Canopus

No problem, and thanks for the credit. The more Cakewalk themes available the better chance people will find something they like. Having seen the video, I kind of liked the blue bars in your Performance module so it’s not impossible that I will change from orange to blue in Gran Vista sometime in the future. As for the name Canopus, it’s a star that only can be seen from the southern hemisphere. It’s actually the second-brightest star in the night sky after Sirius.

Well, it’s basically a dark theme so having a bright PRV inside might look unconventional. But changing that part of the theme shouldn’t be a problem for anyone seeing it as an issue. Of course, I realize that you know how to do this, but for someone less familiar with modifying themes it’s simply a matter of opening the Theme Editor, load the Lead theme and then expand the node Piano Roll view in the treeview to the left. There are six sub-nodes located directly beneath representing modified colours, each identified by a colour palette icon and black text. For each of those six entries, right-click the node and select Remove. After saving, the dark PRV in the theme will have changed to look like the bright PRV in the default Mercury theme. These steps should work for most dark themes with small, if any, variations.

I have actually been thinking about this myself. In my case it was mostly regarding Mute which I think looks pretty cool in Logic, where an active mute for a track is indicated by a flashing Mute button. So thumbs up.

Have you tried Shift+F?

Nope. However, maybe you could use the Melodyne Demo version that comes with CbB and modify the E’s by ear? Make sure all the E's are in one separate MIDI clip like Nigel proposed above and record your MIDI into audio using your orchestral VSTi. Then select the audio clip for this separate track and apply Region FX > Melodyne. In Melodyne, make sure Options > Pitch Grid is set to No Snap so that the notes won’t stick to the twelve tone scale. It should then be possible to tune your E’s into whatever. It’s very clumsy of course, but might be a possible work-around if this is a one-time occurrence.

But it has. Under Edit > Preferences > File > Advanced you can specify exactly after how many minutes or after how many changes an auto-save should occur, whatever happens first. I have mine set to 10 minutes or 10 changes. You can also optionally select “Enable Versioning of Project (.CWP) Files” and the number of versions you want to keep. You must have Advanced checked at the bottom of the Preferences window to be able to see those entries.

FYI: Hypersonic was created for Steinberg by a company called Wizoo, which was later bought by Avid. According to this SOS article (which actually reviews Steinberg's Hypersonic successor HALion Sonic), much of the content in Hypersonic 2 was later introduced in the Xpand! synth which at that time came bundled with Avid ProTools. The Xpand!2 synth is now owned by AIR Music Technology and can currently be bought for only $13. It has also been put on sale for just a few dollars quite a few times (I bought it myself for £1 a few years back). Of course, as Xpand!2 exists as a 64-bit VST you can have the benefit of a large memory addressing space and won’t have to use JBridge to run it. It does require iLock but not a dongle. As for how much content was brought over from Hypersonic I have absolutely no idea, but the factory content is pretty extensive with more than 2,500 presets.

I got some spare time during the pandemic and as a result I created a new theme. Continuing with the metal label convention this one is called “Lead”. When compared to my previous themes “Gran Vista” and “Carbon”, this one is flatter and maybe less obtrusive (some would perhaps say more modern). The blue highlights are fetched from my previous themes, while the gradient Control Bar background and buttons have been created from scratch (or actually using a new custom background layer in Photoshop). An overall goal has been to maintain contrast between buttons, text and background. And, of course, to make it look good. One small detail: a feature that I think would work well in most themes is that the Loop, Selection and Punch buttons all have been given a colour accent that corresponds to the same area in Track view, i.e. yellow, green and red respectively. I will add this to the Gran Vista and Carbon themes as well the next time they need to be updated. Download link: I’ve made this theme for my own use, but in case anyone would like to use it you can download it from here: https://1drv.ms/u/s!AmXDCxaGb7JEeduVqWy0FPQFKe0?e=Jp6SkG Release history: For those interested, there's a release history that covers update information about all my themes. Here's a link to the that pdf document: https://1drv.ms/b/s!AmXDCxaGb7JEdu3To6t7ZeQmmAo

You can’t control the stand-alone version of EZ Keys from within CbB, if that’s what you’re asking. To access the content of your EZ Keys project file (*.ezkp) you will need to insert the VST version of EZ Keys into your CbB project and then from the EZ Keys VST select Menu > Load project and navigate to your ezkp file in order to load your chord content. Once you’ve done that I would suggest that you select and drag your chords from the VST into the EZ Keys MIDI track and then let the melody MIDI track have its output set to the same instance of the EZ Keys VST. Also, at this point you might want to switch off the “Follow host” indicator found in the bottom-right corner of the VST display not to have any duplicate notes sounding.

I noticed that even though the option File > Export > Standard MIDI File now has been added to the main menu, it’s not as simple to export a standard MIDI file from the Export module. That’s regardless if Project or Selection has been selected in the module. Using the Export module, you would have to know that you must go through the Advanced sub-menu (not so using the main menu). If Selection has been chosen and only MIDI tracks are selected I see no reason why there wouldn’t be a similar option in the Export module. Or, if Project has been selected, why the Export module wouldn’t simply include all MIDI tracks in the project and exclude everything else.

Do you by any chance have a Logitech mouse? I found this thread in the old forum where that seems to have been the cause of an identical problem: http://forum.cakewalk.com/Prochannel-folder-m3461987.aspx

Kontakt 6.3.1 works very well for me in CbB, but so did previous versions as well (never tested 6.3.0 though). I take it that you have one MIDI track for each Kontakt instrument and then have set a unique channel in CbB for each MIDI track and the same channel set for each target instrument in Kontakt? Of course, you would also need to have the Input Echo turned on for the track you want to hear. See image below.

Speaking of Tantra, I see that Plugin Alliance in their latest newsletter shortly mentions that Tantra 2 is coming in the next few months. Interesting.

Well, whatever I did yesterday it did solve the problem on my PC opening a project in CbB containing Iris 2 and some MIDI. Just to verify that it was persistent, I created two new projects today in CbB; one containing the VST2 version and one containing the VST3 version of Iris 2. After saving, both projects reloaded in CbB without any issues. The thing is that I now could even reactivate the option “Clear selection on sample load” in Iris 2 and it still worked. Very strange indeed.

Try to disable 'CorelUpdateHelperTask' and 'CorelUpdateHelperTaskCore' in Task Scheduler. I don’t know if this will help with PaintShop Pro (I don't have it), but I’ve had no problems with ads in Corel Pinnacle Studio after following the instructions linked in the following post.

This issue also occurred in CbB 2020.05 on my computer and that was regardless if I used the VST2 or VST3 version of iZotope Iris 2 (v 2.02.455 = latest). When reopening a project with Iris 2, a selected preset and some MIDI, Cakewalk crashed. However, both VST versions worked when I opened the same project in latest version of SONAR Platinum (23.10.0)! As far as I can see I have the same audio settings in CbB and SONAR. The only noticeable thing being different is ThreadSchedulingModel, but changing that in CbB didn’t help. So using SONAR I tried to tweak the settings inside Iris 2 (the wrench in the upper left corner). And lo and behold, when I deactivated the flag “Clear selections on sample load” in Iris 2, I was able to load the project in CbB as well (both VST2 and VST3). Maybe @JoeGBradford or someone else having Iris 2 can verify this?

No, that’s not the case. Cakewalk by BandLab runs perfectly well offline with all files stored locally. Maybe you were thinking about the cloud based BandLab product? Similar names but oh so different feature sets.

You only have to be online once every six months to escape falling into demo mode IIRC. Also, as from the last 2020.05 version, you can use off-line authorization using a USB flash drive and a separate internet connected computer.

The text colour of 64 bit, VST3 and DirectX plug-ins can’t be changed independently, but the text colour of VST2 plug-ins can be set to any colour you want in the Theme Editor through the node Browser > Plug-in Browser > VST2 Text. Also, you can change the colour of 32-bit plug-ins in the node Browser > Plug-in Browser > 32-bit Plug-ins Text should you want to. All the rest defaults to the colour set through the node Browser > Plug-in Browser > Plug-in Tree Text.

Musician’s Friend is selling boxed two version old software from UVI that MF probably have had standing on their shelves for years. How that would indicate corporate changes at UVI is beyond me.

Yes, he has sampled a large number of instruments for other companies like Steinberg, Toontrack, Nord Keyboard, XLN Audio, Reason Studios and Kurzweil. He has e.g. sampled all four instruments in XLN Audio’s Addictive Keys series, as well as the Classic Electric Wurlitzer 200A, Grand Piano, Retro Electrics and Upright Piano in Toontrack’s EZ Keys series, to name but a few.

Because of the ever-present risk of computer viruses, you should never expect people to download Word documents from unknown sources on the web.

Yes, when Synth Anthology 2 was introduced I immediately realized that the same graphics had been used in the synth display. And when now quickly comparing the preset lists, I can see that many if not all the presets in Synth Legacy have been recycled and found its way into Synth Anthology 2. But of course, for anyone not already having Synth Anthology 2 this would also mean that they will get many of the bells and whistles in the big brother for only $4.99.

Synth Legacy was custom made by UVI when Guitar Center celebrated its 50th anniversary in 2009. It has never been sold directly by UVI but only through Guitar Center (and possibly Musician’s Friend). Just like any third party UVI Workstation product it won’t turn up in your UVI account after activation. The $4.99 deal is really great. I bought Synth Legacy in 2016 for $49, which at that time was 50% off the regular $99 price. As a nod towards the 50th anniversary, Synth Legacy include sounds fetched from 50 synth classics: Alesis Andromeda, Roland Jupiter 4, Roland Jupiter 8, Roland VP-300, Roland TB-303, Oberheim Matrix 6, Oberheim Xpander, Oberheim OB-X, Studio Electronics ATC, SCI Prophet 5, Yamaha CS-80, Elka Synthex, RSF Kobol, Korg PS-3200, Moog MiniMoog, Moog MemoryMoog, Waldorf Pulse, Access Virus C, Yamaha AN1X, Novation Nova, Waldorf Q, Clavia NordLead, Yamaha DX7, Yamaha DX100, Yamaha FS1R, Korg DS8, NED Synclavier 2, Waldorf Microwave XT, PPG Wave 2.3, Casio VZ-1, Casio CZ-1, Korg DW8000, Kawai K4R, SCI Prophet VS, Korg Wavestation, Yamaha SY22, Kawai K5000, OSC OSCar, Seiko DS301, Ensoniq VFX, Roland JD-800, Roland D-50, Korg M1, Ensoniq Fizmo, Yamaha SY77, Ensoniq SQ1, Ensoniq ASR10, Mellotron M400, Fairlight CMI IIx, E-MU Emulator 2.

It’s a small company so everything is done manually. Depending on time of day, you would normally have to wait maybe half a day or so until the download links appear in your account. I bought the Rain Piano Mk II two days ago and found the links in my account within a couple of hours.