John

Excellent thread! I have been computing for as long as there have been PCs. I build my own. I learned stuff from this thread. Thank you. This is another reason why the Cakewalk forum is so darn good.

Yes.. Buses are cheep. You could have an instrument bus for single instruments. You have a lot of leeway.

The above from Millzy is the way I do it. Its a good practice to have a separate bus for each type of instrument. There is no reason to be stingy with buses.

We don't allow personal attacks. Please don't do this in the future.

Basically, the faster the better. I found that core speed is more important than the number of cores. SSD is far better than a mechanical drives. More memory is better than less. Most important is a good solid audio interface.

Check your ASIO buffer settings. It can be too high or too low. Find the sweet spot.

I'm not a fan of the Monkees but just for fun I wondered what I would like to hear of the song. So here is my version. I'm a Believer 2.mp3

There is another way. Importing the audio from the audio from the Cakewalk audio folder under the project. Make sure all the audio is set up as full tracks not clips.

Michael I believe you are satisfied with what you get with the TTS-1. It may be that you have not heard what can be done with MIDI in the modern era. With samples for a single instrument running into multi GB size files for samples the ability to create a fantastic sound is practically unlimited. There are completely free samples and sampler players that are very good indeed. Heck, Sonar came with Dimension Pro which was a very good sampler. Cakewalk doesn't come with a bunch of instruments Sonar did. Without having tried what is out there you can't know what you are missing. Also the method you outline of creating MIDI with a sound module is unusually difficult. There are simpler ways to get a really good sound from MIDI.

When you say use the "brute force method" you are using a program change to select the right program to play back. Is this correct? if so that is the way it should be done. Unless you tell the synth or synth module what patch to use it will default to the first patch. This can be done by inserting a patch change at the proper point in the MIDI track. TTS-1 is a software version of the Roland Sound Canvas and follows the General MIDI protocol as well as some of the Roland GS protocol. I would invest in better soft synths and samplers. Try Kontakt for example and notice how much better the sound is. TTS-1 is OK for auditioning MIDI or composing but not so good for its sound quality. Nor is it a substitute for a real hardware Sound Canvas. You have a massive amount of software VSTi virtual sound modules available that will run rings around the TTS-1.

I like to think of it as mono source to mono track. Stereo source to stereo track.

Read the first manual of the first synth. Then go on the the next one. If you are asking about how to use a software synth in Cakewalk that is a simple thing to answer. The M32 should also have a user manual with how to connect it to a DAW. We have a lot of very good and knowledgeable people here that can answer almost anything but your best bet is to narrow down the question/s to a reasonable size. Be more pointed in the question.

"Maybe even something we don't know about yet." Oh great, another piano!🤕

I like the pianos that come with Kontact. I was tipped by our Deals forum about a free piano from Melda called Monastery Grand. This impressed me right off the bat. Its a sampled piano of over 3.1 GB size. I am very pleased with its sound. I already have most of the pianos mentioned in this thread. All of them are very good. This one is very nice, though.

I have always used Windows Pro. I have Pro on my desktop and my laptop.