Bruno de Souza Lino

SONAR did have deep controller integration in the Roland days.

I feel like the Drum Map Manager could benefit from ta similar level of abstraction you see on the Articulation Maps. We're in 2020 moving towards 2021. Nobody should be required to know MIDI Note Numbers. Also, why is something you apply to projects on a case by case basis in the preferences?

Try running CbB as an admnistrator and see if that works.

Only complaint I'll voice towards Z3tA+, Z3TA+ 2, Rapture, Dimension Pro and other CW VSTis is that almost every single sound goes over 0 dB. So much in fact that all plugins have a limiter button you can activate and many presets have that button on by default and the sounds still are very loud.

This issue can happen when your audio interface gets disconnected while it's being used. Windows doesn't know how to handle it and this BSOD happens.

Despite the improvements in sound and such, both the plugin and the standalone version takes forever to load on my machine. I haven't clocked it, but it seems to be around a minute. Also, there's the annoying thing that the "hide items you don't have activated" button doesn't stick, so you have to click it every single time to hide everything else and only see the stuff you have.

On 12/18/2020 at 9:23 PM, Starship Krupa said:

BA has a tendency to balk and tell you you need to update it before you can proceed, then when you let it update, the update fails and you must visit bandlab.com to download the latest one and install it. Tedious.

At least it does have a progress monitor (I think). Most of them don't.

The version on bandalab.com is not the latest version of the assistant. Once you download it, it will tell you there are updates for it. At least, it doesn't do what Waves Central does. Waves Central will not allow you to do anything unless you're running the latest version of it. The only way to stop it is to disconnect your PC from the internet.

I wonder. Is there a reason for version 5 to be 1 GB larger than version 4?

The main issue here has nothing to do with your machine, but with developers themselves for the most part. Many assume everyone has enthusiast level hardware and develop targeting that kind of platform. As the hardware increases in performance (in theory), the more plugins need more CPU, more RAM, more cores and so on. Optimizations pretty much don't exist at this point. Eventually, it gets to a point where a piece of software that always ran on your machine fine requires more resources than you have. Then you either upgrade to a better machine, stop using the software altogether or use something else.

Eventually, it gets to that cool point where loading a single plugin can take your entire DAW with it.

I'll compare Rapture and Dimension to Xpand2. It's one of those things that don't quite click when you're using the plugin by its own, but then you realize that you can create a multitude of sounds by combining the various presets and such with a bit of tweaking.

Enterprise LTSC.

Audio snap does it for you, but it's not a fully automatic process, afaik.

All claimed differences in regards to dithering are not audible by human ears. The spectrum is different and differences can be measured. In practice, truncating or dithering makes no difference and nobody will know if you did X or Y. Unless someone invents a box that you can adjust from zero to a lot of dither, they're just parroting stuff they heard somewhere else.

40 minutes ago, Starship Krupa said:

Having said that, the slowness or unreliability of downloads via a manager may in some/most cases not have anything to do with the download manager itself, but rather the servers on the other end. There's no guarantee that a "direct" download would be any faster or more reliable.

Not when the speeds to download the manager itself are faster than downloading using it. Or when the manager is incapable of recovering from connection/download errors. There's also the whole manual installation thing. If you have to manually install the stuff, a download manager is only a time consuming impediment between you and the file you want to download, especially if the thing downloaded is a regular installer.

As per not seeing how people download plugins... There are multiple ways to do that. There are several valid points in not having a connected computer, especially with Windows 10 "phoning home" every second. Some people download the installers and bring them to the offline pc. Many plugins/software have offline activation options, including CbB. Another way is having an intermediate server between the offline PC and the internet configured only so managers can work and nothing else comes out or in. And so on.

3 hours ago, JoseC said:

Well, most software nowadays requires some kind of assistant. Native Instruments, or Arturia come to mind for example. CbB at least updates directly once installed, and does not require the Bandlab Assistant anymore. Complaining about this is becoming very 20th century.

Okay, let's start from the beginning:
- Native Access has slow download speeds 98% of the time, it often hangs while trying to install, authorize and remove installations. You also have to baby the installation, which defeats the purpose of a download manager to begin with.
- IK's Product Manager also has the same download speed issues. You also have to baby the installations.
- Steinberg's will often corrupt or hang downloads over 10 GB in size for no apparent reason. At least it only downloads the products, you have to install them manually.
- Nothing to complain on Arturia's manager so far. Downloads are fast, installation is a no brainer. Automatic installation as well.
- iZotope's has fast download speeds but you still have to baby the installation, once again defeating the purpose of a download manager.

Now on Bandlab's:

- Even if you download the so-called latest version from the website, it still asks to update the first time it runs.
- Often times, there will be GUI drawing issues the first time the program runs, so you're blessed with a blank window that doesn't do anything or ways to get out of it that don't involve waiting.
- In many instances, the client will fail to download and install its own updates. The only way to fix it is reinstalling the assistant.
- In many instances, the client will fail to download CbB, but no error message comes up.
- Much like the other mentioned installers, you have to baby the installation, which defeats the purpose of having a download manager.

I'd invite anyone to comp a three lane comp where the first event has to be overlapped at the end by the second, but you need to add a third which is one bar before the second. Somehow, the third event is in-between the first two because new takes are added below the currently active take.

1 hour ago, msmcleod said:

From 2020.11 onwards, BandLab assistant isn't required for updates. It's only required for uploading/downloading BandLab projects (and of course the loop content)... which will likely change too in the future.

But it still is required for downloading CbB.

Workspace saving only seems to affect the control bar, not what stuff is shown, docked or similar.

This click is also printed on frozen tracks, apparently.

Only extreme downside of the way CbB installs is the fact that there's no other way to download it other than using the Bandlab client and it's  is not the most stable of things. Plus you don't even need the thing once CbB is installed, except for updates... Which the client will refuse to do unless it's updated as well.

I tend to avoid using the comping tool because it creates a mess in many instances, especially if you have more than two takes that overlap and the overlaps are not the same. You end up muting parts you wanted to keep, pushing wrong takes to the front, some of the smart tool options are very finicky with where in the clips your cursor has to be on, etc. It's almost like you're running with scissors that are on fire.

Adding:

- Better control over Aux, Bus and Folder Tracks. Adding them is counter intuitive. Deleting them is also counter intuitive.

- Better control over clip fx. You can't pin the window and there's no clear indication as to whether the clip has fx or not.

- Some sort of mechanism to fully reset the ProChannel to it's default state. You can do it pe plugin, but not for the entire thing.

- More homogeneous ProChannel behavior when it comes to presets. While you can load module presets in the module itself, entire ProChannel presets require loading a file.

9 hours ago, Jonathan Sasor said:

Yes, BandLab owns all the intellectual property that was under Cakewalk, Inc. We have all the source code for all of the previous plugins, and maintain the authorization back end.

I'm smelling some sort of subscription scheme in the near future for some reason.

6 hours ago, Eusebio Rufian-Zilbermann said:

Some plugins (waves, etc) don't let you choose a target path. One option that I have found useful is, choosing one location as "the good one" and then replacing all the other folders with directory links to this "good one".

E.g., if I decide to use c:\Program Files\Common\VST2 as the "good location" I would

a) Check c:\Program Files\Steinberg\Vstplugins, and move anything in there to c:\Program Files\Common\VST2

b) Delete the empty c:\Program Files\Steinberg\Vstplugins

c) Open a command prompt and run:

   cd c:\Program Files\Steinberg

   mklink /d Vstplugins "c:\Program Files\Common\VST2"

d) repeat the above procedure for all other alternate vst plugin folder locations

After replacing folders with links, for anything that allows specifying VST location (DAW, plugin installers) use the "good" location (because some plugins do check and give you an error if they are scanned at a linked location, e.g., XLN) . Remove all other paths (e.g., in your DAW you don't want to have it scan all linked locations, because that will just multiply the time it takes to scan plugins and not add anything useful)

 

For Waves plugins, you have to manually move the multiple WavesShell wrapper files to where you want.

- Ability to replace FX Rack plugins like you can do with Virtual Instruments and ProChannel modules.
- Ability to remove the EQ module from ProChannel.
- Ability to use ProChannel modules as FX Rack plugins.
- Some sort of routing matrix for I/O.
- Better control over VST2/VST3 plugins. There's no option to hide VST2 plugin versions of VST3 plugins, only to hide 32 plugins if there are 64 bit versions of the same.
- Either some sort of latency calculator utility or better control over some of the settings. In many instances, changes to ASIO settings don't seem to do anything.
- Some sort of indication in the plugin browser to which plugins are new.