Starship Krupa

That's a great idea, but I think it would have to be curated by one person. Once something like that's opened to all, you quickly start getting unrelated feature requests. "A chord track would make my workflow less clunky" and such. To me, "clunky" means features that exist, but function in a needlessly clumsy way.

Hit your F6 key. I used Cakewalk for an embarrassingly long time before I even knew about RMB select, so if the Smart Tool wasn't doing what I wanted, I'd switch tools. Imagine how much faster things started to go after I figured out RMB select. And for extra convenience, let's say you're using the Smart Tool and want to quickly select with the LMB then switch back to the Smart Tool. Hold F6 down while you do your thing with the mouse, then release it, and the tool will switch back to the Smart Tool or whatever tool you had been using.

Yes, oddness abounds with their upgrade offers. For instance, I could have upgraded to MTotalFX for more than the cost of MComplete. It makes sense because while all my previous licenses counted toward MComplete, not all of them counted toward MTotalFX because I had a (purchased at deep discount) license for MSoundFactoryLE. So if your licenses include MDrummer, MSoundFactory, and MPowerSynth, none of them apply to FX bundles. Also, I swear that I've seen that "refresh the page and the price drops" thing happen too. Or I checked the prices, then went away and came back a day or so later and they were lower. It's the MeldaFairy waving her wand, I guess. And dude, c'mon really, if it said $11 for MComplete earlier, it should now say "you already own MComplete." 😁 Unless you're waiting for referral credits to come in....I had that happen during a big sale, so I always waited until the day before the sale was over to make any purchases.

Not long ago, I had some credits in my account due to someone I didn't even know having bought something pricey using my ref. code (likely posted on VI Control). 50% off everything sale came up, I was all poised to spend my credits on MTransformer and looked and saw that in addition to my credits, I needed $19 to level up to MComplete. I really didn't see that one coming. It's such a huge collection of stuff, and I will be getting licenses for anything they ever come out with as long as we both shall live. MeldaProduction's credits and prior purchases and "% off" sales have a way of building up and combining to make bundles way cheaper than one expects, so if you own any license, always check your bundle offers when they have a sale. This happens partly because if you already have a license for a plug-in that's part of a bundle, 70% of that plug-in's list price is applied to the bundle price. This drops to 50% if you bought it from a dealer. This is why snagging $10 MeldaProduction odds and ends from dealers pays off: it's a coupon for 50% of the list price of the thing when applied to a bundle. There's also overlap in the bundles, and the license prices from one bundle apply to another bundle. So let's say you already have MEssentialsFX, half of the plug-ins in MEssentialsFX are also in MMixingFX, etc. so you don't have to pay again for those. Wouldn't it be wonderful if iZotope did it that way? Anyway, if you're new to buying anything from them, use the newsletter sign-up and use a referral code and you'll get the cost of the MFreeFX "pro" upgrade down to about $8. Pretty good for 37 plug-ins. If you want to go fancier, my recommendation is for MEssentialsFX. 10 plug-ins including MTurboReverble, MTurboDelay, MAutoAlign, and MAutodynamicEQ. Use the first-timer deals and get both bundles for about $80. And no, we can't post referral codes in public, so hit up a Melda customer (it's ralfroberts' topic, so reward him) in private.

Um, MComplete includes everything in MTotalFX, so buy MComplete first. 😁

Check PM for a possible alternative. 😊 Another benefit you'll appreciate from updating to a later processor is the presence of the higher levels of extended multimedia instructions. I started to have some IK Multimedia plug-ins refuse to run on my old notebook, which had a 2nd-generation i7. They said they needed the multimedia instruction set to run and that was that. I'm not sure how the presence of those extensions affects Vegas NLE's and video rendering, but it sure can't hurt.

Unfortunately, no, which is why I sourced you the Optiplex. Modern graphics cards require the computer to boot from the UEFI BIOS, which loads from the system drive rather than motherboard ROM. A Dell Optiplex 7010 with an i7-3770 was my main DAW/NLE rig until about a year ago, and would still be working fine had I not found a killer deal on a motherboard. It has a GTX550Ti in it, which was a pretty powerful GPU in its day (and still holds up), but it wasn't unusable when using the onboard graphics. Dells are known for being very well-built. As for being upgradeable, the only thing to watch out for is whether the graphics card you want doesn't have power requirements that exceed the power supply's capacity. Dells, like HP's, use power supplies with proprietary connectors, which makes them more difficult to swap for beefier components. The GT 1030 has very low power requirements, but as I said, the onboard graphics of a newer i5 or i7 will knock the sox off your current GT 520 anyway. BTW, if you haven't taken an air blaster can to the inside of the HP lately, that can help with noisy fan syndrome and may help the computer run faster. Just be sure to take it outside first! You may be able to find a Canadian source of refurbished Dells. I think Best Buy also sells them. Just Google "refurbished Optiplex" and see what comes up. I can help vet whatever you find. I recently helped Larry Jones take the refurbished Dell path and he's very happy with the results.

Let's say my song is in 4/4 and I have my grid set to 1/4 notes (or 1/8 or whatever subdivision). Is there a way for me to have Cakewalk's playhead move ahead by 1/4 note (or 1/8 or whatever) each time I strike a certain key (or click the mouse in a certain place)? The purpose for this is transcribing songs. Right now, I'm trying to figure out a song's beat, so I have it loaded as an audio track, I have the tempo matched, and I'm putting the notes that the drummer is playing into the PRV. It just popped into my head that it would be great if I could make Cakewalk play just 1/4 or 1/8 or 1/16 each time I tapped the key. Otherwise I hear the next note I want, but also a few after that before I can hit the spacebar and rewind. So to be able to set the grid and play just the next beat would be handy. Having a command to back the playhead up by a beat division would be cool, too. This seems like something Cakewalk would be able to do, and if it's not already, a feature request is on its way.

A HP Pavilion i7 2600 is a desktop/tower.

Your Pavilion doesn't support UEFI BIOS, so upgrading the video card ain't happening. Really, though, it's actually a good thing that it didn't work, because this is a much better card for less money, and also passively cooled: https://www.amazon.com/ASUS-GeForce-GDDR5-Graphics-GT1030-2G-CSM/dp/B0716ZH99K There's no longer any reason to struggle with systems this old when there are deals like this around: https://www.amazon.com/Dell-Latitude-Business-Certified-Refurbished/dp/B07K6YG7YY That makes it about $200 total (including the GT 1030) for a computer that would be a video editing powerhouse compared to your current setup. And if you get a brand new system (which I would never do, I shop used and refurbished), the GT 1030 is a worthy card. (even without the card, using the onboard graphics on the Dell would be better than what you have now) I use Vegas Pro and my GT 1030 flies with that, I also game with it and it's run every title I've thrown at it with aplomb. Here's a comparison. Note how the GT 1030's column uses the words "hugely faster" and "hugely better" for every spec. https://gpu.userbenchmark.com/Compare/Nvidia-GT-1030-vs-Nvidia-GeForce-GT-730/m283726vsm12582 Turn the Pavilion into a network server.

RFK

A Cakewalk forum participant whom I know to have a Meldaproduction referral code. Brian now has an MComplete license, so no longer needs referral credits. Check your account. If you've never bought a license from them, you'll get 20% off that first order no matter what you spend your money on. As long as you use a referral code.

It's a drum-oriented multieffect, packages different modules specially set up for drum processing. Nice to have them all in one place, but if you have the individual processors, I'd say it's not essential. Some people like one-stop instrument-specific FX, some would rather use individual favorites. I haven't tried it yet on any of my drum tracks, I'm not currently tracking live drums. But I did open it up and poke around the UI. Unlike most Melda stuff it doesn't have access to multiparameters and modulators, and it's meant to be operated from the top-level GUI's. There are 9 different devices, each tailored to a different part of the kit plus room and overheads. As always, if you want to buy it and you haven't made a MeldaProduction purchase before, be sure to snag someone's referral code and get 20% off. Sign up for the newsletter for a 10€ credit.

Been a while since I put a bump on this topic. Finally leveled up to MeldaProduction's MComplete (which should serve as a cautionary to anyone checking out their FreeFX bundle: that stuff is like crack in the form of a DLL for susceptible folks), so I've been exploring that huge bounty and not inclined to acquire even more plug-ins. I made an exception for this one, because I still haven't found a drum machine plug-in that satisfies the sounds I hear in my head. MDrummer, in customary Melda fashion, just offers way too many options and a bazillion drum sounds, so I get lost. Pepto Audio's DR-84 gets close to the classics, it's a ROMpler of various 80's drum boxes like the Linn, DMX, X11, and Drumulator. The samples are mono and have no FX, although there is an era-appropriate reverb on board if you want it. Caveat: for whatever reason, their sound mapping deviates from the General MIDI Drums, which may take some delving into the Drum Map Manager if you care about having the correct drum names displayed in the Drum Grid. If you don't, then just get used to their mapping and go for it. It sounds great. Bonus: it reports its preset names to Cakewalk, so you can access them from Cakewalk's own menu.

How about doing it like the guy in the video is doing it, using volume automation on the track? Up in the Tools Module in the Control Bar, there's the Draw Tool (F9). If you right click on it, you can change it to the Triangle: Once you do that, any automation you draw will be in a triangle wave, with the period being whatever your current snap settings are: To do a hard stutter, I'd recommend the "Square" setting. If you want to do it with a plug-in, the freeware Kilohearts Essentials collection includes a Trance Gate that will whip it up instantly. MeldaProduction's FreeFX bundle also includes MTremolo, which will also do it.

I think there's some misunderstanding about what he's trying to do. He wants to use the keyboard's speakers to monitor from Cakewalk. Unless the keyboard can act as an audio output device (unlikely), the only way to accomplish that would be if, as @gustabo says, the keyboard has an analog audio input. If it does, then a 1/8" stereo to 1/8" cable from the green jack on the computer to the keyboard's audio input should do the trick. Be forewarned that this configuration will then make any sound the computer makes play back through the keyboard's speakers. Since @Byron Dickens was uncharacteristically silent about this, the best solution would be to buy an M-Track Solo ($50) and a pair of dedicated powered speakers (of better quality than whatever you're using now, such as the Presonus Eris) for it. Second best would be to just get the powered speakers and and drive them from the computer's green jack. Do this and you'll hear what your setup is really capable of. Once you start overdubbing, freezing tracks, etc., you'll find the $99 Eris/$50 M-Track investment very much worth it.

The Clunk Monster rears its ugly head!

Since BandLab has no legal obligation to honor lifetime updates to SONAR, I think a good solution would be a crossgrade. Those licenses were purchased from another company, and that's what crossgrades are all about.

I don't, offhand. There are monitoring tools in Windows that allow you to see what's phoning home. I use Resource Monitor. I once ran it while launching REAPER, and sure enough, it phoned home. It was an unregistered installation, and I'm sure it would have worked fine without being able to phone home, but still, you never know.

Having a license key doesn't always mean that the product doesn't also phone home during the registration process.

Oh my, I thought everyone on this forum was familiar with their insane genius. I downloaded a demo of Dumpster Fire and immediately paid full list price for their entire catalog (at the time) just because I wanted to encourage these lunatics. Did you watch any of the "demo" videos? Dumpster Fire is one of my favorite plug-ins. I took the pop metal clip from the Cakewalk browser and turned it into something that sounded like a Dixieland band in a cement mixer. Here are the product announcement video and the demo video:

Nice. And thanks for asking, it got me to think about what drummers I really like, and listening later I realized that all 3 of these songs have similarities in the beats. The time signatures ain't strictly 4/4, and I want to start being able to "hear" beats like that in my head, whereas I'm as stuck on 4/4 as your usual American rock loving boy. I've been musically blocked for the past few months due to some mind-bending financial challenges (rescued at the last minute by an inheritance a few days ago). I think what I want to do is take some of these loping beats and transcribe them into the DAW. This kind of thing might go pretty well with the downtempo stuff I want to explore. I'll leave you with a clip I watched over and over and over when I first started playing drums and was also not coincidentally recovering from a horrible episode of major depression. These guys weren't playing music, or even channeling it, they WERE music:

Also Steve Jansen's playing on his brother David Sylvian's Brilliant Trees:

Some of my favorite playing is from Alan White on Oasis' What's the Story Morning Glory? His version of the lazy Manchester beat is stellar. And often played with rutes instead of sticks. This is a different Alan White from the Yes drummer. Speaking of which, Bruford has played some pretty tasty stuff. Nigel Olsson with Elton John, Bonham, Moon (his stage presence very much influenced by Krupa), Ringo of course, Hal Blaine. I like Peart, it's tough to be that complex and still serve the music, which I think his playing did. Whoever played drums on American Analog Set's Promise of Love. I have listened to this song many times on headphones, playing along on my Slingerlands: Tony Allen's playing on this track from AIR's Pocket Symphony (this version cuts off the intro somewhat, but it doesn't hurt it much). Allen had a history that included playing with one of music's most evil assholes, someone I won't even mention, but he tears it up here:

I know, huh? This is the only forum I've ever participated in where topics actually improve. Not all the time, but I've seen trolling rants turn into thoughtful discussions and in depth useful critique. We went from Donny and Marie to Buddy Rich, Gene Krupa, Sammy Davis, Jr. Joe Morello and Prince! How about Jeff Porcaro's playing on Katy Lied?