Frank Cheney

Good points made by everyone, with accuracy and food for thought!

So 'discovery' is always valuable, and the NKS ways facilitate that,

which is a big +  ...hadn't looked at it with that perspective. On the

other hand, today I discovered a really fun parameter/effect in Native Instruments

'The Giant' piano, 'reverse resonance'. If you play a glissand, a kind of chordal trail

(moving pad?) soon follows, quite a delight, begging for a long enjoyable session!

I think it would be tough to tag accurately, and tough to search for as a type of sound that

would be grouped with others, as it may be on the unique side.

Maybe you guys could see if NKS colates the words I used above, and locate presets

that utilise the reverse resonance? Hopefully, it's not an isolated parameter/effect!

Cheers

I'm not sold on NKS for the masses. I think it encourages mediocre productions,

by making generic pools of sounds:  pads, leads, pluks etc

and the musician is easily opted out of learning the character

and capabilities of instruments, and settling for the first sound

that's catchy enough to get a click.  There are working people competing for

jingles and making demos, scoring various projects, where time seems of the essence.

But to me NKS seems like fools gold. It's like porn flooding the zone with naked women.

There is usage, but not relationship, and certainly not intimacy.

NKS floods the zone with sounds, but will the art be personal?

Will it be long lasting and memorable? Listened to a second time?

Or will it devolve into quickies, rushed out for the easy money?

And let's not forget that NKS exists only to generate revenue for the front office.

Through hardware sales, partnership deals, licensing, and fees for helping coders

to assimilate their products.

Ultimately, the goal is to eliminate competitors who won't or can't comply.

For some, NKS will be a sugar/caffeine rush on the morning commute,

and the early shift, but later on, when the pressure is on,

a productivity crash hits, and the results suffer accordingly.

I can't think of anything I listen to on a regular basis, that would have

required NKS to create.  And there is plenty of junk audio cranked out

where the station quickly gets changed,  or the stop button gets clicked,

and the desire for finding some semblance of excellence, lives on.

Even more coding hours wasted hampering the free use of a free software.

If the Cakewalk daw were actually free, with no extra hoops to jump through, the hoops

man-hours could be invested in creating saleable sound libraries, saleable instrument presets,

saleable educational videos, upgraded and new plugins etc etc etc

Use the profits for charity, if profits aren't the prime motive for all this.

Just don't be wasteful of the coding man-hours, which are too great a resource to squander

just because...

People are clinging on to Bandlab Assistant like it's a freaking life-raft,

when they are firmly on dry ground.  This is not the 'good connectivity'

that Noel mentions, and on top of that, it's being  poorly handled.

My opinion is that the assistant is a superfluous loser, serving no evident purpose,

while there is low hanging fruit for Bandlab to harvest elsewhere.

Cheers

On 11/29/2019 at 9:32 AM, Craig Anderton said:

First of all, I have zero business affiliation with Cakewalk, so any answer I would give to this kind of question would be speculation, based on my overall experience industry experience. As to why BandLab keeps updating Assistant, it does more than just update Cakewalk. I assume the updates are done for the same reason any apps are updated - clean up loose ends, add new elements, etc.

'Why' was not part of my question, but your speculations are no doubt

often appreciated! I'm asking an accountants question about

financing the coding work needed for maintaining the current regimen of

login, registration, and authorization, and if a user can't complete that,

having a demo mode to fall back on, adding a bit more complexity

to the codebase...

and all this maintained on a product that has no commercial price tag.

So again, how do Bandlab financially benefit from

coding and recoding updates for the Bandlab Assistant and it's demo mode?

Cheers

Craig, Noel, or those who actually know, how do Bandlab financially benefit from

coding and recoding updates for the Bandlab Assistant and it's demo mode?

And please, just facts or numbers, not spin based on 'gee, it works for me' stories.

Thanks, and happy Thanksgiving, and  safe travel!

Bandlab Assistant is not alone in being buggy, I have a commerial product

that I researched, purchased and registered using my internet connection

but when logging in to the apps portal, it responds with some

nonsense about 'a problem with your internet connection...please try again'.

I realize there is an international shortage of good coders...but the trend

of companies overcomplicating the basics for the sake of gathering

data/statistics/trends yada yada yada backfires loudly, but the

beancounters are deaf to reality, and demand more and more info to be harvested.

I think Bandlab would derive more actual services users if the daw itself had no

secondary registration/activation requirements. These things cost man-hours to maintain,

don't work for everyone, and some will walk away at the first sighting of such

extra layers. Issue one serial number for all, one installer for all,

leave a Bandlab web connection button on the daw gui,

put lots of useful Bandlab video flyers in the installer archive,

and be happy.

The legacy Cakewalk software, like Dimension Pro, Rapture, and Z3ta,

are also still as good as they were when last updated, which was excellent.

It wouldn't hurt Bandlabs public profile, to allow them a rebirth, perhaps make them

part of a charity or scholarship funding effort, where a new install and redistration

could occur when a contribution was made.

Cheers

On 9/8/2019 at 4:18 PM, Starship Krupa said:

I try to be sympathetic, and I am far, far from a "pro" user. I only started using Cakewalk by BandLab in April 2018.

One scenario I dislike myself and try to avoid is being a Feature Request Apologist, where someone makes a good feature request and I respond with some convoluted workaround. I at least try to acknowledge that it's a reasonable feature request and that what I'm suggesting is a way to soldier through for now, not a way of saying that their request is unnecessary. 😄

It's often hard not to do that with Cakewalk because it's such a deep program and there are many ways to do things.

I this case, however, I lost my cool, because the gentleman in question seemed to go out of his way to self-sabotage by trying to "fix" things, copying what he thought were installation files from various locations on one computer to other places and running them. Then when this resulted in a damaged installation, he responded to it with multiple suggestions that the current licensing and authentication model be "substituted" with pop-up ads at start time as some kind of trade-off. I ignored the first couple but he kept at it.

Is the idea that we're somehow paying for the program in Annoyance, and rather than paying in one lump sum, it would be better to pay it off in small amounts over a long period of time? I don't know. I'm unclear on the concept.

Unfortunately, BandLab support, which is where the issue should end, has been unable to undo this specific user's mess, but in the meantime, I maintain that the answer to the occasional  authorization failure is not to "replace" authorization with pop-up notifications at start time. They do not serve the same or even a similar purpose. If users who experience authorization failures contact support, best case scenario is that the mechanism can be made more robust if it needs to be. If support knows there are issues and what they are, development will be informed.

I'm one of the lucky vast majority who's never had a problem, but I can see where it would be really bad news if it happened at the wrong time. I have noticed from watching the forum that it seems to only happen at install time, not for Cakewalk installations that have already successfully authenticated, so there doesn't appear to be much danger of demo mode happening during a critical session.

You use perjoritive insults like "go out of his way to self-sabotage" and "this specific user's mess".

No registration regimen is perfect, and when the Bandlab system did not work,

on an otherwise well working system, I took normal and reasonable steps as workarounds,

that do work on some products.

There is no mess, as uninstallation is trivial for experienced users.

Uninstalling an attitude of superiority, is far more difficult.  I think my suggestions

would simplify bandlab coding expenses in the long run, , with win 10 spinning oddly,

and a new mac system with major changes imminent.

Many potential users balk at the appearance of account creation and registration

being required for a 'free' product, IK and NI, among others, catch a fair amount of flack

with their free product requirements. Which for the record, do work in my systems.

3 hours ago, Starship Krupa said:

Really? You had to contact support to get your freeware DAW out of "demo mode," and because of that, you want the company who issues it to change the way they do their licensing activation so that you nor anyone else need ever, ever have to re-live the horror of that experience.

My gawd, the inconvenience of it all!

Support have so far not succeeded getting this version of the daw out of demo mode.

A much earlier version worked OK. I have three other daws used for their strengths,

and a wide range managerial regimens enforced by plugin devs, all working fine.

Demo modes and registration schemes for free products

are superfluous code. User accounts over time are more accurate trackers.

I suggested swapping the reg/demo for useful displays of tips and info

that would help new users, and can be dismissed with a click by experienced users,

or as suggested by someone, turned off in prefs.

Thread title 'Little suggestions for cakewalk'

So I suggested some things. The option to enable/disable popups makes sense,

but my suggestion acknowledges that Sonar was recued by Bandlab,

and that they have a right to link their business and content

to the Sonar daw which they provide without demanding our $$$$$.

Including a variety of informative startuppopups, easily dismissed, in trade for removing

the registration scheme and demo mode, seems a good compromise,

especially for a high quality free product getting significant updates.

Cheers

Not everyone is a  longterm pro Sonar user who might be annoyed by a dismissal mouseclick.

Lots of users are new to Sonar, and presumably, many more are hoped for,

and as a new Sonar user, tips and example projects utilizing them, would be welcome.

Dealing with registrations and coding a demo mode diverts coders from bug fixing

and implementing new features, and diverts users from making music.

Music makers that may use Bandlabs content and services in the future.

Cheers

How about removing all registration and the demo mode for cakewalk Sonar,

and instead, whenever Sonar is launched,  present a useful usage tip popup,

along with a link to a quality project (possibly tip related)

that could be imported whenever desired.

New product announcements could also appear at startup etc etc

Also, a menu item for tips, ads, and projects could be added somewhere handy

This could help a wide range of users, while not being a major annoyance,

if a mouseclick can dismiss the popup...

Cheers

BA is installed, but using the green install button does nothing.

Even though task-manager shows four processes in the list.

Other daw softwares I use have auto-updates, or update notifiers,

that work without problems. I updated  my chrome and firefox browsers,

and turned off their safety malware blockers etc, still nothing from

BA. I placed a support request echoing  what I mentioned here.

(knocks on wood-grained formica(

Hi, the daw is internet connected. I uninstalled all cakewalk items

listed to install,  edited registry, killed processes using task-manager,

rebooted, and reinstalled as aministrator. Sonar still opens in demo mode.

Thanks much for the links.  Sonar registered OK as you mention,

in the background, on my spearcatcher computer (win7Home-Premium), but not on

the main daw (Win7 Pro), where I had to sneakernet the downloads to. 

I might uninstall things, and try again, then contact the

proper support if needed.

Cheers

How about an optional purchase of a Cakewalk Sonar version

that can be registered offline with just a serial number, and could coexist

with the Bandlab version?

To me, that ease of use would be well worth $30. I've had an issue on

one of my computers, first installing, and then registering, as mentioned

in a nearby forum topic.

The update sounds epic to me, even though I don't use most daw features.

It speaks well to Sonar being a more solid and enjoyable daw

for years to come, even for a minimalist like me.

Cheers

I installed Bandlab Assistant in windows 7,
but Cakewalk Sonar would not download when attempting
to install it from the bandlab Apps tab.
On a different computer, I found four download files in

Users\me\Appdata\Roaming\bandlab-assistant\Downloads

I copied them to that path in the windows 7 computer
where the first attempted installation failed,
and ran Cakewalk_Bandlab_Setup_25.07.0.79.exe,
which ran successfully, along with drumReplace.exe,
instruments.exe, and melodyne.exe.

The problem is bandlab-assistant offers no visible registration
option, nor does the Sonar gui, and a red popup warning
keeps appearing saying 'Demo Mode etc, Please contact support.'

The support link leads to a dead-end of faqs etc
The email contact link also fails to find a human,
and cakewalk has lost my 'legacy' account
where I had registered Dimension Pro,
Rapture, and z3ta+ 1.5.

Why not a simple serial # reg for the free Sonar?
And how about re-enabling registration for older
but excellent Cakewalk , as the computers they ran on
are needing replacements by now?.

If the old softwares have no future with you,
auction off the rights and code to those
who will keep them alive.
Cheers