msmcleod

FWIW, I've got an old Intel Core Duo Dell Laptop running Windows 7 32 bit, SONAR Platinum connected to a Yamaha 01X, i88x and Behringer ADA8000. I've no problems recording projects (up to 24 simultaneous tracks) on the laptop and going to either CbB or the new Sonar for mix duties or further editing. I can even re-open the project in SONAR Platinum for further overdubs, however if I think I might have to do this, I try to avoid using any of the new features missing in SONAR Platinum. Most features are fine though, with the notable exception of the Arranger - for that I just save the arranger track as an arranger template, so I can re-import it again. Nested track folders can be tricky too - the folders will get flattened out when opened in SONAR Platinum, but they should keep the hierarchy when loaded back into CbB/Sonar as long as you don't move tracks around. Obviously the older the version of SONAR, the more features you'll "lose" if you save the project in the older version... and as @Jonathan Sasor says, avoid 32 bit DirectX plugins apart from the Cakewalk stock ones (e.g. Sonitus).

For individual clips you can use scrub.

If this is in Sonar, expect some big improvements in the next update. We found a bunch of areas that were causing slow operations in larger projects. In CbB, turning off the audio engine and/or closing the synth rack can speed things up significantly.

Whether 1TB is big enough all depends on your usage. I've got a 4TB SSD in my DAW machine, partitioned 512GB for my C Drive, and all my Kontakt libraries/sample based synth data on the 3.5TB "E" drive. My projects are on a separate 1TB SSD "F" drive. It's worth mentioning though, that all I have on my C drive is DAW related programs - i.e. SONAR, CbB, Sonar, MixCraft and Studio One... plus the odd utility... so no office programs at all. If you're using your PC for anything else, then you want at least 1TB for a C drive, and a separate drive for your data.

IIRC SONAR X1 Expanded was a version of X1 with an early implementation of the ProChannel. The X1e update was available to all versions, but you may find there is a specific X1e update for SONAR X1 Expanded, just as there was for artist/professional/producer.

It's a known problem with Izotope plugins, and not just with Sonar either... other DAW's are having DPI problems with Izotope plugins too. Izotope are aware of the issue, so I guess its just a matter of waiting for them to implement DPI support in their plugins. The only workaround is to disable DPI awareness in Sonar - this essentially makes it behave as CbB did... but it'll affect the entire app and all other plugins too. Personally, I'd just avoid using Ozone 11 in my projects. If I need it for mastering, I'll run it standalone with a stereo mixdown of my project. I find Ozone grinds my machine to a halt on the best of days, so I avoid using the VST for that reason too.

Using "Fit Improvisation" with real recorded material is always going to give unpredictable results. It's designed to be used on a track with only quarter notes recorded, and at every quarter note - in other words, a track where you've "tapped along" to the beat. From the docs: "To use this command, you must record a reference track containing a single clip that matches your original track or tracks but has only a single note on each beat boundary. You should make sure that the reference track has one event for every single beat, with no extra beats or missing beats. The first beat of the reference track should be at 1:01:000"

Windows doing updates in the background? This catches me out all of the time.

FX plugins can only be inserted on to a single track, which is why the track name can be displayed. Synths can be "fed" from multiple tracks - i.e. I could have 16 or more MIDI tracks feeding a single synth instance, along with the audio track that it is fed to. This is why a track name isn't displayed.

In my experience, a laptop's onboard sound device is fine for playback/mixing but unsuitable for audio recording in most cases - the electrical interference alone makes this a blocker. Use WASAPI Exclusive, as most ASIO drivers for on-board devices are no good. Latency won't be as good as ASIO (but not that far off ), but it may not be low enough for recording virtual instruments if you're particularly fussy about timing. In my experience, synth pads are fine but piano is a no-go. One thing to add though - it's unlikely the headphone amp on a laptop will be good enough to drive professional headphones, so bear that in mind. A small portable audio interface is a far better solution. Tascam, Focusrite, Presonus, Zoom and M-Audio all do entry level 1 or 2 channel interfaces that are pretty small (about 2-3 times the size of a mouse).

You're better off using Articulation Maps if you're using Ample Guitars rather than relying on MIDI notes. @Creative Sauce did a great tutorial on how to use them with Ample Guitars:

All I can say is, whatever size you build it's never going to be big enough. I started off with 22' x 10' and it's ended up tiny inside, although perfectly useable if I'm the only person in the room. I've got another building which is approx 16' x 10', which I was hoping to put a drum kit in... but with sound insulation added it's gonna be too small to get a kit inside. I may still put a drum kit in it... but I'll be limited to using it when my neighbours are away (thankfully there's only two nearby). FWIW you can get great results from a log cabin with a room inside a room which can cut down costs significantly. My 16' x 10' cabin cost around £6K - soundproofing it would probably add another £2 - 3K.

Essentially, you need to create a tempo map for the pre-recorded audio. There are three ways to do this: 1. Drag the audio track to the timeline, and let melodyne extract the tempo. I can't remember if this is the case or not, but you may also need at least Melodyne Essentials for this to work if you're using v5. v4 should be fine. 2. Use "Set Measure/Beat at Now". For this, you move the now time to the start of each measure/beat in your audio file and call "Set Measure/Beat at Now" specifying the measure/beat in the dialog. Start at the beginning and work your way through to the end. You can try doing this for each measure only, and then drill down to the beats if you need more accuracy. 3. Create a new MIDI track, arm it and record a single note or drum hit for each beat while the audio is playing. Select the MIDI clip, then from the main Process menu select "Fit Improvisation".

... and it works surprisingly well. I can crank up my two 150W monitor speakers to full, walk around the outside my studio, and hear practically nothing. What it doesn't cope with as well is incoming low frequency noise, e.g. (real examples from personal experience): - People revving their Harley's like crazy - Guys digging up the road up to 1/2 mile away - Visiting US destroyers trying out their fog horn - Low flying Chinooks ... but perhaps the most baffling one, was a phantom kick drum that I kept hearing... turned out my neighbour's kid was practicing drums on his acoustic kit, inside his house around 80 yards away. The only thing that was getting through was the kick drum. It's worth noting that none of these would likely make themselves heard in a recording, and if they did they'd be drowned out in the mix (or you could easily gate them out).

If you clone the partition ID's as well as the data, then most activations should be fine. This is why I use Clonezilla rather than other "move your OS drive" utilities that come with new drives. Clonezilla clones everything, whereas some other utilities only do the partition contents. When cloning to a larger drive, I let Clonzilla do its thing, then use PartitionWizard (free edition) to resize the partitions to use the extra space.

It says your sign-in was successful, which is different from activation. In other words, it recognises that you have a valid user account, but it appears you don't have a valid paid subscription?

All CC's such as Pan, Modulation etc are channel wide, whereas velocity is specific to a particular note. There's nothing we can do about this - it's the MIDI spec.

As it stands, the only control surface dll that can "mirror" behaviour natively is the Mackie Control dll. That being said, all of the control surfaces are aware of the active (i.e. focussed) track, so it should be possible to do that via AZController for the KeyLab / Micro4K. It's been a long time since I've looked at that, so I can't help you much with that. @azslow3 may be able to offer more insight.

Did you accidently put something into offset mode at one point?

The differences you're seeing between Mackie Control and MMcL Mackie Control could be down to maybe the MMcL version being an older version, or simply that the configuration in the dialog (under the Utilities menu) is subtly different. As far as the other behaviour, all I can say is every control surface that isn't an official Mackie Control (and especially those without a SONAR mode) has its quirks in MCU mode. In my office, I use an old Yamaha 01X (I removed the mLAN card and built a dongle that hardwires the control surface ports to the ports on the back) and a Mackie C4. The plugin support is actually pretty good on that, but it does have a different set of buttons than the MCU. What it does have though is an official SONAR mode, which means it's sending the correct combination of button presses for various modes. Even so, I find myself getting confused as so many buttons have more that one function (either by pressing them multiple times, or using a modifier button). The name/value display toggling is a common feature of many control surfaces, as is the single track + multiple params vs multiple tracks + single param toggle mode. ANY control surface that isn't an official MCU, unless its extremely basic, is going to be emulating multiple button presses, as they don't have the same buttons as the real MCU. The only possible exception is perhaps the largest Behringer X-Touch model, which seems to have all of the MCU buttons. Also, depending on what functionality they offer, they may have to store internal state (i.e. remembering which mode they think they're in, so that the correct combination of button presses can be sent out). So unless this exactly matches what Cakewalk/Sonar is expecting, there's going to be some weirdness. This is why MCU emulations should really have a SONAR mode. Sure, you can set Cakewalk's Mackie Control emulation to Cubase, but all that does is remap the buttons - it doesn't make Cakewalk/Sonar pretend to be Cubase. The one solution that will almost certainly work is @azslow3's AZController. I used it for a custom hardware controller I was building at one point. It can do pretty much anything, but be prepared for a steep learning curve. To be honest though, I wouldn't get hung up on the slight differences - just pick the solution that works best for you and stick with that.

Pic 1 was just presenting the parameters in order, as it couldn't find MackieControl.ini - take a look at my screenshot of C4 Mapper, and the parameter list on the bottom right. That's the order the parameters are being presented, and that's what you're seeing in Pic 1.

This is a variation on what I use for my "upload to cloud" script: ROBOCOPY "C:\Cakewalk Projects" "D:\Backup\Cakewalk Projects" *.* /XO /E /COPYALL /DCOPY:DAT ROBOCOPY "C:\Cakewalk Content\Cakewalk Core" "D:\Backup\Cakewalk Content\Cakewalk Core" *.* /XO /E /COPYALL /DCOPY:DAT ROBOCOPY "C:\Cakewalk Content\Audio Library" "D:\Backup\Cakewalk Content\Audio Library" *.* /XO /E /COPYALL /DCOPY:DAT ROBOCOPY "C:\Cakewalk Content\Picture Cache" "D:\Backup\Cakewalk Content\Picture Cache" *.* /XO /E /COPYALL /DCOPY:DAT This is the "download from cloud" script: ROBOCOPY "D:\Backup\Cakewalk Projects" "C:\Cakewalk Projects" *.* /XO /E /COPYALL /DCOPY:DAT ROBOCOPY "D:\Backup\Cakewalk Content\Cakewalk Core" "C:\Cakewalk Content\Cakewalk Core" *.* /XO /E /COPYALL /DCOPY:DAT ROBOCOPY "D:\Backup\Cakewalk Content\Audio Library" "C:\Cakewalk Content\Audio Library" *.* /XO /E /COPYALL /DCOPY:DAT ROBOCOPY "D:\Backup\Cakewalk Content\Picture Cache" "C:\Cakewalk Content\Picture Cache" *.* /XO /E /COPYALL /DCOPY:DAT ... and you set OneDrive (or whatever cloud sync app you use) to sync D:\Backup A quick explanation of the flags: /XO - exclude older files... i.e. skip anything that is newer or the same in the destination /E - include empty folders to ensure the folder hierarchy is preserved /COPYALL and /DCOPY:DAT - copy all the file attributes, e.g. date created, date modified, file owner etc.. you'll need this for /XO to work properly

It'll be picking up the parameter order from MackieControl.ini, so check that - maybe those parameters aren't listed (I've edited mine, so it'll be different). It should be listed under [ProChannel EQ]. Alternatively, use C4Mapper to check/edit it for you (you'll need to run it as Administrator for it to write back to MackieControl.ini). The reason the first two parameters were different was because it wasn't finding MackieControl.ini in the other directory, so it just presented the parameters in the order it presents them to Cakewalk.

You can't just move these DLL's - they're COM objects. They need to be unregistered first (while they're in the original folder), then re-registered in the new location. The MMcL uninstaller/installer will do this for you - but they need to be in the folders they were originally installed into, for the uninstall to work.

It's probably worth clarifying the "working independently" thing... Cakewalk's Mackie Control, Mackie Control XT and Mackie Control C4 all talk to each other. So I could have five surfaces set up: 2 x XT units, a main MCU unit, and 2 x C4. These would be set up as Mackie Control XT, Mackie Control XT, Mackie Control, Mackie Control C4 and Mackie Control C4. Anything I do on any of the surfaces is "known" by the others, so they're acting as if they're one big control surface. I can add as many additional surfaces to that group that I want by assigning them as one of those three control surface types. MMcL Mackie Control #1, MMcL Mackie Control XT #1 and MMcL Mackie Control C4 #1 work in exactly the same way, except they only talk to other "MMcL ... #1" surfaces. Likewise MMcL Mackie Control #2, MMcL Mackie Control XT #2 and MMcL Mackie Control C4 #2 work in exactly the same way, except they only talk to other "MMcL ... #2" surfaces, and so on. So you essentially have four groups of Mackie Control surfaces that can work independently of each other.