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Is a PDF manual or offline help available?


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This is a great idea, a most wonderful thing, thank you so much.

It will be of so much help to new users who are starting with CbB and never had access to this before.

Note to new users: the Reference Guide is not merely the HTML documentation in PDF form, it's a much more detailed 2,600 page book on how to use Cakewalk.

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17 hours ago, Morten Saether said:

The Cakewalk Reference Guide PDF can be accessed directly from this forum. To view and download the PDF, click the Cakewalk by BandLab forum menu and select Reference Guide PDF, or download the PDF directly from here.

 

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Wow! It is true that Bandlab is listening to the community 😄 Can this manual be accesible from the DAW help menu? Thanks!

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Thank you for providing this pdf file to new Cakewalk by BandLab users.

Wow!  First look reaction.  From a quick look there has been a lot of revisions and updates from the last edition of the Sonar Reference Manual.  Congratulations to whoever has been working on the project.

I am impressed.

Edited by fogle622
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On 4/5/2019 at 2:52 PM, Morten Saether said:

The Cakewalk Reference Guide PDF can be accessed directly from this forum. To view and download the PDF, click the Cakewalk by BandLab forum menu and select Reference Guide PDF, or download the PDF directly from here.

 

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So, happy to see it. I moved it to OneDrive so I can access from anywhere. The online documentation is very hard to read on my phone which I routinely use for technical reading when I have downtime (doctor's office, waiting for planes, etc.) Hope it can be kept reasonably current.

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On 4/6/2019 at 5:08 AM, Feral State Sound said:

Can this manual be accessible from the DAW help menu?

Our own @scook created a handy utility for adding items to the Utilities menu, and I found that it works a treat for adding an entry to launch the Cakewalk Reference Guide.

http://forum.cakewalk.com/Adding-programs-to-the-SONAR-Utilities-Menu-a-new-tool-Updated-for-CbB-m3237117.aspx

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  • 10 months later...

Congratulations to Cakewalk by Bandlab and Morten Saether for the absolute hands down "BEST" music composition software I have ever had the pleasure of using.  I have been in the producing/directing segment of music for 40 years and I can say unequivocally that Cakewalk by Bandlab  cannot even be compared to any other music production software.   It is so far superior in every regard that I don't even know where to begin my accolades.  THANK YOU BANDLAB for coming up with the very best top notch software in the business.  I only hope that others become aware of your excellent products early on in their careers.  Very best to Bandlab and wishes for you to totally RULE in this exciting music production business...…...respectfully Archie Newton...……….San Diego Ca. 

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  • 9 months later...
10 hours ago, jon bees said:

gulp....2,600 pages.  is there a pdf handy guide as in "import something, record a couple of tracks on top and get the basics".  thanks

@jon bees,

2600 pages is the size of the final Sonar Reference Guide pdf file.  The April, 2020 Cakewalk Reference Guide pdf file was 1704 pages while the November, 2020 Reference Guide pdf file is 1802 pages.

While that is still huge it is current by including information about all the updates from Sonar to 2020.11

Edited by Jim Fogle
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On 11/19/2020 at 6:59 AM, jon bees said:

gulp....2,600 pages.  is there a pdf handy guide as in "import something, record a couple of tracks on top and get the basics".  thanks

Where are you seeing this page count? The link at the top of this thread goes to the current manual, which is now down to around 1,700. Still quite a tome, but it's a substantial removal of outdated and redundant material. There is a getting started section.

Your best bet, if you are okay with the YouTube format, is to go to the Tutorials Subforum and start browsing. With just the current ones that @Creative Sauce and @Xel Ohh (and others') are putting out, you should find plenty of guidance.

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55 minutes ago, Starship Krupa said:

. . . it's a substantial removal of outdated and redundant material.

I do recall that at one point there was a dramatic drop in number of pages which was due in large part to an increase in page size/more content per page. ** I recall doing a brief comparison of several sections and concluded it was not reduced to there being less content.  Not sure if substantial sections were removed since then.  One comparison of two versions was enough for me!!!! 

**"The version I downloaded 7-12-2019 (25.05.00) was 2188 pages.  The . . . 25.07.00 version . . . was 1724 pages."  [I did the comparison because a user expressed concern about having the correct version since the number of pages was so different.]

Edited by User 905133
edits; to add a link referencing page number reduction
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I kind of assumed that a lot of it was taking out instructions for use of Platinum Edition-only plug-ins.

I noticed that Morten S. took out lots of pages from the "getting started" section that dealt with things like setting IRQ jumpers on boards and gameport-to- MIDI cables, outdated information about configuring a computer to be ready for SONAR. I think it went on for at least 50 pages about topics like disabling/enabling ACPI and plug 'n' play and making sure that AOL wasn't set up to automatically dial out with your modem and so forth. It mentioned that one way to get the latest drivers for your sound card might be by dialing up the card maker's BBS. There was no mention of the internet or web. ASIO and WASAPI were not included in the discussion about driver models.

By my guess, it looked like most of the information dated back to before 1997. It was removed, the things that it covered are pretty much taken care of by running the manufacturer's installer, then plugging in a USB cable. Done, no IRQ conflicts or any of that. Even less if the person is just using the onboard hardware CODEC.

Isn't it amazing the difference from those days? You can now literally go to Best Buy, buy a Windows notebook computer, and as long as it has 6G or more of RAM, there is nothing more that needs to be done if you are doing in-the-box electronic production. Sure, most people want to set up an external interface, but they don't have to. Back then you couldn't get sound of any kind out of the computer without dropping an extra $50-100 on an add-on card.

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15 hours ago, Starship Krupa said:

I kind of assumed that a lot of it was taking out instructions for use of Platinum Edition-only plug-ins.  etc.

You might be right!!  I went from X3 to CbB (with a slight detour via the free Home Studio edition release at the very end and a quick look at the SPLAT demo).  I was busy with my hardware sequencer and sound modules at the time, so never got into SPLAT (though I kept peeking in on what was happening). 

Sorry for any confusion: my solitary comparison was between two CbB Reference Guides. I defer to you on this (and to anyone else that wants to compare pdfs).   

 

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For some reason the former Cakewalk website did not have a public link to download the Sonar Reference Guide.  Before Cakewalk by Bandlab I used Cakewalk's consumer product, Music Creator.  The older boxed editions included a printed manual while the newer versions included download links to updated versions of the same manual.

As far as I know the old website did not include a public download link for the Sonar Reference Manual so if you didn't own Sonar you didn't have access to the guide.  I found out about it because it was included in the download of Sonar Home Studio.

I glad the guide is available to everyone that wishes to download it.  Two changes would make it almost perfect; add a version number to the pdf file name and include the pdf in the initial download of Cakewalk by Bandlab.

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