Starship Krupa

If anyone has given it a fair shake, I'd say @ChernobylStudios/Scott has.

He's having hassles that just aren't happening in the other DAW's he's started using.

He didn't say flat out "avoid Cakewalk by BandLab, it's junk," he said that he had found it unsuitable, but that new users should still give it a try. That's pretty balanced at the frustration level he was expressing. He also said that he's going to continue his tips and tricks video series using CbB.

I've seen lagginess too, had it with a couple of projects where I'd start the transport and it would take up to 4 seconds to start rolling. I traced it to CbB streaming a zillion muted clips from the disk, takes that were not currently in use that I now realize need to somehow be put in Archive mode when I go to mixing. I've requested that Archiving be allowed for Lanes as well, which would take care of that problem.

My response to finding defects in this software that I was being allowed to use for free was to ask if I could help out by filing detailed reports and working with the developers. His response, after years of paying for the commercial version and perhaps seeing certain issues go unaddressed, is to post a public complaint and maybe hope that it stimulates the developers to fix the issues he's complaining about. I don't think either of them is invalid. One might be considered more directly constructive, but it's a matter of how we each choose to spend our time.

As far as Jaime posting it, it's just food for discussion and I'm glad he did.

As CWAF! as I am, I think it's still a work in progress. There's still way funky stuff that goes on in the Lanes subsystem when recording multiple audio takes in Loop mode that should not be happening, and that I have to clean up after every time I track drums in my studio.

Speed Comping, as handy and slick as it is once you figure it out, I believe might make comping in CbB needlessly difficult for new users to pick up. It was to me. I got into trouble with it. I still do. I would like to have a way to switch some of the features off if the user chooses to work in a more simplified way. A great feature that could use a little tuning, maybe.

On 4/11/2019 at 8:54 PM, Magic Russ said:

ADDED New font “Roboto Condensed Light” for the text module

Domo arigato, Native Instruments.

Yes, that's the Auto version, and yes, I know he's currently got the regular non-Auto version in the Eternal Madness Sale for $33 or so, but it's for real. I already have MDynamicEQ, which I picked up in an Eternal Madness Sale, but I'm seriously considering jumping on this, as soon as I get my head around the difference between the two! 😂

https://www.pluginboutique.com/products/190

2 hours ago, mdiemer said:

What do you mean by Moonieware? I have not heard that term before.

It's not a term in common use. We made it up on NIRVANAnet, a dialup BBS network, 30 years ago, to describe software or hardware that was, um....distinguished by having a rabid following. It's a snotty term, created by people in their 20's.

Here's a characteristic of Moonieware: when one tries to discuss such a product with one of its advocates, and try to get information about its strong suits and shortcomings, according to them the strong suits are everything, and the shortcomings are either none, or that the stupid idiots who run the company can't market the product properly, or that some other manufacturer(s) have a deathgrip on the marketplace.

They mean well, they're trying to help spread the word about their favorite whatever, help it survive, but people eventually wind up wishing they would just STFU, and it often creates unrealistically high expectations when someone does try the product and it turns out to just be a normal product with flaws like any other, often with glaring drawbacks that the users are overcompensating for.

Reaper isn't really like that anymore, as far as I know, but about 10 years ago, ugh.

3 hours ago, SomeGuy said:

I think most people here know the types of people I'm referring to.

Yes, which is why I referred to the Commodore Amiga. Back in the dial-up BBS days, the Amiga and Linux had similarly moonie-ish followings.

How this manifested in online discussions would be that if anyone mentioned any application of computers, say word processing or databases, or CAD, the BBS' resident Amiga or Linux moonie would be certain to chime in to claim that such-and-such program, which was the only application at the time that was written for that task on their platform and was , of course, only available on that platform, was considered by all, far and wide, to be far superior to any similar software that was available for the Macintosh or DOS/Windows.

You know, "I'm trying to decide whether to go with WordPerfect or Microsoft Word for the Mac my parents just bought me to take to UC Berkeley. Anyone used either of them?"

"Well, I know that PencilPoint PaperPress for AmigaDOS is the best word processing program there is!"

This had the result of everyone else on the BBS swearing that we would never, ever touch a Commodore computer as long as we lived, not even if it were running life support at the emergency room at a hospital and we needed its help to survive.

No doubt the moment that Reaper got the ability to display a staff view, no matter how rudimentary it may have been, there were Reaper advocates who would tell you that anyone who wanted to do serious work with a staff view should try REAPER.

It put me off from trying the program for months longer than I would have otherwise.

I just have a thing about moonieware, and Reaper is, unfortunately, moonieware.

23 hours ago, Craig Anderton said:

Nothing has as stable an audio engine....as Ableton Live.

Whoa, not even Mixcraft? When I came to Cakewalk from having used Mixcraft for years, it was jarring to find out that in Cakewalkville, the "audio engine" was this separate thing that starts and stops and that you sort of treat like a lawnmower engine. "Oops, she stalled out again, lemme give 'er a pull."

Things have gotten better in that department since I just went ahead and got a $30 SSD for my audio data, but still, whoo boy.

3 hours ago, SomeGuy said:

I have a Late 2013 iMac that I bought shortly after it came out.

Perhaps the average "lower end of beginner music maker" in your neighborhood has a bit more cash to play with than the ones in mine. As I said, my friend just bought a used Dell for $50. No beginner music maker I have ever met has been able to scrape the cash for a brand new or even recent Macintosh on their own just to do music with, no matter what a great deal it was in the long run.

If we posit a scenario where someone gets the DAW bug up their ass, chances are these days they will have a computer. Chances are it will be a Windowbox, in which case they can d/l CbB, but if it's not, they can have GarageBand for free instead. I was talking about if they don't have a computer. What budget do we give them?

2 minutes ago, abacab said:

Might be worth a look!

There could be various bits installed here and there to reward the inspections of those interested in taking a look at their computers' file structure after installation of the demos. For informational purposes, of course, and surely not to step outside the licenses to which I have a right, Home Studio, CbB, and whatever the SPlat demo license grants.

I did find out that it's not the best thing to let the Rapture Pro sounds and the Session sounds get too cozy. They'll get weird, and not in a good way. Rapture is much happier with the duplicates winnowed out of the Pro collection.

3 minutes ago, abacab said:

if it finds them

I understand that those sounds are installed with the demo of Sonar Platinum and in some cases may even be left behind when the demo is uninstalled.

On 4/8/2019 at 4:42 PM, kitekrazy said:

The One Knob series is underrated.  Check out some reviews.

The ones I have skimmed made them sound much like Cakewalk's own oft-derided Style Dials.

I've thrown a Style Dial on a track here and there and had some fun. MAX is a useful one knob enloudener.

15 hours ago, InstrEd said:

Hopefully Meng and company will start to sell RapturePro and prochannel modules again

That would be nice. Heck, if they want to start giving them away with Cakewalk, I won't complain either. I love my ProChannel, and the more modules the merrier.

I managed to snag Rapture Session through a quirk of having obtained CA-2A years ago which somehow allowed me to get Home Studio, which comes with some jolly little DX plug-ins and also....Rapture Session, which is really, really nice.

Rapture Session would be a good thing to include with CbB, as a matter of fact, if Rapture Pro turns out to be something BL wants to sell separately. It's a great teaser for the full product and useful all by itself.

9 hours ago, fogle622 said:

Unfortunately, the conversion did not go well.  The conversions either stalled during the conversion process or presented an error code.

Shoot. Did you try Zamzar? Just curious, because when I was researching it, their file size limits indicated that our beloved Ref. Guide came in juuuust under the limit.

I suspect, though, that with something like the Ref. Guide that has so many static images, it may be tough for a converter to handle.

I'm curious as to whether anyone else has used ToolsEditor to put a link on the Utilities menu. I've been using it multiple times a session since I added it. I need that extra detail.

For anyone having trouble figuring it out, the recipe is that you make the link to your PDF reader, in my case Sumatra.exe (but it could be acrobat.exe or whatever), then add an "argument" that points to wherever you keep your Ref. Guide, in my case Downloads\Cakewalk.

So whenever Morten revises it, I can just drop the new one in there and my link will still work.

What share of the "pro" market Cakewalk has is of little to no concern to me. I think it's quite beside the point and not where the exciting stuff is happening in 2019.

The model of a person or group of people working up a bunch of material and then paying to go into a building where there's a few people operating magical highly expensive machinery that records them performing their material and then the building people take the recordings and edit and mix the recordings using more highly expensive machinery at the end of which a record company (or the performing people) writes a check to the building people is an all but entirely obsolete model.

Studio recording today is akin to studio photography of today. Yes, they still exist, yes, they will always exist, yes, there are things they will always be able to do that nobody else can, but their hold on the market is long gone.

It's as gone as that thing where a "record company" turns recordings into pieces of plastic and sells them to young people and pays the performing people 9 cents for each dollar of plastic pieces they sell and keeps the rest to pay for the recording building people and other "expenses." And sorry, but I'm fine with waving bye-bye. Neither of them ever served me or anyone I know very well, and what has replaced them offers so many more opportunities that it's mind boggling.

The role of a DAW in a traditional pro studio is emulating (and extending the capabilities of) a multitrack tape machine, mixing console, effects rack, and editing block. For both audio and MIDI forms of musical data.

Composing and arranging don't need to be done in big studios any more (for the few exceptions, pedant away if you feel like it) to the extent that they ever did. The artists who do those things can do them at home, in their own spaces, with the tools that suit them.

Today, the computer is part of the picture starting from the "working up a bunch of material" phase. The moment I have a song idea I start demoing fragments and using the computer to rearrange them, working on different parts, etc. Many of my workflow needs during this process wouldn't mean diddly to a "pro DAW" customer.

I'll be sitting watching TV with my laptop nearby and guitar plugged in in case I get an idea for the solo in one song that's been escaping me for weeks.

The idea that a good program for this newer model of working is still supposed to be trying to grub for a bigger share of the "go into a building" market and it would be a point of shame if it didn't get it seems....silly to me. Cakewalk isn't going to tear any bigshots away from their beloved Pro Tools no matter how hard it tries, and Sonar's traditional small/home studio and hobbyist market is way more exciting and closer to where the future (not even, it's where we've already arrived) is anyway.

I am all for Cakewalk being a great choice for musicians, composers, live recordists, and small studio owners. If the Pros want to hang on to their Tools, they should do so with enthusiasm (PT is a fine program).

1 hour ago, SomeGuy said:

Reaper fanatics are very pushy about making sure that DAW is a part of every conversation... 

And we've witnessed how well that worked out for the similarly "technologically superior" Commodore Amiga.😏😁 I don't think Reaper is headed in that direction, though!

2 hours ago, SomeGuy said:

GarageBand is a problem on macOS. It's a bigger deal for its market than iMovie is for the video editing market, as it is far more usable for projects beyond the trivial. It ships with a lot of instruments and tons of loops - it's 100% usable out of the box, unlike Cakewalk by BandLab. There is no reason for any lower end of beginner music maker to even consider anything else

Really? No reason, not even the disparity in hardware cost for a "lower end of beginner" between a good used Windows system and a good used Mac?

I'm asking because I don't know what usable used Macs go for these days. I do know that I can get Windows systems with plenty of life left in them for next to nothing. It will be a system that some gamer got tired of, or some manager in an office thinks isn't a big enough status symbol, but it will have plenty of power to run Cakewalk. Moreso with strategic upgrades like RAM and SSD.

A friend of mine just picked up a retired Dell office desktop with an i5 in it that I know will run Cakewalk really well for his uses, he paid $50 for it. And he hasn't added any RAM or an SSD or a special graphics card yet.

I think of Macs as fine beginner computers for when mom and dad are still paying the bills, less so when the young person themselves is paying for the computer, the rent, the food, the utilities, etc.  Never had the silver spoon, so it was always homebuilt computers and Microsoft (and Digital Research!) operating systems. Now I also have a Mac, which is very nice.

I agree with you that people get too feisty and tribal about their consumer preferences, but I think that is hard-coded into us as humans. For some reason, we feel better when people agree with us about how things should be done. But there's more (or less) to it than that. It used to be a vital argument whether Motorola microprocessors or Intel ones were "better," as if it somehow mattered which one was buried deep within the computer, running the OS. Now Motorola is out of the microprocessor game and the argument is forgotten.

If you were to ask me what DAW software to buy anyone under the age of 30 these days, I would have to go with Ableton Live. At least the ones I see and talk to, that's kinda all they want to know about.

Discussions such as this one usually ignore the most critical question, which is "for what kind of music production?" And then everyone jumps in assuming it's the kind of music they mostly do.

For MIDI? Audio? Loop construction? Live performance? Hardware control? Live mixing? Until you know the answers to those questions, it's like discussing "what's the best saw?" without knowing what is to be cut with it.

Yet on we go. "I'd like to see you connect 12 vintage synthesizers to GarageBand and send them all sysx commands on different channels. Now observe as SonarLab and my mighty CAL script forces them into submission!" "Reaper is too difficult to use, therefore discouraging young people from wanting to produce music!" "FL Studio is too easy to use, therefore discouraging young people from producing music that I recognize as music!" "Pro Tools is still the only DAW to bother with if you're opening a serious professional studio." "Who the HELL is opening 'serious professional studios' these days? Is Avid selling like 10 licenses per year, then? People use the programs to make music."

7 hours ago, fogle622 said:

Please consider also publishing The Cakewalk by BandLab Reference Manual in the EPUB format.

Jim, I've never compared the two formats, but I know that there are various free services and converters like Zamzar.com that claim to convert .PDF to EPub.

I don't know how good a job they do.

On 4/5/2019 at 8:19 AM, Mike Ve said:

I'll assume the end game is to go back to something paid

Nope. At least BandLab's stated intentions are to keep Cakewalk as free as their web, iOS, and Android DAW's.

They are a much larger company with many irons in multiple fires. Cakewalk is a small part of the portfolio.

Thank you for the affirmation of my smarts. Yes, I did rather more mean it as a critique of the learning curve. And given the enthusiasm of the user base and the versatility of the program with its UI, an "Intro" theme would be a welcome addition that might help new user retention. Because believe me, I have so much wanted to like Reaper, for several reasons.

As for CbB, newbie Lenses, what a great idea! And in general, maybe more in the way of templates that come with the program to get people running and help with new user retention.

This is something that I would like to put my efforts toward as I get more skills. One of the issues holding me back is that there are a couple of nasties, bug-wise down in the Takes and Grouping subsystem.

I think that an important workflow for a DAW like Cakewalk or Pro Tools or Cubase or any of the ones that are built to support heavy-duty audio work to at least allow (even if it's not the main workflow), is the basic one that people are used to from using tape and Pro Tools.

If you want to record and then edit 2 tracks of audio, it goes like this: arm 2 tracks for audio recording, hit record, stop recording. Your audio is ready to edit. You cut it up and move it around in blocks called clips or regions.

Formultiple takes, same thing, but you get the various takes in rows. Edit, and mute and unmute the clips and rows to comp and then you mix.

That's, IMO, what experienced DAW users are going to recognize and be able to jump in with right away.

Cakewalk has that for the most part, but what slowed me way down on learning comping, was, ironically, Speed Comping. I just wanted to start with my audio in the lanes, start with basic slip editing tools, and when I tried to do this, at the end of my tracking sessions my takes were cut up into clips I didn't want and were muted in odd ways.

Then when I tried some basic comping, there was confusing behavior based on where on the edge I clicked, and clips would go muted and unmuted all over the place. Of course, these are all Speed Comping features, and I've been getting used to them, but it took a long time. A long time as in holding things up when it didn't need to.

I am working on a detailed feature request for a mode where we can bypass the speed comp features, Basic Mode or something like that, which people can switch to while they are getting up to speed with Speed Comping. I mean, once I started getting the hang of the speed comping features, I think they're the shnizzle, but one can easily get into trouble with them or find them daunting and confusing if they just want to jump in right away and do a little overdubbing and basic editing.

I think he probably doesn't want to have to do that every time he opens a project based on the template.

He's already said that he's tried closing it and saving the template again.

55 minutes ago, msmcleod said:

To be fair, I mentioned that I use L2 for interim mixes, and razor7music mentioned OneKnob Louder with some pretty heavy caveats... that's hardly a recommendation.

Still, sikk burnz.

Heh, I just put that in my sig so I could pull people's legs. Well, actually also because it started to weird me out: why was it always Waves and not some other plug-in house? Thinking about it, though, it's because they do offer the most comprehensive line in the business. By far, I think.

Someone's always suggesting one of their products because they're the one company most likely to have something that will work, duh.

I dig my Waves stuff except for that oddball shell that hangs up the loading process. I especially like the fact that any old USB stick can be a licensing dongle.

Boost11 is a pretty cool tool! I hadn't even tried it until a couple of weeks ago I decided to check it out as the last thing on a mix I was playing with. Good graphical representation, easy to follow what the limiter is doing, it sounds good, loud, slammin'.

I am pretty sure that the OP's issue is that Inspector is open, not that Inspector happens to have ProChannel visible in it. I doubt he'd be any happier if it were Track or Clip details.

He's probably trying to keep a clean screen to the left of the Track View, to have more room for clips and waveforms, etc.

For the record, I am running a Windows 10 system with the latest update, and Inspector is not open when I start my projects. Congratulations synkotron on the most outside guess I have yet to see.  I suppose it's not 100% impossible that something that Microsoft changed to help protect against data theft could be preventing Yury's template from loading with the Inspector View in a closed state, but I'm more inclined to think that it's a Cakewalk setting.

My guess is that it's a Lense issue. He may have saved a lense with his Inspector open, then created the template using that lense.

Yury: call up your template, then set your screen up the way you want it, with the Inspector closed. Save that as a Lense, one of the global ones, from the dialog in the upper right corner. Then save your template again with that lense active and see if it behaves.

If you can keep grandma and grandpa and the kids away from your DAW computer, it's even possible to permanently disable Windows 10's realtime threat scanning.

If you're using Windows 10 Home Edition, you need to enable Group Policy Editor (which takes an extra bit of effort to do with Windows 10 Home, but is a useful tool):

https://www.majorgeeks.com/content/page/enable_group_policy_editor_in_windows_10_home_edition.html

Then once you've turned this feature on, you may use it to have better control over the other feature of Windows 10 than you are given by default:

http://slashgenie.com/permanently-disable-windows-defender-in-windows-10/

I learned how to do these things due to observing Cakewalk taking a performance hit from having Windows Defender running everything through its realtime scanning engine, which, according to my monitoring, included all of my plug-ins and the audio streaming off my hard disk. Since I consider the idea that my plug-in collection could be harboring malware, much less my newly-recorded audio, to be completely asinine, I concluded that Windows Defender was itself worse for my computing experience than any malware I had encountered in 35 years of using computers and that it needed to be brought under control. By which I mean "turned off."

🤦‍♀️

So far we have the Waves plug-in recommendation, an assumption that someone with the handle "girldairy" is male, the "time travel" solution (where you go back and re-record everything, except better)....

Also an Amish rakefight on the topic of normalization and, something that baffles me no end, multiple recommendations to purchase commercial FX whose functions are duplicated by plug-ins that ship with Cakewalk. Like having a pizza delivered to the free all-you-can-eat buffet.

Boost11 anyone? Sonitus MultibandFX? Both quite good, both quite capable of serious enloudening, depending on the source material. As the saying goes, if you can't get it done with these, buying "better" ones will be of little help.

How about some of those mastering FX chain presets? For basic "loud," they can get pretty close to Ozone Elements, IMO, at least enough to help out a frustrated newbie. We even have an ultra-simple one-knob thing called MAX. Turn MAX clockwise, MAX makes your track LOUDER.

English does not seem to be girldairy's primary language, but they are savvy enough to have tried Audacity as well as "Sonar." It looks like they tried to get their audio to sound louder by increasing its gain, but ran up against digital clipping (the song just "cracked"). No, a change in level won't increase the perception of loudness, that probably calls for the services of dynamic range and EQ processors. A multiband compressor, limiter, and EQ have been mentioned in this thread. We have an excellent multiband compressor, limiter, and parametric EQ at our disposal in CbB, and a nice handful of presets for them that are designed for just this task.

It is not rocket science to get "one acoustic track" to sound LOUD, without taking classes or spending money or understanding new psychoacoustic principles:

1. Load track into Cakewalk.

2. Apply Cakewalk FX presets (or MAX) until sufficient LOUDness occurs.

If 2. fails, report back to forum. We may need to tell you how to either normalize or apply the Gain knob to your track to give the FX more level to chew on.

On 4/8/2019 at 4:33 PM, InstrEd said:

So you don't need it anymore😉

I shall raise the jocular pedantry stakes and say that he indeed does still need it, only now he is fortunate enough to have it.

As are all users of Cakewalk!

Tip for those who want to have their newly downloaded Cakewalk Reference Guide but a menu click away:

I added a link to the Utilities menu in my installation that launches the Guide using @scook's ToolsEditor utility.

The utility has far more uses than just launching a PDF, but it does that without even breathing hard.

To find out how to add the new Reference Guide to your Utilities Menu go here:

http://forum.cakewalk.com/Adding-programs-to-the-SONAR-Utilities-Menu-a-new-tool-Updated-for-CbB-m3237117.aspx

On 4/6/2019 at 5:08 AM, Feral State Sound said:

Can this manual be accessible from the DAW help menu?

Our own @scook created a handy utility for adding items to the Utilities menu, and I found that it works a treat for adding an entry to launch the Cakewalk Reference Guide.

http://forum.cakewalk.com/Adding-programs-to-the-SONAR-Utilities-Menu-a-new-tool-Updated-for-CbB-m3237117.aspx

Groan....missed it again. I am really good at this.

I check Deals as a daily ritual for months at a time, then I promise my best friend I will help her with spring cleaning her yard. After hours of pruning, brush clearing, pizza consumption, get home last night too tired to check the forum, then play catch-up on missed work.

Until just now.

On 3/27/2019 at 8:16 AM, Feral State Sound said:

- "View note names" button on PRV

Man, why in the name of all that is holy can't the name of the note (or drum) appear (and no, not just over at the left on the fake piano, I mean right at where I'm looking) when I hover my cursor over the damn thing in the Piano Roll View like happens in every other damn MIDI editing program? In this one I have to guess?

Button my eye, it should just be there already.

Instead, it's hey, look at the grey grid with the meaningless rectangles on it! I guess I could right click and pull up a TON of information about the note....