mettelus

Are you saying the "Free 30-Day Pro Demo" link on this page doesn't work? The demo has always been for the Pro version AFAIK, but is a one-time deal like most software out there. I only mentioned it because the "Performance Monitor" is one of the easiest and "free" ones (if you have never run the demo before). There have been tools over the years done for SONAR, but they require multiple inserts rather than a "dashboard" view to let you see what all the guts are doing in a few seconds.

Unfortunately, Cakewalk doesn't have a performance monitor that drills into plugin performance (it has been feature requested more than once), and threads on these topics hit quite often. Nectar 3/4 both can have a significant CPU/latency hit, with Nectar 3 being (far) worse. The "A Bit of Everything" preset inserts 18% CPU usage and 195.6ms of latency (one instance) with Nectar 3, and 14% CPU/16ms with Nectar 4 (latency is far better, but still). That said, when you have a slew of plugins, trial-and-error troubleshooting can be a royal PITA. Being in a situation where you do not know whether the issue is the machine or plugins (much more likely), a DEMO of Studio One will give you insight into plugin issues immediately. Simply load a couple loops into a few tracks, drop in plugins you are using often, then "View->Performance Monitor" and check "Show devices." You will be able to see the performance of each plugin (similar to this), and some of them may totally shock you by what they are doing to your system. You really need to have a firm grasp of what plugins are problem children before you go tearing into a system looking for issues (that may or may not be relevant).

I took a quick look at that controller and a couple things for you. First, there are 3 screws on each end so the unit will come apart into 2 pieces AFAICT (the bottom and sides are one piece). The guts are not "loose" but any interconnecting wiring may be short, so opening it similar to a book is the best way to open the case. Just disconnect everything prior and be sure to use a screwdriver that seats properly so you do not round off the corners of the screws. Working on a towel helps a lot if a screw tries to escape, so it won't roll off someplace on you. The buttons (should) have a protective rubber mat over the switches, but all of the contacts need to be sprayed with them clearly exposed to clean them properly. Pots have a hole on the back (the "big knob"), and the push buttons can be gotten from the top (under where the mat should be). The TRS jacks you can get from the outside easily like you already did; but if you pop that open, that is also a good opportunity to add a little more "spring" to them by pushing them a little toward the center of the 1/4" holes (the tip connection is really just a spring).

Quick question on this... did you take the cover off and apply the DeOxit through the hole on the back of the pot? The wiper blade is actually "exposed" (and accessible) there, and that is the only way to get DeOxit onto what has actually corroded inside a potentiometer.

Absolutely, automation lanes are commonly used for material that is resident within a track. This is a link to an old help file page, but there are also videos online to help explain as well. Try to be as descriptive as possible with searches, and automation lane videos will pop up for you. Mike at Creative Sauce has a couple of them here and here. I wasn't clear from your OP if you were looking to modify performance real time or were focused on mixing (where the track contents are static, but you want to adjust that content).

I am not sure if you have done much guitar work, but many lower end guitars will need finishing work on frets, nut, and possibly hardware (bridge specifically). This is in addition to any PUP swaps or wiring changes. If looking for mahogany specifically, China has one of the largest reserves, so is easy to get one-piece bodies cheap that way. With the amount of work you may be facing (just keep that in mind), kits are another option, but you would also need to final finish the wood in addition to the above. I built a LP kit a couple years ago and only needed to replace one PUP and the bridge. @Grem also picked up Strat-style kit and just finished it recently, but some of that set up was a bit more than he was anticipating. Because of the level of attention I gave to that kit, the only guitar I own that plays better is the one I had PLEK'd.

Another alternative is RiffStation, which was a paid-for app that got unlocked when the developer stopped support so is now free but can be hard to find. With RiffStation you can adjust tempo of the playback file (only one file at a time) on the left side of the main screen. It was geared for guitarists, but can be used on any media it supports.

MTremelo is all that is required (no need for the MB variant), and is free (part of the MFreeFXBundle). If your work is to create the filter for audio (which seems the case but not sure), you can have MTremelo do that work for you, and also adjust length as desired to filter at different rates "on the fly." Below is a quick screen cap of what @Promidi was referring to. The yellow, fuchsia, and orange paths are blowouts from the main screen. You can get rid of the negative cycles via either the yellow or fuchsia paths in the pic above, and edit those to your heart's content. The orange is advanced settings, and you do not want interpolation or crossfading enabled (based on the OP), but you certainly can depending on the desired result. Be sure depth is set to 100% (main screen), as well as sync to DAW and set the length to what you need (1/128th in your OP description). MTremelo alone will allow you to mash up audio at will without the need to do any additional advanced editing shenanigans.

You are sort of asking two questions here. The built-in loop construction view is Alt-7 on the keyboard. As far as playing back varying lengths of that loop "on demand," if that loop always starts at the beginning, you could try using the Matrix View (Alt-5), and adjust the settings to stop playback between cells so that you can MIDI-control the duration of what is played. There is a very old tutorial series that is still (mostly) applicable for most of CbB (it was made for SONAR X2). The chapter list and videos are on separate pages. What you are asking about are Chapter 26 (Matrix View) and Chapter 35 (Groove Loops).

Just to reiterate the above, what you are seeking can easily be done with a VST Instrument (there are many free ones that are nice) and you can either trigger notes by manually entering them in the Piano Roll View (PRV), via the Virtual Keyboard, or with an external MIDI controller. You will be editing mostly in the PRV, but you would not need a keyboard that has onboard sounds, so if you want a physical MIDI controller, that can be plugged in via USB and seen as a separate device in CbB without issues or conflicts with your 2i2.

As someone who engineered and oversaw production on HDDs that statement is 100% NOT TRUE. YouTube is rife with idiots, so be very careful as to what you read/watch, and never assume you are an expert because you read something online. A HDD head literally flies roughly 1 micro-inch from the platter, so even a molecule of tobacco smoke can rip the head off (that is 100% true, and why de-lidding them voids any warranty). However, that does nothing to the data on the platter (with the small exception for where the head impacted). Once the hysteresis curve has been set, the platter will maintain data until another magnetic field overdrives that. The platters are basically optical flats with an oil coating on them, so you could also optionally use a degreaser on them and spray them with acid to prevent a head read (rust the crap out of them). Unless you have data on your drives that will get you sent to prison, it is sort of moot anyway; no one else but law enforcement is going to waste the time trying to get data off of old drives. We had an engineer that would play games and de-lid drives then run them on his desk to see how long they would run before the heads crashed, it actually took a lot longer than we expected.

I strong magnet (like a welding magnet, or decent level neodymium magnet from K&J... just be careful with those, since they can cause bodily harm... I have a few 100lb magnets I use for welding and to freak people out at times) will definitely do the job. What most do not realize is during the manufacturing process, there are bits written to discs to give the head navigation coordinates (left of track, right of track, and on center) for each sector so that it can verify alignment before writes/reads. Those navigation point are no different than the data lanes and the entire disc is highly magnetic, so a strong magnet will not only wipe the data, but also wipe the navigation points from the disc which will make a head unable to even locate tracks. That said, there are tools now to optically read discs with a laser, so anything not magnetically wiped can simply be scanned. Driving a spike through a disc will only obliterate the actual puncture location, the rest of the disc can be scanned without issues. You do not need to un-swage (take apart) the discs to magnetically wipe them, just break the seal on the cover and pop the lid off, then run a powerful magnet along the edge of the disc stack. You just need a magnet strong enough to generate the same localize field a head does to wipe a disc magnetically. Quick edit: Wow, those magnets have gone up in price dramatically. I got 4 of these for $10 each 20 years ago, and they are $45 a piece now! At that time, welding magnets were $75 a piece and still less powerful than these guys, so they are still a deal. Just be very careful with any magnets this strong.

There were actually quite a few posts in the old forums of people looking at SONAR and asking if the bundled software was locked to it. Some admitted quite frankly that they had no interest in SONAR, but wanted the included plugins specifically for another DAW. Another item to consider with bundling is that such would most likely also increase the price of the bundle. For newbies, that can be enticing, but for folks who already own them they could be paying more for a DAW for things they already own. The MAGIX Samplitude Suite is a good example of this, for a first-time buyer that can be an awesome deal, but some of the included apps in the last go-round were the same as when I got X5 (and you don't get an "extra" copy that can be resold with that). MAGIX does have the advantage that they include the latest version of SpectraLayers Pro (and older versions of their other software), but $199 each year (when it is on sale), is a bit excessive for a DAW upgrade. It would be more effective to split out the DAW from other apps, but there is definitely an interest for folks to pick up things that vanished when SONAR became CbB (Z3TA+2, Dimension Pro, et al.), and nothing precludes having 3rd-party deals for current SONAR owners rather than them being bundled. Even iZotope gets comments in this regard a lot. So many of their bundles overlap that people comment things like, "Only two applications are upgrades for me, the rest I already own."

This actually caught me off guard. Didn't the prior versions simply disable saving? The 3-month window I find a little odd as well TBH.

It is also worth noting this thread when it was released. I picked up Scaler EQ, but it has limitations that the internal features are not available "real time" to tweak the functions or drive them with MIDI input, so it has more "static" functionality to it. They acknowledged this issue and are setting it as a priority for future revisions, but I have not been tracking it specifically.

Need to look into putting NDAs in place... they are all the vogue now anyway. This could turn out to be a second source of income (although lawyers will take most of that from you).

The problem oftentimes with raw patches is that it takes very little tweaking to them to get a far different sound. Without the hardware itself (or an emulator), even patches are only going to go so far, which can be another issue with "how" to actually use them if you have them in hand. The video below has an offer in the description for the (customized) patches used for a cover of "Another Day in Paradise" on (3) D-50s.

Doesn't surprise me, since a couple cartridge replacements can cost more than the machine itself. HP has been playing around with the chips on those cartridges for years. If you go in and disable the "HP SI Service" manually, it keeps their printers from phoning home.

Depending on where you are getting your source material from, 4K Video Downloader is another option. In addition to video download options, there are also audio-only options available. IIRC, the free version does 30 downloads per day, and it also alleviates the hassle of loopbacks or recording in "real time."

That is the story with half of my projects for sure, I buy things well in advance of using them at times as well. Have you tried tackling this from another perspective? I.e., you really only need an audio interface to get audio in (and cannot really get around this)... can you pull the Behringer out of the loop and play the project back on the RealTek chip in WASAPI mode? Be sure the project sample rate matches the RealTek in Windows Sound Options, but if you have a system (or even headphones) to use the Onboard audio that should be an option (for playback/mixing). You will take a latency hit for that playback option, but I use that to mix surround quite often.

There have been a couple posts recently that were funny... one had "notable quotables" in it, and the other referenced IT folks gravitating to DAWs for the "past few years" (has been a LOT longer than that). But a notable quotable from you from the old forum (I appreciate good sarcasm) was to the effect: "Everyone with a DAW thinks they are a producer."

Not sure if that Behringer UMC404HD is within the return window (hopefully it is), but there are bigger names in the game with an interface in that price range that make their own drivers. Behringer has had a lot of posts over the years with people having issues with them. A trial of Studio One Pro has more analytics/latency options available internal to the app, but if you have already replicated the issue with Reaper, I doubt that is going to help you find a solution to the interface itself (which is what it appears to be).

I think that is really how I read into the OP as it was, but from the standpoint of Studio One. I.e., the development horsepower in house is sufficient to let the tech savvy folks "play around" with another variant. I doubt that it is really an intended market, but more the "we wanted to see if we could do it, so we did." The most destructive effect from the Gibson debacle was the gutting of the Cakewalk development team. Being out manned by an order of magnitude makes everything harder.

That is a really odd one, and the only other internal thing that comes to mind is if they show up in the Plugin Manager. I have very rarely tweaked things in that, and am wondering if tweaking folder layouts can cause such. But, there is still the question if it is a Windows issue or CbB itself. Any DAW (free or demo) that can use VST3s would be a quick way to check. If they do not show up in that either, then Windows is having the issue. With the VST2s working, it is certainly not paramount to run to ground, but it sure is baffling.

To the chassis itself? That is a bit odd since everything in the rack should have a 3-wire power input on it and designed to fault out that ground. The chassis itself should never see power except for things like you walking on the carpet or similar and shouldn't transmit to the circuitry either.