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n-Track Software n-Track
Digital Audio Multitrack Recorder for Windows
USER GUIDE
REVISION 2.0
© 2009 Flavio Antonioli
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Credits
n-Track Studio ©2009 Flavio Antonioli
Portions of this manual by Alessandro De Murtas.
Multiband Compressor, Graphic EQ and Tempo Delay plug-ins by Y. Oonisi. n-Track Drums based on DK+ by Luigi Felici
Version 6.0 graphic design by Luca Panzarella
Grammar revision by John Drummond.
This manual, as well the software described in it, is furnished under license and may be used or copied only in accordance with the terms of such license. The content of this manual is furnished for informational use only, and is subject to change without notice.
We assume no responsibility or liability for any errors or inaccuracies that may appear in this book. No part of this publication may be copied, reproduced or otherwise transmitted or recorded, for any purpose, without prior written permission by Flavio Antonioli.
ALL PRODUCT AND COMPANY NAMES ARE
TM
OR ® TRADEMARKS OF THEIR RESPECTIVE OWNERS.
WINDOWS 95, 98, ME, 2000 XP, Vista and NT ARE TRADEMARKS OF MICROSOFT CORPORATION.
VST PLUGIN INTERFACE TECHNOLOGY BY STEINBERG SOFT- UND HARDWARE GMBH. ASIO ITERFACE
TECHNOLOGY BY STEINBERG SOFT- UND HARDWARE GMBH.
Among the many people that have contributed in making the program always better with countless suggestions, comments, and bug reports, I.d like to thank in particular: Alessandro De Murtas, Sean
Ercanbrack, J. David Lee, Jeff Keister, Richard Fairthorne, Lennard G. Cairns, Richard A. Smith, Michael
Olsen, John Drummond, Bryan Bassett, Don Gaynor, David James, Kelly Craven, Tom Willis, Bax Taylor.
Thanks to Ross Howard for the splash screen graphic.
Table of Contents
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1. Getting Started
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1.1. Introduction to n-Track Studio
For a long time music recording has been difficult for those who could not get access to professional recording studios. The inability to afford expensive equipment has often confined many musicians to the world of second rate equipment, discouraging their ambitions to realize their true musical potential. Once this was typical but today things are changing! Forget private recording studios, expensive equipment and high invoices: with n-Track Studio, having a professional music home recording studio and a comprehensive audio environment has never been easier and more affordable than today! n-Track Studio has been designed to bring you a powerful Digital Audio Multitrack Recorder. All you need is a full duplex soundcard, Windows 98, ME, 2000, NT or XP, a microphone, some free space on your hard drive, and a bit of imagination: there are no limitations on what you can realize with this program!
Let’s have a look at some of n-Track Studio’s special features:
Working with n-Track Studio is easy: to start a new song, just record the first track (usually the rhythm base). After having selected either MIDI or WAVE recording (by switching between the microphone and keyboard icons on the toolbar), click on the record button on the toolbar. Once you have finished, click on the stop button. Can it be any simpler?
Do all by yourself! Record a track and then add as many as you wish. Forget the track limitations of your old tape multitrack recorder: n-Track Studio has been proven to be able to manage from as many as thirty tracks on an high-end machine to six tracks on a 486 processor.
Tracks (.wav files) aren’t mixed together in a single wave file and then played. The mixing process is done "on-the-fly": this way you can alter the volume and pan settings while listening to your song or even while recording.
Add effects to tracks non-destructively
. Again the result of the effect processing isn’t written on a file but is calculated .on-the-fly. during playback. Change parameters and listen to the results in real-time. The program comes with 5 native effects (EQ, Compression, Chorus, Echo, Reverb, Pitch shift, Auto-
volume), and can also use third party DirectX audio plug-ins
Live Input Processing to use the program as a multi-effect device for your instruments.
Punch-In Recording: It’s also possible to start playback by pressing the play button and then start recording at a specified point by clicking the record button during playback.
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Tracks can contain more than one single wave file: you can drag and drop wave files (represented by rectangles in the timeline window) from one track to another. Also, you can adjust the file offset inside a track moving the small crosshair icon in the lower left corner of the waveform rectangle.
Looping of wave files can be easily accomplished concatenating several instances of the same wave file.
The program can sync to other programs or external devices using SMPTE/MTC or MIDI Clock sync, acting either as master or slave. Videos (AVI, MPEG, Quicktime) can be played in sync with the song in a dedicated video playback window.
It’s possible to automate the evolution of the volume, pan, send and return settings: you can "program" fade-in/outs, cross fades, boost the volume of a track when there is a solo etc..
Multiple input and output soundcards or more than one soundcard are supported so it’s possible to record more than one track at a time and to output to more than one stereo output. Each output channels has its own master effects section and master volume control.
Use your favourite external Wave editor. Due to the fact that audio tracks are stored as normal wave files, you’ll be able to process the tracks with the help of an external wave editor using the button on the toolbar.
Remix or burn to CD. Once finished recording the whole song, you can mixdown all the tracks into a single wav file and then use it to burn to CD or to distribute the song via the internet using the built-in mp3 encoder.
1.2. Installing n-Track Studio
1.2.1. Installation
• Double click on the setup file, usually named ntrck_sw (you can download if from www.ntrack.com
)
• If you’re running Windows Vista you may have to accept the user account control prompt that asks you if you want to authorize the installation of the program
• Choose the destination folder where to install the program. The installation suggests a default destination folder “C:\Program Files\FASoft\n-Track Studio”. If you want to install the program into a different folder click on the Browse button
• Follow the Setup instructions to install n-Track Studio software into your computer
• Launch the program by selecting the n-Track Studio icon in the Start Menu
• Enjoy
To uninstall n-Track Studio
Open Start Menu/Control Panel
•
•
•
•
Click on Add/Remove
Select ‘Add or remove programs’
Select n-Track Studio from the list of installed programs
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1.2.2. Minimum system requirements
CPU
: Pentium III 700
MEMORY
: 512 MB RAM
SOUNDCARD
: A full duplex (i.e. capable of simultaneous playback and recording) soundcard
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OPERATING SYSTEM
: Windows 98, Windows ME, Windows 2000, Windows Server 2003, Windows XP,
Windows XP x64, Windows Vista, Windows Vista x64
Make sure you’ve got the latest version of the drivers of all your hardware devices, especially the soundcard.
Updating drivers is often the solution to many different problems.
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1.3. Quick start
Working with n-Track Studio is easy. The first thing you need to do is check if the recording vumeter shows the input signal coming from your microphone or instrument. If it doesn’t make sure that the cables are connected correctly and that the soundcard is set to record from the correct sources. See the
Setting the recording levels topic for more info.
To start a new song, just record the first track (usually the rhythm base): click on the record button on the toolbar. Once you have finished click on the stop button.
The track you've just recorded will appear on the timeline as a waveform. Select it and adjust the volume and pan settings (you can do so while listening to the track) moving the sliders on the mixer window.
Now you are ready to add a new track: make sure you are ready to play and click again on the record button.
Alternatively you can start the playback by pressing the play button and then, during playback, start
recording at the desired point by clicking the record button ( punch in recording
).
Tracks can contain more than one single wave file: you can drag and drop waveforms from one track to another. Also, you can adjust the file offset inside a track moving the small crosshair icon in the lower left corner of the waveform rectangle.
Once you have finished your song save it with the Save As command from the File menu (File/Save As).
Note on menu commands: we will occasionally be referring to commands available from the n-
Track main menu bar as for example something like Add Channel/Add New Blank Track/Audio.
That means “click on the Add Channel sign on the main menu bar that appears in the upper part of the n-Track main window, a popup menu will appear, click then on the Add New Blank Track in the popup menu, and then click on the Audio command from the last popup menu”. That is each / sign corresponds to a new popup menu that appears selecting an entry from the previous menu.
The .sng file that the program will create will contain the wave files names, the mixing settings, the volume evolution and the effects settings. It will not contain the actual audio data, which will remain
14 stored in the wave files as they were recorded. See the File types used by n-Track topic for more info on the various files used by the program.
Now you may want to mix down all the recorded tracks into a single wave file using the
command ( , or the Mixdown Song command from the File menu).
1.4. Step by step Tutorial
After you have successfully installed n-Track Studio, you can begin your first project with your new
Digital Audio Multitrack Recorder. In this chapter, we will use a simple example to show you how you can create a new song from scratch using just your computer, a microphone and n-Track Studio. Although the program is capable of recording two or more (depending on the audio hardware) tracks at the same time, for this tutorial we’ll assume that you’re going to record all the tracks by yourself, one at a time.
1.4.1. Recording a demo song
Prepare your instruments, turn on the computer, launch the program, and connect the mic jack to the soundcard’s mic input connector.
The first thing to do is to check if the program is receiving signal from the microphone: try to talk into the microphone and see if the program’s recording level meters move (fig. 3.1).
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If they don’t, run the Windows volume control using the program’s Settings/Soundcard
settings/Recording mixer controls menu command or selecting Start
Menu/Programs/Accessories/Entertainment/Volume control [Windows XP or earlier versions of Windows] or Start Menu/Control Panel/Hardware and Sound/Manage Audio Devices [Windows Vista]. Now check from the recording view (Options/Properties/Recording) that the mic in is the only input source selected, and that the level is sufficiently high.
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While adjusting the mic input level check the actual recording level using the n-Track recording VUmeter. Try to sing (or play the instrument the mic is going to record) at the highest volume you think you will reach during the actual recording, and try to set the level so that at the maximum volume the vumeter will be in the higher red range.
Note: if you’ll exceed the maximum allowed recording level, the recording Vumeter will show a
CLIP
sign, which means the recording level in that precise instant has been too high and the recorded sound is going to be distorted.
For more information on how to set the recording levels see the
Getting started/Setting the recording levels topic
.
Since we’ve decided that we’re going to record a track at once, and you’re recording directly from the mic, you’ll want to record mono tracks: to set the recording format to mono click on the “Settings” button on the recording vumeter and select mono.
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Since you’re recording your first track there’s no particular need to use headphones, but you will need to use them for the following tracks to avoid the microphone capturing the signal coming out of the speakers.
Now that everything is set up prepare yourself for the recording and press the record button the n-Track toolbar. You’ll see the time indicator showing the recording time and a red flashing
“Recording” sign.
Complete the recording and click on the stop button.
on
Let’s assume that you were a little frightened by your first n-Track recording and the track didn’t come out right. No problem, just click on the recycle bin icon on the toolbar: the program will ask you what you want to do with the recorded file. The safer thing is to send the file to the Windows recycle bin, so that you’ll be able to retrieve it later if you realize that you erroneously removed a good file.
Let’s say that you record the track again and this time everything goes well. You listen to it (clicking on the playback button on the toolbar) and it sounds fine.
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It is now a good time to save your work: the program by default names the wave files that you record like this “name_of_the_song_X.wav” (where X is a number). Since the default name of a project is “New song”, the wave file you’ve just recorded will be probably named “New song_1.wav”.
It's always a good thing to have a file name that is logically related to what the file is actually about, so we’ll now rename this file (supposing that it is an acoustic guitar track) to "DemoSong_Ac_Guitar1.wav" using the Rename wave file from the Track menu. Notice that the name of the track, as shown in the upper part of the track’s mixer section will not change: since a track can contain more than only one file, the name of a track is not related to the name of its wave files. You can change the track name in the
track’s properties dialog box that appears for example right clicking on the a track’s waveform in the timeline window and selecting Properties from the pop-up menu.
Let’s now save the whole project using the Save as command from the File menu, to the file
“DemoSong.sng”. The project file (.sng) will contain all the song settings, links to wave files, effects etc., but not the actual audio data, which remains stored in the wave files the .sng file points to, like the
“DemoSong_Ac_Guitar1.wav” we previously recorded.
Let’s now record the second track. If you changed instrument you’ll need to check the recording level again to be sure it’s correct. If you’re using headphones you may also need to check if the audio being played back (i.e. the first track) is at a volume similar to that of the signal that you’re recording so that you will be able to play along with the recorded music while also hearing what you play through the headphones.
Setting up these levels properly may be a bit tricky with some soundcards because with some of them the input sources (i.e. mic) recording level (the slider in the recording view of the volume control/sound control panel) is not independent from the level of the input monitoring (the level in the playback view of the volume control/sound control panel), so you may not be able to move the mic monitor slider, without altering the recording level. You can instead move the wave out (playback) or master volume slider to match the playback volume to the volume of the microphone monitoring.
Once you’re ready, position the time bar where you want the second track to start from (by clicking with the left mouse button on the desired point in the time axis) and click on the record button.
The most common problem at this stage is the so called “bleeding” of the first track in to the second track: if the soundcard mixer is not properly set, the newly recorded track will re-record existing tracks, thus destroying the isolation between the tracks. To check if this is happening just playback the tracks together and solo the second track clicking on the S button on the track’s mixer slice. If you still can
topic contains instructions on how to solve this problem.
1.4.2. Adding compression
Let's assume that all went well and the second track (a vocal part) has been correctly recorded. Now you notice that the vocal level is a bit too low in some places and becomes too loud in others. More often than not vocal tracks need a bit of compression: here you will use one of the most powerful features of
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software based multitrack recording in general and of n-Track in particular, software effects processing via plug-ins. We’ll use the n-Track Compressor plug-in that comes bundled with n-Track Studio. Effects plug-ins can be added in a number of different ways. By default n-Track automatically adds a Compressor plug-in on each track channel which is very handy because most channels need a bit of compression (and for those that don’t need it simply leave the compressor with its default settings which leave the signal unaffected).
Click on the EQ/AlwaysOn effects button on the track’s mixer strip near the three small EQ knobs
. You’ll see the built-in EQ window appear and below it the Compressor plug-in window.
Effects processing is always performed in real-time, so you can tweak the plug-in settings while hearing in real-time the result of the processing. Now click on the drop down preset list and choose a preset that is suited to the track (for example “Soft knee compression”).
For detailed info on how to use the compressor right click on the plug-in’s logo and select Help from the popup menu.
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1.4.3. Re-recording portions of a track
Now that we’ve added a bit of punch to the vocal track we’re ready for the third track, a couple of electric guitar solos.
Record the electric guitar solo track
Let’s say that the first solo goes well, and the second doesn’t come out right:
Since the first solo was ok you don’t want to re-record the whole track, but you just want to overdub the second solo: click on the button on the left side of track 3, then select MME: Microsoft Sound Mapper – Right
Channel (or the name of your input soundcard channel if your configuration is not the default).
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Alternate way to set which track to record:
Click on the button on the recording vumeter, and select from the dropdown list “record to track 3”.
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Now click on the time axis in a point some seconds before the start of the 2 nd
solo and click on the record button. Once finished, you’ll notice that a new part appears on the timeline, just after the first solo wave file. In fact when the program overdubs a track, it doesn’t modify its actual wave files, but it just records another wave file with the new material, and it adds it in the correct place in the timeline. This is called
non-destructive overdub, as the original wave file is left unmodified.
The new recording is placed into a new Take and both the old and the new take will appear stacked on top of each other. You can switch between the old and the new take simply by clicking on the waveform the of take you want the track to play. Read more on
Since we were doing this just to check what had happened, we want to restore the parts exactly as they were after the overdub. To revert the song to the previous state click two times on the undo button on the toolbar.
n-Track can automate the process of trying recording takes of a portion of the song using Punch-In
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1.4.4. Adding Effects and “Tweaking a Track”
Now that the solos are ok, you may want to add a little EQ to the guitar track, and maybe also a bit of delay. Since other tracks may need the delay, you can put it on the first aux channel.
Add a new Aux channel selecting the Add new Aux channel command from the Add Channel menu.
Right click on the mixer window, then enable both the Show Master Channels and Show Aux Channels items, then enable the Horizontal Masters & Auxs item in the Layout submenu.
Right click on the second upper black list box from the left in the mixer window (corresponding to the 1 st aux channel), select Add Effect from the popup menu and then select n-Track Echo from the list of available effects.
The plug-in will now be applied on the first aux channel, to hear it applied on the 3 rd
track you’ll need to send this track to the aux channel: move the track send slider from –Inf to 0 dB.
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During playback you’ll notice that the aux channel’s vumeter will start to move, but you still won’t be able to hear the effect of the delay.
To make the aux channels signal appear on the output you’ll need to move the aux channel’s return slider, which is located near the master channel’s effect list. Once you’ve set it to an adequate level, you should be able to hear the delayed signal.
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1.4.5. Appling an Effect to Specific Parts of a Recording
Suppose you want the echo to be applied only to the final part of the second solo. We can obtain this using aux send (or return) automation:
• Add a new Aux channel selecting the Add new Aux channel command from the Add Channel menu
(you don’t need to do this if the song already has an aux channel)
• click on the volume button on the toolbar and select “Draw send to aux 1 volume” from the drop-down menu.
• select the part where you don’t want the echo to be heard, holding down the Ctrl key and dragging with the mouse on the track
• click on the button on the timeline: you’ll see that the line that represent the send volume evolution will be set to 0 (-Inf) for the duration of the selection. This means that no signal will be sent to the aux channel during that time
Start the playback and hear how the transition sounds (to start the playback at a certain point simply double click on the time axis). If it sounds too sharp, you may soften it substituting the abrupt step in the volume evolution with a short fade-in: by clicking and dragging on the volume evolution you’ll be able to shape it at your convenience.
1.4.6. Recording using Markers
Now we’re ready for our last track. You want to add back-up vocals during the choruses. Let’s assume that the choruses lyrics are all a bit different from each other and you don’t remember too well the song’s lyrics. You can put a marker in correspondence to the start of every chorus: click on the button on the toolbar and then click on the desired place on the time axis. A triangle will appear to signal the marker position.
During playback, 5 seconds before the marker time a pop-up window will appear, showing the marker’s name, a text message and the count-down to the actual marker time. You can edit the pop-up text double clicking on the marker triangle on the time axis.
You place markers at the beginning of each chorus and type in the pop-up text field the lyrics of each chorus. During the recording the lyrics will appear and you’ll no longer have the problem of remembering them (just like Karaoke).
You can change the font used in the pop-up window from the Preferences/Options/Fonts dialog box.
1.4.7. Final Mix-down, Compression, EQ and Reverb
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All the tracks have now been recorded, let’s do the final mixing of the whole song. If you have a compression plug-in an almost mandatory step is to add compression to the whole mix, putting a compression plug-in on the master channel. Also a bit of EQ is typically a good idea, as it is adding a reverb to the vocal track. Since you may need the reverb on both the lead vocal track and on the backup vocals, you may put the reverb on the 2 nd
aux channel and send both the lead vocal and the back-up vocal track to the aux channel. In this way the program will process with the reverb plug-in a single signal made up of the two tracks. This will use much less system resources (i.e. cpu time) than putting a separate reverb on each track.
1.4.8. Programming volume evolutions
Now you want to refine the volume of the tracks during the evolution of the song: the volumes don’t need to be constant, you can draw their evolution in the same way we previously did with the aux send.
Click on the volume button and select draw volume from the drop down menu. Now you can
“design” all the track’s volume evolutions.
We recorded an electric guitar solo track, and electric guitars are usually very noisy when they are not being played. You may then want to remove the guitar buzz in the instants where you’re the guitar is not playing: select the intervals to mute dragging with the mouse on the track (holding down the Ctrl key) and then click on the button to mute these parts. If the buzz is just at the start and at the end of the wave files, you can obtain the same result moving the start and end of the wave file to where the guitar actually begins and ends play. To do so drag the little rectangles at the left and right of the wave file to the desired position.
1.4.9. Fading out the song
We’re now ready for the final fade:
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on the select the region where you want the fade to take place (typically the last few seconds of the song) by dragging with the mouse on the time axis and press the fade out button on the toolbar
1.4.10. Mixing down to a single wave file
Now that everything sounds good the last step is to mix-down all the song to a single wave file: select the Mixdown Song command from the File menu, then select the destination filename.
The format used by audio CDs is 44100 hz 16 bit stereo. If you plan to use the mixdown file to burn an audio CD track make sure that you check the ‘stereo’ and 16 bit options in the mixdown dialog box and select 44100 hz as the mixdown sampling frequency. press the start button. The mixdown usually takes quite less than the actual duration of the song.
If you want to hear how the mixdown wave file sounds press the button on the toolbar to remove all the tracks (obviously do this after you have saved the current project, which you should normally do every time you make any important changes to it) and import the mixed down wave file using the
Track/Insert wave file menu command. The file will sound exactly as the original song.
1.4.11. Editing the mixdown file
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You may now need to cut unnecessary silent lead-in and lead-out parts in the mixdown wave file: click on the button on the toolbar and select “Destructive wave editing” select the part to cut click on the cut button on the toolbar.
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1.4.12. Burning To CD
The last (optional) step is, if you have a CD recorder, to burn the song into a CD-R.
Open the CD burning dialog box with the View/CD Burning menu command. Import the mixdown wave file you just created, insert a blank CD and press the burn button. You can also tell the program to mixdown and automatically burn the track to an audio CD with the Burn audio CD track option in the mixdown dialog box.
Good luck with your next song!
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1.5. Setting the recording levels
The first thing to learn when recording with the computer is using the soundcard’s mixer software or the standard Windows Volume Control [Windows XP and earlier versions of Windows] or the Sound Control
Panel [Windows Vista].
Most soundcards contain a simple mixer circuit, through which the soundcard is able to select, among its many inputs and outputs, the signal(s) to record from and the signal(s) to send to the output.
Before starting a recording, connect your audio source (microphone, guitar, mixer etc.) to a soundcard input (usually line in or microphone in).
• Windows XP and earlier versions of Windows
Run the Windows Volume Control (usually found in the Start Menu/Accessories/Entertainment menu). Chose the Options/Properties menu command, select your soundcard and click on the
Recording button. In the options dialog box make also sure that all the relevant signals are not hidden: the dialog box shows a list of the sources the mixer will show, and sometimes important sources may be hidden by default. After you click on OK the mixer will show the view of all the recording controls.
Now make sure that the recording source to which you have connected your audio source is activated (i.e. the checkbox below the source’s level slider is checked).
• Windows Vista
The audio devices settings can be adjusted in the dialog box that appears opening the Windows
Control Panel via Start Menu/Control Panel, selecting Hardware and Sound, then clicking on
Manage Audio Devices. Audio inputs (i.e. recording sources) appear in the Recording tab of the dialog box, outputs appear in the Playback tab.
Each input and output of the audio device/soundcard will appear as a separate icon with its own level meter. To adjust the settings of each input/output right click on the Input or Output (for example Mic in), select Properties from the popup menu, then click on the Levels tab. The controls available for each input or output may differ and depending on the particular model of soundcard there may or may not be controls for recording/playback level, mic boost etc.
Turning off all unused recording sources reduces the overall noise level and improves the quality of the recording.
Adjust the selected recording source’s recording level slider, watching n-Track’s recording meters until you obtain a good signal level without clipping.
You’re now ready to start your recording!
Note that hearing a signal coming from a soundcard input doesn’t necessarily mean that the soundcard is recording that signal: for example, with most soundcards can be configured so that you can record the signal coming from the line input while monitoring (i.e. hearing from the soundcard’s output) the signal coming from the microphone input. You can set which signal to monitor from the playback view/tab of the Volume Control/Sound Control Panel, while the signal from which to record is selected from the
recording view/tab.
Some soundcards/audio interfaces can’t be controlled by the Windows Volume Control or Sound Control Panel. This usually happens with professional and semiprofessional devices such as the M-Audio Delta, Audiophile etc.. That happens because the device has many options that don’t fit into the general purpose Volume Control/Sound Control Panel scheme. The audio device options, levels, routing etc. can be set in the device’s own proprietary control panel usually found in the Start Menu/Control Panel folder. Each particular device has its own set of controls and configuration so please refer to the device’s user guide for the details on how to to use the control panel.
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1.6. Signal levels & clipping
Unlike analog audio, where the recording level is somewhat flexible and there is a ‘red’ area where some distortion occurs but the recording is still acceptable, with digital audio the audio recording level must always be strictly lower than the maximum possible level, usually indicated with 0.0 dB.
Levels are measured from the maximum level downward. For example -90 dB is almost perfect silence, -
60 dB is barely audible and -6 dB is a very strong signal, 0 dB is the maximum, full scale, signal level.
When the signal level goes above 0 dB the signal is abruptly cut (clipped) resulting in a very noticeable distortion called clipping. Unlike analog distortion digital clipping is very unpleasant and should be avoided as much as possible.
The above is actually not true for the audio signals that flow within n-Track. It is true only for the signals that come from the soundcard (i.e. recording) and go out to the soundcard (i.e. playback output).
The signals inside n-Track virtual mixer are floating point audio signals, which support levels way above 0 dB. Signals within the n-Track virtual mixer can reach very high levels without causing distortion, so that for example you don’t have to worry that an effect is boosting the level of a track excessively.
The only thing that matters is that the overall master audio level, as shown in the master channel level meter or in the Playback meter window (View / Playback meter menu command) is below 0 dB.
You can for example boost a track volume so that the track level is +30 dB, as long as you reduce the master output volume (for example setting it at -30 dB) so that the overall level is below 0 dB.
1.7. Soft clipping
n-Track includes the soft clipping function, which tries to minimize the negative effects of digital clipping by automatically reducing the level of the signal when clipping is detected, and then gradually restoring the volume back to its original setting when clipping is no longer occurring.
While this works rather well and the clipping distortion is typically avoided until the level is extremely high, soft clipping does modify the audio signal in trying to reduce its level, much like what would happen if you had your hand on a volume knob and adjusted very rapidly the volume of a song during playback to try to smooth out the loudest parts and boost the quietest parts.
Soft clipping can be disabled in the popup menu that appears right clicking on the View / Playback
meter window.
1.8. Audio devices selection dialog box
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The audio devices dialog box allows selecting which soundcards/audio interfaces the program uses for recording and playback. The dialog box can be opened with the Settings/Audio devices menu command
Selecting multiple playback and/or recording devices
To select multiple devices click on the entries on the devices list holding the Shift or Ctrl keys.
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When clicking on an entry in the devices list, the entry will highlight and a number will appear to its left.
The number indicates the order in which the program considers the devices. For example using two recording devices, the 1 output devices, the 1 st st
device will be the device to which each track is sent by default. To send a track to a device other than the 1
device’s level meters will be the leftmost ones in the level meters window. For st
select the output device in the Track Properties dialog box that appears double clicking on the track.
Audio Driver Standards
The program can access a soundcard using various different methods:
• WaveRT. Introduced with Windows Vista, WaveRT is an audio driver format that’s specifically designed to enable audio applications to operate with very low latency. WaveRT achieves a reduction in CPU usage at low buffering settings by basic ‘getting out of the way’ after the playback and recording has been set-up and letting n-Track directly talk to the audio hardware without intervention by the driver. This translates to more efficient streaming at low latencies.
Note: due to what appears to be a bug with Windows Vista x64 WaveRT drivers allow to use low buffering settings only when the x64 native version of n-Track is used. When using the x86
32 bit version on the x64 version of Vista low buffering settings result in an error opening the soundcard.
Please see the 32 bit and 64 bit versions topic for info on the difference between the 64 bit and
32 bit versions of n-Track
WaveRT drivers are currently available for Vista for a small number of audio devices including many audio interfaces built into motherboards such as the Realtek ALC882M and C-Media
8738/8768
• WDM. Introduced on Windows 98SE and supported by later versions of Windows, WDM is comparable to Asio in terms of achievable latencies. Depending on your particular soundcard/audio interface it might be better to use WDM, WaveRT or Asio drivers.
• MME. All soundcards have MME drivers. This is the oldest driver standard and although very reliable doesn’t allow to work with low latencies and is consequently not suited for live input processing and playing instrument plug-ins live
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• Asio. Many semi-professional and professional soundcards have Asio drivers, which allow for latencies similar to those of WDM drivers
Using WDM, WaveRT or Asio drivers usually allows using a much lower latency than other types of drivers, and makes it feasible to use the program for live input processing of a musical instrument played in real-time (for example use a distortion plug-in to play an electric guitar without an amplifier and process its sound within n-Track).
When using WDM, WaveRT or Asio drivers, you typically select a single driver in the Wave devices dialog box and all the soundcard’s channels will automatically be used (as opposed to having to select multiple
‘virtual’ drivers with MME one for each couple of channels). You can limit the number of channels that you want to use in the Advanced dialog box.
When using Asio, the playback and recording buffers size and number is decided by the
soundcard’s driver: changing the settings in the n-Track’s Buffering settings dialog box will have no effect, as the program will immediately restore the settings required by the Asio driver. Many soundcards have a control panel that lets you change the buffering settings, accessible clicking on the ‘Asio control panel’ button in the dialog box that appears clicking on a vumeter’s settings button.
Windows Default Playback/Recording device is an alias for the device currently selected in the Control
Panel/Sound-Multimedia applet as the preferred recording or playback device.
Suppose for example that you have 2 soundcards, “X Audio” and “Y Technologies”, and the preferred audio playback audio device set in the Control Panel/Multimedia applet is “X Audio”. The content of the playback devices list will look something like this:
X Audio -> MME driver for X Audio card
WDM: X Audio -> WDM driver for X Audio card
Y Technologies -> MME driver for Y Technologies card
X Audio ASIO driver -> Asio driver for X Audio driver
Wave Mapper -> Alias for “X Audio”
In this example the Y Technologies doesn’t have an Asio driver.
The Advanced button in the dialog box opens the Advanced audio settings dialog box that lets you adjust specific settings. The default settings should work well for most users.
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1.9. Recording more than one track at a time
n-Track supports simultaneous recording of multiple tracks. You can for example record yourself singing and playing guitar to two separate guitar and vocal tracks, or you can record a full band with each instrument being recorded to a separate track.
Regular soundcards/audio devices typically have one mono mic input and one stereo line input which can’t be used simultaneously so the maximum number of simultaneous tracks that can be recorded is 2.
Dedicated multichannel audio recording hardware can have from 4 to 16 or more inputs.
To record two instruments playing together with a regular soundcard, you can connect one instrument to the left and the other to the right channel of the soundcard’s stereo line input connector. If the two instruments have line-level output (for example a guitar amplifier and a keyboard), this connection can be made combining the wires properly. If one or both the instruments are not line-level (for example microphones) this kind of recording is typically done using a mixer to pre-amplify the signal and to route the instruments to one of the stereo channels using the mixer’s panning controls.
To enable recording the stereo line input to two separate mono tracks set the Stereo to two mono tracks recording mode in the
dialog box.
1.10. Recording using Take Lanes
When you re-record over an existing track n-Track by default creates a new Take for each recording attempt.
Takes are a sort of ‘sub-track’, a track can contain multiple takes and for each track you can tell n-Track to actually play one particular take, play audio from different takes for different sections of the track
(i.e.play this chorus from take 2 and that verses from take 3), or even play all of the takes simultaneously (which can get pretty loud pretty fast!).
Say you have recorded a track and then recorded a new take on the same track. By default the track will look like this:
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When a track has more than one take the track will be vertically split into Lanes that show all of the takes available for a portion of a track stacked on top of each other.
The fun part comes when you want to the track to play a portion of one take and the rest from another take:
• Select the interval that you want to play from one take by horizontally dragging with the mouse over the track
• Press S (or select the Edit/Splice menu command)
• Now simply click on the takes that you want to play during the highlighted section
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In fact, when a portion of a track has more than one take available, you can switch between one take and the other simply by clicking on the take that you want to play during that portion of the track.
In the screenshot above the original take (Guitar.wav) plays for the whole length of the track except for the central part, in which the portion of take 2 (lead1.wav) plays instead.
Disabled takes will appear with a different color (purple in the screenshot above) from the take that is actually being played.
You can switch between Take Lanes and the old way of showing and playing a single take per track in the
Takes submenu of the track popup menu that appears right clicking on a track, or by pressing the L shortcut.
The Takes popup menu has also commands to move parts between takes, clone takes, and split a track with multiple takes into multiple tracks with one take each (which is handy when you want more control over the takes selection/comping).
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See also
Punch in/Multiple takes recording
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2. Using n-Track Studio
This chapter contains information regarding the most common tasks that need to be performed when recording or mixing songs using n-Track Studio. Understanding this tasks (with particular regards to the interaction with the soundcard’s mixer) is strongly recommended in order to be able to use the program properly.
To make your work with n-Track Studio as effective as possible, please take the time to read this chapter.
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2.1. Types of files used by n-Track Studio
n-Track Studio uses numerous types of files for different purposes. Below are listed the main file types and their use.
Song file
Extension: .sng
Song files are the n-Track Studio project files. They contain the song structure, the mixer settings, the effects used on each track, the volume envelopes etc.. Song files don’t however contain the actual audio data of the audio tracks, they instead refer to wave files that contain the audio data. To playback a song you’ll need both the .sng file and the associated .wav files.
Wave file
Extension: .wav
Wave files are the files that contain the audio data that makes up songs tracks audio signals. Each waveform that appears on the timeline window corresponds to a wave file (the full path of the file can be seen in the wave file’s properties dialog box that appears double clicking on the waveform). A song can contain more than one instance of the same wave file.
Wave files can have many formats. n-Track Studio supports stereo and mono wave files of any sampling frequency, with 16, 24 or 32 bit depth.
Standard MIDI file
Extension: .mid
Standard Midi files are files that contain sequences of musical notes. The main difference with .wav files is that while .wav files contain a representation of an acoustic signal, MIDI files contain the sequence of the notes played on an instrument. For example a MIDI track of a piano recording contains only the sequence of notes (described as note number, velocity with which the key was pressed, time at which it was pressed and duration of the note) played by the pianist. The corresponding .wav file instead contains the acoustic signal emitted by the piano. The difference between a .wav and a MIDI file is basically the same as between a recording of a concert and the concert’s sheet music. The .wav file obviously contains much more information than just the sequence of notes, and in fact .wav files are typically much much bigger than MIDI files.
42 n-Track Studio can both import standard MID files into MIDI tracks, and export the current song’s MIDI tracks to a standard MIDI files.
Peak files
Extension: .npk n-Track Studio creates peak files to speed up the displaying of wave files’ waveforms on the timeline.
Normally the program generates the npk files during recording. This files are not critical as the information in them is contained in the wave files they were created from. If you accidentally delete an npk file, the program will recreate it the first time it will have to display the associated wave file’s waveform.
Packed song file
Extension: .sgw
are a special kind of song files. Both file types contain the structure of the song. The difference is that a packed song files also contains the audio data used for the song’s tracks. Thus a .sgw file can be used to save and transfer a whole song as a single file, without having to worry to find the
.wav files associated with a .sng file. Packed song files are mainly useful for archiving or transferring songs from one computer to another. When the program opens a .sgw file it still has to recreate the .sng
+ .wav files structure, so the .sgw format is not useful for saving songs while you’re actively working on them. The audio data contained in .sgw files can be either uncompressed or compressed.
Mp3 (mpeg layer 3) compressed audio file
Extension: .mp3
Mp3 files are audio files that are compressed to drastically reduce the size of the file, while only marginally sacrificing the audio quality of the recording. Mp3 files are typically 1/10 or less of the size of uncompressed .wav files, and are widely used to transfer songs over the Internet. n-Track Studio can save a songs mixdowns to mp3 files or convert existing .wav files to mp3.
Ogg Vorbis
Extension: .ogg
Ogg Vorbis compressed audio files. See the Ogg Vorbis files topic.
Windows Media Audio compressed audio file
Extension: .wma
Windows Media Audio is a compressed audio file format similar to mp3, but wma files are typically ½ or less of the size of mp3 files of comparable quality and are thus more suited for transferring songs over the Internet. Unfortunately .wma is a Microsoft proprietary standard, available mostly only on Windows based PCs and it’s not currently nearly as popular as the mp3 file format.
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2.2. Volumes and effects parameters automation
Clicking on the volume button on the toolbar and choosing the desired parameter (track volume, pan, send or return volume etc.), the timeline window will show a line superimposed to each track.
This line represents the temporal evolution of the selected parameter. When for example you select
“Draw track volume” on the drop-down menu, you’ll be able to program the track’s volume temporal evolution simply drawing on the track’s timeline representation.
To switch between volume, pan send or return drawing press the downward arrow near the volume icon on the toolbar , then choose the desired parameter in the pop-up menu.
To draw the evolution of an effect’s parameter select ‘Effects parameters’ in the pop-up menu, then select the desired effect in the left drop down list and the parameter in the right drop down list.
An alternative way to program the evolution of a parameter is to use the fader automation: during playback, click on the button on the main transport toolbar. When this button is activated, every action on a mixer’s fader (volume sliders or pan knobs, excluding the master volume knob) will be recorded in the evolution graph of the relative parameter. If the button is pressed during playback, the faders will move according to the relative parameter’s programmed evolution. Once an evolution has been recorded moving a fader, it can be edited on the timeline window displaying the relative parameter’s evolution clicking on the button on the toolbar.
Holding down the SHIFT key allows to freely draw the evolution of the volume (i.e. every move of the mouse will create a new node in the piecewise linear waveform).
Unlike what happens with all the other parameters, the aux returns evolutions are shown for every master channel (i.e. output soundcard) and aux channel in the same screen: even if these evolutions are
drawn on top of certain tracks, there's no direct connection between this tracks and the return evolutions, which applies to a particular aux channel and not on single tracks.
If you want to perform a fade in/out, you can select the time interval during which the fade should take place by dragging with the mouse on the track and then selecting the Edit/”Volume/Pan drawing”/Fade
In/out menu option.
By clicking on the X icon
on the toolbar, the current selection will be muted, i.e. the volume evolution will be put to zero. Clicking on the same button holding down the CTRL key will destructively silence the selection: the wave file will be modified in an unrecoverable way (except for the undo ).
Effects parameters automation works with both DirectX plug-ins and VST plug-ins, but while any VST effect will allow its parameters to be automated not all DirectX plug-ins allow it. To see if a DirectX plugin supports automation select ‘Effects parameters’ from the drop-down menu, select the effect in one of the ‘effect’ drop down boxes. The plug-ins parameters will be listed in the drop-down box on the right. If no parameter is listed the plug-in doesn’t supports parameters automation.
See also
44
2.3. Automating effect parameters
Effects can be automated using
Automation of effects parameters
using parameter envelopes or mouse input recording
All VST plug-ins support automation of their parameters, but only some DirectX plug-ins do. All n-Track built-in plug-ins support parameters automation or using
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2.4. Varying effects on a track using aux send/return automation
Sometimes it is useful to apply certain effects only to specific parts of a track or to vary the amount of an effect during the evolution of the track. For example you may want to increase the amount of a reverb only during the chorus of a vocal track while keeping the reverb amount low during the verses.
This kind of processing can be obtained using aux channels and send/return automation.
In the preceding example the reverb could be placed in the first aux channel ,setting, for example, both the send and the return level for this aux channel to 0 dB. The amount of the effect can now be regulated by the send evolution. Click on the downward arrow near the volume icon on the toolbar select "Draw send to aux 1 volume" and draw the send evolution so that during the parts in which you want the effect amount to be greater the evolution assumes higher values.
In a similar way different effects can be applied to different parts of the same track. If in the preceding example for example you wanted to substitute the reverb effect with a delay only during the chorus, you could put the reverb in the first aux channel and the delay in the second channel. Now you could draw the send evolutions so that during the chorus the send to the first aux goes to 0 (-Inf) and the send to the second aux channels goes from 0 to a suitable level, the opposite happening after the ending of the chorus. The program handles up to 32 aux channels, so a lot of more sophisticated real-time processings can be easily obtained.
See also
2.5.7 Aux channels routing and settings
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2.5. Audio effects and Signal processing
Realtime audio effects can be used from within the program in a number of ways:
• Tracks inserts
• Aux channels
•
• Master channels
•
The track signal will be processed with inserts effects before being fed to the main mix. Up to 25 effects can be applied to each track. To apply a new effect click on the icon on the toolbar or click on an empty part of the track's inserts effects list in the mixer window. To add an effect to the track simply select it from the effects drop down list.
To add an effect to an aux channel click on the icon and select the desired channel from the dropdown menu.
Each track signal can be sent to an aux channel using the track's send controls, located below the list of inserts effects on the mixer window. The aux signal, made up of the mix of the signals of all tracks whose send controls are different from -Inf, will then be processed by the aux effects and then fed to the main mix as set by the return controls. This kind of effects processing is extremely useful for certain kind of effects, such as reverbs, delays etc. For example instead of applying a reverb to several tracks using inserts, the same result can be obtained by putting a reverb on an aux channel and then using the send control of each track and the aux return control to adjust the amount of reverb applied to the track.
amount of an effect during the course of a song.
At the end of the signal path, the master channel effects will process the signal resulting from the mixing of all the tracks and aux channels (aux channels can be optionally excluded from master channel
and limiting to obtain a good volume impression without clipping.
Effects can be arranged in any combination and one single effect type can be repeated several times for a single track (for example you can add two separate echoes with different delay times).
To make some changes on a particular effect on a track, open the effects dialog box and select the desired effect on the track list box. The effect dialog box will appear and you will be able to make the desired changes.
You can exchange the order in which the effects are applied using the up and down arrows buttons.
When using effects, be aware that the program calculates them while the song is being played back, so
the load on the computer processor increases quite heavily. On the other hand, all the
adjustment you make are not destructive, and the track that the program processes isn’t really modified, so you can experiment without having to worry to ruin the wav file and more importantly without having to wait for a wave editor to process the whole track.
You can decrease the load on the CPU by
tracks, instrument and group channels.
See also
2.5.7 Aux channels routing and settings
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2.5.1. Live input processing
n-Track Studio allows the computer to be used as a multi-effect device.
When in the live input processing mode the program will record from the selected input soundcard(s), will feed the recorded signal into the main mixer, thus allowing you to use plug-ins as track inserts, on the aux and master channels, and then will output the resulting signal to the active output soundcard(s).
If the buffer sizes are sufficiently low, the input to output latency will be low enough for the processing to appear to the ear as done instantly. This allows applying effects to an instrument while playing it through
See also
48 the computer. You can for example add a delay or reverb to an electric guitar, or add reverb to vocals etc.
The processing works also during the song playback and during recording. This may be useful to monitor the tracks being recorded. Vocal tracks for example are often processed with compressors and reverbs.
Normally one would record the track dry (without any effects) and then apply the effects.
The drawback with this way of recording is that during the recording the performer doesn’t hear how its voice will exactly sound when processed with the effects. Using live input processing you can instead add the desired effects before actually recording the track, then record the track with live processing enabled so that the program processes the voice with the effects and mixes it with the other song’s tracks.
The live input processing mode is enabled pressing the Live button on the toolbar.
A small delay is typically hearable: this is due to the buffering that is always necessary when dealing with soundcards.
Carefully adjusting the buffer settings on the buffering settings dialog box is fundamental in obtaining the lowest possible input to output intrinsic delay.
Turning the buffering knob to the left will decrease the total buffering, thus allowing for a smaller delay: if the buffering is insufficient, a slight distortion (actually a fast repetition of clicks) will be hearable.
To make the intrinsic delay less annoying, usually the best way to use the real-time processing is to hear your instrument only through the output of the computer. For example when playing electric guitar, you can connect the amplifier output using the guitar amp line-out jack, while muting its speaker output (for example plugging an headphone jack into the headphone connector).
If the intrinsic delay is so high that you can’t manage to play while hearing the delayed sound, you can adjust your setup so that you hear your instrument output from both the computer speakers and from the instrument amplifier speakers (if applicable), even if in this way some effects, such as EQ or compression, loose their usefulness.
The minimum delay of a system doesn’t depend much on the computer speed, but mostly on the soundcard’s driver design: the best results are typically obtained when using WDMm Asio or WaveRT soundcards drivers. When input to output latency (the sum of the input latency and the output latency) falls below 10 milliseconds the delay becomes un-hearable to most people.
2.5.2. Freezing
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Effects processing can sometimes overload the CPU (the computer’s ‘brain’), especially when working with complex projects or when the computer is not very fast, resulting in annoying clicks or pops while playing the song.
One way to overcome the problem is to Freeze channels that are being processed by CPU intensive plugins. When you freeze a channel n-Track creates a temporary wave file with the channel’s audio data after being processed by the channel’s plug-ins. During subsequent playbacks instead of processing the channel with the plug-ins n-Track simply reads the temporary wave file you created when you froze the channel.
When a channel is frozen the effects are bypassed and you won’t hear any change in the effect’s parameters until you de-freeze the channel.
When you de-freeze a channel and want to freeze it again you have two options: either repeat the regular freeze procedure just like you did the first time, or use the Re-Freeze command, which instructs n-Track to simply re-use the temporary wave file created during the earlier freeze. Re-freeze is instantaneous, although it won’t reflect any changes in effects parameters done after the original Freeze.
Freezing is also available on
Instrument channels : when a VSTi or DXi is starting to use too much CPU you
can simply freeze the channel and the MIDI tracks sent to the instrument will be frozen too. You’ll still be able to hear through the instrument new MIDI tracks sent to the frozen instrument or MIDI notes coming from an external MIDI keyboard.
The Bounce command consolidates tracks made of multiple wave files into a track with a single wave file.
The Bounce and Process track command consolidates the track into a single wave file and also gives the option to permanently apply track effects, EQ, volume envelopes. It also gives the option to create a wave file that starts at the beginning of the song for easier exporting of tracks to 3 rd
party programs (see below)
Tips
• Hold down the Ctrl key while pressing the Freeze button (or when selecting the Bounce command right clicking on a track) to freeze/bounce all the tracks in the song.
• Launch the the Bounce and Process track command, the Bounce Options dialog box will appear, select Bounce from beginning of song and click on Bounce all tracks. This will bounce all the song tracks so that you’ll be able to painlessly import the tracks into a new song and the tracks will automatically be in sync with each other. The command is also useful for preparing the tracks for exporting the song to 3 rd
party multitrack editing programs.
See also
50
2.5.3. VST plug-ins
n-Track Studio supports VST standard plug-ins.
VST plug-ins must be stored in a single folder on the hard disk. You can specify the path to this folder in the
dialog box.
You can apply a VST effect to a track clicking on the track and pressing the DSP button on the toolbar.
The property window for each plug-in contains the bypass checkbox, the CPU time indicator (that shows the percentage of the total program time spent by the plug-in) and the preamp/postamp controls. This control will allow to adjust the level of the signal arriving to the effect so that no distortion is introduced and that the signal level is kept sufficiently high.
If you don’t need this adjustments, keep this controls in their central position (the “off” writing will appear below them) so that for example the program doesn’t waste CPU time to apply an unhearable amplification (to easily do this you can right click on the control and choose “Center” from the pop-up menu that will appear).
When chaining more plug-ins within a track, only one among preamp and postamp is actually useful: for example the postamp of the first plug-in does exactly the same thing as the preamp of the second one, so it’s better to turn one of them off.
See also
2.5.4. DirectX plug-ins
51 n-Track Studio supports the DirectX standard plug-in architecture.
Click here for a list of DirectX plug-ins that have been tested to work with n-Track Studio
Some plug-in will refuse to work with mono tracks, reporting an error when you chose them from the list: you can either chose to use them only on stereo tracks or check the option “expand mono tracks to stereo” from the Preferences/General dialog box. This will also greatly enhance the result of some effects, in particular reverbs.
The property window for each DirectX effect will contain the bypass checkbox, the CPU time indicator
(that shows the percentage of the total program time spent by the plug-in) and the preamp/postamp controls. This control will allow to adjust the level of the signal arriving to the effect so that no distortion is introduced and that the signal level is kept sufficiently high.
If you don’t need this adjustments, keep this controls in their central position (the “off” writing will appear below them) so that for example the program doesn’t waste CPU time to apply an unhearable amplification (to easily do this you can right click on the control and choose “Center” from the pop-up menu that will appear).
When chaining more plug-ins within a track, only one among preamp and postamp is actually useful: for example the postamp of the first plug-in does exactly the same thing as the preamp of the second one, so it’s better to turn one of them off.
The effects list may contain some entries that aren't actual filters, but Windows internal codecs. Typically if you choose them a pop up dialog will appear saying "Filter doesn't support property pages".
52
See also
2.5.5. DirectX and VST effects that work with n-Track Studio
You can find links to shareware and freeware DirectX and VST effects plug-in at this web address: http://ntrack.com/effects.shtm
To use DirectX and VST plugins, click on a track, press the DSP button on the toolbar then choose the desired effect from the drop-down list.
See also
53
2.5.6. Hosting ReWire slave programs
n-Track Studio can host ReWire compatible third party software such as Propellerhead Rebyrth, Reason,
Ableton Live, Virtual Sampler and more. A ReWire compatible slave program will automatically send its signal into the corresponding n-Track ReWire channel(s). You’ll then be able to process the signal with plug-ins, send it to aux channels, group channels etc.
ReWire software will sync to n-Track’s timing and the transport controls (play, rewind etc.) on any
ReWire software and n-Track will work together, i.e. starting the playback from the Rebirth window will also start the n-Track song playback.
To add a ReWire channel: select the desired ReWire compatible program in the Track/Insert ReWire
Channel menu command.
A window with the available channels will appear. A ReWire program can have two or more channels, n-
Track by default activates the first two channels. Other channels can be activated ‘on the fly’ during playback. Once you’ve added the ReWire channel you can load the ReWire application and test if its signal is correctly being routed through n-Track.
Once you’ve finished your work close the ReWire application first and then n-Track. Closing the programs in the reverse order may cause stability problems.
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ReWire technology is developed by Propellerhead Software AB
2.5.7. Aux channels routing and settings
The signal sent to aux channels can be taken from three different points in a track’s or group channel’s
. Each send can be pre-inserts, pre-fader, or post-fader. The type of each send can be set with the send mode button right above the send pan control in the track’s mixer stripe.
pre-fader send when a send is pre-fader the signal sent to the aux channel is not influenced by the track's fader settings (volume and pan). Pre-fader sends may be useful for example when using an aux channel as a sub-mix, i.e. to group tracks and control their volume and pan using the aux's return setting: if a send is pre-fader and the track's volume is set to -Inf the track's volume will be set exclusively by the send and return controls.
pre-inserts send when a send is pre-insert the track’s signal is sent to the aux channel prior to it being processed by the track’s insert effects and before the track’s volume and pan settings are applied.
post-fader send when a send is post-fader the track’s signal is sent to the aux channel after it has beeen processed by the track’s insert effects and after the track’s volume and pan settings have been applied.
The signal returning from an aux channel to a master channel can be inserted into the mix in four different ways:
pre-master channel effects & pre master volume the signal returned from the aux channel is processed with the master channel effects and the master volume setting is used to control the return’s level
post-master channel effects & post master volume the signal returned from the aux channel is
not processed with the master channel effects and the master volume setting is not used to control the return’s level
pre-master channel effects & post master volume the signal returned from the aux channel is processed with the master channel effects but the master volume setting is not used to control the return’s level
post-master channel effects & pre master volume the signal returned from the aux channel is
not processed with the master channel effects but the master volume setting is used to control the return’s level
0 to 32 aux channels can be used. The higher the number of aux channels the more system resources will be used. It's advisable to use only the number of aux channels effectively needed. The number of aux channels to be used can be set in the Preferences/Options dialog box.
See also
55
2.5.8. Groups channels
It’s often useful to adjust the settings of a group of tracks at the same time. Having to change the same setting for many tracks may be tedious, so you can instead send a group of tracks to a dedicated group channel. A group channel is created when a new group is selected in the Output to drop-down list in the
track’s properties dialog box. When the group channel is created a new channel strip appears on the mixer window. More than one track can be sent to a group channel, so that when you adjust the setting of the group channel all of the group’s tracks are influenced.
A group channel can have its own effects, send its signal to aux channels and have automated volume and pan just like regular tracks.
Group channels can in turn be sent to other group channels, allowing to organize the song in a hierarchy of groups and allowing a great flexibility in the routing of signals.
See also
2.5.9. Track EQ properties
56 n-Track’s track EQ lets you use up to 20 bands of parametric EQ.
Each wave track has 3 EQ knobs on the mixer window. The knobs control the 3 EQ bands boost/cut amount. The three bands are by default set as respectively low-shelving, band boost/cut & high-shelving filters, but each band filter type, frequency and bandwidth can be customized in the EQ properties dialog box.
Even though the mixer has only three knobs, more EQ bands can be added or deleted in the EQ properties window with the ‘add band’ and ‘delete band’ buttons.
The EQ window also has a built-in spectrum analyzer
and automatic instrument tuner that can be activated
or deactivated right clicking on the frequency response graph.
Boost/cut:
Set the selected band boost (when the value in dB is positive) or cut (negative). This the same knob that appears on the mixer window.
Frequency:
Sets the frequency at which the band is positioned (the value represents the center frequency for the ‘Band boost/cut’ filter and the corner frequency for the other types of EQ).
Bandwidth: Size of the band to be boosted or cut (applies only to the ‘Band boost/cut’ band type).
The parameter units are ‘octaves’. A bandwidth of 1 octave means that the highest frequency is twice the lowest frequency. A bandwidth of N octaves means that the highest frequency in the band is 2
N lowest frequency.
times the
EQ type: Sets the band filter type. By default the 1 st
band is a low-shelving filter (boosts or cuts by the selected amount the frequencies below the corner frequency), the 2 nd
band a ‘Band boost/cut’ filter
(boosts or cuts by the selected amount the range of frequencies centered around the center frequency and of width set by the bandwidth parameter) and the 3 rd
band is an high-shelving filter (boosts or cuts by the selected amount the frequencies above the corner frequencies). Other available filters are ‘high pass’ (which entirely cuts all the frequencies below the corner frequency) and ‘low pass’ (which entirely cuts all the frequencies above the corner frequencies).
Track: The track whose EQ’s parameters are displayed in the dialog box.
Band: The band whose parameters are displayed in the dialog box.
See also
2.5.10. Spectrum analyzer
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The spectrum analyzer examines the signal at the output of the EQ and calculates the power of each frequency contained in the signal’s spectrum. The results of the analysis are drawn in the graph.
The analysis of the signal is performed using the FFT method. The size of the FFT window, the size of the
FFT and number of samples after which each new analysis is performed can be adjusted in the popup menu that appears clicking with the right mouse button.
You don’t typically need to understand what these parameters mean to use the spectrum analyzer, however here’s a quick explanation:
Window size: the window size is the length of the block of signal that is analyzed. The longer the window the more the analysis will be accurate. More accuracy means that the signal’s frequencies will be shown with more detail, groups of frequencies close to each other will be shown as a single frequency band when a short window is used but will be shown as distinct bands as the window length is increased.
The disadvantage of using a long window is that the spectrum will show all the signals in the analyzed block, and if the block is too big you may get into a single spectrum two subsequent signal that you instead wanted to be shown separately. If for example you want to see the spectrum of a sequence of
notes played on a guitar, and you set the window length to a number of samples that approximately equals 1 second. If the guitar player plays 3 notes during one second, the spectrum of the corresponding signal block will show the frequency bands corresponding to all the three notes that have been played on that second, and if some bands overlap, for example one note may be or contain an harmonic component
(an integer multiple) of another, you’ll only see the sum of the three notes spectrums. If a ~0.3 second window is used instead you’ll see three spectrums each showing the spectrum of a single note played on the guitar.
Also a longer window means that the screen is updated less frequently. This can be overcome by setting the ‘computer FFT every X samples’ parameter to a size less than the window’s. This in turn means more analysis per seconds and thus the CPU will used more intensely.
FFT size: the size of the FFT must be at least the size of the Window. A longer size for the FFT basically implies a more smooth graphical representation of the spectrum in the graph, but the accuracy of resolving adjacent frequency bands will not improve unless the window size is also increased.
Compute every # samples: if the window size is large, it may be useful to set this parameter to a size smaller than the window size. When this is done the program will analyze the signal at a frequency higher than that set by the window size (which implies that a same portion of the signal will be analyzed more than once). More analysis per unit of time impose a greater stress on the CPU.
Window type: without getting too technical the choice of the type of the window used is a tradeoff between smoothness of the spectrum and ability to resolve (show as separate) small peaks in the frequency spectrum. The rectangular window is the best for the latter requirement while the Blackman window provides the smoothest spectrum.
You can enable or disable the spectrum analyzer right clicking on the frequency response window. With stereo signals you can display the spectrum of either the left channel, the right channel or of both channels simultaneously (in the latter case two spectrums are drawn, the left channel’s in red and the right channel’s in green).
2.5.11. Automatic tuner
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You can enable or disable the tuner right clicking on the frequency response window.
The tuner analyzes the signal at the output of the EQ and shows how much the signal’s main frequency component is close to the frequency of a musical note. The closest note is automatically selected so that for example when tuning a guitar you don’t have to manually tell the tuner which string is being tuned.
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When the note is close but not exactly equal to the note’s frequency the percentage of the difference in frequency will be shown, allowing you to adjust the instrument (typically a guitar) to tune it to the desired note.
The accuracy of the tuner is typically so high that it’s likely that you won’t be able to reliably tune the instrument to the exact note frequency.
With a guitar the tuner detects even small detuning caused by the bending of the guitar’s neck caused by the weight of the hand resting on top of it. This doesn’t mean that the instrument is not in tune as the human hear won’t typically notice a very small detuning and a musical instrument is usually built to be heard by a human hear and not by an electronic tuner!
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2.5.12. n-Track Signal Path
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Diagram designed by
2.5.13. Mastering
Mastering is the the last step in the production of a song. Once the song has been mixed down
to a single wave file, the file may be loaded again to apply the latest processings (typically EQ and Compression) to produce the filnal wave file to be used for burning a CD.
When mixing down a song, if you plan to process the resulting wave file (which is often advisable) you may want to do the mixdown with 32 bits resolution, so to assure the minimum possible degradation of the sound quality due to the repeated processing (actually even when using 16 bits wave files the sound quality degratation caused by a few processing steps is very hard to notice. When using 32 bit wave files you may fell free to process the same file tens of times without any noticeable loss of quality).
2.5.14. Dither & Noise shaping
n-Track Studio can use dither and noise shaping when converting signals from the program’s internal format (32 bit) into 16 or 24 bit format. This conversion takes place at the very end of the signal chain, when the signal is prepared for the output to a soundcard or for writing to a wave file, for example during the mixdown.
The dithering process consists in adding a very small and calibrated amount of noise to the signal before converting it to a less accurate representation. This can increase the dynamic range of the resulting signal, allowing to represent signals even smaller than a given format’s theoretical maximum resolution.
This process also reduces the effects of the non-linear distortion inherent to the quantization process, which can result in the generation of harmonics that are often annoying to the human hear.
The drawback of the dithering process is that a small quantity of noise is added to the original signal. The amount of noise added is controlled by the
Dither depth parameter. This parameter is expressed in bits, which are referred to the current output format. For example when converting to 16
62 bits, 1 bit unit is 1/(2^16) of the full scale, while when converting to 24 bits, 1 bit is 1/(2^24) of the full scale.
The noise introduced by the dithering can be reduced using the noise shaping technique, which moves the dither noise to a region of the frequency spectrum where the human hear is less sensitive (high frequencies).
The noise shaping process should typically be applied only when preparing a wave file to be used for creating a CD track, when no other processing is to be applied to the file. The benefits of the noise shaping process are in fact somewhat delicate, and can be completely voided by successive processing.
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2.6. Working with Surround
You can use n-Track to mix songs in a surround format or to create a surround soundtrack to a video. n-Track supports all popular surround formats, including 5.1, 6.1 and 7.1 formats.
5.1 is the most popular surround format as it is the format used by the majority of film and audio DVD.
To create a surround project:
Make sure that the desired physical output channels are selected in the box that appears selecting the
File/Settings/Preferences/Audio devices menu command.
If you selected a multichannel WDM, WaveRT or Asio audio output driver, make sure that all the desired outputs are active selecting the View/Soundcard settings/Playback format menu command and clicking on Select I/O channels
Select an audio track
Right click on the audio track and select Surround from the popup menu
The track will automatically be sent to the Surround Main output
Right click on the circular surround panner control that has been added in the track mixer strip
Click on the surround format name (for example “Surround 5.1!”) in the upper right corner of the surround panner window
The surround configuration dialog box will appear, where you’ll be able to select the desired surround configuration (5.1, 7.1 etc.), which surround channels go to which physical audio outputs and the order of the various surround channels (i.e. the central channel is usually the 4th channel, but since your setup might be different you can use the move up/down buttons to change the relative ordering of the channels). You can modify the surround configuration even after you have started working on the project.
The Surround Main output is a virtual channel that maps to the actual physical output channels according to the current surround configuration.
Surround effects plug-ins can be applied on Surround Group channels: select a surround track, right click on it and select “Send to a new group” from the popup menu a new group channel will be added to the mixer
Effects applied to the surround group channel will need to be able to process surround signals (i.e. regular mono or stereo effects will not work or will not produce the expected results).
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When the project will be complete, you can create a single mixdown
wave file: select the Mixdown command from the File menu click on the More options button select Single multichannel wave file from the output format drop down list in the lower right corner of the window
See also
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2.6.1. Surround formats
The most common surround format is 5.1. Increasingly common formats are 6.1 and 7.1. 5.1 is the standard multichannel audio format for movie DVDs. Audio on video DVDs are usually encoded in either
Dolby Digital or DTS compressed formats. Multichannel compressed formats allow to store 6 channels of audio data in less space than 2 channels of uncompressed audio data such as the uncompressed format used in audio CDs.
The output of a surround project created with n-Track will be in uncompressed PCM wave format. The mixdown wave file will need to be imported into a DVD authoring software that will use it to create the audio track of a DVD performing the encoding to a multichannel compressed format.
The basic version of both Dolby Digital and DTS allow up to 5.1 channels. Extended versions of both standards, named Dolby Digital EX and DTS-ES allow the enconding of 6.1 channels.
The “.1” in a surround format specification stands for the LFE channel. LFE is an acronym for “Low
Frequency Effects”. In contrast to the main channels, the LFE channel contains only low frequencies, below 120 hz. The LFE channel is used to drive the sub-woofer which is used in all home-theater speaker systems.
One of the main reasons why the LFE channel has been added to Dolby Digital and other multichannel digital standards is for compatibility with legacy analog film audio formats. LFE channels were used in analog film audio for technical (unburden the main channel tracks from the distortion easily caused by heavy bass signals) and economical reasons (eliminating the need to install in theaters expensive analog cross-over filters to separate the signal going to the subwoofer and to the main speakers) that wouldn’t matter in the digital world.
Some confusion usually arises between the concepts of LFE channel and subwoofer. The subwoofer is typically used for the reproduction of both the low frequency content of the signal of the main channels
(left, central, right, surround left etc.) and for the reproduction of the LFE channel. On many setups small home theater speakers can’t reproduce low frequencies, so the home-theater amplifier divides the signal of each of the main channels, sending the high frequency content to the corresponding main channel speaker and the low frequency content to the sub-woofer.
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It follows that you don’t typically have to do anything to have signal go to the subwoofer. You can totally ignore the LFE channel and still the sub-woofer will play powerful bass sounds according to the bass content of the main channels. The LFE channel allows for extra control and separation of bass sound effects. LFE content is typically present in movie soundtracks only during scenes containing sounds such as explosions, airplane engine noise etc.
It’s generally believed that human hears can’t detect the spatial origin of a bass sound. That’s the reason why in home-theater speaker systems the sub-woofer position in the room is considered irrelevant.
Accordingly the n-Track surround panner doesn’t place the LFE channel as a speaker in the virtual room shown in the panner screen. The LFE channel has a separate slider that controls how much of the source signal goes to the LFE channel.
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2.6.2. Creating a surround DVD
The mixdown created with n-Track can be used to create a DVD that will play on standard DVD players connected to a home theater speaker system.
A standard exists for audio-only DVDs with very high quality audio format (24 bit 192 khz). Unfortunately the DVD-Audio standard is not yet widely used and only a minority of DVD players can play DVD-Audio discs.
An alternative way to create audio-only DVDs is to create regular video DVDs with no video (or just a static background image). Although the audio quality will not be as good as with DVD-Audio the discs will be playable on any standard DVD player.
Audio on standard video DVDs is typically encoded in Dolby Digital
Audio DVD Creator (http://www.audio-dvd-creator.com)
TM
ac3 format.
Third party software that can be used to convert the n-Track mixdown to an ac3 encoded file include:
Minnetoka SurCode (http://www.minnetonkaaudio.com)
Sonic Foundry Soft Encode
BeSweet (http://dspguru.doom9.net)
The resulting .ac3 file can be imported in a DVD authoring program to create and burn the actual DVD.
Some DVD authoring or Dolby Digital
TM
Ac3 encoder programs require as input a single .wav file for each of the surround outputs. You can create single wave files for each output selecting the Two mono wave
files for each output option in the mixdown dialog box.
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2.7.
Controlling n-Track with MIDI faders
The mixer faders and the transport controls (play, rec etc.) can be controlled by an hardware MIDI control surface. You can configure what actions are associated with the MIDI events generated by the control surface faders and buttons in the View/Settings/MIDI faders-control dialog box.
The dialog box shows a list of the defined events and the associated actions. To change an event click on its name in the list, change the desired options in the lower part of the window, then click on an empty part of the list window to save the settings.
If you don’t know which events are generated by your control surface, you can select the event you want to edit, click on the ‘Learn’ button, then move the control on the control surface. The program will detect which event the control sends and update the ‘MIDI event’ settings accordingly.
MIDI event: Type of MIDI event to which associate the desired action
Channel:
Channel to which the MIDI event is sent
Controller number: Number of the MIDI controller (if the event is a MIDI controller) or of the MIDI note (if the event is a note-on or note-off event).
Learn: Automatically detect the event generated by the control
Action:
Action (change in volume, pan, mute, solo etc.) that you want to associate with the selected MIDI event
Track/num: Track to which you want to apply the selected action, or output channel number (if the action is return volume or return pan setting)
Aux num:
pan actions)
Aux channel to which to apply the action (used for send vol, send pan, return vol & return
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Receive/Send: Check the receive option if you want the program to respond to the MIDI events coming from the control surface. Check the Send option if you want the program to send MIDI events to move the control surface faders when the faders are moved within the program (useful with motorized control surfaces).
2.8. Editing
The program supports 2 different editing modes:
in this editing mode the program behaves like a wave editor. This editing mode is called destructive because the files are actually modified
copy, cut & paste portions of parts (references to wave files). When performing these editing operations the wave files the parts point to aren’t modified. You can also use this editing mode to
create loops (pasting holding the Shift button appends the part at the exact end of the
current track)
To change the current editing mode click on the editing mode icon on the toolbar (which will show on of the icons above) and select the desired editing mode from the drop-down menu.
n-Track can also edit individual samples
of wave files.
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2.8.1. Destructive wave editing functions
Basic wave editing functions can be performed inside the program: you can cut, copy, paste, insert part of wave files. To execute such operations, you must first select a part of a wave file inside a track on which you wish to perform an operation.
Make sure that the arrow icon is selected on the toolbar and that the destructive wave editing button on the toolbar is pressed
Holding down the left button drag with the mouse on the desired wave file waveform to select a part of it, or otherwise drag on the time axis (the top or bottom part of the timeline window). You’ll see the selection highlight as you drag. If you drag on the time axis all the tracks will appear to be selected, but
71 the wave editing operations will have effect only on the wave file that has the white border around its waveform.
Once the selection is made click on the icon corresponding to the desired operation on the toolbar (many operations will have no effect if the selection extends out of the limits of the wave file, so make sure that the selection lies all within the wave file).
All destructive wave editing function are undoable: when the program executes such operation it saves the data in temporary wave files to allow for multilevel undo.
- One common useful operation is to extract a part of a bigger wave file and place it in a separate
track. To do this select the desired part of a wave file, click on the copy button and then click on the paste button while holding the SHIFT key: this will make the program create a new wave file with the copied data and it will put it at the exact offset that the copied data had, so you can for example use this function to keep only the good part of a long recording take deleting the original wave file, or for example to repeat a vocal part in multiple tracks offset by a small amount in such a way to simulate a choir.
- Another useful trick is to silence part of wave files: you can do this selecting the part and clicking on the ‘X’ button on the toolbar: if you hold the CTRL button the operation will be destructive, i.e. the part of the file will be physically silenced. If you don’t hold CTRL the volume evolution will be altered in a way to mute the selected part of the track: to view the effect of this operation switch to the volume drawing view by clicking on the volume icon on the toolbar.
- Sometimes very strange effects can be obtained by reversing an audio recording. You can reverse the current selection using the Edit/Special/Reverse playback menu commang
For more sophisticated operations on wave files the program can launch an user specified (through the
Preferences/Paths dialog box) wave editor on the selected track by clicking on the icon on the upper toolbar.
See also
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2.8.2. Non-destructive wave editing
When in non-destructive wave editing mode the cut, copy and paste actions will never do any modifications on the wave files the parts (references to wave files) point to. The modification will be only applied on the parts themselves:
Cutting the selection will have the effect of splitting the selected part in two pieces and shrinking them so that the selected range of the part’s wave file is no longer included in the song
If the copy command is applied when the temporal selection is empty, the entire active part (the part you last clicked on) will be placed in the clipboard. To make the temporal selection empty simply click on a part without moving the mouse.
Pasting a selection previously copied (or cut) will create a new part that exactly corresponds to the clipboard selection. If the paste command is executed when the current selection is not empty the selection will be filled with the clipboard part, while if no selection is active a new part will be created in a new track.
Holding the Shift key while pasting (clicking on the icon or pressing Ctrl+V) will append the part currently in the clipboard (i.e. the part which has been previously copied or cut) exactly at the end of the current track (see
Other non-destructive operations are accessed through the Edit menu:
Splice: detach the current selection from the rest of the wave files: a reference to a wave file is cut in 2 or 3 pieces. The Splice command actually works in two modes:
• when a track selection exists (i.e. an highlighted portion of one or more tracks) the splice command works on the current selection, it doesn't look at the position of the vertical playback cursor, i.e. if you select a portion of a track by dragging with the mouse over the waveform, then single click on a different position in the timeline axis, the Splice command will be applied to the selection you dragged on the waveform, not at the point where the cursor was positioned.
The selection will be transformed into a new part, thus creating 3 parts from the original part.
• when no track selection exists (for example press Ctrl+0 to clear all selections) the Splice command will be applied at the timeline cursor position, and it will split the current part into two parts, one before and one after the cursor position.
Splice in N parts
Create N concatenated parts out the (whole) selected part
Merge
See also
Rejoin two parts that have been previously spliced
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2.8.3. Editing individual samples
Wave files are made up of a series of samples. Each digital sample is simply a value between -1 and 1.
The sampling rate at which a wave file is recorded represents the number of samples that the wave file contains for each second of recording.
When you see a waveform you usually can’t discern each sample as even for short lengths the number of samples is very high and they are ‘blurred’ together to form the waveform representation that you see on the n-Track timeline.
If however you zoom into the X axis by repeatedly pressing the
button on the toolbar (or rotating forward the mouse wheel holding the Ctrl key) at a certain point you’ll start to see a series of dots appearing on top of the waveform as shown in the screenshot. The dots represent the individual samples that make up the wave file.
You can drag a dot vertically with the mouse to adjust the sample value.
The ability to edit individual samples can be useful to correct DC offset problems in recordings and to harmonize editing points. If for example you place two wave files next to each other and during playback you hear a short click corresponding to point where the two wave files are attached, you might be able to eliminated the click by editing the samples near the connection point to make the transition visually smooth.
An alternative method is to overlap the two wave files slightly and
the two.
Note that abrupt changes between near samples do not usually appear in real recordings. Manually edits of individual samples that result in abrupt changes in the samples value (the screenshot above shows such an abrupt change) results in very high frequency noise bursts that can be very annoying and hurt your ears.
2.8.4. Destructive wave file processing
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Effects, volume and pan envelopes can be applied destructively to a track wave files.
Normally effects are calculated by the program in real-time during the song playback.
In many cases it may be better to apply effects in a permanent manner. For example sometimes using too many effects may cause the computer to go out of resources: applying the effects destructively can free many cpu resources. In other cases it may be needed to apply different effects to certain parts of a track (this can also be accomplished in real-time using
send/return automation).
Likewise in some situation it may be useful to apply volume or pan changes to a wave file in a permanent
manner. This typically is needed when mastering
a wave file resulting from the mixdown
of a song (for example to apply the final fade out).
Apply: Volume envelope
Pan envelope
Effects
Apply to: Selection
apply the track’s volume envelope to the selected wave file apply the track’s pan envelope to the selected wave file apply the track’s effects to the selected wave file process the selected portion of the wave file
Whole
Convert to: Stereo convert the (mono) wave file to stereo
bit
Note: if the file format is being changed (the strereo and/or 32 bit options are checked) and if only a portion of the wave file is present in the song (i.e. the left and right file edges have been dragged to shring the part) the processing will be applied also to the excluded parts
Dither:
Use dithering. For more info see Dither & noise shaping
Dither depth: Depth in bits of the dithering noise. For more info see Dither & noise shaping
Noise shaping:
Use noise shaping. For more info see Dither & noise shaping
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2.8.5. Normalize
Normalization is the process of amplifying an audio signal so that it maximum amplitude matches the level specified. Normalization can be useful for example when preparing a wave file for burning a CD.
Setting the maximum level of all CD tracks to 0 dB assures that no clipping occurs and that the playback level of all tracks is similar (assuming that all the tracks have been processed with similar compression and limiting settings).
Note: normalizing a wave file will not improve its signal to noise ratio. If the recording level used was too low, amplifying the signal will also amplify noise.
Normalize to: maximum level that the signal will assume after normalization
Scan: scan the file to extract the current maximum level
Channels:
select which channel to apply the normalization to. If the normalization is applyed to both channels the aplifying factor will be chosen so that the channel which has the highest peak will reach the requested level (for example normalizing to 0 dB a stereo file with the left channel that peaks at –3 dB and the right channel that peaks at –2 dB will produce a file in which the left and right channels peak at respectively –1 and 0 dB).
Apply to: Selection
Whole
process the selected portion of the wave file process the whole wave file
Convert to: Stereo convert the (mono) wave file to stereo
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Note: if the file format is being changed (the strereo and/or 32 bit options are checked) and if only a portion of the wave file is present in the song (i.e. the left and right file edges have been dragged to shring the part) the processing will be applied also to the excluded parts
Dither:
Use dithering. For more info see Dither & noise shaping
Dither depth: Depth in bits of the dithering noise. For more info see Dither & noise shaping
Noise shaping:
Use noise shaping. For more info see Dither & noise shaping
2.8.6. Snap selection edges to 0
Selecting good cut and paste points is crucial to obtaining natural sounding edits of wave files. The Snap
to 0 option is designed to help the selection of such points: the instants in which the waveform crosses the 0 level are often the best places where to cut a wave file.
Snap when crossing 0 with [Negative/Positive/Any slope]: the program can detect the slope of the crossing of the 0 level. It's usual good to use always a certain (positive or negative) slope, so that when for example a segment of audio is pasted into another, the slope of the resulting waveform at the insertion point will be sufficiently smooth. This will lead to a higher probability that the edit will not be accompanied by short clicks in correspondence the edit points.
Scan at most x samples:
sets the number of samples that the program will scan when searching for the 0 crossing.
Assume DC component:
sets the signal level that the program will consider as 0. Thi option is useful if the file you're working on has a DC component: the snapping will be made relative to the DC value specified instead than relative to 0. The level must be entered as a real number (i.e. '0.23') between 0 and 1.
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2.8.7. Crossfading
Crossfading is the operation of creating a smooth transition between two separate wave files. The program performs the crossfade in realtime during the playback of the song.
The operation is non-destructive because the original wave files are not modified.
To apply a crossfade, drag a part so that it overlaps the other part by the desired amount (the crossfade time). As you drag you will see the a crossfading volume envelope shape appear in the space at the intersection of the two waveforms.
You can disable crossfading of a wave file in the Crossfade sub-menu of the popup menu that appears right clicking on the crossfade area at the intersection of the waveforms. Select More from the popup menu to customize the length and shape of the crossfade volume envelope.
2.8.8. Punch in/Multiple takes recording
After careful listening to the solo you’ve just recorded you decide that you’re still not satisfied, and you want to try recording it again: click on the undo button and send the wave file to the recycle bin (if you are not sure if you want to keep it, you may save an “alternate” version of the song before trying to rerecord it, so if you don’t manage to record another solo as good as the original one, you can always revert to the saved song).
After a couple of tries you start to get tired of having to use the mouse to start, stop, undo and restart the recording. If you want the program to do this automatically for you while you’re trying to record a good take you may use the punch-in facility.
Click on the punch-in settings button on the punch-in toolbar (second button from the left)
Check the “multiple takes” checkbox in the punch-in settings dialog box.
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Drag with the mouse on the timeline to select the interval to record. Notice that as you drag the punch-in toolbar is updated to reflect the selection.
Click on the start punch-in recording button to start the recording.
The program will repeatedly let you record the selected part.
When you decide you’ve recorded a good part, click on the stop button: a list of all the recorded takes will appear. This will allow you to insert into the song only the take(s) that you think are good and discard the others.
Punch in/Multiple takes recording can be activated with the punch-in recording button in the punch-in toolbar which is by default located in the upper right corner of the screen.
If the toolbar isn’t showing right click on the toolbar and activate the Punch-In Recording entry to make the punch-in toolbar appear.
The punch in toolbar allows you to set the time at which the start and the end of the recording will occur.
More options can be specified in the punch-in settings drop-down menu that appears clicking on the
button, including the amount of time the playback will start before the actual recording begins.
When you check the multiple takes option, the recording procedure will automatically restart when the cursor reaches the punch-in end time. The recording will continue to loop and accumulate takes until the user presses the stop button.
This can be useful, for example, when you want to record a difficult solo and you need to try it a few times. Using this option allows you to play continuously without having to manually stop the recording, remove the bad recording from the song and start again.
If the Add takes to new tracks option is selected, each take will end in a new track as soon as the take is finished.
When multiple takes is selected and Add takes to new tracks is not, each new take will be saved in its own layer called Alternate take inside the punched track. Once the recording is finished you can switch between the takes/layers right-clicking on the track and selecting the take from the Alternate takes popup sub-menu.
2.8.9. Looping wave files
To loop a wave file in n-Track Studio do the following:
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- Insert the wave file to loop using the Track/Insert wave file menu command
- make sure you’re in the "non-destructive editing mode" (click on the on editing mode button on the toolbar)
- press CTRL-C (or select Edit/Copy)
- press CTRL-V (or select Edit/Paste) holding down the SHIFT key: this will make the program insert another time the same wave file. If SHIFT is pressed and held, the program automatically puts the new reference to the wave file in the same track as the copied part with the offset equal to the former end of the track, so that there will be no gap in the playback
- continue pressing SHIFT-CTRL-C until the wave file is repeated as many times as you wish
In this way it is also possible to create more complex loops. For example if you want to create a drum track and you have two wave files, one for the normal bar and one for a break, you could paste the normal bar 3 times, the break bar 1 time, and then copy and paste the whole sequence.
2.8.10. Markers
Markers can be inserted by clicking on the button on the toolbar and then clicking on the desired place on the timeline upper time axis. A marker can also be inserted simply right-clicking on the time axis and selecting “Add marker here” from the pop-up menu.
Markers can be moved simply dragging them on the timeline axis. Double clicking on a marker will open the marker properties dialog box, in which you can change the marker’s name, position, comment and pop-up texts.
Click holding the Ctrl key on the timeline axis between two markers to set the edit selection between the two markers.
Use the Ctrl+Shift+ left and right cursor keys to move between markers.
If a marker’s pop-up text is not empty, during playback, x seconds before the marker time a pop-up window will appear which besides the pop-up text will show a count down of the time before the marker position. This feature may be useful for example during recording: you could let the program warn you just before some critical points of a song are approaching (for example “first guitar solo”, “last chorus” etc.).
The marker countdown time and the font used for the pop-up text can be customized clicking on the
Settings button on the Markers list dialog box.
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2.9. Input/Output formats
You can select which recording and playback format to use in the dialog boxes that appear clicking on the settings button in the playback and recording vumeter windows.
Playback and recording formats are set independently, you can for example record in 24 bits and playback in 16 bits and vice-versa. Likewise the format can be set independently for each input and output device, clicking on the Settings button of each device’s vumeter.
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The input and output format dialog boxes let you chose the input or output format:
Bits
16:
16 bit format, supported by almost any soundcard
24:
24 bit packed format
24 unpacked:
24 bit format in which the 24 bit of data are memorized as the rightmost 24 bits of a 32 bit block
24 unpacked left justify: 24 bit format in which the 24 bit of data are memorized as the leftmost 24 bits of a 32 bit block
Stereo/Mono:
Asio settings:
Number of channels opens the Asio settings dialog box (the button appears only when using an Asio driver)
Setting that appear only on the recording format dialog box (that appears clicking on the settings button on a recording vumeter):
Stereo -> two mono tracks: allows recording two separate mono tracks (corresponding to the left and
Enable Live input processing from this input:
when Live input processing is active, this input
soundcard will be used only if this option is checked.
2.10. Recording more than one track at a time
If you need to record two tracks at the same time (for example if you sing while playing guitar) you can do this with a single soundcard simply by connecting two different microphones, one for each channel of the soundcard’s line input (left and right).
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The program can record in stereo mode, creating either a single stereo track or two separate wave files.
You can set how the program should behave by clicking on the Settings button in the recording vumeter window.
If you record two separate tracks at the same time, you’ll want the program to record two separate wave files. You can set the record mode to stereo -> two mono tracks in the dialog box that appears clicking on the settings button on the recording vumeter window. If you are recording a single stereo instrument set the recording mode to stereo to obtain a single stereo wave file.
If you are recording a single instrument, set the recording mode to mono. The mono option may not be available with all soundcards. If it isn’t available, you can set the program to record from either only the left or only the right channel in the popup menu that appears clicking on the rec to… button in the recording meter window. Select don’t record from this channel for the unwanted channel.
If you need to record more channels n-Track also supports simultaneous recording and playback with multiple soundcards or multiple inputs soundcards.
To record from multiple input channels:
Select the desired recording devices from the
Preferences/Recording Settings/Wave Devices dialog box,
dragging them with the mouse or clicking holding down the CTRL key
Select the desired recording format clicking on the Settings button on the recording vu-meter for each input channel. Note that each input and output channel has independent settings.
Select which channel to record from activating the record to buttons on the vu-meter
Start recording
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2.11. Mixing down the final song
Once you have finished adding tracks and you have adjusted the volume and pan settings, you may want to mix down all the tracks to a single wav file:
This operation may take a while.
You can also select Mixdown while playing”, and the program, after you entered the name of the file to mixdown to, will start the playback and you will hear the song played normally, but the playback data will also be saved in to the mixed down file. In this way you can adjust volume, pan settings as well as adding or removing effects while the song is playing, and the resulting mixed down file will exactly reflect what you hear during this “final mix down”. Also, it doesn't matter if the computer isn't fast enough and every now and then you hear some jumps in the music: the mixed down file will not contain these defects, as these jumps are caused by the computer not being able to furnish data to the soundcard in time for its playback, but when it finally manages to have this data ready, it saves it to the mixed down file just after the previous good packet of data.
Mixing down works only on audio tracks, so if you have included a midi file, you'll have to "record" it selecting MIDI as the recording input in your soundcard mixer, so the program will be able to treat it as a wave file.
On slow machines, or when the number of tracks you’re using becomes high, it may be a good idea to mixdown some or all the tracks to one single wav file, and then proceed to record other tracks. In this way you’ll be able to manage more tracks and you won’t suffer from possible synchronization failures that may happen when the computer is too loaded by the high number of tracks.
Once the mixing down has finished, you may want to convert the wave file to
format for distributing the song in a smaller file.
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2.12. Tracks formats, mono & stereo playback
Tracks can be either mono or stereo: the pan slider will simply act as a balance control for the stereo tracks while it will actually pan the mono tracks to the left or to the right.
You can set the playback number of channels (stereo or mono) in the dialog box that appears clicking on the playback vumeter settings button. Listening to a song in mono mode is often useful to ensure that the song is mono compatible, i.e. that it will not sound too bad when played on mono devices (for example old radios, mono televisions etc.).
It's also possible to disable stereo playback only while recording other tracks: in fact many soundcard are capable of full-duplex (simultaneous recording and playback) operation only when used in mono mode. If you get messages such as "Error opening soundcard” when trying to start the recording, try to enable the option "mono playback while recording" in the Preferences/Recording settings dialog.
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2.13. 24 bit soundcards
24 bit recording and playback is currently available only on very good quality soundcards, such as the
Creative Audigy 2 and 4, M-Audio Delta cards, Echo Layla, EMU 1820 etc. If you don't have such a card you don't need the 24 bit n-Track version. If you'll buy one of this cards later you'll be able to upgrade to the 24 bit version for the exact price difference between the standard and 24 bit version.
If you don't know if your soundcard can handle 24 bit recording and playback, probably it can't.
Creative Labs Soundblaster 16, 32, AWE32/64, Ensoniq/AudioPCI 64, SB128, Live!, Audigy 1, and most of the multimedia soundcards that you find pre-installed on your computer are only capable of 16 bit recording and playback.
The Soundblaster Audigy 2/4 can record and playback in 24 bit (& 96 Khz) mode.
The Soundblaster Audigy 1 can only record and playback in 16 bit mode, despite the specifications may lead to think that it's a 24 bit card.
To check if a soundcard accepts the 24 bit format, click on the settings button on the playback vumeter window, select "24 bit", click OK and start the playback. If the format is not supported the program will report an error. Also make sure you've selected the soundcard's WDM or Asio (not MME) drivers in the File/Settings/Preferences/Audio devices dialog box.
The format of the input or output (16 or 24 bit) has no influence on the precision with which the program does its internal signal processing calculations. The program always uses 32 bit (or 64 bits if the option is selected) floating point signals for optimum sound quality and dynamic range.
2.14. Technicalities
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2.14.1. The n-Track mixing algorithm
The mixing algorithm is conceptually very simple: the tracks are first fed through the inserts effects and then mixed together, each one amplified by a factor resulting from the combination of the master volume, the track volume slider and track drawn evolution.
The volume evolution is used at the very ending of the mixing process so it doesn’t influence the aux sends, even if the “pre-fader sends” option is unchecked.
After the tracks are mixed all goes to the master channel effects.
Sends and returns are placed at different points depending on the Auxs dialog settings.
2.14.2. 32 bit and 64 bit versions
64 bit processors are widely available and today constitute the majority of CPUs on newly sold computers. 64 bit operating systems are available since a couple of years (starting the x64 version of
Windows XP).
Despite the great availability of 64 bit CPUs 64 bit operating systems are on the other hand still not quite popular and the vast majority of Windows users still use the 32 bit (x86) version of either Windows XP or
Vista. n-Track is available in two “formats”.
• The 32 bit (x86) version runs on both the 32 and 64 bit versions of Windows.
• The 64 bit (x64) version only runs on the 64 bit versions of Windows.
The standard version of Windows XP is not a 64 bit operating system and can’t consequently install or run the 64 bit version of n-Track.
If you’re unsure which version of n-Track to download or install, go with the 32 bit version as it is the most compatible version and has no noticeable performance disadvantages over the 64 bit version, unless your songs use a lot of instrument plug-ins that require massive quantities of memory.
Both versions of n-Track can be downloaded from the download page at www.ntrack.com
2.14.3. Recording levels
It's better for the signal to be a bit lower than the ideal than to be a bit higher. If you use 15 of the 16 bits (i.e. use only half of the amplitude, peaking at -6 dB) you will probably not hear the difference (and you surely will not hear it if you use 23 bits out of 24), while if you sample a signal with an amplitude two times the maximum (+6 dB) you will probably hear bad clipping distortion.
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2.15. Fine tuning the program to your system
There’s a number of settings you can customize to make the program work better with your computer.
You can alter some parameters to make the program more or less “heavy” on the computer CPU, so that if you have a slower CPU you can use the program without problems:
• You can experiment with different playback buffering settings to find the optimum compromise between reliability and “real-timeness” of the program operation: fewer buffers of a smaller size will allow the result of actions made during playback, such as altering the volume, pan, or effects parameters, to be hearable in less time. Low buffering can, on the other hand, lead to occasional jumps in the playback and loss of sync which can be very disturbing if they happen during recording. One may consider keeping the buffering heavy during recording and then during the final mixing phase, when real-time response is more important, using smaller buffers.
On slower computers, or when the number of tracks becomes great and the system becomes heavily loaded, you can reduce the load on the processor:
• Disable the mixer vumeters (uncheck the Preferences/Appearance/”Show vumeters for each track” option
• Disable automated volume/pan evolution for MIDI and wave tracks
• Turn off or resize to a small dimension the recording and playback vumeters
• Disable the “Expand mono tracks to stereo” option in each track’s properties dialog box
• Use higher program priority (use caution with very high priorities)
• Disable the display of waveforms during recording
One strategy for working with a great number of tracks is to
a partial version of the song.
Suppose your system can’t seem to handle more than 8 tracks: you can record the first 8 tracks, adjust the settings and mix them down to a single wave file without deleting the original wave files. Then you record the next block of tracks using the partially mixed down file as the base. Once all tracks have been recorded, you can reload all the wave files that were previously mixed down, adjust all the settings and mixdown all the original tracks into the final song.
2.16. Customizing the program
The colors and fonts used by the program can be configured through the Preferences/Appearance
dialog box.
The background of the mixer window, of the main window and of the timeline window can be customized putting a bitmap file in the program’s directory, named respectively
“mixer_background.bmp”, “main_background.bmp”, “timeline.bmp”.
If upon loading the program finds one of this files (or both) it will use it, otherwise it will use the standard background.
The Toolbars can be customized double clicking on them or via the
Preferences/Appearance /Customize
toolbar 1/2 buttons: buttons can be moved, added, deleted and moved from one toolbar to the other.
Toolbar buttons can also be moved in this way: hold down the Shift key, click on a button and drag it to the desired location (within the same toolbar). Releasing the button outside the toolbar will delete it.
2.17. Synching a video clip to the playback
To play a video clip in sync with the song playback:
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• Select the Sync with video command in the View menu
• A window will appear: click on the browse button on the lower right corner of this window, select the desired video file and click on Open
• Make sure the Sync with checkbox is checked
• If you don’t want to hear the original videoclip audio, uncheck the Audio checkbox
From now on every time the playback is started the video file will be played back in sync with the program's audio output. When not in playback a single click on a given point on the timeline time slider will cause the corresponding video frame to be displayed on the Video Sync widow.
The program will be able to play any file type for which a proper CODEC is installed on the system. You can check which codecs you have installed in the Control Panel/Multimedia/Devices/Video codecs dialog box. Usually Windows installs by default codecs for playing .AVI, .MPG and .MOV files.
Video playback can absorb a great quantity of processing power, depending on the size of the video window: to reduce the load on the computer reduce the size of the Video Sync window.
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2.18. Save/Recall selections
The Save/Recall selections window allows to save and recall the selections used for editing on the timeline window.
Saving and recalling selections is a method complementary to using markers to define edit points.
Add: Save the current selection
Delete:
Delete the selection highlighted in the list of selections
Merge: Merge together the selections highlighted in the list of selections
Apply: Recall the highlighted selection
Bank selection method:
The method used for switching instrument banks. The “Normal” setting will work with most MIDI synths. Creative Labs soundcards use the “Channel 0” switching method.
Close: Close the window
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2.19.
Regions
n-Track allows to define regions within wave files. To define a new region highlight the section of the wave file that you want to be included in the region dragging with the mouse on the timeline window, then right click and select ‘Create wave file region’ in the pop-up menu.
You can find the list of all the loaded wave files regions in the View/Wave files regions dialog box.
You can add a part made of a selected region to an existing or new track by dragging the desired region from the regions list dialog box to the timeline window.
The information on a wave file’s regions is saved in the wave file itself, in a format compatible with most
Windows wave file editors.
Add: Add the selected region to a new track
Delete:
Delete the selected region
Show regions in waveforms:
Check this option if you want the regions to be shown in the waveforms representing the song’s wave files in the timeline window.
Close: Close the window
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2.20. Save project as a Packed Song File (.sgw)
n-Track Studio normally saves projects into .sng files. .sng files contain only the structure of the song, not the audio data which is kept in separate .wav files (you can find more info in File types topic).
Saving a project as a packed song (using the .sgw extension) allows you to save all of the song data, including the audio data, into a single big file. This can be useful for transferring songs for example by email or for archiving them to CDs.
The .sgw format is not suited for “everyday” saving of projects as n-Track will always need the .sng +
.wav set of files to allow you to work (i.e. edit, playback and record) on the song, so each time you load a .sgw the program will extract from it the tracks’ wave files and will let you save the song’s .sng file.
The audio data stored into .sgw file can be either uncompressed (producing a perfect copy of the song) or
compression. When compressing the file size drops significantly at the cost of loosing some information on the audio data with a consequent slight decay in sound quality (the amount of which can be selected using the compression slider in the Save .sgw file dialog box).
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3. MIDI
3.1. Recording MIDI tracks
To record a new MIDI track, click on the microphone button on the toolbar. The button controls which source (audio, MIDI and audio+MIDI) the program records from. After clicking on it the button will change its image to a keyboard (MIDI recording). Pressing the button again the image will change to a keyboard plus a mic , which means that both wave and MIDI tracks will be recorded.
Make sure that the MIDI instrument you want to record from is connected to your MIDI input device
(typically a soundcard’s Joystick/MIDI connector), and that the MIDI input device is selected in the
dialog box.
If you want to hear the notes played with the MIDI instrument through the current MIDI output device, the program can route the incoming MIDI signals to a MIDI output device. To enable this check the options Keep devices open and select either the Auto or Manual MIDI echo mode. See the
topic for info on how the MIDI echo modes work.
Sometimes it is useful to record more than one MIDI track at a time, for example when transferring
MIDI tracks from a MIDI keyboard. You can record multiple MIDI tracks at once using the following procedure: create an empty track for each track that you want to record (with the Track/Insert blank
track menu command), then for each track change 'all channels/all devices' setting in the MIDI track's properties dialog box to the channel from which you want to record the track from.
See also
3.2. Editing MIDI tracks
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Editing MIDI tracks can be useful both for correcting imperfections in recorded tracks or for creating new tracks from scratch.
MIDI tracks can be edited in the Piano Roll window: select a MIDI track and press the button on the toolbar (if no MIDI track is selected a new MIDI track will be created).
The Piano Roll view can also be activated by clicking the Piano Roll button on the track properties dialog box which appears when you double click on a MIDI track.
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The Piano Roll window show the MIDI events occurring in the track. The most common events are notes, but other types of events (controllers, pitch bends etc.) can be displayed and edited in the same way as notes. You can set which types of events are displayed and which events are inserted in the dialog box that appears clicking on the events display icon on the piano-roll toolbar.
The Place drop-down box lets you select which event will be inserted when you click on an empty spot in the piano-roll window. The View box lets you choose which events will be displayed.
Note events appear as blue rectangles, whose color intensity is proportional to the note intensity
(velocity).
This rectangles can be selected, dragged into different positions, enlarged or shrunk as you whish.
The vertical axis represent the notes pitch: dragging the notes rectangles vertically changes the notes pitch.
The event properties can be manually edited in the dialog box that appears double clicking on an event rectangle.
Multiple events can selected and moved at the same time.
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New events can be placed activating the icon on the toolbar (click holding the Ctrl key to set the properties of new notes), while events can be deleted when the button is activated.
Cut, copy & paste operations can be performed on MIDI events by selecting the desired events or by selecting the desired temporal interval (dragging with the mouse on the time axis). Once you have selected a group of events click on the copy button on the toolbar, select the offset where you want the notes to be copied and press the paste button to paste the notes into the new position.
Copy, copy & paste operations can be useful when composing MIDI drum tracks.
3.3. Creating a MIDI Drums track
Create a new blank MIDI track with the Track/Midi/Create blank MIDI track menu command.
Assign the new track to channel 10 in the track’s properties dialog box. This is very important because channel 10 is the channel for drums.
Select the note button on the toolbar
Clicking on the piano roll create a brief number of beats, the base rhythm that you want to repeat over the length of the whole song.
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Press the arrow button (Move Events on the toolbar)
Select the desired area you want to copy.
Once you have finished your selection, simply press the copy button. If you prefer you can use the keyboard shortcut CTRL+C.
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Now choose the offset where you want to copy your pattern selection (fig.6.6) and press the paste button. As you can see, your selection has been copied to the offset you wanted. This procedure is particularly useful if you want to create drum tracks because you must often manage repeating measures.
Instead of manually pasting the same beat multiple times, you can let the program automatically replicate the selection you’re pasting an arbitrary number of times in the dialog box that appears clicking on the paste button while holding the Shift key or pressing Ctrl+Shift+V
See also
3.4 Drum tracks note names display
3.4. Notes/drums names display
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The left side of the piano roll window usually shows a vertical piano keyboard. This is often useful when composing or editing tracks of melodic instruments. Drum instruments are different than the usual MIDI instruments because each “note” of a Drum channel corresponds to a different percussive instrument (for example D4 is an high tom, D3 an acoustic snare etc.), so when editing a drum part instead of the classic vertical piano it is often useful to have the names of each drum instrument being written on the left part of the piano roll window.
Right clicking on the left part of the piano roll window opens a dialog box in which you can select how the notes are drawn.
If “Show piano” is selected a vertical piano will be drawn.
If any of the following entry is selected, the program will write each note name as set in the MIDI instrument definition. Instrument definitions can be edited in the dialog box that opens clicking on the
'Instruments' button in a MIDI track's properties dialog box, then on 'Edit'. The name of a note can be modified double clicking on its name while holding the Ctrl key. For more info see the MIDI Instruments
assignment/definition topics.
See also
3.5. VSTi/DXi instruments plug-ins
VST/DX instruments are particular VST/DX plug-ins that accept MIDI data as input and can be used as
MIDI synths.
Using a VST/DX instrument MIDI synth has many advantages: the synthesized signal is mixed as a regular wave track, so it can processed with effects, sent to aux channels etc. the synchronization is (unlike what usually happens with MIDI devices) sample accurate so the audio and
MIDI tracks will always be perfectly synched since all the MIDI output can be sent to one or more VST/DX instruments, the program doesn’t even need a soundcard with MIDI capabilities. The quality of the MIDI tracks depends exclusively on the quality of the VST/DX instrument sinths.
How to use a VST/DX instrument: select the desired VST or DX instrument to use in the Add Channel / New Instrument Channel menu open a MIDI track’s Track properties dialog box. The MIDI output port drop down box should now contain, besides the regular MIDI output port, an entry relative to the VST/DX instrument plug-in.
Multiple VST/DX instruments can be used. An entry for each plug-in will appear in the MIDI track’s properties output port drop-down box.
Both the instrument plug-in’s audio channel track and the MIDI track’s volumes and pan settings can influence the signal.
topic.
See also
3.5.1 Playing live through instrument plug-ins
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3.5.1. Playing live through an instrument plug-in
Instrument plug-ins can be used to play a MIDI instrument live (i.e. let the VST/DX instrument output in realtime the notes you play on a MIDI keyboard).
To enable the live playing through an instrument plug-in enable the Live input processing
mode by pressing the Live button on the toolbar, check the Connect input to output option in the
you’ll have to select the desired instrument plug-ins in the output drop down box).
Note: the delay between the time a note is pressed on the MIDI keyboard and the time you actually hear
the buffering can be usually made small enough so that the latency is not noticeable.
Playback buffering can be adjusted in the Buffering settings
dialog box.
See also
3.6. MIDI Instruments Assignment
Each MIDI channel of each MIDI output device can be assigned to a different MIDI instrument.
A MIDI instrument is a set of program names, note names and controller names definitions that will be used for the selected MIDI channel/output port combination.
The MIDI instruments assignment dialog box can be opened clicking on the Instruments button in the
MIDI track’s properties dialog box. The left box lists all 16 MIDI channels for each MIDI output port.
When a channel is selected the relative instrument is selected in the right box.
See also
3.7 MIDI Instruments Definition
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3.7. MIDI Instruments Definition
The MIDI Instruments Definition dialog box lets you define program names, note names and controller names for your MIDI instruments. MIDI instruments can be assigned to MIDI output ports/channels in the
MIDI Instruments Assignments dialog box.
The dialog box has two boxes. The left box shows the current instruments banks, while the right box shows the currently available program names, note names, controller names sets.
The items in the right box are the items of which instruments are made of. The items can be dragged from the right box to the left box. If for example you want to assign to the 3 rd
bank the selected instrument the program name set ‘General MIDI’ select with the mouse the ‘General MIDI’ program names set in the right box (it will be listed under the ‘Program names set’ folder), then drag it to the desired position in the left box.
Each instrument can have a different program names set for each bank (the current bank is set with the
Bank parameter in the MIDI Track’s properties dialog box). The first program names set of the instrument, denoted by a * sign, will be used for all banks for which a specific program names set hasn’t been defined. If you define for example an instrument to have the following program names sets:
* - General MIDI
4 - Program numbers n-Track will use the General MIDI program names set for all the instruments banks except for bank 4, which will use the ‘Program numbers’ program names set.
Each bank has a controller names set and each program can have a separate note names set. The note names are shown in the left side of the piano roll window. As with program names sets the note names set with a leading ‘*’ will be used for all the programs that don’t have a specific note names set defined.
See also
3.8. Programs (instruments) names
The program by default associates to each program number the corresponding General MIDI standard instrument name.
Different program names sets can be configured in the MIDI Instruments dialog box that opens clicking on the 'Instruments' button in a MIDI track's properties dialog box, then on 'Edit'.
You can switch between the available set of names clicking on the small button to the right of the program drop down list on a MIDI Track’s Properties dialog box.
Not all synths adhere to the General MIDI standard, so you may find that some instrument name doesn’t correspond to the sound produced and you can select or create a program name set that matches your
MIDI synth sounds.
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3.9. MIDI System Exclusive messages
System Exclusive messages are messages that MIDI devices may use to transmit or store data using their proprietary format. Other devices and programs make no assumption on the content of the data messages, they just store or transmit the messages.
For example a MIDI synth may use a system exclusive message to download from a sequencer (n-Track) a set of sounds, or an external multieffect device could download its configuration through one or more system exclusive messages. n-Track allows to record system exclusive messages in two ways: as normal MIDI events within a track, recorded during the regular recording just like MIDI notes, and as a global set of system exclusive banks that can be managed using the View/MIDI System Exclusive banks dialog box. The dialog box allows to manually receive (without the need of recording a MIDI track) and send system exclusive messages.
System exclusive banks may be configured to be sent automatically when a song file is opened, so that if the messages are used to configure devices needed to play the song all the configuration is automatically
done upon loading the song. In the example above n-Track may set in the external MIDI synth the correct sound bank needed to play the song’s MIDI tracks sending the song’s system exclusive banks.
Each bank can be set to be sent automatically when the song is loaded (‘Autosend’ checkbox in the event’s editing dialog box).
Although it’s not usually useful to do so the messages can be manually edited double clicking on the message in the events list dialog box. Each system exclusive message consists of a series of bytes written in hexadecimal formats. Each message must start with the byte F0 and end with the byte F7.
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3.10. Grid settings/Quantize
The MIDI quantize function snaps the selected notes to the nearest point in grid.
It may be used to correct imperfections of a recording
Snap
sets the grid spacing. The grid may be spaced according to a musical time
(measures, beats etc.), by number of musical ticks or by absolute time
(i.e. 1.5 seconds)
Swing
moves forward (positive swing) or backward (negative swing) every other grid point. Swing helps to create a ‘shuffle’ feeling in the quantized notes
Quantize region
the region where quantizing takes place can be limited so that the program will quantize only events that fall within a certain range from the nearest grid point. Events outside that range will be left untouched.
Excluding
Highlight quantize region highlights the quantize region as defined by the ‘quantize region’ and
‘excluding’ parameters
Quantize settings exclude the given region around the grid point from quantizing. Events within the specified region will not be quantized.
Notes start
Notes end
snap the start point of the selected notes to the nearest point in the grid, moving the notes ending points by the same offset (the notes length remains unchanged) snap the end point of the selected notes (the start point is not changed,
Randomize so the notes length can change) moves the event around the quantize point by a random amount limited by the randomize parameter
Strength
Quantize if the strength parameter is less than 100 the program will move events towards the grid point only by the percentage set by the strength parameter. If for example the strength is 50, each time you quantize an event it will move half of the way towards the nearest quantize point.
Auto-quantize recordings when this option is active each time new MIDI notes are recorded they will automatically quantized according to the current quantize settings quantize the currently selected MIDI events
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3.11. Tempo/time signature
The evolution of the song tempo and time signature can be programmed in the “Tempo changes” dialog box. At any given measure the time signature or the bpm (beats per minute) may be changed. The program will use this information when displaying the time in the M:B:T format (measures:beats:ticks), for MIDI Clock sync purposes and for setting the metronome tempo. From the Tempo changes dialog box tempo changes can be added by clicking on the "new bpm" or "new time signature" buttons, which will open a dialog box asking for the desired tempo information and for the time (in M:B:T format) at which this new tempo should start. By default the tempo is set to 4/4, 120 bpm as set by the two "built-in" tempo changes at the beginning of the first measure.
If you simply need to change the whole song tempo or time signature double click on any one of this first two tempo changes and modify them.
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3.12. Synchronization
n-Track Studio can be synced to other audio programs or to external devices using MIDI Clock or the
MIDI Time Code (MTC) protocol. The program can act both as master or as slave, respectively generating or syncing to an incoming signal.
See also
3.12.4 Configuring the program to act as master
3.12.5 Configuring the program to act as a slave to other programs or devices
3.12.1. About SMPTE/MIDI Time Code
The MIDI Time Code (MTC) is a protocol used to exchange SMPTE (Society of Motion Picture and
Television Engineers) time signals over a MIDI connection.
The SMPTE timing is the standard used to sync different machines such as video tapes decks, multitrack recorders etc. in both the professional audio and video world. The standard SMPTE signal coming from hardware devices can be converted to MTC using dedicated interfaces.
Many software packages support MTC sync, and the syncing of different programs in the same computer can be accomplished without having to resort to hardware cables. It's possible to use a loopback MIDI driver that simply routes the MIDI signals sent to its inputs back to its virtual MIDI output ports.
You can download freeware utilities that accomplish this task.
In this way it's even possible to sync multiple instances of n-Tracks in the same computer or even in different computers connected by a MIDI cable!
See also
3.12.4 Configuring the program to act as master
3.12.5 Configuring the program to act as a slave to other programs or devices
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3.12.2. About MIDI Clock
MIDI Clock is a protocol used to sync different MIDI devices to the same clock reference.
A program or device that generates MIDI Clock sends a “MIDI clock” impulse every 1/24 of a quarter note. In this way, and opposed to MTC sync, where absolute time is the only information sent, syncing to
MIDI Clock automatically allows the slave to follow the master tempo variations.
Apart from the clock signal itself, three other signals are exchanged:
- Song Position Pointer, sent to signal that the playback will be restarted from a new location
- MIDI Continue, sent when the playback is being restarted
- MIDI Start, sent when the playback is being started from the beginning of the song
Many software packages support MIDI Clock sync, and the syncing of different programs in the same computer can be accomplished without having to resort to hardware cables. It's possible to use a loopback MIDI driver that simply routes the MIDI signals sent to its inputs back to its virtual MIDI output ports.
You can download freeware utilities that accomplish this task.
In this way it's even possible to sync multiple instances of n-Tracks in the same computer or even in different computers connected by a MIDI cable!
See also
3.12.4 Configuring the program to act as master
3.12.5 Configuring the program to act as a slave to other programs or devices
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3.12.3. SMPTE time formats
The time format most commonly used between audio programs is 30 fps non-drop.
To make n-Track generate this timing select "30 fps non-drop" from the MTC/MIDI Clock dialog box, enable the "use real 30 fps for 30 fps non-drop" checkbox and click on the enable button.
This is all you really need to know. However here's some info if you are willing to dive in the subtleties of time formats:
5 SMPTE time formats can be used with MTC:
-
-
-
-
-
24 frames per second (used mainly for film sync)
25 frames per second (as used by the European television standard)
29.97 frames per second with drop frame (also referred to as 30 fps drop)
29.97 frames per second (also referred to as 30 fps non-drop)
30 frames per second (used only in the audio world).
The last two formats are used to sync to NTSC video, which has a frame rate of exactly 29.97 fps.
The seconds counter is always incremented when the frame count reaches 30, so if the frame rate is
29.97, the SMPTE time soon departs from the real world time: for example when the SMPTE 29.97 fps non-drop time is exactly 1:00:00.00 the real world time would be 1:00:03.18, 108 frames higher than the non-drop time.
The 29.97 fps "drop" time format is used to compensate for this problem. In this format two frames are dropped every minute, i.e. the time advances from 0:59:29 directly to 1:00.2 for each minute in the hour except at minutes 0, 10, 20, 30, 40 and 50. In this way a total of 108 frames are dropped every hour, thus perfectly compensating the "slowness" of the 29.97 frame rate. Note that this leads to some times that are never used, such as 1:00.00, 1:00.01, 2:00.00 etc.
See also
3.12.4 Configuring the program to act as master
3.12.5 Configuring the program to act as a slave to other programs or devices
3.12.4. Configuring the program to act as master
Open the Syncronization dialog box pressing the icon on the toolbar
Select the desired MIDI out port (for example LB1 if you're using HUBI Loopback device)
Choose if want to use MTC or MIDI Clock sync (if needed both signals can be generated simulateously)
For MTC sync choose the desired time format (typically 30 fps non-drop)
Click on the Enable button
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From the program or device you want to sync n-Track to enable slave syncing and select the input port corresponding to the output port previously chosen.
Now everytime the playback is started from inside n-Track the device the program is synced to will (after a short delay) start the playback.
See also
3.12.5 Configuring the program to act as a slave to other programs or devices
3.12.5. Configuring the slave to an incoming time code signal
Include the MIDI input port (for example LB1 if you're using HUBI Loopback device) from which you want to receive the time code signal in the Preferences/MIDI/MIDI devices dialog box.
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Open the Syncronization dialog box pressing the icon on the toolbar
Click on the Enable button corresponding to MIDI Clock or MTC
From the program or device you want to sync n-Track to enable master MTC or MIDI clock syncing and select the output port corresponding to the output port previously chosen.
Now everytime the playback is started from inside the master device (the device that is generating the sync signal) n-Track will start the playback. When the record button is pressed and slave syncing is enabled, n-Track will start the recording as soon as it receives the incoming sync signal.
Notes:
The program need some instants to prepare itself to the playback: after detecting an incoming signal the program will actually starts the playback after the time specified in the "pre-roll" field (the playback will start with this delay but it will be nonetheless in sync with the other device).
The program will stop the playback after the time specified in the free-wheel field will be elapsed without having received MTC signal.
You can compensate possible sync problems changing the "offset" and "set 0 at" values in the
Syncronization dialog box
See also
3.12.4 Configuring the program to act as master
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3.12.6. MTC/MIDI Clock dialog box
MTC/Smpte output
Output port: port to which the MTC signal is sent to
Enable:
Format:
enable MTC generation
SMPTE time format used for the MTC generation
Offset:
offset that will be added to the generated MTC (this value will be summed to the time you see on n-Track's time window: if for example the offset is 5 seconds, when you start the playback within n-Track the first timecode generated will be 00:00:05.00)
MIDI Clock output
Output port: port to which the MIDI Clock signal is sent to
Enable:
Offset:
enable MIDI Clock generation offset that will be added to the generated MIDI Clock
Use Start, never Continue: always send the MIDI Start signal instead of MIDI Continue
Use Start, never Continue: always send the MIDI Start signal instead of MIDI Continue
Send Song Position Pointer: send the SPP signal to notify the slave of the new position within the song
Wait after sending SPP:
waiting to allow the slave to cue to the requested position
Use internal timer: use the internal timer instead of the soundcard's clock reference (recommended).
The internal timer resolution is set through the Preferences/MIDI dialog box
Use real 30 fps for
30 fps non-drop: use the true 30 fps frame rate instead of the 29.97 NTSC frame rate (see
Input
Input Port: port from which the program received MTC or MIDI Clock signal
MTC/Smpte - MIDI Clock
select the type of the incoming sync signal
Enable:
enable syncing to the incoming signal
Set 0 at:
offset in the song at which the playback is started
Start at offset:
offset in the incoming SMPTE time at which the program will start the playback.
For example if the "start at offset" value is 1 hours and "set 0 at" value is 5 minutes, the program will start the playback when the SMPTE it receives reaches 01:00:00.00 and the playback will start at the offset 00:05:00.00 in the song.
[MTC only]
Preroll:
time that the program takes to actually start the playback after it has detected from the
MTC input that the playback should be started
Free Wheel: after not receiving a valid MTC signal for this amount of time the playback will be stopped
[MTC only]
See also
3.12.4 Configuring the program to act as master
3.12.5 Configuring the program to act as a slave to other programs or devices
3.12.7.
Virtual MIDI Patch Cables (loopback devices)
A Virtual MIDI Patch Cable or Loopback Device is a driver that generates virtual MIDI input and output ports. Every MIDI event sent to a loopback ouput port instantaneously appears at the corresponding input port. The driver also allows routing the same output to more than one input.
This can be used to sync n-Track Studio to one or more audio programs using MIDI time code, without having to resort to external MIDI connections.
You can download freeware virtual MIDI patch cables utilities at the address: http://www.ntrack.com/hubi_loopback.html
See also
3.12.4 Configuring the program to act as master
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3.12.5 Configuring the program to act as a slave to other programs or devices
4. Reference
Detailed documentation on the program features and dialog boxes
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4.1. Keyboard Shortcuts
Shortcut Function
Spacebar Play/stop
0 (zero) Start Recording
Backspace Rewind
F12 Pause
ESC Mute All output
Mouse wheel
Ctrl+Mouse wheel
+ / -
Ctrl+Shift+Mouse wheel
Windows Key + Drag
Move left/right
Zoom In/Out horizontally
Zoom In/Out horizontally
Zoom In/Out vertically
Duplicate and drag part
Ctrl + Drag
Alt
S
Drag part (without clicking on crosshair icon)
Show volume envelopes
Splice selected portion of part
Shift+S Merge
Q Mute selected part
Ctrl+A
Ctrl+0 Clear
Ctrl+R
Select All parts selection
Mixdown
Left arrow Select previous track
F5
F6
Shift+F3
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Right arrow
Up arrow
Down arrow
Ctrl+Up arrow
Select next track
Increase volume of current track (shift -> faster)
Decrease volume of current track (shift -> faster)
Pan current track left (shift -> faster)
Ctrl+Down arrow Pan current track right (shift -> faster)
Song
Ctrl+S Save
Ctrl+Shift+S
Ctrl+1
Save Song As
Import Audio file
Ctrl+Z Undo
Ctrl+Y Redo
Ctrl+T Toggle timeline follows playback cursor
Ctrl+C Copy
Ctrl+V Paste
Ctrl+Shift+V Paste at the end of track (append)
Ctrl+X Cut
Ctrl+Shift+X Cut and eliminate silence in the middle
Ctrl+I Insert
Ctrl+B Toggle snap to 0 crossing of audio parts
Ctrl+G Toggle snap to Grid
Settings
Ctrl+M
Ctrl+Shift+M
Ctrl+Shift+Left cursor
Place Marker at playback cursor
Click and place Marker
Go to previous Marker
Ctrl+Shift+Right cursor Go to next Marker
Ctrl+P Preferences
Ctrl+F4
Ctrl+F3
Soundcard Recording mixer
Soundcard Playback mixer format program
Recording meters window
Playback meters window
Show/hide Master mixer
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F3
Ctrl+Shift+Tab
Ctrl+9
Show/hide Track mixer
Show/hide all mixer windows
Toggle Keyboard mixer (see below)
When the Keyboard Mixer is active (Ctrl+9 to toggle):
To adjust more the mixer settings, you can use the keyboard as a set of virtual faders:
Q W E R T Y U I
A S D F G H J K will add (Q) or subtract (A) 1 unit from the volume setting of tracks 1 to 8.
Holding down the SHIFT key or activating CAPS-LOCK will increase the step to 10 units.
Holding down CONTROL key or activating SCROLL-LOCK, will switch the keys to operate on the pan settings.
For tracks other that the first 8, select the desired track (clicking with the mouse on any of its waveforms or use the left/right keyboard arrows), and the use up and down arrow keys to move the selected track's volume (hold Ctrl to adjust pan).
Z and X adjust the master volume level.
Toolbar buttons reference
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See also
Main toolbar buttons:
Creates a new document and closes the current .sng file
Opens a saved .sng file
Saves the current .sng file
Opens the mixing down (mixdown) dialog box
Calls the preferences dialog box
Docks/undocks the timeline and track list windows
Calls the external wave editor (selected from the preferences) on the selected wave file
Inserts a wave file in the selected track
Removes the selected track from the song. If the “Ask to delete wave files to be removed from
the song” preferences option is not checked the wave files associated with the track will not be deleted from the hard disk
Activates the selected track’s effects window
Activates the master channel or aux effects window
Sets the mouse mode to the volume/pan evolution drawing mode. When this button is pushed, a menu will appear where you will be able to chose which volume, pan or aux evolution to draw
Sets the mouse mode to wave file’s offset dragging mode
Sets the mouse mode to wave files dragging between tracks mode: wave files can be moved from one track to another (provided that they don’t overlap with another wave file in the same track), but offsets can’t be adjusted
Switches the editing mode between destructive wave editing, whole track parts editing and nondestructive cutting&pasting
Switches between audio and MIDI recording. The audio recording input will depend on how is configured the soundcard internal mixer. To select the correct recording source and adjust levels use the soundcard’s own software mixer or the Windows standard volume control.
Opens the program help file (the one you are reading now!)
MIDI panic & playback stop: all program audio & MIDI output should be immediately halted
Reverse the playback direction of the selected portion of a wave file
Opens the video sync window
Opens the tempo/time signature dialog box
Normalize the selected portion of a wave file
Fade out selection
Fade in selection
Flatten the volume evolution of the selected track
Crossfade two parts
Opens the Piano Roll window for the selected track. If no MIDI track is selected a new blank MIDI track is added
2 nd
toolbar buttons:
Cuts the selected portion of the selected track corresponding wave file
Copies the selected portion of the selected track corresponding wave file
Pastes the clipboard contents to the selected portion of the selected track corresponding wave. If the
CTRL key is pressed the contents of the clipboard will be pasted to a newly created wave file, that will added to the song at the offset corresponding to the start of the original data.
Silences the selected portion of the selected track corresponding wave file. If the CTRL key is pressed while you click on the button, the wave file will be actually modified. Otherwise the track volume will be put to zero, but the wave file will not be modified
Undoes the last action made on wave files
Redoes the last action undone
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Activates or deactivates the loop option: the current selection will be looped forever
X axis zoom
Y axis zoom
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Zoom selection
View all song
Opens the selection dialog box
Place a marker in the time axis (press this button and then click on the desired place in the time axis)
Activates or deactivates the grid. When the grid is activated, all selection values and wave files off sets will be snapped to the nearest (not shown) grid line. Hold CTRL and click on the button to ad just the grid settings
Activates the Metronome settings dialog box
Activates the MIDI Time Code status dialog box
Opens the punch-in/multiple takes recording dialog box
Show or hides the big mixer window
Activates the playback vu-meters window
Activates the recording vu-meters window
Opens the Real-time input processing settings dialog box e
Starts recording
Starts playback
Puts the playback offset to point to the the start of the song and if pressed during playback restarts immediately the playback from the start of the song
Stops playback & recording. Holding down the SHIFT key stops only recording. Holding down the
CTRL key stops only playback.
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4.2. Menu Commands Reference
File: New Closes the current .sng file and starts a new song
Open Open a saved .sng file
Import
wave file)
Save Saves the current .sng file overwriting the old file
Save As Saves the current .sng file prompting for a new filename
Move Song
Copy or move all the song's wave files to a new directory
Mixdown
Export
Import
supported)
Convert .wav file to: Mp3
Preferences
Converts a wave file to mp3 format
Wma Converts a wave file to mp3 format
Opens the preferences property sheet
Edit:
Exit
Quits the program
Undo
Redo
Undoes last wave editing action
Redoes last wave editing action
Volume/pan drawing: Draw Pan
mode (the volume drawing icon on the toolbar must be activated)
Draw
Set mouse drawing to draw pan
Place
place where to insert the marker in the timeline time axis)
Manage markers
Opens the markers list dialog box
Snap
files offsets (when dragging with the mouse, will snap to the nearest grid line (not actually shown)
Enter
Grid properties
Selection
Sets grid parameters (spacing & offset)
Manually enter the selection limits
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Snap to 0: mode:
Toggles snap selection to 0
Destructive wave editing
the files) the wave files present in the song edit destructively (i.e. actually modifying
destructive
wave files, without altering the actual wave files
Fade
Fade out
Opens the fade in/out dialog box with fade out settings
Flatten
Flattens the volume or pan evolution of the selected track
(constant for all the track length)
Cut
Cuts the selected portion of the wave file corresponding to the selected track
Copy
Copies the selected portion of the selected track corresponding wave file
Paste
Pastes the clipboard contents to the selected portion of the selected track corresponding wave file. If the CTRL key is pressed the contents of the clipboard will be pasted to a newly created wave file, that will added to the song at the offset corresponding to the start of the original data.
Insert
track corresponding wave file
Inserts the clipboard contents into the selected portion of the selected
track
envelopes to the selection
Silence Selection: Put volume to 0
the wave file will not be modified
The track volume will be put to zero, but
destructively
selected track corresponding wave file. The wave file will be actually modified selected portion of a wave file
Non
files: a reference to a wave file is cut in 3 pieces, with the middle one exactly being included in the selected range breaking the original part at the start of the current selection
Splice
selected part
Merge Rejoin two parts that have been previously spliced
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Trim
Cuts the unused beginning and ending sections of the wave files corresponding to the selected track parts, regaining unused disk space. This option has effect only if the edges of the wave files have been dragged, and consequently the wave files are not entirely in use in the song (for example if a part is made of the middle 3 seconds of a 9 second file, trimming it will transform the part into a whole wave file 3 seconds long, deleting the 6 seconds of unused audio from the hard disk)
Song comments
Opens the song comments dialog box. The text you type there will be saved in the .sng file: you can use this feature for example to remember what instruments, chords or whatever else you may need to remember when you will open the file at a later time.
information
including wave files used, effects, aux channels etc.
Track: Insert
Remove
Inserts a wave file in the selected track
Removes the selected track from the song. If the “Ask to delete wave files
to be removed from the song” preferences option is not checked the wave files associated with the track will not be deleted from the hard disk
MIDI: Piano Roll
Opens the Piano Roll for the selected MIDI track
Insert Blank MIDI track Inserts a blank MIDI track
Activates the selected track’s effects window
Wave
Rename
Track properties
Split
Opens the track properties dialog box
Splits the selected wave file in two mono wave files and adds this newly created files in the song, removing the original stereo file. The program will prompt to delete it depending on the preferences settings.
Copy track
track or to a new track
Copy the selected attributes of the current track to an existing
Import tracks from .sng file Imports all the tracks from a previously saved .sng file
Action:
Play
Record
Stop
Starts the playback
Starts recording
Stops playback and recording
Rewind
Punch in
Restart the playback from the start of the song
Opens the punch-in/multiple takes recording dialog box
Launch
Calls the external wave editor (selected from the preferences) on the selected wave file
Mute
View: Timeline list
Recording
View the timeline window
Metronome
Mixer
Vu-meter
View the Metronome settings dialog box
View the mixer window
Big Mixer
Master
Activates/hides the Big Mixer window
channel
Opens the buffering monitor window, which shows how many buffers have been queued, information sometimes useful to determine when the computer isn’t being able to handle the current number of tracks and/or effects
MIDI Time Code Sync
Sync with video
Activates the MIDI Time Code status dialog box
Opens the
Soundcard’s
Recording
Runs the soundcard’s mixer as configured in the
Preferences/Paths dialog box
Wave
Opens the selected wave file with the wave editor configured in the Preferences/Paths dialog box
Zoom… Timeline zoom controls
Refresh
Recalculate waveforms
appear on the timeline (recalculates the .npk files)
Recalculates the waveforms that
Cascades all windows
Tile all windows horizontally
Cascade
Tile
Tile
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Help: Contents
Tutorial
Keyboard
Opens the help file
Opens the Tutorial help topic
About
Register
Opens the about box
Opens the register dialog box: if you are a registered user you can enter there your program codes to register the program and unlock all the features not otherwise accessible from the shareware version
Buy the registered version Connects to the web page where you will be able to register online the program using a credit card through a secure server
n-Track
homepage. There you’ll be able to check if there exist a later version of the program, view the FAQ or post messages to the n-Track Studio Discussion Forum
4.3. Metronome
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You can open the metronome settings window by clicking on the metronome icon on the toolbar.
Set the tempo, choose MIDI or PC speaker output and if the metronome should be hearable during recording and/or during playback. Click on the test button to hear if the tempo is right.
Output to:
- PC speaker: check this option if you want hear the metronome clicks through the standard PC speaker
- MIDI note: check this option if you want hear the metronome clicks through a MIDI synth. You can select which MIDI device to use: usually you will set the metronome device as the same device used for
normal MIDI output (as set thorough the Preferences/MIDI/MIDI devices
dialog box). If the program reports an error when starting playback, make sure that you’ve not selected MIDI MAPPER in the metronome settings and the actual MIDI device the MIDI MAPPER points to (as set through Control
Panel/Multimedia/) in the Preferences MIDI devices, or vice-versa. If you want to use the same device, select in both settings the same entry (i.e. both MIDI MAPPER or both “Xyz Inc.MIDI synth”).
When to use:
- Recording: activates the metronome during recording
- Playback: activates the metronome during playback
- Accent first beat: Makes the first beat of a measure sound differently than the other beats
- Velocity: sets the velocity of the MIDI note (that ideally corresponds to the velocity of the keyboard key as pressed by a finger): influences the volume of the note
- Duration: duration of the MIDI note corresponding to a beat. Too high values make the metronome loose timing, due to the fact that it can’t play two notes at the same time, so to play the next beat the preceding beat note has to be ended
- Note: sets which note to play for the beat. If you select a drum channel, the note selects the drum sample (snare, kick, hat…)
- Channel: sets the channel to use for the MIDI output. Channel 10 is usually used by MIDI synth for drum instruments, so this is the default setting
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- Tempo: Sets the time base (3/4, 4/4 etc.)
- At … bpm: sets the number of Beats Per Minute
- TEST: test the selected metronome configuration. Press it again to stop
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4.4. Preferences
4.4.1.
Recording settings
Sampling Frequency: Sets the sampling frequency of the recorded tracks. Make sure that all the tracks are recorded using the same frequency.
Mono playback while recording: Some soundcards allow simultaneous recording and playback only in mono mode. If you experience some problems while recording, try this option.
dialog box: choose here which soundcard to use as input device and which to use as output.
Hide lag indicator if lag values is less than… This option will control when the lag indication will be displayed on the time window: sometimes the lag value can grow to large size due to playback or recording glitches, ruining a recording. So what’s important is knowing when this happens. Entering in this field the critical value of the lag above which one can actually hear synchronization problems will make the program normally hide the lag value indication. Entering 0 will make the lag indication show always. Default = 500
Number of tolerated buffers under-runs: the program will halt the playback when this number of buffer under-runs (i.e. clicks in the playback caused by excessive load on the computer) is exceeded. Set this value to -1 to disable the detection of this ‘out of resources’ condition.
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4.4.2.
Preferences/MIDI settings
MIDI file & Compensation: This allows to specify a MIDI file that will be played in sync with the song.
It is different from adding a MIDI file to the song (using “Import MIDI file” from the file menu) or from recording MIDI tracks because in the former way the program just tells Windows MCI sequencer to playback the MIDI file, while if the MIDI tracks are added to the song is the n-Track internal MIDI sequencer that does all the work. The latter way allows for some more flexibility in that it is possible to adjust MIDI channels & programs, set and draw the evolutions of volume and pan etc.. If a MIDI track is inserted in the song the preferences MIDI file playback is disabled.
Remap channels: This option allows the program to remap the MIDI tracks output to channels selected thorough the track property window. Default = checked
Filter volume/Pan events: Eliminates from the played back MIDI notes the ones that control the volume and pan of the MIDI synth: for example while recording a MIDI track you could have moved the volume slider on the keyboard. This will have made the program record that event and if this option is left unchecked during playback the same volume change will be reproduced: after the volume event will be posted, the volume setting made in the program’s mixer will have no effect, unless you move the volume slider again (making the program send another volume event). Default = checked
Filter program changes: same as above but with regards to the channel’s program (instrument) setting. Default = checked
Automated volume/pan: This allows the volume and pan of the MIDI track to be programmed drawing on the track (after having clicked on the volume icon on the toolbar). If this option is unchecked the drawing will have no effect. The automation of the volume and pan consumes some resources so if it’s not needed it’s better to leave it off: Default = unchecked
MIDI devices: choose here which soundcard to use as input device and which to use as output. This dialog also includes the “connect input to output” option: check it if you’re playing thorough a MIDI keyboard attached to the MIDI input of the soundcard’s and you want the output to be heard through the selected output soundcard.
Timer to use: sets what timer the program internal MIDI sequencer should use. The wave timer
(retrieving the actual time querying the soundcard’s wave output elapsed time since the playback has started) may be preferable in some situations when MIDI tracks may not be in sync with the wave playback. Default = system timer
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Internal Timer Resolution: sets the resolution of the Windows timer used by the program to generate
MIDI events. Higher resolutions (lower values) result in better timing at the cost of more CPU utilization.
Default = 8 ms
Ticks per quarter note: sets the resolution with which notes are represented (used for representing time in M:B:T format and for MIDI clock sync). Default = 120
4.4.3.
Preferences/Options settings
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Priorities: Use higher priorities to make the program able to exploit more of the system CPU resources.
Be careful with very high priorities as they may render the system unusable. Defaults = Normal
Generate peak files while recording: Allow the program to generate the peak files during the recording. If this is unchecked the program will wait for the end of the recording and then will process the whole wave file to extract the waveform data to use for displaying the wave file on the timeline. Default
= checked
Automated volume/pan for wave tracks: This option allows the volume and pan of the wave tracks to be programmed drawing on the track (after having clicked on the volume icon on the toolbar). If this option is unchecked the drawing will have no effect. The automation of the volume and pan consumes some resources. You can uncheck this option if you need to make economy in CPU usage. Default =
checked
Restart playback where it last stopped: if this option is unchecked the playback will always restart at the last position where the cursor has been manually set
Read data from tracks even if muted: when this option is disabled, a few seconds may pass between disabling the mute control for an audio track and hearing the track again.
Ask for “ready?” before recording: if this option is checked a little message box will appear before the actual recording start. Default = unchecked
Ask for names of wave files to be recorded: if this is checked the program will prompt the users for the name of the wave file(s) to be recorded each time the record button is pressed. Otherwise the program will assign a filename based on the name of the current song (displayed on the main window’s caption). For example if the name of the song is blues.sng, the first recorded tracks will be named blues_1.wav, blues_2.wav and so on. It’s always possible to rename a song’s wave files using the
“rename wave file” option from the track menu. Default = unchecked
Ask to delete wave files to be removed from the song: if this option is checked every time the program is told to remove a track from the song it will ask if the user wants to actually delete from the hard disk the wave files associated with the track. This may cause accidental deletion of wave files so be careful when answering to the message box. Default = unchecked
Playback vu-meter anticipates the output: set this option for a more precise measurement of the output level and clipping condition. When this option is checked the program will report levels above 0 dB instead of just the CLIP sign. The drawback is that the level graphically shown on the vumeter is slightly in advance with respect to the signal being heard at a given moment (i.e. the level shown on the vumeter
133 corresponds to the signal which will be heard after x tenths of second, where x depends on the buffering currently used). Default = unchecked
Use system timer for playback time: when this option is checked the program will calculate the current playback time using the computer timer. If the option is unchecked the program will use the playback time reported directly from the soundcard
Use system timer for recording time: when this option is checked the program will calculate the current recording time using the computer timer. If the option is unchecked the program will use the recording time reported directly from the soundcard
Dither: Use dithering. For more info see Dither & noise shaping
Dither depth: Depth in bits of the dithering noise. For more info see Dither & noise shaping
Noise shaping: Use noise shaping. For more info see Dither & noise shaping
Number of Aux busses: Sets the number of aux channels to use in the current project
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4.4.4.
Preferences/Appearance settings
Set fonts/Set colors: customize the program’s look. This changes, as well as all the preferences settings, will be saved when the program will exit
Volume drawing ranges: set the ranges of the timeline volume drawing
Delete all undo data: deletes all the temporary wave files created to allow undo on wave editing operations
View Waveform: if this is unchecked the wave file will be displayed in the timeline as just filled rectangles. Default = checked
Markers pop-up time: sets how many seconds the pop-up window with the marker count-down appears before the marker time. The pop-up window will appear only for marker whose “pop up text” (as set in the marker properties dialog box) in not empty. Setting the time to –1 disables the marker pop-up window.
Enlarge mixer by factor.. : factor by which the mixer window size is enlarged (values greater than one) or shrunk (values between 1 and 0)
Split mixer in two rows if the numer of tracks is greater than: if the number of tracks is greater than the number here specified the mixer will be split in two rows to allow more tracks settings to be adjusted in the mixer without having to use the horizontal scrollbar
Log interpolation: see Fade Properties
Save backup every X minutes: if this option is checked the program will save a backup of the current song every X minutes. The backup will be named "~ntrck_backup-XXXX", where XXXX stands for the current song name. If for some reason the song you're working on gets corrupted you can revert to the last saved backup loading this file.
Default Time Format: selects the time format used by default on every dialog box. Available formats are 10 (i.e. tenths of seconds), 24, 25, 30, 75 FPS (Frames Per Second), samples or M:B:T (measures, beats, ticks).
Lower timeline axis time format: selects the time format for representing time in the time axis at the bottom of the timeline window
Passive vu-meters update: if this option is checked the animation of the vu-meters is given a low priority, so under stress situations the vu-meters may stick for some instants, but in this way the system will be able to "concentrate" more on the actual mixing job
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Show vu-meters for each track: uncheck this option if you think that the mixer's vu-meters are using too much CPU resources (you may check if this is the case temporarily closing the mixer window and checking if the program becomes more responsive)
Use different colors for each track: if this option is checked a new color will be assigned to every newly recorded or inserted track. If this option is unchecked new tracks will be assigned the color set in the Default Colors dialog box
Delete empty tracks: if this option is checked the program will delete a track when the last wave file it contains is removed. Since when a track is deleted all its settings (effects, volume evolutions etc.) are lost, when one whishes to re-record a certain wave file, it may be useful to delete the wave file, keep the empty track, record the new file and place it in the old file’s track. In this way you won’t have to adjust again all the track settings.
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4.4.5.
Preferences/Paths
Wave Editor Path: Insert here the path to your wave editor. By double-clicking on a track in the tracks list box the program will launch the wave editor to edit that track.
Soundcard’s mixer or Windows volume control path: sets the path to the mixer software that may be launched from within the program using the View/Soundcard mixer menu command
Working directory: Sets the directory the program uses by default to store the wave files, .npk peak files and undo data. If none is specified the program will use the current directory.
4.4.6. Fade properties dialog box
Shape: select which shape the fades should assume. Logarithmic fades are the most natural sounding ones
Interpolate
logarithmically:
the program interpolates linearly between the volume evolution nodes. This reflects in a logarithm-like evolution between two nodes in a logarithm graph such as the timeline volume evolution representation (the levels are shown in dB). So the correct representation of the volume evolution takes place when this option is checked. When it isn’t the program simply connects the nodes with a straight line, which is not how the volume actually evolves between the nodes. Un-checking this option speeds a bit the drawing of the timeline window and may render the volume representation clearer, although less correct.
See also
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4.5. Wave Devices (Advanced)
n-Track supports different types of soundcards drivers. In this dialog box you can set which drivers are displayed in the Wave Devices dialog box.
Show MME devices: Show MME devices in the devices list boxes
Show DirectSound devices: Show DirectSound devices in the devices list boxes
Show Asio devices: Show Asio devices in the devices list boxes
Compensation: see Sync & lag issues
Use up to N input/output channels When using an WDM or Asio multiple input/outputs soundcard, the program will normally use all the available input and output channels. You can use this settings to make the program use only a certain number of channels.
4.6. Audio format conversions
4.6.1. Wav to mp3 conversion
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Mp3 (which stands for MPEG Layer 3) is a standard compressed audio format that guarantees high sound quality while obtaining very high compression ratios: depending on the chosen bit rate compressions up to 1:10 can be achieved with almost unhearable (at least to non audiophile’s hears) loss of quality.
This makes this format ideal for distributing audio files over the Internet or in any situation when the size of regular wave files will make their transmission impractical.
On the other hand mp3 is always a lossy compression and so it isn’t suited for storing audio data when the sound quality must be kept as high as possible. For this reason (and also because on-the-fly decompression of mp3 files will be way too heavy on the computer CPU) n-Track Studio doesn’t support mp3 file format for recording or importing tracks, but it only allows conversion from finished wave files
(i.e. created after
) to mp3. To listen to the mp3 file you’ll need an mp3 player, such as
Winamp.
This program uses for the actual encoding the freeware utility BladeEnc by Tord Jansson, which is in turn based on freely available ISO sources.
Wav to mp3 conversion Dialog Box:
- Bit rate: selects the compression factor. Higher values will produce a bigger but better sounding mp3 file
- Mono: forces the mp3 file to be in mono format. If the original wave file is mono the mp3 file will be mono anyway
- Delete wave file after conversion: if checked the program will delete the original wave file after the conversion has ended. Be careful with this option since if the conversion ends with an error, the file
will be nonetheless deleted
- Crc: Adds checksum data to each frame in the MP3 file. The checksum data is needed for errorcorrection when streaming the MP3 in realtime over Internet (as done by Internet radiostations). It lowers the quality of the sound slightly since the checksum data also needs to fit in the specified bit-rate and is not needed for normal use.
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- Private: Sets the private-flag in the MP3-file, specifying that this is a private MP3. Setting this flag doesn't affect the encoding time, file size or quality in any way.
- Copyright: Sets the copyright-flag in the MP3-file, specifying that this is a copyrighted MP3. Setting this flag doesn't affect the encoding time, file size or quality in any way.
- Copy: This switch clears the MP3 file's original-flag that is set by default from version 0.50 of
BladeEnc. Clearing the original-flag doesn't affect the encoding time, file size or quality in any way.
- Priority:
Changes the priority with which BladeEnc is run.
Multiple conversion can be executed simultaneously by the program and the normal program operation can continue during the conversion(s).
See also
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4.6.2. Wav to Wma (Windows Media Audio) conversion
Converting wave files to wma format is useful for distributing audio files over the Internet or in any situation when the size of regular wave files will make their transmission impractical.
Wma files contain audio data that is compressed by using a new high-quality lossy audio compression scheme (codec) called Windows Media™ Audio codec
Wma files can be be significantly smaller than mp3 files of comparable audio quality.
• Format: selects the output file format. Higher values of the bitrate and the sampling frequency will generate bigger but better sounding files
• Attribute: select in the drop down list the attribute you want to set and enter the corresponding text in the edit box. The attributes you set will be visible when opening the file with a compatible player
Multiple conversion can be executed simultaneously by the program and the normal program operation can continue during the conversion(s).
Playing wma files
A number of players support the wma standard, among which Winamp v2.5 and later
( www.winamp.com
) and the the newest Windows Media Player. If an attempt to play a wma file is done with older versions of the Media Player the player will recognize the new file type and will automatically download from the Internet the appropriate codec.
See also
4.6.3. Ogg Vorbis files (.ogg)
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Ogg Vorbis is a new non-proprietary standard for audio files compression. Although not as popular as mp3 it is rapidly gaining acceptance and support from audio software as it’s currently considered the best audio format in that it achieves the best sound quality for a given file size.
.ogg files can be played on most current audio players such as Winamp (www.winamp.com).
More information on Ogg Vorbis can be found at www.xiph.org n-Track Studio can convert wave files to the Ogg Vorbis format with the File/Convert wave file to/Ogg
Vorbis menu command.
files into the current project using the Import wave file command in the Track menu.
4.6.4. Sampling frequency conversion
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This option allows changing the sampling rate of wave files. The program will automatically ask to convert the sampling frequency if you try to import a wave file with a sampling frequency different from the working frequency (as set in the “Preferences/Recording settings” dialog box), or when doing a mixdown you select a sampling frequency different from the working frequency.
File to convert:
The file to be converted. You can browse for the file clicking on the browse button.
Multiple files can be selected.
Replace existing file: Change the original file sampling frequency. The change will generally not be undoable. If you’re lowering the sample frequency, a subsequent increase in the sampling frequency will not restore the file as it was before the first conversion. This happens because when lowering the sample rate the signal is low-pass filtered to avoid a phenomenon called aliasing. For example when converting a 44100 signal to 22050 hz, all the frequencies in the 11025-22050 range will be eliminated.
Create a new file: Create a new file with the desired sampling frequency leaving the original file untouched. When multiple source files are selected the program will automatically generate the name of the converted file appending to the original name the new sampling frequency (for example converting the file named “guitar.wav” to 32000 hz frequency the resulting filename will be “guitar_32000.wav”.
File format
New sampling frequency: The sampling frequency you want the file to be converted to. Any integer number can be specified. The most common sampling frequencies are listed in the box to the right of the sampling frequency text box.
New bit depth: Bit depth of the converted file. If you intend to apply further processing to the converted wave file, the 32 bit format guarantees the greatest possible quality.
Dither: Use dithering. For more info see Dither & noise shaping
Dither depth: Depth in bits of the dithering noise. For more info see Dither & noise shaping
Noise shaping:
Use noise shaping. For more info see Dither & noise shaping
4.7. Recover a wav file from raw audio data
Sometimes .wav files get corrupted following an hardware (hard disk) or software (file system, Windows crash, program crash etc.) failure.
The File/Convert wave file/Recover .wav file from raw audio data command allows you to try recovering the audio data from a .wav file whose headers (i.e. the beginning of the file which contains information about the file format) have been somehow corrupted.
In order to restore the .wav file headers n-Track will ask you to manually specify the format that the wav file uses, including the file’s sampling frequency, sample format (16 bit, 24 bit etc.) and number of channels.
If you don’t know or remember which format the wave file is supposed to have, you can try going by trial and error. Start trying each of the bit formats. If you select an incorrect bit format the resulting wave file will sound as pure digital noise.
If the recovered wave file resulting is too slow or too fast an incorrect sampling frequency or number of channels might have been specified.
The Audio data starts N bytes from the beginning of file parameter should typically be left at the default setting, particularly for files originally created by n-Track.
If you change the setting, you should change it by a multiple of the file sample size. For example a 16 bit mono wave file has a sample size of 2 bytes. Increasing the parameter Audio data starts… parameter by
1 will result in all the file samples to be shifted by 1 byte resulting in pure noise. Likewise if the format is
16 bit stereo (2 channels), shifting by 2 bytes will result in the file’s left and right channels to be exchanged.
Warning: playback of a recovered .wav file that has been unrecoverably corrupted or that has a bit format different from the one you specified will result in very LOUD noise which may hurt your ears and damage the speakers.
4.8. Mixidown Dialog Box
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Output file: name of the wave file that will be created
Tracks to mixdown: select the tracks to be mixed down [default = all tracks]
Substitute tracks with the mixed down file: let the program remove the mixed down tracks and substitute them with the newly created wave file
Create also an mp3 version: after the mixing down has ended, the program will open the mp3 conversion dialog box to convert the mixed down wave file to mp3 format
Process Master Channel: if this option is unchecked, the program will not process master channel and will consider the master volume as if it was 0 dB. Uncheck this option if you want to substitute the tracks to be mixed down with the wave file to be created.
Bit depth: by default the program creates wave files with the same bit depth you’re currently using on each output soundcard. You can force the program to generate 16, 24 or 32 bit (float) wave files clicking on the relative radio button. CDs have 16 bit resolution, so if you intend to use the mixed down wave file to burn an audio CD use the 16 bit setting. Generating 32 bit wave files can be useful if you intend to process again the file to be created using a wave editor or n-Track itself, as maintaining an high intermediate quality helps in keeping low the noise that is always generated when the audio date is processed.
Channels: select the number of channels of the mixed down file
Sampling frequency: select the output file sampling frequency. If the selection is different from the working sampling frequency the program will mixdown to the working frequency and then will convert the resulting file to the specified frequency.
The two typical applications of the mixdown
feature are:
- Mixing down the whole song to a single wave file
- Mixing down some tracks to apply effects permanently or to reduce the number of tracks that the program mixes “on-the-fly”
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For the first application, typically all the tracks will be selected (as the program does by default) and the
“Process Master channel” option will be checked. If you need also an mp3 version check the “Create also an mp3 version” option.
For the second application, the “Process Master channel” option will be typically checked as the
“Substitute tracks with the mixed down file”. In this way, the program will create a new wave file with the selected tracks and will substitute the tracks with this single wave file, in such a way that the song will sound exactly the same as before but the actual number of tracks will be decreased, thus making the program exploit less the system resources. The program will also ask for a .sng filename to export the mixed down tracks, so that at a later time it’s possible to reload the single tracks as they were before mixing down (wave files associated with the tracks should obviously not be deleted) using the
“Track/Import tracks from .sng file” menu option.
4.9. Asio settings
Asio Control Panel: Opens the soundcard’s Asio driver control panel, where you can change settings specific to your soundcard’s driver. Not all drivers have a control panel: the button will have no effect if no control panel is available.
Process in driver’s thread: Use this settings for maximum efficiency and low latency. If with this option activated the program becomes unstable uncheck it.
Restart if driver asks: Uncheck this option if you don’t want the program to stop and restart the playback or recording when the Asio driver reports that a loss of sync has occurred
Clock source: Some soundcards allow to sync to external clock reference signals. If unsure, use the
‘internal setting.
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4.10. Buffering settings
Playback buffers: number and size of buffers used during playback and for live processing output.
Decrease the buffering to decrease the time between an action operated on the mixer and its hearable result (output latency). Low values of this parameter will make the program more resource consuming: if you can hear jumps in the playback, try to increase this parameter.
Preload buffers:
a value higher than 1 allows the program to load buffers from the hard disk while at the same time processing another buffer
Disk loading buffers bigger..
sets how many times the buffers used for loading data from disk are bigger than the buffers used for accessing the soundcard. Since big disk loading buffers lead to a more efficient use of the hard disk and small buffers used for accessing the soundcard lead to a lower latency, a relatively high value for this parameter can allow to use the hard disk efficiently while maintaining a small output latency.
Recording buffers: number and size of buffers used during recording and for live processing input during recording
Disk buf. Size: sets the size of the blocks the program uses to save data to disk. Bigger blocks make the access to the hard disk more efficient, but too big blocks may cause small drop-outs in both the recording and the playback during recording.
Press the apply button to use the new values. If playback, recording or live input processing are active, they will be stopped and restarted with the new buffering settings.
Default values appear rotating the knobs, but any other value for both the buffer size and number can be manually entered typing the number in the text boxes.
Always start from the default values, then try to increment the buffers if you need more reliable playback and decrement them if you want lower latency.
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When using Asio drivers, the buffers size and numbers are dictated by the Asio driver, so the program will complain if the settings are different from those requested by the driver.
4.11. Piano Roll settings
The piano roll window can show a number of different MIDI events. In this dialog box you can select which events to show and which kind of event to insert when the button is activated.
Place: select which event to place when the button is activated
View: select which event should be drawn on the timeline window
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4.12. MIDI Event properties
Start: time at which the event starts
End: time at which the note ends
Note: pitch of the note
Velocity: note velocity. The velocity parameter reflects how an acoustic piano keyboard actually works. When the player pushes a key, the way in which the key is pushed in the end reflects only in how fast does the key hammer hits the piano strings. With most MIDI synths and with most instruments higher velocities result in louder notes, but the velocity often also affects the timbre of a note.
Channel: channel to which the event will be sent to
Controllers:
Controller #: controller number
Value: controller value, range 0 to 128
Pitch wheel:
Value: pitch wheel value, range 0 to 16383
Program change:
Program: instruments number, range 1 to 128
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4.13. MIDI Track Properties dialog box
Track name: Edit the track name displayed on the timeline and on the mixer window
Program:
Select which program (instrument) assign to the selected track. Not every MIDI synth has the same set of instruments. You can change or customize the set of instrument names associated to program numbers clicking on the small button to the right of the programs drop down box. When
“(none)” is selected the track will use the MIDI synth default instrument for the track’s channel
Channel:
The channel the MIDI track is assigned to
Bank: The bank of instrument used for the track channel. Leave “(none)” to use the default channel. If the switching banks has no effect (and your MIDI synth has different instruments banks) try to change the “Bank selection method” parameter
Bank selection method:
The method used for switching instrument banks. The “Normal” setting will work with most MIDI synths. Creative Labs soundcards use the “Channel 0” switching method.
Output port: The MIDI output port the MIDI track is sent to. The drop-down box will include all the
devices selected in the output section of the Preferences/MIDI/MIDI devices
dialog box.
Velocity +/-: Augment or diminish the track’s MIDI notes velocity by this factor
Transpose +/-:
Augment or diminish the track’s pitch by this factor
Chorus +/-: Augment or diminish the track’s MIDI notes chorus by this factor
Reverb +/-: Augment or diminish the track’s MIDI notes reverb by this factor
Color: Track’s color
Piano Roll: Open the Piano Roll window
150
Remove track: Remove the selected track from the project
4.14. MIDI devices settings
MIDI Input port:
Select the MIDI Input ports to use. Multiple devices can be selected dragging with the mouse or clicking holding the Ctrl key
MIDI Output port:
Select the MIDI Output ports to use. Multiple devices can be selected dragging with the mouse or clicking holding the Ctrl key. Selected devices will have the device order number written to the left of the device’s name. The device number sets the order by which the devices are shown in the ‘Output port’ drop down list in the MIDI track’s properties dialog box
Keep devices open: when this option is checked the program will always keep the MIDI devices open, and no other program will be able to access them when n-Track is running. When this option is unchecked it’s not possible to route the MIDI input to one of the outputs (for example to play with a MIDI keyboard)
Input to output echo:
None: the program doesn’t send any incoming MIDI signal to any MIDI output port
The program sends the incoming MIDI signals to the MIDI output port and channel of the currently selected track. When in this mode you can switch the sound produced by a MIDI keyboard simply clicking on the MIDI track that has the desired channel and output port settings.
Manual: When this mode is active you can select the MIDI output port and channel to which the incoming MIDI signals will be sent to. You can also alter the incoming notes transponding them and changing their velocity
4.15. MIDI Events editing window
The MIDI events editing window allows to sequentially view and edit all the events in a MIDI track in a table that shows all of the event’s parameters. For example for a note event the note name, channel, the
151
152 start time, the velocity and duration parameters are listed in the event’s row in the table. Some events
(for example program changes) may be easier to add or edit using this table view instead of the piano roll view.
Similarly to what happens with the Piano Roll, you can customize which events are displayed and which can be inserted in the dialog box that appears clicking on the View/Place Settings button.
See also
153
4.16. Time stretch
This option allows changing the speed and size of wave file. To stretch a wave file click on its waveform in the timeline, then use the Track/Special/Time Stretch menu command.
Transpose:
Set the change in the file tonality. The file size and speed will be changed accordingly. For example an increment of 12 semitones (one octave) corresponds to making the file length half of the original
New length: Set the desired file length. The change in speed and tonality will be inversely proportional to the change in size.
Replace existing file: Change the original file size.
Create a new file: Create a new wave file with the desired length, leaving the original file untouched.
New bit depth: Bit depth of the converted file. If you intend to apply further processing to the converted wave file, the 32 bit format guarantees the greatest possible quality.
Dither: Use dithering. For more info see Dither & noise shaping
Dither depth: Depth in bits of the dithering noise. For more info see Dither & noise shaping
Noise shaping: Use noise shaping. For more info see Dither & noise shaping
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5. Troubleshooting & Support
5.1. n-Track Studio on the Web
n-Track Studio web site: http://www.ntrack.com
n-Track Studio download page http://www.ntrack.com/download.shtm
n-Track Studio Discussion Forum: http://www.ntrack.com/frame_stat_discussion.html
5.2. n-Track Studio version history
The updated version history can be found on the n-Track Studio web site at the address http://www.ntrack.com/whatsnew.shtm
5.3. Feedback
Bug reports, suggestions and comments are welcomed and will help in developing better versions of the program.
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157
If you are submitting a bug report or reporting a problem you are facing using the program, please check if you can find in the F.A.Q.
an answer to your problem.
Also, check if you are running the latest version of the program. If not, check the version history
( http://www.ntrack.com/whatsnew.shtm
) web page to see if the problem may have already been fixed.
If none of this helps, then send an email to [email protected]
Please include in your message as much information you know about your system:
The exact version of the program you have installed
Hardware configuration details (processor, memory, hard disk(s) and especially soundcard(s))
Software configuration (including the version of Windows you’re using)
See also n-Track Studio World Wide Web site: http://www.ntrack.com
n-Track Studio Discussion Forum: http://www.ntrack.com/frame_stat_discussion.html
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5.4.
Sync & lag issues
With some soundcards new recordings don’t sound perfectly in sync with the previous tracks because of the inability of the soundcard to start the recording and the playback at the very same time. If you notice a sync problem in which recorded tracks sound constantly (i.e. with equal delay during the whole length of the recording) too early or too late with respect to existing tracks in the song you can use the
compensation parameter in the Preferences/Wave devices/Advanced dialog box to compensate for the problem. Use a negative value if the new tracks sound delayed or a positive value if new tracks sound too early (the program will shift new tracks to the right by the amount specified, or if the compensation is negative the shift will be towards the left). The default value of 0 will work in almost all systems.
Usually there’s no need to worry about the compensation settings, so read this only if you can hear a shift between the recorded tracks,
If you experience sync problems try unchecking both the Preferences/Options/Use system timer for checkboxes, then set the
Preferences/Recording settings/Hide lag indicator.. parameter to 1.
During a recording, notice the value that will appear near the "lag" writing on the time window on the program’s toolbar.
If the lag value is constant throughout the duration of the recording it can be compensated with the compensation setting discussed above. If the lag value grows constantly during the recording the problem is most likely caused by the soundcard sampling frequency not being perfectly constant or by a difference in the soundcard’s recording and playback sampling frequencies. When this occurs the problem can’t be fixed using the compensation parameter and the program may not work properly so it may be necessary to change soundcard.
Note: the lag values reported are based on the recording and playback position information reported to the program by the soundcard. This information may be incorrect so it may lead to think that sync problems exist while it’s just that the recording and/or playback times are being reported incorrectly. It’s very important to double check with your ears if the lag values reported make sense.
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5.5.
Creative Labs Soundcards issues
SoundBlaster Live!
The SoundBlaster Live! Has some sync problems when the sampling frequency used is
different than 48000 Hz. This seems to happen because the Live! internally always uses this sampling frequency. When other frequencies are used the card performs a real-time sampling rate conversion which doesn’t perfectly preserve the timing and thus creates sync problems.
The Soundblaster Audigy 2/4 can record and playback in 24 bit (& 96 Khz) mode.
The Soundblaster Audigy 1 can only record and playback in 16 bit mode, despite the specifications may lead to think that it's a 24 bit card.
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6. Appendix
161
6.1. Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)
The latest updated version of the FAQ can be found at this address: http://www.ntrack.com/faq.shtm
162
6.2. How to buy n-Track
The benefits of purchasing n-Track include
• Unlocking all the features of the program otherwise locked in the evaluation version
• Free upgrades to all n-Track Studio 6.x versions
• Unlimited email technical support
• 30-day money back guarantee n-Track costs $64.
Purchase n-Track Studio online Now
Purchasing options
Credit card
You can purchase and immediately receive the full version of n-Track using a Credit Card with the option of making the purchase online over a secure web server, via an U.S. tool free phone or by fax.
Click on the “Buy n-Track Studio” button in the “About” dialog box or select “Buy n-Track Studio” from the program Help menu. Your web browser will be launched and pointed to the online purchase page
( http://ntrack.com/register.html
)
After the order is complete you’ll immediately be able to download the full version of the program.
Postal Mail
You can purchase the program filling this order form
and sending it via postal mail.
If you can't download the program from the Internet, you can optionally order a CD containing a copy of the program.
Thank you for registering n-Track Studio.
Purchase n-Track Studio Now
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Upgrading to n-Track v6.x
Registered n-Track Studio users can upgrade to n-Track v6.x for an upgrade fee of 34$ or 29 Euro
If you registered the program on or after the 1 st
of May 2008 the upgrade is free (please contact us if you have not already received the upgrade information).
Benefits of registering n-Track:
You’ll receive the codes to register the shareware version of the program, removing all limitations and nag screens
You will get free upgrades to all n-Track Studio 6.x versions
Being a registered user you can ask anytime for technical support
Purchasing options
Credit card
You can purchase and receive the full version of this program from using a Credit Card with the option of making the purchase online over a secure server, via an U.S. tool free phone or by fax.
Connect to http://www.ntrack.com/upgrade.html
Thank you for registering n-Track.
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6.3. License
n-Track Studio is shareware. This means:
1. All copyrights to n-Track Studio are exclusively owned by the author - Flavio Antonioli.
2. Anyone may use this software during a test period of 40 days. Following this test period of 40 days or less, if you wish to continue to use n-Track Studio, you must
3. Once registered, the user is granted a non-exclusive license to use n-Track Studio on one computer, for any legal purpose, at a time. The registered n-Track Studio software may not be rented or leased, but may be permanently transferred, if the person receiving it agrees to terms of this license. If the software is an update, the transfer must include the update and all previous versions.
4. The n-Track Studio unregistered shareware version, may be freely distributed, provided the distribution package is not modified. No person or company may charge a fee for the distribution of n-
Track Studio without written permission from the copyright holder.
5. n-Track Studio is distributed "as is". No warranty of any kind is expressed or implied. You use at your own risk. The author will not be liable for data loss, damages, loss of profits or any other kind of loss while using or misusing this software.
All rights not expressly granted here are reserved by Flavio Antonioli.
6. Installing and using n-Track Studio signifies acceptance of these terms and conditions of the license.
7. If you do not agree with the terms of this license you must remove n-Track Studio files from your storage devices and cease to use the product.
Thank you for using n-Track Studio,
Flavio Antonioli.
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7. Glossary of terms
Audio Interface
a Soundcard which not being attached to the computer PCI bus is no longer a
‘card’, but is still the device responsible for audio input and output. Some audio interfaces are made of an internal card and an external break-out box attached to the internal card via a proprietary cable. The term is generally used as a glorified term for soundcard.
Comping
the process of combining different takes into a single track selecting the best portions of each take.
MIDI a standard mechanism for digital representation and transmission of musical information. A MIDI track represents music as a sequence of events, as opposed to an audio track that represents music as the digitized acoustic signal as detected by a mic or other device.
Soundcard
the device somehow attached to the computer (via USB, Firewire, PCI or integrated into the computer main board) that is responsible for capturing and digitizing the audio input signal and sending the audio output generated by the computer to external devices such as speakers or mixing consoles.
Take an attempt at recording a particular track, musical part. In the process of recording a song multiple takes are recorded and then the best one is selected to be part of the final version of the song, other takes are discarded.
Index
.
.mid ............................................................................ 37
.sng............................................................................. 37
.wav ........................................................................... 37
0
0 dB ............................................................................ 31
1
16 bit .......................................................................... 81
2
24 bit .......................................................................... 81
3
32 bit .......................................................................... 82
5
5.1 .............................................................................. 59
6
64 bit .......................................................................... 82
A
166 algorithm ................................................................... 82
Asio ............................................................................ 34
Audigy ...................................................................... 153 audio devices ............................................................. 32 audio effects .............................................................. 42 aux channel .......................................................... 42, 50
B
backup ...................................................................... 128 bounce ....................................................................... 45 buffering ............................................................ 44, 140 buffers ...................................................................... 140
Bug ........................................................................... 150
Buy ........................................................................... 156
C
CD burning ................................................................. 29 click ............................................................................ 69 clipping ....................................................................... 31 compression ............................................................... 18 control surface ........................................................... 64 corrupted ................................................................. 137 crossfading ................................................................. 72
D
DC offset .................................................................... 69 delay ........................................................................... 44 destructive editing ..................................................... 70 digital sample ............................................................. 69
DirectX ................................................................. 47, 49 dither ......................................................................... 57 dithering ................................................................... 127 download ................................................................. 150
Drum instruments ...................................................... 96
DXi .............................................................................. 97
E
editing ........................................................................ 66
Editing MIDI ............................................................... 90 editing points ............................................................. 69 effects parameters envelopes ................................... 40
EQ .............................................................................. 52 exporting .................................................................... 46
F
FAQ .......................................................................... 155
FFT ............................................................................. 53
Forum ...................................................................... 150 freeze ......................................................................... 45
G
General MIDI ............................................................ 100 grid ........................................................................... 101 group ......................................................................... 51 group channel ............................................................ 51
I
input to output latency .............................................. 43 insert effects .............................................................. 42 install ......................................................................... 11
Instrument plug‐ins ................................................... 98
K
keyboard .................................................................. 111
L
lag ............................................................................ 123
167 latency ................................................................ 98, 140 line in ......................................................................... 30 live input processing .................................................. 43 live playing ................................................................. 98 loop ............................................................................ 74
M
markers ................................................................ 25, 76 mastering ................................................................... 57 metronome .............................................................. 121 microphone ................................................................ 30
MIDI Clock ................................................................ 105
MIDI control surface .................................................. 64
MIDI devices ............................................................. 145
MIDI Drum tracks ....................................................... 93
MIDI events .............................................................. 145
MIDI instrument ......................................................... 98
MIDI Instruments Definition ...................................... 99
MIDI keyboard ........................................................... 98
MIDI program names ............................................... 100
MIDI recording ........................................................... 89
MIDI System Exclusive ............................................. 100
MIDI Time Code ....................................................... 104 mixdown .............................................................. 27, 79
MME ........................................................................... 33 monitoring ................................................................. 31 mono .......................................................................... 80
Mp3 .......................................................................... 132
MTC .......................................................................... 104 multichannel .............................................................. 78 multi‐effect ................................................................ 43
N
noise shaping ............................................................. 57 non‐destructive editing ............................................. 68 normalization ............................................................. 71 note name.................................................................. 96
O
Ogg Vorbis ............................................................... 135
P
packed song ............................................................... 87 playback format ......................................................... 76 punch‐in ..................................................................... 74 purchase .................................................................. 156
Q
quantize ................................................................... 101 quick start .................................................................. 13
R
168 recording format ........................................................ 76 recording level ..................................................... 31, 83 recording multiple tracks ........................................... 35 recording source ........................................................ 30 recording vu meter .................................................... 14 recover ..................................................................... 137 regions ....................................................................... 86 registration .............................................................. 156 restore ..................................................................... 137 return ......................................................................... 42
ReWire ....................................................................... 49
S
samples ...................................................................... 69 sampling frequency conversion ............................... 136 selections ................................................................... 85 send ............................................................................ 42 send automation ........................................................ 42 sgw ............................................................................. 87 shareware ................................................................ 159 signal level .................................................................. 31 signal path .................................................................. 57 snap to 0 .................................................................... 72 sng .............................................................................. 87 soft clipping ................................................................ 32 song file ...................................................................... 37
Sound Control Panel .................................................. 30
SoundBlaster Live ..................................................... 153 soundcard input ......................................................... 30 soundcard’s mixer ...................................................... 30 spectrum analyzer ...................................................... 53
Standard MIDI files .................................................... 37 stereo ......................................................................... 80
Stretch ...................................................................... 147 surround .................................................................... 59 synchronization ........................................................ 104 system requirements ................................................. 11
T
time format .............................................................. 105 track EQ ...................................................................... 52
Troubleshooting ....................................................... 149 tuner .......................................................................... 54
169 tutorial ....................................................................... 14
U
uninstall ..................................................................... 11 upgrade .................................................................... 158
V
Velocity .................................................................... 143 video clip .................................................................... 84 volume automation ................................................... 39 volume evolutions ..................................................... 26
VST ....................................................................... 46, 49
VST/DX instrument .................................................... 97
VSTi ............................................................................ 97
W
Wave file .................................................................... 37
WaveRT ...................................................................... 33
WDM .......................................................................... 33
Windows Volume Control .......................................... 30
Wma ......................................................................... 134
X
x64.............................................................................. 82 x86.............................................................................. 82
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