abacab

Just kidding of course. A fine example of Craig still putting in the hard work like he did to explain the workings of Cakewalk Sonar to us mere mortals... 🤣

https://www.sweetwater.com/store/detail/AndertonS1-e--sweetwater-publishing-the-huge-book-of-studio-one-tips-and-tricks-e-book-by-craig-anderton "Written by industry legend (and award-winning engineer) Craig Anderton, this clearly written, profusely illustrated e-book gives you the tips and tricks you need to maximize Studio One’s potential in your projects."

I tried VCV and then the Softube Modular. Both are excellent sounding. Then I installed Voltage Modular Nucleus (free). https://store.cherryaudio.com/bundles/voltage-modular-nucleus "This collection of 22 modules and over 130 presets is the ideal novice's introduction to modular synthesis. This package includes all of the fundamentals of subtractive analog synthesis, including oscillators, filters, envelope generators, amplifiers, and mixers, plus a sequencer, arpeggiator, and a full suite of useful utility modules and powerful effects modules. With Voltage Modular Nucleus, you can discover the thrill of patching modules together in new and endlessly creative ways, and explore all of the capabilities of Voltage Modular, absolutely free." I decided that the Cherry Audio developers have made a good effort to maximize the ease of use of a modular system, especially for modular newbies. It is very intuitive, and fun to explore. It sounds great and comes with many presets to learn from. With many inexpensive bundles available, it also seemed to avoid that very expensive rabbit hole of acquisition if modular addiction took hold. I upgraded to VM Core + Electro drums when it went on sale. I've now got all the modular I can absorb for the time being! Just pick what works for you. An oscillator is just an oscillator, it's what you do with it that really counts! 🤣

No. That was a Sonar bundled license. CbB comes with SI-Drum Kit. Neither Addictive Drums or SI-Drum allows you to import your own samples to trigger, but you could trigger their internal drum sounds from an MPK. Since drum kits are mapped to MIDI notes, anything that sends a MIDI note + velocity should work OK.

Well that is probably at least 6 year old hardware at this point. Expecting it to perform well with the latest software tools is a bit of a stretch. Also mastering tools like Ozone are intended to be used after the mixing stage, where they are the only plugin running, and everything else is already bounced to audio.

Soundpaint sent me a thank you coupon for 15% off anything, so I used it to grab the 1972 Wurli yesterday for $17. Nice! It will be interesting to see what can be achieved with it as far as the many sound design capabilities of Soundpaint offer. Layering and blending it with acoustic piano or guitar, or some of the more creative samples they offer. Fertile ground for sure! If you haven't got them already, the Free Angels and Free ASMR libraries are no-brainers, as they cost nothing. I have those as well as the free 1928 Steinway and the paid 1975 Gibson Soul Guitar ($20). https://soundpaint.com/products/free-angels https://soundpaint.com/products/free-asmr

OK, I've checked out The Giant. That's an impressive one! Especially The Giant - Cinematic, it has some very ethereal presets! That part definitely falls under the "odd/unique character pianos / pianos with a twist" category! Layer that with the Giant - Basic Giant, and you have a "Giant" piano pad!

I'm still absorbing VM Core, Year Two Collection (FM Bundle, Vector Bundle, Vintage Voice Bundle, Polymode Module), & the PSP Ultimate Modular Collection). 🤪

It seems that Cakewalk sometimes translates certain imported MIDI data into Cakewalk project attributes that are not visible in the MIDI event viewer. I think @scook shed some light on this a while back, but I don't recall where.

You will need a drum VST that you can load your samples into. Cakewalk does not include this, so you will need to get one from a 3rd party. Anything that you can load samples into and trigger from a MIDI controller would work, but some are dedicated to drums. Here is a pretty basic drum sampler for free. It seems to be quite popular! https://decomposer.de/sitala/ Sitala is a free drum plugin and standalone app: Sitala‘s beauty is simplicity. It‘s fast and musical. Six knobs. Sixteen pads. Drag and drop. Playable like instrument. And for non-percussion samples there is the free Grace sampler: https://www.onesmallclue.com/ Grace is a stable and compact sampler with a great streamlined workflow and a strong feature set. https://bedroomproducersblog.com/2015/09/14/grace-sampler-free/ https://bedroomproducersblog.com/2010/09/28/bpb-freeware-studio-best-free-vsti-samplers/

That will make @Fleer 's day!

I'd have to agree on that opinion of Noire. That one and Una Corda are the only NI pianos from Komplete that I have installed here. Might need to check out that Giant. And the EZKeys Upright Piano is the only keys library that I have from Toontrack. I figured that since I already have other grands, I would get some variety going. A very piano sounding piano! Sounds like it belongs right in the living room for singer songwriter stuff, rather than in a concert hall.

I have the Abbey Road Collection. That is a very cool and unique set of plugins. Worth keeping up with, and I WUP'd them once to get the upgrade to the Waves v12 with the new preset browser and the scalable interface. That is the thing with WUP, you don't have to do it every year, only if it's an upgrade that you want or need. Also have the Scheps Omni Channel, and that's another very cool and useful plugin that is a keeper. It's light on my system and it can make almost any track I put it on instantly sound better! I'd take or leave the H-Series collection, but got it for a good price. Same with the Inspire Virtual Instruments Collection. My favorites are the synths Element, Codex, and Flow Motion. The rest are mostly sampled keyboards, that I have duplicates of elsewhere. If I could only keep one of them it would be Element. Never bought into any of the other flagship Waves FX bundles. Now that I have collected other brands of FX I don't feel that anything was missed. Having a dozen compressors or EQs does not help me out much. If anything, I really need to delete much of what I've got, LOL! Some of the other miscellaneous Waves plugins here were either outright freebies, or buy & get free deals. Not go-to by any means, but some are fun special FX. For example: Brauer Motion, Kaleidoscopes, Ovox, LoFi Space, Berzerk Distortion, CLA Echosphere, Manny Marroquin Tone Shaper, etc. Oh yeah, an honorable mention for the Waves One Knob series. I've collected 5 of them as freebies! Sometimes you just want one knob. Preferably one that goes to 11. 🤣

Since Reaper and FL Studio are also crashing, it's probably a bigger problem than just Cakewalk. Maybe plugins related, but that can easily be ruled out. Is it always the same plugin causing the crash, or any of them? Does a new project load fine, but only crash when you add a plugin? If it was just an existing Cakewalk project crashing I would suggest starting your .cwp project in safe mode (hold shift key while loading the project). Then you will get prompted (y/n) for each plugin to load or not. This is a troubleshooting step and it discards any plugins that you decline, so either do not save it or save it as a new name.

Waves plugins are good. WUP is optional, and the first year comes free. Waves licensing is garbage. No version updates after first year without WUP.

^^^ good idea!

Sadly, AIR has not updated Transfuser in years. It had a lot of potential, and would have greatly benefited from continued support. Maybe iZotope Breaktweaker might be an alternative to consider, but it's not the same.

Which Ableton will gladly sell you a preset pack for...

I saved a lot of money! 😉

OK, I finally caved on F.'em for $24, as the FOMO (not the GAS) got the best of me.

Plus a 2nd license for the 2nd computer!

Had to check if I already had this one. Check yeah!

Analog is based on Ultra Analog, Tension is based on String Studio, Electric is based on Lounge Lizard. Plus there is also Collision, which is based on Chromaphone.