mettelus

Did you try getting it from the app itself in Options->Check for Updates? That seems to be the most painless from my experience (but of course the app has to be installed).

No one EXCITED about "PreSonus Sphere" being renamed/rebranded "Studio One+"?? Come on... that is original!

The Browser panel to the right of the track view also has a "Plugins" tab at the top. In that picture it is set to "Media," but it is often quicker to drag/drop from the browser (default hotkey B will open/close the browser to give you more viewing space) than to use menus.

Scaler 2 also has some features that are not "obvious," so learning the GUI and functions to their full extent may need to come from reading the manual or tutorials. Transitioning between chords and using voicings can assist greatly for how a piano player would get "from here to there." I have primarily been using Scaler 2 to add tracks to existing songs, so I have been using it to build performances more via drag/drop to a separate MIDI track, then editing nuances in the PRV. Some of the performances are close, but for sheer speed the final track is easier to build that way rather than try to "shoe horn" Scaler 2 to fit perfectly (which it will not in some of these cases).

Ugh, I usually read the forums to wind down before bed, and they lit up almost all the forums with that crap tonight.

The quality of the cable is also important, and the capability of the hardware also can come into play. The issue with longer runs is usually not signal degradation, but a "time out" threshold is triggered by the hardware. Focusrite technical support could give you better details (as well as an absolute max), but recommendations are typically nominals rather than limits.

The performing before farming it out is a good point. Then you encapsulate the intent rather than handing a lyric sheet to someone. "One Night in Bangkok" had the music completed first, so they sent a partial with those lyrics to the lyricist to give them something to show the intended melody, but the lyricist liked it so much they kept them and ran with it. The human voice is the most complex instrument there is so focus on that instrument (be it yours or another's), rather than a program. Some programs are so complex they take forever to get the nuances in them that a human "just does." One cannot learn to walk (or run) for themself relying on crutches.

It is even simpler than that. The maintenance required on an aircraft is significantly more than a car (which is a questionable skill for many as it is). A disabled car just rolls to a stop (or might crash into something if unlucky), but with an aircraft gravity always takes over, so any crash will have significant extra energy behind it. The potential for misuse alone could be overwhelming.

I have seen some horrific accidents over the years, so "flying cars" just makes me realize how many Darwin Award contestants are coming. I worry more for the collateral damage that will result.

+1, You will always learn best by doing. Studying will only get you to a certain level before experience will allow you to go further, and experience will provide tools to accommodate gaps you may encounter. Never fear making mistakes either; those are often the best learning tools.

I was going to tack this on to the 10th Anniversary thread, but this is from Humble Bundle and looks like it includes everything Escape Motions has for $30, except Rebelle 6 (Rebelle 5 is included in the bundle).

Interesting faux pas or Freudian slip there... it is Meng, not Mung.

You might want to check out some of the free online courses. I just checked and Coursera has one for "The Singer Songwriter," that started today (July 10) but use the search engine on there and see if something interests you. For Coursera specifically, they create a forum for each class (it is wiped about a week after the class ends, so keep that in mind) which can be a great way to run into like-minded individuals and discuss ideas. It is very common to find other collaborators in those forums, and we even had breakout groups years ago that did songs during the course duration as group projects in some cases. Those forums you get out what you invest in them, so active participation is a huge plus.

This might be good to also post in the "Feedback" section for improvements/features. AFAIK, CakeTalking was discontinued and was last used with SONAR 8.5, and a few forum members still use 8.5 for this reason. When Windows is drilling into apps (for things like Voice Assist), the app also needs to expose active child windows (like the arrangement window) properly. I am not sure if there is an answer to your question, but hopefully someone can chime in with better insight. Your question did prompt me to look for more information, and there are quite a few ideas out there, but not specific to Cakewalk that I could find. "Best DAW for a blind person" came up with mostly Mac results, so they didn't lead to anything Windows-based. It did make me even more curious, so "How many people in the US are legally blind?" returned "1.3 million people over the age of 40," which is a significant number. If someone doesn't chime in with a solution, please consider also posting in the Feedback section. That was one feature of 8.5 that keeps that version still in use by many.

Changing the keyboard is something to consider. Keyboards collect dust and crap that can interfere with the gap needed to let keys "release" (builds up on the rubber diaphragm under the keys). Typically this takes years to become an issue, but if you ever eat at the computer or have pets it can be quicker. I took a shop vac to my keyboard once and pulled enough cat hair out of it to make quite a dust bunny. I am rather violent as a typist, so once lettering starts to wear off keys it is reaching end-of-life (about the 4-5 year point for me). If you have a shop vac, you could try vacuuming things out (a lot of what went in will come out, but not all).

Bear in mind the plugs were also new. They suffer dielectric breakdown over time and were reaching end-of-life as it was. The LS4 motor locks out the 4 inner cylinders when cruising, so mileage also depends on traffic (sitting at reds lights chews up the most gas because it idles in V8 mode expecting you to punch it) and that the motor monitors itself when to shift into 4-banger mode. New plugs up the torque in the 4 outer cylinders, so the inners were locked out more after swapping the plugs.

I only ever had the one can of D5 that John had recommended, and just use it on metal connectors. It seems to wear off its lubrication capacity after a few years, but takes such a small quantity to be useful. Stuff worked so well I couldn't feel the "pop" of the connector on the plug and the boot came back off so easily I resorted to the metal-on-metal contact internal to the boot (the ignition contact on these is at the tip of the plug). Plugs have been changed 3 times in this vehicle, but connectors have never been cleaned. 20% increase in fuel efficiency, so the entire can would have paid for itself on one tank of gas. I had to lay across the motor to reach the back bank and hold myself off the fuel rails at the same time while wrestling the boots, so the boots "just coming off" now is a GREAT THING. I would be very leery on sandpaper around electronics. For all the crap that "comes out," a portion of that crap "went in." The gap tolerances in many PCB applications are pretty small, and depending on what conformal coating method they used (if any), can make them vulnerable to conductive particulates building up. Stuff like car battery posts and connectors (where you can see where all the dust goes and it doesn't matter anyway) are fair game for sandpaper, but pushing that into a pre-amp or instrument I would definitely not do.

I just wrestled with putting plugs into a trans-mounted V8. After the royal PITA of popping connectors off they didn't want to reseat properly (especially on the back where leverage isn't the best), so I said screw this and grabbed the DeOxit from the house. Suddenly they went back on with minimal force and I could feel the metal-to-metal contact inside the boot. Sprayed every other connector I pulled apart while I was at it. Gotten so much mileage from that 12-year old can and still have half of it left.

Sort of reminiscent of the two who ran a script to generate a truckload of song melodies (they claimed they had done all possible variations). With storage being so massive and cheap these days, someone could script it to pound out lyrics just the same, text files are so small they could pump out thousands of songs a second. I notice Bing has shifted to assembling responses from its web spiders, but at least they footnote which page each sentence comes from. So far they are simply butting complete sentences together AFAICT.

Crooks who hate candy are particularly dangerous! Not sure how far from home their distribution center is, but I have actually gone to pick up something I was after once (call and verify it is there before going). Two of the centers are less than 20 miles from my house, but most stuff "just arrives when it arrives" as far as I am concerned.

Didn't read through the entire thread, so not sure if you checked the input devices - a wireless mouse in particular. Low batteries or dust on the optics (for the wireless/optical variety) can wreak havoc on inputs. Those devices drivers can also be "reset" on the fly by unplugging the USB FOB and plugging that back in.

Just to be aware, the VST3 implementation for a lot of plugin vendors was hit or miss for years, so the workaround was to keep the VST2 on hand just in case (often the quick workaround). When there is a mismatch between a DAW and plugin, it often comes down to the developers talking to each other to resolve the issue, but the reason is to get the vendor to conform to the VST3 standard rather than fit a specific DAW. If a DAW accommodates non-standard coding, it will almost lock that plugin vendor to the DAWs that did rather than make them universal.

I just happened to remember this site for free Guitar Pro tabs. If you share links on FB or Twitter they will download immediately, but you can simply wait 20 seconds to download them. Pretty simple. These are the actual gp[x] files, so you can edit/manipulate them in Guitar Pro however you choose. There are almost 50,000 tabs on that site to choose from. Ample Sound guitars will also import GP files, so the two applications pair up rather well if you have any of the Ample Sound products. Quick edit: Not used the site much but the link at the very top of that page to download the entire database (all 50,000 tabs), is $9 for July (normally $18).

+1, I find I violate my own guidance to others at times, and one that bubbles to the top is "Draft first, then edit." Especially with longer works (music included), I get easily sucked into editing "do loops" when reviewing where I left off (terrible habit on my part). Unless a good portion of the final intended work is present, I am going to end up modifying it later anyway. DI takes have proven themselves valuable for me, since I can simply re-amp during mixing rather than trying to shoehorn the original wet version where it doesn't quite fit.

I am not familiar with copyright laws very much, but I do find it ironic that someone who has no ownership of a piece to get a copyright of a transcription (especially if in error). Flip side (in the days of early internet one can never quite verify things like these): When MIDI first took off there were often errors in pieces as they were published. An early version of "Don't Stop Believin" was a bit off for the piano piece but otherwise intact, and the person who brought it up the piano most adamantly simply redid the piano track and gave it back to him. Supposedly that person who redid the track was Jonathan Cain. If true, that was such a classy move on his part.