95% of my readers won’t care about.

YouTube has a system of audio processing set up that is bewildering and annoying. I have figured out a system to process the audio of your videos so that they meet the YouTube audio standards about 95% of the time.

This method will cost you about five euros at most, and the single necessary plug-in is often on sale for half price or less.

I tested dozens of audio files from music to dialogue to various types of noise and various combinations of these. While my method will not always give you perfect results, it will get you close to the ideal results with minimal effort and minimal cost.

There’s all sorts of arguments on the internet on whether you can use a Passive DI in reverse as a Reamp, or go straight out of your amp or maybe use a special cable?

What IS Reamping? What are these things you do it with? Why do you use them? And can you really do that?

Let’s find out with some measurements and then real world tests.

THIS IS A MEDIA HEAVY POST!!!!!!!

This post will load up to 105mb of data!!!

This post will load up to 105mb of data!!!

This post will load up to 105mb of data!!!

This post will load up to 105mb of data!!!

This post will load up to 105mb of data!!!

There’s also another 97.4mb of optional downloads.

The recent Cubase post took a lot out of me this week for content creation.

So I spend my effort doing a lot of backend improvement. Bugfixes on the site, improved nav-bar, youtube improvements and DAW Chart is improved.

I made a new video for the DAW Chart for people that like videos. The DAW Chart also has price information now and I fixed some ratings that were mildly errant.

IF THE PAGE LOOKS WEIRD THEN DO THIS:

• Safari - cmd-option-r
• Chrome - ctrl-F5 (Win) cmd-shift-r (Mac)
• Firefox - ctrl-F5 (Win) cmd-shift-r (Mac)

I also changed some colours to make the page feel nicer to read.

Cubase 10 is out! Is it worth it? What’s new? What was there?

I’m ready to go, so let’s hit this hog!