Good day all,
My name is José Luis Silva, portuguese citzen who lives in South America, Brazil, São Paulo. I’m 54 years old 
I’m a journalist for a long time
New to Cantabile I use it for streaming and (try) to improve micro sound quality.
Kind regards to all
Hi José & Welcome to the Forum!
Give a shout if you need a tip or assistance, someone will help out. 
Cheers,
Dave
Thanks a lot Dave!
I’m discovering the amazing Cantabile … and love it so far! My streaming mic (HiperX Quadcast) have much better quality now…And I will try my other mic (Audio Technica ATR 2500) with Cantabile.
Kind regards
Jose Luis
Welcome to the forum, José.
Hi, glad to have you here!
Good you made it to Canabile forums. There is lots of friendly experienced help here if you need it.
Yes, you are right, Cantabile is amazing. Thanks to Brad the program developer, and all the fellow musicians who have given their live performance advice.
And there’s the rest of us too…
I have been a Catabiler since August last year, so it’s about time I said hello!
I am a 65-year-old HGV driver, married with 3 children who have all flown the nest. I was started on the path of music by my parents who got me learning the clarinet at the age of 14. It was a wooden Boosey and Hawkes clarinet, and I had just become comfortable with the whole range of notes when it went in for an overhaul, which took 3 weeks, and when it came back, all I could get out of it was the open note. After 2 years of hard work, it had all come to nothing. Demoralising!
I taught myself to play hymns on a folding harmonium, then got a bass guitar and got on really well with that. I picked up some basic guitar chords to accompany songs on acoustic guitar at a children’s charity holiday camp, but was heading for being a player of many instruments, master of none. So, I decided to specialise in not being master of just the one instrument.
I found myself hooked by the arrival of synths and keyboards, along with the arrival of prog rock, so that I could escape the banality of the pop scene with Gary Glitter, Bay City Rollers, David Cassidy and Donny Osmond! Roll on Pink Floyd, Genesis, Yes and co!
My first keyboard was a Roland RS505 Paraphonic Strings synth which served me well. Keyboard magazine ran an article on the Synclavier, and suddenly I was into digital keys as well! But – story of my life, the Synclavier was way out of my budget! I got their blue-coloured album demoing the keyboard, and it featured a rendition of “Autumn” from Vivaldi’s “Four seasons” by Patrick Gleeson. I started to search for Patrick’s album, but years later, after finally tracking a CD copy, I was thoroughly disappointed because the supposed different voices all seemed to sound the same!
I actually upgraded the RS505 to a Synergy, which was a ROM Player derivative of the General Development Systems synth, which was used for the soundtrack for the first Tron movie, and was in the same league as the Fairlight and the Synclavier. It was ground-breaking for its time, and served me well when I joined a Christian rock band in the Midlands, here in the UK, centred around Derby, Nottingham and Birmingham.
It became unreliable, so I traded it in for a DX7, which kept me going for a couple of years, until RSI struck. I worked at the time for British Telecom, who were Britain’s biggest computer users at the time. But they were mainframe computers, which didn’t talk to each other, so our desks looked like a Rick Wakeman gig with keyboards all over the place. So, BT commissioned a smart keyboard which could emulate all the mainframes they were using – a brilliant idea. But they specified it for data input only, allowing a slower, and cheaper processor, and the handbook stated that it must not be used for word processing, even though that is what we were doing with it. We weren’t given the handbook, so I bashed a way on the keys unaware of the damage I was doing to myself.
As part of this I was loaned out to a BT office in Stoke, travelling on mileage, and as such I had my eyes on the travel allowance which over the months of the secondment would pay for a Korg M1. But the damage was done, and I was on sick leave, and the M1 stayed at the dealers!
I ended up losing my job, and was within days of losing my house, but worse than that, it ended my keyboard playing. I contented myself with flying the pa desk, whilst aching to be able to play all the synth sounds I could hear in my mind while the band played in front of me, minus a keyboard player! Quite frustrating!
Jump forwards 27 years, by which time I had done a number of sales jobs which I kept losing because I was costing too much in commission and bonus payments, and ended up driving lorries for a living! I was invited to a worship leader’s conference because there was a seminar on PA work. In the introduction the keyboard player told us that his job was simply to provide simple block chords using pad sounds to fill out the overall sound of the band. There was no need for finger-gymnastics, and I thought maybe that opened a door back into a form of playing music again.
On getting home I dug out my old DX7 only to find the on-board back-up battery had failed. I replaced it to find that the BIOS had been corrupted, and would cost a fortune to replace, so the DX went in the bin. I jumped on to my wife’s Yamaha PF15, but after only 15 minutes the RSI pains were back because of the weighted key action. Oh dear! All my resurrected dreams of musical stardom came crashing back down to earth again. As a last-gasp saloon job I went to PMT in Birmingham and asked to have a look at the MX61, which I played for 45 minutes without a single pain! Woo Hoo!!! They didn’t have one in stock, but I ordered one, only to be let down several times, so I cancelled the order, and contacted GAK in Brighton on the Friday afternoon, and they got the MX61 to me the very next morning. Superb service, thanks GAK. Thoroughly recommended!
I love the keyboard, especially after buying the John Melas editing suite which opens the keyboard right up – it is amazing what it will do, even though it is only a £500 budget ROM player! To think that 30 years ago the DX7 cost £1800, and the Korg M1 would have been over £2000!
Its only real shortfall in my opinion are the choir sounds, which are a bit bland and weedy, so I invested in the Olympus Choir Elements plug-in, which is excellent value for money. And now I was hooked on VST plug-ins, and have discovered that once you step onto this path, it is very hard to not keep o getting more and more of them! This is when Cantabile came riding over the horizon to solve my problems of live performance with all those VSTs!
I really appreciate the help you guys have given me on this forum to get up and running, and things are going sweetly. I have an occasional hanging notes issue, which has been more noticeable after the windows 11 update, but have simply created a binding to a note that I don’t use, and the problem therefore barely exists!
I have really enjoyed my return to playing music again, with the last 7 months being a real blessing because of this amazing piece of software, so thanks to all responsible!