Matthew Sorrels

All VST Shell plugins (a type of VST plugin that contains multiple plugins) get re-scanned by Cakewalk if you have the scan setting "Automatic background scan" or "scan on startup". I think the idea there is that Cakewalk can't determine if there are any changes to the included plugins by just checking the time stamp on the shell plugin. But it seems to me that perhaps it's being a bit obsessive. If the shell's file has not changed it may be reasonable to assume what it contains hasn't changed either. Perhaps at one time this didn't work so well which is why Cakewalk/SONAR was made to always scan shell plugins. Reaper doesn't re-scan the Wave's shell plugins unless the time stamp on the shell changes. Perhaps Cakewalk could improve this. There are a few other companies that use the VST shell approach to plugins, but Waves is by far the biggest and most common users will encounter.

Up to 3 free now. I went ahead and got the Amplitude Leslie. If the group buy hits the max level it will mean I fully complete my T-Racks and Amplitude libraries. Worst case I'll come up a few of the new Tape Machines short.

I've rolled back to 4.04 but it doesn't surprise me the clicks are happening on many instruments, since it's an engine issue. Hopefully they will get these fixes out quickly.

The matrix of who charges what and when can be very complicated. Most US credit cards do add additional foreign transaction fees (around 3% is common) in addition to their fees for currency conversion. Paypal when charging a credit card passes through the country and can trigger these fees (on my Citibank card they show up as an additional fee at the end of the month and have no direct connection to the charges). But if you use a bank account with Paypal those fees are normally avoided and you pay only whatever Paypal tells you the currency conversion is. In this case it appears Paypal is going to increase the fee it charges for doing the currency conversion (to 4% for most major currencies though that table is so complicated I'm not sure of anything). Long story short Paypal is going to be more expensive when doing currency conversions, no matter how you fund the Paypal account. It may begin to be cheaper to just use your card directly vs Paypal with a bank account. Hard to say for sure, my bank credit card doesn't tell me in advance what the currency exchange rate it is going to use is. I have to wait for it to appear on my statement. On interesting thing people may not realize is that the foreign transaction fees aren't related to the currency. I've had non-US businesses that actually charge my card in USD still trigger a foreign transaction fee because they aren't US based. A number of large businesses process their fees through a US office/corp to avoid this.

I usually use Paypal because my credit card also tags on a 3% foreign transaction fee. Which they don't do when Paypal does the conversion and I use my bank account. Looks like they are closing this loophole? The only good news is the GBP is down a lot vs the dollar and may keep getting hammered till they finish leaving. Sadly too many merchants insist on billing in USD if you are US and they do the conversion from a price including VAT. Then Fastspring tacks on your local sales tax, on top of the currency conversion and "included" VAT. I have no problem paying my local sales tax, assuming it gets sent here (yeah right), but paying sales tax on top of a price including VAT converted to dollars bothers me.

It appears you can't make the ARC System 2.5 one of your free choices either, since it includes hardware and the promotion says "you can choose 2 more software titles of equal or lesser value for free" In the past if you bought something from say a vendor and got a great deal the normal price of the item would be used when determining what you could choose as your additional titles. With the ARC having two prices at IK I suspect they will have some issues with that.

If you order the ARC System 2.5 with the crossgrade price, is that what determines your price for your additional choices or do they use the full retail price of ARC System 2.5 ($199) for determining what things you can choose in this promotion?

There are a few threads on Play's issue with fast bouncing. Starting with Play 5.0 they changed how Play streams data which can result in release tails not playing depending on how much of the samples are in memory and how fast the storage device is. EastWest support are pretty much determined to ignore this major failure and will run you in circles with blaming your computer/your hard drive/your DAW when it's really their software. You may be able to work around it by loading the samples fully into ram, placing the samples on a very fast SSD and not fast bouncing any tracks. But even in the best conditions it is still broken and can and will manifest. There is no 100% reliable solution really, no matter what other users may claim. Recent versions of Play 6 using the VST3 version only seems to work slightly better for me but it is still possible to get it to fail. If you have the ram try turning off "Stream from Disk" in the Play menu. You may also be able to adjust the cache settings for your drive in preferences/streaming (though there are bugs there also, for example on my computers that option lists no drives you might have more luck). All that and using a slow bounce/render can usually get you a viable recording. Rolling back to a 4.x version of Play can also work but cuts you off from all the other features added to Play 5 and 6.

One thing that sometimes trips people up is (before the sandbox option, not sure how well it works now) one plugin will get scanned and it's written poorly and/or isn't very robust, then Cakewalk goes to scan the next plugin but memory is all messed up and core system libraries are all badly initialized, so that next plugin fails (or fails also). So the first plugin is actually the problem but the next (or a later) plugins pay the price. Since you got this to happen on two separate computers I suspect you may still have a "bad" plugin (on both computers). The sandbox option is supposed to help with this, but I don't have enough experience to say if it really is helping or not. But I have seen a lot of poorly written (usually much older) plugins cause every plugin after that to fail to scan. Might explain why Play scans just fine for me but wasn't for you.

Since Play uses the iLok software protection you might want to install the latest version of the iLok License Manager from https://www.ilok.com In CbB you might want to look at the registry entry the VST scanner makes for your Play vst3 plugin. You should have two of them: HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Cakewalk Music Software\Cakewalk\Cakewalk VST X64\Inventory\c:/program files/common files/VST3/Play.vst3 HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Cakewalk Music Software\Cakewalk\Cakewalk VST X64\Inventory\c:/program files/common files/VST3/Play.vst3*0 Play If you delete those keys and start CbB it will just re-scan Play itself (can be useful for testing). There are a number of entries that tell what it thinks about the plugin. isVst3, isX64, isSynth and the all important isBad.

In Cakewalk do you have Scan in Sandbox enabled?

It seems to work for me without any problems (that it didn't already have). I loaded a few old projects and they all played just fine. It also scans just fine in CbB, Cubase, Reaper, ACID 9.0 and Reason 10 for me. The fact your having problems with multiple DAWs and multiple vendors points to some sort of system level problem. Reboot windows and fully update windows might be a good starting place. We'd need a lot more information though to help you figure out exactly what the problem is.

Yes, it is the player not the library changes since the new 4.06 build does the clicks even with no library update (see my screenshots). But it still may only effect guitar-type instruments, instead of (even worse) every instrument.

VSTBuzz also has a 10% off coupon in the Perks section https://vstbuzz.com/perks (just tried, VSTBuzz coupon won't work says it's used up) You may be able to buy a gift card at Audio Plugin Deals using your points there for even more discounts. (not sure on the gift card thing, it worked with discounts at Sample Logic but may not with Impact, let us know if you try it)

With repeating (not overlapping like their release notes say) notes on the grid not working 4.05 is out for me. These clicks may just be the guitars/strumming since the release notes list a bunch of changes there. After a number of emails they have admitted the Steel Drums do crash, it's not fixed in this release (I didn't expect it to be).

Even if you apply the Sample Update (and install the new Pedal Steel Guitar) there are definitely new clicks between 4.04 and 4.06. I used Dave's MIDI file and exported audio using 4.04, then upgraded but didn't update the library and exported that and then updated the library and exported that. In RX7 you can see a bunch of clicks before the library update that weren't in 4.04 but even after the library update there are still serious clicks (less than before the library update though). Here's some screen shots, look at the 2.5 second mark for the upward spike and before the library update there is an additional downward spike at 2.0 and just past the 2.5 upward spike that aren't in 4.04. First 4.04, no clicks Now 4.06 but no library update And 4.06 with the library update

I still use CbB when I'm recording audio and just mixing, because I like how it routes audio and handles effects. But when I'm using soft synths and MIDI (which is almost all the time) I'm using Cubase 10. It could do the audio stuff but I don't quite have the handle on it and it's just not worth the effort to fully learn now that CbB is back alive. When I'm using ACIDized loops and loops in general I still use ACID. I'm faster with it and like what I get. But it's MIDI and effects aren't really up to snuff. All the rest of the DAWs I have are more like collector items, I'm not using them except to play with the software. I think of it kind of like cars. Every car will get you from point A to point B, but depending on what you are doing you might want a truck or a sports car.

It's got to be a price error. GBP (ex vat) 95, Euro (ex Vat) 64.50, USD (ex Vat) $149 In USD that's $116 for GBP price and $71.88 for the Euro.

A user on KvR made a video of HATEFISh Convinced me to buy HY-Plugins HY-SeqCollection2 https://hy-plugins.com/product/hy-seqcollectionwinmac/ which is on sale at KvR and ADSR for $39 (try the demo) It's crazy complicated and perhaps not a good comparison to HATEFISh, since simple can sometimes be better. At least for me the demo of SeqCollection2 sold me that the more expensive and powerful MIDI sequencer was the better choice. If you have the full version of NI Reaktor there are a number of euclidean sequencers that can be downloaded from the user library. I've played around with Euclidean Polyplexor v1.5 and it looks like there is now a version 2 (never can keep up with Reaktor stuff) https://www.native-instruments.com/en/reaktor-community/reaktor-user-library/entry/show/9285/ https://www.native-instruments.com/en/reaktor-community/reaktor-user-library/entry/show/12031/

I went ahead and got Acid Pro 9 at Sweetwater with this deal. The price was right, even though it wasn't even an upgrade. 9.0 at least so far has been a lot better than 8.0 was. The VST scanner actually made it through my VSTs the very first time. I didn't have to kill processes/etc. So big improvement there. The UI seems a little nicer but I'd have to run 8.0 to be sure. I also got a coupon code for Planet Producer, though no details on what it is supposed to be for. It did let me buy one of the Sony/SF Acid packages for free though. The loops it comes with downloaded very, very slowly and aren't that impressive, but they seem different than 8.0 I wish they hadn't done the Acid Pro Next thing (the price is way too high for the limited additional features), but for the price this is a much better version of Acid 64bit than 8.0 was. There is a Cakewalk Early Access update. They have been working pretty hard to get it solid. I suspect it will ship in the next week.

The doubling is based on the Nyquist rate, it's not random it's pretty much the physics of sampling to avoid aliasing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nyquist_rate

I really want to put more padding on the top of the M50X's. They kind of hurt the top of my head. But sadly none of the zipper/velcro padding replacements/warp arrounds seem to really help in that area. You can get a cheap soldering iron at any hardware store. It's really not that difficult a skill. The wear on mine aren't so bad it's unusable yet. May just find another set. I like the M50X but the headband isn't all that great.

Initial Audio sent some email about a Sektor 1.3.2 update, I installed it yesterday. Appears to be a giant crash fest for me, just trying a few random presets, crash. The previous version seemed more stable. I'm also confused by their website it says I've asked for 0 serial numbers of three, but somehow I'm running it? There is no way to see my registration inside the plugin either. I think it's a lost cause.

I was looking into what it would take to replace my ATH-M50X headband and found this reddit "guide" if you can solder you should be able to do it. Assuming you can actually get ATH to send the parts/etc. A video of the repair: Image guide:

When doing 3D animation frames start to be really important, so that exact frame number accuracy kind of matters. For normal video the little issues may not be a factor. One thing that is very important when trying to use video with CbB/SONAR is to be sure and set the video timecode FPS correctly. The sync module in the main toolbar has a drop down. Or you can do it in the preferences under Project/Clock.