Hey if there’s anyone else using Cakewalk Pro out there…
I’m having trouble converting my projects to mp3 format. As in “I can’t do it.” Any ideas? I’m bringing in sound through a Roland UA-100 and directly through an Alesis keyboard (not sure of the model # ). A friend told me to try using Cool Edit Pro, which I did, but that doesn’t seem to be working either - I can’t get the projects to open in Cool Edit. Maybe it doesn’t recongize Cakewalk’s formatting…
Anyways, I know there MUST be someone here who knows about this stuff… PLEASE! lol.
I use Cakewalk Pyro sometimes. It may be about the same for all practical purposes. At the risk of being redundant I’ll “walk” you through from the start, ie, recording from an outside source. Make sure your mic jack is active, and the “in” source of the mixer board for the computer is on.
1.Open cakewalk 2.under “tools” click “record audio” to open wave editor 3.click record 4.click “file” and type in title 5.click “start” ..a WAVE should show on the screen. 6.click stop 7.close “wave editor” window.
Back to Cakewalk…on left menu bar scroll down to “program files” then to “cakewalk” then to “cakewalk pyro” or “pro.” The title of your tune should appear. Click on the title to “blue” it in, then above in the tope menu bar you’ll see a drop-down that says “convert to.” Your tune will be in “wave” form and so you’ll want to click “mp3” and wait for it to complete the task. The title will then appear beside the other title, only with “mp3” instead of “wave.” It may reduce in size from something like 20MB down to 255KB.
You can then find this mp3 by clicking on “my computer” then to file “C” then to “program files” then to “cakewalk” then to “cakewalk pyro” or “pro” then to your mp3 listed. Double left click to play the tune, or right click for menu and choose “send to” then “mail recipient.”
If this doesn’t help, I apologize in advance. It works for me.
if you’re worried about quality, you may want to use an external mp3 encoder and just record your projects to wave and then encoded it with the outside encoder.
LAME is questionably the best mp3 encoder out there. you can do a search on google for “lame mp3” and probably find it.
if a 20MB wave was compressed into a 255KB mp3 file, that mp3 is horrible quality, and you may want to change your cakewalk settings. a decent quality mp3 will be about 1/9th the original wave file size.
I’m using Cakewalk ‘Guitar Tracks’
from the menu I select:
Tools
Mixdown audio
Export to file
there 4 choices of formats to save to (wave, real audio, windows media, mp3)
I don’t know if it’s possible to convert standard MIDI files directly to MP3 with Cakewalk software, but you can export projects that use sampled instruments directly to MP3… although the newer versions of Cakewalk software require you to register the demo version of the MP3 export plug-in that comes with them.
Besides direct exports, it is no big deal to use another audio app to capture the MIDI synth output as it’s playing… then you can convert it to whatever audio format you want.
If you think this is tricky, wait until you start using a wide variety of instrument sample formats and have to learn the proceedures for all the 3rd party import plug-ins that will be necessary to use them in Cakewalk… I currently must use DirectiXer, Halion, LiveSynth Pro and Virtual Sampler just to import my instrument samples into Cakewalk Sonar.
