Noel Borthwick

See correction to my post above. You may actually need Bapu. You must own more than 128 unique plugins to run into this..

As long as you have rights to the material. This will be played in a public place so covers may not be permissible. It could also be featured in our NAMM feed.
I updated the OP to indicate this.

Please post submissions in the main thread only please. 

43 minutes ago, David Owen said:

Are original compositions by the submitter the only material that qualifies, or can covers also be submitted?

That would depend on if you have rights to the material. 

Sounds great! Nice writing and mix.

Hi folks,

We're looking for some cool content to showcase at NAMM. Please link any of your music if you have potential submissions you would like to share in this thread.

Thanks!

Hi folks,

BandLab is going to have a big presence at NAMM this year and Cakewalk has a dedicated booth where we'll be showcasing the product and new features.

Generally for product demos, we have a few real world projects on hand that we use to show various features. I have a few projects that I had set up for the AES show but need a few more for variety. We'd like to put out a call to anyone who would like to have their project showcased as part of our materials. In the future we can also consider using some of these for downloadable demo songs (all with permission of course)

To kick this off: If you have some great sounding projects that were produced primarily in CbB and showcases the application please post a link to the music in this thread with maybe a screenshot of the loaded project if possible. An easy way would be to publish a mix of your project to BandLab and embed the BandLab link. (click the bandlab icon on the toolbar in the post editor to embed)

Important: We need a project file for a submission so please don't list songs that you cannot submit as a project. Also if you list something from a collection / album please indicate which song you would like to be considered. We won't have time to listen to albums and pick something appropriate. 

Requirements:

- Since everything will be played from a Surface Book 2 with generally stock plugins (SONAR plugins are ok) tracks using 3rd party plugins would need to be frozen.

- We're looking for some diverse material so things like modern electronic music, film scores, jazz, contemporary rock/pop are all viable.

- Project's that showcase certain types of features would also be useful. e.g vocal comping, multi tracked drums, vocalsync, melodyne, advanced mixing, etc.

- You must have rights to share the music and may need to sign a release form 

- If accepted projects will need to be uploaded to a shared folder 

For NAMM we just need a few more projects but feel free to submit any candidates since they might be considered for other uses as well.

Time is short so we'll need these by mid next week to get prepped.

thanks!

If anyone is on the Insider program please try out that build and report back. The way to test would be to load up as many instances of VST plugins as you can in CbB.

Try and load up 1000 or more instances  <<see correction below>>

A quick way to test is by adding an effects chain containing say 20 or so plugins (not important which ones) and then duplicate that chain several times in the track, and finally duplicate the track.

CORRECTION:

My original recipe above wont work. You have to add UNIQUE instances of plugins that specifically load a new DLL to run into the limit. i.e loading a 100 waves plugins wont hit the problem since they are all loaded from a single waves shell dll. Also loading the same plugin multiple times is fine since it all comes from the same dll. This is likely why most people never run into the 128 slot limit.

Here is a much more detailed explanation from Pete Brown from Microsoft. 

So to test this you need more than 128 UNIQUE plugins installed and need to load them all into a single project to see if its fixed. Good luck

Yes we got notification from Microsoft about this and will be testing this update.
It should only affects cases where people were loading up hundreds of instances of plugins inside the DAW. You could hit the ceiling if the plugins were built with an old VC runtime or if they were statically linked with it (static linking is not ideal since every plugin instance has a duplicate copy of the runtime so takes more memory)

No other functionality should be impacted. Its good that they fixed it however.

On 1/7/2019 at 11:31 PM, micv said:

Could you confirm and show me where in the menu it is?  I don't see any envelop in the Right click menu.

 

For me the env cannot be activated in the Take Lane once moved out of the that lane.  You can collapse the lanes and go to the Track and edit the clipthere but not in the Take Lane.

I think I misspoke you can manipulate clips envelopes on individual clips from the context menu on the envelope but you cannot add envelopes to a clip that doesnt have them from the menu. Sorry for the confusion. The only way to add clip envelopes is via the edit filter.

Also I think there is a bug when there are multiple clips on different lanes with envelopes like you see. I can activate it but its not allowing editing. We'll bug this up and fix it for a future update. Thanks!

Thanks  The GR-50 was ok for its time but it was terrible as an external controller. Much better stuff now with fishman et al. I no longer have it. I have a GI-20 that I havent used in years. These days I stick to guitar when I have the time to play.
Check out this album which I recorded around 90. It is almost exclusively using the GR-50 (all internal sounds no MIDI). Not my cup of tea any more but I was into it in the day

6 hours ago, Hidden Symmetry said:

Found this internet collaboration the other day. Not mine but a project by Charles Morais Jr. (drummer, age 17) of Coltrane's Giant Steps. Charles Morais SR.: keys Jerry Brooks: bass Roger Byem: saxes, myself on guitar.

Done in 2005 it says 'still under work' but it was never continued or finished. Still there's some good raw performances from Charles, Jerry & Roger in this working version.

https://www.soundclick.com/html5/v4/player.cfm?songID=1633313

 

 

Very nice! Now this is more up my alley lol. The bass has a nice groove there. Great guitar solo too.

Something that may be of interest. You may might notice that the way notes are articulated is very different from how it sounds when played from a keyboard.
I mentioned earlier that the  Roland controllers generate pitch wheel events to do slurs, hammer on's and pull offs from the guitar. These are typically instantaneous pitch bends, something you physically can't do from a keyboard in real time. Synths respond to this is quite differently than how they would when notes are played consecutively and it gives it a nice legato feel.

I got interested in this back then and wrote a CAL script called bend.cal to do this with normal MIDI parts. It can be quite effective to create more legato sounding lines.
Check out the attached file if you are interested. This is what got me interested back in the day to write music software Some pretty dense CAL code there!
Ha my email address in there is from my old job before Cakewalk.

BEND.CAL

I believe that was an intentional change. It was too confusing for many people to have one layout per section. It was done in 2016 or so.
Generally layouts are too much work for most people so we switched to the tag based built in plugin categories which is quick and easier to use.

13 hours ago, Blades said:

@msmcleod I just went back over to Cakewalk to try out this nifty idea of creating a new category or ctrl-clicking.  Now I cannot get the properties dialog to display at all for any Audio FX in the Browser.  It still works for Instruments, but right-clicking any of the Audio FX does nothing - no properties popup.

• I closed my project and re-opened.  Nothing.
• I closed Cakewalk and re-opened. Nothing.
• I closed Cakewalk and that project, opened a different project. Nothing.

These are the kinds of things that drive me nuts.  If I'm in the middle of a tune and encounter one of these oddities, it makes me want to quit, or switch to a different program.

 

Note that to edit categories inside the plugin browser you must set your filter (dropdown on plugins tab) to "Sort by category" or it wont work. That is likely why its not showing up for you.

Some important distinctions between the plugin manager, layouts and the built in plugin browser. The plugin browser stores all the scanned plugins in a database and the categories are like tags so you can group things under multiple categories. As you found you can make your own categories as well. (These are not to be confused with the category in the plugin manager which specifies the plugin type)

Any changes in categorization in the plugin browser only apply when the "Sort by category"  filter is selected. i.e. it is completely distinct from plugin layouts which are authored in the plugin manager. If you want to utilize the plugin browser categories in other plugin menus or as layouts you can simply choose "Manage Layouts" from the plugins tab dropdown and it will automatically populate a layout with all your custom categories and even honor multiple categories. Once you save a new layout with that you can use that as a layout in the plugin browser from then on.

Basically plugin layouts can be thought of as user categorized sets of plugins. The plugin browser categories are "built in" - it initially builds its categories from categories advertised by the plugin vendors for VST3 and there are also some factory authored ones for common VST2 plugins that we did. You are free to save these as plugin layouts and keep different sets of them or use the simpler built in browser categories. I suspect most users would find the latter approach simpler than maintaining plugin layouts.

We already have mechanics to store it in a database since the last two years. Its also in the registry for backwards compatibility with other versions of SONAR.

So even better - I fixed the slow loading of the categories 😉
I now cache the data that was causing the really slow registry lookups when the plugin manager starts up. 

The startup of the app will be slower but now switching categories is just a fraction of a second to refresh.

27 minutes ago, scook said:

Unfortunately the browser does not provide a way to nest folders. If is did, I could abandon the plug-in manager for layout maintenance.

Ultimately it will. When layout management is rolled into the buolt in browser we'll deprecate the external plugin manager app. 

38 minutes ago, msmcleod said:

For the most part, you don't actually need the Plugin Manager:

• Manual scans can be done from Preferences->VST Settings
• Plugin properties can accessed be via the plugin's VST2/VST3 dropdown menu
• The plugin layout can be changed via the plugin browser by right clicking on the plugin

The only thing you really need the Plugin Manager for is excluding problem plugins, but I'm sure the CbB devs will provide an alternative way of doing this before removing the Plugin Manager.

Exactly. The only extra functionality in the external utility is layout management and excluding plugins.

On 1/5/2019 at 10:33 PM, msmcleod said:

For me it takes around 4 seconds to display 324 VST 2 effects, but clicking on VST3 instruments takes 8 seconds for only 7 VSTi's.

Clicking on the DirectX effects comes back almost instantly.

To my mind it must be doing more than that behind the scenes. 

Then again, it might just be inefficient code. For example, you can see the scroll bar handle shrink as the VST2 effects populate, almost as if it's responding to WM_PAINT messages as each list item is added (rather than refreshing the GUI after the list has been populated).

This wouldn't explain the 8 seconds for 7 VST3 instruments tho.

For me it's not the end of the world, but it is a bit annoying when it repopulates everything every time you alter the plugin options.

The time taken has nothing to do with the listbox population. Its reading the registry that is slow. Though you see it slow for 7 VSTi's behind the scenes it has to go through the entire inventory to find them. If you have a few hundred VST's a lot of registry reads. The DX effects enumeration is much more efficient than the registry enumeration hence its fast. 

The logic can of course be improved by using caching (like CbB does) and this was a todo item back in the day. This wouldn't improve the first load time of the plugin box but subsequent loads would be quick.

Just now, Ben Chase said:

Hi, Noel. Thanks for the response. I use custom layouts to be able to name and organize plugins the way I want them.

Sure thats fine but I assume thats that's something you do very occasionally right? Once you make a layout you don't need plugin manager anymore.

Sure but that shouldn't be something you need to do on a daily basis.

Plugin Manager is not really being maintained these days and it hasn't been updated in a very long time.  We plan to ultimately depreciate it from Cakewalk. Its only provided for legacy reasons.

The only reason you need to ever use it today is for creating plugin layouts. Everything else and more can be done much more efficiently directly within the Cakewalk plugin browser tab, including scanning from preferences.

What is the reason you still use plugin manager?

@Starship KrupaSome more things to troubleshoot:

1. Do you see the same delay on starting playback on a new project with a single audio track?

2. Go into preferences | playback and recording, and ensure "always open all devices" is off.

3. Go into preferences | project record, and ensure "allow arm changes during playback and record" is off.

4. Go into audio device setup and disable all inputs and outputs except the ones you need. Start with one in and one out.

You can also try resetting the config file. Go to preferences config file and click "reset config to defaults".  this will back up your current settings and reset to defaults.

See if any of these improve the lag on playback start. You can also try a different audio device if you have one available to troubleshoot.

The only possibilities for delay on playback start are audio driver or disk related typically. You could also have some service that is slowing down file open operation on playback startup.

1 hour ago, micv said:

1. Let say you have  clips, (Record 1, Record 2, Record x) in a Take Lane, and you want to lower the gain for the clip Record 1.  So you create a gain env in that Take Lane, now you have gain env for all the clips in that Take Lane, i,e, Record 2, Record x  also have gain env.   Wouldn't it be better to, say, right click on Record 1 and create a gain env just for Record 1? 

When you choose the edit filter to edit an envelope it will add clip envelopes for ALL clips on that lane. You can still right click the clip you want an add an envelope manually.

1 hour ago, micv said:

Now you create some nodes and change the gain for the various part of Record 1.  Now copy or move Record 1 to another Take Lane, yes the env is copied with the clip  but try to add/delete nodes or change the gain level of the env of the copied or moved clip, it won't let you do it. 

It will. When you copied it to the new lane the envelope is not "active" so you cant edit it. You can still shift click the envelope to activate it or set the edit filter on the new lane to allow editing.

1 hour ago, micv said:

Let say you leave the Take Lane gain env active (Clip Automation selected), and you draw some env for some clip on another Take Lane but within the same time frame as Record 2, now suddenly Record 2 have the nodes drawn onto its env, when you don't intend to touch Record 2 at all.  This behavior is not consistent but occurred more than enough to be annoying.

This sounds like a bug. I tried to repro it but couldn't unfortunately.

6 minutes ago, Starise said:

Very nice track. Interesting history on it. I'm amazed CW loaded the old project. I'm sure there is still a lot you would be capable of with this if you had the desire and thinking out loud, the time.  

Thanks for sharing  it!

 

 

Yeah it brings back a lot of memories from a different era. At the time I mixed the tracks via MIDI CC7 and then used a mackie 1202 to mix the outputs of the hardware synths to stereo and record it to cassette tape

It would be nice to have a real drummer instead of the cheesy MIDI drums and a bass player as well. I might try and modernize it and try and actually perform it someday. Never actually did anything with that tune other than this scratch track although we were looking for a recording opportunity to do this and a bunch of other tunes. It never materialized though...