Starship Krupa

On this forum?? I guess I was lucky enough to have missed that....or I already have the user blocked. 🙄 As I've said previously, if having to authenticate once every 6 months is too high a price, then there are many other DAW's, probably even a couple that don't contact their home servers every time they start. We are blessed with so many alternatives. One thing that's great about the new BandLab integration feature is that CbB doesn't force the user to use or even notice it. It exists in the release notes and as two menu items under File (like the LANDR integration that used to be in SONAR that was a menu item under Utilities).

The theme creators in the UI Themes subforum are pretty diligent about updating our themes and putting that in the topics of the posts that link to our themes, so you had to browse past at least two dozen updated themes to find one that wasn't updated. The updated themes will have threads that have been bumped to near the top or state outright that they are 2021.04 compliant. If you still have an archive copy of your customized Tungsten theme, it's the work of a few minutes to export your Record Arm button image and then re-import it back into a stock Tungsten theme. Perhaps I don't understand what your issue is, Like Colin, I don't see how it could be made clearer or less ambiguous that a given track is armed. The button turns red in both Mercury and Tungsten. That's been an industry standard for over half a century, going back to the tape days. As a matter of fact, the MSR (RW*A) buttons are some of the few images still left unchanged in my own themes. I figured they were standard and should be left alone. Also, you definitely should not have been getting the "invalid theme" message just because you had a non-updated theme sitting in your Cakewalk Themes folder. One thing I found out the hard way is that I can't just rename a theme in Explorer, if I want to change its filename I need to open it in Theme Editor and save it with the new name. If I don't do it that way, Cakewalk gets confused about which theme is which.

I'm in agreement with you: what is the "Instrument Tracks" selection on there for if you can't have it checked, uncheck the other two types, and still have Instrument Track strips showing? Mostly, I don't need MIDI strips in the Console. I use the Console for mixing, and any fancy MIDI stuff, I open the Inspector and do it there. I no longer use Simple Instrument Tracks, but if I did, I'd feel kinda frustrated that I couldn't use that menu to get only my Audio and Synth/Instrument strips to show up, the strips I actually use for mixing. I brought this up years ago and it was explained to me that since "Instrument Tracks" (not "Synth Tracks") are a combination of a MIDI track and a Synth track, hiding MIDI tracks must hide Instrument Tracks. At this point, I still think at least the nomenclature should be changed to reflect what the selections actually do: "Instrument" should be "Synth." So the user will at least be able to understand what these checkmarks do.

I have seen this in the past but unfortunately can't remember what conditions or solutions were involved. I think maybe it just happened, then stopped happening as it is with your system. Sorry I don't have more.

Another thing, especially for those like @treesha who are getting the message that the installer is corrupt, open Windows Explorer, right click on your C drive, select Properties, click on the Tools tab and then click on Error Checking. This will scan your drive for corruption. It may be going bad or you may have something wrong with the file system.

As you know, I'm sympathetic to people who get started with onboard sound. I still want to perform the experiment of recording an entire audio project by running the output of my Yamaha mixer to the line in on my laptop just to see how it goes. As you point out, if someone's doing electronic type music with MIDI and samples, they don't really need to invest in an external interface (put the money into a good set of cans first!). I'm such a geek that I downloaded and read Realtek's datasheets on their hardware CODEC. They'd have us believe that they've been working on it like it's the cure for cancer. There are many features like S/PDIF that every current Realtek chip can do that just aren't used by the people who design them into their motherboards. Based on that, I suspect that in current systems the noise floor issue might be more down to the motherboard manufacturers' implementation than something inherent to Realtek's CODEC. Still, it's not like we can go in and change anything. Love to have access to that S/PDIF, though. Can you imagine being able to connect an external A/D directly to your laptop without going through USB? I've long suspected that the other interface manufacturers are paying off Realtek to keep them from coming up with a functioning ASIO driver. It's certainly not like they haven't had enough time.😅 To anyone reading this, I too can start getting the "hit Play and instant dropout" if I run Cakewalk in WASAPI Shared vs. Exclusive. It's also essential to launch the Sound applet in Control Panel and make sure that Properties/Advanced for your output device has both Exclusive Mode boxes checked.

Interesting metaphor. I'd speculate that for those of you fortunate enough to have the Platinum suite, maybe it's like having an earlier loaded model of a car you keep around so that you can salvage parts from it. 😄 I sure wouldn't mind having that Cakewalk LP Multiband EQ around to play with. It's too bad that I can't pick up some Studio One convert's used Platinum license to pull parts from!

John's video is pretty comprehensive. I have another method to add. That is to put a gain knob plug-in in the FX rack. My favorite is BL Gain, which is free and comes in different flavors depending on how much gain you want to be able to add. I stick with the 12dB version. Kilohearts also have a simple one that comes with their package of free FX. The utilities he mentions, SPAN and Youlean Loudness Meter, have counterparts in the Meldaproduction FreeFX Bundle (which comes with 35 other useful FX and utilities). I'm also fond of TBProAudio dpMeter. We're blessed with so many free loudness meters it's good to try different ones to find which one gives you the easiest to interpret results.

Michael, Ed, I'm curious how these compare to industry fave headphones like ATH-M50, Sennheiser HD280, Superlux 681, etc. If you have experience with those. I'm big on detail and soundstage. The M50's are the best I've heard at that. I also have the same $10 Sony cans that Paolo uses, surprisingly not bad for a dime if you want some lightweight on-ears. If you get the impression I'm a headphone 'ho, that's....not inaccurate. All the way back to many hours spent with The Moody Blues in my teens. P.S. If I'm ever called upon to come up with a brand name for a line of cymbals, "Status" is my first choice.

If you're in doubt, it's easy enough to create a BandLab account for your singer and use that account to install and authenticate Cakewalk. It's still your computer, but the software itself is registered to your partner. 100% within the license terms as I understand them: BandLab don't care who owns the computer, rather it's who has the license subscription for the program and is using it. Why do they care? As stated from on high, they just want to know how many people are using the program in their own studios/home studios/coffee houses etc. At the minimum, the software needs to check in once every 6 months. They also want to keep us informed about the current build. We're not forced to update to it, but they want us to know if there is a newer release. That said, I'm pretty sure that there's no mechanism for them to detect that 2 installations registered to the same user are in use at the same time. So no software police will be knocking on your virtual door. But playing by their rules costs nothing and is a nice gesture to those who are providing this for no charge.

I'm currently working with the trial version of Stutter Edit 2, thinking of picking it up in the iZotope Community Appreciation Bundle. I love it, it's something I've been looking for, as long as it works. But I've been running into issues where parts of the UI become unresponsive and I have to remove it and put it on the track again to get it to start working again. iZotope explicitly say that it's compatible with CbB, so I'm wondering whether this is something to do with the fact that I'm running it in trial mode or if there's some other issue. If you're using SE2 with Cakewalk, please chime in.

You get Stutter Edit 2 in that Community Appreciation Bundle.

Hmmm, thinking about TRIAD over here....

Ah, found it:

Which is of course the usual state of things during rendering, when we need the processor clock the most. I'll see if I can find Pete Brown's guide to Windows system optimization for DAW use. Pete is our resident Microsoft employee.

It seems more that the days of widespread forum participation are slowly passing away. I do wonder, though, these youngsters who consider forums to be an outdated form of community information exchange, what platform(s) are they using in place of them? Instagram, YouTube, Facebook, there's nothing that I've seen that can touch the encyclopedic density of persistent information that a forum generates (which the young ones also benefit from via Google searches). As far as I know, I can't topic search a Facebook Group. Nor a YouTube comments section (I notice that YouTube added a "community" tab to channels that functions more like....a forum). Reddit discussions seem to have a much shorter half-life than in a forum. Besides the ease of information access, there's the sense of community that's like walking into a favorite cafe where you've gotten to know the regulars. I guess since I started out as a BBSer 30-odd years ago and still have IRL friends from those days, I'm pretty used to threaded message communities. FIDOnet, then usenet after that. For anyone concerned about Cakewalk attracting a younger user base outside of this forum, check out the views counts on X.E.L. Ohh's YouTube channel. His tips on Piano Roll View got10,000 views, his one on using Graillon in CbB got 27,000, how to record vocals 16,000, and weirdly enough his video on making a beat using only TTS-1 got 4,300 views. He has 3,000 subscribers, which isn't exactly Rick Beato territory, but that's 3,000 people who want to know whenever he drops another tutorial. Another YouTuber is Mike of Creative Sauce, whose CbB videos draw in the tens of thousands, and his Cakewalk Basics video has drawn almost 250,000 views. I don't know (and don't really care) how those numbers stack up against, say, people who do Cubase tutorials, but I like the idea of a quarter of a million people watching a video about how to use Cakewalk. BandLab sure don't seem to be throwing money at advertising, the budget looks to be going to pay developers, which is fine with me. REAPER looks to have a solid place in the market based on being a quality product at a low price, and I think they've relied on word of mouth (to a fault at times).

How nice that I didn't notice that, due to the diligent efforts of the development team. 3 years ago I would have spotted it very quickly.

Your best bet at this point is probably to revert to the earlier version. For future reference, normalization is best applied at the beginning of the mixing and editing process. I never use it myself, I prefer just cranking up the Gain knob on any tracks that were recorded at a low level. Also of course, in addition to duping tracks to try things out, Save As is your friend, as well as possibly enabling versioning in Preferences. I try to remember to Save As before making any big moves, especially on a mix that's nearing completion (completion, HA).

Thank you so much for saying this. Really. I've always felt that my bringing fresh eyes was my best asset, considering I had almost zero experience with SONAR. 3 years of using CbB, I still feel like a n00b. Some features I've never touched except to experiment with them, like Audiosnap and even the Step Sequencer. I've never edited in Staff View, only used it to print out sheet music. Poked at Matrix View and had a hilarious experience with not being able to figure out how to turn it off, it was like an I Love Lucy bit where my loop was blasting over and over and I couldn't find the stop button anywhere. Never tried Drum Replacer. So Cakewalk is like this huge building with rooms I never go into. I'm all about the big 3: Track View, Console View, and Piano Roll. I was afraid of coming off like a hothead, but in retrospect, I think some of my flailing and expressed frustration may have influenced the change to the Smart Tool and the attention given to enabling a simpler editing workflow. The devs never said this, but I was blowing up the forum for a while with my consternation about trying to perform what are basic editing tasks in most DAW's I've tried. Cakewalk just kept getting in my way. It's so much better now, but from time to time I do trip over things like this weird cross-take fade (which I can repro, BTW, so fingers crossed). Many of the issues I've had come up because as a drummer, I am in love with Cakewalk's clip grouping feature (sorely lacking in Mixcraft, and one of the main features that pushed Mixcraft to 2nd DAW status in my studio) for editing and comping 4 track drum recordings. So every move I make has to propagate across 3 other tracks in perfect sync. One bug I uncovered with this only happened when my other 3 tracks had their lanes collapsed. The devs had a hell of a time reproducing it because they usually work with lanes open, not surprising because they're trying to observe what's going on. But I work with lanes closed to avoid screen clutter. After months of back and forth and sending them my messed up projects, someone noticed that mine were being sent in with my lanes closed. It was a nasty mother of a bug, too, causing major portions of takes not to appear in clips. The worst part was I had a friend tracking drums at my place who has a Pro Tools studio at home and though he liked Cakewalk, he was shaking his head at the clip weirdness. It was fairly easily remedied, but scary at first. Maybe nobody else works with closed lanes, or they noticed that things went sideways when they did and stopped doing it, or whatever. Anyway, pretty sure this current thing with the long fades is a bug, and one I can repro. I suspect it has to do with the fact that my takes were all recorded in one continuous loop with no stopping, so it's one big audio file. Maybe the devs record their takes mostly one at a time rather than sitting down and bashing into 4 audio tracks for 20 minutes on a 4-minute song. But that's the way drums are recorded here at Glitchseason....

The next thing to do is run LatencyMon again and then click on the Drivers tab and find out which one is chewing up your interrupts. I was getting high latency stats from LatencyMon and used it to figure out that my network interface driver was what was causing it. I rolled back to the previous driver and it was much smoother sailing. If that doesn't turn anything up, what it says about BIOS settings definitely applies. Common wisdom says to disable certain Intel BIOS features for DAW work, and I was following that. Nailed my processor to what I thought was its maximum clock speed. I reenabled one of the forbidden settings (turbo boost, I believe) and my processor speed jumped. This was the case on both my Dell tower and Dell laptop. There are also power settings in the OS that allow you to set things up so that your processor never gets slowed down by the OS in favor of battery savings.

At $6 a set, they're not going to be eating much market share any time soon. I can get Ernie Ball, Dunlop, or D'Addario sets for less than that from Amazon's own site. GHS are .07 more, and Fender are $4. If I really want store brand strings, Musician's Friend's Musicians Gear electric sets are $2.60, and free shipping without having to pay $14 a month for it. Musician's Friend have been selling those strings for decades and I don't think they've put any reputable string makers out of business. To the contrary, in that time period, Dunlop started making strings at their factory in Benicia, just North of me. Good product, too. I don't think that store brands have a negative effect on name brand products, especially commodity things like strings. I like my GHS and D'Addario, and I'll pay a buck a pack more for them if I have to, which I don't. If anything, I suspect that they cause the name brands to step up their game and make sure that their product is competitive.

Ha, @Colin Nicholls, did you get this? It seems to happen at my house for no reason I can pin down. I thought at one point it was odd or even days. I'd never paid much attention, I guess I write my notes in take lane headers and don't put enough tracks in a folder to be concerned with how many there are.

FLIGHT DECK's MIDI and audio reset button is invisible on my monitor, and if I click it, the audio engine button goes invisible as well. Maybe my screen is set to a lower contrast than yours?

Ha, what kind of minds think alike? I tried to post last night with a photo of my new states 1-3 buttons, which like yours add a "+" sign. See it below. I like what you've done with the rollover, and I agree that it now makes sense. Cakewalk just isn't using it in a way that indicates anything other than "your cursor is now over this button" unless you already know about the behavior. I may change my Cell 1 image back to the standard now that I've seen yours, but I do like static buttons that suggest what will happen when I click on them. I will mull it. It's a fine line, isn't it, between functional and clever. Was this always in Flight Deck and I just didn't notice? This is proof that a good theme can add functionality that's not there in the stock themes. Anything that makes it easier on new users is great by me. Here's an image of what my new lanes buttons look like in all their static states: As you can see, the "loud" button is for the state when lanes exist but the lanes panel is closed. When the lanes are open, it switches to a black background image.

Welllllll....in this case, we are getting what we paid for, it's just that we paid for most of it years ago. Our license fees funded the first 30 years of development, and now that code base is owned by a company that wanted to keep developing it and let everyone use it for free as a promotional, brand-building product. There were some that were very upset that they had paid hundreds in licensing fees for a product that was now going to be free for everyone, but it's a fact that as a Cakewalk by BandLab user, I know that there is a lot of bonus material in that Platinum bundle that I can't get my hands on for any amount of money, and I also didn't get to use SONAR for all the time that the paid users did (although I did own a SONAR license back in the early 2000's before I set the hobby aside for a dozen years). I was using Mixcraft when Gibson pulled the plug. Mixcraft is a great little program, but a little program it is. I've found Cakewalk to be much more capable.