Lord Tim

Just a glitch, unfortunately:

Nobody knows yet.

The forum got a software update not long ago and unfortunately some of the layout broke along the way, specifically phone and tablet sizes. I agree, it's pretty frustrating, but it's been reported so hopefully we can get this sorted soon. In the meantime, if you switch to Desktop Mode on your phone browser you'll see the alert icons come back, and then you can switch back to mobile view once you're on the page you're going to.

OK, fair enough - that's 2 requests now. I'm not opposed to the discussion about it at all, but you're right - this was really run into the ground ages ago and brought up again once the new paid products were announced. I'm not sure there's anything left to s--- -- hold up, maybe we're being a bit hasty with this lock... 🤔

Just to get in a little early, these threads tend to be a little bit of flame-bait (either intentionally or unintentionally), so if it starts to go south, I'll give it a lock.

Might be a hard one to argue for, unfortunately. Obviously this has nothing to do with Bandlab at this point, so it's all on Gibson. But what was the actual deal, can anyone remember the wording? "Lifetime" can mean different things, depending on context and the wording of the agreement. Lifetime of the product can mean until it's discontinued (which it was when Gibson shuttered the Cakewalk company) or lifetime of the company (of which the Cakewalk company reached end of life when Gibson shuttered it), or it could mean "forever and ever, amen" which is unlikely to ever be legally argued for, unfortunately. I have no love for Gibson, mind you - they're a horrible company and what they did to both us (including me, I bought at lifetime license too) and the devs at the time was pretty poor form, so I wouldn't be sad if anyone DID try to sue them, but I think there'd be a bit of a legal uphill battle to do it. Playing devil's advocate though, what I did pay for that "lifetime license" worked out to be around what I would have paid if I was doing a yearly thing anyway, so it all ended up as semantics for me in the end, so I didn't particularly feel ripped off by what I paid, but how it was handled by Gibson is always going to sit wrong for me.

One other caveat too, I found in the past (pre-CbB) and opening some really early SONAR projects would sometimes throw an error because the window layouts were perceived as corrupt. I know Noel has done a hell of a lot of work on that kind of thing since the Bandlab take-over so this may no longer be a thing. If you DO get a crash or error opening old projects, open them in Safe Mode by holding down SHIFT while loading the project, but just say YES to loading every plugin. The project will open correctly with all of the window layouts reset. Then I'd save under a new name like @mettelus suggested above.

Cakewalk even still reads old .WRK files from the 80s, in fact, and CWP (and BUN and CWB from every version)

Yeah, just to confirm a couple of things you said there, the Realtek HD ASIO driver is actually broken and not suitable for DAW use at all. The devs put that warning in because so many people kept getting stuck on it. WASAPI is usually your best bet because the performance is usually best, especially WASAPI Exclusive, although depending on what device you're using and what other software you're running, it can be pretty finnicky. MME is the oldest and most "compatible" driver but, yes, it goes through several layers of software before it even gets to the hardware so you usually get terrible latency, and in fact worse because you'll usually need to up your buffer slider a bit. But that said, if you don't care about the latency, there shouldn't be any particular quality loss that you'd notice over Bluetooth headphones. They have their own issues with quality loss because of the protocol they use but if you're not finding those an issue, then using MME shouldn't be a problem at all.

I would say intent or delivery, which is the one thing I was getting at with my point - you can fix timing, loudness, pitch, etc. but you can't fix the intent, which is where something like Melodyne *won't* help, but it *will* give you a safety net if you want to make that your priority and fix any other shortcomings in the performance. Please take no offence from my reply, by the way! That was more of a general comment than anything directed to you specifically

Just to play devil's advocate here and give a different perspective, I have a couple of thoughts about Melodyne. First, I think I do OK as a singer. I've been doing this stuff long enough by now that if I wasn't really good at it by now I probably should have quit to become a toilet seat polisher long ago (is that an actual job? Might be something for my retirement years... 🤔) but even then I still use Melodyne on nearly all of my tracks. For backing vocal tracks I like to really lock in the pitch and timing to get it all super tight, and then decide how much looseness I want to leave in to make it still feel human. It was a constant bugbear for me in the early years when we had choir sections that weren't quite locked in and it still really irks me to this day! For our style of music anyway, some styles really lose a lot of the magic if you make stuff too perfect. For leads, I always rely on the performance first and do multiple takes so I can comp the best parts to a good vocal track. Even then, I still use Melodyne as a safety net. I'd rather know that if I want to go for some outrageous note (and we're kind of known for our Stupid Vocalist Tricks) or some particular technique, I'm not having to choose between getting the right kind of feel or emotion into a take or absolutely nailing a note. You can tune a bum note, but you really can't fix a crappy performance, so having Melodyne there to tweak pitch and timing on an otherwise awesome take is really useful, and gives you a lot of confidence to say "f**k it" and just go for it. What I've also found is, similar to what Mark was saying there, is do a reasonable take, tune the hell out of it, then sing along with it. The idea is not to keep that original ultra-tuned take, but it does help get you into the right zone for hitting notes for your actual take. I've had a few kind of green singers come through the studio here and that's helped them substantially. The last thing is that maybe the style you're doing really requires crazy tuning on stuff where it's veering into the Uncanny Valley. It's not supposed to sound natural, but it's appropriate for the material. This is art after all, and is all very subjective. But with that all said, I do absolutely agree with the sentiment that vocal training is a good idea. Whether you want to tune stuff in a crazy way or not, or use tuning as a safety net, having a solid basis in the beginning gives you options as to how you use these tools to create your art.

USB mics like the one you mentioned in your other threads are generally not suitable for professional use like this. It's not necessarily that the mic itself sounds bad - some of those cheap mics can actually be quite usable - but it's more so the USB part of it is its own audio interface. Again, I'm sure the Audio to Digital conversion probably is usable (as you're finding in Audacity) but the driver itself can be the problem. The way a lot of programs get around it is by using MME as the audio type, which has bad performance and terrible latency. And once you start to use realtime effects, you'll notice the performance especially will suffer. If you're able to switch to WASAPI Shared in your Preferences > Audio > Playback and Recording > Driver Mode, this will give you the best shot at getting decent performance. Some devices won't allow you to do this though. After that, you should be able to go to Preferences > Audio > Driver Settings and adjust the Buffer Size slider to a point where the project won't glitch out. Additionally to all of that, if you've got any generic "drivers" installed like ASIO4ALL, MAGIX Low Latency Driver, etc. uninstall them - they can cause issues inside Cakewalk and other DAWs. The best solution, ultimately, is to buy a proper interface (even a cheap one like a Focusrite Scarlett Solo) and a mic with an XLR connection to plug into the input of that device. You'll get proper professional ASIO drivers, great stability and every issue you have will simply go away.

Swish! 😎

Or if you still need it there, SHIFT+C will minimise it, so you still get a bar across the top but hovering over each item will display the module.

Yeah, I don't believe this is possible to change at this point. Those dividers are problematic anyway, IMO - there's really no indication anything is there in the first place and it just feels like wasted space for no reason. The new vector based UI that's planned for Cakewalk Sonar might allow it, though? If nothing else, if the display size is adaptable and resizable, it will better fit into a smaller screen.

I appreciate the friendly step forward there, John I think we all have crappy days and sometimes don't make the best decisions when posting - I've certainly been there! Written word is notorious for being taken out of context too; it can be hard to read the tone of something when it's just pixels on a screen. English sometimes isn't a first language, and communication skills for these kind of places can really differ a lot from person to person too. Like I mentioned in the other locked thread, I think we all just need to keep in mind that there's an actual person on the other end of these posts. Listen, I know sometimes some people who respond to my posts are intentionally taking them the wrong way just to troll - forums are like that, even the good ones like this place, and I've been admin/mod on forums for the last 25+ years... I've seen the best and the worst of this stuff - but I'll go out of my way to give the poster the benefit of the doubt just in case it's one of those scenarios above that I mentioned. Let's all try to be mindful and show some empathy, and keep this place as friendly and inclusive as it can be!

Cakewalk Next hasn't been released at all, and there's no official statement from the devs when this will happen. As far as I'm aware the beta invites are still yet to go out as well, so we should have more information once this all starts rolling.

Sorry guys, I think this thread is asking for some high emotions and attracting harsh words by leaving it open. I'm gonna lock it. I think at the heart of it there was some nice sentiments and steps to make things right overall, and I think the OP question was answered to the best of our knowledge for now. The bottom line is we just still have to wait and see. I'm absolutely sure we won't be left in the dark once the new products drop - it's a commercial product now, they have to sell it, right? Just one final note, let's all be a little mindful that there's a person on the other end of these forum posts, and a bit of respect and empathy goes a long way. There's a reason I've kept coming back to this place year after year, and it's this amazing and knowledgeable community, so it would be a shame for anyone to feel like they're being excluded from this killer resource. Anyway, lockage ahoy! Cheers, all.

I say let's move on Sometimes a PM to a user can do wonders for clearing the air. There's actually been some good to come out of this thread with a good discussion about releases, betas, etc. so rather than let it get into the dirt and get locked, let's focus on the great question in the first post.

This is your call, of course, but it would be a shame to ditch a product that you like because you don't like a couple of people on a forum. You have a whole learning curve ahead of you for a different product and no guarantee there won't be a bunch of jerks there too. Listen, I'm still a n00b mod here so I'm sure other senior mods and admins will have more to say about this than me, but I personally think it's a shame that anyone would get run off the forum because of harassment, and I'd encourage you to report anyone giving you a hard time. There's kind of a warning system set up for people who don't play by the rules constantly.

I've beta tested a few things over the years for different companies and there's strict NDA agreements that you have to sign to be added to the team, which makes a lot of sense. A lot of the time companies even discourage you from mentioning you're even testing just so you don't let anything slip accidentally. I'm not sure what the Bakers have planned for Next - I'm sure there's an internal testing team already for the existing products so far (as is mentioned in a few of the Early Access threads) but this sounds like it'll be something else - I could be wrong about that, of course. From what I'm seeing around the forum, I don't think anyone has been contacted yet about this stuff, so it's all kind of conjecture and guesses on my part at this point, but I'd say it will come down to what ever is in the user's agreement.

That's a good question! No insider knowledge on this at all, but I'd say that we'll get the same post in the Product Release Info thread and likely a sticky post too. Since Next is opening up to beta testing, it wouldn't surprise me if there was some kind of Early Access thing for it (and Sonar?) as well. The Toast Messages in CbB could also be a good way to let users who aren't on here know there's a new product line as well, of course. Bandlab Assistant is kind of deprecated at this point, so I'm not sure if we'd see anything through that - it's all preferentially handled in-app in CbB now.

The crappy thing about forums is that sometimes the written word comes across in entirely the wrong way, not to mention language barriers too. I know I've definitely been caught up in the "you said WHAT about me?!" loop and then had a phone call with the person later and it was like "oh no, sorry, I didn't mean it like that at all!" and I'll admit I've been on both sides of that too over the years. How's about we start with a clean slate on this thread and put it all down to a misunderstanding? EDIT: For the record, I don't think anyone should feel like they shouldn't ask a question about anything on the forum. I think we all get a little fatigued by some of the same questions sometimes, though, which isn't really the fault of the question asker. Perhaps there needs to be a couple of threads that we can just refer to as links to save any misunderstood tone in replies?

I'd assume it'll be in the Product Release Info section, and be in-app as a Toast Message as always, like any other update. Being a final release, I'd be surprised if there wasn't a little bit said about it by the Bakers once it finally drops.

The short answer is you can't - this software is nearly 20 years old now and I don't believe it was ever offered a download from any of the currently supported servers. Ask this question again in the main forum and you'll likely get some more answers: https://discuss.cakewalk.com/index.php?/forum/2-cakewalk-by-bandlab/