Starship Krupa

Hmm. I mentioned the "from any version of Artist" upgrade earlier, which has long been $49. I can't find that upgrade on Presonus' website any more. Wonder if they discontinued it.

Can confirm that this library is another of SoundPaint's essential tools for people who want to make ambient drone. Every other song on 9128.live sounds like it was made using SoundPaint's free libraries. Maybe more than every other.

Really looking forward to The Talos Principle II. Coming in November.

I guess it makes sense if you consider that the last people in get the benefit of the work that's already been done as far as smoothing out the workflow, issues with data transfer and display, etc. They didn't have to invent those wheels, so they have more resources available to direct at other features.

Right, as with MIDI, VST, ARA, .SFZ and ASIO. Standards like these, once they get enough traction, result in greater revenue for those who buy in. So you like to track and edit in REAPER or Studio One, but you prefer to mix in Sonar or Mixbus? Great, the easier it is to do that, the more likely that both companies will get your licensing money. Your client's home studio is based around Waveform, but you work in Cubase? Great, they can do the initial tracking and/or composing in Waveform, then you can import their work into Cubase for mixing and further editing. Maybe your client can't afford a copy of Omnisphere, so they write the track using XPand! and let you pick some groovy sounds using Omnisphere. To the extent that being able to do this is important to you, presence or lack of this feature will influence purchasing decisions. Of course it won't be able to cover every single parameter. As with all interchange formats, there will be features that aren't/can't be included. For instance, at present, video is a no-go between Bitwig and Studio One. As with loading a project in any DAW, it pops a notification if it can't find a plug-in. It's not meant to be able to go back and forth all day long between dissimilar DAW's during a complex mixing process, but to be a way that a certain amount of pertinent information can be exported from one DAW and imported to another. At as early a stage as possible. I'd say that it could probably cover most things that are involved in a rough mix, so you do your tracking and comping in your favorite tracking and comping DAW and then export it for mixing in your favorite mixing DAW. People do this today by bouncing to individual audio files in the first DAW, then importing them into the second one. "Imagine" doing that for 50 tracks, at the end of which every effect you used, every edit (no matter how imperfect) and every MIDI track, is baked-in and can't be unbaked without going back to the first DAW. I'm not going to bother typing it all out for people who don't follow links, but here's an in-depth list of what it does (and does not) cover at present: https://www.bitwig.com/support/technical_support/dawproject-file-format-faqs-62/

As much as I love Cameron's channel and his music and libraries, I don't understand why he's not making a friggin' FORTUNE as a VO artist. He's got such a great "70's FM late night DJ" voice. Jim Ladd comes to mind. Some automobile maker should adopt him as the voice of their commercials.

https://www.bitwig.com/stories/bitwig-and-presonus-are-making-it-easy-to-share-projects-between-programs-271 Free and open standard. This would be an excellent feature to include in Cakewalk Sonar.

Whoa, that's trippy. I still don't quite understand the motivation for this. The Linux DAW market is miniscule. Do they do it just to shut the Linux moonies up? But they are really working hard to pry that $50 out of my pocket for the Artist upgrade....

Oh, very nice. I've been waiting for this to come around again as a freebie. I already had a single license for it, but was hesitant to use it because I'd need to bring my license card to my laptop if I wanted to work on a project there.

As ever, Swatches has been update to include this, so even if you don't want to buy the full pack, you can still make use of 8 or so of the sounds for free.

While it's good that it's working, and WASAPI Exclusive is a good mode, it's still a good idea to see if you can get the Presonus' ASIO driver to work. You'll get better performance as well as other benefits. Keep posting here and we'll try to help. First item of business is to make sure you're using the latest version of the Presonus driver. Also, in my Universal Driver control panel, it shows what interface is connected. Make sure your Studio is shown there.

I've seen similar issues solved by switching to an earlier revision USB port before. My guess is that it somehow has to do with flow control; the interface's USB port was designed with slower data flow in mind and the newer spec ports either overwhelm it or don't hear from it often enough. Never heard of it with something as recent as the M4, though. Where I have heard of it was in relation to very old MIDI-only interfaces designed during the USB 1 days. The solution for those is to plug a USB 1 hub into the USB 2 port, which seems to slow the communication down enough so that the interface can handle it. The only issues I've seen from having bus-powered USB interfaces were related to what the motherboard and/or OS does to USB ports when the computer goes into whatever sleep is enabled. My very recent Presonus Studio 2|4 will have audio but no MIDI after waking my computer. This despite the usual going into power settings and disabling bla bla bla. I still prefer Firewire for my studio. Firewire was designed from the start for 2-way streaming communication. Looking at the specs you might think that Firewire 400 was slower than USB2, but USB2 was faster in only one direction. I thought I was just being crusty about that until I bought a recent USB interface. USB still feels to me like I'm trying to do audio over a keyboard/mouse port. Heck, as far as I know, none of the interface manufacturers are even on USB 3 (which at least has asynchronous flow control) yet. I'm hoping that my Focusrite Pro 40 will carry me through until true USB 3 or Thunderbolt interfaces can be had for decent used prices. Even the antique computers I tend to run the wheels off of have all had USB 3 ports on them, so I don't know what they're waiting for.

Chiming in because this was just called to my attention in another topic and it sounds like a very useful feature. Sounds like a large number of other DAW's have it, sounds like people making the switch to Cakewalk Sonar might be disappointed not to find it. I do anticipate people who come up with the coolest licks they've ever played during that 2 measure pre-roll to beg for an option to have Sonar record it anyway in case their genius light accidentally comes on. 😄

IMO, just liking the post isn't enough if the feature is really important to you. Replying to the topic, with your own reasons why it's important to you, is more likely to get and hold the attention of those making the decisions about how to allocate coding time. And don't worry about necro'ing an old thread, that just shows that the feature is desired by many people over a long period of time. The devs don't have time to ready every post, but they will notice if the same topic keeps rising to the surface. And persistence is not futile. One of my own pet features/headaches was how Cakewalk named and numbered interface inputs, which was DIRE with my old Presonus Firepods. I lobbied for a great long time, others chimed in, and it eventually happened in a very elegant, flexible way. All that you've said about how your hardware recorder had it, about how you researched PT, S1 and Cubase and they all had it, etc., helps make a better case for including it in Cakewalk Sonar (because Cakewalk by BandLab is now feature frozen). AFAIK, the streamlined Cakewalk group at BandLab doesn't have a dedicated marketing person to keep an eye on the competition and suggest/insist that the product include certain new features. This can be a blessing, as it puts quality ahead of questionable "big" feature bloat, but maybe there's a downside as well. This forum is the only way I know of short of making a YouTube video to advocate for features and fixes in the software. Extra points for using the word "clunky" in your post.😆 (The only thing to leave out is a suggestion that it would be easy to do, because there's no way for us to know that.)

Since I have MComplete I can't check out what of the standard Melda FX it comes with other than MTA and MC. But whatever it does come with, shoot, just because it has the word "guitar" in its name doesn't mean you have to only use it on guitars.... "It only comes with...." or "it only lets you...." are not usually part of the MeldaProduction buying experience. 😄

Yeah, I dunno. At some point, but what point? As you say, and as the devs have said, it's still up in the air. I would find it....out of character for BandLab to just pull the plug on CbB. Too many would see it as proof that the reason they put the 6 month validation in CbB was so they could eventually "force" the userbase to start paying for it.

I'm still in the phase of learning about orchestral arrangements where I'm working with free and cheap libraries/players. Orchestral Companions, Orchestools (VSCO-based), Spitfire BBC, etc. My velocities are still at 127, everything's on the grid, and I haven't gotten into articulations and the like. Once I figure out what I'm doing and what higher end libraries have to offer, I might invest. Now I'm still in my Soundspot/Dead Duck/MeldaProduction free bundle/iZotope Elements phase.

Their stuff is not all created equal. I think there are at least 3 different lines they acquired. I bought a bunch of their stuff when they were new on the scene and deep, deep discounting. Good for fast results, not so much for deep diving. Loop Engine is one that I purchased recently and am very happy with. The other ones that I keep around are the sound design-y ones. Venom can take any sound and turn it into an ambient wash, Dodge Pro is a powerful sequenced filter and dynamics processor. I bought them both as part of very low-priced bundles they were offering years ago. Thanks for reminding me, I have been neglecting Venom and Dodge Pro lately and they're good stuff....

Since I believe I got MPS 5.1 UE at the same time you did, I'm very interested to hear how this turns out.

One of the ones that does not, and explicitly recommends ASIO4ALL as a substitute is Ableton Live. I was amazed to discover that, especially given the popularity of Live as a program for live performance, presumably on laptops.

Yes. The first thing to do with any program when you save something and then when you reopen it it's corrupted is to check the integrity of your disk. Drives eventually go bad physically, some sooner than others, and while it's much less common than it was 25 years ago, the file system can get corrupted, too. The way to check is to go to My Computer, then right click on the drive and select Properties. From there, click on the Tools tab. Also, Windows Defender is good at what it does (although I have issues with how it does it), but if I'm having any mystery troubles, I also like to run Malwarebytes Free. Try those first, see if they help.

By crippled, do you mean that it didn't have all of the modules that Platinum did? CbB shipped with fewer modules than Platinum as well. It left out a couple of the compressors, such as the PC-2A. Can't remember the other one, maybe the Bus Compressor 4K or Channel Compressor 4K? It also had no Concrete Limiter. Artist, on the other hand, at least according to that chart, only had the Style Dials, with the Style Dials' "back ends," the PX-64 Percussion Strip, VX-64 Vocal Strip, and the TL-64 Tube Leveler probably hidden like they were in CbB (until we figured out how to unhide them). For people who were owners of Platinum and installed CbB, it would have looked and acted like exactly the same program, due to Platinum's extra goodies coming over seamlessly (in most cases). There were a LOT of extra goodies. One of the reasons that I started both the "Favorite Freeware" topics years ago was that CbB shipped with such a bare minimum of plug-ins. Especially in the area of instruments, it's lacking a bunch of Cakewalk-branded ones that even Professional came with.

Thank you for letting me know this. I wonder why Cakewalk Inc. left those features off the comparison list (or did I just miss them, or were they added after the list was made?). Plug-in Load Balancing is a big plus for me. Still not quite the "many" that Byron referred to, but an important feature to me. I once experimented with a challenging project on my 11-year-old laptop, changed nothing but turning Plug-In Load Balancing off, and it couldn't even play it. The dithering would also be if I ever got projects to the point where I wanted to render them for conversion. 😏 I'm not sure why it stirred controversy when I said I thought CbB was similar to SONAR Professional feature-wise. I didn't say "identical." And even now that HIBI has kindly enlightened me, for feature comparison purposes, CbB still seems to me closer to Professional than to Platinum. Nobody outside of BandLab knows what features other than the new GUI Cakewalk Sonar is going to have. I'm sure it will still have Drum Replacer, VocalSync, Plug-In Load Balancing, and the Pow-r dithering options, but what about bundled plug-ins? One thing that would be great would be if the Sonitus Suite could get a makeover and conversion to VST3. Whatever comes with it, I really hope it's not locked to Sonar. I use multiple DAW's and I don't like to use plug-ins that are tied to only one of them (I make an exception for the almighty Quadcurve EQ). My attitude toward bundled plug-ins is similar to @JohnnyV's, I think. Given a $300 price difference, I would also opt to spend the money on other audio tools.

Hah. You only think you do. Ever hear of The Mandela Effect? 🤣 I never owned a version of SONAR in the X years, when I started it was still Cakewalk, then it became SONAR. I stopped using it around 2003 or so (SONAR 2.0 maybe?) and then didn't come back until CbB shipped, so I have nothing to go on but the old marketing materials on the website, old reviews, etc. When I first got CbB, I took a look at that page, with the comparative features and it looked to me like almost all of the things that separated Professional (sic) from Platinum were plug-ins, made either by Cakewalk or by 3rd parties. Since Drum Replacer looks and acts like a plug-in and shows up in Browser as one, I thought it was a plug-in, although the web page calls it a Core Feature, as it does half a dozen PC modules, which are plug-ins. After that, we wind up with the differences in "core features" amounting to VocalSync and Theme Editor. Much as I love Theme Editor, and will miss it if it's not going to be a part of Cakewalk Sonar, it's a separate program. Given that, if it's true, you might see why I came to the conclusion that CbB was closer to Professional than Platinum in features. I don't want to perpetuate misinformation if I can avoid it, so if I've got it wrong I want to know before I repeat anything that isn't factual. Someone just saying, "no, you're WRONG" without saying where I'm wrong doesn't help. What am I missing? This isn't just an academic question, the userbase is eventually going to be asked to start paying for Sonar, and it would be nice to know which version Cakewalk Sonar most resembles. Of course we haven't seen Sonar yet, so we don't know what features it will have that CbB doesn't.

Could you please elaborate? Byron kindly filled me in on how the various versions were actually called "Home Studio," "Artist," "Studio," and "Platinum," and that there were "many more features, not just plug-ins" in Platinum. Are those the things that struck fear in you? If so, I hope that you'll accept my excuse that I was getting my information from the Cakewalk, Inc. website, which according to Byron, got one of the names of their own products wrong. I'm really surprised that nobody ever caught that or alerted them. I also can't figure out why, if there were many more non-plug-in features, that they would have a chart that showed only 3, one of which also functions as a plug-in and another that has nothing to do with audio processing.