John Vere

Actually the Halion is one of my least favourite of the GM players. If you look on my You Tube channel you will see I demoed all the different players and played a midi file through each and then compared the sound quality. The Halion was down the list. Example the guitar patch sounds like a Dobro? I just installed the Cubase 12 and I see it still sounds the same. There’s a few free sound fonts players I demonstrate in the video that work fine.

I think I demo this here.

I think I covered this in detail in one of my tutorials but the workflow I use starts with midi velocity. Example I only use 2 different Bass VST s. Ample p bass on most and I have settled on the velocity set at 106. So that is the starting point. Then the VST is set at 1.0 on its volume control. I leave track level it unity. This usually gives me about-3 db on the bass buss. I will then adjust to around-4.5 depending on song. But for my backing tracks this is set in stone. I too use AD for the drums and I built a kit and saved the preset. I do swap out snare drums but once again I start with the kick and snare velocity is never over 110. This way it always puts out about-3 db on the Drum buss. And then I dial in around-4 db depending on song but backing track this is set in stone. Definatly invest in the You Lean loudness meter it is a huge time saver with the paid version to be able to drag and drop individually tracks as well as your export mix.

Warning- I’m being attack in another thread for calling it a demo. But I can’t help but think of it otherwise. To me a Demo is what you have when you can try software but you haven’t bought it yet. It will expire if you don’t buy it. Im also demoing a bunch of the most popular DAW’s. Each one is different but all have a similarity in what they can accomplish. There’s just one deal breaker that is interesting and that is none of them so far use a smart tool! I find it now prehistoric to have to manually switch tools for midi editing. But none of them are subscription only. Most have different levels at different prices. I see no signs of needing re- activation. In the end Cakewalk/ Sonar has the best workflow for midi editing bar none. Problem I have right now I hope they fix is all the themes except Mercury have dark PRV. So for me Sonar is crippled. I’m still using Cakewalk in the meantime.

I don’t know why you choose to defend a company that you are not even an employee of . I am only stating what I observe buy being in the middle of Demoing 10 leading DAWs. They all allow saving so far. I haven’t gotten that far with all of them. It will take a while. Some like Cubase give you 2 months. They can call it what they like but Sonar is just another demo along with the rest. To me a Demo is software you can try out but you don’t own it yet. And I can compare different experiences between all of these different companies with what it takes to acquire the demos. Most require you create an account and register to access the demo. Bandlab was the only company I had to actually pay them something up front to demo their products. I don’t mind this because I support Cakewalk. I’ve had a free ride for 7-8 years thanks to them so $15 is a bargain. But that’s me. I’m not sure how Joe Public would think.

Does the stand alone version work. Did you re register the new computer on Celemony web site? Do you own your copy or was it the demo? The demo expires after a month.

Yes I know that, it’s a early access release. The point is that you can’t help but look at it as a demo seeing as how it is the full version with either a time limit or a crippled save or export function. That is standard of most demos. I have 10 different DAW demos loaded up right now including Sonar. Sonar to me is in demo mode because I haven’t bought it yet. I can’t think of it as anything else under those conditions. The only difference between it and the rest is I actually had to pay to demo it for more than 3 days.

Funny you should mention that! Often my financial advisor goes over my small collection of stocks and points out ones we should ditch and then asks me if there’s anything I was interested in? Next visit I think I’ll get him to check out if Bandlad is listed. I was certainly smart 12 years ago when staring at my brand new iPhone I bought some Apple!

Exactly but that was fine for a freebie but now it’s not.

In a way your paying $15 for a 1 month fully unlocked demo of 2 DAWS and some perks you might not be interested in.

Absolutely as well as have all the details attended to like the info on the web page. Tutorials and fancy promo videos press releases to the industry, unveiled at NAAM. They either have a brilliant plan that has yet to be revealed or they just don’t think things through. I have now been on all the major DAWs web pages and Bandlabs sites will need a lot of work if they want to look good out there. For almost a year the main thing you see is “Coming Soon”. ?? That’s unheard of elsewhere. I want to see Price and a demo the rest is exactly the same boring promo all the web pages have which I doubt anyone reads, I don’t, it’s all promo marketing speak and you rarely see what you want to know so on to the demo. I guess Cakewalk is the demo! What a confusing mess I feel sorry for any one who might have been interested.

I remember in the early 80’s I think the only drum machine was the Roland Comp Rhythm which used all analog stuff. I had one and we did a few bar gigs and it seemed absolutely no difference to the same crowd that was always there. You had to guess at tempo and figure out what a Fox Trot was. But that was the day we realized we got paid the same $400 for the weekend with one less person to share it with. The rest is history.

Cancer has removed more people from my life than I think old age has! But in amongst the sad stories are many of my friends and family that beat the *****. There’s a new treatment now called immunotherapy that has brought back at least 5 people I know. My son in law lived 10 year longer than his excepted time by simply eating only real food no alcohol a few reefers staying active and playing his LesPaul. And repeating the words I am not ready to die so FU cancer. But I 100 % understand the importance of a tight drummer. I played bass most of the time in real bands and there’s a huge difference when you have that unmistakable groove that only happens with a good drummer. The whole reason I ended up learning about midi was I just couldn’t stand playing with bad drummers. And possibly the punters wouldn’t notice the drummer was missing but it would just suck to have to go the canned drum route. But for me it’s that or stay at home which is the worst of the 2 evils

I’m working on a research project of looking at all the other DAW available to us. One thing becomes very apparent is that every one of those so far I’m demoing have very good official tutorials. Bitwig has them totally integrated into the software. Those companies obviously understand the importance of top quality tutorials to get new users up to speed in a hurry. It made me realize why Mike would focus on Sonar again. Probably didn’t get the stats from making Studio One videos. Cakewalk was free and had no official videos. So wide open market. Studio One is one of the more expensive DAWS and it has a lot of professional videos already. Majority of his subscribers couldn’t afford S1. So stats probably were dropping rapidly. You can make money on You Tube but it’s a stressful fight to maintain those stats. So back to Sonar which is yet to be seen how big the user base will be. But for now it will bring his stats back up. But really Bandlab will need to make proper tutorials to compete as like every one says. Now it is no longer the best free DAW. It is just another DAW and I’m finding some very good stuff out there in DAW land.

It was at least 20 seconds on my old machine but now about 10 on the new computer. I read where it has to load something into memory first.

Ya it’s a bit deceptive because that era the USB ports were never midi. They were for firmware updates and like in your case software patch managers. What is cool is this old stuff never dies!

I’ve abandoned it anyway. No time to waste on it. I was only interested in the Stem separation anyway. I just found a much better alternative. Mixcraft. I haven’t looked at it for years. Check out the demo. So far only thing missing is a smart tool. It has Ara for Melodyne and does 5 track stem separation. A download midi file not only loaded up instantly it sounds really good. Sonar has no GM player now. It comes with some really good plug ins. It has a store where they list 100’s of plug ins with a lot of fee stuff listed. Early days but so far I’m impressed. Only $120 too. I got a lot done in no time with out opening the manual. I think this one’s been overlooked and it’s just seen some major updates. I tried Studio One yesterday and the GM player has gotta be the worst of them all . It’s sort of like Cakewalk but it’s also $500. Out of my budget. Cubase is way out of my budget. I’m also going to look a few of the others just to see what is up. Some are very reasonably priced. Its 2017 all over again but things have improved at lot since then.

Not sure if it’s the same as my Korg 05r/w but you can’t output audio from each instrument from the analog outputs. It only outputs the stereo mix. So not sure why you are crashing Cakewalk? Obviously by its vintage it’s a 5 pin midi connection. So what are you using for your midi interface? You basically would have to record each part in a separate pass and mute the other sounds as you go. Personally because there’s much better sounds available with VST instruments to me I don’t think it’s worth the bother. Korg even has a VST version of this series. I only like to record the full instrument sounds they are way better quality than Combi mode which is on par with Cakewalk TTS-1 sounds.

I'm not sure why people keep saying " Everybody is going to subscriptions"?? That seems a misconception. I just was researching for the video I just made and I visited at least 14 other DAW websites and only Pro Tools was a subscription. All the more popular DAW's are all cash sales. Most have a few options starting with basic versions at affordable pricing. What is shocking is the sticker price for the top tier versions of some of them. You can bet that the marketing folks at Bandlab have been studying those same pages I visited and using that as part of making the upcoming decisions on pricing. So please stop overreacting about this. WE DON'T KNOW YET! And if it really concerns you why not send Bandlab a Email or use the "contact us" feature on the web site. Posting here might get a little notice from a few Cakewalk staff members but they have no control over this and it might even be doubtful Bandlab listens to their opinions. It is a good time to voice your concerns and it's great to share those with all of us, but that won't be heard by those who count.

@scook has not logged on to the forum since last September. I hope he is well as he’s been a part of my Forum life for a long long time. I learned more from him ( and @msmcleodthan anyone else here. If you go through my playlist starting with this one I have about 6 tutorials on using VST instruments you might want to start your own thread if you have further questions as it’s confusing to start helping a different person mid thread

The Op hasn’t been on the forum for 2 years. They have a few threads they started and abandoned.

As I say in the video, You are using the Mix recall from song 1 but all of a sudden at song 6 you get a better mix happening, you save song 6 as a mix recall and go back and apply that to mix 1. I'm not dead sure what happens if a track is missing. Would be easy to test. Tracks can be empty and hidden. The new Sonar has enhanced the Track manager to allow recalling track layouts based on custom pre sets. This will be a huge timesaver for people like you. Hide every thing but the strings! Then toggle back to the whole show with one click. Say what you will about Cakewalk ? Sonar. If you dig in deep it can do some pretty cool stuff.

That’s right. You have to name a track before you record. Any name changes after a track is recorded are not reflected in the audio folder The way to clean up a project is to use “Save As” and check copy audio with project and put it in a new location. Only the audio used in the current version will be copied to the new location.

This is definitely a job for mix recall . I use all the time for live recordings. It works perfectly if each project has the identical track layout. So a live recording is just that. But they can be 1 hour to 3 hours of material. So you might have 3 45 minute projects. Each has 12 songs. Get song 1 sounding good and save as a mix recall scene. Now you can apply that scene to the other projects or songs . All your settings and effects will be superimposed on the other projects. I think it’s covered in this video https://youtu.be/o18_HZgfGp0?si=hYnnp8Z6vJlc2qtk

My 2 cents.