JohnK

Cakewalk by bandlab is owned by people who are not the "bakers". If they were to release a version that lessened the intellectual property of the company that owns the code, they would probably be breaking the law and up for the legal ramifications of doing such. I have worked for companies that abruptly go into liquidation, there is no time to release some cracked version, even if they wanted to. Once a firm goes into the hands of the liquidators, they will try and sell off remaining pieces of the company to repay the outstanding debtors. So the code of cakewalk is an item that may be of value for sale after the company is dissolved to pay off debtors. Just think, SONAR didnt go open source or free once Cakewalk dissolved.

I have made the switch. However, one niggling fear is if BandLab goes under like Cakewalk. At least with Sonar, once you purchased it, you could continue using it regardless of the source company disappearing from the face of the earth. What worries me now, if BandLab goes under, Cakewalk will stop working, as it relies on the online registration. What highlighted this is my mind was when I stopped using it for a while, and I had to re-register it. If BandLab were no longer responding to eable the registration, I would of been screwed.

My computer is WAAAAAAY old, and hence my pre-planning/prep. And even when I did my last upgrade, I got the previous generation CPU. I think its a Gen2 i7 2700K, 3.9GHz Oc'd to 4.4Ghz (currently they are up to Gen 10+ I think). It has been up to everything I have thrown at it (I dont do gaming). When I did my last upgrade I went with SSD RAID 1 (120GB as they were expensive back then), and it now has 24GB of RAM, and I just upgraded my hard drive from 120GB SSD RAID1 to 1TB SSD RAID1. I used to junction off all my data to a RAID1 4TB HDD. Now it all runs off the SSD's. No noticeable speed improvements, as my junction-ed off data was simply data. I work in IT so have a working knowledge how to squeeze performance out of my PC. Nonetheless, I realise my other question hasn't really been touched upon. I was also wondering if Onboard Sound was "getting there" to a point of being useful for music (remember this is a hobby, not a profession). In the above post, by @Promidi he gave a link to a PCIe card by ASUS I think ASUS make motherboards, so, possibly their current motherboards may have previous gen sound built into their latest boards? especially since some would be targeted at gaming. And my current PCIe card is many many years old.

My current card is the M-Audio Delta - Audiophile 24/96. I would not consider it a professional card, but it has served me well. Of course there are some PCIe cards available, but they are few and far between (ie the exception), compared to when I purchased my current card. i.e. you two are both right. As for "noisy". All the fans on my PC are dead silent, so much so that other people are shocked to find out my PC is running when they stand right next to it, and have to confirm with me, even if they can see the screen. As for electrical interference from other devices, I have never had anything audible to me come through. Since my card has been working fine, I never followed the changes, so when I looked, I was surprised they had almost all switched to USB. Thanks guys for confirming that I wasn't simply being hit with misdirection of advertising by search engines. I kinda like having a card inside, tucked away from view. Just for info, here are the cakewalk config and ASIO control panel for the card. I actually thought I had raised the buffer to the highest point before it was noticeable, but the low numbers makes me think I actually went the other way.

A totally theoretical question, for now. But My computer is getting old, but is still way more powerful than I need. I was just preparing my self for a surprise meltdown; the PC is around 7-10y old I think. So I had a look if there is a windows 10 driver for my soundcard (which has served me well) and there is none. I had a very quick look at audio cards, and everything (or at least most) appears to have gone USB. Is that correct? I was wondering if there are motherboards available with on-board audio, that have ASIO drivers and low latency. I do all soft synths and only stereo out, with mostly mixing down (ie not recording the output), but all VST synths, so latency is important, but I dont need it to be super low, just playable.

Changing a single note in a three note chord is not as simple as you think or describe. Cakewalk does not do it.

Just to be super clear, I am not really interested beyond just maybe having a play with it (I downloaded it), because it just seems like an impossible thing to do ie break apart a guitar chord to individual notes, allowing changing a strummed major chord to minor. Thats beyond what I thought would be possible, and would like to see how well it would work on a distorted guitar; thats gotta fail. (EDIT: As I spelled corrected this, I just thought that i may wish to use it to get someone else's distorted guitar RIFF with a great sound, and apply it to my RIFF...hmmm... the sound of Hendrix ... but without the talent...) One thing you mentioned about sending data to their server brings up the question of is just how much data would be available to the VST to collect and then send to their server. Is it just the wave file you placed into the VST OR does a VST have access to your whole system? A lot of VST's have sample data, that means they can access data on your drive, so it would appear the VST wrapper itself would provided minimum protection. Just a theoretical pondering. I have yet to hear of a malicious virus embedded in a VST, but it sounds totally feasible. I have always scanned any VST I downloaded from the net, and always go for the ZIP version instead of the installer versions.

I am not recommending this VST, I just stumbled across it as a free Melodyne alternative, but for me, the things it does not duplicate of Melodyne are the reasons I even looked for a free alternative. But still, it looks like it may be of interest. AS I said, I haven't tried it, but would be interested to find out if it works well in Cakewalk. The YouTube clip that I saw was: Didn't like the clip title, as it sounds very much like click-bait. And the website is: https://samplab.com/plugin It appears to be in early development. I was surprised how it could break apart the individual notes in a chord, into a playable instrument; didnt know that Melodyne could even do that.

I've held back on uninstalling bandlab assistant, as I *think* the install of the latest might have taken me through re-logon. I have had a break for a few months, and I now have the latest version installed. Interesting to see that something I posted as a bug in one of the previous releases has been fixed. Haven't tested it, and it was so obvious to me, I am sure it would of already have been quietly on the books to be corrected already.😉 Thanks for your help. oops... might have spoke too soon. Just ran the "Check for updates" from the help menu, and got this NB: I have the latest version installed I also looked for the "Library View" under the file menu, and I didn't see it. The following is what shows up under my files menu.

So, let me get this right; ignoring what has happened in my recent past to not waste either of our time, and just move forward. I need to use the installer application this one time, and once I have upgraded, I can then go back to updating from within cakewalk, and can also then uninstall the Bandlab Assistant?

And that's what I would like to diagnose before I install another program on my system. I am not someone who will just install apps willy-nilly. I use my computer for more than just Cakewalk; including work. I want to know the "for some reason". Why would it fail? Remember, last night I became un-activated, and this morning it somehow became activated.

I had a read of that thread, and it says if you already have cakewalk installed, you do not need the installer.

I expected that question... and hence I included the image in the original post with the version

I just tried to update from within Cakewalk, and it failed. Is there an IP I can ping or traceroute to help identify where it is failing>? Or is this a temporary server issue, like I was having last night?

I just checked this morning, and it did not complain about not being activated; ie it appears to work now. But this experience has put fear in my mind of what happens if bandlab dissolves.