AxlBrutality

I've always been really guilty of neglecting my bass tone, and my writing style doesn't really lend itself to the bass standing out. I've always just used it as an undercurrent/undertone (as is tradition in a lot of metal, haha)...but I'd like to start featuring bass more prominently in a lot of my music. Some more better options as far as amp sims in general go (not just Revalver; everyone's guilty of neglecting bass) would be nice and might help me with that. I hear JST's Bassforge is pretty badass; might give that a try soon. OH isn't proprietary, no...they do release in a variety of formats (including standard .wavs). Their libraries and packs are huge, and they are well worth it. I own Mesa, Diezel, EDVH, and Ampeg libraries from them and they are absolutely top notch quality-wise...with a TON of options and combinations to boot. I've never had any issues... All three bands in my signature are 100% me. All vocals, lyrics, songwriting, all guitars, bass, piano/keys, orchestral programming, drum programming (I do actually play drums, but prefer to program these days), recording, and mixing. Silence Before the Storm and Agony By Default are my main projects; Ashes of Denial is more of a side project that I randomly work on from time to time. I'm also involved in a few other projects, but those 3 are my babies so to speak. @Starship Krupa Holy shit; not gonna lie....you had me for a while there. Lmao.

They all seem to be less of a resource hog than Revalver as well, in my limited experience. So far I'm fairly impressed, especially for the price point (always being on sale for less than $10 each). I think I'll stop at Dominator, Emperor, and Hellbeast for now though, lol. Plenty to play with there for a while. I've actually got a pretty massive tone going on right now with Dominator (with Mesa Ownhammer IRs) on one rhythm, Emperor (with Deizel OH IRs) on the other side...and Hellbeast (with EDVH OH IRs) powering the leads. Pretty impressive, tbh. Emperor is a little noisier than I'd like for start/stop chugging; gonna have to play around with the gate and gain settings a bit. Other than that...this might actually be what goes on my next record. We'll see.

I spend a good amount of time over the course of a year and a half going through everything free, plus a couple of additional purchases (I don't recall everything right now; it's been a while). The 6505 (paired with the Tubescreamer knock off and various Ownhammer IRs) was really the only thing that fit what I was doing. Having said that, it fit very well, which is why I continued to use it for so long. To this day, it is actually my backup and I do use it...the 6505 is still a gold standard even in modern extreme metal. I've just begun experimenting with various other amp sims is all, and have found that there are soooo many other options out there that do what Revalver does, and they either sound the same or better. That's part of what I meant regarding to the being left in the dust comment. Part of it was a lack of marketing. there are soo many options out there now, and Peavey let Revalver be relegated to the bottom of the pile. And on top of that, they really failed to be inventive or introduce new stuff over the last few years that was good enough to pull people back from the big players these days based on pure word of mouth. Hardly anyone I know uses Revalver...everyone in the metal community has moved on to sims like Bias FX, Toneforge, or the Fortin stuff...or they prefer profiler hardware like Kemper, Helix, Axe FX, the physical Bias FX stuff, etc. And IRs? Ownhammer dominates that space, and for good reason. I barely touched Revalver's IRs once I started getting into OH stuff. As a side note, I actually just came across Audio Assault's stuff recently too, and bought several of their amps today for dirt cheap...and I'm decently impressed. I also think that Revalver could use more options for bass. And as I mentioned, it's a little less intuitive in general than other amp sims....which is why specialty amp sims like Toneforge are so popular. Don't get me wrong; I like Revalver and it does its job...but it's gonna take something big, something different, to pull me back. And I'm not sure they'll be able to win over a whole lot of people that use other stuff unless they start actually marketing themselves worth a damn. Peavey was still more concerned with peddling their physical gear than they ever were with marketing Revalver, and that really hurt them.

Just looked on their site; it does look pretty spiffy...I'll add it to the consideration list for sure! Appreciate it.

I've used Revalver for a few years as my main sim and have mostly liked it, but had begun moving on to other amp sims. Revalver hasn't really been supported much over the last few years, isn't nearly as intuitive as many other newer amp sims...and, outside of the 6505, really doesn't have as many options for the tones I'm looking for (extreme metal). It's also always been a bit noisier than some other sims when using high gain stuff...although I did really, really like the Käften "smart" gate and it helped with that. I will say the 6505 emulation was stellar; that was my go-to. I'll keep an eye on it and I'm interested in seeing where they go with it, but yea. That train has kinda already left the station, and Revalver has honestly been left in the dust (at least in the rock/metal communities) by other companies.

So just as an update, I caught the Hellbeast on sale for $9 today and have been playing around with it. It's pretty decent. Not sure I'd pay full price for it ($70), but for $9 it was definitely a steal. It's got a little bit of that cheap Line 6 metal tone that I don't really like, but it's average to good if you use some Ownhammer Mesa or Deizel IRs and do some cab blending (it's got a dual IR loader) and a bit of EQ work. Edit: Emperor and Dominator were on sale again too, for $5....so I couldn't help myself. I actually like them even more sound-wise, although the IR loader is kinda buggy.

Yea, I mean that $65 is already 50% off (it's on sale), but I'll definitely shoot them an email and ask.

I'm finally moving closer to uninstalling my side by side installation of Legacy, and TruePianos is really the only thing left from that that I really use enough to keep hanging on to it. It's currently on sale for $65 (and I do plan on emailing them to see if I can get an extra discount as a Sonar user), but I was wondering if there are better/comparable alternatives? Just kinda want to examine my options. Just looking for a basic VST piano suite; I don't need a whole smorgasbord of different pianos or available effects....your typical decent grand piano sound is fine, and I use other effects independently (so included effects and parameters aren't super important). Depending on my workflow and the situation, sometimes I just draw in values in piano roll; other times I do use an actual keyboard to record MIDI. So something that has decently low latency and works well in both situations would be great. Free is great, but I don't mind paying a bit for something that's good (you get what you pay for often times). However, I don't really want to (nor can I, really) blow triple digits in cash on something though. Suggestions?

Nice; thank you! Now I just need to debate whether or not spending $65 on TruePianos is worth it, or what other comparable alternatives there are. Off to post in the Effects sub.....this thread has gotten waaaay off topic lol.

Oh snap; really? So, just to clarify...all of the licensing in my XLN account is 100% intact even if I uninstall Legacy? I literally just got around to sending an email to XLN support asking about it; I didn't know the forums here would be faster lol. Thanks!

Honestly, I'm not sure how worth it it is to most of us or to Bandlab, although it may be appealing to potential new users. I think a lot of us have since moved on and found other plugins and instruments that are decent to stellar. The only reason I keep SPLAT/"Legacy" installed is for my XLN license for AD2 (which I could easily just go purchase outright if need be, honestly) and for LP EQ (which is fantastic [though a bit resource heavy], and unfortunately the aforementioned OpenGL issues prevent me from blowing $100-200 on FabFilter...which is also OpenGL driven and has actually had some of the same problems for a small subset of their users). I do utilize TruePianos and SI Strings once in a while, but that's really only because I'm too cheap to buy something else (and I also am stubborn and don't like to take chances on new things). Although I think SI strings is included in the Bandlab version anyway? I can't remember. Other than that, it wouldn't really break my heart if Bandlab didn't bring any of that stuff back. I never used about half of it (including things like Rapture), and there are so many other options these days.

@Noel Borthwick Yup; PM'd you.

Hey, wait a minute. Are you guys talking about the effects menu that comes up when you right-click the FX Bin to insert a plugin? I don't have different colored fonts to distinguish between VST2 and VST3 (or 32/64 bit, for that matter); this would be extremely helpful...as I usually have to guess.

@Noel Borthwick, I don't know if it was this release or last release where you felt you had quashed the "parameter recall" issue, where plugin parameters would jumble or be reset when reopening projects or copying plugins to new tracks....but I've come across that issue with a plugin I recently purchased (JST Toneforge Jason Richardson). JST has been in touch finally and indicated they believe it to be an issue on Cakewalk's end. I did report it to you guys as well, but didn't know if you'd come across it. I advised JST to reach out to you with their findings, just fyi....so I guess it's up to them to do so. Having said that, they said they are releasing a new version "soon" which has different ways of dealing with parameters, and they believe it to be functioning okay in CbB. So I'm not sure how much it will matter (or how much they care), but it would probably be good to figure out in case the issue ever comes up again with other plugins (or remains the same with this one).

Hey there! I see it; I'll reply a bit later this morning....kindof dealing with a household crisis this morning, but I wanted to let you know I did see it and am not blowing you off.

Oh, haha...that's a bit easier/better than the way I looked up. I was literally looking in the system folder where the logs are actually stored...hence the "mile long list of files that might as well be in Russian" comment. I will keep that in mind going forward! I don't plan on doing a lot of recording over the next week or two (which is when it seems to occur the most), but that will definitely be included in my diagnostics from here on out. Thank you (in general), and thanks for helping me help you and everyone else better.

@Robert Bone Bios is up to date, according to my Intel utility (Edit: MSI utility confirms). I do recall having a couple of BIOS updates after I replaced my HDD a few months ago. I also haven't tweaked anything in there. I actually haven't ever looked at the Windows Event Viewer....had to look up where to even find it. I don't recall the exact time frame the last random/memory-based crash occurred (sometime last week, but I don't recall the day), and the event list for the last couple of weeks is a mile long. I can check it next time I have a similar crash, now that I know about it and to look at it. Is there a particular type of event I'm looking for? Shit all might as well all be in Russian as far as I'm concerned, lmao.

Here's the thing....my video cards have been newer cards. Not brand new, but not exactly old-timers either. My laptop (the one that's currently my workstation) has both a recent-build NVIDIA GTX 1050ti and an Intel UHD 630, both with updated drivers [I've tried running these plugs on both cards, to no avail). My wife's desktop (which was formerly my workstation and had the same problems) has a slightly older NVIDIA GTX 1050. (All of those cards also apparently support up to OpenGL 6 or whatever it is now, which supposedly had cleared out a lot of these problems [from what I've read....but we're starting to get into territory that I don't know much about]). Also, unfortunately, due to my laptop being a laptop, and my wife's desktop being a small form factor prebuilt gaming rig (with power and physical space limits because MSI prebuilts suck), I have minimal ability to upgrade any of these cards. It's a possibility, but idk. Might just be time to go back to ASUS rigs...I never had any issues like this with ASUS motherboards or ASUS-versioned NVIDIA cards. (Both these computers are MSI rigs.) I'm not a computer geek though, so again, I only half know what I'm talking about if we go much deeper here. My computer knowledge is better than some, but nowhere near where it probably should be at this point. Lol. Edit: I've done some deeper digging, and it appears that a few Fabfilter users have experienced these issues for years without a resolution, and Fabfilter also continues to use OpenGL anyway. All seem to point to OpenGL conflicts with NVIDIA cards specifically, but as you mentioned, it's been a very small subset of people...most people even with NVIDIA cards seem to not have issues. Strange.

@Noel Borthwick Fair enough, and thanks for all the explanation and clearing the air. We're good. That really does suck, though. I guess I'm off to find comparable (and hopefully not expensive) plugins, and to try to somehow avoid plugins that use OpenGL. Honestly, I'm just glad I have some sort of closure after about a year of wondering about/fighting with this.

Just fyi, I have been provided with a few key updates today, which I have highlighted in green in the OP. @Robert Bone Windows, audio/video drivers, etc....as well as Bandlab (through the most recent hotfix) are all up to date. I am actually painfully meticulous and obsessive about keeping my machine, OS, etc. updated (as well as keeping the disk cleaned and the SSD trimmed). Also should probably note that I did a clean install a few months ago of both Legacy and CbB, along with all of my plugins and such. (I had an HDD failure, and took the opportunity to swap a Solid State drive...so I had to fresh install everything, including my OS.) No major tweaks to Windows other than basic stuff: power options (nothing ever turns off or goes to sleep), "active hours" for updates and maintenance are set to make sure none of that happens when I'm working, and I turn Windows Defender's realtime protection off when I'm working (so as to not have it operational in the background). I also have select suspend for USB ports disabled. Lastly, I have OneDrive (among most other useless programs) uninstalled and have no other antivirus besides WD. I run a pretty clean and updated machine, and make sure as little as possible runs in the background. But I also don't tweak too much that's over my head, and while I do have some limited overclocking ability with this machine, I haven't touched any of that.

Thank you for the details and explanation of what's going on. I wasn't really passed any of that info by the official support channel, only that you had recently finally found a possible cause and it could be on the plugin end, but it wasn't confirmed and you were still investigating. No offense, and maybe I'm misreading your tone here as a bit condescending, but no one has actually confirmed that until you did, just now. Everything in this thread has been speculation...and as mentioned, I wasn't passed any info from CbB customer support other than y'all might have found a potential cause (this was about two weeks ago) and that it appeared to be on the vendor end, but that y'all were still investigating and trying to contact Slate. (And that was after a year of me complaining about it and sending in reports, for the record.) I was given a bunch of language/code to pass along to Slate in case they ever decided to finally get back to me, but I have no idea what I'm looking at there. I'm not a developer. Don't get me wrong...I don't care whose "fault" it is, nor do I have any allegiances here. I just know I can't use several of my favorite plugins, and haven't been able to for a year. (I also didn't bump this thread, which is months old, btw...although I have made references to this problem in general in newer threads because it is a huge source of frustration). I'd also like to note that it was Slate and Melda who were vehement that I test it in Reaper or another DAW, and then neither ever got back to me again after I reported that it worked fine there. I don't know what that's all about, just how it looks. It's not the first time multiple companies have pointed at Cakewalk and then abandoned me...which is why, as I've mentioned to you recently, I prefer to just come to you now regardless of the program in the hopes that you have a professional repertoire with whatever company we're dealing with. Again, I do appreciate the work and the communication. Do you have any idea if JUCE would be working on a fix, and if that would manifest in updates with Slate, Melda, etc. and their plugins? Or are these all pretty much useless plugins for the foreseeable future, and I need to just abandon them and move on (barring some magic from you guys)?

Interesting...it's still listed within the Slate All Access package in the Gobbler application, so I figured there was an actual problem. That would certainly explain things (the whole "no longer being authenticated by my accounts" issue). I wonder why Gobbler didn't get the memo. One issue down. Although, as mentioned, I've never used S-Gear and didn't plan to...so it wasn't a huge deal. Just an annoyance when scanning VSTs and trying to refresh licenses. Thank you!

Allow me to preface this by saying these issues have been reported through the official support channels, as well as to some plugin manufacturers where necessary. Anyway, I seem to be particularly good at encountering and/or uncovering strange bugs and behaviors. They vary in importance/severity for me, though everyone's workflow is different and they may affect others who encounter them more or less. Some of them have been ongoing issues for close to a year and have been recreated on multiple computers, while others I ran into as recently as this morning. Some have had no headway made on investigation; others have known or suspected causes but no solutions yet (obviously). Some may not be Cakewalk issues, some are. The purpose of putting this thread together is a) to see if others are having the same issues and if anyone has potential solutions of their own, b) visibility, to let others who are encountering these or similar issues know they are not alone (and to provide them with information in the future, if solutions are found and they encounter issues in the future), c) to draw attention to them in general, and d) to maybe generate random discussion surrounding various issues. Feel free to ask for more information, provide suggestions, CC anyone you may think might be able to chime in, etc. I'll admit that while I've been a member of this community for many years, I have been mostly quiet unless I have a major, work-stoppage-level bug and/or am really pissed off. Lol. I would like to change that. Warning: Long post. -Cakewalk's VST Scan throws error when encountering Melodyne VST2 Encountered this one this morning out of the blue. I've chosen the option to disable the plugin each time and continue, since I don't currently use Melodyne. Screenshot of Error: https://www.dropbox.com/s/zn0fz2h8c3r73hr/Melodyne Scan Error.png?dl=0 -Cakewalk's VST Scan freezes and hangs indefinitely when encountering Melodyne VST3 Also encountered this one this morning. No idea what causes it, but it renders me unable to complete any new VST scans. I have a fresh dump file if a member of support sees this and wants it, though I've already sent one in. -JST Toneforge Jason Richardson fails to recall/jumbles plugin parameters a) when reopening project and b) often when copying plugin to a new track. Encountered this just this week right after purchasing it. No known cause, happens about 99% of the time, happens with both purchase version and the updated version. The plugin parameters/settings don't just reset to default; they actually get weirdly/randomly jumbled. JST was rather dismissive when I first contacted them, and in fact their social media told me they don't recommend Cakewalk as a DAW. Update: I just received an email from JST support...they can't reproduce the issue and are pointing back at Cakewalk's known struggles with plugin parameter recall. Update 2: JST support was able to reproduce some of the issues, but their workarounds aren't working for me. According to them, there seems to be issues on Cakewalk's end with recognizing and saving parameter changes. They also claim that an update to Toneforge is coming soon that, among other things, redefines how it handles parameter changes...and they claim that it has been tested with favorable results in CbB. I'm trying to facilitate direct conversation between CbB and JST as well; we'll see how that goes. -Slate Virtual Tape Machines, Eiosis DeEsser, MeldaProductions MAutoPitch, LP EQ, and LP MB all fail to fully load GUI and freeze/hang Cakewalk when attempting to do so. This has been ongoing for nearly a year. All plugins work fine when tested in Reaper. VTM will occasionally load GUI, but will hang CbB the moment it gets closed. Eiosis will only partially load GUI, and will hang CbB when closed. MAutoPitch is the worst offender, instantly hanging Cakewalk when opened. LP EQ and LP MB, which had similar/the same issues, have been solved by editing the config files, changing the OpenGL value from 1 to 0. Cakewalk support discovered an issue with one of them (I believe it was VTM) not responding to a GUI command, but I haven't heard anything else since. I have fresh (as of this morning) dump files for the MAutoPitch, VTM, and Eiosis hangs, if support sees this and wants them. Just say something and I'll PM them. Update: Noel has just given a full confirmation and explanation of these problems and the situation here: https://discuss.cakewalk.com/index.php?/topic/4083-major-freezinghanging-issues-with-an-interesting-cause-and-no-obvious-solution-any-ideas/&do=findComment&comment=82296 Slate S-Gear refuses to recognize Gobbler or iLok Authentication during VST Scan New as of this morning. Haven't paid much attention to it, and just skip the authentication process (because I don't use S-Gear). Update: Apparently S-Gear is no longer a part of Slate/Slate's All Access Bundle, explaining the expired license/refusal to authenticate. Not sure why it still appears in Gobbler as a part of the bundle. -Random Crashes...particularly when recording, and usually when CbB has been open for an extended amount of time (longer than a half hour)... Sometimes it hangs and I can create a dump file. Other times it just closes out completely with no errors or hangs. What's particularly alarming, however, is that NO activity from the session is saved, even with autosave enabled and working and manual saves also done throughout the session. And no recovery copy is attempted to be made 95% of the time. I've lost hours of work due to this. I was able to create a dump file for CbB support recently, and while it's fairly random, they believe it to be a memory corruption or leak of some sort...particularly when Cakewalk is writing the waveform. That's all I know right now. I think that's it for now. There were actually about a half dozen others that weren't big deal to me, so I never said anything, but they were actually finally fixed in the last couple of updates (shout out to @Noel Borthwick and company for their work...the ASIO buzzing during rapid start/stop of playback was actually pretty annoying). I apologize and can't help but think maybe attention would have brought to them sooner if I had spoken up as well. I will try to be a more productive member of this community and more helpful to support from here on out (hence threads like this). I'd also like to give a shout-out to @Starship Krupa and @Robert Bone for their attempts at helping with a few of these issues, and their patience with my frustration at times. I suppose that's all for now. Cheers, y'all.

All three plugins with this issue (Slate VTM, Eiosis DeEsser (distributed by Slate), and MeldaProductions MAutoPitch) test fine in Reaper. That was actually the first thing Slate asked me to do when I contacted them almost a year ago. (Unfortunately, after reporting that, I never heard back from them.) I have yet to update the Melda plugin; will do that at some point. Cakewalk support recently indicated they had found an issue with a response to a GUI command with VTM, but I haven't heard anything since (that was about a week ago). I am currently in the process of gathering all my bugs (these and more...I encountered yet another one this morning), recreating all of the dump files, and putting together one massive bug report...which I will post in a separate, condensed, updated thread so as to maybe help others as well.

Unfortunately, the plugin won't even fully load the GUI, and freezes (and hangs CbB) before I can do anything. Also, the 64-bit double precision engine is turned off.