inialization or .ini question...

[Lomitus]

Hello All!
I am new to these forums so thanks in advance for your patience and wisdom.

I'm relativly new to the world of Cakewalk and will probably have many questions as I go here. I"m running CWPA 9...given to me by a friend when he upgraded to Sonar (but he kept the freakin manual). I'm running this on a Duron 700 with 512 megs of RAM, (2) 20 gig harddrives, Win98 SE, etc., etc., etc.. I'm getting a solid 20 tracks with plently of effects off it without too many problems.

My first question is...and this isn't really a problem as much as an anoyance...is there any way to perminatly turn of the freakin metronome while recording? I have to go in and turn it off every time I start a new project and this is getting somewhat tiresome. I don' t use the metronome itself as I use a small beat machine to set up my scratch tracks (old Boss DR220...works like a charm for me). I have looked thru the help files, but didn't find anything in regards to this. Is there an .ini file or something that I can put in the initialization settings that will turn this annoying little bugger off permanatly?

My Second question...and of greater importance is; Can someone explain in relative detail the best way to set the buffer settings in CWPA (for this system)? There seems to be little to nothing about this either in the help file. I would like to get these tweaked, but don't want to sit there and just blindly play with them. The person I had gotten the program from had tweaked them out pretty well when we installed it, but do to a recent system crash, I lost all of the tweaks and the person is now out of state and I have no way to get ahold of him to ask what he had done? I haven't had a problem -yet- with the default parameters, but the current project I'm working on is only around 12 tracks so far and I'm afraid that as I add more later that I might run into problems. I had this problem when I used to run N-track as well...never was able to get the buffers quite tweaked for optimum performance (N-track...some very nice features, but the bugs rendered it pretty unusable...every now and then it would write eronious data to my audio tracks...which is why I'm using CWPA now).

I'm greatful for any assistance!
Jim Walczak

 

[dachay2tnr]

I'll begin with my usual disclaimer. It's been a couple of years since I've used PA9, and the features between it and Sonar tend to blur in my mind.

That said, probably the best thing to do relative to the metronome is simply to create a template. This could be helpful to you in other ways as well. You can preset the number of tracks you want, recording sources, playback sources, etc. Turn off the metronome, set everything up the way you want it, and then do a Save As and select "template" from the file type drop down menu. When you start a new project, just recall the template.

As for the buffer settings, sorry, but it is kinda done blindly. Typically you want to let PA9 profile your sound card, and then accept the settings it chooses - unless you are having problems. In most cases, you will have fewer problems with larger buffers and more of them - but you will also have a higher latency. Therefore you need to strike the proper balance between tolerable latency and system performance. If you are not having problems now, I would just leave them as is. If you start having problems, try increasing the number of buffers (or changing the size). The problems will usually manifest in dropout of the audio.

 

[AlChuck]

Just to slightly amplify what dachay2tnr said, you can save your modified settings to the normal template if that's how you start most of your sessions off; you can also save variant ones with any name you want and pick from the list when you create a new file.

 

[crosstudio]

just to create a doubled track for what AlChuck said

i have my template saved such that i've got a midi bass, piano, hat, kick, and snare midi channels, and a bass, 2 guitar, 4 lead vocal, and 4 back vocal tracks and an 8-bar loop point all set. all i have to do is set the tempo and start building my tracks.