Tony Shaffer

I'm promoting my ongoing feature request again: I'd love to see Cakewalk incorporate a "bar offset" so that I can set measure one in the DAW to be measure one in my chart. Maybe - if I'm reeeeal lucky, this will show up in the final version of "free" Cakewalk or in the new "paid" version of Sonar. I have to think a bar offset would be helpful to many of us. Anyway, laughter being the best medicine, I devised a joke to express my pain and anguish over my projects starting at bar 3 and my having to "do the math" every time I try to find the right measure to edit in Cake: So...some bass, piano, and guitar notes walk into a bar. Bartender looks at them, sez, "hey, if you're just here for a pickup, you're in the wrooong bar...you really need to go someplace else." Thanks. Try the veal. T.

I seem to be having trouble loading Plugin Alliance/Brainworx effect presets. They do not appear in the plugin dropdown window. I can navigate to them and load one, but the name does not appear in the window. Additionally, I cannot save my own presets; they all save as "no preset," without the name I'm trying to assign. Any solutions would be appreciated. Thanks.

I like to request this every year or so, hoping one day it will happen: Bar Number Offset - so measure numbers can start at 0, -1, -2, etc. instead of 1. I work from charts when recording, and if I have pickup notes or an intro or want to leave some pre-roll measures, my chart shows the verse begins on measure 1, but in Cake, I'm actually starting on measure 2, 3, 4, whatever. This makes it trickier than it needs to be to navigate to a measure while reading my chart, especially if songs actually start with a different number of measures prior to measure 1 in my chart. I have to think this would also be helpful for those who don't use charts, being able to record something like a 12-bar song and easily navigating to the start/end of each section: bars 1, 12, 24, 36, 48, etc., while using pre-roll measures. (Note: this means the section of the song starts at the beginning of bar 1, ends at the end of bar 12.) Steinberg Nuendo/Cubase also allows offsetting bar numbers within a project, which would be nice to have as well, but I'd be happy having this just at the beginning.

My long-time request for Cake is to be able to set the beginning measure number (so I can have one or more measures prior to measure one). The biggest reason for this is that I work from charts, and it would be incredibly easier if measure one on my chart and measure one in Cake would indicate the same measure. And this gets more tedious and complex if I have pickup measures and then have to locate something like the seventh measure of the second verse. Thanks, T.

Some years back, a company called Dancing Dots provided a program that incorporated the JAWS screen reader with Cakewalk to provide accessibility for visually-impaired individuals. Unfortunately, the CakeTalking program was pretty much abandoned after Cakewalk 8.5 because the company did not have the resources to maintain this effort along with the many other accommodations it provides. Current options for blind recording engineers would be Pro Tools or "semi-friendly" programs such as Reaper or Samplitude, but not everyone has or wants or can afford a Mac setup, and none of the other DAWs provide the range of control offered by Cake 8.5 with JAWS. My feature request would entail incorporating screen-reader capabilities into Cakewalk for the visually-impaired. I have a blind friend who works in Cakewalk 8.5.3, with JAWS - without monitor or mouse - and he navigates his computer impressively with registry editing and complex computer chores, and he uses a number of control surfaces for plugins. But he is unable to take advantage of the advancements of Cakewalk in the current version, or those in X1, X2, X3, and Sonar Platinum. From time to time, he will encounter issues such as Win 10 updates and new versions of plugins that require sight to set up and operate and when he reluctantly requests my assistance, he adds a monitor and mouse to his system to accommodate "my limitations." One he has things set up, he is incredibly fast and well-organized, and Cakewalk is his preferred DAW because of his detailed familiarity along with the fact that Cake is a highly intuitive and versatile DAW. I believe everyone should have music in their lives, be able to express themselves creatively.