Starship Krupa

Brut

I go back a bit further than that. When the boutique stompbox wave hit in the late 90's and early 00's, I was something of a figure in that scene. I had my own small company with a line of loving recreations of specific vintage fuzz boxes. My products were reviewed positively in Guitar Player and Guitarist. I don't talk about that phase of my life much around these parts, it doesn't usually come up. I first became aware of the 500 rack craze about 15 years ago, watched it grow, knew a couple of the early movers, etc. There was of course some cross pollination between those scenes. Which is all to say that I understand and am sympathetic with people who want to add some analog sauce to their productions. And the people who are into this kind of thing are not afraid to spend some money, which is always nice when building a user base. It's a crowd I would hate to have alienated from using Sonar. They're good people to have around. So from that list of tracks and processors, I, with my pair of Saffire Pro 40's would easily be able to accommodate all that hardware only if Sonar would let me use my outputs individually. Otherwise, I'd not be able to pull it off, and half of my outputs would be useless,

That sounds scary. Can you describe in more detail how your projects (I assume you meant "projects" when you typed "programs") are having trouble opening in SONAR? The projects I have done in CbB open fine in SONAR, although there is a popup warning that the newer features won't be accessible. Obviously, if I use Arranger sections, those won't come across to the old program. Although I think that being proactive is a good idea, on my systems, Cakewalk by BandLab has not stopped working, nor have BandLab announced a date after which Cakewalk by BandLab will stop working. So you should not be having any problems with CbB at your gig on the 22nd.

I think that at a basic level, what Norfolk wants to be able to do is: if an audio interface has 8 outputs, use 8 different external mono processors on 8 different channels. So if you have a mono sound source on channel 1, you can send to your interface's output 1, then also send a mono source from channel 2 to your interface's output 2. The way it is now, a send can be configured as L+R, L, R, or Mono. The problem (as I understand it) is that if you put the External Insert on Channel 1 and set it to L, you can't put another instance on Channel 2 and use the leftover "R." Assuming that output 1 on your interface is half of stereo pair 1 and output 2 is the other half, you lose an entire output. I believe that the use case for single mono sends is not "real studios that use a lot of hardware." The theoretical pro studio will likely be using: 1, interfaces with plenty of stereo pairs and, 2, stereo rackmount processors. They'll also likely have 3, Waves Mercury and/or iZotope Everything subscriptions. The target market I see for this functionality are people taking part in the current craze for "500" rack boutique processors. Here's an article from a few years ago about this phenomenon: https://www.soundonsound.com/sound-advice/choosing-500-series-modules I have a couple of friends who have these, some built from kits. These things tend to be mono because of the modular nature of putting together a system (if you want "stereo," you buy 2 of them) and because their small size may not allow for more than one channel of analog goodness. If you are working with a lot of these things (they seem to be rather addicting), you'll be aware of what the DAW needs to be able to do to make your life easier. Some DAW's don't provide for it at all, some provide for using as many outputs your interface has as sends, and at least one, Cakewalk, ties up 2 outputs per insert whether you need stereo or mono. For instance, I have an interface with 10 outputs, 2 of which are dedicated to monitoring. With Cakewalk as it is, that would mean that if I had 2 vocal tracks and wanted to use external hardware compressors on each of them, I'd already have used up half of my interface's capacity and only be able to use 2 more compressors, which would mean choosing any 2 of bass, snare, kick, left overhead, and right overhead. Or maybe put a stereo Fairchild 670 clone on the master bus. But I would quickly be all out of sends. On the other hand, were I able to use all of my sends, I could have mono processing on all of the aforementioned mono tracks and still have one send left over. I personally mix entirely in the box these days. I have a few stray pieces of rackmount stuff that I rarely use. Cleaning up this feature isn't my personal fight. My wishes are for a nice software sampler ported over from Next, and/or some love shown toward Matrix. But I do believe that this boutique hardware processor enthusiast market is worth accommodating. And it seems like an artificial limitation. There's no reason I can see for treating each hardware output as half of an inseparable stereo pair. It's a waste of resources. I like Sonar and I would like to be able to recommend it to my friends without caveats like "but it's not the best if you want to use a lot of external sends." And if someday I get into 500 rack toys in a big way I'd like to be able to use them with Sonar with no restrictions.

Hybrid 3, Vacuum Pro, and Xpand!2 are all synths that I would not wish to be without. I think I have about $30 invested in them, not counting various $5 expansion packs purchased to qualify for PB BOGO's. If you're into building songs around arps, as I am, Hybrid 3 does things that no other synth I've tried can do. Very versatile arpeggiator that can be stacked 2x for very complex arpage. And it just sounds great. Xpand!2 is a crazy capable ROMpler with some great sounds. Vacuum Pro is a great emulation of a subtractive analog synth, especially nice if you aren't interested in recreations of specific instruments.

IMO, Harpsichord holds up, but I'm with Peter on the rest of them. If you want a nice harpsichord, get Harpsichord next time it comes up for under $10.

$29 for Trackspacer is a "go directly, do not pass GO" purchase.

I think I'm interested to know more about what you think is missing from the Matrix as currently implemented, vs. Project 5 (and Bitwig, FL, Ableton Live, and so forth). What features should be added? What features should be changed?

Only if you believe that Cakewalk's inability to send a single stream of audio at a time via its external insert feature without also tying up a second audio stream is somehow down to a limitation of WASAPI. In my years of following this issue, I don't remember anyone else suggesting that. While the introduction of WASAPI may have made it more difficult for Cakewalk's coders to change the external insert feature for whatever reason, it wasn't that WASAPI somehow only allowed I/O channels to be used in stereo pairs. SONAR introduced the ability to output individual mono channels with the same release it introduced support for WASAPI: SONAR 8. (source: Noel's blog) The bottom line for me is that if Studio One and REAPER can do it, it is possible to do. And they're just the programs that I personally know can do it. There are probably more.

Keep in mind that the Windows versions of REAPER and Studio One can handle mono external inserts no problem (or so I'm told). If anyone tries to tell you that the issue is some limitation or other of Windows. I hold that if Windows program A can do something, it calls into question the credibility of claims by developers (or dedicated users) of Windows program B that they can't make Windows program B do that thing due to some shortcoming of Windows'. The reason that some audio programs don't support WASAPI and instead either supply or recommend ASIO4ALL is that the people developing those programs are simply put, lame-o's. There is no other explanation or excuse for a Windows DAW not supporting WASAPI. Cakewalk is in no danger of dropping support for WASAPI, and one of the many reasons is that the CTO worked closely with Microsoft when they were developing it.

Been going through Theme Editor withdrawal and kinda liking the new look of Sonar (mixed-case), so I whipped up a facelift for Session Drummer 3 to give it a look inspired by Sonar's Dark color scheme. Files and instructions are in the link in my sig. It only replaces 2 files, so easy to try.

It's fine for making simple charts from my MIDI parts to hand off to other players. If I were a "real" composer, I'm sure I'd find it too limited. But that's what Finale and Musescore and the rest are for.

I'm not as well-versed in this issue, as I only have a couple of outboard processors, so not in danger of running out of sends. But I've seen the plaintive cries over the years and sympathize with having "if they'd only fix this ONE DAMN FEATURE it would be the greatest thing ever" going around in my head. To the extent that the devs have replied, I think they mentioned that mucking about in that area would be opening a can of dusty spaghetti, and they'd likely also want to do it better this time. The current method seemed kind of kluge-y when I tried it. When I've done it in the hardware world, that kind of thing is well-integrated into the mixer itself, not as an add=om. From what I've seen, the devs really have their hands full trying to get the initial release of Sonar ready with the vector UI being the big new feature The silver lining with Sonar going payware is that the development will naturally shift in the direction of features. "Now with!" being a favorite marketing phrase. That could be "now with completely overhauled and expanded support for external rackmount signal processors!" Gotta have the word "rackmount" in there.😄 Payware license-driven software development can hit the pitfall of adding a new feature, then letting it dangle in the wind when the development team is then put on the task of working on the next big set of features before things are fully right with the new feature, and from what I've seen, SONAR, with its various changes in management, may have suffered from that one. At least for the nasty crashy bugs, the current team have been ferociously active about setting that right. There are older features that could get some love, like Matrix view and the Arpeggiator. My understanding is that those were grafted on from Project 5. The Matrix isn't as well-integrated as it could be (right click on clip, Send To Matrix cell, eh?), and there's no way to create and edit arpeggiator patterns. They're both features with more potential, especially for current music styles. The boom in use of external processors is not a thing to discount. People shell out a LOT of money for those little mono 500 rack gadgets. I hope that BandLab goes back to the NAMM Show someday, last time I was there it seemed like half of Hall D was taken up by people peddling 500 rack stuff. I know from personal experience with my boutique pedal company that musicians LOVE using stuff that not everyone can find/afford/figure out how to use. It's a segment of the market that doesn't mind opening their wallets. There's no reason not to treat them with the same importance that compatibility with software processors gets.

Create an instrument track with Stochas. Create another instrument track with the synth you wish to control with Stochas. Set the synth track's input to Stochas, MIDI channel 1 (that's the default for Stochas, although you can change it). Turn the synth tracks Input Echo on. Set the Stochas track's Channel to 1. Enter some notes in Stochas' editor. Set Cakewalk to loop for a measure or two or however many measures you want it to loop. Hit Play. At this point you should be hearing output from the synth. If you're not, make sure that the synth has a patch loaded, make sure you have input echo turned on, make sure you have some notes entered, and make sure the synth track's audio path is clear all the way through to the output (the usual troubleshooting when you can't seem to get a synth to make sound). Make sure that the Stochas plug-in is set to enable MIDI out (which you do using the menu under that "VST3" button in the plug-in UI). This setup should work for any generator or sequencer like this that acts as a virtual MIDI instrument generating MIDI information. If you want to get results similar to what Stochas does, I really encourage you to try using Cakewalk's built-in Step Sequencer, as outlined above. It does the note probability thing no problem. Once I found that out, I didn't bother with Stochas anymore.

It's what allows it to do time stretching. Pro tip: don't go deleting DLL's that aren't in your VST folder.

If the coppers find him.

I know that Chromaphone gets the lion's share of love, and it is indeed a great synth, but I recently picked up Ultra Analog VA-3 and like it better. Chromaphone sounds "colder" where Ultra Analog VA sounds "warmer" to me. So I encourage anyone considering buying an A|A|S synth to try them both (they have fully functional free trials).

Absolutely worth it. I'm very leery of "exciters," but I listened to a song done by someone here on the Cakewalk forum and noticed a real ear candy sparkle to one of the elements. Asked them about it and they said it was the Vitalizer.

I was pleased to find that Libbyapp from my local library has Beat. Now to wait until this issue comes out....

If you're exclusively using virtual instruments, samples, and loops to create your music then, no, you don't even need an external interface. WASAPI Exclusive will get you decently low latency and good sound with just your system's built-in audio CODEC (invariably Realtek, they seem to have the market for onboard hardware audio CODEC's completely monopolized). I don't know what the problem is with getting an ASIO driver for Realtek's CODEC's. There's nothing inherently wrong with the hardware, it's even capable of doing 192K/32, 7.1 channel, S/PDIF (if the board manufacturer implements those things) but that lack of an ASIO driver is a big deal for audio work. Why no programmer has come up with one is a mystery. Realtek shipped one for a while, but it was so buggy they pulled it.

It's certainly against the forum TOS. Dropping a fiver or finding a way to read the issue via a library membership is a small enough consideration to give Beat and A|A|S. And for those who think they have everything A|A|S, they usually come out with multiple new soundpacks in between these freebie deals, so at least check and make sure. Their stuff is so great.

Updates to NI Access always make sure that the NI hardware support services that you've disabled a dozen times because you own no NI hardware get re-enabled. So there's that....

(shoots for Deals forum, hits rim)

I've received many (sincere I hope) compliments, but since the topic seems to have gone toward the wah wah WAHHHH..... I was in Bath, England, in a small lightly populated pub one afternoon. Was chatting with the barman, a young chap, mentioned that my (proto grunge Faith No More-ish) band had just finished doing a demo in a studio. He showed interest in hearing what was coming out of San Francisco at that time (1990) and asked if he could play it on the pub's sound system. Joy! Halfway through the second song, a grumpy pub owner appeared and ordered him to turn it off, snapping "this isn't a heavy metal pub!" Well, it wasn't a heavy metal band either.... As for people's reactions to my music in general, well, I've always tried to remember that I make it so that it sounds good to me, that my own tastes have always been outside the mainstream, and that if anyone else at all likes it, that's a bonus. Even if someone's just pretending to like it, that's nice, that they like me enough to care about my feelings. The best/funniest times have been when friends have come to shows or listened to tracks out of a sense of duty, and I can tell that they are genuinely surprised that they like it. 😄 And @User 905133, I'd take the "good driving music" to be quite a compliment.

It would be great for those times when someone posts to a music forum saying "I got these tracks from a band who recorded them in their rehearsal room, no possibility of recording them over again, so I need advice on how to salvage what they gave me." Followed by five replies suggesting they re-record the tracks.