Starship Krupa

Good lord, for whom? I've always been kinda weirded out by people who stuck with SONAR when CbB is free and so much of an improvement (and were subsequently having problems with the years-old unsupported program), but in this case, I believe there will be plenty of people who will keep using the free product unless there is a paid version that is really inexpensive. Whether they will also be people who actively participate in the forum remains to be seen. If anything, I'd have the impulse to shame anyone who shamed CbB stalwarts. 😃 Of course there is that versionism thing where anyone, pro or volunteer, who is trying to support a program will try to convince users who are having tech issues to upgrade to the latest version to see if it helps. How long before the first angry "I even spent my hard-earned cash on buying Cakewalk Sonar to see if it would solve the problem, and now I'm out the money as well as the time and my haptic controller still can't talk to my plug-ins?"🙄

VHS for 3.85€ you shall be mine.

It seems self-explanatory, does it not? Except maybe you're wondering why it happened when you have your DAW connected to the net every day and why would the activation ever get that close to running out and isn't it supposed to just silently renew itself yada yada. And the answer is....it just does it this way sometimes. Every once in a blue moon, someone's Cakewalk will start forgetting to renew itself, then eventually pop the red toast message saying that time's a wastin', then they have to tell it explicitly to renew itself and then it's fine. Often they also have to log in to BandLab with their browser, but it seems that you were spared that indignity.

I don't usually look too far outside the more business-y areas of this forum. So I open this topic and there is a photo of Richard Branson kite surfing with a naked teenaged girl clinging to his back. WTF do you guys get up to around here?

Perhaps in number of features, but that lack of support for 3rd-party plug-ins was a stone cold dealbreaker for a LOT of people, myself included. That relegated it to being just the little sound program that came with the interface. Crippleware. Plenty of native FX I suppose, but I'm too into VSTi's to be able to make use of Studio One Artist 4 except as a sketch tool.

Although I know it's useless to use facts and logic to change an opinion that wasn't formed using facts and logic, let's check out how Linux has fared in the desktop market in the past 5 years. In Jan 2018, Linux had a 1.69% share of the market. OSX had 12.8%, and Windows 82.68% In Jan 2023 Linux had a 2.91% share, OSX had 15.33%, and Windows 74.14% So in the past 5 years, Linux has gained 1.22%, OSX a (surprising, way to go Apple) 2.53% gain, and Windows has dropped 8.54% Not exactly a tidal wave. Speaking of which, one of the things I've noticed about people with irrational beliefs is that they often preach that there is an impending cataclysmic event or shift of some kind that will elevate those who think and act as they do to a superior status. This will be their reward for whatever deprivations they are suffering now (with Linux loonies, the deprivation is usually lack of software choices and hardware support). "You'll see! Just wait! You won't be laughing 5 years from now!" The thing is, it's trivial. If, 5 years from now there's been some breakthrough that actually does make Linux a superior platform (and that would need to include core audio functionality similar to Microsoft's and Apple's), and software vendors are supporting it as well as they do Windows, then there could be a reason to switch. I use my computers to make music, browse the web, and play games. When they no longer do that to my satisfaction, I change them. By adding storage, changing to a more powerful CPU or graphics card, switching to different software to perform those functions, a different audio interface, or whatever. When there is a compelling reason. Not one that I fantasize about happening in the future, but WHEN it's necessary. All the pieces are subject to change, including the OS if one more suited to my tasks comes along. Hasn't yet. I'm just not that emotionally attached to computer parts, including the software. I have some odd quirks about what I use; I still prefer Firewire, so I bought a new-in-box Focusrite Saffire Pro 40. I don't annoy people with how much "better" my interface is because Firewire 400 is an asynchronous bus-mastered protocol and USB 2.0 is serial, and nobody wags their finger at me or tries to convince me that soon Microsoft will end support for Firewire on Windows so I better drop it and get a USB one. I still have an optical drive and use it, nobody chides me about CD's being obsolete. Who even cares about this crap? This OS wars thing is so 90's. Use what you use and leave others to do their thing. As much as I'd love to have Garage Band available on Windows so that I could recommend it to DAW beginner friends, I don't go to Garage Band forums and drone about how I think Apple should make a Windows version and tell the people that they should switch to Windows before Apple forces their systems into obsolescence. I'd love to have iMessage on my Windows desktop like I do on my Mac. But I can't, and I understand why. No whining, no weenie-waving. I just use the stuff I do have and get on with it. I've also learned that fanatics are much more bothered by indifference than they are opposition.

Brave on Windows 10 over here. Works a treat. Maybe Linux systems have a feature that blocks hard information about the OS' market share. That would explain a LOT.

How else would such a referral system work? I put mine out there enough to eventually get MComplete and I never felt like I was begging. I think their products are a good value that I want everyone to know about. I post the same stuff now that I can't even use referral credits.

It works just fine on my system. 😁

No, god, no, please, anything but that.

Congratulations on your MCompleteness. Over 100 plug-ins that you'll feel like you barely scratch the surface of. 😄 That is not an "issue." Those are the terms of purchase. It's similar to most other software companies' policies on upgrade deals: upgrading doesn't grant you the right to sell your previous license(s). You usually retain only the right to use the product(s) that were upgraded. Also, you're usually not permitted to sell individual licenses from a bundle. From the MComplete bundle, there are over a dozen individual plug-ins that at this point, I don't think I'll ever touch aside from just test driving them. It would be great if I could sell or give away those licenses, but it just doesn't work that way. I think some of the mystery big purchases I've seen drop credits into my account are from when I put my referral code into a couple of threads (I got hand-slapped by a moderator, but the code is still in older threads) at VI-Control about MeldaProduction. The userbase over there seems to include some high-roller pro types whose idea of checking out a manufacturer's line of goods is to just buy a complete bundle. No "upgrade the FreeFX bundle" for them. The moral is to get it out there when you can. I always tried to be cool about it and actually type something helpful, like the recipe for getting the FreeFX bundle/pro upgrade for $5 or whatever. No "Use this code for 20% off at MeldaProduction!" followed by nothing else. 🙄 I wonder how much cash I've spent with them over the years. I decided at one point that I had all of their products that I wanted, but the credits kept rolling in and a couple of lowball introductory offers (MTurboAmp, MSoundfactoryLE) on big-ticket items (normally $108 each) came along and....here we are. Those deep discounts really add up. And it usually comes as a surprise during these 50% off all bundles, 50% off all products, 65% off all bundles sales just how much those little $9-25 purchases and Pluginboutique freebies are really worth in Meldaville.

This. Horses for courses. Linux is great at what it does best, which is hosting servers, enabling people to get extra life out of older hardware, and provide a viable productivity desktop for people and organizations who wish to save money on OS licenses. It also provides an alternative for users who don't care for Microsoft's and Apple's policies and behavior. The primary function of a company is to make money. If they can't make enough profit from some activity (even indirectly), they will either not engage in that activity or cease to engage in it. Witness the impending freeze of freeware CbB and advent of payware Cakewalk Sonar. The "building brand awareness" era was great, but about to come to an end. The 5-year introductory offer. 😄 It's difficult for audio software companies to make money on Linux because A, there are so very few people using it for audio, and B, frankly, Linux users are used to getting most of their software for free. The potential customers are LOUD, but few.

I believe you meant to say: 💩 Really, folks, look at this guy's content (as well has his change of handle). The only places he's "contributed" to are the "Delusional Linux" topic in Coffee House and here. The "is that all you got," the change of handle, the repeated assertions that he's "out of here" yet always coming back, it's obvious. He's a skillful troll, and it's been fun to play Poke The Troll with him, but he's just getting a kick out of the attention and how much he can bait us. And sincerely, Mr. Linux Advocates Are The Worst, my (red) hat is off to you. You played the 90's "Linux Loony" to a T. It was fun to revisit my younger days. 😄

C'mon, now I know you're roleplaying. That's another one from the Linux moonie playbook: make an unsupported claim that, even if true, would have no bearing on the "discussion." Sure, the fact that NASA uses Linux for some things proves that it's good for audio work! Speaking of NASA, do you know what audio software they used when studying and cleaning up the audio from Neil Armstrong's "One small step" speech? GoldWave for Windows. Apparently when NASA has audio work to do, they use systems other than their Linux ones. But really, who gives a crap what NASA or anyone else uses? So someone warned you away from posting a Linux beg on this forum and you did it anyway? Are most other Linux users as smart as you? I am about 75% convinced that your schtick is a put-on. Is this for a class you're taking or just your own amusement?

"Is that all I got (sic)?" I was merely agreeing with your statement. Be careful what you wish for. I've been following Linux' fortunes since early 1992. I downloaded it from a BBS on floppies and gave it to one of my company's programmers because we had chattedf about him using UNIX at university and I thought he would be interested in this thing. I have a Linux box in my home right now, a retired 32-bit iMac. I've lost track of how many Linux systems I've built. I find the OS fun to tinker with and useful for lightweight productivity things like web browsing, email and word processing. Libre Office runs great on it, so does Chrome, and for the vast bulk of people, that's most of what they do on a desktop computer. I use my computer for those things, but I'm also an enthusiast of audio production and games, two areas Linux is terrible for. For audio production work, where it absolutely falls on its a55 is when I try to set up audio on it for anything more complex than an onboard Realtek chip. For games, nobody makes decent games for Linux. The usual Linux apologist answer to this is something along the lines of "it's the fault of the hardware companies for not supporting it." "If they would only make games for Linux, people would buy them." Followed by a list of software that actually does support Linux. I've heard the pitch a hundred times, it never changes. Like Sakini said, I haven't seen a Linux weenie like you in decades. If this is some kind of 90's roleplaying or an elaborate troll, I have to hand it to you, you sound just like they did back then. Participating in this topic reminds me of my younger days, when the Linux-smitten would loudly proclaim how Linux was going to take over the market "real soon now" and that Windows was doomed. I haven't seen one of you boys (and you're always boys) around in a long old time. Here in the Bay Area the younger ones tended to be into facial hair, polyamory and sword collecting and the older ones kinda looked like Hollywood serial killers. The market has had a very long time to speak, and it has and continues to speak clearly: the demand for audio production software on Linux is tiny. Do not mistake LOUD for large. I imagine that the notable commercial DAW software companies that do support Linux, Cockos and Tracktion, did it mostly to shut the Linux whiners up. "Linux is no longer an underdog in music creation circles and is much much better than the current Windows offerings, which are terrible." The first part of that statement is not quite true, Linux, while indeed being a dog for music production, is not an underdog, because to be an underdog, the dog must be in the fight, which it isn't. You think Linux is The Answer. You are convinced that it's going to take over the world real soon now, and that you're smarter about the software market than the people who run Adobe, BandLab, Presonus, Acoustica, Steinberg, Avid, Magix, iZotope, MeldaProduction, Waves, UAD, IK Multimedia and Image Line who are going to be left behind as the Linux platform assumes its rightful supremacy. You're that market-savvy, yet somehow you got the idea that coming to a forum for a Windows-only commercial product and whining and picking fights would be a good way to drum up support for your favorite computing platform. The current Windows offerings are "terrible?" Cakewalk is a "Windows offering" that you're begging to be ported to Linux. You went on about how great Cakewalk is, you do realize that what you're asking for is a DAW on Linux that works as well as Cakewalk does on Windows. You had to run Windows to know that Cakewalk was so great. And that's pretty much how it is in the world of audio production. The software runs on Windows and MacOS/OSX/whatever Apple's term for it is (funny that when Apple finally realized that MacOS 9 was crap and needed a full rewrite, they had the sense to base its successor on FreeBSD). Why not just go download a copy of REAPER and use that? Support a company that supports your platform! Boycott the rest into submission. REAPER used to have kind of a Linux-y loudmouth would-you-please-just-STFU culture around it and if you're lucky, you might find some of those people in their user community to hang with.

Not sure I'd care for that. I've never used a DAW that operates that way. Something you get used to, I guess. I'm still on v 4, so it took me a bit of flailing until I twigged their philosophy, and that drag and drop was usually the first thing to try in S1. Which in Cakewalk requires the extra step of depressing the Ctrl key after you select the tracks. I never said it didn't. Don't all DAW's have them? I'm not trying to diminish Studio One, I'm comparing the strengths (and weaknesses) of the two programs. I think Studio One is a great program, lots of good ideas there that I would love to have in Cakewalk. This might not be a popular opinion, but it seems to me that feature-wise, CbB (as it is today) is comparable to Studio One Artist. The big missing feature in Artist is the Chord Track from what I can tell. Compared to Artist, Cakewalk also lacks the integrated samplers, and its other bundled instruments are kinda dire. Studio One Artist 4 added the samplers a few months after CbB first shipped. A couple of years later, Presonus added support for 3rd-party VST's to Artist 5, which is when it became a viable option, IMO. BandLab pushed the meme that "Cakewalk by BandLab is the formerly $499 SONAR Platinum for free," but it never was. Feature-wise, CbB (when it was first issued) was pretty much the formerly $199 SONAR Professional, which was Cakewalk's 2nd-tier option. Cakewalk Sonar when it ships will be competing with the $99 Studio One Artist, and Studio One Artist is stiffer competition these days, as is the $149 (but frequently discounted) Mixcraft Pro Studio. It will be interesting to see what the pricing looks like. Cakewalk has obviously been the best bang for the buck for the past 5 years, but that may change. This is something that I too would like to see addressed.

The new feature blurbs for S1 v6 indicate that they just introduced that kind of UI customization. I only have S1 Artist v4, so I don't have a way to compare them.

That much is quite obvious.

I think the drag and drop workflow things he demonstrated were pretty slick, although you can already drag an instrument from Cakewalk's Browser onto the Track Header pane and have it create the instrument track of your choice without popping that dialog. All you have to do is set the choices in the dialog the way you like and then untick the box that asks if you wish to see the dialog every time. It's a thing about Cakewalk: it's packed with slick little features that nobody knows about. If you're not Smart Swiping and Quick Grouping, I use those all the time. I mentioned Quick Groups to Mike in the comments of the video and he said that S1 does something similar to quick groups. I've read some of S1's marketing hype, and it seems like they have an overall philosophy that focuses the workflow on dragging and dropping. That shows in the end product. Cakewalk's UX suffers somewhat from having been created by so many different teams under different product management. There doesn't seem to be a unifying design philosophy applied to it. Maybe there are/were multiple design philosophies? Cakewalk was around before drag and drop was even a thing on the PC. Dragging and dropping FX onto the headers to create audio tracks....nice enough, but kind of a novelty (unless you are aiming for every operation to be able to be triggered by a drag and drop). The ability to select and drag two FX onto the FX bin would be a nice thing, though. Dragging FX onto the Sends bin and it automatically creates a Send track? I think I actually thought about that for Cakewalk at one point but didn't bring it up. I'd use the heck out of that. I typically don't use drag and drop from the Browser much because it doesn't offer anything special, but if it automatically created send tracks, and you could drag multiple plug-ins at the same time, that would change my attitude toward it. People have been mentioning templates as how they avoid the repetitive chores of setting up projects, and perhaps S1 lends itself more readily to a "blank slate" approach, starting from an empty or minimal project. When you aren't so sure ahead of time where things are going to go. The more deviation from the template, the more the workflow exposes itself. Anyway, I'm sure the devs are paying attention to these videos and the resulting threads. This drag and drop track and bus creation is probably not all that difficult to implement as it doesn't ask the program do anything it can't already do, it's just another way to tell it what to do. Drag and drop to the Send bin to create a bus, hold Alt to create an aux track. P.S. He also showed (but didn't talk much about) how you can resize the modules in S1's mixer, which I have wished for since I started using Cakewalk. There can be a LOT of wasted real estate in the Console depending on how many FX and Sends you're working with, whether you need the gain knob visible, etc.

Craig, what’s the name of your YouTube channel? I’ll add it to the YouTube Channels topic if it’s not already there. And great idea. YouTube videos seem to carry extra weight with the devs. When they see someone else’s workflow and where they get hung up.

That's why there's such great synergy in the merge with iZotope.

I'd probably like Seventh Heaven too. They say it's a Bricasti M7 clone and my favorite MTurbo device is called "Brichamber." I assume from the name that it's supposed to imitate a Bricasti. I've heard that about Vintage Verb. I guess it's designed to do similar things to Exponential R2/R4/Symphony, which I have and are great. I loved the sounds Robin Guthrie got with Cocteau Twins and those are supposed to emulate those 70's/80's rack 'verbs. Neoverb sounds great; it's got the Expo algos. iZotope had to go and add their patented CPUGobbler® technology, though, so I haven't explored it so much. I am surprised about Raum. Like most of us I got it because it was free. I tried it and it didn't knock me out. Are you using it as a general purpose 'verb or sound design-y character effect?

I'm no authority, so I'm curious which reverb(s) you consider to be equal or superior.

For me, there is not, nor will there likely ever be any functional difference between MTurboReverb and MTurboReverble. They both have the same devices and presets. MTurboReverb allows you to get under the hood more deeply and edit the reverb algorithms. Here's a screenshot of my favorite reverb in MTurboReverb(le): As you can see, this one single device has 27 different parameters for the user to adjust if the user wishes. That selector that says "Bella" is one of the 9 different algorithms you may select for the "Brichamber" device. There are about 100 different reverb "devices." 100 different reverbs where you can choose your favorite of 9 different algorithms per reverb. So the non-LE version is for people for whom 900 different flavors of reverb with 26 parameters each isn't quite versatile enough. IMO, pretty much nobody needs the non-LE version. Without touching a knob other than Dry/Wet, it already sounds as good as anything I've heard (I haven't heard every reverb but I have licenses for the Exponential line and have checked out multiple reverb shootouts on YouTube). And, confession: I've only ever used the Brichamber device, and only with the "Bella" algorithm, because I stop when I don't think I can make a mix sound any better. It's the first bus reverb I try and inevitably sounds so good that I've never felt the need to switch to another preset. It feels weird to have that many options and stick with only one, but what can I say? I'm a "too many reverbs unfocuses the mix" guy. Only other thing I use is either PhoeNimbuStratus or something extreme like Valhalla Supermassive. MTurboReverble and MTurboDelay by themselves make any of the 2nd and 3rd tier bundles that includes them a bargain if you don't already have them. Just one great reverb is worth the hundy that MEssentials is going for right now.

I posted the news on VI-Control in the wee hours and there are already a few newly-anointed MComplete licensees over there. One is convinced it's a glitch. 65% is a BIG discount, though.... I'm wondering if maybe the site's code is giving you 70% of retail in credit even for each individual plug-in in a bundle. That might explain the small cost of MCompleteness. Whatever, MPowerSynth was the unexpected prize of the bunch for me. I already had all of the MP products I wanted before I became MComplete. I wouldn't want to try programming it, and the front-facing UI is plain as can be, but there are some fine sounds in MPowerSynth.