ptheisen

I'm probably going to purchase Dorico 5 Elements, also 50% off. Elements has a surprisingly high percentage of the pro features, missing only some of the things that people creating scores for publication might need. I don't need those things, so I think Elements is a great value at the sale price.

You may also want to check out NotePerformer, which works with Dorico Pro/Elements, and uses AI to interpret the score and automatically translate the markings into all kinds of  manipulations, resulting in very expressive performances when playing back well marked scores. This reduces the amount of smarts needed to achieve that 😉. Think of it as an alternative to spending hours and hours on midi editing,  envelopes, articulation maps, etc, in a DAW.

To keep expectations realistic, this is what was in the most recent CbB maintenance update:

Updated to 29.09.0.108 (July 3, 2024)

Fixes in build 29.09.0.108

Regression: Per Output Instrument Track disabled in Add Track flyout menu.

BandLab API updates.

Changes (build 29.09.0.098)

CbB has been updated to work with the new Cakewalk Product Center.

Offline activation is now available via Product Center.

Improvements to sign in process with new activation response and error pages. Signing in to BandLab no longer redirects you to the BandLab portal after sign in.

Cakewalk no longer automatically launches the browser to sign in at app startup.

The Sonar promotional window should not appear when running CbB offline (at this time).

Updates for Sonar promotional window content.

Fixed problems with unresponsive Sonar promotional window.

Fixes for analytics and app startup.

Fixes for in-app updates.

There is also this chart that does a pretty good job of comparing the different versions:

https://www.sonuscore.com/guests/downloads/Articulation_Comparison_TOEL.pdf

FWIW, Kontakt allows multpile instruments within a single instance and assigning separate midi channels to each instrument.

The Essentials version of Sonuscore's The Orchestra is on sale for $49.50 at the Sonuscore website at the moment. Not sure for how long.

Yes is my favorite band, I've seen them a number of times. The best was in April 1979: Jon Anderson, Steve Howe, Chris Squire, Rick Wakeman and Alan White all in their prime playing from a round and slowly rotating stage, with a great light show. But as usual with Yes, the highlight was the music itself. They played songs from their earliest albums all the way through their latest at the time, Tormato, including a 25 minute medley comprised of Time and a Word, Long Distance Runaround, Survival, The Fish, Perpetual Change and Soon. They also gave a beautiful performance of my all-time favorite song, Awaken.

Sadly, their are no videos of the "in the round" performances containing good quality sound. However, Hed Gilboa has done a remarkable job of piecing together a lot of different"in the round" videos and syncing them to the excellent quality soundboard recording of the October 1978 Wembley Stadium concert, which was not "in the round" but had a set list very similar to the show I saw. Check it out if you haven't already!

We all have our perspective. I'd like to think that on a public forum, we're all entitled to share ours.

Probably the main reason the subscription threads were numerous was because no "sticky" threads with clear answers to questions were created. Many of the threads were started by different people who are not regulars on the forum, each coming onto the forum at a different time, and when they could not easily find the answers to their subscription questions, started their own thread, having no idea that they were rekindling the embers of a controversial topic.

From my perspective of the back and forth responses in those threads, the people who don't like subscriptions were no less respectful and no more repetitive than the people who are okay with subscriptions. Yet many of those threads were locked by someone saying that the people who don't like subscriptions were too repetitive and disrespectful. Again, from my perspective, if there was any sense of hostility, it was towards the people who don't like subscriptions.

Forgot to mention, Starship Krupa's thread is in the new Cakewalk Sonar sub-forum.

Please see my response in Starship Krupa's thread "Whom to contact about licensing options?"

On the question of what happens when you stop the subscription:

In another thread, probably also in the private Beta sub-forum, Noel confirmed that when your subscription ends, Sonar is deactivated until you renew the subscription.

This was brought up in the private Beta sub-forum.

The info provided (thanks, Noel!) is that the decision makers are already well aware, but as of now, it seems they are content with the status quo. Anyone who wants to make their thoughts about that known should email them via this link: https://bandlabtechnologies.com/contact/

You should check whether the specific EZKeys instrument you are using is programmed to respond to CC64 as a sustain pedal. Some are intentionally not programmed to respond to it. For example, a Hammond organ emulation may intentionally not respond to CC64 because a real Hammond organ does not have a sustain pedal input, so a faithful emulation might not either.

If the instrument allows the CC64 input and has it mapped to sustain functionality, what you are trying to do should work. I have successfully done something like this. I had two separate keyboard controllers, each with just one pedal jack. So I assigned one of the controllers to send CC64 and the other to send  CC07, or CC11, for volume. As long as the input setting in Cakewalk for the instrument's track is set to omni (not a specific midi device), it listens to all midi data being generated, and can respond to the data from both controllers at the same time.

You can't fool me. Look at the serial numbers. That's just two pictures of the same bill. ?

You'll want to check out whatever Presonus products 3rd party sellers have to offer. A month or two ago, the PreSonus store removed pretty much everything except the subscription packages for Studio One Pro. They say it is temporary, and that a new store will eventually be available, but there's been no update since. We'll see. I have a feeling, they, like just about every competitor, are testing the subscription waters to determine how many people can be swayed to purchase a subscription to S1 Pro and all the add-ons before making further decisions about other forms of purchase.

Do you have version 1.6.1 installed? That version fixed a lot of those problems, but maybe not for everyone.

I wouldn't give up on Luna too quickly if that is the only reason.

 V1.6.1 released June 4th fixed the Kontakt issue and a number of others. Give it a try, it worked for me.

I don't know about VSL, I don't have any of their products. I also uninstalled Luna, I've decided not to let it distract me any further ?.

Additionally, Bandlab obviously purchased the rights  to the Cakewalk brand, and hired a number of the employees, so I agree that saying they just bought the Sonar product intellectual property is not entirely accurate.

17 hours ago, User 905133 said:

Interesting (Atari ST Pro 24 Software).

This issue of "Amazing Computing" has an article on "Master Tracks Pro v. Bars and Pipes" (starts on page 30). 

Master Tracks Pro on an Atari 1040ST was how I started out.

I tried Luna and basically liked it, partly because the look is very professional and appealing to me. The new Sonar is the opposite for me, so I won't be spending any money on that.

The Luna dealbreaker is that one of the main selling points for me, the Neve summing extension, is not only an expensive option ($149 on a half price sale), but UAD will only allow it to be purchased if you also have a UAD interface registered with them. Since I don't have that, I'd have to spend another $400 minimum to get a bare-bones UAD interface that I probably wouldn't use.

About 6 months ago, I decided to switch to Studio One. Nothing is perfect, but there are so many things I do like about it, including the look.

I must be in an agreeable mood today.

Misha, I agree with you that Bandlab should be giving clear answers to their long-term Sonar users, and that their lack of response dampens their reputation.

However, you are assuming that their eventual answers will be what you are hoping for. Bandlab is probably in a position where they've known the answers for quite a while, and the answers are not what a lot of people are hoping for, so they think it is better to just not say anything.

In that respect, I agree with Jimbob. If the answers were what you are hoping for, they would have given them by now.

Which leads me to agreeing with John Vere, you probably need to start not just thinking about, but acting upon, your plan B. I started on my plan B about 6 months ago.

I have no UAD plugins, but am only interested in the Neve summing, so I was just doing a search that taught me the Neve summing is the only outlier that requires UAD2 hardware. It's due to solely licensing agreements, not functional capability. They won't let you buy the Neve summing unless you have registered some UAD2 hardware.

At least three of the items addressed above were ones that I experienced and hoped for them to fix, so this is a great update!

4 hours ago, DeeringAmps said:

BUT SbC  is no longer in BETA, this is the program as it sits right now, available via BandLab's Backstage Pass.

That is only half true, and one of the reasons why there is some confusion. A bunch of users are still participating in the official BETA program, which is ongoing . The BETA version is a build or two ahead of the Backstage Pass version, and the BETA testers are not allowed to mention anything that is not yet in the Backstage Pass version in any thread other than the official private BETA thread.

It is very odd, unless the explanation is that the pricing plan is in place: the Backstage Pass subscription.

The very few responses received from people like Noel have been carefully worded. They said they are considering "other purchase options", but did not specifically mention perpetual licenses, so the other purchase options might be different forms of subscriptions. For example, just for a specific product (Sonar or Next) not the whole Bandlab ecosystem.

Unfortunately, for those who are averse to subscriptions, including myself, it is definitely the trend. Most companies are trying to steer their customers in that direction to one degree or another. Some companies are giving incentives for going subscription so that the customers feel like it is their choice, instead of feeling like they are being forced into it. But the end result is the same.

As others have been more or less saying, NKS integration is mostly something that plugins and hardware controllers implement, not DAWs.

Another thing to consider is that NI wants you to buy their controllers, not someone else's. So Komplete Kontrol has been programmed to allow only NI controllers to use their endless encoders as endless encoders. Endless encoders on competitors' controllers are treated like ordinary potentiometers by Komplete Kontrol. And to make it worse, the Takeover function that they offer to help with potentiometers (or endless encoders) on competitors' controllers only works when Komplete Kontrol is in stand-alone mode. When using Komplete Kontrol as a plugin in a DAW, the Takeover function is lost, leaving only the dreaded jumping parameter behavior when using a non-NI controller.

These kinds of things have turned me off of Komplete Kontrol.

If you use Kontakt libraries, you may want to see if you can successfully add a Kontakt instance to Luna. It has been reported by some that this crashes Luna. It certainly crashed when I tried it!

Luna is appealing in some ways, and in some ways seems to be trying to emulate Studio One, but Studio One is a much more mature product that already has just about everything most people would want, so I'll be sticking with that.