Quantcast
Channel: Mixing Tips – The Cakewalk Blog
Browsing latest articles
Browse All 77 View Live

SONAR Production Tips – Building A ProChannel De-esser

Introduction SONAR X3’s modular ProChannel allows users to take advantage of all the different aspects of a real mixing console. One great way of improving your vocal production is by using De-Essers...

View Article



Vocal Month: Easy Automatic Double Tracking (ADT) with Melodyne Essential

There’s a great ADT program lurking within Melodyne Essential by Craig Anderton So is Celemony’s ADT (Automatic Double Tracking) program any good? If you have Melodyne Essential, you can find out for...

View Article

Vocal Month: Creating Vocal Harmonies with Melodyne Essential

Can’t quite hit the high or low notes? Melodyne usually can. by Craig Anderton If you don’t have a wide vocal range, you have to choose a vocal’s key very carefully—the low parts can’t go below your...

View Article

How to use a vocal-double to enhance lead vocals

One of the toughest things about working with a lead vocal track is getting it to pop out, while allowing it to still sit in the track nicely in context with its surroundings [other tracks].  Every...

View Article

Virtual Instruments: 5 Tips For The Z3TA+ Junkie

Here are some of our favorite Z3TA+ tips and videos from our archive: 1. EDM Production – Enhance Your Drums with Z3TA+ 2 Insert two instances of Z3TA+ 2. Copy your drum sequence to both Z3TA+ 2...

View Article


AD2: Pitch Envelopes and much more than just drum samples

by Dan Gonzalez Yes, that’s right. You may think that Addictive Drums is just a simple sample player but it’s actually an impressive tool for sound design. XLN Audio has the program set so that you can...

View Article

7 Steps to Cleaning Up Your “ACT” with Hardware

by Craig Anderton ACT (Active Controller Technology; in SONAR) is a powerful protocol, and its complexity can be sufficiently daunting that some people never take advantage of it. However, one of the...

View Article

Setting Up Your Studio for Surround Sound (Producer/Studio)

Interested in Surround Sound Mixing? Well both SONAR Studio and Producer both have the ability to route to many different speakers using our Surround Bus and Surround Panner. Check out this short 3...

View Article


DAW Best Practices: How to use metering in SONAR

[Originally posted as a daily tip on the SONAR forums and reposted for viewers here on the blog.] The Overachieving Meters by Craig Anderton To change resolution for any audio meter, in any view,...

View Article


6 Mindblowing reasons to get SONAR X3 Producer

1. SONAR has redefined mixing in the box. The ProChannel redefines the way you work with the Console View. Each audio track, instrument track, and bus comes with a complete modular strip of analog...

View Article

How Eliud “Liu” Ortiz used SONAR X3 for his recent Jennifer Hudson mix (RCA...

These days, some professional mixing and recording engineers are doing work for major labels completely missed the analogue age. Others are still mixing on consoles.  We have come to a point where...

View Article

The Sound of Console Emulation in SONAR X3

The age of hybrid studios The day has come where digital audio has caught up to the analog trends of the pre-xyz age. Hybrid (digital/analog) home-studios are more common and the need for more analog...

View Article

The Art of Transient Shaping with the TS-64

Understand this often-misunderstood processor, and your tracks will benefit greatly  By Craig Anderton  Transient Shapers are interesting plug-ins. I don’t see them mentioned a lot, but that might be...

View Article


Optimizing Vocals with DSP

Optimizing tracks with DSP, then adding some judicious use of the DSP-laden VX-64 Vocal Strip, offers very flexible vocal processing.  By Craig Anderton  This is kind of a “twofer” article about...

View Article

Basics: Five Questions about Filter Response

By Craig Anderton  You can think of filters as combining amplification and attenuation—they make some frequencies louder, and some frequencies softer. Filters are the primary elements in equalizers,...

View Article


DAW Best Practices: How to get a bigger drum sound with reverb

The Biggest, Baddest Drum Reverb Sound Ever [Originally posted as a daily tip on the SONAR forums and reposted for viewers here on the blog.] by Craig Anderton You want big-sounding drums? Want your...

View Article

Mixing Heavy Metal with the ProChannel & Softube Mix Bundle

The Softube Mix Bundle is a strong and creative addition to SONAR’s ProChannel strip.  This bundle adds 5 solid effects, great for any mix, to the Softube Saturation Knob already in SONAR X3 Producer....

View Article


Basics: Five Questions About Panning Laws

By Craig Anderton It’s not just a good idea, it’s the law…panning law, that is. Let’s dispel the confusion surrounding this sometimes confusing topic. What does a panning law govern? When a mono input...

View Article

Basics: Five Questions about Effects Placement

By Craig Anderton There are plenty of places in SONAR where you can process the audio signal, but you need to know how to choose the right one. What’s an “insert” effect? Don’t you always “insert” an...

View Article

Multi-track Drum Editing – Crossfading and Critical Listening

by Dan Gonzalez In the past 3 articles we have looked at basic tools for drum editing as well as identifying, splitting, cropping, and aligning clips. All of these techniques can be followed pretty...

View Article

Reader’s Choice: Most Popular Guitar Production Articles in 2014

by Dan Gonzalez 14 Tips for Guitars Before Entering the Studio Entering the studio can be a stressful task if it is your first time. Here at Cakewalk we’ve outlined a few things that every guitarist...

View Article


Reader’s Choice: The most popular mixing articles of 2014

by Dan Gonzalez Mixing is and always will be one of the core elements of each and every DAW. Here at Cakewalk, SONAR features hundreds of a ways to mix and process your tracks for personal and...

View Article


Mix Recall Remembers Your Instrument Settings

by Dan Gonzalez Mix Recall takes your mixing to another level by offering SONAR Artist, Professional, and Platinum users the ability to save different mix scenes of the same mix within a single...

View Article

Mixing Pop with SONAR Platinum – Synths, Bussing, and Ducking

by Dan Gonzalez SONAR Platinum is the newest, greatest, and most advanced version yet. It contains all the tools and accessories that anyone would need in order to produce, mix, master, and compose...

View Article

Achieve More Professional Sounding Vocal Tracks With VocalSync

by Jimmy Landry Things have obviously changed in music production over the years, but just recently a few technological advances have surfaced that are game-changers. One of these items includes the...

View Article


Making The New York Impulse Pack for the SONAR “Braintree” Release

by Dan Gonzalez Impulse responses (IRs) are small bursts of audio data that represent the frequency response of a real life space. By using convolution reverbs we can use them creatively in our...

View Article

Mixing Vocals: Easy Dynamic Vocal FX in SONAR

by Dan Gonzalez A word on Vocal FX Mixing vocals is a tricky process since it is the most prominent element in any song. Vocals can be processed a very specific way to achieve an effect of sorts – or...

View Article

Cakewalk at Gearfest 2015 with iLan Bluestone

On Friday/Saturday June 12th and 13th, Cakewalk and Gibson will be part of a great music event in Fort Wayne, IN called “Gearfest 2015.”  What once started out as a smaller “musician’s conference,” has...

View Article

Speed Up Your Workflow With 5 (Rather Hidden) SONAR Features

SONAR has a LOT of features. So many, in fact, that it’s easy for some of them to fly right under the radar. The list below contains five of my favorite SONAR features that can really speed up your...

View Article



Using Cakewalk Drum Replacer: The “Right” Way and The “Other” Way

The “Right” Way: There’s more than one way to use Drum Replacer to trigger your drum sounds. Which of these you choose will depend on the material, as well as your preferred outcome and workflow....

View Article

HOW ILAN BLUESTONE APPROACHES HIS CHARTING EDM TRACKS

SONAR Platinum artist iLan Bluestone’s career trajectory is moving fast.  The jet-setting EDM producer is touring the world, but was kind enough to share not only his time with us discussing his music...

View Article

5 Tools To Get “That Analog Sound” From SONAR

With the advent of digital audio, some feel a certain quality associated with the analog signal path has been lost. While that may have been true at one point, analog emulations have come a long way...

View Article

Five Reasons Why Patch Points Rock

By Craig Anderton Looking for some advanced, interesting, or downright weird ways to use the new Patch Points feature? Here you go: Signal Splitter Suppose you want to split one track to several...

View Article


The Evolution of Comping

Compiling or “Comping” takes is relatively new to sound recording. With the increased ability of technology has come the increased desire to comp with excruciating attention to detail, sometimes all...

View Article

Parallel Compression: Now Easier Than Ever

A few years back, we showed you a bit about Parallel Compression in SONAR. Now that we’ve introduced Patch Points in the Jamaica Plain update, you can do these same things with a much more efficient...

View Article

15-Compressor Shootout: Lead Vocals

No question, there are a lot of compressor plugins out there, and they all have their unique layouts, quirks, and sonic qualities. In the video below, we line up 15 different compressors and...

View Article


Coloring Your Sound With Reverb: Part 1 – Convolution Reverb

With so many different reverb options available, it can sometimes be hard to know where to begin. This series will focus on helping you make your reverb decisions more efficiently by identifying the...

View Article


Anatomy of a Project: A Nontraditional Approach to a Commercial Recording

By Jimmy Landry Last summer, Peppina—a young female artist from Finland— plunged herself into the NYC music scene for two months. With the help of renowned NYC entertainment attorney Steven Beer who...

View Article

5 Ways to Widen Your Mix

At some point, nearly every mixer has experienced this: “My mix sounds great, but this mix by (Bob Clearmountain, George Massenburg, Joe Barresi, etc.) sounds so much wider… How do they do that?” Aside...

View Article

panup: Studio Session & LANDR Test

by Panu Pentikäinen (panup at Cakewalk forums) Alex ja Armottomat (Alex) visited my recording studio in February. We had five days total to do a fully mastered CD, make promo photos of the band, and...

View Article

Mining Gold from PA Recordings with SONAR

by Craig Parmerlee – SONAR user since SONAR 7 SONAR and other DAWs are used heavily to produce high-quality recordings, while other people use SONAR as part of a compositional process.  I find that...

View Article


Artist Spotlight; Eric Hansen—How He Gets Big Pro Soundinig Results at Home

“Is it World Music?”  “Is it Spanish Music?” “Is this Jazz?” “Is this in the Acoustic Genre?”  Fortunately for guitar virtuoso and now-Pro D.I.Y’er Eric Hansen, the simple answer to these questions he...

View Article

Cakewalk Talk Episode 3 Part 1 – Interview with Daniel Rowland from LANDR

Check out the latest episode of Cakewalk Talk, where Dan Gonzalez interviews audio engineer Daniel Rowland (Adrian Belew, StudioBelew, Accept) about LANDR and his role at the company.   We’ve posted a...

View Article


How iLan Bluestone used SONAR Platinum on his new track “Bigger Than Love”...

Just a few short years ago, we learned of a new up-and-coming artist who was using SONAR.  After introducing ourselves and learning more, the one thing that kept resonating were the infectious melodies...

View Article

HOW The Duke Western USES SONAR TO CREATE MUSIC FOR DUCK DYNASTY (AND MORE)

Here at Cakewalk we are fortunate to have an external team of rocket scientists who help test out SONAR beta releases.  This team is dedicated, passionate and most of all appreciated by all of us...

View Article


The Dynamic Gate | A Cleaner Way To Mix Drums

by Daniel Gonz Gates are wonderful processors that can clean up background noise and bleed in your audio tracks. They’re a bit tricky to understand because the key to successfully using one is often a...

View Article

The Miracle of Mid-Side EQ: Rock Your Mixes and Masters

by Craig Anderton Sure, the LP EQ is a great linear-phase, stereo EQ. But it was designed for mid-side processing as well as conventional stereo, so let’s explore what mid-side processing is about, and...

View Article

Pro SONAR User Murray Daigle Holds Mixing Clinics at LONG & MCQUADE – ONTARIO

Producer/Songwriter/Mixer Murray Daigle out of Toronto concludes a successful short run of Mixing clinics this evening at Long & McQuade stores in Canada. Murray Daigle is a Toronto based Music...

View Article

Is the car test still relevant?

“My first mix sounds awesome in my car!” Said no producer ever… Every producer and mixer knows the struggle; the infamous car test. You know the drill. You print a near-perfect mix in your home studio...

View Article


Building Your Own Professional Sound Panels – 5 Years Later

[Links to building the sound panels below] Time flies when you’re having fun the old cliché saying goes.  For me, five years ago, I was in the trenches for a good week going down a rabbit hole not...

View Article

Browsing latest articles
Browse All 77 View Live




Latest Images