Light Grenade

This has been implemented in the latest early access update. Happy days!

Thanks Glenn. I'm definitely going to use this in the mean time. The wildcard naming/export system in Reaper is one of the best things about it, would love to see something similar implemented in Cakewalk, massive timesaver.

Agreed!

Another longstanding bug with this, busses or aux tracks cannot be solo'd when using the external insert plugin anywhere in a project. To hear a specfific bus/aux in solo, you have to mute every other bus/aux. Tracks can be solo'd successfully, just not busses/auxs. It can be frustrating

Cheers Jack.

Hey folks, Thought I'd share this live jam. Roland Juno DS88, Novation Bass Station MKII and an Alesis Sample Pad Pro triggering NI battery. A really enjoyable way to write music, it was nice getting a break from a snare drum destroying my right ear. Of course, all recorded and mixed within Cakewalk. Cheers.

+1

Agreed, transient detection definitely needs improving. Tab to transient is guilty for chopping off the beginning of hits all over the place, so you normally need to zoom in and check which can be pretty time consuming. Quantizing drums is a necessity in some cases.

Yeah, I get this. I nearly defected to Reaper / Studio One, and I totally get why people did. I wasn't aware how buggy Sonar X1/X2/X3/ were at the time, X2 particularly was a nightmare, I corrupted more projects than I finished with X2. However, I didn't actually realise how bad it was until I used Reaper for awhile in the Gibson/Bandlab crossover period. Reaper is solid as a rock. Thankfully, Cakewalk in it's current form is very, very good and stable, the best it's ever been by far. I just don't think people are aware, or believe it. I get that though, as I had people telling me X2 was stable when it absolutely wasn't. Bugs are being taken way more seriously now, and are being fixed quickly which is great and a testament to the team.

Over the last few years, I've noticed some dry hire studios offering Reaper as an option on their systems. One studio owner specifically told me 'A lot of the youngsters have been asking if we have Reaper'. Reaper is arguably uglier, and more confusing than Cakewalk, so I don't think the Cakewalk GUI puts youngsters off. It is however, available on both Windows and Mac OS which makes collaboration easier, amongst other things. The reason I use Reaper as a comparison is because it's very sensibly priced, or 'free' if you never come out of evaluation mode. Until studios start using Windows en masse, or Cakewalk is properly developed for Apple, I can't see Cakewalk becoming a recording studio staple. However, people starting out could do a lot worse than learn Cakewalk inside out. It's always been my #1, but I have also learned Reaper and Pro Tools (yuck) for the basis of recording in other places. I then mix in Cake, and this setup is fine.

Apple's marketing department have been successful in their quest to solidify MacBooks as the ultimate portable computer, even though they are gravely overpriced and underpowered. This is why you have students using MacBooks for nothing more than word processing. You go into a coffee shop, how many folks are using Dell, Lenovo or HP laptops? Not many. Apple have created an environment where anything android or windows is seen as being cheap, not as good or not as cool, and sadly this matters to a lot people. Cakewalk's biggest hurdle is trying to compete in an industry, and wider creative landscape which is so apple focused. In my experience of recording studios and general music production, 95% of people are using Apple products, sometimes to their own detriment. For example, students shelling out 1.5k on a MacBook, only to find out it's has a Quad i5 CPU with 4gb of RAM which doesn't actually get them very far. Thankfully, there seems to have been a bit of a realisation recently due to even more obscene Apple prices. This has resulted in a lot of people I know going hackintosh, so hopefully this combined with stability of W10 will see a slow transition away from Apple over time, which will no doubt benefit programs like Cakewalk. This is only my opinion of course!

That is an option for sure, but I like to send my channels and FX returns to different places, so putting them in the same place doesn't work for me unfortunately. Grouping the write buttons works for now, but hopefully having the groups follow automation can be added in the future.

One of the best plugin suites, they have stood the test of time. Low CPU, solid as a rock, sound great and get the job done. I've been using the Oxford EQ for corrective EQ for about 8 years now and never found the need to switch, it's just so good. Inflator can transform your mix bus and drum bus too.

I occasionally flirt with Reaper for listening to rough mixes. I really liked bus folders at first but I grew to dislike them. I prefer folders for straight organisation, nothing more. My clean guitars folder tracks don't all go to the same bus, sometimes I'll bus leads, rhythms and textural parts to different places and bus folders make this very convoluted. In Reaper, I'm always accidentally dragging tracks into folders which messes up my routing. If implemented in CbB, it should be switchable like OP suggests.

I didn't know this was a thing. I'll check it out, thanks!

It would be good if fader groups followed automation lines. For example, I create makeshift 'VCA Faders' and group a bunch of instruments to that fader. An example would be a Snare VCA and this gets my snare submix, snare verbs and snare parallel compression. I then tweak overall snare volumes with this fader. However, if I automate this fader, only that fader follows automation, the grouped faders don't. I then have to automate every channel individually, making the groups somewhat pointless. Video attached showing normal fader movement vs automation. Group automation.mp4

A very good idea!

+1

I know, but adding it with the + button would be faster. Similar to how busses work would be handy.

Bump Using this button to add an aux track would be perfect!

Just getting back to this, thanks! I worked out the exact same solution (accidentally!) Certainly a strange one, I have reported it.

Thank you @Colin Nicholls! This has been my theme for years, and I had to regrettably drop it due to the recent updates. It's my favourite theme by far, especially for long sessions.

Agree. Even a search for FX box would save time, and this could let you set up a macro.

Allen and Heath QU-16 user here. Excellent desk with really nice preamps, the full unit is extremely quiet. Fantastic build quality. You can record pre/post fader and there's 16 XLR inputs, alongside 16 line ins. I've had no issues tracking with this desk in Cakewalk. It replaced a Soundcraft Signature 22MTK which died on me after 4 uses. That unit sounded good, but the build quality was sketchy in places and the headphone amp was useless and noisy so I lost faith in the unit and sold my replacement. The QU-16 is a much better desk overall. Another option is the Zoom LiveTrak line, they are really nifty mixers for the money.

Boz Mongoose. It collapses bass frequencies to mono and give you controls for widening HF. It's on my mix bus, makes a good bit of difference and helps focus the mix.