msmcleod

Linux is by far (IMO) the best choice for a server, and it's great for complex embedded solutions.

It can get by pretty well as a simple desktop solution if you're happy using Open Office/Libre Office or doing some web browsing - but good luck getting your printer to work, unless you're happy to compile/install some home-grown printer drivers.

As a DAW platform, just don't bother - it's really not worth the hassle, and there are zero benefits.

I'm in the process of looking at this one... it's a tricky one.

No workaround that I know of, apart from removing the tempo entries.

The most important rule is to know your monitors.  This takes hundreds of hours of listening to good mixes (from other people) on those monitors, in your mixing room, sitting in your mixing position.  Try to listen as big a range of songs you know really well as much as possible.

While this won't remove any deficiencies with your room/monitors (and FWIW every room has them), you'll at least be at a point where you know what sounds good or bad in your room.   

Pick a reference track from that list of songs that closely resembles your song and put it in your project - level match it to your project, then mute it, then every so often compare it to your song.  Listen carefully to things like the balance between vocals / instruments, and how boomy or loud the bass is.

If you're getting big discrepancies between different speakers/rooms though, I'd recommend some room correction.  I bought ARC 2 years ago, and the difference was night & day.

I'd take a look at IK's ARC Studio, which is a hardware unit - it sits between your audio interface and your monitors.  If I didn't already have ARC 2, I'd have bought it by now.

Oh... and if you are going to invest in any room correction, do this before you start listening to stuff for hundreds of hours... else you'll need to start listening from scratch!

From the Cakewalk Sonar website  FAQ's:

"Is Cakewalk Sonar replacing Cakewalk by BandLab?

Cakewalk Sonar builds and improves on Cakewalk by BandLab, offering advanced technology, effortless workflow, and an interface that amplifies inspiration. You can still access Cakewalk by BandLab here, but it will soon be phased out.

We will continue providing community support and maintenance for Cakewalk by BandLab until both Cakewalk Next and Sonar become publicly available. Existing Cakewalk by BandLab users will be able to continue using the software after the release of Cakewalk Sonar. In the meantime, Cakewalk by BandLab continues to be available here."

"Will Cakewalk by BandLab be discontinued?

Yes, eventually. We will continue providing community support and maintenance for Cakewalk by BandLab until Cakewalk Sonar becomes publicly available. At some point after the release of Sonar, Cakewalk by BandLab will no longer be supported. Note that existing Cakewalk by BandLab users will be able to continue using the software after the release of Cakewalk Sonar. In the meantime, Cakewalk by BandLab continues to be available here."

TDLR:   Existing users of CbB will continue to be able to re-activate and use CbB even after the release of Sonar.  It will eventually be phased out, but we've no immediate plans to do so. There may be a point in between however, where new users will be unable to download and/or activate CbB.

Delete Aud.ini from %APPDATA%\Cakewalk\Cakewalk Core

2 hours ago, icu81b4 said:

I tried the new Start and End Markers function, and although they show on the 'View Markers' list and work ok, They don't show up in the 'Markers Module' which is what I use to get to the start ( All the others markers show up ok) 

Workaround is just put a normal marker in at the start as the 'End' marker stops the project. 

 

btw:- Thanks for the update.   

 

 

It'll be there for the next update.

For CC control, you're much better off using the ACT Control Surface rather than the Generic Control Surface.  IIRC the Generic Control Surface was there more as an example for control surface manufacturers to reference if they wanted to use the Cakewalk Control Surface API to create their own custom surface DLL.

AZController can do just about anything, but unless you're technically minded, it can be a challenge to set up.  That being said, there may be an existing preset for your device that you can download on @azslow3's website, or some of the users there may be able to make one for you.

In any case, here's how you set up ACT:

Here's another with a bit more detail on changing the defaults:

And here's how you map plugin parameters:
 

Melda's MOscillator will generate waves of any frequency - e.g. a sine wave at 5Hz or something.  That could easily drive a side-chain. It's an effects plugin (rather than an instrument), and it's free.

For separate left / right signals you may need to put them on separate tracks, output to an aux, then use the aux output for your side chain input.

Steve Rothery (Marillion), Easter...
 

I can't reproduce this - the automation envelope automatically gets focus when I select the notes, so pressing delete only deletes the nodes.

I've tried this both by drag selecting on the envelope, and individually clicking on nodes.

I also tried using a normal automation lane vs track filter in the main clip.

OMF doesn't contain MIDI, just audio.

In any case, you don't need to export anything from Sonar X1 to load it into Cakewalk by BandLab...   Cakewalk will load projects from any previous version of SONAR or Cakewalk Pro Audio.

BandLab Assistant cannot be used for authorisation any more as the old activation servers are no longer active.   Cakewalk by BandLab will automatically authorise itself when it needs to, assuming you have an internet connection.

For authorisation to work, you need to make sure you're running the latest Cakewalk by BandLab (2024.02 at the time of this post):  https://www.bandlab.com/products/cakewalk#download

Offline authorisation can be done via the Cakewalk Product Center:

Are you using the ASIO driver for an on-board Realtek audio device?  This is known to cause Cakewalk to freeze.  

ASIO4ALL can also cause similar problems.

The fix is to switch to WASAPI - either WASAPI Exclusive for low latency, or WASAPI Shared to enable you to continue using your audio device with other applications while Cakewalk is running.

That's because you've not got any CC64 events to adjust.  You need to draw them in / record them first.

7 hours ago, John Vere said:

I gave up on the arranger a while back as I found it totally buggy. 
It’s only function for me is as more visible markers or for placement of lyrics. But even that screwed up a song one day that I wanted to cut out a chunk. So it’s off limits for me until they fixit. 
It seems to work properly in Cakewalk Next. As well as they copied my idea for the lyric display track. 

Grab yourself a Backstage pass and try this in Next. It’s a perfect DAW for simple Midi and Audio stuff. 
 

We're not aware of any bugs in the arranger, and FWIW Next uses literally exactly the same code.

The only thing that might give you unexpected results is the event overlap threshold... just turn it off, or set it to a very low note value.  It's designed to include notes that start or finish slightly before/after the section boundaries.  This can be useful if you've got unquantized piano parts, but really, using the arranger for anything that isn't snapped to the grid (at least on the section boundaries) is asking for trouble.

I'll quite often have unquantized parts in a song, but I always make sure the start/end of of a verse or chorus always start/end exactly on grid.  This removes the need for the event threshold completely.

1 hour ago, Promidi said:

If your audio engine is not running, then the arranger will not play out of order.

If you are using MIDI only in your project and your metronome is set to MIDI, then the audio engine would not running

Check the engine running status in your transport module.

What you need to do is either create an audio track, or set your Metronome to use Audio.  Do what ever you need to do to get the audio engine to run.

Once the audio engine to running, then the arranger sections will play in the order specified.

1 hour ago, Promidi said:

Open MIDI files in Cakewalk rather than importing them.  Then the markers will be included.

Both these solutions are correct. 

To get around the arranger issue, add a single audio track to your project or a simple instrument track.

Also I'd highly recommend turning off the event overlap threshold unless you absolutely know what it does and what to expect. 

On the rare occasions I use this, I'll set it to 1/64th note or 1/128th note, but certainly no higher unless there's a specific case involving a single section where I need it to pick up a leading note.

Reaper and Ardour are probably your best choices - maybe also look at Harrison Mixbus (which is based on Ardour), and Rosegarden.

Your main issues however are going to be audio interface drivers and plugin compatibility.

RME do linux drivers for their older interfaces, but AFAIK no-one is doing linux drivers for more modern audio interfaces.

Plugin support for linux however is very limited.

Anyone who has had to study Bach chorales will have had the "classical rules of harmony" ingrained into them, e.g.  don't double the 3rd, don't move intervals of 4ths or 5ths 'cos it sounds modal (so power chords are out), 7ths have to be prepared and must be resolved... there's a bunch of them.   Then there's rules of counterpoint harmony... again a bunch of them.

Knowing these rules can actually be advantageous, as applying them, say, to a string quartet sounds way better than not using them - assuming of course you want a "classical" sound, and by that I mean both classical genre and classical period.

However like any rules you need to know when and how to break them, and more importantly you've got to let yourself break them too.  If you've had strict classical training, this can be difficult as some people really do see them as rules.  Certain chord progressions can sound wrong because you've been taught to recognise them as wrong, and this can kill creativity (I'm speaking from personal experience here).

The way I got around this was to apply the same analytical techniques to modern pop/rock music (as well as jazz fusion and more modern orchestral music) as I did in my classes when studying classical music.  Anything that sounded cool that was "wrong" according to my training, I analysed and worked out what was going on.  It then got added to my toolbox.

However I suspect the vast majority of people don't get forced into harmonising several chorales a week for years on end, and for those learning more theory can be a huge benefit to creativity.  Just knowing scales, keys, how chords are formed, relative major/minor keys, different modes etc can broaden your understanding incredibly.  Simple things like changing modes, or chord substitution can make your music way more interesting.

 

I did try this in the past, but audio was pretty much a non-starter as although I did get it working (with WASAPI), it killed performance.

I've tried both VNC and Windows RDP - both worked ok, although performance wasn't stellar (mind you, my network was only 100MB rather than 1GB).

Nowadays I just keep my projects sync'd to the cloud so I can access them anywhere - it does mean my laptop needs all the plugins installed though.

If your studio is in the same property as your office, you could try a more lo-tech solution like splitting your audio output and either using bluetooth transmitter/receiver, or a long audio cable. 

You may find VNC / Windows RDP is fine for video / keyboard / mouse control, otherwise there are similar lo-tech solutions for video (both wired & wireless).  For keyboard/mouse, any remote software KVM solution will work without any real performance issues.

I suspect the 32 channel / 24 channel interfaces use the same underlying driver, and Cakewalk thinks nothing has changed so doesn't bother querying it for more channels.

After closing Cakewalk, try deleting AUD.INI from %APPDATA%\Cakewalk\Cakewalk Core  - it will be recreated when you next start Cakewalk.
 

On 3/29/2024 at 10:36 PM, Shaan said:

Please add an indicator either like checkmark ✔️  or the indicator available in the Piano Roll - Track strip Filter Option 

Although technically possible, it's not really feasible from a performance point of view - it would mean checking the current strips hidden status matches the presets and/or "Show only" options every time the menu is opened, or any time it evaluates whether a command can be processed.

On 3/28/2024 at 5:57 PM, John Vere said:

I think this is exactly what just happened to me with the upgrade to 2023. I assumed it was the new update. No it seems totally striped down and completly weird layout. Dupped again. I really like Filmora compared to Resolve.  So I just need to stop working long enough to figure it out. I actually went looking for an older version of Vegas thinking they were probably more stable! That's like being a Sonar 8.5 hold out! 

IIRC... MAGIX had a product called Movie Maker... they then rebadged it as Movie Studio.  Then they bought Vegas, and released a "lite" version and called it Movie Studio, and renamed the previous Movie Studio back to Movie Maker.  Then the Vegas team found maintaining two versions of Vegas was seriously hampering their productivity, so Movie Studio became the next upgrade to Movie Maker, and Vegas stayed as a single product.

TLDR:  Movie Studio 2022 was Vegas lite,  Movie Studio 2023 is essentially Movie Maker Pro.   IMO both are good products in their own right.

I'm guessing it's no co-incidence that they're going for insolvency - the particular type of insolvency they're doing is the German equivalent of U.S. Chapter 11 - i.e. the bank/investors give them a year to reduce the number of products, streamline the organisation, and hope they're in profit in a year's time.

FWIW, I had the opposite experience... I upgraded my old "Movie Maker" version of Movie Studio a few years back, only to find I'd been sold a dumbed down Vegas.  I'm actually pretty happy it's back to Movie Maker - it might not be as powerful as Vegas, but for me it's way easier to use.

Apologies... looks like it's only in beta builds at the moment.

Anyhow, at least you know it's coming.... 🙂

Looks like holding CTRL allows you to quick group "Hide Track" in the Track View, but not in the Console View.

I'm on vacation at the moment, but I've let the team know.  We should get this fixed.

10 hours ago, GreenLight said:

By the way, will the new Sonar have the possibility to freely scale ("zoom") the user interface size?

Something like what is available in Live:

8 hours ago, John T said:

There's nothing like that right now; the scaling is all based on your global Windows settings.

I do hope we see that sort of thing in future though. I expect it's relatively trivial once the main framework for this stuff is up and running.

There is actually - check out the slider at the bottom of Customization->Display within Preferences.