Loving my Scaler 2 and creating quickly. After 4 tracks of various instrument tracks dropped into Cakewalk, the next on (say acoustic guitar) plays in the Cakewalk track as a piano voice for some reason. I’ve tried making a new Scaler for each track, and dragging from one Scaler track into blank instrument tracks. It happens both ways. I don’t have a bunch of VSTs, and was looking forward to making complete demos with Scaler 2 and Cakewalk. Any help would be so greatly appreciated. Cheers!!
Welcome to the forum. This sounds as if it could be a routing issue in Cakewalk. To help identify the issue,could you post a screenshot of your Cakewalk GUI when this is happening, please? Also, for the sake of completeness, just comnfirm the OS you are using (as your DAW is Cakewalk I assume it is Windows, but which version?), and your hardware spec. please?
There are some members who use Cakewalk here who may be able to help. There are aslo users on the Cakewalk forum who may also be able to help with this issue.
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I am assuming that you are creating straight midi tracks using the MS wavetable patches. It is kind of clunky and you have to select the channel and the instrument and for some odd reason, you then have to select the instrument again before it will accept it. I am assuming that they just have not put a lot of work into keeping up with the Microsoft Wavetable infrastructure.
In my limited experience, it is better to just move on and ignore them.
At least go with the included Cakewalk TTS-1 instrument or SI- instruments. They are better quality sounds and less trouble.
That said, there are a lot nicer sounding virtual instruments available for free. The Ample Guitar Lite and Ample Bass Lite from Ample Sound are good examples. The the free VSTs from Spitfire Audio (both LABS and and BBC Symphony Orchestra Discovery) are a lot of fun and sound wonderful.
There are some others but they can be hit or miss as far as stability. Assuming you have a fairly recent computer, stick with the ones that offer the 64-bit VST3 versions. The VST2 ones that come with Cakewalk are OK but the ones that come from third parties can be hit or miss.
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Thanks for the thoughtful reply. The only thing that doesn’t apply to me is Ample guitar, which I unfortunately can’t run on Windows 10 and my version of Visual C. I was also told to bounce down the composed instrument parts, and Scaler is voicing correctly over single open tracks. I can really use your tips. Cheers!!
Another option is to download a soundfont player. I just downloaded sforzando (Plogue | Downloads. I downloaded Timbres of Heaven that I like. Don Allen's Timbres Of Heaven SoundFont That comes with a bunch of nice samples. I have not looked further as that set me up with tons of instruments of “Good Enough” quality for me.
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That sounds fantastic - I’m surrounded in my studio/fort with Novation keys, boom mic and keyboard on all 3 sides. I was just getting ready to get into my Cakewalk project. I will be hitting Plogue link before I start. It sounds like a wonderful addition to my library. Have a great evening, and thanks again for taking the time to give me some great advice. Cheers!!
Just be careful. It is really easy to get lost in the search for the “perfect sound” and lose sight of the music itself. Don’t forget that if you just do a plain clean instrument, there are tons of additional effects, pedals, amps, delays, and such that you can use on any of the instruments.
On the right of the track, there is a little double arrow that you can expand and set all kinds of fun effects (FX)
You can also tell the instruments to listen to scalar for its input
You can specify it listen to all the midi channels from it or only one specific midi channel. This is really useful with the multi voice output and to link multiple instruments together to make more interesting sounds.
Then you can use the DAW sync feature and arm the other instruments to record just from the scalar output.
Add that to being able to sync up multiple instances of Scaler and you can do things like record different instruments with their own Scaler settings at the same time (Live Sync).
That lets you do things like this:
I have a main controlling instance of Scaler and then a separate instance of Scaler for each section (Strings, Woodwinds, Horns and such) with different instruments listening on their on channels from the multi-voice output of their section controller. They are all linked up to the one master controller with live sync.
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This is fantastic, thank you! 3 months ago, this would have been a bit complex for me. But I’ve just been getting much more in depth every day. This is exactly what I need at the exact time that I can follow your great directions. And get the most out of my favorite toy. I’m 58 and if you asked me if I wanted a brand new Corvette (and could not sell it) or Cakewalk and a few choice VSTs - I’m choosing music. I’m disabled with severe, chronic pain. Getting lost in the DAW and being creative is the best distraction I could ask for. The advice won’t be wasted on me - My bucket list goal is to make something beautiful and epic - I hope. Cheers!!
Well, I am just a little bit ahead on the road to learning this stuff. I have been watching a lot of YouTube videos. The Scaler Plugin channel, Creative Sauce, and School of Synthesis are good places to start. I have been going back to some of them because they say something in passing that went over my head but when I go back, I realize what I didn’t understand first time around.
Good luck!
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