Some Guy

We're in the Late 2010s. Adobe and other companies have had tutorials online for years. Cakewalk themselves did tons of videos on SONAR, for years. They started on YouTube, 8 years ago, so the idea that there was some lack of video content about this DAW is a bit of a stretch - considering there is very little value in duplicating this type of content. You'll find similar with Pro Tools, Media Composer, Premiere Pro, Audition, Samplitude, and a host of other software. There has been an increase in video content for all of this software, over the years, as mediums like YouTube have increased in popularity. The only thing that has been wanting, is the other stuff - which has increasingly disappeared. You're living in whatever world you choose to live in, where what you prefer is what is apparently preferable to everyone; and what everyone else should see. Again, I didn't say "Death to YouTube Tutorials." I simply stated that written or PDF documentation and actual help files don't need to die to make room for them. Read the thread. Keep things in their proper perspective... dude.

Yes, the FUD is at an all time high, these days.

That's because your movies are encoded for stereo playback. How well will this work in a video trying to teach you how to pan surround sound on YouTube, when the creator renders it as stereo or YouTube downmixes it to stereo? The only way to get any value out of that, is to actually be given the media to follow along with the tutorial - using the actual software. (Assuming the user has the appropriate hardware.) People are reacting as if I said "Death to all YouTube Tutorials" and want them all replaced with PDF files. That is not what I stated. What I stated is that Cakewalk should provide the PDF Documentation and CHM Help Files because that stuff works, and almost all of it still applies to Cakewalk by BandLab. Removing it doesn't help anyone. It does the opposite, for no reason other than "this is what they've chosen to do." And all you have to do is perform any search on that documentation site to see how bad it is. It's not like I didn't try to use it 😛

Except the user guides are nothing like that... so the exaggeration is neither appropriate nor logical. Secondly... User Guides and Tutorials can be done in multiple ways... Take Blackmagic Design, for instance. They have a Fairlight Tutorial Book with 4-5GB of footage that comes with it so that you can follow along with each lesson. So no... It's not that audio tutorials have never had audio. It's just that the audio tutorials that you've taken/read have failed to provide it. Providing sample audio and tutorials so that users can follow along has been very common, for at least a decade... Adobe, iZotope, and others have all done this for several years... 😉 Ear training from a YouTube video... Cute.

1. You shouldn't be doing serious work on a Laptop not connected to power, the battery life will be terrible; especially if you have heavy projects. I don't think that is even a concern. It's more common sense. I guess usable in crunch time... but you'll be constantly cycling settings to avoid massive drainage when not producing music on the same machine, when it isn't connected to power... 2. I don't dual boot my machines. Fast Start Up hasn't caused any issues for me. When I did dual boot, I used different drives for each OS. I stopped dual booting when Laptops moved to UEFI, and I don't personally see a point in dual booting different versions of Windows on the same machine, personally. 3. That's not the way Telemetry Works on Windows 10. There is one Telemetry service that takes telemetry data on the PC, and it sends it to Microsoft at intervals. Apps don't just constantly phone home. Use a network inspector on your PC to see. Telemetry on Windows functions like a mailbox system. All the apps put their telemetry in the Mailbox (Data Store) and every now and then the mailman (Telemetry Service) takes it to Microsoft. And let's not get conspiratorial about this stuff... … cause Apple collects telemetry data, as well (as do individual developers - so this often becomes a wild goose chase to find the settings to disable it, if possible). There are ways to block the ports or the service itself in a firewall, but that doesn't stop it from attempting to send the data to Microsoft. It's easy to stop these UWP apps from running in the background - you simply go to settings and turn off Background Apps. This affects all of the UWP apps installed with Windows 10, and from the Windows Store, but not Win32 Apps (i.e. Cakewalk, Pro Tools, etc.) You cannot shut off the Telemetry Services in Windows 10. Yes, there are Group Policy Settings there, but like some others, it only works for Enterprise and Educational SKUs. The only thing you can do on Windows 10 Home and Pro is switch between Basic and Full. Turning the Group Policy Setting to disable the telemetry is literally equivalent to setting it to Basic on Home and Pro. This was changed by Microsoft in 2016.

Many of the settings in Group Policy editor are vestigial. Many don't work. This has been common information for years, now. It worked for like the first 8 months of Windows 10, but Microsoft disabled a lot of those afterwards - in the first feature update. This includes the Pro SKU. You can defer for 1 year on Pro, and then it will force installation of Feature updates. You can defer security updates for 1 month, and then you'll have to enable it. Many of us have kept up on this. I suggest people interested in these things keep an eye on sites like WindowsCentral.com to be on the up and up for these things. The unlimited deferral only works on Enterprise and Educational SKUs - not Home and Pro. And Microsoft has been fairly forthcoming about these changes. We used to use Group Policy Settings to disable things like Telemetry, as well 😛 That got "nerfed," too. Example? What you see in Group Policy Editor literally doesn't matter. What matters is whether or not Microsoft has designed the system to care about that setting for the Windows SKU you're running 😛 It's pretty obvious that Microsoft can - easily - set the OS to ignore a Group Policy Setting for your particular Windows SKU, and they have done this for dozens of them. They are not dumb enough to pass up the Windows update settings, and they definitely haven't done so... It was confirmed like... years ago that this was nerfed. Google it, if you must...

It's easy to turn off. It just turns itself back on after a span of time or on reboot. Turning it off permanently is not easy, no. But it's simple enough to toggle, so not a biggie. They needed to enforce this because the millions of porn addicts don't care if they send their mothers malware. Sometimes a heavy hand is best, and no point in doing so if they can so easily disable it... Windows 10 definitely performs better than 7, while being a lot more efficient. The code is definitely tighter and Microsoft has decreased bloat significantly. A lot of ancient code is being updated, replaced, or culled entirely.

1. Not possible on Windows Home. Can only defer (not disable) on Pro (feature updates for a year, and a month for security uodates). 2. Only do this on a laptop if it never leaves the charger - in which case why not just get a desktop 😛 3. See above. 4. This can cause issues sometimes, but typically with software with a very old code base. Never had an issue with it (or with Cakewalk). I've never turned this off, personally. 5. This is the one thing to look over. But, with Windows Home, you are very limited in what you can accomplish. Security headline are 85% FUD, anyways. Irrelevant if the PC isn't internet connected. Registry entries are vestigial in Windows SKUs that don't support the feature. They exist, but do nothing. So what websites tell you to do are often ineffectual. Microsoft is smarter. --- Things I recommend: - Disable Background Apps for all but staples (like Microsoft Edge, Groove Music, etc.) - this affects UWP apps only. - Enable Long Paths

How are you supposed to know how N thing sounds from a YouTube video, often badly recorded and super compressed/transcoded? You know the same way Homo Sapiens discovered cooking. You try it and see. That's the most optimal way to learn. Context Sensitive Help was developed to facilitate this. Anytime you had an issue, you pressed F1 and the help file popped up on the screen explaining to you what this thing is. The current help system for CbB is awful. The website is not responsive. Web Browsers eat up lots of RAM and CPU. The search is worse than that of a PDF reader. The Website is horribly laid out and not very "responsive." Don't think I've stated that YouTube tutorials were "utterly bad." I simply stated that they were a waste of time, because many of them waste tons of minutes (which add up) bloviating about things that don't matter, or are tangential to the subject... like: Gibson's old SONAR macOS Alpha and the BandLab iOS app in a video talking about Installing Cakewalk by BandLab (~2:30 long, but doesn't actually start talking about the installation process until 0:55 in. Meanwhile, nothing was said about the actual installation process itself - especially pertaining to how you can put the Content Folder on a different drive if you do an Advanced installation; or how to set up your Project Directory in a specific place. Watching that video is literally a waste of time... yet, it exists. No disrespect to the creator, but it's 2:30 of filler content that really accomplishes nothing at all except to "just be there." Meanwhile, a user could just open up a Quick Start Guide PDF distributed with the application and all of this is spelled out to them, in more detail. Text is superior to video because you can fit more content and explain things more thoroughly in that medium. No one wants to produce 30-45 minute videos for every feature, but that's literally what you'd have to do to offer as much useful information as an actual user guide or context sensitive help system. I just want the documentation to be more accessible, as in other products.

There were a few side discussions mixed in there. So more like 4 pages of relevant posts to the topic, and 2 page of posts related to that while the rest are... not totally relevant 😛

i7 Kaby Lake is fine. Coffee Lake is after (newer than) Kaby Lake. Obviously how you use the software (project size, types and numbers of plugins/instruments, etc.) has a huge impact on what you choose to run it on.

The Political/Economic discussion is over, and has been for a while... So you clearly aren't referring to that, as it would make little sense at this point.

That discussion is on topic. Thank you, though.

Ugh... That was kind of my point in regards to value proposition... I've used the trials, multiple of them seemed to work well. Additionally, some of them come from companies that also produce NLEs that natively round trip with them, and the integration works as expected. DAWs like DP have amazing video engines and are designed specifically for the needs of film post production. Like any consumer that values his money, I'd choose the one that works best for my needs, if I were to buy one of those... the same thing someone would have done with SONAR., when it was a paid product. That works if you render audio and just drop it on Audio Tracks on the timeline. I neve said that wouldn't work, but I like a more refined workflow. I want to Sync Audio Timelines between the DAW and NLE. AAF works well with most of those, cause I've tried it. Hell, even VEGAS Pro handles AAF and can do decent Audio Post - even if you never edit video in it. I think this omission has less to do with perceived inadequacies of AAF support, and more to do with Cakewalk ignoring that market. Never insinuated that I wanted market-leading instruments, otherwise I wouldn't be looking at GPO. I'm just looking for adequate in a nicely integrated package 😛 I have better things to do than trial out all the free stuff on the internet. Time passes a bit quicker for me, these days 😛

That's increasingly not true: DAWs with AAF Support: Pro Tools Cubase Nuendo Samplitude Sequoia Studio One Digital Performer Logic Pro X etc. … I can list others, if needed. OMF is a legacy interchange format, and AAF is meant to replace it. So it isn't even really worth implementing OMF support in this day and age. You just go straight to AAF, instead. AAF is needed. OMF support is often pretty bad, and most NLEs don't support it at all. I don't need AAF for transferring from DAW to DAW. I need AAF to transfer between NLE and DAW... It's a major workflow enhancement.

I can Competitive Upgrade to Digital Performer for $395. Or Buy Samplitude Pro X4 for $399. For people doing loop-based music (not me), ACID Pro 8 is $149 and is perfectly usable for upstarts, and ships with all the needed Instruments and Synths, plus a ton of Loops; and they're pretty good quality (same as the ones used in other MAGIX DAWs). VSCO isn't that great. I've tried it (multiple times). It's worse than the VITA instruments you get from MAGIX (which I have also used) with Music Maker. Just loading MIDI files and playing them with each Piano, the difference is beyond noticeable (not to its benefit). I'd just get Garrison Personal Orchestra if I were to stick with Cakewalk by BandLab ($150). With a DAW like Samplitude or Digital Performer, I'd just use what they come with; which is perfectly serviceable. Once you hear better instruments, it's hard to listen to that... I also need AAF Support. That's $200 for AATranslator - unless I switch my NLE to Premiere Pro CC (which has good OMF support), but that increases costs by $250+/year... So AA Translator is the way to go, there. A lot of the Cinematic Loops were useful outside of Trance, etc. The loops for those genres, I'd just ignore , clearly. In any case, they were value adds, which was my point. For those who used them, it helped justify the price of the higher SONAR SKUs (SONAR and other DAWs). I don't do much with drums. I mainly need decent Orchestral instruments and good MIDI editing, so the Drums and Electronic Guitar stuff is of very little use to me. But I will definitely say that my needs aren't "typical" for the user base this software has tended to keep; although I can also say bringing in users like me is a natural consequence of what they've done by opening up the product to everyone 😛

macOS is a UNIX operating system. It's not hack-of-Linux. Lol... And a lot of the value isn't in the core OS, but the layers on top of it. Those APIs and SDKs don't write themselves... Companies tried bringing Commercial consumer-market software to the Linux market. The users [generally] didn't want to pay for it. So, multiple companies almost killed themselves with "Linux strategies" and not the market has largely been scared off. Server OSes are always LTS, and they are managed differently than consumer machines... RH made it's money through support, not software sales (despite the fact that RHEL was more expensive than Microsoft Windows). XP was designed for hardware from the 99-01 era. Vista has much higher system requirements, and Windows 7/8/10 basically have the same requirements as Vista. XP was designed for the type of hardware that would run Windows 2000. It's going to bottleneck newer windows versions. I have a low end laptop here (designed for 7) that is slow no matter what OS I put on it. Ubuntu, Windows 7, Windows 10... It doesn't matter. Slow CPUs, RAM, Storage, etc. is going to be slow. Most people who say installing Linux gave the PC a new lease on life are really describing a placebo effect. Linux has system requirements too, and unless you strip it down incredibly and run a low-requirement desktop environment (which Unity, GNOME, and KDE all are/were not), it would run just as badly on that slow hardware.

A lot of those free Effects and Instruments are terrible-to-mediocre. I'm actually speaking from experience, because Cakewalk being free was initially the big "pull" to me... However, the "price" is not working out to be much of a competitive advantage since I'll probably have to pay $200 to bolt on AAF support, $150 for Orchestral Instruments (like Garrison Personal Orchestra 5), and then some - even if other DAWs have perfectly serviceable content for my uses. The "Free" stuff that I've found has been pretty lackluster (worse than a lot of the stuff that is bundled with DAWs), and that's not even touching on things like Cinematic Loops/One Hits/SFX and similar content that is bundled with DAWs, these days (i.e. SONAR Platinum actually bundled a decent amount of this type of content). So, I'm stuck at a weird situation where I like the interface and the way it's integrated/optimized well for my choice platform... but it might not be worth it in the grand scheme of things because other DAWs come with perfectly usable content out of the box, and it would be a one and done purchase for me at this point. I'm not very interested in the EDM/Trance/Hip Hop type stuff that is popular, these days 🙂 Plus, having to manage all of those licenses (and probably multiple extra web accounts) vs. one DAW purchase. Convenience is also a factor, at least for me.

Yes. BMD reduced the price of the paid version from thousands to $999, then to $299 and released a Free Version that's better than any consumer NLE and many Prosumer NLEs for free. It's basically the industry-standard color grading platform, and they purchased Fairlight and EyeOn and integrated Fusion (VFX/Compositing) and Fairlight (Audio Post) into the NLE... then added collaboration features. So it's very hot and it's being recommended to any and everyone because it's "Free" and people are tired of paying super high Avid prices or Adobe subscriptions, among other things. Available for Windows, macOS, and Linux. The hype train is at a fever pitch. Theoretically, something like this could have happened with Cakewalk, but I think the purchase coming after the shutdown hurt (so many people may still view it as a "dead" product)... and also the DAW market isn't as ripe for disruption as the NLE market is/was. DaVinci's standing as a premiere color grading platform also helped it, as people are using that aspect to sell others onto it (Since LOG and HDR are FADs now, even with Smartphone apps like Filmic Pro 😛. SONAR never really had a selling point like that, and a lot of the really good stuff was stripped out of the package, anyways. The DAW market is also full of "Competitive Upgrade" offers. I would say, though, that this should have basically killed Audacity on Windows 😛 No point in using that over Cakewalk, unless you value HDD space that much (or need to import/export formats Cakewalk doesn't support).

It's because Instruments, Effects Packages, Plug-Ins, and features like AAF support are worth money too. Free is nice, but it's a pretty barebones package. You really need to add a lot on top of it to approach what those other DAWs offer out of the box... and many upstarts won't need to buy anything after buying those other DAWs; at least not for a while. The value-adds are often more than worth the increase in price. Melodyne Essential is $99, by itself. Most Paid DAWs bundle this. Instruments and Effects Packages can easily run into the $200+ range if you get something as good as what MAGIX, MOTU, Steinberg, etc. bundle out of the box. At the end of the day, the price of those DAWs is actually quite small, and "Free" for a bare bones package like CbB isn't really that attractive of a value proposition to many. People are discriminate with their choices. It's so easy to do research on these things, these days, and you also are fighting the momentum other products have in the media (i.e. YouTube, Tech Press, etc.). SONAR has existed long enough that Professionals who already own all the Plugins, Instruments, etc. that they need have already - largely - settled on a DAW... SONAR itself, or something else. I don't think it will get the sort of "DaVinci Resolve" effect people are hoping for because DAWs are still - largely - perpetually licensed (or have that option); and many people don't feel the need to constantly upgrade their software year-over-year; especially on Windows, which has excellent backward/forward application compatibility. I think if his was an NLE, it would have been more disruptive. I also think that it could have been a bit more disruptive on macOS, because that platform actually has more room for competitors "under" the "Standards," compared to Windows. The Windows application ecosystem is extremely cutthroat, because there are also viable options for people at the lower end of the market for low cost ($150 or less), which deliver a very nice (more complete "out of the box") package.

Capitalism is all about the consumer. If you don't like a corporation's actions, stop buying their stuff. If enough people do, they will change their model to something acceptable to the customers, or cease to exist. They don't actually hold much power, which is why they lobby governments as hard as they do... If you want it to be more fair... then you have to make a sacrifice. It's people's unwillingness to give up conveniences that leaves them ripe to be exploited. Companies know this, but it doesn't mean they are in control The consumers are. They are the ones who shell out the cash. They're just too unwilling to make the hard decisions and make the sacrifices needed... This is why capitalism brings huge increases quality of life, but is typically followed by corporations that exploit the unwillingness for people to take a step back when they're being exploited. People don't like giving up small conveniences. That's why "First World Problems" is a meme. The benefits of capitalism are great, but it also comes with huge societal responsibilities - which we have been pretty shoddy at dealing with, BTW... Facebook will exploit all those users, who still sit in a corner complaining as they say it's "too hard to leave" because they won't be able to "keep in touch" with the people they know... Facebook makes these things easier, it doesn't make them possible. It's a convenience, but it comes at a price... what gives Facebook power is not their product, but people's unwillingness to seek alternatives and/or just walk away from it. The consumers hold the key, but they will never use it because they are convinced they have nothing to benefit from doing so.

Someone sent me the files in question... but I'm actually a bit nonplussed that BandLab hasn't said anything about this - fairly trivial - issue. Seems like such an odd, yet fundamental, thing to ignore.

Capitalism is all about the consumer. If the people allow companies to exploit them, and their wallets... its their choice. It's actually quite democratic 😛 We just love making excuses for things and acting like we can't live without Facebook, Twitter... a smartphone... whatever. First world problems. If people would change how they look at these things, and start valuing the money they're slaving for, day after day, it would easily correct itself.

It's hard to maintain a secure, stable platform and innovate when you have users spread across 4-5 different OS revisions, causing developers to design and develop apps for the least common denominator (i.e. Windows XP). XP's driver model, security model, etc. all different from Vista (and later) in some major ways - the same way Windows 2000 was a big jump from Me. XP had a bad firewall and didn't even have built in AV/AMW. It was limited to DirectX 9. It doesn't support the most recent CPUs and developing drivers for both Vista/7+ and XP is expensive - this is why OEMs dropped support for a lot of older hardware in the move from XP to Vista. Similar things happened with Windows 9x /Me to Windows NT/2000. This is hard with software, which can contain their own bugs and vulnerabilities... With an Operating System... the costs are exponentially higher. This also limits how Microsoft can design and develop it's own software, due to XP's limitations. On top of that, they have to maintain other components like .NET, Compilers, Application Frameworks and Libraries, etc. because developers expect backward/forward compatibility on Windows - to a greater extent compared to other platforms. At the end of the day, getting everyone on a single platform where they just get feature updates (similar to Apple's macOS) is beneficial both to users and to Microsoft. Users don't have to worry about paying to upgrade their OS, or having applications drop support for the OS they have on their PC (Windows supports old[er] PCs better than macOS, where this actually is an issue); and Microsoft gets to [eventually] stop supporting everything back to XP. Getting a new PC is no longer about raw system requirements for the OS (i.e. XP vs. Vista), but for the user's needs IRT the applications they run and the technological advances in the computer industry (Biometrics, AI, 3D Printing, etc.). If they weren't dumb and allowed OEMs to put Vista Capable stickers and give Vista Upgrades away with low end hardware in 2007, they would not have been in this pickle 😉 Windows 8 didn't help, either.

I'm pretty sure economic reasons for Chrome being free are not in the least bit related to the ideological reasons for Audacity being free... … ...