Starship Krupa

What, no love for the REmatrix Solo found in Cakewalk's ProChannel? I have no idea myself how it stacks up as an IR loader, but hey, it has handy and free going for it.

Was just alerted to the existence of Audio Sorcerer by @Kerryman. He does a lot of Pro Tools tutorials as well, which is a combo I don't think I've seen before: Note: after I posted this I noticed that Jim Fogle already alerted us. Oh well, doesn't hurt to give the thread a bump!

Welcome to the Cakewalk user community. I read your other topic and it's cool to see someone with such diverse instrumental skills. I've always been intrigued by non-keyboard MIDI controllers like the EWI. Cakewalk has some good features to help with MIDI data from "alternative" controllers. In defense of John, whom I've found to be a stand-up guy who does a lot of work to help people learn how to use Cakewalk, when someone asks a question, those of us who are trying to help have no idea what their background is or how much research they've already done. One (imperfect) clue we have to go by is the person's post count. If it's low, they're usually a newer user who we assume can use some hand holding. That assumption is not always true. Everyone who's ever started using Cakewalk has experienced the daunting number of features and ways to get things done, and most of us remember how baffled we felt. My usual way on this forum is to over explain (as I'm surely doing now😄), because it's a shotgun approach that saves time and also because the original poster is not the only one with similar issues who will be reading my replies. The OP is not the only audience. "Forgive me if you've already tried this" is kind of implied, but over explaining can, I suppose, come off as condescending. I've personally had the experience of being at wits end about something, spending hours trying to find an answer, then posting on a forum where I was besieged by weenie wavers eager to display their superior knowledge (or tossing out "RTFM"). This isn't such a forum, I hope. From my observations at least, that is not John's way. He tries to help people get the same utility and enjoyment from the software that he does. The added personal bonus is that when I jump in and try to help someone sort things out, I often learn from the suggested solutions of others. John has said this is true for him many times, including in your other topic. Case in point: even in your angry reply to John, you mentioned Audio Sorcerer, who I'd never heard of despite the fact that I look for YouTubers who have series on Cakewalk so that I can add them to the list I started in the Tutorials sub. Audio Sorcerer will be added, and I thank you. I try myself not to take offense where none is intended, but I also know from bitter experience that it's possible to mean no harm and do harm anyway. The Skylight interface is a really great thing, one of the features of Cakewalk that I like best, but it took me a lonnnnng time to figure out just how I could make the best use of it. It would have been nice to have some guidance earlier on. And I still learn new things about it. So I'll probably go watch John's videos on the subject. All of this said, some personalities just don't get along and I've found it necessary for my own serenity to block certain users. Block him if you must, but you may miss some valuable info.

I move projects between multiple systems with different interfaces (16 channel Focusrite on one, 2 channel PreoSonus or even onboard sound on the other) all the time. Sometimes I get the dialog Mark mentions and sometimes I have to set the output from my Master bus, but it always works. And I do suggest setting your default depth to 24 bits (which Cakewalk uses for bouncing and imports), but not for this reason. It just allows the resulting files more dynamic range to use.

If I understand your request, this is very much already in place. The Export dialog allows you to export in any format, bit depth or rate that Cakewalk supports. Or do you mean do multiple formats at the same time? If it's the latter, I find it best to export from Cakewalk in the lossless format of choice (I use FLAC) and then use another program to convert from that file. I use MediaHuman Audio Converter, which is freeware, but there are many options.

Can you explain more about this? I'm not a programmer, and I'm curious how the developers' choice of languages could affect interfacing a plug-in with its host.

It was the swap file, I believe, not the project itself. And they said that it expanded to 33G, then down to 16MB after rebooting the system. Would that suggest there's a lot of memory in use? They said that their system uses an SSD, so speed/fragmentation wouldn't be an issue, would it? I'm very curious about this because I want to avoid this situation myself.

So taking 5-7 minutes to load or save is expected behavior under these conditions? And the cure is to apply destructive editing? I'll take a guess and suggest that the idea is that Cakewalk can read 50-100 small files faster than it can read 20-35 segments each of 3 larger files. And saving is faster under those conditions? 5-7 minutes seems like a really long time to me. It's been my understanding that reading audio files from a disk isn't an "expensive" process.

Excellent. One of my pleasures in life is watching speedruns of games where the whole point of the game is to take your time and let the story unfold, like What Remains Of Edith Finch, Eastshade, Gone Home, No Longer Home, Firewatch, etc. It's just so wrong. "You can skip through the conversations with the Esc key...."

Her rendition of Peaches' "F*** The Pain Away" (look it up on YouTube) is a modern classic.

To that end, I suggest you roll back to the previous version of CbB. I think there's a description of how to do that in the Early Access subforum. If that solves it, then let the devs know, I'm sure they'll want to know that some change in the last version borked your setup. There is a beta team, but they probably have newer and/or higher end interfaces. I agree that if an interface works with all of your other audio software and not with Cakewalk, Cakewalk needs to be examined. If rolling back doesn't solve it....yikes, maybe something else changed on your system around that time.

That feature hasn't been changed in the 5 years that Cakewalk by BandLab has been around. And I'll add to the chorus: it's past time to install CbB and join the fun. There's no risk to your current SONAR installation. You'll get a TON of new features (CbB was originally comparable to the Professional version, but with many features added since 2018) and a program that runs much better in performance and stability.

Naw man, I'm a relative newcomer. Used SONAR for a couple of years right when it transitioned from Pro Audio to SONAR, then not until Cakewalk by BandLab. Let's see what Wikipedia says....according to the Cakewalk, Inc. entry, 2008-2013. BandLab have been in charge of the software longer than any other parent company since Twelve Tone Systems. Even the Gibson period is ancient history in computer years. We're coming up on the 5th anniversary of the first issue of Cakewalk by BandLab in a couple of weeks. BTW, on "Livin' In The Wind," is that a real Hammond, a hardware emulation or a soft synth? You got a great sound with it. My current go-to for Hammond sounds is AIR DB-33, but it sounds kind of brittle. I used to have an M3, but sold it because I wasn't playing it.

Indeed they do, and it may be of value to them for you to wrap it up as a .ZIP or .CWB and get it to them. I think if you send it to BandLab/Cakewalk support and notify them that it's for the devs, that will close the loop. While they probably won't be able to figure out the initial cause, they might at least look at how it is now and get some idea of how to prevent it. They can also possibly slip you a build that has error reporting triggers in it that will write to a log file. Their call. I'll emphasize this because a few years back, I had one project that exhibited multiple issues with sluggishness, and submitted it to the devs. As it turned out, it exposed multiple issues with Cakewalk due to some uncommon settings I was using. So the devs wrenched on the code and it resulted in multiple improvements to things like drawing speed and input response. This was across the board, whether someone was using my settings or not. This kind of error reporting can help all users. Whoa, that is an excellent idea. Even if it just did an integrity check. I'm sure the support staff would love it. But really, except in your unfortunate cases, corruption is, unlike in other human endeavors, relatively rare. @rfssongs, the OP mentioned that this is happening across multiple computers, which would seem to rule out hardware issues like disk sector or RAM flakiness. Seem to. 😃 With this level of oddness, anything is possible.

I think you missed: That said, I would suggest to Keni that you make your topic title something like "Installing on dual boot Mac Pro" or something. As it is, it just looks like you're having issues with a vanilla install. I believe that there are others here on the forum who have gotten Cakewalk to work on dual boot Macs. And dang, Keni, that is one nice setup to be gifted. I would rock the snot out of a Mac like that! Once you do get Cakewalk to work, mmm, dual Cinema displays, 16 cores....

Yes, he's gone silent since his estimated angry 20% of the userbase were actually listened to. 😊 I will say, I can forgive Waves management for the move now that they've changed course and issued an apology. For management to pull a take-it-or-leave-it move like that and then admit that they screwed up is unusual. I have respect for a good apology and making amends. Of course, despite having licenses for many of their products, I've only ever obtained them via freebie offers, never spent a dime except for one round of WUP. After my latest system rebuild, only two remain installed, MetaFilter and Elements 2. I found one cool preset in Elements 2 and used it on a song and I have a thing for rhythmic filters. It's funny, 5 years ago on the old Cakewalk, Inc. forum, people recommended Waves plug-ins so often that I put a joke in my sig that if anyone ever recommended one to me I would "relentlessly troll them" or words to that effect. On the current forum, which started about 3 years ago, I don't believe I've ever seen someone outside the Deals sub recommend one. Instead, I've become the annoying one, recommending MeldaProduction ad nauseum.😄 That suggests to me a decline in popularity/loyalty of Waves' stuff. Maybe their policies (single seat per license, having to buy WUP in order to get updates) finally wore people down. Especially the single seat. These days, everyone seems to have a tower system in their studio and a laptop to haul around.

Whoa. I didn't know what that checkbox did, 'cause I've never tried checking it. Thank you so much for posting the solution. Would never have occurred to me, and yes, A.J. gets the Man award. I can understand when you were having trouble getting the thing to put out sound, looking at that panel and thinking "heck yeah I want to listen to this device!" With a complex interface like my Saffire Pro, which has 8 stereo outputs plus 2 headphone jacks, Mix Control was initially daunting. But once I figured it out the routing options, now I find it very useful. There are still aspects of it that baffle me. It sure looks like they let the electronics engineer design it rather than the audio staff.

You have direct monitoring turned on. Not sure exactly what the setting is (I have a Saffire Pro 40, which comes with different software), but it's in the Focusrite Control software that comes with the interface. It's an internal routing that sends the input directly to the output for zero-latency monitoring.

As do I. For the most part. Sometimes I want to take note of how I boogered something up for future reference! I think the latest, albeit "lite" version of Guitar Rig is included with NI's free Komplete Start package. You know about the "Favorite Freeware" topics in Instruments and Effects, right? You'll find all the plug-ins you need there. Buying plug-ins these days is optional.

It's not mine, for reasons already stated. Audio software is tools I use in a hobby, just like my woodworking tools. I wouldn't own a miter saw or circular saw under subscription, nor would I own a guitar under subscription, because I want them around as need arises and inspiration strikes. And yes, with the advent of maker spaces, it is now possible to have access to such tools under a subscription model. It's just not going to happen that I'd pay for a subscription to anything that I might not use for weeks or even months at a time, and/or given my current financial situation, I could lose access to if I don't pay the fee. As it is now, if I have a rough month, all I need to do my #1 hobby is the headphones and interface I already own, including the computer, and the perpetual licenses I already own. Those things, plus whatever food and shelter, and my life could still be at least livable and my creative outlet would still be 100% doable. Wow, cool! Great to have this perspective. I myself am a veteran of the consumer and business software industry, as well as IT. So I have industry experience on the manufacturing side and consuming side of both. There are big differences in the markets for consumer and business software. For software that is in the critical path of a business' moneymaking operations, subscription/leasing is the way, and has been for a long time. From an accounting standpoint, it's better for companies to lease what they can, as well as, for publicly-traded ones, I think analysts like you better the less infrastructure you own. This. Subscriptions have the potential to be better for the product itself. Way back, 30 years ago when I was working in consumer software, I had the sudden insight that the way the traditional (non-subscription) consumer software business was set up, it actually worked against software quality as measured by program stability and the addition of annoyance-relieving smaller features that the veteran userbase often prefer. I think there has since been at least one book written about this, but at the time, it just popped into my head. The bad thing is that stability and smaller features are not what made money for these companies. What made money (in the form of attracting new and upgrade licenses) was new features. All coding costs money, and since coding for bug fixes and convenience features doesn't make any, they get shunted in priority. Build me the new features, then we'll revisit the longstanding bugs if there's time. Back then, release cycles were timed to important trade shows, and product managers were given bonuses for delivering the next version of the product with the latest features in time to make the deadline. I was a QA engineer, and my job was to find things wrong with the software. So the better I did my job, the greater the chance that I would cost my boss her bonus money by slowing down the process. This is one of the reasons that I had to stop doing QA. It was killing my soul. A subscription removes this disincentive mechanism. Revenue is ensured, so bugs can be addressed and features that the subscribers request can be added. The goal becomes retaining existing subscribers and attracting new ones, and bug fixes help retain subscribers. The howls of agony from the veteran users on their 3rd release with a well-known bug still present are more likely to go away. That's if the company is smart. It it's not, then "hey, the cash rolls in whether we improve it or not, so send the coders home." And, note to Cakewalk users: the license for Cakewalk by BandLab is a subscription. It says so in Wikipedia, so it must be true (I know, I wrote the CbB entry😂). Seriously, it is a subscription license that must be renewed at least every 6 months. The difference with Cakewalk is that BandLab is paying for our subscriptions. Veteran Cakewalk/SONAR users can see the obvious benefits of being freed from having to grub for perpetual licenses: the program is as stable and smooth and fun to use and versatile as it's been since the X series came out, and maybe before. That's what it's like having your favorite program backed by subscription. So I fully admit that it is (potentially) better for the product while still sure that I really, really don't want to buy a subscription for any audio software, for reasons already mentioned. This, again. I won't go into my beliefs about how stock market analysis is the scourge and poison of capitalism, but yes, this is all true. And after that insight that I had about the disincentives for quality in software manufacturing, I had another one, and swore to myself that I would never again work at a publicly-traded company. What you describe is the reason. When a company goes public, its focus changes from providing goods and/or services that they can sell for a profit to increasing shareholder value, which is entirely based on what a bunch of people in New York who know nothing about your business think your company is worth. Analysts don't care how many employees at what salaries are needed to make a quality product, they only look at how many you have and how much you pay them, and less is more in both cases. This is why a company whose stock is flat will get a new CEO, who immediately, without checking to see what impact it will have on operations, orders 10% in layoffs and elimination of all contract employees across the board, in every department from product development to facilities management. After which the stock price blips up (and upper management cash in a bunch of options). The employees at the company who don't know any better look at each other and think "we already didn't have enough people to do the work, we also lost some of our smartest people. This company is going to go into the toilet. How can the stock price be going UP??" And the new CEO is a hero to his bosses, despite the fact that he (and yes, it's still most often a "he") may have doomed the company's long term survival. Because the people pulling his strings don't care about quality product or long term viability or employee well-being or marketplace prestige or anything else but having that stock price go up. It's about "the big exit," (which happens when the stock gets attractive enough for another company to buy the place out and the early investors can cash out as multimillionaires). In modern times, especially in high tech startups who want to benefit from younger employees donating labor (in the form of working more than the agreed 8 hours a day, 5 days a week), companies give employees stock options so that they in effect become "shareholders." So their focus also shifts from "selling quality product" to "doing whatever drives up the stock price." The actual product or service is at that point no longer "the product." "The product" is the stock price. Cakewalk Inc. wasn't dissolved because SONAR and its other products were necessarily failures, it was dissolved because Gibson's stock price was in the toilet and they wanted a quick boost. Burn the division whose removal will result in the best effect on the stock price. Merry Xmas, stockholders. Note about the publicly-traded thing: A company doesn't have to be publicly traded for this scenario to play out. If they just want to sell the place, the same analysis criteria go into deciding what private companies make good acquisitions. They're also used when private companies seek loans. Explains a lot of unfathomable corporate decisions, don't it? 😂 In light of the above, it could be that Waves are just looking to sell and don't care about what happens to the company or its users after the first big quarter when the analysts put them on the "buy" lists and the owners' shares become worth a fortune. They might not give a hoot about its possible impact on the future sale of Waves' plug-ins. The new owners (or even the current ones) could decide that the real assets are the licensing partnerships with other manufacturers and sell the plug-in business.

For one thing, at least at this moment, the current release of Waves products are fully tested, certified and guaranteed to work with the latest version of every OS they run on. So the risk at this moment in updating your OS to Windows 10 or 11 (or whatever the latest Mac OS version is) is nil in regard to Waves plug-in compatibility. Since you're a hobbyist, I assume that you use your computer for things other than running a DAW with only Waves plug-ins? The longer you stall updating your system, the more painful it will be when you are inevitably compelled to do so. Have you frozen every piece of software on the computer at a single point in time? Anything else you want to update will at some point stop working under an older OS. If all you do is DAW stuff on this system, and you have frozen it in time at a certain point, and you're happy with it's current capabilities, then, sure, whatever, run the wheels off of it and when they do fall off, build a completely new system and start over. For most other people, it's a cost:benefit ratio. There are definitely risks to continuing to run a computer system on an OS that is no longer supported. And while we have all heard the hearsay about "the latest Windows update broke my whatever," I've had a Windows update negatively impact my system exactly once in my 30 years of using Windows, and it had nothing to do with my DAW or any audio software, and was addressed in the next hotfix. How many times have you heard (and I mean directly from the person it happened to) from someone that a Windows update broke a plug-in? In my observations, the only things that Windows updates ever break are drivers. And those issues are typically addressed quickly by the hardware manufacturer. Again, I've never had an application negatively affected by a Windows update, and I once took my DAW system from Windows 7 to Windows 10 when the Cakewalk devs informed me that Windows 7 was no longer officially supported. As is typical with new Windows 10 installations, it needed about 48 hours of sitting and sorting things out before performance was back up to speed, but after this, performance was better than under Windows 7. I also had more than one piece of old hardware laying around that had long since stopped working on XP or Windows 7 that started working again with Windows 10. So it went the opposite way: upgrading Windows fixed driver compatibility and saved me from having to dumpster a perfectly good flatbed scanner. But we all have comfort zones, part of mine includes keeping my system updated. Over my years of occasional use of Waves plug-ins, they have been rock solid across their updates and Windows' and all of my plug-in hosts, and some of mine go back to v.10. If I had fears about Windows updates, Windows 10 Pro licenses can be had for about $6 and will let you stop updates indefinitely. I once tried collaborating with someone who had frozen their lovely Mac Pro tower on an earlier version of MacOS despite it being compatible with (at the time, current) Mojave. He was a Pro Tools user who was in (not uncommon at the time) Pro Tools terror at updating anything because Pro Tools was (rightly) known for getting bricked by MacOS updates. So he was stuck on whatever the Pro Tools version was before they switched to AAX. I was forever sending him files and links to freebie plug-in and other audio software deals only for him to tell me that they wouldn't work on his system. Stuff like 24bit FLAC's and MediaHuman Audio Converter. Finally in frustration, I researched the situation for hours and sold him on the idea of updating both Pro Tools and the OS, because from what I could make out, Avid had finally gotten their act together. He bought a 3 terabyte backup drive so that we could entire clone his current setup and went forth. Not a hitch. Not a single issue, and both the computer and PT worked so much better that he was overjoyed. For Windows systems, one of Microsoft's biggest selling points for Windows is backward compatibility. They sell tons of licenses (maybe the bulk) to businesses who can't afford to have their legacy apps break. And by "can't afford," I mean it could be disastrous in some cases. There are companies who depend on software that if it had a single hour of downtime, would cost them millions. This isn't "I booked a session with an important client and had to cancel because Manny Algae's All-In-One Vocal Effect was on the fritz," this is "we lost our scheduling program and now 5000 banks won't have security guards until it's fixed." Long answer, but that covers it.

Every DAW needs a suite of stock plug-ins, and they really are pretty nice. Given BandLab's penchant for giving things away, it wouldn't surprise me if someday they do port them to unlocked VST3. The devs are frying larger fish at the moment, I suspect. Indeed it is. Once you figure out the curve and attack/release views, it's great for seeing what a vintage emulation compressor, and/or one with quirky controls is really up to. MTurboComp is one that kind of baffled me, with its different models that have all the standard settings for attack, release, threshold, and ratio, but then also have a knob for amount of compression. Isn't that what ratio and threshold do? Quirky EQ's are another one, and in all cases, it's useful for checking the effect of a plug-in's internal oversampling (for those that have that feature). And if you want to clone the characteristics of your favorite vintage emulations using your more precision tools, it's great for that. Some compressors also induce changes in frequency response, and it will reveal that, and some EQ's also include some compression to add to the vintage mojo.

So does this mean that if your product sells 100,000 copies at $200 each, and you make a change in the way it's sold that 20% of your userbase vehemently dislike, the opinions of 20,000 customers are not worthy of serious consideration because they're outnumbered? You're just going to write off that $400,000 in gross revenue. I wonder why, if that 80% of the userbase was already paying for a subscription license by choice, Adobe even felt the need to force it on the ones who were so "completely overshadowed." I mean, if they're that insignificant, why not let them throw their pittance at you in whatever manner they prefer? I'm sure Serif and any number of other companies would have gladly absorbed 20% of Adobe's userbase. You suggested that this is "probably a welcome change for the vast majority of users," but since Waves already had the option to license via subscription, why would starting to force it on everyone who wants to use their products be a welcome change? Why would anyone care what license model another user is allowed to use? People don't complain about it because they dislike that subscription licensing exists, they complain about not having an alternative.

There's also plenty of "new blood" upper management who believe because they've worked in a similar position at another company without completely ruining it that they can stroll in and "take things to the next level." With a similar lack of understanding of what has made the company successful, what the company is really about. See Carly Fiorina at Hewlett-Packard 1999-2005. I have many personal stories from when I worked in IT that I won't go into. But here's one: there was a VP of IT at one well-known software company who I drew the short straw to run over and help them drag their email child window out from behind the parent program's main window. When I did so, and then, by way of showing them how to quickly and easily get themselves out of the situation, dragged the window back behind the main window, the person literally cried out because they thought I was "breaking" it again. This was not the VP of accounting, marketing, sales, HR or any other "soft" department, this was my Big Boss, the VP of Information Technology. Freaked out at a program's child window going behind the main window. This person's flagship project at the company was setting up a unified contact and sales management program for the sales department. This was a media company in the mid-90's, and it was traditionally a MacOS company that had only recently ported its software to Windows. So it had become a "dual platform" company where every employee was getting two workstations, one Mac and one Windows. Of course, for 90% of the workforce, this meant that one of those was "their computer" and the other one was a box that sat there in case someone forced them to look at something on the other one. And, of course, I don't even need to tell you which OS was most people's preference, and by preference I mean like being on one side of a rabid sports rivalry. People had posters up in their cubicles making fun of....I'm not going to say which platform because I don't need to. So what was the infrastructure of this grand project going to look like? Every salesperson would get a brand new shiny....Toshiba Tecra Windows 95 laptop to carry with them wherever they went. They would use these to dial into a bank of modems. When I say that the delivery of these (very nice and expensive for the time) laptops to the sales staff were welcomed as if someone had delivered a horse turd pizza and told them they would be forced to survive on it, I'm only exaggerating a little. There were scenes, and people swearing that they would have nothing to do with it. Although my preference did and does lean toward using Windows systems (although I like my Macs just fine), I fully sympathized with the salesforce in question. Although I personally think such partisanship is silly, I do acknowledge that it exists and that for the people who feel that way, they just do. They likely took a certain amount of pains to get jobs at a Mac-centric company, and now suddenly not only was Windows starting to look like a bigger threat in the multimedia content creation market, they were being told they would be using it daily for a mission-critical task. All because this twit, who had been VP of IT at some financial company who if they had any Macs in the place, they were certainly in the art department, was oblivious to a huge aspect of the corporate culture. They probably weren't even aware that there were people with a passionate preference for one computing platform over another. To them, a computer was just another business machine like a FAX machine, and who on earth worries about what brand of FAX machine they use? But this was a consumer computer software company, and the people who worked there, even the ones who were not programmers, were, duh, passionate about computing. Computers weren't just business machines, they were constant companions that you poured your creativity into. The project rolled on, investment well over a million on it. The Big Boss gave presentations at the supplier's conference about how successful their implementation and rollout was going. I hated it because every time some issue involving it came up, it turned things into panic mode. OMG, one of the database programmers can't connect to the server, run over there immediately and DO something!! No I don't know if they tried rebooting! it's a 4 alarm emergency!! We were busting our butts to deliver something to people who were prejudiced against it before they even saw it in action. At the direction of people who were blissfully unaware of or in deliberate denial about what an enormous turd they were laying. What....fun. How....fulfilling. I could say a lot more, but I'll just mention that I checked back in a couple of years after I had left the company (which I did by bouncing my pager across the conference room table at my boss, who had been dressing us down for not wearing our pagers when we were off duty-not part of the job description. I told him I wouldn't do it because I didn't trust them or the big boss to correctly judge what constituted an "emergency" and said, "y'know, what, you can have the damn thing." Pewwwww.). A few years later I asked a friend who was still there whatever became of the big flagship project, and he told me that while it did go online, nobody ever actually started using it. There was one person they had hired to enter data into it, and she kept doing her job, merrily entering data into it that nobody ever touched. Over. A. Million. Dollars. In 1996 money.