Starship Krupa

2 minutes ago, Brian Walton said:

When I do a new install, everything looks wrong until I get this transferred over to the computer...

This. After using and making custom themes for so long, I feel uncomfortable with Mercury and Tungsten. Since I overhauled the Tools module in my new themes to take up as much real estate as possible and represent the tool cursors you actually get when you invoke them, the stock Tools buttons look spindly and odd. Like, what's up with the wrench? And no more 3-D tape recorder buttons on the Transport, I've gone to the flat Studio One/Ableton style.

I like this theme; the flat Transport and the Gain and Pan knobs especially. It's all business. And....MModernCompressor and VC-670 4 lyfe!

@Light Grenade has 6 tutorials and likely more on the way.

2 hours ago, Bad Penguin said:

is there some type of iLok (universal) or publisher (plug-in specific) limit to the number of times I would be able to repeatedly activate/deactivate the license to Machine from the online iLok Manager?

Not in my experience, and I've moved many machine-registered iLok licenses around.

And since a big part of PACE/iLok's whole schtick is how it helps handle the issue of using one license on multiple systems, I'd be very surprised if they ever put a limit on numbers of activations/installations.

As I understand it, back when iLok was physical-only, a selling point was that you could travel to different studios with your iLok and be able to access your favorite plug-ins. And a selling point for developers was that there was no longer a need for them to maintain a licensing server, the mechanics of end-user licensing was all handled by PACE. Sell the user an iLok license then you're out of the support loop.

They have tried to make it easier on the user with the Cloud approach, but not enough developers have bought into that.

7 hours ago, Grem said:

I have always pronounced Sonitus as "So-nite-us"

Hmm, that sound like an illness to me. "The girl with Sonitus goes by." ?

I pronounce the name as SAW-nih-tus. Sorta Latin. I guess it could also be SO-nih-tus. Or SON-it-us, as in "we have met the enemy, and son, it us."

10 hours ago, John Vere said:

A member I highly respect

Mutual, John. Means a lot.

Your hiatus was a blip. I noticed that you'd been quiet, but figured that you'd be back.

My hope is that even with the ebb of participation in online forums, the information that we provide will be of use to people doing Google searches. I know that the old, archived forum is still helpful to me at times in this way.

15 minutes ago, sjoens said:

Yeah, not working like that here.

Working like that on 2 systems here.

Open PRV, try turning Show Velocity and Show Notes on and off. It will appear below the View menu and above the piano keyboard. To the left of the ruler.

I found the element in the weirdest place: Loop Construction view/Resolution Menu.

56 minutes ago, sjoens said:

How Erik has this in CbB is interesting.

It appeared after I fiddled with the Show Velocity options in the Notes menu.

Thanks to TYLIP these requests are now nearly extinct, but I'm trying to figure out where to find the image used for this element (also the text color, but I have a feeling that's a lost cause):

In Mercury:

In Tungsten:

As you can see, the button is flatter and darker in Tungsten than in Mercury, which tells me that it's themeable.

Any idea? Of course, with darker themes, the black text will be a limiting factor, but the current stock buttons stand out like the proverbial sore thumb.

Many extra points for knowing (or finding) where the text color comes from.

Very interesting and cool hack. Great way to get text to match the Cakewalk built-in text.

Although I have had pretty good luck using Arial with anti-aliasing turned off (in Paint.NET). I must try this....

8 hours ago, User 905133 said:

Evidently the owner of the group (Mike of Creative Sauce) created it as a private group at Facebook, which is his right to do.

If I have to get on Faecebook to get the content, I'll pass. The only time I do anything Cakewalk-y on there is when I have a new custom theme to *****.

As far as crossposting, any information I post is property of ME and I will post it anywhere I please.

8 hours ago, User 905133 said:

I don't know if he approached Bandlab for financial support, but I wondered if that's why he left....

Approaching BandLab for any kind of promo money is a good way to be disappointed. It's just not how they roll.

As far as why YouTubers not being around the forum, well, unfortunately, it's apparently not even worth it for them to announce new content here, as so few hits come from this forum (or any, for that matter). That's according to @John Vere of Cactus Studios fame, who remains a stalwart forum participant. @AdK Studios is the only YouTuber who still bothers to announce new videos in the Tutorials section. It's sad. Not even XelOhh posts announcements here any more.

One reason I can think of is that we of the forum tend to be veterans who feel less in need of tutorials. Which always turns out not to be true, at least in my 5-years-of-using-Cakewalk case. My eternal inability to figure out VocalSync was solved in a Lorene "The Produce Aisle" Anderson video. She only started using the program last year, and sometimes does videos she calls "Cakestumbles" where she just flounders around discovering things. Sounds useless, maybe, but is not at all. In those videos, due to her naivete, she stumbles across features and workflows that I've missed or forgotten about.

She's one creator of Cakewalk videos that I've practically begged to check the place out, if only just to lurk and glean some good tips to share with her viewers, and AFAIK, she's had none of it. Of course, being female is unfortunately sometimes a gateway for poor treatment in forums (this one not included, our sistas in the pit are invariably warmly welcomed).

I guess people would rather have valuable information scroll away into oblivion and answer the same basic questions over and over again. Faecebook. Reddit, YouTube comments....bleah. Although I do sometimes drop in and help on the Cakewalk Reddit.

Anyway, we've all come through with the Plugin Alliance (and other) .spp's. Just about every PA effect has been covered in the past 48 hours. All hail the helpful Cakewalk forumites!

30 minutes ago, Magic Russ said:

Unless I am reading it wrong, it looks like Mixcraft are distributing the Kjaerhus Audio Classic Series effects.   If you know, enough said, if not google what happened to that company.

Whoa. Nastiness indeed. Good heavens. Doesn't get much worse than that.

I had no idea about this. They came with the first version of Mixcraft I got and I didn't care for them (I'm a "mix with your ears and eyes" person and their GUI's were too rudimentary). Also my foray into the use of Mixcraft coincided with a wave of excellent loss-leader and other freeware plug-ins (MEqualizer, MCompressor, MPhaser, MFlanger, MComb, and OrilRiver beat the utter kiddy-fiddling snot out of that collection), which I migrated to.

What Acoustica/Mixcraft are now doing with their installer is allowing optional installation of "legacy" bundled plug-ins so that longtime users can still open old projects without getting "missing plug-in" errors. The default is to not install them. They're listed on the website as "Classic," not by the developer name. Seems like they had to compromise between completely distancing themselves and making things difficult for their user base. It's not as if the "fiddler in the clink" makes any money from it.

Acoustica are unfortunately not shy about still bundling 32-bit plug-ins (despite my bug reports informing them when 64-bit versions became available ?), so they probably didn't drop them for their 32-bithood. Maybe they dropped them because they're simply not as good as later freeware products (and their current bundle, which is a nice collection by ToneBoosters).

Anyway, this is the DAW Users Hall of Shame rather than the DAW Manufacturers Hall of Shame. Still, thanks for pointing me in the direction of the dirt. Icky as it is, it's good to be informed.

On the topic of DAW Users Hall of Shame, I probably qualify for my follies with REAPER. I first tried it about a decade ago and have every so often since and always come to the same conclusion: too much technology standing between me and the creation of music. The first few tries, it took me the better part of 2 hours just to get a track armed for recording (compared to a minute or two with Mixcraft and Cakewalk). This was back when the manual was user-written LINUX-style, with the basics (like, uh, how to start the damn thing recording audio or MIDI) being left out. Before the REAPER brigade chimes in, yes, this has been well-remedied in the intervening years, but the menus have gotten even bigger and more daunting. REAPER is just too powerful for little ol' me, I guess. So I'm either a dunderhead for having such a hard time with it or a dunderhead for continuing to try it even after my initial unfortunate experiences (trying the same thing expecting different results, etc.). It sounds like something I'd like, endlessly customizable, light on resources, stable....but it just reminds me of trying to use GIMP after learning on Photoshop.

Also, despite my hunger for a platform for live improvisation of electronic music, I repeatedly come up blank when trying to use Ableton Live. Magazine tutorials, etc. No dice. I guess I still think of songs too much in linear form. It looks like so much fun, and so many people I admire get killer results with it. Not me, at least so far. WAAAHHH, I wanna use Ableton!

On 1/20/2023 at 5:05 AM, abacab said:

Well if you go back 50 years before "Thriller" in '82, the Billboard #1 hit in 1932 was "Fred Astaire - Night And Day 1932 - Leo Reisman Orchestra".

 

It's interesting to note the name of the musical it's from, and how if someone said "Gay Divorce" today, it would sound like the topic for a daytime talk show.

"Today we're going to be talking about gay divorce and how it affects the lives...."

I do sometimes trip about these cultural timeline things. Yup, the far off year that Prince sang about 40 years ago was 1999. The year The Matrix was released, which was 22 years ago.

In 1972, when DSotM was released, Sergeant Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band had only been out for 5 years, yet it seemed like the equivalent of "classic rock" at the time. They made it in the hallowed halls of EMI Abbey Road with some of the same engineers that worked with The Beatles!

I bought This is the Moody Blues in 1975 and to me (at the ripe old age of 13), that was "old" music. "Nights in White Satin" had been a hit a few years earlier as an "oldie," all of 5 years after its initial release. A greatest hits package where the earliest tracks were from 5 years previous was a career retrospective. Those guys had thrashed out 7 classic albums in 6 years, which is what you did back then, because you knew the ride would soon be over. Wait more than a year and the kids will have moved on to something else.

7 hours ago, Magic Russ said:

Mixcraft for bundling software....

Ooh, do dish the dirt. I'm trying to figure out who that might be.

Mixcraft have more to answer for from still be bundling 32-bit VST's in 2023, IMO.

Following @MimoJP's lead, I posted some .SPP files for Plugin Alliance (and others) FX that his list didn't cover. Elysia, SPL, etc.

Here's the thread Mimo created (maybe Mimo can change the thread title to Preset Menu Dropdown Fix?):

Following the example set by @MimoJP, I've whipped up a few.

elysia.spp contains the factory presets for:

• alpha master compressor
• alpha mix compressor
• mpressor

more bx.spp contains the factory presets for:

refinement
boom
rockrack
saturator
Masterdesk
cleansweep pro
tuner
meter

(it's a complement to the PA file that MimoJP will be uploading)

Lindell-Maag.spp contains the factory presets for:

• EQ2
• 6X-500
• 7X-500
• PEX-500
• ChannelX

SPL.pp has the presets for:

• Attacker Plus
• Mo-Verb Plus
• De-Verb Plus

Ampeg B15N.spp and McDSP EC300.spp are self-explanatory

Ampeg B15N.spp elysia.spp Lindell-Maag.spp McDsp EC300.spp more bx.spp SPL.spp

On 1/19/2023 at 6:59 AM, Sal Sorice said:

Cross-posting files from the other forum is discouraged

By whom?

On 1/20/2023 at 1:03 AM, MimoJP said:

I will share that as well IF there should be demand for it.

Oh indeed, please do!

On 1/20/2023 at 9:05 AM, Kevin Perry said:

Right click drag only selects clips.

Oh is right click drag marquee select ever your friend in Cakewalk! I spent my first year or so unaware of it, and dang were things clunky. 

3 hours ago, abacab said:

Just go ahead and buy Chromaphone 3 on the next 50% off....

I know, I know. They're actually still on their Holiday 50% off everything sale.

2 minutes ago, kitekrazy said:

I always keep these parts.  They are handy for trouble shooting hardware.

Also if you happen to acquire enough spares, you can build a system for a friend in need, which is what I did. A Gateway system that was a friend's daughter's middle school computer (she has since graduated from college!). I replaced its Core 2 Duo with a Q6600 and put an SSD in it and it was my main DAW system for a few years, then my shop computer until just last year. It originally had a preternaturally fast 500G WD Blue spinner. It now has an nVidia Quadro and a pulled HP 400W PSU that I dropped a Noctua fan into.

I gave it to a computerless friend. Runs Cakewalk just fine as long as you don't load it up with too many fancy plug-ins, which he doesn't. Yeah, Cakewalk is based on ancient code, but that means that that code was made to run well on Pentium D's and the like. Throw it at a Core 2 Quad system with 8G of RAM and it's quite happy. I installed it on an old Core 2 Duo laptop that I fixed up for another friend, and whaddaya know: if you stick to lighter plug-ins like the stock plug-ins and ProChannel, it parties like it's 2009.

5 hours ago, Kevin Perry said:

Yes but...a beefier power supply can run cooler and quieter.  I've got a low power system in the grand scheme of things, but a fanless 600+W PSU.  I went for that much wattage not because I need it, but because it is silent and very efficient

Oh, hey, not disputing that headroom is good when it comes to PSU's. My daily driver has a CorsairCX650 that I snagged new in box on Craig's List. Total top of the line.

If you're going to order an aftermarket PSU, there's no reason to go with anything under 500W. I merely wanted to point out that it's not mandatory. I had a pulled HP 400W supply that I built into a Q6600 system for a friend. Over the years I'd replaced its fan with a Noctua, and it's pretty quiet.

I already have every one of the A|A|S products included in the bundle. The threshold would be two soundpacks and I'd give away the rest of the serials, but alas.

My #1 feature request of A|A|S Player would be to expose reverb as a parameter. Those patches sound amazing, but I like to use my own reverb. But I get that they really want you to buy Chromophone and/or whatever synth goes with your soundpacks.

BTW, even though their installer no longer spews duplicate DLL's all over the landscape, there's still no way to tell it which formats you want it to install. So if you don't want the VST2's and AAX's, you still have to manually delete them.

And @User 905133, I know you love you some Objeq Delay, that wasn't directed at you. I, too think that in these days, as much communication as you can get with your MIDI controller is important. With the establishment of the DAW as a live performance instrument.

I will betray my age and suggest that the name "Cordoba" evokes (and always will) Fine Corinthian Leather.

12 hours ago, User 905133 said:

If it responded to MIDI CCs, I'd agree.

Forgive my ignorance, but would something like MCCGenerator help control Objeq Delay?

Objeq Delay is a secret weapon, in all its wacked out esoteric glory. More patches would always be welcome, of course (although it has over 250 stock ones). It's hard to have it not do something interesting to whatever sound I put it on. On the weird sound tool continuum, Glitchmachines' manglaz occupy the far end of controllability and ready gratification, then Freakshow Industries', then Unfiltered Audio's, with Objeq Delay the easiest to get usable weird sounds from.

7 hours ago, kitekrazy said:

Not too long ago I took  I took my retired PC parts to the electronics recycling    Like you are suppose to dump stuff there right?  Well I found a motherboard that had one of those massive dual fan CPU coolers.   I had to take the whole thing.  I had my hopes that the CPU in it was a 4790k.  It wasn't anything special but I do have this massive heatsink that I'm sure would probably work on new systems.   I'll have to post a picture of it sometime.

Nice. Yeah, let's see it. I'd love to have access to a trove of retired PC components.

Parts that IMO should never be tossed are case, power supply, fans, and CPU cooler (within a certain range of sockets). Right now, my DAW system is using a hand-me-down case, which also has fans in it from a Pentium D-based HP full-tower that I found on the curb about 10 years ago, then retired and mostly stripped about 6 years ago. The HP carcass had been sitting outside for the past half dozen years waiting to be taken to a metal scrapper. I needed a fan for a new build last week and voila, it still had a pair of pretty nice (Delta) ones. As long as they have at least 3 wire connectors, a modern motherboard can control their speed. The HP's 450W power supply is currently still running in a system I gave to a friend.

Sometimes "office boxes" have nice fans in them, as quiet can be a selling point for office PC's. They get even quieter once you set up cooling profiles with your fancy motherboard and slow the speeds down. They're also rugged, because nobody wants their office computer's fan to start making funny noises.

Since cases are pretty standardized, there's no reason to dump them until they are well and truly done for. I just spent $50 on a new one, and I'm sure that there are multiple retired possible case donor PC's sitting in garages within a block radius of me.

The need for 500+W power supplies is exaggerated these days. CPU's and graphics cards are being built to use less power than they were 10 years ago, and if you're not gaming and just using your processor's on-board graphics, 350W is probably more than enough. My main rig has a passively cooled GT 1030 in it, which is very light on power consumption.

On 1/13/2023 at 7:35 PM, kitekrazy said:

I spend more time on my outdated Intel 4790, 3.6 ghz system then my i9 system @ 4.9ghz.

Getting your DAW on with less-than-cutting edge hardware is the opposite of shame. Until 6 months ago I was pretty happy with my i7-3770. Then I found too good a deal to pass up on Craigs List and I'm running an i7-6700. Your 4790 is quite capable of doing anything you're likely to ask of it, and sometimes sitting down at my older system feels like putting on a nice pair of perfectly worn-in shoes. Comfortable, familiar. I know where everything is, before I built a new computer and started keeping things tidier.

Maybe it's the punk rock thing: it's cool to make music on banged up no-name instruments that "serious" musicians would shun. ?