Starship Krupa

Excellent point. I was speaking of my own personal experiences as a QA engineer at companies that were making "big" software, not plug-ins. Also as a beta tester for multiple audio programs. Plug-ins do seem to be a different story. And as you pointed out earlier, there are plenty of "oldies" in that department that are still going strong. My only payware VSTi's that are younger than 5 years are my Glitchmachines samplers. And they're supposed to sound broken! (Stray thought: it must be weird trying to do testing at companies like Glitchmachines and Freakshow. Maybe if the plug-in is not destroying the audio it's defective?). The typical dev cycle I see for plug-ins is that there's an initial release, then shortly thereafter a 1.1 that fixes whatever incompatibilities and stray bugs, then it settles down. There are extinction-level events like the introduction of Apple's M1 processor that can spur further updates, or changes in popular DAW's that expose compatibility issues. With bigger software, it seems like there are usually regular ongoing updates with a mixture of feature additions and bug fixes. From the user perspective, with DAW's and NLE's, existing users tend to want the bugs and usability issues fixed before new features are added. And as features go, meat 'n' potatoes are good. The things that have been added to Cakewalk in the past 4 years are good, solid ones that contribute to the program's usefulness.

I like that one. Good for projects that stretch out over a long period of time. Like all of mine!

Updated to 2021.12 Archive button, many other updates, including Step Sequencer and Matrix. Also slick outlined rollovers!

Updated to 2021.12 Archive button, many other updates, including Step Sequencer and Matrix.

Updated to 2021.12 Archive button, many other updates, including Step Sequencer and Matrix.

Updated to 2021.12 Archive button, many other updates, including Step Sequencer and Matrix.

Updated to 2021.12 Archive button, many other updates, including Step Sequencer and Matrix.

Ohhh, I see now. There's a disconnect. Most of the people who posted replies are trying to help the OP make better use of the program, whether we agree with him or not. Not trying to make any points about whether Cakewalk is an inherently well-designed program or whatever. For the most part, it works well for me. I have no need to defend it. I myself would like to be able to free up the space taken up by the closed Arranger, Tempo Track, and Video Thumbnails when a project isn't using them. At this point, I can't, not even with a custom workspace. If it were that important to me, I'd get around to making a feature request. But it's not, not even on my 14" laptop screen. I really like the Skylight interface, having compared it to several other DAW's. It took some time to learn to get the best use of it, but now that I have, I don't feel that cramped on my smaller single screen. It's assumed that for him, what he said is true about the highlighted areas being "empty, redundant, or useless space." For the rest of us, that may or may not be true. The highlighted areas are there for one reason or other (I can't really give up scroll bars myself), and this person doesn't want them. Who cares whether he's "right" or "wrong?" You seem to be here because you want to debate the layout of the program with a group of people whom you know to be dedicated users. This may not be the best place to begin ridding the Internet of hypocrisy and denial.

What examples are you thinking of here? I ask because the only subscription-model software I use is Cakewalk, which has a charge of zero, so I'm not familiar with how it's played out elsewhere (Adobe for instance). I do know that Cakewalk/SONAR failed financially as a seat-licensed product and its quality (no idea about market share) has flourished as a free subscription-licensed project. In theory, the biggest pitfall of seat-licensed software is that, due to the need to attract new and upgrade licenses, development becomes focused on new features that will induce people to buy them. It would be nice if what really drove software purchases was how less crashy the latest version is, but it just doesn't work that way because people aren't savvy enough software shoppers. Companies aren't going to come out and say "the last two releases were bug-laden monstrosities, but we fixed that without adding any new major features and now we would like you to pay us more for the new version." The fact is, under the seat license model, there is a powerful incentive to direct coding resources at new features and not at fixing bugs. Programming hours cost the same no matter what they are doing, so do you listen to the complaints of people who have already bought the program and spend your hours fixing them, or do you add new features and try to get more people to buy it? You point out a potential pitfall of the subscription model where there may be less incentive to improve the software if the company perceives that the revenue stream is captive. As I say, I have no real world examples to look at. I have seen quality suffer under the seat license model, but all of the payware software licenses I own are seat model. From what I understand, Pro Tools has become less bug-ridden since they started pushing subscriptions. I don't know about Adobe products. Did you have specific examples in mind where the quality of the product seems to have suffered?

Well, I don't have any of those except for (most of) the 2015-2016 ones! I definitely don't need to have all the shiniest new toys, my favorite soft synths are my AIR Hybrid 3, Xpand!2, Boom, and Vacuum Pro. I don't think Hybrid 3's code has been touched in half a dozen years, probably the same with the others. I am a big fan of how older plug-ins were coded for a world with slower processors and less memory. Hybrid is much less likely to bog down my system than say, Chromaphone. But I don't know how long they can remain my "go-to's" given that AIR show no signs of updating them to have scalable GUI's. I like the sound quality and configurability of the Sonitus fx that come with Cakewalk, but I never use them because their UI's are cramped. And I don't even have huge screens. But the debate isn't about utility, we were talking about these companies trying to market their aging software as if it were the latest hottest stuff. For instance, iZotope seem to understand that even though the Exponential reverbs are some of the best-sounding reverbs money can buy, they can't market them as they might be able to if they gave them face lifts. I just paid $34 for 2 licenses each of R4 and Nimbus. 5 years ago they would have gotten more than 10X that (although not from me).

Updated with 2021.12's new Archive button, as well as many other art changes.

Updated with 2021.12's new Archive button, also many small artwork changes.

Good idea.

Perhaps, but how much software do you use that hasn't been updated since 2006?

OH, nice auto-censor from the forum software!

The last time we did this dance, it wasn't just a size change, we had an entire new button, wasn't it? Anyway, I don't recall having to force TE to change a button size. My brain is now 60 years old and I'm probably using that storage for something like remembering the names of the actors on The Dick Van ***** Show.

If you didn't customize any Archive buttons, nothing to worry about, Cakewalk should recognize it as a default image and pull it from TTSImage.DLL. However, if, like me with my round buttons and fancy rollovers (which have not seen a public release yet), you've customized the Archive button image, you have a bit of work to do. The new image is 176 pixels wide where the old one is 110 pixels wide. Theme Editor won't let you paste a 176 pixel wide image into your old theme's 110 wide spot, so you can't just run your pixel editor, add a few cells and paste it in. You must make room for it by removing your custom image and letting Theme Editor replace it with the 176 pixel wide image. So how to do that without losing your customizations? Open your custom theme in Theme Editor. On Track View | Track Pane/Archive, right click and select Export/Theme Item. Save the image to a handy location. After saving the custom image, right click on it again in Theme Editor and select Remove. Theme Editor will automatically replace it with the new "Mercury" 8-button default image. Open both your saved custom image and the Mercury 8-button image in your pixel editor and customize away. You should be able to copy and paste your 5-button image onto the new 8-button one and then customize the remaining 3 buttons if necessary. After you've made the 8-button image look like you want it to, you can copy it directly from your pixel editor and paste it into Theme Editor Track View | Track Pane/Archive, or save it (as a .PNG) and import it, or whatever method you like. Save your theme and it should be ready to go with the new subfolder-enabled version of Cakewalk I'm sure there are more streamlined ways to do this, these steps are the more fool-resistant version.

I turn to it when I otherwise get creatively blocked. Toss a junk food movie up on monitor 2 and open Theme Editor and Paint.NET. Even in cases where it is procrastination, at least there is a productive result, and it always makes Cakewalk more fun to use. I've also found theming to be useful for shining light into the nooks and crannies of Cakewalk that I haven't yet traveled in my usual workflow. If I'm going to bring some theming to Matrix or Step Sequencer, I need to know how they work, what the buttons do. As a result of this, I'm using Step Sequencer more often. Still can't quite get my head around Matrix, but I plan to try some more.

No, I meant for when you have a customized Archive button, as a few of mine do (those round buttons in EVA01 and Yellow Submarine for instance). I figured it out, I'll work up a recipe and post it. Theme Editor fights you a little bit on it....

Ah, thanks, I was wondering why I was seeing glitches with this. On my system, once the Archive button starts acting weird, , even switching to Mercury won't fix it. I have to exit Cakewalk and restart. What is the recipe for updating themes?

I managed to get it down to this by using float/close and hiding the audio scale. Not everything you asked for, but maybe better? I think I could have gotten it even tidier by using a Workspace. I sometimes use Cakewalk on a 14" laptop, and it helps a lot to make use of the D key, as well as Shift-D. I never really need to see the Track View and Console simultaneously, same with Piano Roll. Tap of the D key, the other view takes over. As mentioned earlier, I and B take care of the Inspector and Browser. I just minimize them when I'm not using them, but the Inspector is really handy on a small screen for when I want to see ProChannel without opening Console View, as well as its usual functions of changing clip background colors, etc. If you get cozy with Workspaces, you can switch between this and the full enchilada at will:

Most of them may be used in other DAW's, with a notable exception being the ToneBoosters FX.

Remember when this was the holiday freebie some years back? Gift horse and all, but way underwhelming considering such freeware gems as mVMeter.

I finally put a folder on my desktop called "A|A|S Wipe" with shortcuts to all the cruft folders. Remember to check your Program Files (x86) folder locations for such gems as 32-bit VST3's and even weirder Digidesign Pro Tools plug-ins. Some iZotope installers load those up.

I think it's over in tutorials. Originally written with A|A|S in mind, then I decided that rather than only complain here, I'd send them a personal email outlining the issues. This was not very long before they entirely eliminated all the redundancy in their installer, and started offering the usual options of AAX/VST/VST3, so I like to think maybe it influenced their decision to cool it. Since they're Canadian, they probably had no idea that anyone was inconvenienced by it and felt just darn awful. I kept that in mind and used my California mellowness. "You guys are awesome, your software blows my mind, but there's this one bummer..."