mdiemer

You can't upgrade to Platinum, it technically doesn't exist anymore. but you can download and install Cakewalk By Bandlab for free. It's the continuation of Platinum. It won't have DP on it, but you should be able to install it and have it recognized without any trouble. all your old Sonar plugins will work. Or the vast majority. I don't think the Groove Player will work. I have trouble with TTS-1, but I think it's something with my computer. DP and DP LE both work fine. If you are new to the fact that Cakewalk was sold to Bandlab, who now offers it for free, why not try it out? Literally nothing to lose. and it continues to receive support and upgrades. Incredible but true.

The Vst3 version always crashes for me. the Vst 2 works fine.

This is a complex piece of software, honed to near-perfection by decades of dedicated work. It is as user-friendly as any such similar software. It will not yield its secrets to a few hours of screwing around. But if you want - really want - to learn to use it, you can. It will take countless hours of learning and applying what you have learned. If you expect software to read your mind and just do what you want it to do, well the technology isn't there yet. When that day comes, true creativity will have already died. People won't know how to write music, only to hit a few keystrokes, click the mouse once or twice, and sit back while computer code produces what people will call music. Actually, it's already happening. for now, though, there is still time. But you have to want it. If you do, you will learn the software, no matter how hard it is. If you don't, you will walk away, grumbling that it is not user-friendly. The choice is yours.

The high-level stuff will install itself correctly, and CW will find them. Freebies or low-cost stuff may need to be extracted and manually dragged into a folder. Check with the forum or developer, they can tell you exactly what to do.

you will definitely see improvements. You can't have too much memory. Especially for orchestral music, we are fast approaching the point where people will be saying you need 64GB at minimum. I'm sure there are people saying that now. You will see improvements in speed, and you will be able to set your buffers very low, which will improve latency considerably. And pops and crackles should be a thing of the past when I had a computer built for me, I too only had 16GB. Eventually I felt the need for more, so I upgraded to 32. But that is the limit for my mobo, so hopefully it will be enough. now, if we could just add more memory to our brains that easily...

I too use Cakewalk for orchestral work, and I have it found it the best overall software for such work. I use the staff view and event list mostly. Everyone always says that Cubase is best for this kind of work. not true, unless you work in PRV. Cubase's staff view limits your selection to what is currently in the viewable area. So, you can only select those notes. Cakewalk lets you scroll out as far as you wish, so you can select any number of notes or measures. Cake's staff view does not try to be true notation, but another tool to improve workflow. where cubase tries to have theirs be true notation. but of course no DAW can compete with a true notation program. As in so many other things, Cakewalk gets it right. Glad you have found this out also, Rich!

If you are talking about things like EQ, Compression etc, these are audio effects (fx). They can only be applied to audio events. Or to a VST itself. for example, if I have the Garritan Aria Player going, and I do a midi track for strings, I cannot apply EQ directly to the midi track. I can only apply it to the Aria player itself. Or I can bounce the midi track to an audio track, and then apply it. The only effects you can apply directly to a midi track are midi fx, like chorusing, velocity etc.

SOLVED: I had inserted a vst3 version of Aria Player, that was the problem. I just inserted a vst Aria, no crashes now. Turned out to be simple after all.

An easy way to deal with CC events is to use Event List. you will see them there in red ink, if you have in fact put any in. With CC64, any values below 64 will do one thing, values above 64 will do the opposite. I can't remember at the moment which way it's set up, but for example, if this way: Set CC64 to 0, pedal will go down. Set CC64 to 127, pedal will go up. Or it may be the reverse of that, but it's one or the other. If there are no CC64 events, put one in. Set it to 0. see if that does anything. If not, set it to 127. how to put in a CC events? Again, I use Event List. I find it easier than PRV. Go to the first note of the sequence of music you are concerned with (that is, select it). Then just hit the "insert" key on your keyboard (the one you type with). The event will be duplicated. Now, double- click on "note." In the drop-down box, change the event from "note" to CC event. Then make the CC event 64. Finally, change the value of the CC64 event to 0 or 64, and see what effect it has.

Sounds like you have "stuck notes." This sometimes happens with midi or sample libraries. Although as suggested above the most obvious cause is a CC event. what libraries are you using? If you can, maybe try a different library with the same instrument, to check if that is the issue.

It's a bit complicated. When I finish my orchestral projects, I consolidate them before exporting to my notation program. for example, I have maybe 4 or 5 different violin tracks, because I use multiple libraries. mostly they are all duplicates, so I consolidate all these tracks into one "master" violin track. and that's just first violins - have to do the same for seconds, violas etc. Plus all the winds, percussion and so on. When I'm done, I have a much neater file to export. I also get rid of keyswitch notes, double notes etc. I assign all instruments to Garritan Personal Orchestra, as it is easy on the Ram. I listen to it to make sure all is right ("proof listening."). Usually, there is no problem. I do the proofing, fix any mistakes, export the midi1 file, and import it to notation. but with my current project, I can't play it back without it crashing. so, I can't proof-listen. I had to just do the consolidating and hope it's all correct. (It's much easier to catch wrong notes by ear than eye, even if you do read music). Any ideas on why my project is suddenly crashing, after I do the consolidating? It never did before, so I'm pretty stumped. The only change in Preferences I recall making recently was to disable notifications while loading. Thanks, Michael

One possibility is that Aria needs to have an initial starting volume. I put in a CC7 volume event at the start, set to 80 or 100, depending on the inst. Other than that, it is probably a routing problem Make sure all inputs and outputs are correct, as well as channels. The Cakewalk settings have to agree with the Aria settings. If your inst is on channel 1 in Cakewalk, make sure it is on channel 1 in Aria.

If you mistakenly hit shift or ctrl (can't remember which,) it will cause all inst's selected to solo. Look up at the top, at the solo and mute buttons. If you have selected to solo all, the lower solo button will be lit. just turn it off. Hopefully it's that simple....

What is the origin of your midi tracks? Are you using a vsti, such as Aria, Play or Kontakt? some libraries may have a "hitch" at the beginning. For example, when I was using Vienna special Edition 1, the first note might not play. In that case, try Bitflipper's suggestion. This can also be corrected by adjusting the timing. for me, it went away when I cross-graded SP1 to the Vienna Synchron version, rather than the Vienna Ensemble Player.

Have you tried System Restore? You should be able to take everything back to before you deleted the files. Make a system image first in case anything goes wrong (although it probably won't - just covering my *****).

Kontakt may not use CC7 for volume by default. Go into the settings, you can change it to CC7, and make other settings as well (keyswitches, articulations).

Let user choose what tool should be default. For example, I use staff view, and the select tool is what I use 90% of the time. I am constantly inserting bogus notes when I open staff view, because the tool is set automatically to draw. It would be nice if I could make select be the default. much better workflow! Thanks, Michael

If you are going to do orchestral music, do yourself a favor and spring for 32 GB ram. I had an outfit called MagicMicro do a build for me (which I am quite happy with), but I went with 16 GB. I had to upgrade it to 32. would have been easier and cheaper to just put it in at the start.

I have done that too, putting an algo reverb like Lexicon on the track, to enhance it a bit. But I'm going to stick with this method for now. Ultimately, I may decide to go with something like Mir from Vienna Instruments. I'm hesitant, though, because then I'd be tempted to redo everything. Again.

Well, this is working out well. There is a spot in my project where there is always distortion. Very loud and many insts. playing. Nothing I did was making any difference. but now that I have switched to just one Spaces reverb instance, using sends, and nothing but two instances of the "Distance" plugin Proximity, I can finally get through that section without distortion. I think I finally have a handle on reverb. Stuff I should have figured out a long time ago. Oh well, better late than never never.

Thanks Colin. I'm referring to the Global On/Off on the Console. Now that I look at it, it resides in the part of the console that is dedicated to Pro channel, so I'm pretty sure it just affects that. There is no effect on my sends if I turn it off, so I'm good there. But in checking this out, I discovered I had fiddled with some EQ on a few tracks, using the Pro channel EQ, and had forgot to turn it off. So some of my instruments weren't sounding right. Mystery now solved, I think.

Will turning it off affect my reverb sends, for example? Does it only affect Pro channel FX?

John, lapasoa and chuckebaby: agree with everything you said. Simplifying things is what I'm all about here. I did this little experiment for comparison only. To see if I could duplicate the default setting of East West's Spaces NWH by using a send, set to -13.9% (the default value for NWH). Then adjust as needed. I don't intend on having a reverb on a synth itself, and then also sending that synth to a reverb bus. I want everything in the same space, thus one reverb bus, with the ability to vary the intensity synth by synth. (By synth I really mean vsti's, like East West, Garritan etc.). So, I'm going with a reverb bus with EW Spaces on it. No extra reverb on the synths themselves, whether a plugin, or by turning on their "native" reverb, which is usually algo, but sometimes convo. I definitely need to keep things as clear and pristine as possible, as I'm doing orchestral music, which by its very nature is already very cluttered in terms of all the sound waves interacting all over the place.

Interesting observation, bvideo. I think I detect that the reverb send-to- bus method may sound a bit drier than having the same reverb on the synth itself, so you may be right, how they each define percentage may be somewhat different. Which supports what Max said, the ear is always the best judge. The reverb thing is something I've been trying to sort out for years. I'm hoping this thread can help me do that. Keep the wisdom coming!

Let's say you route your instruments or synths to an instancs of EW Spaces reverb, NW Hall. you set the wet/dry to 100% wet. You route that to Mix. you create a reverb send for the insts or synths, adjusting the send level. you route the inst./synth to mix. Now, what if you put an instance of Spaces NW Hall on the synth directly, route it to Mix, bypassing the Spaces reverb bus and send as above. This is meant as a comparison. The wet/dry mix on NW Hall is -13.9%. So, I set the send level to -13.9%. Then I compare the two reverb setups, one with a reverb send, the other with the reverb directly on the synth. Should it sound the same? To my ears it does, or pretty darn close. With the send method, you are sending -13.9% of the signal to the bus, which has a 100% wet mix. and it comes out the same as if you had the reverb directly on the synth, with the default setting of -13.9%. Does this make sense? I'm trying to simplify my reverb scheme, to eliminate unnecessary CPU drain, and an overall cleaner routing scheme. Also, to obtain a baseline scale I can use to calibrate different libraries. Thanks, Mike