Starship Krupa

What I meant was that there's no way to program one's own arpeggiator patterns for the built-in arpeggiator. Yes, the Step Sequencer is great, and has some really cool hidden features having to do with randomization that I bet few people who use it know about. I only found them while working on themes. You can change the probability that a given note will sound in a cycle, which can make for pleasing variations. Which tool were you referring to that you think could be improved? And how could it be improved?

Were you referring to something someone said in this topic? I don't see any bashing going on. If you're referring to my opinion that Cakewalk Sonar is going to be, feature-wise, in the under $99 leagues, I don't think that's "bashing" at all. I certainly didn't mean it as such. As a producer of electronic music, I'd like to have an integrated sampler instrument. I'd also like for the process of setting the program up for drum synth programming to be smoother. I've ranted about it multiple times in the past: the process of setting up the Piano Roll View to display drum instrument names is needlessly obscure and clumsy. An Ableton-style clip launcher for that style of performance/composing is necessary. Matrix View exists, but development seems to have stopped a little short of being finished. It does most of the things a clip launcher panel should do, except that you can't record directly into cells. Matrix is a solid foundation, it just needs a little bit of finishing off. More integration with Track View. As an example of the kind of "integration" I'm talking about, in regard to both the sampler and Matrix View, there should be things like being able to select a region of audio in Track View, right-clicking, and having the option to send the selected audio to a Matrix cell or sampler slot. Another feature that needs just a little bit more polish is the built-in arpeggiator. It's already great, and one of the coolest Cakewalk features, but there's no facility for programming one's own patterns. It's restricted to only the presets that come with it (and the "Alesion" set that's floating around). I guess Project 5 could program new arp patterns, but it's not around any more.

I think you'll find that to be more true for people who have been using Cakewalk for a very long time. For people like me who started relatively recently ("only" 5 years ago), it may be different. The only time I've ever paid any attention to the Synth Rack was when working on themes. To add synths, I use the button above the Track Headers or drag and drop from the Browser.

BTW, for the aforementioned themes that "fix" the button states, see me sig. All of my Mix Modules have buttons that are "lit" when the feature is "on," and for the "off" states, there is a slash. Actually, as a joke and nod to a local Bay Area band, my FX bypass button has "NO FX" in red when FX are bypassed. Also, my Simple Instrument tracks show the icon that has both MIDI and Synth together, because that's what Simple Instrument tracks are. The Synth icon is used for Synth tracks, and the MIDI icon is used for MIDI tracks. For the life of me I don't understand why it's the other way around in the standard themes.

The EQ in my avatar is our beloved ProChannel QuadCurve EQ. I wanted an avatar for the old forum and was putzing around with the EQ, and thought of the expression "put a smile on the EQ."

I've seen this happen as well. And yes, silly move on the part of the plug-in developers. Still, CS should be able to tell the difference between a dll and a directory.

You disagree that "Pro Tools users can be pretty dismissive?" I didn't say are, I said "can be," which is quite different. And I'm sure that things are indeed, as you suggest, different today than they were even 10 years ago in that regard. It would make sense that they would be different because Avid (and Digidesign before them) have not exactly nurtured up and coming music makers. These days, it's more likely that someone using ProTools would have started out using another DAW. Most of us in this subforum have been around quite a while, and back in the day, PT users were pretty snooty about other DAW's. How about "Pro Tools users could be pretty dismissive back in the day?" 😄

IMO, unless Sonar comes out with a bunch of new, major features, it's now playing in the under $100 leagues, not the $199 leagues that it was in 6 years ago. Yes, it's gotten a ton of much-needed bug fixes and smaller new features (nested folders, ripple edit indicator, and on and on). But the only major ones I can think of are Arranger and Articulations. The competition is now Mixcraft, REAPER, Studio One Artist. Still no sampler, no chord track. We'll see what the future holds. I've been a fan of the current development and licensing models.

That's not the first Cakewalk Sonar, though, that's the last Cakewalk By BandLab.

I don't think so. They've mentioned an extensive re-tooling of the UI, including (I think) native scalability, which means vector graphics instead of the fixed bitmaps Cakewalk has. That is a HUGE undertaking. It ain't like creating a Cakewalk theme, which I know myself can itself take weeks if you really go deep and change every element you can. This is the first UI overhaul of this magnitude since SONAR X. So if they're really going to change every menu and view (including things like Staff View), we're looking at quite the time frame. That's blowing the dust off of some very dusty code. I'm not sure why they would have announced it so far ahead of the release, it's induced a bit of FUD among the user base. Including some YouTube heavy hitters who had spent years pitching CbB as the best choice for a free DAW. Cakewalk Sonar is now going to need to be the best DAW for the money, which is a tougher league to play in. So, yeah, hoping for some long-awaited features besides the UI overhaul. I've spent so many years babbling about what a great deal CbB is to my friends who haven't yet gotten into home recording that I want it to still be a great deal.

Which means that she thinks you could pull that off. 🥰 She won't laugh once the house starts filling up with rack modules....

Now we're really getting bogged down.

The hidden messages in the text that we put in bold, I think.😄

Sad, no Vegas Pro this time. Video Pro just didn't do it for me.

Aww, it's all in good fun. It's fun to take cheap shots at certain "institutions." Pro Tools users can be plenty ignorant/dismissive of other DAW's. So I like to talk a bit of smack about how the so-called "industry leader" no longer does any leading. Are other DAW manufacturers looking to Pro Tools for inspiration? I suspect not. Is this feature going to lure users in from other DAW's? No way. It's a way for existing users to dabble in this newfangled "loop" thing. And I'm with you on that Dark mode. I was watching a video and spotted XPand! 2 on the screen, hosted by a DAW with a slick-looking flat dark UI (reminded me of my Green Flat Dark CbB theme). Couldn't figure out what it was until you posted.

Although it seems like a good addition to their usual mixing craft, the performance of this panel might have problems considering it's in Pro Tools. I imagine that this matrix is best viewed on a second monitor.

"The Sketch window presents a grid of Cells into which Audio or MIDI clips can be imported or recorded. Vertical Tracks host either audio clips or MIDI...." "The completed song can be exported as a .wav. However there is deeper integration into Pro Tools available. Rather than exporting ideas created in a non-linear environment into Pro Tools, Sketches can be played back in in sync with a conventional linear Pro Tools session, combining the best of both linear and non-linear workflows." Sounds like this "matrix" of cells is able to do a ton of things. Avid leads the way once more!

Perhaps Pete is who God and Jesus delegate less critical matters to. If it's life or death, it's for God's sake, if it's coming to lunch because your buddy hasn't seen you in weeks, that's a Pete. As for what atheists ask themselves, I'm an apatheist (look it up) and I ask myself WSID. What Should I Do that's in accord with the principles I value? When working on amps, I ask WWLD, which is What Would Leo (Fender) Do.

Yikes. I can't reference to the Dan because it sounds too good, like referencing to David Tipper. It just depresses me!

Ah, thanks. I'm going by my old Dell Optiplex. When I turned on everything but C-States, it actually overclocked its i7-3770 a little, and nailed it hard at that frequency. I thought I was slick for figuring out how to overclock a Dell 😄. I guess as with every BIOS tweak, the thing to do is test it well before and after and go with what works.

You are not wasting your time. For under a hundy, you can get some more life out of that computer and be happier. The 3770 is the fastest CPU with the most cores in that series, so yes, you would see a difference. It'll handle more plug-ins before it chokes. As for the video card, it depends on what you're doing with the system. I just bought a used GTX 1070, and I think they're in the sweet spot now for price vs. performance in the bottom-feeder market. Mine has a total of 4 outputs. Two of those are DisplayPort, and DisplayPort to HDMI adaptors are a $5 item. I'm currently running 3 monitors on mine, and it's not getting near to breaking a sweat. With 8G of VRAM, it better not. The 1070 is a nice, quiet card for DAW work, too. It's smart enough to spin the fans down to zero when not under load. If you're not playing any games on the system, the GTX 650 is definitely adequate. If you are, it will handle most indie games, really anything that's not the latest Esports or FPS. No Read Dead Redemption on ultra, but if that's of interest, pop for the 1070. Make sure that everything runs from SSD's, and if you have an M.2 slot on the motherboard, an NVme for the OS and programs can speed things up a little too. One caveat to CPU upgrades: I got tripped up by the motherboard supporting the newer processor, but only after a BIOS update. Fortunately the MB allowed that from a thumb driver or I would have been SOL. Do it before you take the old CPU out. A 3770 should suit you fine for a couple more years. One of the Cakewalk developers has a 3770-based system in his studio. All the upgrades I suggested will drop just fine into a new system except for the CPU of course. So it's not money tossed away, when you finally do get a newer system and want to hand this one down you can put the 650 and your old boot drive back in. Something that people forget to do that can really help performance is to take the computer out on the porch and blow all the dust off the fans and CPU cooler. The cooler a computer can run, the quieter and faster it can run.

I have a soft spot for Dells; they're built like tanks and often available for crazy low prices on the used market due to their popularity in corporate environments. An Optiplex 7010 was my main DAW for years and I produced some good music on it. Having said that, yes, they are locked down as far as BIOS options. The UI hasn't changed in probably 20 years. Companies don't want someone's gamer kid coming in on the weekend and overclocking the CPU and memory. And they are built for reliability, not speed. But with some coaxing and tuning, they can make decent DAW or gaming rigs (the latter when coupled with a decent graphics card). Fan control is one of the things that's hard to do on Dells, which limits such options for DAW use. mspeng.exe is Defender. Defender is set up by default to check every file that is read or written to disk. Since it's a Dell, you likely have Pro, if not, licenses to upgrade to Pro can be had for under $10. Pro will allow you to permanently disable realtime file scanning. Even if you don't have Pro, Windows will still allow you to exclude directories from realtime scanning. I suggest excluding all directories that have to do with DAW work, such as the DAW's program directory and project directories, VST's, sample locations, etc. And don't worry about the security aspect, even if you disable realtime scanning, Windows will still scan files on your drive, just not constantly. Also, turn Speed Step back on, along with all the other Intel features EXCEPT C-states. One last thing: Dell is known for really pushing their own drivers. This is sometimes a good thing, they tend to work well with Dell's hardware. However, I have had it happen that Intel's own driver makes for better latency. Sometimes it's the other way around. I once had latency go to hell on my Optiplex, so I fired up LatencyMon and found that ndis.sys was the culprit. That means networking, so I rolled back the NIC driver and everything was fine. And plus one on a wipe and OS install if you can do it. In summary, though, if the system's use is going to primarily DAW, there are probably better choices for the money than Dell. You pay a premium for a Dell, and that money can be worth it if you're buying a dozen of them for employees to use in a business environment. Solid as hell, last for years. Like I said, they are a killer deal on the used/refurbished market. You can get what was a powerhouse system 5 years ago for peanuts (partly due to the Windows 11 security incompatibility). With a DAW, you might want to put that money into a quieter case and a mobo that allows more fan control. Quiet PSU like a Corsair, Thermalright fans. If you're gaming or doing video NLE, a better graphics card that's smart enough to spin its fans down to zero when it's not under load. If you haven't partsed up a PC in 10 years or more, you'll likely find that it's much simpler these days in a gamer-driven market. Companies make their components now with an eye toward ease of custom builds. It used to be they assumed that components would be going into pre-builts done by professional integrators. My $.02 after using Dells for decades. Typing this on my corporate-retired Dell Latitude....

Yer tellin' me! I hate to see people in distress over their music software, so I try to help, but really, even a Google search for answers to some of these perennial questions will yield results from this forum. The search engine here is not as bad as the one on the old forum, but yeah, it has issues with trying to find relevant posts. It very much favors recent topics over relevant ones. One I detest is the one at the KVR Forums. If you try to search for MModernCompressor in the MeldaProduction forum, the search engine kicks it back with a message saying that the search term is too common. Really? I think I'm the only person who's ever started topics on it over there. @mibby can back me up.

Thanks for turning me on to something that should have been obvious to me: I just checked Orders to see if MModernCompressor and MAutoAlign were in there, and noticed that there is a gap between November 2022 and April 14, 2023 (which I think is around when I bought Chromaphone), after which it lists 26 orders on April 14-15, all for plug-ins that I bought years ago, like the Orchestral Companions, some later ones like Freakshow Industries' lineup, and a big pile of freebies of the month. Unless memory really fails, I did NOT buy 26 plug-ins over 2 days around US tax day. Especially not ones that I'd already been using for years before April 2023. And I don't think I went 6 months without buying anything from PB, although that is possible. I did declare a moratorium on new mixing plug-ins around late 2022, so maybe I stuck to it better than I thought. This suggests that they did some database work around that time that could have included contacting plug-in manufacturers and getting lists of licenses registered by me regardless of whether I purchased them from PB or directly from the manufacturer. There are also other purchases in there for plug-ins that have incorrect dates. W.A. Production and iZotope are also well-represented in the "wrong date" zone. I guess that for a huge database that contains purchases from millions of people (I assume) going back for such a long time, corruption becomes increasingly possible. Complicate this with freebies, store bundles, and it seems pretty daunting. Good reminder not to rely on PB to keep my license info safe forever. Put those serials in a spreadsheet. I don't always remember to do this, but I have a Google Sheet with many serials in it.