John Vere

USB to Midi cables are very iffy way to connect older gear. They don't have a proper midi driver so often Cakewalk doesn't see them. ' You will need an Audio interface anyways to record the audio from the piano. So most cost effective solution is an Audio interface with Midi ports.

As they said. The signal from the track or instrument enters the channel strip at the top and travels downward. The Gain control is first, then the Pro Channel, ( can be pre or post FX rack) then the FX racky, then any effects or aux sends ( which can be pre or post fader) then the MSR module ( the Mute/Solo/Record) the pan and very last the output fader. Just like a real mixing board.

Good to know! I think I've obliterated Mr Tramp by now. That said it never crashed Cakewalk. I think I froze all those tracks. Yes Safe mode will be required to remove the plug ins from the project now. But I'm thinking what I've noticed is if I open any projects that the plug in is totally missing I just get a list. Therefore wouldn't it work to delete the plug ins and then the project should open just fine but with a list of missing plug ins?? Or is this a issue that happens with only 32 bit plug ins?

Yep, Exactly why I've avoided 32 bit plug ins for possibly 10 years now. I only have 2 left, one called Warp Delay that I used on 2 projects. And then Mr Tramp which was on a lot of stuff. I moved them to the 64 bit folder and I keep them excluded. On the off chance I open those projects I would simply re include it again. It's too bad because there were some pretty cool plug ins that were never updated to 64 bit. Mr Tramp I still think was the best Wurly and it had a great tremolo built in. I now use Lounge Lizzard. But the Warp delay is very weird and imposible to replace.

First no need to uninstall plug ins. Just exclude all the plug ins you don’t need in plug in manager. But it’s not the problem. DXI are not VST and do not use Bit bridge. Those are plug ins installed by Cakewalk and Groove player is the metronome. Bit Bridge is for old 32 bit VST2 plug ins which a lot of old freebies are. Plug ins that use an installer will show on your Windows App list. You can uninstall them from there. The rest are just dll files found in your plug in folders and you can delete them if you like. I just exclude them. To avoid 32 bit version I simply never install them as well as the Program files x82 pathway is not scanned.

Only sometimes. I’ve noticed you don’t always get the other notification. I opened Cakewalk on a laptop I don’t use much anymore and of course Cakewalk was out of date. So I had about 4 toast notices. After it updated I got only this one red one about logging in to activate. But that’s actually clear to me as I understand that I can either go to the help menu or open theWeb site. I click on the red notification and nothing happens. It is nice when software handles this automatically but right now Cakewalk is sitting on the brink of doom so it is what it is.

This! I first test plug ins on a second computer to help keep the clutter off my main DAW. I only install ones that I think I’ll find useful on main computer. Then every once in a while I open plug in manager and Exclude all the ones I haven’t been using. If need them it’s 10 seconds to un exclude later. I only run the scanner after I install a new plug in.

To get you up to speed check out my series of tutorials found here on the Tutorials sub forum. The first few take you on a tour of the skylight interface.

I think it is quite safe to say at this point that some version of Sonar moving forward will be affordable just for this reason. On the small chance that I don't continue with Sonar, I would for sure still purchase a basic version. Because.... Yes- we can use older versions but those better be X3 and backwards to be "Server proof" And ya, not a great choice unless you are desperate. I'm not that desperate. Sonar Plat still ultimately requires the old Gibson server to activate. They have no solid reason to maintain that as time goes on. Write that version off too! You get a artificial view of the Cakewalk user base from this forum which is mainly made up of long time users. The option to use an older version of Sonar is NOT an option for a huge majority of currant FREE Cakewalk users. A huge chunk of these people will look at other free DAW's. This is why I think they will come up with a real stripped down version that is either free of super cheap.

Thanks David for your back up. I honestly hate to see people struggling with audio systems as it is the biggest roadblock when trying to use a Computer to record audio ( unless you own a Mac? But there’s a simple solution that being a proper audio interface.

I just had a look at the web page. It has way too much against it as an audio interface. It actually breaks most of the rules. First- No ASIO driver Second- 44.1 / 16 recording quality the lowest standard. The USB return has no level control but it sort of looks like it can be sent to the headphones. You definitely don’t want it going to the Main outputs as for sure that would create the Loopback. Sorry if this sounds harsh, but you would have been making music a long time ago if you had a proper interface.

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Normally in Cakewalk all audio recording is a Wave file not a Riff. Does the clip actually show as a RIFF file? That seems wrong. Did you record it with Cakewalk or another app?

You are most likely using a 32 bit plug in. They need Bit Bridge to work on your 64 bit system. Most of us avoid using any 32 bit plug ins as they are often unstable. Lots of old freebies are only 32 bit but just not usually worth the bother.

If you don’t buy Sonar you will have no way to open CWP file once Cakewalk is de activated which will probably happen with in this year. You will need to have an older version of Sonar which the majority of CbB users don’t have. These are the people who are the most upset about all this. They have all their last few years of projects in a format that will now cost money to use. Im optimistic that they will solve this huge issue by offering a free version. A Sonar Home Studio 2024

That’s not Cakewalk. I haven’t seen any Activation notifications but those probably happened with the last update a few weeks ago. Please Don’t get Sonar and Cakewalk mixed up. Sonar is being constantly updated right now as well as you are reminded of the status of your lease every time you open it . I kinda doubt they will update CbB again now they put out that last couple of fires. Note they really didn’t need to do that but they did because it seems they still listen to the complaining here on the forum and deal with it Notice how quickly they added a couple of legacy themes! I think all smart people have moved on and are now waiting for the pricing of Sonar or trying other DAWS too. Why cling to a sinking ship. Move on. On my test computer which I just re built from my old machine, are demos for I think 7 DAWS as well as Next the new Sonar and Sonar Home Studio (2015) I didn’t even bother installing CbB.

Reading and looking at your screen shots on the other thread your issue is totally a matter of using the correct theme for Cakewalk You’re using a theme with a dark background which for some reason is the default. I also totally cannot work with that. So we have custom themes that fix that issue BUT. The new Sonar doesn’t support custom themes yet. The only theme with a white PRV is Mercury. Then track view looks terrible. So try Mercury the PRV has seen a million improvements since Sonar 4 and once you learn about them you would never go back. Id say it’s strongest asset is the smart tool. You really need to learn all its options to see how powerful it is compared to all other DAWS. You really have little choice but to move forward. We all had to do this and there’s always a short period of transition. All of us are going though this right now with Sonar. Just look at the thread titles on this page.

All I can say is anyone who has used Cakewalk would never survive using Next. The best example is Cakewalk’s user manual is over 1,900 pages and Next’s manual is only 246 pages. It is totally nothing todo with Cakewalk or Sonar it is like using a completely different brand. You can’t open Cakewalk by Bandlab projects. It is more aimed at the people who have been using the Bandlab app so they can work on a computer instead of a mobile device. You have nothing to loose by signing up for the free 3 day demo.

It’s usually the top of the list of how to optimize your PC for Audio and using a DAW. In Windows 10 it was easier to find it.

So are you just using a Demo version of Melodyne? Possibly that is the problem. This feature might be disabled.

It's been online activation since Bandlab took over. There's an Offline activation but the software was NEVER unlocked for permanent use. They obviously new from day one what they were going to do in the future. As Meng said in his first announcement " We are Baking up something special for you"

You cannot do anything to any audio clip that is open in Melodyne editor. This is why that is greyed out. That's why I said above I un-did the regional effect before I dragged the Kick drum. For the audio to midi you don't use Regional effect. You just drag the audio to an instrument or midi track and it will ask you which Algorithm to use. Use Melodic for bass and percussive for drums, And then If you want Guitar chords you use Polyphonic sustain. I highly recommend you watch the Celemony videos on their web site, they are very well done. I use Melodyne for way more than pitch correction. You can adjust time and level as well. As I said it's the best money I ever spent on software.

I fired up my Laptop. Checking in my apps it only shows Melodyne 4 installed. I open the stand alone and you see that it is not activated and if I click on Activate it takes me to the Celemony web site. I opened a project which has real drums and bass tracks and I dragged the Bass track to a midi track and it converted the audio to midi just like it always has for me for a long time. But what I never saw was the dialogue that asks you to choose the algorithm. I've think I always see that. It just asked me if I wanted to proceed. I then clicked on the Kick drum track and applied regional effects and this opened the editor with same toast message as the stand alone. It seems the Kick drum was represented in the editor and I noticed there's no option to choose algorithms they are greyed out. So I undid the regional effect and dragged the kick drum to a midi track. It took a long time and the progress bar was moving very slowly. It eventually crashed Sonar ( new version) But what will be different for you is you probably don't have Melodyne 4 installed. Check your Program files under Celemony. I come to the conclusion that people who started fresh with CbB over the last 2 year won't have Melodyne 4 and therefore the conversion no longer works. And I've never seen this crash before so obviously the Player version which doesn't have the option for the algorithms is touchy.

Instead of drums try a monophonic track like a Bass? But @Craig Anderton mentioned the other day that the Polyphonic separation works even if you don't have the Versions of Melodyne that support it in the editor. I think you can purchase Elements dirt cheap. It's most certainly worth it. I couldn't function with out Melodyne now. It goes on sale a lot. But what I did was started with elements and every year Black Friday sale, took the discounted price upgrades and so now I have the full version and I think it worked out a lot cheaper that way.

You could be right but I also don’t think I have a way to test it as my older computers all came with Melodyne 4 which doesn’t seem to expire. I was to understand this changed when 5 came out and I guess Melodyne very basic version stopped being free. But I do think it’s called Melodyne Player remains. So possibly it still does the converting. Lots of the DAWS I’m testing do ARA audio to midi conversion. My test computer doesn’t have Melodyne Studio 5 installed. All the software on that computer is free stuff. But that’s also where I installed Home Studio. I know HS always did audio to midi. I do have one Laptop that is W7 and CbB I use for live shows that I could try it on.