Matthew Sorrels

I got it free because of the Luanchpad X I have. It's kind of underwhleming and adds a new always running application to your Windows install that has no option to stop it from starting when you login. Had to remove it from the Run registry key. If you own ROLI hardware I might see it, but not for two (kind of simple) plugins.

Maybe control surfaces and ACT setups are stealing MIDI input before it makes it to the track? SONAR/Cakewalk has always had some strange things with Roland A800, see the mention on this page: https://www.cakewalk.com/Documentation?product=SONAR&language=3&help=ExternalDevices.15.html I'd strip out as much of that stuff (ACT/Control surface setups) as I could and try and get everything as plain as you can. Then see what you are getting.

Assuming you have the pedal going into a MIDI interface you have enabled as an input, I'd recommend running something like MIDI Ox http://www.midiox.com/ Might help you figure out where your MIDI input is going to/coming from and then make sure Cakewalk is configured to accept input from that MIDI device. There are lots of settings but if you line everything up you should be able to start an empty project, add a single MIDI track, arm it and record and see the sustain pedal up and down events.

Do you have Controller selected in the MIDI Playback & Recording panel?

I think (maybe) the plugins believe (wrongly) that one of the others is in solo mode. So they don't play any sounds unless they are also soloed. It might have something to do with number of cores and/or maybe how Cubase works with it. Can't tell for sure. Given past experience with hexachords though I suspect unless I can come up with a 100% reproducible version of it they will just ignore it. Still I have to admit I like some of the things it's generating.

My mysterious parts don't play bug gets stranger all the time. I have one Cubase project when I load will only play the arp or the melody but not both, unless you solo them (using the Solo button inside the plugin, not Cubase's solo). I have another Cubase project that only plays the chords instrument, unless you solo the parts. But when starting fresh and adding all four without changing anything, everything plays together. I've seen this parts going silent unless soloed a few times now so it must be something I'm doing while using the plugins. The strange thing is that once it is like that, I can't seem to get it to go back to working. It's stuck.

I just loaded all four modules in Cubase 10.5, doesn't seem very high a load for me, but also not very multithreaded. I'm definitely not seeing crazy CPU loads though. Maybe 10% overall average(with all 4 playing) and one core around the 50% mark . But this is the full version, maybe it's something about the demo? I'm also not seeing any crashes with the most recent release. I let it play for hundreds of measures and tweaked and adjust parameters on all four modules without even a blip. Only odd thing I noticed is only the Melody or the Arp will sound if you have all four plugins loaded, you have to solo all four instruments separately if you actually want both the melody and the arp to play at the same time. OK maybe that's a crazy thing to want, but it was kind of annoying realizing the arp wasn't playing. I never really noticed regular Orb Composer being very CPU intensive either. Neither of them actually generate MIDI on the fly or something. Orb Producer does have its synth instrument but it doesn't seem very CPU heavy.

I picked it up (with the coupon from having Cinematic Guitar Infinity). I starting trying to use it and found it's not so usable for pretty much any normal guitar part (rhythm or lead). The presets do sound nice and there are a bunch of guitars but none of them are extremely multi-sampled/playable. I kept replacing it with Orange Tree guitars and moving the Guitar Fury to another track/part. These sounds/samples would have been better with Sample Logic's normal Kontakt instrument with four parts. Which may be what Cinematic Guitars Motion is -- which I was offered a discount on while checking out (not sure $199 while buying a $100 product is a "discount" but whatever). No regrets, but I can see this coming to APD at a much better price. Or maybe some sort of bundle (this plus Cinematic Guitars Motion for $100 would seem reasonable to me). I like Sample Logic's stuff but using it is a lot harder than it looks.

I have those same two Fender picks he shows. That was it. 😎

I think you should do do a plain save (pick patch only) not a batch resave. Otherwise the edits to the MIDI automation won't be saved. The hidden remove button because of screen issues can be a big problem. But I'm only guessing on why the sounds would get cut off. Filter cutoffs on MIDI controls often cause Kontakt instruments to go silent. It could be something else too. The single instruments don't have the arp and aren't really nearly as cool as the dual with the arp.

Yeah I can't fix the country on my Falkemedia account either and because I used PayPal it didn't seem to credit it to my Falkemedia account at all. But I did receive an email when you follow the link it had a download the PDF button, but it required being logged out of my Falkemedia account to access it. It was very confusing (and not in English). Also strange the PDF invoices they sent me today show I paid 7% VAT (which is the right amount for PA sales tax) and they adjusted the price of the product so that with the 7% VAT tax it still came to 1.99 euros. Which seems kind of flaky to me.

Bring up the MIDI automation panel, select the assigned one (a few of the instruments seem to have assigned CC 0 which is bank select and may actually be the more likely problem CC, but honestly all of them are kind of suspect). If you select the assignment down below you'll see the settings, there is a remove button. This might help:

I really should have tried Chrome but I'm always scared that using translate on actual web pages while ordering will mess something up. Beat is actually a nice magazine with some great bonus content. Well sometimes at least. And now I think you can actually get it without having to deal with shipping and bank transfers (unlike way back in 2015 when I had to subscribe to the print version and pay with TransferWise because they didn't take credit cards). I lived in Germany as a young child but sadly didn't really learn much, if any, German. Google Translate's camera mode on phones is pretty amazing to let you read printed magazines though.

While it's kind of tricky if you don't speak German you can get the digital version of the latest issue of Beat magazine here: https://www.falkemedia-shop.de/sound/beat/beat-05/2020?number= (be sure to pick the digital version) you can pay with Paypal, came to like $2.24 US with all the fees. Then once you download the magazine PDF (use Google Translate to help with the translation of pages so you can figure out how to get the PDF, it's kind of tricky) you can then go to two websites to download the DVD content and to the Beat serial center where you have to answer a question by providing a word on pages in the magazine (again Google Translate is your friend). The serial center will email you the codes and/or passwords you need. You get a link to AAS with a code that lets you choose 2 soundpacks (I am/was missing exactly 2 -- Masala 2 and Tropical Jam which it let me pick). You can also get a IK Multimedia code for T-RackS ONE (which I already had) and some passwords for the files from the DVD content. The DVD content includes the BE versions of Xhun Little One, Geist Lite, Thorn Solo and some Zampler Eternal Drones. Some other demo stuff too. Nothing I cared much about though. Not a bad deal really and unlike in the past you can pay with Paypal and can do it with an all digital download. You just have to figure out the German webpages for registering and accessing. Link to Google Translate: https://translate.google.com/ You can copy and paste text into it to get a translation. For the magazine itself I used the Google Translate app on my phone and it's camera to translate. The serial center is http://www.serialcenter.de and the DVD download URL is http://www.bit.ly/BeatDL173

It looks like most of the instruments have MIDI CC channels assigned to filter cutoff automation. Running it stand alone you may still be sending MIDI messages. Reload the instrument fresh (to get the right filter settings) then go to the Automation page in Kontakt and remove the assigns. Then re-save the instrument.

I bought a bundle of his stuff that included D-Looper. Was kind of looking forward to it. But while he tosses around the words "with support for ACID WAV / Apple Loops", it doesn't actually read Acid information out of wave files. Nor does it read Apple loop markers either. Which makes its value kind of weak at best. This isn't a super high bar (read the loop markers that are in the wave file/aiff file), but it doesn't do that. Was very disappointing.

Looking at my CAL scripts I found this RemoveDupNotes that I guess I wrote (don't remember it to be honest). It does duplicate note removal on polyphonic sequences by processing each MIDI note lane. Not sure it really works though, but it might be a start. I bet it's pretty slow. There is a bunch of debugging stuff commented out if you find it's not working for you. RemoveDupNotes.cal

Play has been borked for years, the engine doesn't correctly play release samples when data isn't fully loaded into memory and you fast bounce (or actually even normal bounce). If you want to use Play the only way is to cache the samples fully in memory (there is an option in the menu) and to never use fast bounce. And it's not just Cakewalk, every other DAW has these problems to. Using a very fast SSD can help, but mostly what it does is just make it hard to notice it, but it still happens. They have been told extensively about it, for years. I've given up on a fix coming. Load everything into RAM and slow bounce and you can mostly get by.

They just released v1.1.2, guess v1.1.1 had some issues:

https://www.samplemodeling.com/en/news.php Basically they have a no sales policy but for this pandemic they are making an exception. Solo & Ensemble Strings: Eur. 299 instead of 399 Samplemodeling Brass: Eur. 299 instead of 399 The Trumpet, the Trombone and French Horn & Tuba: Eur. 119 each, instead of 159 Digital River will add VAT (if you're in the EU) or US sales tax. Plus currency credit card fees or Digital River's currency fees. Full Kontakt is not required. I've never bought any of their stuff because of their no sales policy, but I just picked up the Brass bundle. On loading the Trumpet it tells me it hasn't received CC11 and thus won't work, making me stretch under my desk to get at my expression pedal. Might be a bit more involved than I normally like. If you don't have an expression controller, you may not like their brass.

Early on they were show stoppers. So much so I pretty much only ran the beta builds, which he released relentlessly. I seem to remember days where he would actually ship multiple updates on the same day. It's not quite like that any more. In fact I don't think I'm on a beta build right now. Most of the bugs these days are just annoyances. There is a lot of logic behind how music works and it's easy for things to not work right. If you read the KvR bug thread https://www.kvraudio.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=168&t=450065 You can see some of the history of issues that have come up. I don't think bugs should be the major issue with deciding if you and Rapid Composer are compatible. It also sounds like he's going to take the melody generator and make stand alone plugins out of it (I hope he does more than just it). Which I think is a great idea. I do recommend getting the full version, the extra tools are really the heart of Rapid Composer. The generators it has are crazy complicated but also generate some of the most usable MIDI. Need a strum, its got it. Want an ostinato, there is a generator for that too. Fingerpicking, check. Bass generator, check. And it follows your chord progression and all the crazy music theory math you can imagine. And then on top of what it generates you can toss in a bunch of phrase variation tools, to humanize things, change chords/ velocity/etc. Here's the generators it has (every one of these has zillions of options): Then here is the list of phrase variations you can stack and use with those generators (think of them as extra MIDI plugins): But with this near infinite amount of power comes a pretty near infinite amount of complexity. If you can get your head around it though, I think it's amazing. I'm fully prepared to pay full price to get the next upgrade, I think it's that good and worth supporting. But it's not for everyone. I'm a big believer in anyone can be a "professional" and should/can use professional tools if/when they want to. But Rapid Composer is one of those tools that learning to use it and getting something out of it is a lot harder than most music software products -- sometimes the pro tools aren't a good match for the normal user. Rapid Composer is one of those apps that while it's crazy complex, it's not because of bad design or because of poor planning (in general). It's very precise about how it works. It has it's own logic and workflow. Taking a pass on it isn't unreasonable though.

I have all of these (Orb Composer/Sundog/ChordPotion/Rapid Composer) you name it, I've bought it. I've spent a lot of time with Rapid Composer. The developer is very responsive and has taken and fixed bug reports pretty much non-stop. The problem of course is that it has had bugs, pretty much non-stop. That said in the last few years it has really grown a lot. While it does have some of the best generators out there, it also is one of the few apps in this class that I don't feel like I'm just driving a random number generator. You really can compose with it and it really can help you do that. But the learning curve is pretty much a brick wall. From the very odd/unique UI that wraps the whole app to some of its crazy ways of working with things -- it's very hard to get to grips with. I figure I maybe understand about 20% of it. Huge sections of it I still have no idea how to use. And I first bought it in Dec 2014. There is a lot more learning material available now which can really help, but even still I think most users are going to find it's almost impossible to get a handle on. My only advice is to try the demo and watch some of the videos. Also download all the user generated phrases/content you can find on KvR. While I think it might offer some big productivity wins if you go all in and use it to make an entire work, I'm still at the using it to generate short (less than 24 measures) bits which I almost always take out of it and put into a more productive DAW. I know I'd get big wins if I did the whole work inside it, but I just can't quite do that full level of project management with it (part of the huge sections I have no idea how to use). I think I have the most fun with it when I just use it as a phrase/chord/melody generator. It might sound like I'm not recommending it, but that's not really the whole truth. I do recommend it very highly but not for everyone. For me it has helped me start thinking about music and music theory in ways I don't think I would have without it.

If someone really had nothing and just wanted full Kontakt getting a player library and then crossgrading is the best deal. But honestly with NI things are set up so a better deal is to get a version of Komplete that includes the full Kontakt. Komplete isn't cheap (though I think there are some cross grade deals) but you do get a ton of great stuff. Once you have an account at NI if you go to the Kontakt crossgrading order page and are logged in it will tell you if you qualify for the cross-grade offer (and which product it thinks qualifies you). That list of 3rd party libraries may or may not be "komplete" lol.

Traditionally the cheapest way to get the full version of Kontakt was to get one of the handful of free Kontakt player libraries and use that as the crossgrade. The trick of course is sometimes NI changes the rules on which of the free Kontakt libraries qualify (if any of them) In the past I know users have used Sennheiser's DrumMic'A, which can be gotten for free (in the past you had to get through the German language website for registering but that looks like it's changed). https://en-us.sennheiser.com/drummica Recently ProjectSAM released a free Kontakt player library, The Free Orchestra. I'd try that if I were starting from scratch https://projectsam.com/libraries/the-free-orchestra/ There are a few other free Kontakt player libraries (if neither of those two qualify). There are also a bunch of low priced Kontakt player libraries that will certainly work, though most of those seem to be stuck in the $99 price range. There are exceptions though, Soundiron has a handful of $39 Kontakt player libraries for example. https://soundiron.com/collections/kontakt-player-edition-collection If you are going to go that route it's best if you find a cheap library you'd actually use/want. But I'd try the free ones first. You might also want wait for the next sale to buy the crossgrade, NI usually has a summer sale of some sort.

Your dump doesn't have very much in it. No plugins in the crashing thread. It appears though you are using Gutair Rig 5, Ozone 8 and a bitbridged 32-bit plugin. When in doubt, it's ALWAYS the 32-bit bit-birdged plugin that causes the crash. So I'd say it's the most likely place to start. Also the version of Cakewalk you are running doesn't match mine, which means you haven't updated. Your running 25.11.0.54, the current version is 26.1.0.28 Update your software, all of it (windows, video card drivers, etc). But especially Cakewalk. Remove any 32-bit plugins from your project. Good luck.