Canopus

I admit, I’ve made a couple of track icons over the years. When I have to take a break from some boring task, I find it relaxing to do something completely different just for fun. Sometimes it's track icons. Yeah, I know. Today I noticed that I had made more than 500 of them, so I thought maybe someone else might have some use for them as well. They’re all virtual instruments and in some cases preset libraries. Of course, there’s a LOT of virtual instruments out there so please don’t expect to find every conceivable VSTi or library in this collection. They are all in png format with a size of 96x96 pixels. The image files are named [Developer]-[Plugin]_cnps.png. That way they should be quite easy to locate despite the large number of files and also not inadvertently overwrite any existing track icons you might have. Some of them come in a few different variants as well. How to use them in CbB Track icons are normally placed in the folder Cakewalk Content\Cakewalk Core\Track Icons and can be inserted into a project by right-clicking on a track’s default track icon and then selecting Load Track Icon. Navigate to the folder where your icons of choice are kept and take your pick. They can be added separately to Track View, Track Inspector and Console View. Just make sure that Views > Icons > Show Icons is selected and they should turn up. You can optionally just drag-and-drop a track icon from File Explorer onto the track. Any part of the track will work as destination, so you won't have to drop it on the existing track icon. This action will also (almost always) automatically update the icon in the Track Inspector and the Console View as well. Fun fact: This drag-and-drop feature is not documented in the Online Help, nor in the Reference Guide. I simply found it out by trying. I would suggest that these track icons are kept inside the attached folder so that they are kept separate from all legacy icons that come with a CbB installation. And no, I certainly don’t have all of these plugins and libraries. Far from it. But I do have a couple of them … How to get them These icons may be downloaded as a zip file from here: https://1drv.ms/u/s!AmXDCxaGb7JEgQTra_vTlaGww6zr?e=aBShc5 Disclaimer I certainly don’t claim ownership of any of the trademarks faintly discernible on these track icons. Just in case someone wondered.

My guess is that you have some clips on tracks 1-4 (not shown in your screenshot) and the Sync Play/Stop button activated on the Beats tab in AD2. That would make your selected beat in AD2 start as soon as you press the Play button in CbB. Deactivate that button in AD2 and your issue will most likely disappear.

Yes, but the voices, phrases and chord progressions are still triggered by MIDI. Watch the official Electric Mint walkthrough at 1:57.

First of all you need to update Kontakt to version 6, because Session Guitarist Electric Mint requires Kontakt Player or full Kontakt version 6.7 or higher. Kontakt Player can be downloaded here. If you own full Kontakt 6, you download it through Native Access. Secondly, you can only play Session Guitarist through Kontakt, so it’s not possible to drag the “sounds” into a DAW. When Kontakt (Player) 6 has been downloaded and installed, you need to scan Cakewalk (CbB) for new plugins for it to show. By default this will happen automatically. If it doesn’t, you need to open Edit > Preferences > File > VST Settings and press the Scan button for a manual scan. When that is done, you add the plugin into an instrument track in CbB. Once you’ve found a combination of Preset, Melody (i.e. articulation) and Pattern in Session Guitarist that you’d like to use in your project, you arm your instrument track in CbB, press R to record and start playing. After recording, you should be able to play back your MIDI in CbB and hear the proper guitar patterns being played. Of course, you'd still need the plugin in your instrument track to hear anything. As for the future, these kind of Cakewalk related questions are better posted in other parts of the forum, like Cakewalk by BandLab or Instruments & Effects.

I’ve also got a Nektar Impact LX88+ and it works pretty well with Cakewalk. However, the SE series you are mentioning is Nektar’s entry level keyboard and doesn‘t have as many DAW controls as the LX series, so if I were you I’d consider going for the slightly more expensive LX49+.

The very first third-party purchase I ever made after having upgraded to Cakewalk Sonar X1 almost ten years ago were some Z3TA preset packs from Xenos Soundworks. Yay! Since then the carousel has never stopped spinning. In fact, I had a look at my dedicated Excel sheet just now and noticed that I’ve made exactly 250 additional purchases since then (hardware not included). The total amount spent I’ll keep as a well-guarded secret.

I think the problem is that you haven't got a project loaded. All controls in the Control Bar are disabled until a project is created or loaded, but they will light up once you've done that. How much is of course depending on the theme.

When it comes to transferring MIDI patterns between different drum program’s proprietary maps, I’m using Toontrack’s discontinued EZplayer Pro. That plugin is absolutely perfect for persistent remapping. I have started to convert MIDI grooves from Addictive Drums 2 through EZplayer Pro with EZD as destination. When automatically remapped, I drag the converted MIDI into a separate folder accessible by EZD3. That way I can actually include beats that originates from AD2 in EZD’s Tap2Find. Now how cool is that? As I’ve also got K12U I could theoretically do the same for all the MIDI drum patterns found in Komplete (Abbey Road, Studio Drummer and Battery) as they are also available as valid sources in EZplayer Pro. Groove Agent is available as well, as are e.g. BFD and SSD. Too bad Toontrack stopped selling EZplayer Pro many years ago, but from a commercial standpoint I can actually understand why.

I’ve had a discussion with myself today whether I should level up my Groove Agent SE and get Groove Agent, but after looking at the comparison chart at Steinberg my left brain finally told me no. I do have a lot of options when it comes to drums so I can’t find the motivation even at 50% off. The biggest benefit for me would have been to be able to use it outside Cubase.

To be clear, we’re not talking about GIFs, but I think it could simply be a matter of repainting all currently active animated buttons when one of those is activated to make them appear as synchronized. But I could be wrong.

An animated png is designed so that it should be backward-compatible with a traditional png. Only the first frame will be rendered as a static image if an app doesn’t support animation. In fact, storing an animated png in place of a static png is already possible in the Theme Editor and doesn’t crash or distort anything in CbB. I've tested. But of course, it will currently only show up as a static image. Some sort of synchronization would be necessary so that all visible animated images with the same timing are animated simultaneously. That would be pretty obvious in Track View if e.g. the Mute button in a theme is animated and Mute is activated on more than one track. Without synchronization the result might end up looking like an angry (and chaotic) fruit salad. Just my two cents. I guess @Ben Staton is the one who can say for sure. As for a fully scalable vector-based GUI to appear in CbB, I wouldn’t hold my breath for that to happen.

Of course, so the best (and pretty simple) solution would be to have an option added to Preferences that would be turned off by default. But if you turn it on, and the currently selected theme supports animations – hey, presto!

Almost two years have passed, so I think it’s about time to bump this feature request. I know that the animated png format is not officially approved by the PNG development group, but it has been supported by Chrome, Firefox and Edge for years so who cares? It's a de facto standard. Just have a look at this example. Wouldn’t it be cool to make it possible to have a theme with e.g. an animated Mute button, like they have in Logic? And no, I don’t think that it necessarily should be part of the default themes Mercury and Tungsten as some users might object to the animation. But add code to CbB so that user themes containing animated png files can be properly rendered. What you see below is just that - an animated png. If you agree, please show your support in the OP.

Even worse, in 2001 Honda were to launch a car named Honda Fitta, which in Swedish means… hm, I’m not even going to tell you. But good luck trying to sell a car with that name there! According to the car magazine Auto Motor & Sport, press releases had already been distributed in Japan with catch phrases such as “Honda Fitta is small on the outside but big once you've entered” and "Honda Fitta is a daily pleasure". When Honda had been made aware of the implications, the car ended up being called Honda Fit in Japan and Honda Jazz in Europe. And all the brochures that were already printed had to be thrown away. So indeed, there are many languages to consider in world-wide marketing.

For those that haven’t noticed, version 1.5.0 of Addictive Keys introduced a scalable GUI in November 2021. That was a big deal to me. Also Addictive Drums, Addictive Trigger and the effects DS-10 and RC-20 have all (quietly) been made scalable. Found in the upper-right corner menu under UI Scaling and Settings.

When the Control Bar is docked at the bottom, save it to a custom workspace.

Yes However, as stated in the subject line you will need full Kontakt from Native Instruments to be able to use it. That’s currently a $199 purchase (normally $399). Just so that you know.

#mehtoo

I’m a type 1 diabetic since many years, but as I still like anything sweet I haven’t given it up. Some two years ago I got something called Freestyle Libre which has been a total game changer. It’s a glucose sensor which I attach (actually glue) to my upper arm and which allows me to read my glucose level at any time through NFC on my mobile. The sensor also automatically reads the current value every minute and if it’s below or above my threshold values, I get an instant audible alarm on my phone app through Bluetooth. That’s absolutely perfect as my main problem previously used to be hypoglycemia while sleeping. Now the alarm will wake me up before I get seriously low. These sensors must be replaced every second week, but as they allow me to micro-manage my insulin injections my values are pretty good. And speaking of cheese cake, I actually had a big slice of that earlier today without a guilty conscience.

There are no release notes currently available for UVI Workstation 3.1.4, but as far as I can tell it now comes as a VST3 as well.

Yes, please follow system locale settings. Hard coded date formats has no place in modern software.

Yup, there’s definitely a disturbance in the Time+Space continuum. Maybe they’ve stocked up too many of these?

When saving a track template containing folders in a nested folder structure, the folders sometime seem to inherit the name of folders on underlying levels when the track template is loaded. See attached video. Edit: There were no reactions to this post, but even so the issue was fixed in CbB 2022.02 Update 1 EA (Build 28.02.0.037): "Folder names incorrect when loading track template with nested folders". 👍