Starship Krupa

5 hours ago, ChernobylStudios said:

It's definitely not moonieware because Reaper isn't perfect.

Nor is any other software. The term has little to do with the product itself, although by nature the product must be one that is less popular than mainstream offerings.

The term mostly referred to advocacy behaviors on the part of a user base, and was coined mostly to piss off such advocates and provide the rest of us with a way to let off steam.

Popping their heads up in online discussions about other programs to say that everyone involved should try XYZ because it's way better, never admitting to any shortcomings on the part of XYZ no matter how obvious. Basically the belief that if we all clap really loud to show how much we believe in XYZ we can create a sustainable market share for it.

Reaper's fanbase seems to have settled down, perhaps as the program itself has become useful enough to keep them occupied making music with it.

A friend of mine says that if one wants to do live sound work, Reaper's versatility in routing will make one quite happy.

I think that the company has done a great job, and seems to pay attention to what the users request, which is always smart. The most important thing is that they have shown that their licensing model can work. I suppose I'll keep giving it a try every couple of years. I've always been rooting for them to succeed.

On 4/24/2019 at 5:21 AM, Oscar Myer said:

Sample Tank would crash CbB on occasion

I too experience this, with SampleTank 3. Both VST2 and VST3 versions lock up after a certain amount of time.

9 hours ago, Chris Jones said:

user-created midi track templates on my system are problematic, where when using a midi track template I created rather than using the standard insert midi track command, when I'd go to record on it the now time time would hang for maybe 3 seconds before recording would start and the same would happen when stopping the track, the now timeline would hang for a few seconds before rewinding itself.

Hmm, the Cakewalk start delay symptom. I won't call it a bug at this point because that implies a single cause. Symptom was that when I started the transport for any operation, be it Record or Play, there was an ever-increasing lag.

I have had a transport lag issue in the past, nasty one. In my case, I theorized that it had something to do with all the unused audio clips that were streaming from the disk, so I started culling them from my Take Lanes and the problem went away. But the project where it was most persisten was a mixed MIDI/audio project now that I think of it, and I wonder if I was looking in the wrong place, that it might have had something to do with the MIDI tracks. It was worst on a project that was solely audio, though.

There have been a couple of times where I hit Record and it didn't start recording at all, but that's not enough times to call it anything other than a glitch or even operator error.

@chrismohr

53 tones? Interesting.

Condolences on the loss of your friend.

Being of the geek persuasion myself I'm very curious what about your system "breaks" if you try to use it with a later version of Sonar or CbB.

I assume that it's a combined hardware and software system. Are there plug-ins or external programs that are having a hard time coexisting with Sonar/CbB? Hardware? Cakewalk's legendary scripting?

If you stick around and ask and answer a few questions, maybe the forum hive mind could help get it so that your system is not tied to just this one dot-release of a defunct program. It seems a shame if you could no longer do your specialized composing work using this system that you and your friend probably put a lot of effort into setting up.

One thing: you say that your "computer" died. By that do you mean that the system disk and the drive (if different) where your installation of Sonar X2.2 reside were rendered unreadable? If not, you may be able to improve your situation by removing the drive(s) and installing them in a working system, at least just long enough to make backups.

10 hours ago, James Argo said:

I still have the CD, (and I made the ISO backup), however I don't think it's legal to share it (even the backup installation).

For the benefit of these inquiries that come up from time to time here, and people who wonder about the consequences of possibly misusing their installation media for old versions of Sonar, I'd like to point some things out. None of it, as you will see if you (not likely) read it is legal advice, and I'm not a lawyer. It's mostly stuff that everyone knows but doesn't stop to consider. If someone has greater knowledge of IP, contract, and civil law and anything I say isn't true, please let me know.

(James, this isn't directed at you specifically, more anyone who's pondering what they might do in this situation)

When it comes to software, typically what the license agreement covers is the use of the ones and zeroes on the media, not the media itself, except for using it in ways that encourage illegal copying. In other words, you can't mount the disk as a network share and put it on the Internet for people to download, you can't burn copies for people to use to make unlicensed installations, etc.

The OP (presumably) purchased a license to use the program. Software EULA's even back then typically didn't come with any prohibitions regarding what could be done with the physical media the program came on, merely the contents of it. Usually, there was language explicitly permitting these contents to be backed up (backing up of media became a consumer right granted by a court decision).

Unless Sonar had unusual language in its licensing agreement, there should not have been any prohibition against using the installation media to install a copy of the software for the purpose of activating it with another legal license. If such were the case, then companies who purchased multiple copies would have been presumably bound by it to maintain all their original installation media and implement tracking to make sure that each originally-supplied CD-ROM was used to install the program on one single licensed workstation at a time. When I was still working my IT day job 20 years ago I knew of no software that didn't allow for sharing a copy of the installation media among multiple computers as long as the target computer was licensed to use the contents.

Activation may have depended on information encoded into the media, but again, 20 years ago I knew of no company, especially not in consumer software, that was still doing this.

This means that you can use your installation media any way you wish, as colorful shiny mobiles, drink coasters, to install multiple legally-licensed copies in your studio complex, whatever, just never for installing unlicensed or improperly licensed copies of its contents.

Next, even if it could somehow be shown to be against the terms of the license agreement to use the media (or a copy of its contents) for the purpose of installing a legally licensed copy on a 3rd parties computer, that wouldn't make it "illegal" in the same way that shoplifting or stealing a car is illegal. By which I mean that if some law enforcement agency somehow learned about someone doing it ("stealing SONAR? I think you want to talk to the FCC or Coast Guard about that"), they would not take steps to prevent it or punish it.

The injured party (presumably the now-defunct Cakewalk, Inc.) would have to lawyer up and take them to court to obtain whatever damages they thought they were entitled to. In a case of the action being against the EULA, that might be the list price of a single seat license plus whatever attorney's fees. Any decent defense attorney would make mincemeat out of the plaintiffs on the basis that no harm whatsoever was done, therefore, no damages. No court is going to make someone pay damages because they helped someone out whose hard drive and the company that made their installation media died.

The current owners of the Cakewalk and Sonar brands and most of the intellectual property on the disc give away the main part of it for free. For the bundled software, the situation would be the same as described above (except probably with even fewer restrictions): they don't care as long as the installation is legal, and if they did, they would have to find out about your misdeed, hunt you down, and take you to a court that would promptly throw the whole thing out.

If all of the oddball things somehow happened, someone was taken to court by ZombieCakewalk Inc. and lost, they'd be told to pay what the court decided and that's it. No criminal record, no cops hunting them down. And when I say "be told to pay," that's all the court does. Tells the losing party they are obligated to pay. It falls back to the winning party to actually try to collect.

(BandLab could maybe theoretically take someone to court over a broken Sonar license, but given the current licensing scheme for Cakewalk, that seems....unlikely)

That's what I have to say about possible legal consequences.

As far as moral questions? The company that wrote the agreement no longer exists. People who bought their licenses expecting not to have to worry about losing their media because Cakewalk, Inc. had been around for 20 years already and didn't seem to be going anywhere are who I'd consider to have taken a beating. The EULA, if it did have language preventing legal installations to 3rd-party computers, and it probably didn't, was written under the assumption that situations like this would never occur, that someone like the OP would be able to phone up and get a replacement disk for a nominal fee. That, of course, is no longer true.

On 5/2/2019 at 3:29 AM, Tezza said:

Starship wants to leave the line there but remove the information box at the top of the aim assist line, to have the option to do so.

Yes, thanks, that's what I want. The information box obscures the information I most want to see when I'm using it. It's too minute for me to read, and it covers up the numbers on the Timeline Ruler.

I already know how to turn the Aim Assist line on and off. I want it there, but not obscuring the Ruler numbers.

(I guess I need to watch the tl in my posts)

Cool, thanks!

I guess I need to install AutoHotkey in order to try it? I'm not familiar with the program.

I just tried setting the global lens to none, and the issue went away. Whether it comes back, we shall see.

And to answer Mark's inquiry, I have "Track View Control Order" unchecked.

1 hour ago, mettelus said:

....an "Arranger Track" (and all the associated Ripple Delete drag/drop goodies). I would much rather read what the section is in nice bold colored sections with big text, and when moved have it look identical. When moving things with markers, the markers themselves could either mask or be masked by the adjacent sections (and marker text is rather small).

No, this is not part of an "arranger track." That belongs over in the Big Feature Request pen with the Chord Track and other big things.

This is a small feature request. I just want to be able to change the color of individual markers. Same markers, just with colors that can be changed, like we have other things whose colors can be changed. All fun, no tears, no feature creep, no fists and yelling over "how DAW X does it," just a color picker added to the current properties.

If we are good and do not fight in the car while coming home from getting our color-y markers, maybe they will consider our Big Feature requests.

3 minutes ago, Lynn said:

Overwrite mode is just like using a tape recorder, where you record over a previous take.

Thanks for taking the trouble to help ease my confusion, Lynn.

I get that it's supposed to mimic "taping over" previously recorded material, what I don't understand is what happens to the underlying WAV files that are getting "erased." I know the clips go away, I've seen that in action, but what about the actual recorded data? Is it a destructive process?

7 minutes ago, Lynn said:

I've discovered that I record faster using the overwrite mode instead of the comp mode.  That way I don't have to go back later and "flatten" a track or erase unused tracks.  This suits me because I usually get a take in 1 to 3 tries, but for others, use what is most comfortable for you.

Okay, so it is to avoid hassle, for people who, once they nail a take, they know they are only going to want to use that last one, and don't want to retain any previous takes for comping purposes or anything else.

And it is, as I suspected, a dangerous thing to turn on, because you yourself have accidentally "overwritten" stuff that you had intended to keep. Tradeoff between convenience and safety, I suppose.

One of the reasons I wasn't sure about it is because in most cases I do wish to keep a few previous takes for possible comping (I'm not an accomplished enough player and singer to expect full-length flub-free takes with regularity and certainty), and the extra trouble of culling unwanted clips (one click per take if I just delete the whole lane) is worth it for safety purposes. I'm absent-minded enough that Overwrite mode would make quick work of any previously-recorded material, so much so that after having it on for a couple of hours, all of my lanes on every track would have been replaced by howls, screams, and swearing.

By "erase unused tracks," I assume you mean deleting lanes (and the clips in them) containing unwanted takes.

What do you mean by "flattening" a track? Cakewalk has a way to flatten a comped track, where it moves the various clips that make up a comped track into one lane, but it sounds like you're working with full takes in this situation, not comped ones.

In your examples above, wouldn't Comping mode also give you the exact same results as Overwrite mode?

One thing is, you mention this is while you have Auto Punch engaged, which I only turn on when I'm punching in. You have it set to Mute Previous Takes, thereby nullifying Sound on Sound's main characteristic, which is allowing you to play or sing along with the previous take(s).

In my experience, where you would experience a whole lot of difference with Overwrite mode vs. the other two is if at any point in the tracking process you manually stopped the transport and restarted it. Then Overwrite would start acting like like The Reaper. No, not REAPER, but The Grim Reaper, in that whatever you had recorded previously would now be done away with as the new tracking advanced.

In the initial tracking process, Overwrite acts just like Comping mode, and it will happily stack take after take into new lane after new lane as I let it loop away. Overwrite creates new empty lanes, and it treats empty lanes just like Comping mode does, it records into them. Where Comping mode differs is that if there's already a lane there with data in it, Comping mode politely creates a new lane for it and leaves the existing data alone. Overwrite seizes the lane for its own and plows through whatever was there.

They also differ in that when tracking stops, if the last take is shorter than its predecessors, with Comping mode the previous takes will be split into two clips along the right edge of the last take. Sometimes other unfortunate things will happen, and there used to be more of them and they were worse, but then some of them were determined to be bugs and those were fixed so it's better now.

4 hours ago, msmcleod said:

I must spend some more time with it and document it so I'll remember! If I do get around to writing something up, I'll share it with everyone.

Mark, if you also don't quite "get" Overwrite mode, I definitely feel better about my own confusion. And looking forward to your findings.

It's not lost on me that the first person I've seen who seems to have experience with overwrite mode says that being in that mode by accident caused them to lose data.

Was this just with a single project? In my case it was, a project I have been working on for over a year, so lots of deletions and undo steps.

I love the Aim Assist Line, in the absence of marker tails/vertical rulers, it is one of the tools I always have switched on to help me line things up, see where my clicks are going to land when I have snap enabled.

My enhancement request is for the position readout part of it, and the most basic enhancement would just be the ability to turn it off.

I wouldn't mind it, might even find it useful if it didn't obscure the timeline ruler numbers, thereby rendering it worse than useless to me by making it so that I can never be sure exactly where the Aim Assist Line really is.

Because the numbers in the Aim Assist Line readout are so tiny, and their size fixed, I have never been able to read them very well, especially when they are crowded in amongst other ruler elements. Because the numbers go all the way out to the very last tiniest measurement, the digits cover up the digits on the timeline ruler that I would normally rely on. So what I wind up with is "indecipherable blob obscuring my timeline ruler numbers."

Even when I tried adding rulers to try to get the thing into clear air, it just popped up yet another display, right on top of the other rulers' digits.

I've tried different colors, but as long as the line is legible in the Track view, the readout will obscure my ruler digits.

It might be nice to be able to change the size of its numbers, but what I really want is the ability to make it stop, go away, leave me in peace. Either that or let me position it above the digits, in that grey empty space where only the playhead ever goes. Its numbers, if allowed to float up there in uncluttered space, might become legible to me.

(I have a feeling I may not be the first ever to request/suggest this, but here goes)

I would find it very useful if color were one of the Marker properties we could edit.

As in this screencap from another editor:

Notice I have one color of marker for the start of an event and another for the end of it.

Where this is especially useful is when defining the classic sections of a song, Verse, Chorus, Bridge, Solo, etc. When I have used this feature in other DAW's, I use a color each to indicate these sections. Makes it easier to spot which marker does what. Make all your tempo change markers one color, etc.

I find the ease with which track and strip colors may be set to be a big help in sorting out what's what in Cakewalk, and being able to do something similar with Markers would be great.

I've been doing my first heavy-duty comping with Cakewalk, trying to learn as much as I can about the tools and behaviors, and I ran across something that I've used when comping in the other DAW's and NLE's that Cakewalk just doesn't have, which is a way to set vertical guides (or rulers).

In most the other programs I've used, these were part of markers. Every marker you set has a "tail" that runs all the way from the timeline ruler at the top to the bottom of the last visible track. Observe:

This allows the user to visually align various objects and events.

A marker (or ruler as they are sometimes called) such as this may be placed off-grid, so that for instance, if one has audio events that do no line up to the global grid they may turn off snap-to-grid, set a marker by ear, then turn snap back on and still have this line to use for lining things up to.

In the capture I'm using above, I have an off-grid automation node, which could line up to a syllable in the vocal or some other audio event.

To make this happen, Cakewalk's current marker system would be enhanced to have these "tails" that could be switched on or off, or there could be another type of marker in addition to the ones we have now. I like the former option, because it would make for less timeline ruler clutter and merely be an enhancement to an existing feature rather than a whole new thing to get used to.

In use, it eliminates a lot of zooming in to examine and place events (and zooming back out), as well as a certain amount of turning snap off and on, depending on implementation. It also provides more visual indication of sections of a song, or whatever else one uses markers for.

On 4/6/2019 at 12:36 PM, Lynn said:

I've many times erased data because I was in overwrite mode

That must mean that you sometimes use Overwrite mode. I have been trying for a long time to find someone who uses that mode so that I can ask them (you) some questions.

A large part of my confusion about the mode comes from trying to figure out recording modes from the Documentation page, which is vague and contradictory on the subject. Even with the Reference Guide, which is much better, I still can't quite figure out how it's supposed to work and why I would want to use it instead of Comping mode.

I can't figure out if it's supposed to be a destructive mode or what. When I experimented with it on audio, I think it created full WAV files just like the other modes, but deleted some previous clips using rules that I couldn't figure out. Is that the way it's supposed to work (I don't mean the not being able to figure out the rules part, obviously)?

If that's how it's supposed to work, I guess I would want to use it in cases where I want to record new information but don't want to have to delete the old clips before I start? Or where I know ahead of time that the last take is going to be the keeper and don't want to have to delete the previous takes?

It just seems like a big and dangerous thing to have around just to avoid having to select and delete some clips.

If it is destructive, and deletes and crops the WAV file after the recording is done, again, seems dangerous just to save what is now very cheap disk space.

There was once when I was testing it and some very strange behavior happened, but I think that was a bug, not a feature.

There are probably other reasons for using it that I just don't see, or maybe I don't understand how it's supposed to work, so if you can fill me in, please do. I want to make full use of the program. Every other time I've brought it up, if people even answer at all it's to say that they never use the mode.

On 4/14/2019 at 7:42 PM, mdiemer said:

Personally, I would rather see them offer the Roland VSC, but that of course involves negotiating with another company. I will probably buy it myself at some point.  It has stuff you don't find anywhere else, assuming it's the same as when Cakewalk had it. I do have an early version on Cakewalk 2002 I believe, but that doesn't do me any good. 

The Roland Virtual Sound Canvas appears to be a current product.

So, no need for BandLab to offer it, unless by "offer" you mean "include for free with Cakewalk." If we're talking 3rd-party programs we'd like BandLab to put into the Cakewalk package, I have a list of those.

Since PluginBoutique seems to put most of the AIR stuff on sale for next to nothing, maybe they could license some of their stuff, although there may be pre-existing agreements that would preclude it. XPand!2 and Hybrid would beef up the package for starters.

How about that, eh? Different colored markers would make those verses and choruses and all easier to see at a glance.

And really, if you've not used markers with tails or rulers in an NLE, they really do come in handy.

I will prepare a feature request, cross my fingers, and make do with the tools I have available in Cakewalk.

5 hours ago, treesha said:

i think you can get some vertical grid lines by going into view i think then vertical gridlines which can be in front of or behind clips

Indeed you can. That's the Grid, and yes, without it, there would be no hope at all. It's static, like an overlay of graph paper.

What I'm talking about is a single (or multiple) vertical line that the user can place along the timeline to mark a place where they want to line up multiple events. And it would be persistent, yet deletable or movable, for each project. Almost exactly like the Markers in Cakewalk, but with a line that extends all the way down the Track space so that the user can just pop over to it and drag things up to it, put automation nodes on it, etc.

Here's a cap of what I mean in another program. I have grid snap off because the event is not on the grid, I placed the marker by listening to the song and hitting a key. But since I have this nice line, I can set an automation node right smack where I want it. Or I could drag a clip with a musical cue right up to it or whatever.

At Parts Express.

If these are similar to the Sondelux cans they closely resemble, aka the Samson SR850, they sound amazing for the price. They're my main mixing and listening cans these days.

My Samsons have cloth earpad covers, where I see in the photo that the Talents appear to have textured vinyl, which may account for the difference in standard price.

I only just now noticed it, so I hope the sale is good until midnight at least. I'm tempted to buy a pair just as backups, even with the $6.95 shipping fee, you can probably also find an item or two at deep discount on their site to help spread the shipping fee out.

Wow, I just spotted the PreSonus HD7's, which look even closer to these than my Samsons, down to the details on the earcup vents.

8 hours ago, InstrEd said:

And if you need a keyboard for MIDI you get CbB for free and spend your money on something like this.

Or something like this. Your very own keytar for under $20!

I actually own one, got it at Salvation Army for $9. Nice velocity sensitive keybed with a ribbon controller on the "neck."

The SONAR by Cakewalk is dead, long live the Cakewalk by BandLab.

BTW, was it part of the Focusrite contest that people had to register for the forum and make at least one post? Because I'm seeing a lot of "one post wonders" lately.

Hmm, I've seen the thing where Track Folders won't open or close, but it was only on one project, so I wrote it off as a glitch. I also experienced stuff like Take Lanes not expanding along with it. Then I'd click around until I found the magic button that would jar the whole deal back into whack. That was usually expanding a collapsed Track  or Folder or similar. Then "poof," working fine again for a while. It went away for good after I deleted a bunch of unused takes.

Lenses you say? The global lens or the one for the track headers?

4 minutes ago, Canopus said:

are you trying to align clips to markers?

Yes, but not just clips, all sorts of things. Automation nodes, future edits, punch points, etc.

All of them become so deliciously....alignable when there's a line I can stick there to align them to. If I were to create a motivational office poster about it, it would say "You Can't Say 'Alignment' Without 'A Line.'' Or something.

10 minutes ago, Canopus said:

I don’t know about any fixed visual vertical cue extending from a marker down to the bottom of the pane,

Perhaps Cakewalk lacks such a feature. Gosh I hope not. Feature request time if it doesn't.

14 minutes ago, Canopus said:

if you click both the Snap To and the Snap to Landmark Event buttons, you will effectively be able to snap to markers. For this to work, you must first also make sure that Markers are selected as valid landmarks

This is what I had been trying during the aforementioned krakensturm. Between the time I posted and you answered, I figured out that it works much better if I have the Snap Intensity cranked all the way up to the far end of Extreme. It gave Aim Assist some biceps.

The Ref. Guide (aka "revised standard version") refers to an "option called magnetic snap" (sic) that has strength settings low, medium, high, and off. Maybe it was like this in SONAR? In Cakewalk, this corresponds to Snap Intensity and has a variable setting from Light to Extreme. I couldn't find an "off," but Extreme seems to be the closest equivalent. Seems odd that "Extreme" is the new "Off."

That dadgum Aim Assist line, though, some prankster put this rectangular readout on the thing right on top of the information I'm most interested in, which is what measure and musical subdivision my cursor is at. The readout apparently can't be suppressed, nor can its type size be increased to something my eyes can make out, and it insists on reading out whatever the Transport meter is set to all the way out to the last digit, so I can know exactly what "tick" my cursor is located near (were I able to read it of course). Since the Aim Assist wiggly blob sits right on top of the Time Ruler, it renders both of them useless, and I've always had to go by either the big display on the Transport module or the smaller one above the Track headers.

I never knew there was a unit of musical subdivision known as a "tick" until I started using Cakewalk. To me, that's what you check roadies for before you let 'em on the bus (hey!).

As a veteran of other DAW's and video NLE's, I'm used to being able to align clips and other events to either the tails of markers (in programs where the markers are designed with tails that go all the way to the bottom of the track window) or to resettable vertical rulers.

So far, I haven't been able to find either of these features in Cakewalk's documentation. The Now Time indicator and the Aim Assist Line are nice things, but have a couple of problems each, the first of which is that there's only one each of them, the second that they move, the Now Time indicator is used for other things (such as keeping track of the Now Time), and the Aim Assist Line's job is to flit to the nearest snap point and hover there like Tinkerbell as far as I can tell. Which is handy, but I find that there are other things that can distract the Aim Assist Line.

Is there such a feature that with Cakewalk's richness and depth of features I have somehow missed?

If, as I fear, not, how do the rest of you folks go about doing things like aligning the start edges of 4 clips that are buried in the 3rd Take Lanes in Tracks 20-23 with the finish edge of a clip in Track 5 and then two days later punching in a MIDI keyboard part at the same start point that will be recorded on Track 30? And then go in and automate a filter res open and close that peaks exactly at our aforementioned point of interest?

With vertical rulers/marker tails, it's easy. You plop down a nice vertical line that comes in a choice of colors, then you line everything up to it.

Without them, I am finding it to be like trying to thread a needle blindfolded. While on a sailboat in a gale. With a recently-unleashed kraken trying to steal the thread and needle.