John Vere

Thanks @HOOK I had no trouble with the new computer because my 2 licenses were on my old DAW and a laptop I use for live recording and stuff. I deactivated the laptop from all the Air products. So those activations were used for the new machine no problem and everything was working fine up until a few days ago. My old Computer was re done from scratch because of a pilot error and I hadn’t deactivated it. I had sent in a request to iLok to deactivate the now officially dead computer and 2 of the vendors fixed that right away. Thanks to all for any insights and ideas everything helps. I refuse to be beaten by a machine!

Looking a lot like it's iLok and not Air. So Guess what. I turn on computer this morning and opened the project and the messages are all back. Not only that inserting the DB33 crashes Ableton lite. So I re submitted to Air and will see if they can sort it out. As I said it's was working for over a month and now it's not. And it was certainly working fine all yesterday afternoon. I had even hard booted the computer just to make sure all was good. I just turned on my other computer and all is well there. Go figure. And that's a brand new ID as well.

There’s no real changes to CbB in the last 3 years? They focused on bug fixes. They saved all the new feature stuff for the up and coming Sonar release. I have a copy on a 2008 W7 laptop and I always updated with no problem. You get a warning that’s all. But you get lots of Warnings when using W7. I just keep it off line and only turn on the wi fi to update.

I’ll just add that I ended up with a second issue regarding the 2nd copy of DB33 I bought in one of my attempts to troubleshoot. It didn’t show on the iLok list and I mentioned that to Air support and they fixed it right away. So I will now declare Air Support as being actually very good. @User 905133 The Velvet is a worthy e piano with lots of good features. I hadn’t tried it for a long time but I installed it as part of my troubleshooting. I actually forgot what it was and was pleasantly surprised as I’m an e piano hoarder. Don’t bother with the Mini Grand. Unless they de bugged it. It was very unstable for me but that was 6 years ago.

Just to follow up, I put the solution in the first post so nobody has to wade through the muck. But just another note that in the end both iLok and Air showed signs of offering support. They kept asking for things I had already given info about so it could have been AI generated stuff. But I was impressed because it was the weekend. They in the end were of no help. It all because the Air installers are still terrible and iLok is a stupid system for authorizing plug ins, aviod it if you can. Xpand2 was the worst. here's what you have to do Air creates a folder in programs x86 called Air Music Technology . Put the compressed download folders in there and unpack them there. Now make sure to point the installer at the Air Music Technology folder during the install or nothing will work. Do not attempt to install it anywhere else.

My favourite is my Roland A49. The last one lasted 18 years. 49 keys is perfect and the keyboard is really small so fits on my desk. I just slide it aside out of the way. What guitar player never think about is that keyboards are just like guitars and you need it to feel good under your fingers. I have a bunch of others that are old synths and stuff but I like to play the Roland because it’s responsive. I’ve got lots of videos about midi stuff https://youtu.be/T3ES7-l4WS0?si=BsKmtkXdwRjcKNFc https://youtu.be/8xYGKsLHAh0?si=eauVT1ysgJS-tBq8 https://youtu.be/YJlI6U8Rqa0?si=xAVTiVko2x7NWliT

Try to return that interface it’s useless for anyone with a PC and Cakewalk. the 2 lowest price Behringers and then 2 made by Art do not have ASIO driver. They are only for use with Apple computers. There are lots of 2x2 interfaces that are in the same price range that do have ASIO drivers and will work with Cakewalk. Watch this video

Thrift stores often have old drapes. New would be expensive for sure. You can make nice cloth ones out of landscaping cloth and mineral wool. We make Roxul insulation here in my town. They make a special sound proofing batt that are for partition walls. My studio is in the basement and the ceiling is not finished. So I put Roxul in there and covered the ceiling with landscaping cloth. My wife says she only can hear the bass. And it’s very quiet. I have a dozen guitars hanging on the back wall which is made out of chip board and between them I have the cheap foam things. My studio is very dead. There’s a difference between having a treated room and just a dead room.

This is it . What little info some one would be after that will be on a hard drive would most certainly not be worth it. I thought my method of smashing the circuit board off and tossing it in the electrical recycling bin. And then separating the rest and putting it in the metal recycling bin which goes to a different location here was more less as safe as I am from being hit by a meteorite. I tried drilling but it was too much work. That steel is tough.

I posted the video first because if you follow everything I go over then that rules out the majority of common issues people always have. It’s not clear now if you actually watched it so we are still in the place where we really don’t know anything about your set up. Only that you have laptops and a Scarlett interface. As posted above it’s hard to troubleshoot these issues with no real information. Driver mode, buffer settings, computer specs, optimization, types of plug ins used all this is important. So don’t be shy and try for more details. Anyways it’s always a plug in.

Thank you for your answers but you should really read the OP where all of this is explained. If you read all I have said, this is not an installation issue. It's an Authorization issue. And as I said in the OP they were working for at least a month.

I was a School Bus driver and one day we showed up at work and one whole indoor parking bay was full off pallets all piled with all the old computers from the entire school district. Possible 300 computers or more. I asked the manager what they were going to do with them and he said they can’t scrap them until all the hard drives were removed and destroyed. I made them a deal. I’ll do it for free and salvage rites. There were a lot of those little coloured Macs that are rounded I think they call them Bondi’sThere we’re a million IBM think things. Big huge Commodore tank’s Servers and so on. They let me use the garage space. I set up a table and with a powered Philips screw driver, and a hammer I proceeded to disembowel them all. The tech guy said all had been wiped and most stuff had been on the servers. But the hard drive needed to be destroyed. They were mostly 10 GB anyway. I simply hit the end with a hammer which knocked the circuit board off the bottom. I kept a few of the new 40 GB data drives. I think 60 GB was the biggest you could get back then 1998? But I managed to remove a lot of RAM and put it on eBay. I made over $1,500 on RAM alone. Especially the stuff from the old servers. I also re imaged the little apples and sold them to happy people for $20 each. Turns out Apple parts fit in PC so more RAM and weird stuff that I made a few buck on too. I kept a Mac Server. It was a beast. I rebuilt a bunch of the little IBM boxes as well and because of the collection of parts they were good little office computers I sold complete with keyboard mouse and monitor for $40. But a lot of perfectly good stuff went to recycling. At a certain point sales fell off.

Update: I got emails from both iLok and Air. Wasn't expecting anything on the weekend. Air deactivated the old computer. And said to contact them if it didn't work. It didn't. ILok seems willing to work with me and asked for screen shots of the problems. OK. Here's what I tried today. Uninstalled everything. iLok and DB33. Restart computer Re installed iLok and then deactivated the new computer. I now had 2 activations available. Restart computer Downloaded DB33 from Air web site, it said it was an update but the version number is the same as my old one. Re installed without issue. Re activated the Air Instrument expansion pack 3 to the new computer in iLok successfully. Restart computer Open Cakewalk and start scan. Same warning message regarding licenses. And now a new warning about the Air Chorus and Phaser which turns out were in the Cakewalk VST folder so never got deleted. Note I haven't bothered re installing Xpand 2 yet. Total failure so far. I took screenshots of everything as I'm proceeding and sent them to both iLok and Air Support. Waiting for replies. Not one to stop trying: I then thought I'd see what would happen on the old computer I had just rebuilt. Now that Air had granted me the 2nd computer authorization. I installed iLok and logged in. I activated the Expansion pack. I installed the DB33 and opened Sonar Home Studio ( I'm not bothering with CbB on this computer) and everything works. I also opened Cakewalk Next and it too can use the DB33. I opened old projects that I knew had the DB33 in Home Studio without issue. Hmmm? Is it actually a CbB issue?? I realized I only have CbB on my new computer. No other DAW's. But I still had the installer for Cakewalk Next in my downloads from November and I re-installed it. It scanned for plug ins on start up and warned me about Xpand2 being not found. As I said, I had uninstalled it. I opened the plug in manager and there was no sign of DB33. The Steinberg folder is on the scan list and all other plug ins are available. So this is one of those real weird ones and I can only hope at this point either Air or iLok sort it out. I'm actually pointing my finger more at iLok right now. note to @msmcleod I saw the Visual C++ flash quickly during the install on the old computer that worked. I looked in my installed Apps and there's 11 of those installed, 2005 - 2008-2013- 2015. So not sure how one would go about messing with those. It's still a possibility because obviously there's nothing wrong with anything else - it all works just fine on the other computer using identical installers and locations. Oh and I also paid $10 for a new copy of DB33 from KVR that @Mr No Name posted. I now have a new serial number. Woopy! But it doesn't show in iLok. Still only the DB33 demo and the one in the expansion pack. I passed this along to Air support as well.

I owned a music store for 12 years so I’m a huge fan of only shopping in real music stores. But they were always 250 miles away. I’d load up on my Daddario strings so I wouldn’t run out. I noticed they sell them on Amazon and I bought a set for my classical guitar and they seemed low quality??? I then learned that they are not the same ones you get in a music store. They are fakes made in China. I bought those cheap acoustic squares a few years ago and they make great packing for gig suitcases! You’ll see them in a lot of videos. Have you considered a nice thick set of drapes? A band I was in once practiced in a garage and he had scored these old theatre curtains which he would close to cover the door and his messy toolbench. That and an orange shagg carpet and the acoustics were pretty good.

Hi. Sitting by the fireplace ( gas) right now. Don’t dare open the big curtains yet. Cat door frozen solid. Daughters car won’t start. So to warm up I’m learning 6 Jimmy Buffett songs. I’m way down on the border here in Grand Forks. Its -27C

Here’s a good place to start

It’s always a plug in. Cakewalk most certainly does not behave like this. When it does 90% of the time it’s a plug in.

@msmcleod Your info about the C++ might be what is happening because the Air installer is pretty bad. I’ll try that. Thanks

Thanks everyone for replying. If you read my OP it explains that the software is in the default location. The Steinberg VST folder. They were working just fine so I can’t see it was anything to do with any of that but you never know. The message is pertaining to ILok authorization not a faulty install. So it’s either an ilok issue or an Air issue. I contacted ilok and they already got back to me asking for screenshots so maybe they can fix this. It’s the weekend and they keep regular hours. We’ll see if Air gets back to me they certainly didn’t last year but I’m almost optimistic this time. I know it’s on sale for $10. Why would I pay them again? I already have 3 licenses copies of xpand. ?

Cakewalk works at 32 bit floating point to avoid missing bits. Literally. It’s not like bouncing on a tape deck. This is why we love digital audio.

@Glenn Stanton You must have seen my first post before I edited out the question about Kontakt. I thought I better start another thread on that topic. But Thanks for the info. I guess that's exactly why I haven't used it and I was wonder why? I see lots of posts from people who use Kontakt. But $200 is way over my budget for VST's. I have Dim Pro collections. Yesterday I used the free Kontakt 7 and the default library Mallets on a project all day and it seemed fine? I think I only paid $100 for the complete Air collections. I feel sorry for anyone who every paid full price. The DB33 shows as $110. I am using the Colla B in the interim but it's not as good as the DB 33. Xpand has been my horn section and it has some great ethnic stuff too. In a way I'm fine because I actually finish all my projects export them and move on. But jeeze I literally have 100's of projects with the DB33 on it. A lot of them I was smart enough to back up with all synths frozen. But not my backing tracks, as they are 100% midi only projects. I just sent in a support email to iLok and I did manage to find a backdoor to Air support and I have submitted a request to have all my licensed Computers de activated.

Jan. 16 2023- Solved Again? Air got back to me and told me to send a request to iLOk to reset all my licenses. This took about 4 hours and they responded with a long list of instructions to follow. > If you want to see the instructions go to the bottom of this post. But Everything seems to be working. For now at least. At least I know know what to do if it happens again. Jan.15 2023- NOT Solved. Everything worked fine all afternoon yesterday after I posted below. I had even done a Hard reboot to test. But when I opened the project this morning I get the same messages again. I tried inserting the DB-33 into Ableton and it crashed! So it's not Cakewalk and I don't think it's Air. I think it's iLok. Jan. 14 2023- SOLVED UPDATE: I'll put it up here so no one has to wade through the mess. Not sure exactly what did it. The list of what I did would fill a book. I eventually got Xpand and Velvet working. This made it even more of a mystery. DB-33 showed as successfully installed and was played just fine in Magix Music Maker and Ableton Lite. ( ya I had to install them to test) But nothing in Cakewalk. So I re installed it for the 4th time but this time as Administrator. At first it still didn't show on scanning. So I checked all the boxes including Re scan failed and scan in sand box. Scan dialogue showed 0 new plug ins found still, but. DB-33 is back and seems to be working fine. Below is my original post: I have used 2 Air products on 100's of projects over the last 6 or so years since I first bought them. The DB33 and Xpand2. I have everything they make and got it all on sale at one time or another but these are the only 2 I like. And I like them over anything else I've tried. I even have 3 different licenses for xpand2. But every time I've had to install them it's been a huge PITA. I just built a new machine and I more or less had all my plug ins up and running within the week after I fired it up. And I have used Xpand on a few new projects no problem since. All the ducks are in a row. I lok is happy, Cakewalk knows they are in the Steinberg VST folder, they are on the plug in list etc. And as I say, I've used them. All of a sudden when I tried to insert the DB33 yesterday I got the notification shown below ( same one) I opened iLok and logged in and I found it was activated. I did notice a demo version showing too? Was that causing a conflict? I uninstalled DB33 in windows apps as well as making sure the dll. was gone from the VST folder. I checked all folders just to be sure. I still had the old installer and all went fine and DB 33 was re installed and inserted in the project and played just fine all day. Then the bad news- I shut down for the night and re open to resume and get the message again. I then tried inserting Xpand and got same message?? Another issue is my old computer had all there stuff installed and I forgot to de-activate before I re built it. All the other vendors responded and fixed the activations with in a day or two. Still no word from Air. You can see all my Air products show 2 activations. The second shows as the old computer that has a new name now. There was also my Laptop I used and I went in there and deactivated all Air products and the others so I could use them on the new machine. There's another possible issue. It might have only sort of worked for Air. Thank you all. JAN 16 2023- The solution. Go to iLok support page and submit a ticket to have all you licenses reset. They will reply after they do this and give you this list 1) Close any open cloud sessions (From the File menu in iLok License Manager) 2) Quit iLok License Manager if currently running, as well as any other binary that uses our protection 3) Go to the Start icon 4) In the search field type in “services” (without quotes) 5) Choose “Services” from the search results 6) Within the Services window, look for “PACE License Services” 7) Right-click it and choose “Stop” from the pop-up menu ? Leaving the Services window open, open a Windows File Explorer window 9) Navigate to the following location (this can be cut and pasted into the address bar): C:\ProgramData\PACE\Eden 10) Delete all ”.sdb” files found there and then close the Windows File Explorer window 11) Return back to the Services window 12) Right-click “PACE License Services” and choose “Start” from the pop-up menu The client database on Windows will be reset after completing this step. Next, log in to iLok License Manager and from the File menu, click Preferences, then Licenses. Click "Remove account data saved on computer" If the button's text is already gray there's no need for this step. Now reactivate your licenses; the products should launch as usual.

In another thread someone mentioned tutorials in other languages. I thought about adding subtitles to my videos but turned out you need to do this before you publish them. I came up with a work around. I will slowly post all the transcripts of my narration to my web site. I will then add links in the comments and people can translate these into other languages to follow along. I have the transcripts but I need to add the times to each paragraph so it's easier to follow along. This will take a while. Got 3 done so far. https://sites.google.com/view/cactus-studios/cakewalk-tutorials

It’s interesting that you ask. I’m just investigating how I can use subtitles in my tutorials. Then those would be available in all languages. Cakewalk is a very global community and I can tell by the names of my subscribers how global it truly is. Edit. Updated Jan 30 I just found out last night how to add the subtitles to existing videos. It’s actually very easy. It will be a huge project to get it all done. I will be definitely add subtitles to all new releases. I am also publishing the transcripts of my narrative here. Yet another winter project. I’ll never get anything else one! https://sites.google.com/view/cactus-studios/cakewalk-tutorials

Depends on the rest of project and system capabilities. I work at 256.