Ernie Tamminga

Many thanks to all the responders. Lots of actionable advice.

Now for some action...

I'm sure this has been discussed before, but I don't find info...

I'm looking for a good usb keyboard controller to work with Cakewalk by Bandlab (latest release). I'm currently using a little Novation Launchkey Mini, which is limited but serves the purpose of playing notes into Cakewalk. I want to "upgrade" to a 61-key controller. There are a bunch on the market, and lots of them say they integrate with any DAW -- but when they list the DAWs they work with, they don't mention Cakewalk.

I'm not sure I even need a controller to "integrate" with Cakewalk. I'm basically fine with using my computer keyboard & mouse to do the actual DAW-controlling stuff, and it may well be that all I need is any controller that can send MIDI via USB (I think they all do).

That said, if anyone here has experience/recommendations about a controller that works particularly well with Cakewalk, I'd love to hear what you have to say.

A bit more info: I use Kontakt7 in Cakewalk, so any info pertinent to that, in this context, would also be appreciated.

I'm using the latest Cakewalk release. I've been watching the video tutorial on mixing.. For trimming a track, it shows having the cursor in Smart mode and clicking on either end of a track, then pulling inward to do the trim. When I click on the end of a track, nothing happens except that the time-now indicator gets placed there. The cursor does not change to a two-arrow icon, it just remains the normal arrow. If I "pull inward" with that cursor, all it does is create a time-selection. 

I really want to trim the track... how can I actually do that??

This seems like an AWFULLY basic question, but...  In my Cakewalk by Bandlab interface, I want to apply an fx (Izotope Ozone 😎 to the Master bus, but... 

I can't find the Master bus.

The documentation says it's below the tracks, but it's not.  There's a Bus Pane, but there's nothing in it.

Do I have to explicitly CREATE/INSERT a Master Bus?  Currently, the outputs of all my tracks are assigned to the first stereo pair of my Focusrite Scarlett. I can hear everything just fine on playback, through the Scarlett., but I can't assign an fx  directly to the stereo output pair. Do I have to create a Master Bus and assign the Scarlett's outputs to that bus??

I had assumed that a Master Bus would exist "automatically", but apparently I misunderstood...?

Thank you!

Within Cakewalk (version 2018.09), I do Help/Check for Update.

It tells me there is an update.

I click the Update button. I get a message saying the update failed - something went wrong, and I should try again.

Trying again doesn't do any good: same result. Repeatedly.

Is there a better way to update?