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New user impressions (and a bit of musical archaeology)


MarkP

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I downloaded Cakewalk by BandLab a couple of weeks ago and I am astonished at what it can do. Granted, it's been about 20 years since I last did any digital music recording (using Cakewalk Home Studio, as it happens). The advances between then and now are about as amazing as they had been between then and the 1980s, when I did a  bit of work in recording studios with 2-inch tape machines. The whole world of VST effects and instruments alone has changed everything.

Anyway, I managed to get my 1987 Ensoniq ESQ-1 working with CbB, even to the point of opening twenty-year-old .wrk files in CbB and finding them already set up to play the ESQ-1 again, after I'd loaded its instrument definition, which I don't think I had to change at all. I also found a pair of AKG headphones I bought in 1974 that still work too.

I have to say that the videos by Mike at Creative Sauce were crucial to how quickly I got to understand CbB.

The only tricky part of getting everything back the way I left it at the turn of the century was reloading stored ESQ-1 programs. I originally stored them on audio cassettes, later transferred to .mdx files about 1999. None of my old MIDI software now runs on 64-bit Windows 10, so I had to search around for something that would at least let me try sending stuff to the synth. I settled on Bome Software's SendSX in the end. It is clear and straightforward to use. The mysterious .mdx file format, once I could inspect the contents in SendSX, turned out to be standard MIDI codes, but the sysex headers and footers were oddly messed up for some reason. With a bit of assembly-style code-breaking, and reference to the appendices of the ESQ-1 manual, I figured out where the program data began and ended, and simply appended the sysex headers and footers that should have been there. Instant success! The ESQ-1 thought for a moment about what it was receiving and then lit up with all my old voices. So not only was I able to get old songs into CbB, I was also able to get them to sound right on the ESQ-1.

There is a problem in the ESQ-1 that is causing it to lose internal program and sequence data every time it is switched off. This I can live with, as the programs can be safely stored in the 80-voice EEPROM cartridge, and the sequences are better off in CbB anyway. I suspect the problem is more than a flat battery, as I am not getting a battery warning at start-up. Unfortunately the engineer who last worked on the synth (Phase Engineering, in Sydney) appears to have retired to the mountains.

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Great story -  ! I've been able to utilize recordings I made in Midi only Cakewalk and a Pro audio 9  recording I made in the early to mid 90's. It's one of things that makes Cake a standout. Backwards compatibility all those years ago.

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Welcome to new decade. I bet your keyboard has a ROM  COMS battery in it. Even my Roland 505 needs that replaced every decade. I need to do it again soon. It still has all my patterns I programed in 1985 in it. My Yamaha 01v digital mixer is the same. They are usually the 2022 like computers use ( and Snark Tuners) 

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46 minutes ago, John Vere said:

Welcome to new decade. I bet your keyboard has a ROM  COMS battery in it. Even my Roland 505 needs that replaced every decade. I need to do it again soon. It still has all my patterns I programed in 1985 in it. My Yamaha 01v digital mixer is the same. They are usually the 2022 like computers use ( and Snark Tuners) 

Thanks! Yes, reading up on it, it seems that the battery must be long dead. As soon as I can find someone competent I will get it replaced. I know it requires soldering and I don't trust myself to do that. Good to know your old stuff is still alive and kicking too.

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9 hours ago, MarkP said:

..."I also found a pair of AKG headphones I bought in 1974 that still work too."

OMG! me who thought I was one of the oldest guys on this forum, you just showed me that this is not the case.

Even your headphone is almost as old as me. 😅

I started the adventure in the 90's with Cakewalk Express, then I got down to business with Cakewalk Pro Audio.

The only thing that I regret and that I find that we have taken a step back is the stopping of Studioware.

The possibility of creating your own interface to control your external midi machines, but what a genius idea!

If there is one thing that I would like the Bandlab team to re-integrate and in a modern way, this is it.

In any case, happy to count you among the Cakewalk users, long life to you and to CbB!

Edited by lychee
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44 minutes ago, michheld said:

While you are talking about the past I get some strange thoughts: Any ideas how to convert Amiga-Soundtracker files to midi? 😉

Oh ! A guy who followed the same route as me looks like?

I started to compose my first sounds on Atari / Amiga and Protracker, then on Octamed (which could play both the samples of the usual trackers, like the midi) before coming to PC with Cakewalk.

Surely there are programs for converting tracker files to midi, or is there a modern tracker called Renoise that maybe can play and convert these old files.

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31 minutes ago, lychee said:

OMG! me who thought I was one of the oldest guys on this forum, you just showed me that this is not the case.

Even your headphone is almost as old as me. 😅

 

I was only a nipper when I got those headphones!

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1 minute ago, lychee said:

Oh ! A guy who followed the same route as me looks like?

I started to compose my first sounds on Atari / Amiga and Protracker, then on Octamed (which could play both the samples of the usual trackers, like the midi) before coming to PC with Cakewalk.

Surely there are programs for converting tracker files to midi, or is there a modern tracker called Renoise that maybe can play and convert these old files.

ThxAloT! I will check this. I started recording and mixing in the late 80ies (with a self-soldered Mixing "console" = 2 potentiometers soldered together with 6 Cinch connectors and telephone cable in a plastik box), an Amiga-500 and two tapedecks. No money but a lot of more or less good ideas. In that times we had not so much hard- or software which could hinder us from getting our musical ideas on the compact cassette 😉 There very a plenty of Amiga discs with Soundtracker samples and I had to play the discjockey to load a song into 2 MB RAM.

BTW: I have all these "AIFF"-like files on my PC now but how can I convert them into WAV? They all are 8bit, around 20khz but have no file header which would tell the software of nowadays how to interpret them. I  tried a batch convert them with Audacity but that didn't work either.

So I'll try to find the best of these old samples and will convert them manually... Maybe I'll find a way using the Amiga Emulator UAE? My old System runs on a 500MB diskfile but the old soundtracker programs are not compatible with AmigaOS3.1 🙂

All the best 2 U

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There is an Atari emulator as well called STeem all found here- Tims Atari World  http://atari-music.fddvoron.name/   All the old software is now freeware more or less. I think I paid $400 for Dr.T in those days ( 1984?)  But the emulator only runs on Widows XP.  

I converted all my SEQ. files to MID files before my last Atari died in 2002. They were on Floppy and it was getting hard to do this even then.  I still have, and occasionally use them.  

A piece of software that I had back then was written by a local person and I had him customize it to include using the Joystick port as a foot controller. I could stop,start and advance playlist.. And of course the biggest button was the PANIC ( for those who wouldn't remember it sent an all notes off for stuck notes. ) 

http://atari-music.fddvoron.name/promid.htm  

Jeff moved on to work for Roland for a while and I also used his MT 32 editor. The MT 32 was possibly one of the first GM synths and Cakewalks TTS-1 is a descendant. That might be why I have a low tolerance for those sort of sounds 😁

Anyhow to this day there's never been a PC version of this program which to me was the ultimate performance tool. Configured your midi set up, Played your files, Foot control of playback and displayed the lyrics using txt files when the song started. All in 1985-86

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Similar story here with a 1992 Ensoniq SQ'2 & Home Studio 9.

When you think about it, Cakewalk still does the same MIDI stuff it originally did.

.cwp files are very similar to the old .wrk files and have always been compatible.

Old .bun files not always so much.

Definitaly move your old ESQ files to modern media as old media can fail over time. I put mine on CDs before the original floppies & the disk reader no longer worked.

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3 hours ago, sjoens said:

Similar story here with a 1992 Ensoniq SQ'2 & Home Studio 9.

When you think about it, Cakewalk still does the same MIDI stuff it originally did.

This is true. I was still somewhat surprised to see all my old program names there on the tracks, and even my original notes preserved in the Notes tab of CbB. There is a template I used when creating new songs that is still usable with CbB today. I had completely forgotten all this stuff but Cakewalk hadn't.

You're right about keeping media up to date. I've moved my old files a few times over the years, generally as I've upgraded computers, and after the experiences of the last week I've also resorted to the low-tech solution of keeping programs in a big .ods spreadsheet with a sheet of notes about sysex headers and footers. As long as bytes exist, I should be all right.

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In fact....  .. .......    . 

the file formats are so similar (if not exactly) you can change "wrk" file extentions to "cwp" & vice versa with little to no incident.

Kinda like "cwres" (cakewalk resource) files are really "ini" files.

You can open a "wrk" file in CbB, but you can only save it as a "cwp" file.

🤔

Edited by sjoens
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On 2/9/2021 at 6:13 AM, michheld said:

ThxAloT! I will check this. I started recording and mixing in the late 80ies (with a self-soldered Mixing "console" = 2 potentiometers soldered together with 6 Cinch connectors and telephone cable in a plastik box), an Amiga-500 and two tapedecks. No money but a lot of more or less good ideas. In that times we had not so much hard- or software which could hinder us from getting our musical ideas on the compact cassette 😉 There very a plenty of Amiga discs with Soundtracker samples and I had to play the discjockey to load a song into 2 MB RAM.

BTW: I have all these "AIFF"-like files on my PC now but how can I convert them into WAV? They all are 8bit, around 20khz but have no file header which would tell the software of nowadays how to interpret them. I  tried a batch convert them with Audacity but that didn't work either.

So I'll try to find the best of these old samples and will convert them manually... Maybe I'll find a way using the Amiga Emulator UAE? My old System runs on a 500MB diskfile but the old soundtracker programs are not compatible with AmigaOS3.1 🙂

All the best 2 U

Have you tried to just import a AIFF file into a CbB track ?  I've never worked with them - but curious if you tried to just drag dropping one.

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Aiff files should import fine into cbb. You can also import raw files with no header.

Btw cwp and. Wrk files are completely different. Cwp is a  more modern format that supports backwards and forwards compatibility which is how we are able to pull off making changes to the format so easily while still retaining project file compatibility.

Welcome back to the future btw :)

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4 hours ago, Noel Borthwick said:

Cwp is a  more modern format that supports backwards and forwards compatibility which is how we are able to pull off making changes to the format so easily while still retaining project file compatibility.

IMHO you've done a great job with CbB.

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