John Vere

I’m not very up on this stuff but wouldn’t you use midi learn in the effect? Like I can easily change a lot of parameters of both effects and VSTi from my Roland keyboard which has a couple of knobs for this. I just choose midi learn and wiggle the knob. Of course I’m using specific channels for this. 
I use one knob to control level and the other is for the effects send. 
I have 6 instruments each on its own channel. 

That button is why. 
 

My midi tracks are normally on the grid. But the issues I encountered were all to do with using normal editing to remove or copy paste parts of tracks or whole sections of songs. Once you add the arranger these edits will go south on you. 
I also noticed the commit arrangement to project never seems to work. 
 

Just personal update to this. 
First I avoided Music Maker in my shop for DAW video and received a few angry comments and emails. So I downloaded and installed it and what a s—t show of bloatware and yep, had to remove the generic driver from Reg Edit. 
It has adds built in and just very annoying stuff. Then once you finally deal with all that the DAW itself is possible the most lame useless piece of poo out of the 14 others I’m demoing. 

Anyways the good news was while I was on the web site I saw the demo link for Vegas Pro so downloaded it and just installed it today. It is exactly like MS 17 I’ve been suffering for the last 4 years. 
But hopefully with out crashing every 5 minutes.  I’m just going to take it for a spin after lunch. 
But wow was it nice to not have to learn something new. And it opens all my MS 17 files perfectly. 
To me it’s like I was stuck with Sonar X1 for the last 4 years and just discovered Sonar 2024. At least I’m hoping. 

I gave up on the arranger a while back as I found it totally buggy. 
It’s only function for me is as more visible markers or for placement of lyrics. But even that screwed up a song one day that I wanted to cut out a chunk. So it’s off limits for me until they fixit. 
It seems to work properly in Cakewalk Next. As well as they copied my idea for the lyric display track. 

Grab yourself a Backstage pass and try this in Next. It’s a perfect DAW for simple Midi and Audio stuff. 
 

What the Aural Exciter did was add harmonic distortion to higher frequencies. Many coloured compressors do this,   I think the  Molotok by Tokyo Dawn is one. Free. 

There’s no big difference if you have the TTS-1 installed already. 

You still have to make sure nothing is selected in your midi outputs. 
 

And if the tts-1 is added after you have midi tracks loaded just add the TTS-1 and then select all the tracks and use the tracks

/ selected tracks output to choose the TTS-1 

3 hours ago, njm255 said:

Not trying to argue, just curious. I see a lot of people say that "their DAW" is so much better than the others and I'm curious what features Sonar has that are not commonly available in others. I've been dabbling in Cubase and haven't found anything particularly better or worse than Sonar, just different, but everybody claims one is better than the other.

Example for me two that are very important Smart tool. And tempo map created by a simple drag and drop to timeline.
 Actually the whole of  Sonars PRV I think is one of the best. I didn’t see one that had the built in track selection inspector which also allows layers as well as soloing muting of midi and audio tracks. 
I think the people who find no difference are just people who don’t use all of Cakewalk/ Sonars features. Fine.
The smart tool alone is a deal breaker for me. 
 

It totally depends on your personal workflow. 
Some of the DAWs I tried you can see would be way better than Sonar if you are using only loops as example. 
Some DAWS have much better tools for manipulation and randomly changing stuff around for creative composing. 
As a musician who can play a wide variety of instruments and sing I need totally different tools than people who are just experimenting with sound. Modern DAW’s are mostly aimed at non musicians. 
Cakewalk/ Sonar has just about everything to record and more importantly edit midi and audio. This is what I found lacking in most of the others. 

I have been demoing about 10 top DAW’s. Sonar blows them all away. Trust me. Each DAW might do a few things better or different but not one of those has the features Sonar has.
And don’t forget that they are not finished with building it! In 2 years I bet it will have some long awaited features added like chord track, sample player etc. 

Im most definitely purchasing it when made available. 

The only way I’m aware of is to open a bunch of Projects that are stored on that computer. I think it only keeps about 12. 
I’ve had issues in the past when opening projects from a storage drive that was now disconnected. 

If you don’t own a keyboard controller then use the virtual keyboard. But the downside is it only sends one velocity. 
Anyone who wants to record midi should purchase a keyboard controller. 

SonoBus. A free app that can be used as a plug in on your Master Bus. It is also a stand alone PC, OS and Android app. 
I use it to send Cakewalk playback to my cell phone as a proofing tool. 
It uses your network.
So I could play my latest mix for you anywhere in the world. 
Sound quality is subject to settings and bandwidth. 
So in my home using CAT5 networking, computer to computer,  I can have higher sound quality. 

I have converted possibly over 100 bass tracks to midi so here’s what to expect. 
Yes it will be an octave lower for most VSTi like SI  and AmpleP Bass. 

Yes the duration will be overlapping which can cause the following note to be cut off. 

Yes there will be missed or additional notes. 
 

Tips: 

Record the bass loud. Don’t worry if you go red as it won’t matter in the end. It is  best to be max at -4db. If it isn’t then use Normalization to -4 db. 

Use only  1 PU that is the cleanest sound. Muddy sound won’t give good results but a brighter clean sound will. 

Those false notes are caused by unwanted notes being played or harmonics. So focus on clean and simple. It’s easy enough to add the fancy stuff later. 
Yes no matter what editing will be required. 

My routine is drag the bass audio track  to AmpleP bass track holding Shift to keep it in time. Use melodic setting.

Select all - Transpose 12  then pull duration back about 1/32 or until notes don’t overlap. 
Still selecting all, grab the lowest  velocity tail and drag it to max. Let go. Now drag them all back to around 106. That’s a sweet spot for AmpleP bass which is definitely the best I’ve ever had. 
 

Now start playback and edit duration and move notes around etc. I can do this pretty fast now. 
I might also open the drum track and then open the bass lane while holding CTRL so I can see the kick drum placement ghost in the background. 

1 hour ago, mettelus said:

After the lessons learned from Gibson, I would never buy a VST(i) locked to a DAW, let alone subscribe to one.

THIS!  I the process of trying all these other DAw's this is something you start noticing. Some of Cakewalks plug ins are a no go in the other DAW's and this creates a small/big issue for being future proof.  It made me realize that one should avoid using any of these "locked" plug ins on your projects so you are not tied to that one DAW. 

It seems a lot of DAW's are priced based on how many of these goodies they dangle in front of you. Sonar is about to do the same thing,   Most of us have all that stuff already. I found it humorous they dug up Session Drummer. 

Take any given DAW and look at what it costs over a longer period of time , 5 years minimum.  It’s pointless to only look at what it costs for 1 year. 

I’ve been test driving Studio one along with Bitwig, Cubase and Mixcraft.
Studio one and Cubase are the closest to Sonar in features but possibly double the price? Of course I don’t know yet but that’s what it’s looking like to me. And no smart tool is a deal breaker for me.  As said above you have to look at the price of the Artist versions for a better comparison. 

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. 

17 minutes ago, Matss said:

mmm i don't understand

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. 

1 hour ago, David Baay said:

You don't even need to do that. Excluding plugins just hides them from the menus so they can't be added to a new project; it won't stop the plugin from being loaded in an existing project that uses it.

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. 

12 hours ago, Promidi said:

Use only VSTs that you actually need.

On that note: I do not have Cakewalk scan VSTs on start up - I only ever do vst scans manually, and on demand  -when I add a VST.

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.