John Vere

I have a very basic system I have used for probably 15 years. I organize cakewalk just like I organize my word documents and my photos. I use folders and sub folders that are clearly marked as to what they contain and in most cases these are dated. Example"Phone Photos 2010" " " CWP Originals 2010" " Backing tracks MP3 2017" I have always had DATA drives on my computer where my storage goes. I do not store anything on C drive. In the case of my DAW computer it has a data drive just for recording. I have always had external storage drives where I back up the data drive too. It's a simple as that. I say DRIVES because I have 4. Back up is a simple copy ( drag and drop) from the working folder to the storage drive. The flaw in my system is that I need to do this on a regular basis as it is not automatic. I've never had an issue as I keep my hard drives clean and buy new ones regularly so I have never had a hard drive fail. I have hard drives from 2004 still kicking about. Yes I can mount them to an old external IDE drive enclosure. So archiving is not a big deal you just need to take the time to transfer your project folders to an external drive. Because I have always used "per project folders" I have never lost any part of any project. I organize the projects into main folders " CWP Originals, CWP Backing Tracks, CWP-Client Name etc" For Backing tracks because they are 100% midi I was working using One Drive to save my CWP files too. There's no audio so they take up very little space. One drive has a local folder in my E drive and then I can open these on my office computer no problem That way any editing I do is always up to date and there's always at least 3 copies of that file. Computer 1, the cloud and computer 2.

This is good news. You could save the installers in the past, but you needed to grab them before you hit the install button. Then they were gone. If I'm hearing correctly -Cakewalk will no longer go into demo mode every 3-6 months?

Did you not see Noels post above?

The OP seems to have left the building anyhow.

Time well spent when you get any new software is just explore the GUI. In Cakewalk if you open the Browser on the right and then the Help Module - if it isn't there go to Views and add it. Now as you hover the mouse over the Workspace the Help Module will display what the features are and do. Also most features will display a white dialog box explaining what they do. So whenever you think a feature must be there just go exploring with the mouse pointer until you find it. Oh and by the way they are not really LED's are they?

Sorry Noel, I guess Flaw was a wrong choice of words. I don't mind the system other than the issues with updating the assistant and that never goes correctly. If you read the threads you'll see a lot of us have to jump through hoops to update and it's not Cakewalk but the assistant. Mabey the new method will work better if we are not forced to update the assistant. It just annoying to always have to update software you don't use or care about-- like iTunes I'll never complain about updates to Cakewalk- keep 'em coming!

so I run a cable from the headphone output of the amp to the line in of my interface. This will work with some amps and the signal should be pretty close to what you hear with a mike. But In my case with the Blackstar the Headphone signal is noisy. This was a disappointment especially because it shuts the speaker off.. Something you shouldn't do with a tube amp. It's one reason I bought the cheap Zoom pedal. It's dead quiet even on the wall wart power. This is why DI boxes can work as most have a ground lift if your having ground loop hums.

Don't think there's a way to make it work It's a flaw in the system but I would imagine the company is not going to fix it. The target market for this stuff is very connected to the internet. But to have to do it randomly every ?? I just got the pop up on another laptop I don't use much anymore and I think it's only been 3 months. Cakewalk has become a "connected" product and not much you can do. If you have Splat why don't you install that on his computer. It will be good forever.

AH right,, that should read Poo Tools!

There's lots of great free music recording stuff around. My collection of free or /and cheap/ stuff probably outnumbers the $$ paid for now. I come from the dark days of Bit Torrent and boy I would never go back there again. Why would you when there are so many legit ways to make music without spending a fortune . I've always had " payed " versions of Cakewalk going back to the FREE version I got with a Roland Sound Canvas. Then you get free stuff when you buy an Audio interface. I got Sonar X1 that way ( hated it) KVR was a source of many freebies and now I find Plug in Boutique a great source. If you stayed tuned to music forums people will post recommended freebie all the time. Just here last week I learned about iK Multimedia's freebies. https://www.ikmultimedia.com/products/index.php?R=INIT&FV=free-software-related-products&CV=Other Filter&PSEL=freesoftware Check it out 5 great VST's for free! Plug in Boutique always has a free giveaway if you by something. So I buy an $8 VST instrument and get isotope Elements for free. https://www.pluginboutique.com/articles/1662?gclid=CjwKCAiAqJn9BRB0EiwAJ1SztYbWtYJL1oWMT32EgPViIDTJHKoMgVFIlMAN88TP1kwO6E3HpLziohoCgy8QAvD_BwE My main bass is Ample P bass lite Free. https://www.pluginboutique.com/categories/64-Virtual-Instrument?free=true So it makes perfect sense to me that my favourite DAW is now free. I don't look at it that way because originally I invested probably over $500 in various versions. I tend to buy the basic versions of my software, I Have Cubase and Wave Lab Elements versions as example. When I first bought Sonar it was the Studio versions. I even owned Home Studio which at the time was only $30CAN. They would offer upgrade deals all the time and if you waited it out you saved a lot of money. So now it's free to everyone and if anyone wants to complain or think this is all wrong think again.

The difference is it was called Sonar for many years, and now it is called Cakewalk. They took a while to figure out what to call it when they took over, but thought keeping the Cakewalk name was a good idea. Therefore Cakewalk by Bandlab was settled on. It is really Cakewalk Sonar Platinum and now with a lot of updates. A lot of free deals on software and VST plug ins often involve a hair pulling rite of passage. I just scored a few fee VST's and it took me a few hours to finally get it sorted out with the activations. It's hard work with a reward at the end. The plethora of free software is amazing, don't complain if it takes some farting around to get it up and running most times it's just a matter of reading the documentation they supply.

A DI box always has the unbalanced 1/4" output signal that goes to your amp and then an XLR balanced out that normally is sent via a snake to a PA system. But for a studio this goes to our audio interface. DI boxes come in variable qualities and the good ones don't mess with your guitars tone and they are dead quiet going to the PA/ interface. Win, win. If you want a good one check out Radials collection. They make a lot of different DI boxes and for me the Tone Bone is killer for just about everything including Bass. They do make a Bass Bone which my son has had for like 10 years and used through some pretty serious PA rigs at festivals.

I'm not sure your aware of this but if you install CbB right now you can open your projects without a hick-up. I open old Sonar projects all the time and there's little difference other than I have to load my workspace so everything looks the way I like it now, not then. It's not a huge learning curve as the basics are still unchanged but boy is there a million great improvements been made since then. I highly recommend you take the plunge and without delay! I have recorded dozens of my bands live sets to 16 tracks directly into Cakewalk using my ancient Tascam us1641 and a 2008 Sony laptop. I'm at 44.1/24 and I never use that 64 bit engine thing as most seems to say it won't change your life. We generally played 3 one hour sets and I would save the project and load a new blank during our breaks. Because of the old laptop the wave forms were never close to being drawn when I saved. I would copy them over to my main DAW and those 1 hours files would draw up pretty fast as I was farting around getting things set up. Never had to wait for that really. And sorry about the miss information I only said graphic card issue because that's what someone here told me once something about video cache. One thing you could try is go back to the 32 bit engine and see if that speeds things up. If your only heading for MP3 there's no real reason to go overboard on the recording resolution.

This why I'm warning against "Importing" It is well known that if you import a midi file to an existing project a lot of data is not going to be there. The project will dictate a lot of parameters, example the projects tempo. Take a downloaded midi file, open a blank project and import the file. It will have nothing, no tempo no synth etc. it brain dead. It will have Velocity, I just did this and checked. But there are no patch numbers etc. Now if you take that same file and "open" it Cakewalk will create a new project and all the original data should be 100% intact. If you have nothing checked under Preferences/Midi/ Devices/ output then Cakewalk will insert the TTS-1 and all the tracks will play correctly if the file was a GM file. So the standard practice is to SAVE AS a MID. file in the original DAW and OPEN that file in Cakewalk to preserve important data. I would think you would need all the midi tracks on different channels before you save it otherwise they might get jumbled.

Thanks Noel I'll give that a try. This is a silly project but I'm always a sucker for winning a fight with Windows!

What model of Keyboard is this? Most keyboards you should be able to record the midi output and then you can edit the track to clean up mistakes etc and change the tempo very easily. It is not that easy to change the tempo of audio and I've never done it so sorry have no answer for that. You might not even need the sounds the Yamaha keyboard makes as there are hundreds of VST instruments available with Cakewalk and 3rd parties. Many are free.

There's a lot of ways to do this . It takes a box that has 1 input and 2 outs. Don't use a Y cable that will kill your impedance. A lot of DI boxes will do this. My Boss TU-3 tuner can do this. My Zoom G1 can do this. etc. I use a Radial Tone Bone Pz Pre to handle a lot of these tasks. It's a DI box on steroids.

Yes you can have all the VST's available in any DAW you install. You need to go to the plug in manager and add those folders to the pathways. Example all my 3rd party VST's I keep in Steinberg VST folder. https://help.cakewalk.com/hc/en-us/articles/360033405834-Using-the-Plug-in-Manager- Most are found under C/ Program Files or C/ Program Files (x86) then under Cakewalk or Steinberg. As far as a slow redraw that has nothing to do with the software and a lot to do with your Computers video card. A good gaming video card might speed that up. I have an old W7 laptop that takes forever to re draw simple 16 track songs. Same project on my i7 is almost instantaneous.

You should never IMPORT midi Always OPEN the midi file and the previous settings will be maintained. You just have to replace the TTS-1 with what ever synth you want to use. Import is meant to be used for clips not whole songs.

Hey Jim thanks for that, I downloaded it and ran it on this office computer and then I googled what it say's my Mobo is Asrok H97Pro4 and under audio the good news is this Audio: Realtek ALC892 7.1-Channel High Definition Audio CODEC; Supports Premium Blu-ray Audio So now I will see if there is a proper driver for this as I have a feeling it's running on a W10 generic. I know I had huge issues with the graphic card and it was because of this after I installed W10 I had to get the proper Nvidia driver and all was good after that. I built this machine from scratch using mostly on sale parts. I added the graphic card so I could use it for watching movies on a TV. The on board didn't have HDMI. I don't really use it much for a DAW but it's nice to edit stuff on. Update- Well that was a dead end as the driver is dated 2015 and say's Vista..

Ha- Next thing they will remove the volume control saying us old farts are the only ones that use that stuff, just make everything as loud as possible and let the turd polisher magic VST fix it !!

I do use the TH3 for stomps after the fact, I especially like the Compressor and chorus pedal... But I'm a huge fan of getting the sound I want first and then I record it. You tend to play to the tone and the effects, Example how could you possibly use a wha wha or even delay? You need to play along with them and for me that's never been possible via the DAW. Latency spoils my fun. There's something more reactive about playing through stomp boxes and an amp. For me it's the true guitar experience. I have lots of stomp boxes. Tremolo, Delays, dozens of overdrives, chorus, Mutron and MXR envelope ( auto wha) and a Rexx pre amp. I also dial in tones and effects on my Blackstar combo. I also have a Zoom multi pedal that for $70 is way more usable that I thought it would be.

Ok so someone buys a basic interface that has 2 inputs and 2 outputs and 1 headphone jack. Great if that's all they will ever use because they play guitar and sing. Then one day a friend comes over and , oh oh, Now I need 4 inputs and another headphone jack. Oh and he wants his headphones louder or he wants his mix different in the phones, And how about some reverb? Or you find yourself wanting to use an outboard synth but,, jeeze, now I'm swapping cables and having to re adjust my input gains all the time and wait a minute! I don't have any midi ports. How about a cool device that has SPDIF outputs ( CD, Mini disk or synth) and how do I get that into my DAW? You get the drift. So as I say in my blurb. Before you buy an interface it is wise to sit and think about how you might use it and what your future plans might be. All the above situations are solved for me because I bought a Scarlett 6i6. So a small mixer - $100 , a midi interface, $100 a SPDIF interface $100 and a headphone pre amp $100. I'm putting a $100 price tag on each just as example. But that is easily $400 to get what I got for only $150 more than the cost of a 2i2 . Now they make the 8i6 which gives you even more than I got. https://www.sweetwater.com/store/detail/Scarlet8i6G3--focusrite-scarlett-8i6-3rd-gen-usb-audio-interface So if where you bought it will exchange it for something like the 8i6 go for it. For you I see needing at least 4 inputs and the midi ports. so the 4i4 is only $70 more. https://www.sweetwater.com/store/detail/Scarlet4i4G3--focusrite-scarlett-4i4-3rd-gen-usb-recording-interface

Here's a question- All of my laptops and desktops only show " High Definition Audio Device" in any place that I investigate. Is this a W10 generic driver issue? In other words I have no clue who actually made the on board sound chip. I could have a realtech and not even know this unless I go and look up what my mobo is and so forth. The reason I ask is possibly the very pour performance experience with on board audio is due to not having the proper driver installed.

Absolutely. I disable all other audio devices on my main DAW. I didn't even install the drivers for the on board audio when I re did the OS. You have to be pretty careful about what you install to a serious DAW machine. I always try and test new plug ins and stuff on my office computer or laptop first. I used to keep my DAW unplugged from the internet but that has seemed to changed as there too many things that now depend on that connection to work including Cakewalk.