scook

Try holding down the SHIFT key while starting CbB.

This should add the missing files to your user directory.

While waiting from someone who owns an e-drum kit to reply this may get you started.

According to p10 of the TD-17 Owners manual from https://www.roland.com/global/support/by_product/td-17kvx/owners_manuals/ the TD-17 brain may be connected to your PC via USB. It is a class compliant device so no driver is needed to send MIDI to the PC.

Once configured according to p10 of the manual and connected to the PC, CbB should see the TD-17 brain in MIDI preferences. Unless you plan on using MIDI to record the sounds from the brain consider just selecting the MIDI input and do not select any MIDI output.

With the device enabled in CbB you should be able to add a MIDI track and record the kit.

With MIDI recording verified now comes the mapping exercise. There are several ways to do this. You will need to know what the drum kit is transmitting and what the drum VST expects.

The notes sent by the kit pieces may be set in the TD-17 brain. The Owners manual covers this in the Customizing a Kit section starting on p14. According to p17 the MIDI note assignment is in the Other menu.

If you prefer to use CbB to handle the mapping you can use either the Transpose MFX (add the plug-in to a MIDI track and hit F1 over the plug-in UI to read its help) or the drum map manager. You can either use the TS-17 documentation or simply record the kit pieces too determine the incoming data. Once the data for the kit is recorded you will need to add the appropriate notes to the map for the drum VST (the note data will be in its documentation). There are not many videos about the process. Here are a couple

https://www.blades.technology/music/daws-sonar-and-studio-one/sonar-drum-maps

and

While recording you may want to monitor the drums sounds coming from the brain rather than the drum VST to avoid the delay added when monitoring the drum VST from the DAW. This may be done by adding the audio outputs from the brain to you audio interface or mixer.

Usually the vendor or manufacturer of the software will provide this information. Try contacting the support group of the company that sold the software.

Are the CC's implemented as automation in the track view or in the Controller pane of the PRV?

The plug-ins bundled with CbB are detailed in the first link. That's it. If you want something from old Cakewalk products you will need to install the old Cakewalk products. The subject has been discussed several times - here is a typical example

plug-ins bundled with CbB

The installers are still on the old Cakewalk site but if you did not migrate your account in late 2014 it may be difficult to access them.

All Cakewalk DAWs share registry entries, plug-ins and utilities.

Normally the installers detect previous installation and force upgrades and new installs onto the same drive. This will also happen if the previous DAW was uninstalled without manually cleaning up the registry.

If one manages to get two Cakewalk DAWs installed on two different drives or even on one drive but without the appropriate folders being shared as expected, there is no telling what errors may show up.

All Cakewalk DAWs default to installing on the system drive. This is not to say they cannot run on another drive but AFAIK they are primarily tested with installations on the system drive. There are options to install support files such as the bundled content and sample libraries on other drives, however; due to the shared nature of the products once a decision is made where to locate these parts in one DAW, upgrades and new installs must use the same location. This is due to registry entries all Cakewalk DAWs have in common.

For years Cakewalk upgrades came with a warning that removing the old product after installing the upgrade could result in damaging the upgraded installation. This is still true when installing CbB with an older Cakewalk DAW on the machine.

If I were facing the situation described in the OP, I would perform a clean install of both DAWs, then run the full X3 producer installer, apply the X3e patch (there may be a few plug-in updates in it) followed by CbB allowing both to use defaults. Once fully installed and verified then review the disk usage with an eye to moving samples and other content off the system drive as desired but leave the DAW, support files and plug-in binaries on the system drive.

I mentioned the ASIO registry entries because even if the hardware and drivers are up to date and working properly there may be an entry in the registry hanging up CbB - possibly a "Generic" ASIO driver. Temporarily renaming the ASIO registry is a quick test to bypass this part of the CbB startup. If the program starts up albeit without ASIO that narrows the problem down considerably.

I was getting ready to send this when the post immediately above hit.

1 hour ago, Jana Cole said:

The plug in says "no preset" and I've gotten sound from it without changing this.

This is typical of sample playing plug-ins. Normally the plug-ins start up empty. In that state they will make no sound. There are two ways to get samples loaded in the plug-in either by explicitly loading samples or by loading a plug-in preset.

When it comes to presets there can be multiple preset managers. Cakewalk supplies one ("A" in the image below); it is above every plug-in in the standard header -

You can read about it here. For most synth plug-ins this preset manager starts up with "No Preset" selected.

Most plug-ins have their own preset manager (sometimes multiple ones depending on the plug-ins). These are separate from the preset manager in the Cakewalk standard header. For their use refer to the plug-in's documentation.

Regardless, at the point I mentioned preset or sample in this thread, it occurred to me the plug-in may not have been setup to make sound. The subsequent mention of violin samples answered that question but raised the issue of the MIDI notes being out of range. When looking at the PRV keyboard do not make assumptions about the MIDI note value. The note names displayed in the PRV are based on the "Base Octave for Pitches" setting.  Cakewalk starts with MIDI note 0 being C0. This means MIDI note 48 is C4. If you want C4 to play MIDI note 60 the "Base Octave for Pitches" needs to be set to -1.

The question about a full string section was an attempt to find a string library for the sampler with a broader range of playable notes. Some sample players have them. Again not having the benefit of working with Play puts me at a disadvantage in providing solutions.

There are users on the forum that use Play but they may not read this thread because the subject and OP start off reading like a generic CbB configuration problem.

If you want specific help with Play, a new thread in Instruments & Effects may get replies from users of that product.

If SI Suite was installed, it did not get scanned. If it was scanned, then the scanned failed.

They may be in the FX list. This has been reported in the past.

The first thing to try is a VST Reset from preferences with "generate scan log" enabled. Review the log to see if the instruments are actually getting scanned.

Thanks there was an image above my post that had all the info needed to get the SI Suite but it was removed for some reason.

Just to be clear, click on the Install Addons... shown on this menu to access the Studio Instruments installer.

I don't know of a way to suppress the drop down. AFAIK, it is always displayed just above the track view on the right just below the Windows decorations.

It has been in the same upper right corner of the main CbB window since the first version. In fact it predates CbB. In older versions of CbB it was called Lenses.

Audio I/O devices must be specified regardless of the Driver Mode. The prior post shows an attempt to use ASIO Driver Mode when no ASIO driver was present. Switching to WASAPI Shared solved that problem.

If the OP posted that page of preferences in this thread there would be selections enabled.

Audio was working after switching to WASAPI Shared but now a plug-in is not producing sound.

In this case, the failure was not due to CbB hardware setup.

The user asked the sampler to play notes that are out of range for the instrument selected. Maybe due to an expectation of which MIDI note value C4 represents. The clues to the problem are the third image in the OP and later mentioning a violin preset.

similar thread

Removing an image is possible when starting with a user theme. This will cause the DAW to use the Mercury image.

In this case, the images in Mercury were modified too.

The only way to get images used in a prior Mercury or Tungsten release is copy the images from the prior release. Assuming the images have the same geometry. Themes are not always backward compatible.

The "Virtual Instrument Playground" mentioned in the OP is from a BandLab page not a Cakewalk By BandLab page. These are two different products.

Unfortunately the BandLab instruments are not available in any other DAW.

As noted above, Studio Instruments which are regular VST2 plug-ins are in a separate installer.

Without the plug-in my ability to suggest fixes is limited. Does Play have a full string section? Try that or use the PRV keyboard to determine the range of the preset.

My guess is the note is out of range for the instrument.

One thing to verify is if the note is within the instrument's range. Assuming the C4 indicated in the PRV is the CbB default then the MIDI note value is 48. This may be too low for violin.

By default CbB assigns MIDI note 0 to C0 but this may be changed with Base Octave for Pitches

Yes, that suggests a sound is loaded in Play. I have no experience with the plug-in.

The volume of the plug-in may be affected by Zero Controllers When Play Stops. Not having any experience with the plug-in I cannot say for certain. Others will have to weigh in on that plug-ins operation.

It may be instructive to swap Play for TTS-1 and see if it can make sound. That would narrow the problem down to the plug-in and its operation.

To swap synths on the track right-click in the track header, select "Replace Synth" then select a new synth.

Can't tell from the images above...does the synth plug-in have a preset loaded? Some synths make no sound by default, they must either have a preset or some samples loaded before they will make a sound.

Also make sure the "Zero Controllers When Play Stops" is not messing with the plug-ins volume setting.