msmcleod

Back to the OP's question though, sfz+ is a tricky one as technically it's a rgc:audio product rather than a Cakewalk one. Although Cakewalk bought rgc:audio, I guess it depends on whether BandLab bought rgc:audio's assets when they took things over.

I think it was free, but I had to go through the process of requesting a license for it.

It should be in your original Cakewalk account - mine certainly is:

I'm running 44.1/24bit using a buffer of 64. I need to run VST2 for THROAT-Evo and ASPIRE-Evo. I've not got Autotune itself though, which may be much more processor hungry.

It's the standard iLok authorisation - i.e. either to an iLok dongle, or a computer. Most of the AIR software is pretty old. I've not had an update since I bought it. It's good though, so don't let that put you off.

It might be, but bear in mind that a 40" 4K screen is like having four 20" 1080P monitors. I'm using a 23" 1080P monitor at the moment, and I just get by with it. There's no way I could read a 20" 1080P monitor at the distance it is in my studio - which is basically what a 40" 4K screen would be like. Even to match the "size" of what I have now would mean a 46" 4K monitor - which is huge.

I've found a lot of the Antares products to perform badly in Cakewalk when using VST3, i.e. the pops & clicks you mention. Using the VST2 version instead fixed it for me.

I use Thunderbird too. I much prefer it to Outlook.

I've had good results on piano parts, but I did have to be choosy with what algorithm I chose. Universal or Melodic is useless for polyphonic audio to MIDI. I find "Polyphonic (sustain)" the best most of the time, but it does depend on the material. So if you get results that suck, create a region FX and try changing the algorithm, then drag it on to your MIDI track again.

Cakewalk installs the Melodyne core libraries as part of its main install, and uses them to convert to audio to MIDI. So it is in fact Melodyne, but only a small part of it. So what you can't do without installing Melodyne is create a Melodyne Region FX and use Melodyne to edit your audio. The problem is that when you do install Melodyne, those core libraries are updated and so Cakewalk is then using the buggy version.

When it says "Bucket assignment in BandLab is not supported.", what does this mean? Does this mean you can't use buckets at all, limiting you to 8 tracks, or does it mean it assigns it for you based on your track number?

They would be good additions. I'd love to see a 70's version of Phil Collins and a Nick D'Virgilio.

If you really want to control Cakewalk from the V49, you can use either the ACT MIDI Controller, or the Cakewalk Generic Surface types. There's not an Alesis V49 preset, so try the Alesis MPK49 and adjust the parameters as necessary. AFAIK you won't be able to control Cakewalk and a plugin at the same time, so you may have to disable the control surface in Cakewalk (DONT uncheck the MIDI device - just uncheck the controller), for it to be usable with a plugin. To be honest though, I can't see the V49 controls being much use for controlling Cakewalk itself. It has no transport controls or anything. IMHO you'd be best not setting it up as a Cakewalk control surface, and just using the ACT Learn function to control what you need as and when you need it.

Ok, this sounds like you're computer's power scheme is set to put USB devices to sleep after periods of inactivity. Try turning off USB power suspending in your power options.

The location of the driver has no relation to VST plugins - they are completely different things. You need to have the V49 MIDI input checked under Cakewalk's MIDI devices. When you install a control surfaces it will 'steal' the MIDI device for the control surface, which means you can't use that device for anything else like playing notes. Which is why the V49 should appear as two separate MIDI devices: one for the keyboard, and one for the controller part. Try checking both devices under MIDI devices but don't install a control surface. Make sure your MIDI tracks / instrument tracks have their MIDI source set to Omni->All. Your keyboard should now work. Only then try to install the control surface. If they keyboard stops working, then it's likely you've picked the wrong MIDI device for the control surface - so switch it to the other one.

If you delete the controller surface from preferences, does it start working again?

There's really no "one" answer to this, as it largely depends on your plugins, the number of tracks etc. When using one core, all your plugin processing is done by the CPU quickly swapping between each plugin. So it does a little bit on one plugin, then swaps to the next etc. This gives the effect (no pun intended!) of things happening at the same time. However, when a particular plugin is very CPU intensive, this impairs the CPU's ability to switch quickly as it can be stuck on one plugin for longer than usual. A faster processor means the CPU can do this intensive task quicker, so it can switch to the next more quickly. Multi core CPU's allow the CPU to do things at the same time, so on a dual core CPU there's half as much task switching (this not strictly true, but you get my meaning). While one core is busy doing it's heavy DSP processing on a plugin, the other cores can be used for other things. So I guess the short answer is that both are important for VST handling, although more CPU intensive plugins might benefit more from more cores with load balancing enabled. Its worth mentioning though for tracking, I/O speed is also a factor. When you're tracking you're writing as well as reading from disk. There's also a lot of memory swapping going on too. Bear in mind also, that I/O and memory access can also be a bottleneck with multi cores as not everything can be accessed at the same time, so they may be waiting in a queue for the resource for a few microseconds or so. So faster memory, faster I/O, CPU cores, CPU speed all play a part. Some plugins need more CPU than others, some need more memory (or faster memory due to lots of copying of memory around) than others. This link may explain things better than me... https://create.pro/blog/cores-faster-cpu-clock-speed-explained/

You need to uncheck "Recycle Plugin Windows" in Preferences->VST Settings

It was a real shame Enterprise didn't run for longer. I enjoyed most of Voyager, but I got a bit tired of "yet another holodeck based episode".

I actually prefer the older version of Nectar Elements. It's a pity they discontinued it for a while before releasing the new Nectar Elements - there's no upgrade path between them. The newer Nectar Elements does has a wizard and automatically guesses what your vocals need, which I guess is great for quick results, but it looks like there's much less control than with the original elements.

The AIR Complete bundle, although dated is still an excellent set of instruments. Plugin boutique is offering an upgrade from any of the AIR products for only £60 / $78. You can currently get Xpand!2 for £13.99 / $18.42 and then use this to upgrade to complete: https://www.pluginboutique.com/product/1-Instruments/64-Virtual-Instrument/1560-Xpand-2 https://www.pluginboutique.com/product/1-Instruments/58-Inst-Bundle/2294-AIR-Instrument-Expansion-Pack-3-COMPLETE-UPGRADE-

All of your methods of reducing CPU that you've mentioned above are good ones, and are the ones I'd recommend. One other, which is pretty quick would be to increase your ASIO buffer. This would be less suitable for tracking however. For tracking, freezing tracks would be my first option.

Monitising more advanced stuff like LP-EQ makes sense, but channel tools to my mind is bread & butter functionality. It always slightly bugs me that I have to insert it as an "effect" into a track to do stuff like flip L&R / individually pan L&R channels. I feel this would be much better either as a stock ProChannel model, or built into the track inspector itself.

From what I can gather from the video it works like this: You put one instance on every track, this "registers" this track with the plugin You then go to the assign tab (from any instance of the plugin), which lists the registered tracks. You then assign the registered tracks to buckets So the display CLA has of 4 instances showing each tab, is 4 separate instances (from any 4 random tracks) with the appropriate tab and bucket selected. So in essence, you can control all tracks from any instance.

FYI there was a link to a list on the old forum, of what plugins were bundled with Sonar from version 8 onward. I found that installing X1 Producer, X3 Producer and Sonar Platinum gave me 99% of the plugins bundled over the years since Sonar 8, less the 32 bit DX plugins of course. The only thing missing from X1 / Splat combo is R-Mix, which only came with X2 Producer, but I couldn't be bothered to install X2 as well just for R-Mix. Anyhow the link is here: https://www.dropbox.com/s/4k4trs6qj1740d6/Cakewalk Addons.xlsx?dl=0