Matthew Carr

@msmcleod has given you your best option: One project with all the mixed down audio and using the arranger feature is definitely the best way to go if you want a smooth experience and be able to move from one song to another without pauses . Add MCI controls to stop playback just before the end of each section, and map the stop, start, next arranger section and previous arranger section to your midi keyboard and you'll have a working setup far better than having to manually load project files between songs... If you're using VST instruments for sound generation it gets a bit harder, esp if you have different sounds for each song coming from different vsts. In that case, you could try creating a track folder for each song in your setlist, add instrument tracks setup with your vsts for that song to the folder, set the audio output of the instrument tracks going to a patch point audio track also in that folder, and set the output of the patch point to go to your audio output. Then you can automate the patch point track to only be active for the current song - in that way you'll have a folder of vsts that can only be heard for a specific song when you play your keyboard. Of course this means you'll end up with a lot of instrument tracks - which are all creating audio when you play midi in - which could overwhelm your computer depending on the number of tracks and vsts used. Personally, I tried something like this approach but as each song needed a specific set of patches using different vst it became too complicated and I ended up buying software specific for live use (www.gigperformer.com). Some might consider it expensive at $149, but it takes away all the pain of using VSTs live, is easy to use and understand yet super configurable - and is rock solid. I have full confidence in my setup now that just wasn't there when trying to push Cakewalk in a direction it's not really meant for, and the lack of stress before a gig is worth it! For just backing tracks and hosting vsts, gigperformer will be enough, but my setup is complicated so now I have a cakewalk project with arranger sections to do playback of my backing tracks / dmx / notation and midi PC to outboard gear - including a midi PC to gigperformer to switch to the correct rackspace of VST instruments for that song. Works great, and was worth the effort / cost to set up.

Be prepared to put in some significant effort, but it's all possible and works well. For weekend warriors the standard seemed to be DMXIS, but to me that's a bit old in the tooth now and the hardware is discontinued. I used a free program (Q Light Controller plus) v4, not the beta, which lets you define your fixtures, functions, and create a virtual console with buttons & sliders for controlling scenes & functions. Once built, the virtual console console can be triggered by Midi so you can use a midi track to push buttons on the virtual console to sequence the lighting to a click or backing tracks. I even went as far as creating a drum map with the mappings from midi to virtual console... yes, it took a long time! 😅 You'll need some piece of hardware to generate the DMX. In my case I already had ethernet in my rig, so chose an Artnet to DMX node similar to this, although QLC+ supports various USB devices as well. Good luck!

Mix Recall is great feature which I use a fair bit, so glad to hear there could be improvements in the pipeline

I use an XR18 as my interface, the lowly brother of the X32, and I have absolutely no issue with it at all - it's a superb piece of kit for the money. Latency is as good as any usb interface (unless you want to spend big bucks on RME), and you're getting 18 in (with physical connections) / 18 out (over usb), built in DSP, a mixer with eq / compression / noise gate on each channel, and 6 busses (for outboard gear or IEM mixes) - perfect for a small band. I deal mainly with live sound, so there may be interfaces with better pre-amps etc, but for my purposes it's great. Being able to record on 18 channels simultaneously is just great for recording live sound. The x32 is 2 x XR18 with more (physical faders, more busses / fx slots etc).

Good outside the box thinking! Although in my case I prefer to use the timeline and have arranger sections for each song (just to easily see where they are on the timeline) as there are other tracks with midi events happening for external gear as the track plays - plus I can also display midi data in the staff view while the song plays, giving me a leadsheet that follows the click track 🙂

One of the biggest issues with using a laptop is DPC Latency, and it's hard to find reliable data on whether a particular laptop is affected. A laptop with good specs can be rendered useless for audio work if thermal management or some other driver introduces large DPC latencies - it's much more prevalent on laptops than desktops. https://www.notebookcheck.net/ has tested this laptop, and it seems it could be ok as the drivers causing issue are network drivers (prob wireless) which can be turned off when doing audio work, and power settings probably haven't been optimised for audio work. Having a personal recommendation for the model you're buying, or better still a hands on test, would be my preference before splurging If you do end up buying it, an update here on how you find it would be great to help others.. 🙂

For anyone reading, AZSlow3 updated AZController so it can move to named markers in response to a midi message (and he even provided a preset which would prevent moving to the marker if the transport was playing) - absolutely perfect! 😄

Hi @azslow3, Thanks for suggesting a couple of ways to approach this. I think the second option of adding a "<current state text>" option would be the most elegant implementation, although I understand this involves development effort - so you'll need to take a call as to whether you personally think it's worthwhile 🙂 I've made a post on your forum to continue the discussion, as this topic is now a discussion about AZController rather than Cakewalk,,, https://www.azslow.com/index.php/topic,603.0.html

Thanks azslow, My use case is for live performance, so let me give an overview as maybe I've not explained very well, or there is a better way. In my cakewalk project I have a master setlist of songs (~60), each of which are marked as arranger sections and have a marker at the start (and potentially some markers at points in the song). Each arranger section (song) has an audio track for a drum track, some midi tracks which are displayed as notation, and program changes for external gear. I have an third party program (Gig Performer) which hosts my VSTs played from my controller keyboards, and can organise setlists. As each song is selected in the setlist it's able to send a distinct midi message (CC, PC etc), which I want to use to set the now time in cakewalk to the start of each arranger section (song). The challenge is therefore to move the now time in cakewalk to a defined point via a midi msg - so when I select a song in Gig performer, the now time in cakewalk moves to the start of the correct arranger section (song) in cakewalk. The type of MIDI message I can send is comprehensive (Program change, CC Msg, Song Position Pointer etc). I think it may also be possible to send an OSC message as well, using the Gig Performer scripting language, if that would be easier to handle in AZController. Hope that helps explain the use case, feel free to ask any further questions! Thanks, Matt

Hi @azslow3 Firstly, thanks for picking up on my post, and more importantly thanks so much for taking the time and effort to write such a useful utility for cakewalk - it's been a real lifesaver given the current state of hardware integration! Totally makes sense about Cakewalk having to be in focus when receiving the keystrokes, although in my case that's not really ideal. I agree that navigating by markers would be the best - my initial attempt was to just navigate X markers from the start, but I have more than 20 markers in my project so that wasn't possible - and I need to jump to non contiguous markers, so using next / previous marker won't work either. Is there any chance the number of markers to navigate could be made an input field allowing a larger number, rather than a drop down limited between -20 and 20? e.g. the drop down shown is replaced with a text or combo box The idea of having named markers to jump to would be great - is it possible to add an alternative dropdown which is populated with the names of markers in the current project? That would be completely awesome and far better than just allowing a larger number of markers to select from, as it would avoid having to count markers in the project, and adding or removing markers in the project wouldn't affect the existing mappings after any changes, which could end up being a real pain. Obviously that would be more work than just changing the drop down to a text box, but conceptually it could work something like this: - Add an additional drop down in the 'Marker' action list - When to 'To Marker' is selected, the drop down list of values shows the names of markers in the project - Not sure how things work under the hood in the SDK, but I'd imagine the list of marker names would be mapped to an index of marker IDs in the project, so adding / deleting a marker in the project would mess up this mapping. Hence they'd also need to be a 'refresh' button of some sort, which would re-map all marker names to the current marker index based on the name of each marker. - i.e. although the marker name is initially selected from a list of marker names in the current project, the actual marker name string is stored internally rather than the index. This would facilitate the refresh button functionality, which could then be extended to also remove marker names not found in the project (or perhaps map them to a default 'Marker Not Found' entry) Obviously I appreciate that you have developed and worked on AZController for free, so I have no expectations - I just thought this would be a cool feature to add if you ever wanted to (or had time) to work on another version. Sorry for going down the rabbit hole on this! Thanks again for all your development efforts, they are really appreciated. Matt

Hi @Heinz Hupfer, Apologies for bringing back a very old thread, but have been trying out your script for AZController, which looks like it will be perfect for my needs, but I find that when sending a zero value for CC:57 (btn off), the 'Go' dialog is displayed, but the subsequent keystrokes for entering the now time (100) and pressing Enter are ignored i.e. I just get the 'Go' dialog with the value for the last go to entry displayed and waiting for input, such as: Any ideas what I'm doing wrong, or how to fix this? Thanks so much! Matt

Anyone use the new export function to export arranger sections? I just tried a large project with around 30 arranger sections and only 20 sections exported - they were all listed as a task, but the process completed without creating all the files (they were all exported as MP3) I then clicked on the arranger section of a missing file, to highlight that section, and then exported to audio using the drop down on top left 'Export' button - the audio of the missing section exported fine, so not really sure why it wasn't included in output from the new dialog. Anyone seen this, or have an idea what could be wrong?

Gigperformer can play back audio, and now midi, but it's easier for me to use CbB as I can align any PC messages and DMX with the backing track easily on the timeline. In Gigperformer, I often select a different rack (collection of VSTs) for a different part of song.. there might be a way, but couldn't see a simple way of keeping the same backing track playing when moving to a different rack. Gigperformer is pretty awesome, and I'd highly recommend it - it is a bit pricey though. If you have Studio One then the Show Page could be worth investigating; it looks interesting, but don't think it's quite there yet feature wise - hopefully they continue to develop it. Sadly I think John is right, Live performance is a very small niche, in a very small market! So although CbB has the potential to be an amazing live performance tool, I doubt it will be developed in that direction - hence always good to hear other peoples solutions!

I use CbB in a live setting, but over time I've moved away from using it for everything. The thing that hindered me most was the midi; inputs and outputs were forever being mapped to the wrong midi port at startup (because I'd move the file between my studio PC and performance PC, where slightly different things were plugged into different USB ports) - and then VSTs would start acting on CC / PC changes from the wrong source. That wouldn't become apparent until you played a song that used the VST, so it made for a nervous live performance. My best investment was Gigperformer, when on sale at Plugin Alliance. It hosts all my VSTs, has a rig manager for different PC setups, and just works. CbB plays back the backing track, shows notation, and sends out MIDI DMX (to QLC) and program changes (to Gigperformer) via loopmidi - virtualising the midi routes helps when moving project to a different PC. I use the arranger view as a setlist - each section in the arranger view is a song, so I can name them and jump around at will, or just play the set end to end. Each of the cover bands I play in has a limited number of songs (30 or so), so I can easily put all potential songs in one project.

Yes, I can see that the automatic recall might be annoying, but at the moment it's hard to see many other reasons for clicking on a task, other than to delete it, rename it, or open the output folder , which could all be handled by the task drop down menu - meaning the default action of clicking on a task line would be a more natural paradigm of form and sub-form. As long there's a prompt to save or cancel any changes (if dirty) before any new task is recalled, then the recall / save could be automatic, and the options removed from the drop down menu. The double click is a handy shortcut, but perhaps not be best UI wise 1. Double clicking the task is a 'magic' action - you wouldn't know to do it unless you've been told 2. If you've double clicked the task, there is nothing to tell you that the dialog is now showing the details of the task that's been double clicked Not trying to rain on the parade - the new export dialog is a massive step forward and I'm stoked! Just from my perspective it could be slightly more consistent with the way other UIs work. Cheers, Matt