John Vere

This is a timely topic for me. I just finished a tutorial on midi set up. I realized after reading this I should add the information about the 2 driver modes as well as look into this 10 port limit issue. Does anyone know where Windows would keep the list of assigned ports? Registry? The OP’s link takes you to the Korg midi driver download which seems includes a midi driver removal tool. But often these things are easier to do in Windows directly if you know we’re to look.

I would choose a proper set of headphones that have the correct impedance. So now your spending another $ 100 on a headphone amp?? seems like penny wise pound foolish to me. Lots of great headphones available on Amazon and most are not that expensive if you do a little reading of reviews.

You can store your projects on any cloud server and open them on a different machine. I use One Drive. Of course there's a size limit with most. If the projects don't have Audio they are real small.

I gave him that link yesterday as well as explained why. You probably missed that after he filled 2 pages with rants? I think what Roland and Yamaha have done is a good thing. People were to lazy to download the proper drivers so they handed them over to Microsoft and said, here use these instead of yours for our products. The driver says Roland in device manager so thats all you need to know. If it was generic it would say Microsoft. My A49 uses the same drivers after checking that out. They are from 2015. But they are solid and it’s the best midi driver on my machine. I think the OP is blaming the midi drivers with using the controller as a control surface. I don’t think that has anything to do with the midi driver. That is a different system that is out side my realm of experience. That requires a bit of research and fussing about are far as I can tell. There’s been no shortage of threads on the topic of using a control surface with Cakewalk. To the op. If you want to notify a member do this @azslow3 Now they will get a notification and hopefully respond. He’s very good at this stuff.

@Andrew Easterling You probably have not set your audio up properly. Watch my tutorial and I guarantee you'll have audio. As far as this OT goes there seems to be an issue right now as they introduce the new Cakewalk installer. So in the mean time go to the Free Instrument thread in this sub forum and try some of the many free alternatives available. I like the SI instruments but I don't really use them. Plug in Boutique is a great place to start with no hassle downloads. Just sign in. https://www.pluginboutique.com/ This is another no hassle site I use. https://plugins4free.com/ For Bass I use the Ample P bass lite. For drums I use Addictive Drums which has a free demo version which doesn't expire, they are just missing the Toms so you just use TTS-1 or MT power kit for toms. https://www.xlnaudio.com/demos There is also the AD Keys Piano demo which is my main piano. It's only missing the lowest and highest octaves which you don't really need for most music. There it also the MT Power Kit. SI piano- there are dozens of great free electric pianos. I use Mr Tramp for Wurly. I have at least 50 free vst instruments that are as good as any I purchased.

XP skip Visa W7 skip W8 W10 Skip W11 W12.

No what it seems has happened is Roland has handled over the driver to Microsoft so all you need to do is connect the keyboard to the USB ports and Windows will automatically download and install the Roland driver. This has become the norm now. The CD will be an older driver for older OS. Looks like W8.5. Once you do this open the Device Manager go to Sound and Game Controllers and check your A 300 is installed and open the Properties dialogue and see what the driver tab says.

My take is that they have abandoned screen sets and workspace has replaced them. I haven’t used a screen set in a long time since I set up my workspaces. I also use the show hid toggles. I= inspector B= Browser C= Control bar D = Multi Dock. I can pretty quickly have the screen the way I want it. You won’t see the help module if you close it before saving your workspace.

Go to the Roland web site and download it from there https://www.roland.com/ca/support/by_product/a-300pro/

Great glad you got it sorted, You should vote my answer up so people searching with this issue find the answer.

I have the A 49 which is the simplest A series model. But it looks like they share a similar layout and design. It replaced a Roland P 200 I had had since 1990. It was made in Italy so I think the Bontempi factory. It was still working but pretty beat up so I had keyboard GAS. I’m a fan of using music stores as much as possible for important stuff. So I went to Tom Lee and tried them all out including 88 key models. What I found was a lot of cheap plastic feeling keys in the small controller models. I think feel is often overlooked by none keyboard players. Would you by a guitar with a sh—y neck? No To my surprise they still made my P 200 now the A 49. Same shape and size with a few more features. It was definitely the nicest feel of them all unless you tried a large $$$ piano. Best of all it has both midi and USB connection and USB powered or wall wart option. It also has a proper midi driver which makes life easier. It is the only midi device I have that I can connect with Cakewalk open and it will work with out reboot. So I do believe you made a excellent decision to go with Roland.

What I like is in the true habit of all cakewalks new gizmos they seem to leave the old ones intact! I found nothing of interest in the new dialogue I’ll use but was happy to find the Export widget in the controller bar is still unscathed and works as always. It’s like the insert track dialogue for instruments which has some nifty features. But the old insert synth dialogue is still there too. Anther is the Plug in management is now in 2 different dialogues. This is fine for long time users but the duplicates of functions must be confusing to new users. I counted 8 ways I can insert a soft synth.

I think the difference for some seems to be they want to work in track view and not console view. I guess if you don’t have 2 monitors that could explain it. I live in console view once I’m done tracking and editing. If you only have one monitor use the D key and make the console view full screen. I played around with auxiliary tracks when they first came out but have never found a reason for using them since. One thing about track templates is they can remember a lot of extra stuff that saves time. When I insert my guitar amp template it chooses the correct input, it puts TH 5 in the bin, pro channel is good to go. And it automatically inserts a guitar buss with delay inserted. It’s also the right colour which is most important ?

Are you saying that track A is a midi track and track B is an audio track. You update the audio track B by deleting the original audio and drag and drop new audio to this track(B) and the midi track A the data disappeared? Is it further down the timeline or just gone? is ripple editing on?

Thanks,yes that’s the first In what might be a dozen or more. I’m just editing # 2 now. It is about setting up midi. There are many videos on Cakewalk but they mostly are topic related. A few folks have requested more of a step by step series so that’s my goal. I’m trying to be accurate and go into details that I find are important due to those type of questions always come up on this forum.

Yes absolutely we are always evolving over time. Part of this is the advancements made with the technology. When all I had was a 4 track.. that was a very different process to write a song and turn it into a full piece of music. I've been lucky to have both real instruments, like drums, and midi since the very first days. You had to stripe one of those precious 4 tracks with time code to sync up your Atari computer with midi. That left you with only 3 tracks of audio. To this day I'm still pretty minimal in my track count. Then we got our hands on 8 and 12 track cassette recorders and life was easy. My first attempts with Cakewalk in the early 2000's was nasty due to the lack of a proper audio interface. I put it all aside and continued to use my Out of the Box digital system- Atari, Yamaha MD8, Yamaha 0-1v mixer and a DAT recorder for mastering. I made my best recordings to date on that system. But back to the process, once I did start using Cakewalk I still treated it like my old system. I had no clue how to even edit midi using PVR. It took a long time and as Cakewalk has added new and better features, like the drag and drop audio to midi and drag and drop to timeline tempo map, my process changes to take advantage of those tools. I still like recording with a band or at least part of a band best. That process is easiest to get a great recording for me. Set up to optimize the drums in a treated room of some kind. Then I lay down a scratch vocal and guitar as the drummer and me interact live in the same room. There will be a little vocal bleed into the overheads but hopefully I don't change the timing or the lyrics. Try and do a few songs at once. We did our Uncle Ruckle album this was with the bass player being in the room as well.

Exactly. For complicated set ups you need better audio gear and an audio interface can easily handle that. On Board laptop sound is very limited in connectivity and by the time you hobble together a bunch of cheap adaptors that money is better spent on the correct device. Below is the script for the video I made about interfaces. It only got a few views on You Tube so I removed it. Shopping for an Audio Interface? There is a lot of choices. But before you start looking Make a list of your requirements first. Example you might determine you need a 4x4 interface. That just narrowed down the search by a lot! You might only find 12 models and a few of those might be way out of your budget. Now compare those to get the most features needed. Don’t cheap out. Get what you need now because it’s false economy to short change yourself on features. You’ll end up spending more money down the line to make up for it. Example, only 1 headphone output and you all of a sudden need 2. Now it will cost you another $100 or more to buy a multi channel headphone amp. What kind of connectivity do you require? and how many of each. This is the most important determining factor. Most of us only need a few in/outs. It’s nice to not have to unplug and plug stuff in. If you already own a mixing board you can most certainly get by with less. These are some of the connectivity options: XLR for mikes & 1/4" for instruments or better yet Combi jacks which are both. Then other options are RCA, ¼” line level, ¼” Instrument level ,MIDI, SPDIF, ADAT, MADI Especially MIDI jacks if you use vintage synths, drum machines or pianos. How many ins and outs do you think you'll need now and in the future? Are they accessible or are some on the rear panel? Are the ¼” jacks Balanced? RCA jacks are handy if you have a DJ mixer or any consumer audio gear. And sometimes there are RCA in Parallel with main outputs. Just make sure the outputs have connectivity that matches your studio monitors. Is there a true stereo input pair? Some don’t have matching inputs which sucks for recording stereo devices like guitar pedal boards, Hardware piano’s, synth and drum machines. Are there channel Insert jacks for using hardware compressors. What type of connection to your commuter does it use. USB 2 is all you need for up to 32 channels of audio streaming. But USB 3 is now the most common. Here is some of the other front and rear panel features to look for Are there peak level meters or just a little LEDs for each input? Do all inputs have a peak indicator? Are there separate controls for Monitor level and headphone level? This is a pain when they combine these two. Is there a blend control for mixing Input Source with Computer or DAW playback. A lot of cheaper interfaces are missing this important feature and only have an on/off toggle. This makes it difficult to adjust what you’re hearing in your headphones and you have to muck about in your DAW to fix this. I think this control is a overlooked important feature. How many Headphone jacks? A level for each? This is also important if you work with other musicians. And as I said it is cheaper to have it built in that having to go buy the additional hardware. Are the input pads or line / Instrument toggle switches on the front, back or software controlled? Having them hidden is a bit of a pain because you might even forget they exist. Is it a metal box or cheap plastic? Is it light and portable or large and bulky, Rack mountable? If you’re going to take it with you make sure it is road worthy. Does it have an on / off switch? Many don’t. I use this a lot because I might change from on board audio to my interface. Much easier to turn off a switch than unplug it. Does it use Buss power or a power supply? Look for at least an optional power supply. Buss power can have issues with noise and Phantom power and some need a dedicated USB 3 buss. I had to purchase a special PCIe card just to power my Motu m4 and that cost me 40 bucks. Does it have DSP effects built in? This is great for adding reverb to you headphone mix without actually recording it. And there might be a compressor and special guitar effects you do want to record. Once again it’s saves you money if you will need these things. Does it use a Software GUI mixer? Having a software mixer adds more monitoring options. My Focusrite 6i6 has a mixer and I can use it to create 6 different headphone Que mixes. Does it have a Loop back function. This is a newer feature that is real important if you do live streaming, screen captures, Zoom or stand alone VST recording. It will also record off the internet say from you tube or sites that won’t let you download. Ahrr Captain there’s Pirates a float. Do you need low Round Trip Latency for real time processing like Guitar Sims? Most average priced interfaces like Tascam, Steinberg, Pro Sonis, Scarlett’s and my Motu have around 10 ms of RTL at a working Buffer of 256. You might get this lower if you have a very fast computer but most of us will have around this amount of delay. This delay is very annoying to most of us so be warned. Low RTL is going to be at a higher price point. Probably over $500 like RME stuff. There is almost no information or specs supplied buy most manufacturers. They will tell you up to 5ms of RTL but they are not getting that at a buffer setting that is actually usable on most systems. You’ll suffer drop out and stuttering. Zero Latency monitoring is not the same as round trip latency All interfaces have latency. The A/D converter adds almost 1ms of latency for starters, your USB system, computer processing the D/A converter and so on. But this doesn’t matter when you use direct monitoring. You’ll hear everything in perfect sync. This is what Latency sounds like DEMO-- Zero latency is only referring to monitoring directly from the interface. And most important of all, Does it have top notch ASIO drivers for your OS. Don’t buy any interface that say’s “class compliant driver” That will work for a Mac, but not very well with a PC. What is the word on support from the company? Visit the web site and try creating an Account before you purchase. Pretend you just bought the device. See if the drivers and manuals are easy to get at and kept up to date. Are they a PC or Mac oriented company. And this one I think is also overlooked-- Does it come with free software, Example Focusrite interfaces seem to come with a lot of good actually usable stuff. There could be over $200 in value here so make sure you check this out. Most companies only give you some lame version of a DAW that you are probably not interested in because you already have a great free DAW with Cakewalk. Everyone will recommend the interface they have chosen, that doesn't mean it is the right one for you. But recommendations are also part of the research needed to make the right decisions. Make your list starting with the input /output specs. Check for pricing on sites like Sweetwater or Musicians Friend. The reviews are a very good resource but take the negatives with a grain of salt. There’s a lot of idiots who have no clue as what they are doing and they vent by writing a negative review. The audio interface is the heart of a digital studio. It is the centerpiece and spending money on this is more important than your actual computer. So have fun shopping.

My timing is very good as well and it should be after playing for almost 60 years! I also can play real drums and I mostly played in old time country type bands wearing that hat. That’s why I’m hyper sensitive to latency. So if a note is off the grid by a tiny bit I hear it. And even though I’m a long time bass player with some stuff to make it sound good I now convert my parts to midi and this solves a few things for me. One of those things is to archive all my projects for future proofing and that’s midi. Midi will always be a format that opens on any computer.

I have a M4. There is a few things you probably didn't do during install, I cover everything in this video. I had to install a PCIe USB 3 card to get mine working properly because of the Bus power. But that's not your problem at this moment. Make sure you re start your Computer. If the Motu is working it will show as the Default audio device when you click on the Speaker icon in the systems tray. Also you can go into the device manager under Sound Video and Game controllers and make sure the Motu is listed there. If it isn't then you haven't installed the driver correctly. Use scooks link to the web site and make sure you download the latest driver, don't let windows do this or it might install a generic driver. .

Here’s a new way I discovered that is perfect for singer songwriter stuff. Input 1 vocal mike Input 2 guitar Record your song best as you can focus on the tempo and a solid punchy rhythm . Don’t worry about the details of performance as these 2 track will get re done. Don’t use the metronome Drag the guitar track to the time line to create a tempo map. Record a bass track. Drag the bass track to a midi track and quantize and edit. Make it perfect. Use you favourite bass VST Insert you drum VST and now lay down kick track and quantize and edit to lock in with the bass. Now record the rest of the kit part by part. Quantize and edit. Now lay down some keyboard parts to fill in the space and add interest or a counter rhythm part. Of course you quantize! you now should have a bed track that is squeaky tight. Now sing you heart out and get a perfect vocal track. Gotta love Melodyne 5 Last I like to do the guitars so as to not walk all over the vocals and this will also ad the needed sloppiness to the tune.

Not sure how you started the project as this would be the key. You normally either lay down the first recordings to the metronome or even better a basic drum beat. After I have a few guide tracks with bass, guitar and scratch vocal i often record the drums part by part. Say start with a kick track. I then quantize it using the settings that closely matched the correct grid. So I’m not sure how you arrived at laying down your dum parts. But Quantization is how I tighten up drum parts. There are hundreds of ways to create a song and Cakewalk can do them all. Watch some videos to get ideas on how others do it to get some ideas.

Of course this is about CbB. This is the forum for Cakewalk not Sonar Some of us might remember how things work in Sonar and there is still all the documentation somewhere. Workspaces is one of the many new features and why you should upgrade

It's pretty powerful. I even figured out setting up different scenes. The only problem is if your are say, demonstrating Cakewalk, and you leave the focus on OBS and hit the space bar to start playback of Cakewalk OBS stops! So focus is often an issue for me. The Audio set up was very tricky and a few years ago what I did was set up a small mixer with my Audio interface outputs and my narration mike. I had to run this back into my interfaces 3/4 inputs and set OBS audio for those. But I had to use WASAPI shared mode which sucks when your trying to make tutorials about CAkewalk and need ASIO. But as I said the solution is any Audio interface with a Loopback. All you do is set that as one of the OBS inputs as well as the 1/2 output of you ASIO audio.

Hey Michael, Just one thing comes to mind and this has happened to a few people due to adding the TTS-1 to a project later on in the game. I just had it happen to me a month or so a go. I got a toast message saying something fatal had happened and Cakewalk needed to close. But to verify that see if a mini dump was created. https://www.cakewalk.com/Support/Knowledge-Base/2007013262/How-to-collect-a-Minidump-file-when-your-Cakewalk-program-crashes