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Hi folks, Most have probably seen that we have a new release out - see above link. It wasn't planned but it has ended up being one of the strongest releases since we started CbB - a fitting tribute to our one year anniversary! Not only did we finally do ARA2 which has been in planning for some time, but we tackled some tricky and long overdue improvements to editing in general. The bullets in the product announcement cover a lot of ground but I'll highlight a few notable improvements: Slip editing (cropping) and stretching clips is now far more robust for all data types (MIDI, audio and ARA clips). Edits are now managed accurately even when doing combinations of operations such as cropping followed by stretching or vice versa. Edits should also be preserved across undo and redo. Multi clip time stretching, an often requested feature, allows you to easily time stretch clips on multiple tracks by the same amount. Elastique time stretching is improved and sounds better. When using ARA clips there is a lot of new goodness especially with ARA 2 plugins. This is our biggest ARA refresh since 2013 when it was first implemented and there are numerous optimizations and improvements behind the scenes. If you have Melodyne you will notice that all edits like dragging or cropping and stretching clips now have real-time preview in Melodyne. This makes it easier to align with other tracks when editing. Track and clip selection are now fully mirrored via ARA 2 allowing Melodyne to follow your clips and track selection. You can set Melodyne to automatically hide and show blobs automatically based on your selection. It will also respond to renaming tracks and clips. There aren't any ARA plugins that respond to color yet but when available they will also respond to the track and clip colors in CbB. All ARA 2 clips now share a common view. So navigating across multiple clips is as simple as clicking on a clip. The view data in Melodyne will automatically change to track the selected clip. Is is a lot faster than double clicking clips to close and reopen a new view. Creating ARA regions as well as MIDI analysis is now more efficient and should be a bit quicker. The Gain knob in the Inspector controls either audio Input Gain or MIDI Velocity Offset for Instrument tracks. This allows you to independently control MIDI velocity for instrument tracks based on whether the Audio tab or MIDI tab is selected in the track inspector. Thanks to several forumites who suggested this useful feature. Playlist view has been widened to accommodate showing more text. Bug fixes: We fixed over 45 bugs this release alone! Not all are listed since some of them were related to the new features. We continue to prioritize making CbB as stable as possible. A small request. For each release we'd like to gather some feedback on how useful or stable it is for you. If you are so inclined please take a moment to rate the product release topic in the forum. (there is now a star rating at the top of the post) Thanks to you all for your support and we hope you enjoy 2019.05 and our upcoming releases this year!

Improving CbB means many things to all of us, whether it’s improving stability, adding new features or improving existing ones (audio editing is a big one by all accounts!). For others, improvement means increasing software reliability. It’s all critical, so we’re pleased to announce that the 2019.05 release brings a healthy dose of both new and improved - our top stories being support for ARA 2 and multi-clip slip stretching! On top of bringing lots of new functionality to life, the team put massive focus on bug fixing and improving the state of slip editing in general, addressing a multitude of long standing issues. We’re super excited about this one, folks! Features & Enhancements ARA 2 (Audio Random Access) plug-in support. ARA 2 provides tighter, more efficient app integration of next generation ARA plug-ins such as Melodyne 4, including sharing tracks, regions, selection, as well as other project settings Improved editing of ARA 2 regions with a shared view across all plug-in instances Multi-clip slip stretching (hold down CTRL+SHIFT, then drag any selected clip edge to stretch all selected clips, or use the Stretch tool) The global Timing tool has been renamed to Stretch tool The Gain knob in the Inspector controls either audio Input Gain or MIDI Velocity Offset for Instrument tracks, depending on whether the Audio tab or MIDI tab is selected Updated zplane élastique v3.3.0.23501 audio stretching and pitch shifting with bug fixes and performance enhancements The Stretch tool (available by right-clicking the Edit tool in the Control Bar) now works on multiple selected clips, and also supports lasso selection and time selection Bug Fixes Clip Properties Inspector shows incorrect M:B:T clip length (actual length + 1 measure) Step Record continues to record to the original track after you switch focus to another armed track Arpeggiator Rate control fails to update when the parameter is automated MIDI only projects are immediately marked as dirty on file open Accessing menu commands can unnecessarily mark a project as dirty Bounce to Clip(s) results in mono data if a clip envelope is selected; Bounce to Clip(s) is now unavailable if the selection does not contain MIDI or audio data Intermittent crash when opening projects Closing a project immediately after opening can cause a crash Staff view fails to persist on project load Opening lyrics view when transport is playing causes crash Slip editing allows clips to be made zero length Clip waveform sometimes disappears while slip stretching Waveform display in split audio clip appears to adjust crop when slip stretching Slip Stretching MIDI clip causes clip data to disappear Slip Stretching cropped MIDI clip causes clip data to change unexpectedly Undoing slip stretching of audio clips could sometimes not restore the clip to its original state Slip Stretching clip to max, then dragging in opposite direction causes clamp to fail After stretching a clip to the max 400%, releasing the mouse, then attempting to stretch the left edge further causes all stretching to get lost unexpectedly Drag copying an ARA Region FX clip to create a new clip can result in a crash Tracks still visible in Melodyne after deleting or freezing tracks with Region FX clips Melodyne UI doesn't show slip stretching preview while editing until mouse up Canceling from a slip edit or slip stretch doesn't restore ARA regions in Melodyne When slip stretching a Melodyne Region FX clip from the left side, Undo does not restore the Melodyne data to its original location Undoing a copied Melodyne clip leaves blobs visible in Melodyne Cropping a stretched Melodyne clip causes blobs to shift unexpectedly Melodyne does not update when changing clip start time or duration from Clip Inspector Melodyne doesn't show preview while dragging Melodyne Region FX clips Clip loses focus in Melodyne after dragging to a new track Latest release notes are here. See prior release notes. Check out all new features released to date.

Omnisphere 2 is just wonderful. And adding Keyscape makes it indispensable.

Yes and does it a lot better

Wikipedia's ARA page has now been updated to reflect the facts that Cakewalk by BandLab has always had support for ARA 😎 and that it supports ARA2 as of release 2019.05. (Cakewalk and SONAR's representation in Wikipedia seems to have always been rather dire. I've spent hours sorting out some of the most garbled grammar, confused timelines, incorrect punctuation, outright misinformation and unintentional vandalism I've ever seen in relation to a topic on that platform, and there are still no entries for either CbB or BandLab)

When I 1st installed CbB 2018.04, the very first version, I was very pleased that it was very stable and really worked well with V-Vocal. Few crashes and if it crashed I could just double click the CWP and be back up and running in about 10 sec. Far better than Sonar Platinum. Today I'm happy to say that 2019.03 using Win updates from 10/7/18 is by far the most stable version for V-Vocal, I've found so far. I just worked on 3 songs tuning vocals and did 51 V-Vocal clips whit only 1 crash and that was on a spot that had 2 clips and each clip had a gain envelope. When I tried it the 2nd time I bounced to clip both clips to eliminate the gain envelopes and it worked fine. It may be fine to update the latest Win updates, but for now I'm just going to stay with this version for at least another month or so before making any changes. I'm enjoying the stability.

This is the first project I finished in Cubase 10

Almost, except that he would have probably been thrown out of a window instead of simply being banned! 😀

Oh hell yeah! Maybe double your lead vocal, as you kind of did in the choruses? Absolutely great riff, great kick-***** ACDC , great guitars, great vocals, and great song concept. Sorry for your loss. Mine passed away 2 years ago. If I'd have written him a song, it would never be as cool as yours!!! And for my Dad it would have been more like Lawrence Welk. cheers, -Tom

From Uncle E: They are totally out, unfortunately. We have been checking multiple times a day, every day, and there has been no movement. At this point, I really have no idea when Steinberg will make more available. I bitched on Steinbergs FB page about slow delivery of licenses to vendors. Maybe their development is great but it seems like the rest of Steinberg is half assed.

Clearly, then, the new strategy should be "don't plan" Good job, Noel!

Woo-hoo! BTW, the Tech Specs section on Cakewalk's product page hasn't yet been updated to reflect the newly-implemented ARA2 support: https://www.bandlab.com/products/cakewalk The world must know! I think CbB is in a small minority at this point, isn't it? I will be updating the Wikipedia ARA2 page shortly to add CbB to the list of DAW's that support it....

Great for corporations - cost-effective, everyone's using the same version, easy file exchanges, etc. Not so great for consumers, who have different needs.

The reviews do not inspire confidence.

Hi Everybody, I wrote this song back in the 90's and I used to perform it at open mikes - people for the most part liked the song. It's off my album "Wishful Thinking". Any comments and critiques are appreciated, and thanks for listening. Here it is: https://www.soundclick.com/html5/v4/player.cfm?songID=13529036

I'm seeing it on both a 1st gen Scarlett 18i20 & 1st gen Scarlett 6i6 (on two separate machines), both in ASIO mode. It is very infrequent, so much so that it don't consider it much of an issue... especially since stopping/starting the audio engine cures it immediately. I'm pretty sure you're correct in saying it is a driver issue though. I think I may be able to reproduce it just by stopping / starting lots of times, so I'll switch over to WASAPI for a while on my 6i6 setup and see if I can reproduce it. Another option would be to try using the ASIOLink driver, acting as a wrapper for the Focusrite one. I didn't notice any difference in latency when using this, and only a very slight increase in CPU. Maybe it handles calls subtly differently, which might be all it needs. [Edit] - I just noticed my earlier post in Feb, where it was happening more frequently. I sometimes have my Focusrite set to being the Windows sound device, especially if I'm following a tutorial... maybe this might make a difference. I've not being doing this as much lately, which is maybe why it's not happening as much? The next time it happens, I'll make a note of whether Windows is using the Focusrite or the motherboard sound device.

I would say the Plug-in Manager in Cubase is almost as good as Cakewalk's, but as the list is stored in an XML file it is possible to manually improve the result to handle its shortcomings. You might want to do this if you e.g. want to create more friendly names for vendors and/or instruments. The name of the file is C:\Users\[USER]\AppData\Roaming\Steinberg\Cubase [VERSION]_64\PluginManager.xml. However, this must be done when Cubase is not running as the program will overwrite that file with its current plug-in manager entries when the program is closed. But as Cubase will keep the entries being read during start-up you won't have to think about this until the next time you want to manually edit that file. You might also want to store a copy of your manually edited XML file under a different name just in case.

I'm not so sure. I don't think they'll offer 50% off new licenses again anytime soon. It devalues the product if done often and then people are going to think that even the upgrade price is too high. I think this is an exceptional thing they're doing to steal back a bunch of market share and maybe get some extra income, and also to get a bigger pool of people paying for upgrades in the future. Also those people are more likely to buy other Steinberg products now that they already have the dongle, especially if they integrate well with Cubase. I suspect Studio One and Reason have much smaller market share, and therefore can't command the premium that the market leaders like Cubase get. Their feature sets don't really exceed what Steinberg offers, so they have to compete on price/value.

Cool rocking tribute to your Dad, nice one.

I like the heat shielding on that piece. 😀

Like Emma Peel??

MeldaProduction has announced the 21st round of the Eternal Madness Discount 2019, offering 50% off 4 plugins every week. This deal starts on Monday, May 20th. Deal of the week: MMultiAnalyzer Price: €30 €59 MStereoProcessor Price: €40 €79 MEqualizerLP Price: €50 €99 MTransient Price: €30 €59 Note: If you happen to be new to Melda plugins, you can use someone's referral code for an additional 20% discount off whatever you're buying. Here's my referral code: MELDA1548575 (Feel free to use it, or use a friend's because Melda gives them 10% credit too!) Plus get 10 credits free for signing up to Melda newsletter!** **thanks to @Royal Yaksman for pointing this out!

I forgot to say Hub wasn't connecting but thanks to a member here's post at the steinberg forum all is well. Thanks msorrels! Hub Connection Problem Fix Bill

Fantastic EQ on vox or bass. I paid $49 for it, where do I go to get my $20 back?

Wow!! It appears that PA is following Waves in the $29 deal! They must be monitoring this forum and know we ain't gonna pay much more than $29 for plugins now!! Great work Larry! You have brought the PPP down! WAY DOWN! : ) [edit] Forgot to say that the Maag plugin is really good on vocals. Don't over do it. Great price. No-brainer

I started a new project in Cubase yesterday...so far no headscratchers I upgraded to Padshop Pro for 9.99 as well. So far the only "bug" has been the way the plugin manager sorted some of my plugins and for some reason I don't have the darker Padshop Pro GUI. Other than learning a bit on the go it's going painlessly, I'm liking it so far! Bill

I've gotta say (and I know I've said this tonnes of times before on this forum), that there's a fine line in the time takes between getting Shreddage sounding realistic and actually practising the part on a guitar and playing it for real. I use Shreddage in two specific cases: When I want to get an idea down quickly, and I've not got a guitar to hand (though if it's a simple enough part, I'll probably use U-JAM VG IRON) When I physically can't play the part (like really fast sweep pick scales). In this case, I record a real guitar for the parts I can play, and comp-in Shreddage. I run both parts through Revalver's ACT engine so they sound more or less like the same guitar. In every other case, I'll use a real guitar. Even in case 1, I'll usually re-record it with a real guitar later on. You can literally spend hours trying to get a Shreddage part to sound like a real guitarist... or you can spend that time practising the part. Of course if you can't play a guitar, or don't have one its a moot point.

Thanks for all your help, Mark. I dialled back the sensitivity of the faders a little and the shaking/vibrating issue was rectified. It's functioning really well now. I would like to try the Mackie MCU. The only thing I'm a bit bummed about is the zoom functions don't work via the jog wheel (something I was looking forward to introducing to my workflow); perhaps the Mackie MCU will incorporate this function? And, as mentioned, the VS=700 MCU won't respond when I try to open its properties (and crashes Cakewalk), so, definitely worth experimenting. Thanks so much for all your help: you've been super helpful.

I like this one. I agree with all the comments above... especially the open hi-hat level, and the timing. As far as the timing goes, I think you might get away with just concentrating on humanising the Shreddage part. The three things I'd do are: 1. Slightly adjust the timing of power chords. In most cases, I think coming in slightly early would work - but sometimes they want to be slightly late. 2. The gaps between the chords are just a tad too long. Try making the chords last a bit longer - even if it's just some of note in the chord (e.g. the highest note by a very small amount). 3. Experiment with the velocity of the notes within the chords. Think about whether the guitarist is picking down or up, and give the first note picked a slightly higher velocity than the others. As a user of Shreddage myself, I find bypassing the effects whilst doing this can help. If it sounds like a typical GM MIDI, you've still got work to do... but if it sounds like a guitarist jamming along on his acoustic, or his unplugged electric then you're there. But a great sounding tune.

Its most likely a plugin that is not releasing and not able to close

Doesn't Melodyne do what V-Vocal did?

$16.91 at checkout at JRR with code forum. https://www.jrrshop.com/kilohearts-khs-one

Why does that sound like the title of a country western song?

I listened to the first version a bit, then compared to the second mix. The 2nd mix is headed in the right direction. Cool tune, cool origins! From the heart, obviously. Congrats on that! Mixwise, I agree with Lynn, a better piano (something with more dynamic range) might help, particularly in the naked intro. I think you could easily go to the chorus, reach for the piano fader, and drop it one or 2 db. The piano is kicking the crap out of your vocal. I can tell you lowered it a bit for the second mix? You are on the right track. The guitars sound great!!! cheers, have you played it for her yet? -Tom

Nice and fun. Nice to know you are retro rawk, plus a bit of Scandanavian 80's synthpop to boot. Its a cool tune. One crit to track down is maybe that open hi-hat on the left side that pops up JUST AFTER the "2 and" in many measures. That open hi hat is a ton louder than it needs to be IMHO. As in, "1 and 2 and 3 and 4 and" Certainly is a breeze to listen to! cheers, -Tom

If that's true (and I thought the same thing), and Cakewalk just implemented ARA 2, could a chord track be far off within Cakewalk ?😍

Can you share a project or some way for us to reproduce this? We can try and fix it. FWIW while we did fix some copy/paste bugs in this release the main focus was on slip editing. If you know of a problem and its not something others are seeing its likely never going to get fixed unless you bring attention to it with a repro.

Melodyne is fixed! Woo hoo! Other items are very cool too!

All valid points, and yes, pan laws do make a difference. My last album project had a mix of songs done in Studio One and in Cakewalk. I don't think anyone could tell definitively which was recorded in which. But your point about the GUI is spot-on. There have been many studies about how look influences perception. Wine experts were given identical wines to taste, and they invariably said the more expensive ones in the bottles with nicer graphics tasted better. Another good study is when people saw the identical movie, but the sound quality was better in one than the other. People said the video quality was better in the one with better sound! I have no doubt that particular GUIs resonate better with particular musical approaches. As I always say, right tool for the right job. When I did the Simplicity album (2017), Cakewalk was mostly the right choice. For Joie de Vivre (2018), it was mostly Studio One. It's like being a painter, and deciding whether you're going to start with acrylics or oils. It depends on the type of painting you want to create...and how you feel that day

Run the Bandlab Assistant to update

Especially a Male Cat.

no

Oh, right, you mean those who believe that for some reason it's inherently not possible for the software methods that two different programs use to mix together multiple streams of digital audio and deliver them to the ear to make an audible difference? Because, "digital?" I should think the challenge would be to get multiple programs all doing that to sound reasonably similar, that is to sound like a good hardware mixing board doing the same thing.

Well, FOH guys are very touchy about feedback. LOL! 😆

Kewl tune, Wookiee!

This song is a rocker with a bit of synthesizer lead to spice it up. I thought it was a cool song - an interesting listen. Thanks for posting.

I think he said that he signed in to his account and everything was there. Happy time! There might have been some confusion between Cakewalk Sonar, Cakewalk by BandLab, a Cakewalk account, and a BandLab account. Have you ever been asked to renew your "membership?" Via a red warning and a blue warning? I have not seen these. The license for CbB is a subscription requiring renewal at least once every 6 months via the BandLab Assistant contacting BandLab's activation servers. The OP got it figured out. For anyone else reading this: connect computer to Internet. Start BandLab Assistant. Follow prompts. Enjoy renewed license.

Yes, loops available in BandLab Assistant may be used in Cakewalk by BandLab. Once a loop is downloaded, they are stored in folders in your Documents\BandLab which may be loaded into CbB either using drag and drop from BA or the folder itself.

Guys, I just noticed the thread is being locked, but stepping in here to give my two cents and hopefully a final word on this thread. Though in the history of the internet (or humanity!) there has never been a situation in which the words "Calm down" ever succeeded in calming things down 😂, I just want to make an honest plea that we try and keep the forum friendly, because it could overshadow the importance of why threads like this are posted in the first place. --- The original comment from @Davydh was that this video was sad to see, and I 100% agree. Any time a user is disappointed by, or has experienced disappointment whilst using one of our products/platforms/services, no matter what the reason or cause, our fault or not - it's disappointing and I am personally sad to have been part of that in some way - even more so if we are personally responsible. I'm happy for people to disagree with my opinion, but hopefully being someone who is directly affected by it means it has some weight - I think it's worth going on record to say my thoughts are that there wasn't any negative intent from Scott at @ChernobylStudios - his video was one of passion, frustration and disappointment, but that's very different to actively trying to disparage the company out of ill intent. I want to go on record too to stress that in all the communication I have seen from Scott with us (as BandLab), he has consistently been passionate, respectful, detailed and always wanting to make things better with suggestions that would benefit all users, not just himself. Since our relaunch, as he correctly pointed out, we have not had yet a policy in which we could compensate creators like himself - he spoke in his livestream of truly loving Cakewalk, caring about it and wanting it to succeed, and I think the proof is in the pudding in the videos he had personally spent the time creating (uncompensated) over the last 12 months since we took over. I sincerely doubt he would actively spend hours of his own personal time creating content that helps people all around the world with a sinister motive down the road. For what he has contributed positively to the CbB community around the world, I don't think it is controversial at all to say that I am grateful and appreciative. Do I wish the cancellation video & subsequent livestream wasn't public? Of course! As someone within the company, the only thing I'd love to see out there is flowers and rainbows (and I am thankful for all of you who have been part of this, spreading the word positively across the internet), but I'm equally a firm believer that every user should be entitled to voice his/her opinion and thoughts in the same way we can do anywhere else on the internet - praise always makes one happier, but criticism is more often than not what makes us better. --- To be clear, the facts of the matter are that he seems to have had a serious issue with VST settings not saving and resetting whilst using CbB and this is a real dealbreaker for us. This is incredibly concerning, and unfortunately (or fortunately, depending on how you look at your glass) we, and our extended testing team, have not been able to reproduce this on any of our devices/tests/attempts to do so. From what he described in his video, it sounds like it is not to do with VST2->VST3 persistence, so if it is really the case that something within our code is causing VST settings not to save, this is a big deal and I want to stress to everyone here that this isn't something we take lightly. We are doing everything we can to figure this out and address it as we do with every serious bug report. As per @Morten Saether's post above, this post is also an active call for anyone who has experienced this before and can replicate it to get in touch so that we can try and figure out what is causing it and ensure it doesn't happen again to any other user. --- Finally, it's also important for me to emphasise that just because CbB is free does not mean we take things less seriously or that you should expect any less from us. The way the team lives, breathes and is set up is as if it were a $1000 product that people paid for. My point of view is that anybody who uses a professional product is investing their own personal time, and frankly for a product like a DAW, the time they spend on it is ultimately worth far more than how would have paid for it outright if it was a $400 boxed product - this is a responsibility we take seriously and we are always trying to figure out ways we can support the CbB users better now it has grown so much larger than it was before. Thank you again to everybody for your support and for caring enough about CbB to speak up and to continue to be part of this community. We continue to do everything we can to make the product better - feedback from you guys is why this forum (and CbB itself) exists in the first place. How I wish we could get things done faster. If only there were more than 24 hours in the day! Yours, Meng