Rickddd

I love Cakewalk, and appreciate what bandlab has done over these last years to make it even better. Back in the day, before there was Bandlab, I bought cakewalk. First the basic one, then upgraded to Studio, then upgraded to "Platinum". I forget how much I paid but I believe a full copy of Platinum was selling for something like $600. This was some 10 years ago. I don't expect the bakers to give a copy away, but it would be a nice gesture if there was some consideration for people like myself who invested real dollars into the program for when the new Sonar comes out. Maybe a 10% discount or something like that. Just a thought

This is so cool!

Thank you so much @scook

I vaguely remember years ago cakewalk adding a feature that allowed one to record a midi (e.g, piano) direct to audio wav file, instead of creating a midi file. Is that feature still present?

1. Freezing tracks is a bit of time and work, but it's the only thing that will flatline track demands. I have a pretty high computer, 32 Gig I-9700 running on SSD's, and I have to resort to freezing rather quickly normally. My current song data is also on an SSD. 2. If you use the "Upsample" feature for 64 bit vst's, I keep mine at upsample on render only. Never upsample on playback. 3. Be strategic about how you apply "common elements" like reverb. Having a single reverb bus and using a send (while adjusting how much signal is sent from any calling track) can reduce VST load, and has the advantage of have one unified "voice" instead of many. 4. Definitely, some VST's are much more resource intensive than others. For me, I like to use Waves Abby Road Plates a lot and that drags my system down quickly; so I think long and hard before I use it. Again, freezing can be your friend. 5. I'd much rather freeze a melodyne track then bounce it for obvious reasons. 6. Shutting off all effects ("FX" button") of course will often make a mix sound a lot different, but you can turn on the effects for specific tracks, thereby reducing load. 7. Sometimes, when I have pushed my system to it's limit despite freezing tracks... OR if I want to add additional tracks while having FULL FIDELITY... I will output the song as is, create a new project, and have that file pulled in the new project. I then can add whatever I want in full glorious fidelity, and then have to bring it into the original project. It is a multi-step approach, but it does get around any resource limitations. Hope this helps.

The following scenario has happened quite a bit over the last couple of months for me. I have Melodyne 5 Studio and the latest CwB. I fortunately have found a work around, still this never happened in the past and I am just hoping it resolves itself in the future. So here is teh scenario: 1. I edit a track using melodyne. 2. when I come back to the project, the edits are physically there, but when I play the song no output is heard from that particular track. Zero output. 3. When this happens, if I "freeze" the track, the frozen track shows zero waveform ('tho the edits and wave form are present in the pre-frozen track). Now this has resulted in several "gotcha" moments but fortunately there are two work arounds. 1. Freeze the track before I save the project, or, 2. If I forget and no output is heard, I do this: a. Right mouse click remove melodyne b. Immediately "undo" (for me, CTRL-Z). Doing #2 restores the clips ability to output and preserves the edits. It works, works every time actually, but is annoying. The dead-output melodyne clip in CwB doesn't happen always, but maybe that's because I now freeze the tracks right after editing.... IN am in WIndows 10 pro, 32 GB, my CwB is healthy as a horse so far as I know and this has been happening over at least 2 of 3 updates.

Why physically cut the end of the song off? Why not use automation (depending on how you end your song, e.g, fade), and just export to the shorter length using adjusted markers?

I'm not an expert at all, but your SSD can eat regular hard drives for supper. However.. a 1 TB SSD system drive doesn't leave oodles of space for decent future growth. I bought a second SSD 1 TB and run both my projects and cakewalk off of it. Just say'in.

Prefs> Customization> display > show start screen (uncheck)

I wanted to point out an alternative to randomization and approaches to "doing it yourself". And that alternative is hiring a session drummer for your song. I'm not here to push this business, I am a home recording musician and that's it. But "Fiverr" has over 900 session drummers of varying talents and varying genres many of which will do your song for $20-$40. I haven't hired any drummers from it, but I regularly hire singers, lead guitarist and a pianist. Not for all my songs, but for those where I want to add something that I myself simply can't provide. Here's a link to the session drummers on Fivrr. By the way, Fivrr has a really good system in place to protect you the buyer- artists are paid after you approve what they provide you. So you are in control. Most artists have samples of their work for you to judge. Again, I have no connection to Fivrr other than I use them for singers, guitarist and pianist. If I ever decide I want real drums, I will definitely use that service. Just say'in.

I'm not getting that. Mine works fine. What Martsave suggested could very well be the culprit. As a quick test, disable all effects universally - does it still have silent moments?

I do love this software. I still have CTD issues from time to time when a project gets large or complex, but I work around it. Aside from that, my concentration is on the music and the software just makes it so easy to focus on that. I came into Cakewalk before there was Sonar.... so glad I stuck with it.

I would think it would impact everything in a particular clip. So yeah, high hat etc. But there's a work around for that. 1. Create a new take lane, copy the clip into it. So you have lets call it identical clips A & B. 2. Now, the goal would be to take the kick out of say clip A, and ONLY have the kick in clip B. 3. Different ways to do that, but here's one way.... but there is a better way I'll mention at bottom. a. Lock the data in clip B (Right mouse click > click lock > lock data) b. Click on Clip A, click on the piano note for the Kick, hit delete. It will look like it did not delete it because the other clip is there as well. c. Now lock data in clip A, and unlock B. Remove all but kick in B. d. Now you have two clips, one atop another, that will work exactly like teh single clip e. Now, on clip B, the one holding the kick, do teh midi effect thing. Remember, you are not working the track now, but the take lane. That's it. BTW, if you don't want to go through the lock, unlock thing, another way to quickly do it would be to create a temp midi track. MOve a copy to it, delete the kick in one and the rest in the other, then move it back. The other way you might approach things in the future, depending on what drums you use, is to have a track for just the kick, just the snare etc. I use Kontact, it's a bit of a pain to do this, but it works. But you may want to stick with the 1st method. I'm just a self-taught country boy some others may have a better way to accomplish it. But I don't think it's too awful bad after you do it once.

Craig... I was very interested in your post... I have always had a frustration doing that same thing because I would always nudge the automation track ahead or behind in time. Even if just a little it can sometimes cause issues for me.... so I was following your instructions and drum roll... discovered that if I held down the shift key (left) when I drag the automation it stays exact in terms of time placement. I can't tell you how much of a pain in the A%$% this has always been for me. I'm free!!!! Free!!!!!!! Yeah!!!!!! Rick

GREAT POST... never thought about the problem... but I found an elegant solution!!!!! Select the midi clip of on interest. Add the midi effect "Velocity". There is a setting within that effect called "Limit". Limit can select a lower limit and and an upper limit. For your particular goal, set the lower limit. Be sure to click on the little circle above it to make the limit active. In the image below, I have set a minimum velocity of 75. At this point, all of your notes in that clip will have a minimum velocity. You can choose to stop right here... and keep the Midi effect active... or... drum roll... BOUNCE the clip. You are left with a midi clip, no more MIdi effect, but all your notes will have the desired minimum.