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+1 for Xpand!2. And the other AIR synths and keyboards Hybrid 3, Vacuum Pro, Loom II, Velvet, and DB-33 are good too, but could just use a scalable GUI and some modern browsers. Although, now that I have IK Hammond B-3X, don't think DB-33 will get much love anymore. But it ain't bad, just not even close. I found Strike great fun to play, but encountered too many difficulties trying to export. So uninstalled it. Transfuser has had GUI issues and crashes sometimes, so I rarely bother. I have Structure installed, because using it as a ROMpler for some good quality off the wall samples I don't have elsewhere is occasionally useful. Especially in the 'World' category. But for roll your own types, building your own presets has become difficult, as you can no longer enter text to label anything in Structure. I suspect this broke sometime in Windows 10.

I think you could accomplish what you wanted by loading VIP multis in order, from the playlist feature of VIP. Switch the multi, and a new set of instruments quickly loads. VIP multis can contain up to eight VSTi (VST2) instruments, with added 3rd party insert plugin effects (VST2). Save your favorite multis to a playlist and go. Keyboard splits and/or layers with the eight instruments are available. Any of your instruments in the multi with an internal arpeggiator/sequencer could provide the needed groove. VIP itself has no sequencer, but VIP can run as a VST plugin within your DAW. So you could add a drum machine track to your DAW and sync with VIP. And I have instant access to over 20,000 of my various VST2 instrument presets in the VIP browser. So maybe AKAI is leaving it for dead? I don't know, but the current asking price for VIP is a no-brainer!

This is true for Studio One. I believe it's the save that bites you, not just opening, but it wouldn't hurt to be careful. Always use a "copy" of a project in testing any new software version, in any DAW. New features once saved to a file are not always backwards compatible with old versions.

The Capo feature is greyed out on the 'free' Ample guitar.

Studio One demo.... https://support.presonus.com/hc/en-us/articles/210041393-Studio-One-FREE-and-DEMO-FAQ https://support.presonus.com/hc/en-us/articles/360047170792-What-is-not-included-in-the-Studio-One-5-Demo- Or PreSonus Sphere is $14.95 a month, billed monthly to check everything out.

If you don't know what you need yet, then Cakewalk is probably enough for you now. Cakewalk is a very deep and powerful DAW, that can do most things well. I have been using it for over 20 years. And I also have Studio One Pro, that I picked up when Gibson first shut Cakewalk down. But you will know when the time comes to try something new, when you cannot do something easily that you need to do in Cakewalk. But only you can know what that is, and everybody has different workflow needs, so there's no one-size-fits-all answer to what is the best DAW. Best suggestion I could make is subscribe to PreSonus Sphere for a month or two, and give everything a go. Then decide if it's worth it to upgrade.

WD-40.

Not bad at all. I think that's close to what I paid a while back. It's a fair price for what you get.

For ugliest, I vote Reaper, FL, and Bitwig Studio. ?

There are 3 kinds of people in the world. Those that can do math, and those that cannot.

Last check. Instrument cables. Wake me up when something 'worthy' comes around, LOL!

Yes, VIP will work with any MIDI keyboard. I think that the multi and playlist features would be useful for live use, but I only use it in my home studio. I have the Alesis VX49 with the 'Advance' LCD screen for VIP integration. Needed a keyboard several years ago, got that one, and got VIP 3 bundled for free. When you launch VIP as standalone, or as a DAW plugin, the keyboard is activated in VIP mode, otherwise it performs normally as a generic MIDI controller. You can build and edit VIP multis, select presets, and control performances (playlists) all from the little color LCD and buttons on the keyboard. Seems that part probably never went over commercially in a big way, but it works. In my home studio, I would rather just use a mouse and PC keyboard, along with my large PC monitor, with VIP running on-screen in full HD. So the keyboard features are no biggie for me and I could take them or leave them. It has been a decent 49 key controller with 8 knobs, 8 pads, and aftertouch. But I would rather have a master keyboard with some sliders, which the VIP integrated series, and the NI Komplete S series keyboards all seem to lack, unfortunately.

Nope. Just my MIDI keyboard controller. Never actually thought about clicking on the fretboard. It plays the the full range of notes as Terry described, using the lowest frets (open or first position) until you reach the highest string, then advances note by note on that string all the way up the fretboard. As a keyboardist and not a guitarist, I never noticed this behavior before, as guitar voicing is all a bit foreign to me. All I care about is that the correct pitch is played via a keyboard, and it does do that.

I just updated my earlier post. Turns out that I wasn't actually running the latest AAS version... shame on me! ?

Just loaded up 6 instances of Chromaphone 3 (VST3), all playing at the same time in Cakewalk 2021.01. No issues here. Windows 10 Pro 20H2. Edit: Apologies about this post. It turns out that I was still running v3.0, even though I had downloaded and run the AAS 'all-in-one' installer after the update was released. Chromaphone 3 v3.1 now causes Cakewalk to 'stop responding' when I try to load a 2nd instance of Chromaphone 3. Several other DAWs that I have now tested this with do not exhibit this behavior. It appears to be related to Cakewalk. And as I mentioned earlier, I am still on the January release of CbB, so it's not related to the new release of CbB.

And Magix... and inMusic...

Some more detail about your VM setup could be useful. I have successfully installed Sonar 8.5 Producer (32-bit) on a Win XP Home (32-bit) virtual machine. I was able to add a USB MIDI controller input to Sonar that was connected to the host, using "USB pass-thru" to the guest. My host is a Windows machine, so the USB MIDI driver was class compliant and enabled and recognized on the host. To do this with a Linux host you would need to make certain that the host had recognized the hardware first. Then there is the audio performance question. I was just doing this to see if I could get an old copy of Sonar running, and not to actually do any music production. Not sure how far you would get with latency and all, with the audio hardware virtualized. Edit: And I just re-read your original question about controlling a soft synth on the host from Cakewalk running on the guest. I don't think there is any VM function to pass through a virtual MIDI port from guest to host, or vice versa. But I could be wrong. I am familiar with Linux (since Red Hat 9 & very early Fedora), and used Ubuntu & Mint as my daily driver for a couple of years, and used a dedicated PC install of Linux for that. Have installed VMs on both Windows and Linux hosts. Briefly dabbled with audio production on Linux, and quickly decided that Windows is much easier. It just works.

Yay! ?

I think AKAI is backing away from VIP. They have quietly discontinued their flagship VIP keyboard (Advance series) with full VIP integration, as well as have the other inMusic Brands, M-Audio (CTRL49) and Alesis (VX49). You can see that their only current products marked as "VIP Ready" are the MPK series. https://www.akaipro.com/products/keyboards

BandLab Technologies is a large group of music related businesses. https://bandlabtechnologies.com/ The BandLab CEO, Meng, purchased the former Cakewalk DAW from Gibson in order to add a fully fledged desktop DAW to the BandLab portfolio, and promised to release it for free indefinitely. So Cakewalk (by BandLab) is really a minor piece of a major company. Since the acquisition of the property rights for the Cakewalk Sonar software (the former Cakewalk company was totally disbanded), no parts of Cakewalk have ever been offered for sale. The members of the former Cakewalk development team that Meng hired have provided thousands of bug fixes, and many important new features for Cakewalk since 2018. Free for us to enjoy!

Our purpose: To continually improve the quality of life for the ordinary musician https://mu.se/about https://mu.se/muse-products

I'm not a guitarist, so AT4 is waaaaayyy more than I'll ever need. So I can easily pass on AT5 MAX. AT4 content runs well in AT5 CS btw. As an occasional bassist, the Ampeg stuff I've already got in AT4 is plenty good! But overall, after all of the IK virtual instruments, the T-Racks MAX and MixBox is plenty for me, considering that I already got good deals on T-Racks extras like Sunset Studio, Leslie, and Space Delay! ? Good to go for now! I have enough plugins!

Some background, from the guy that has been running the MuseScore project. Well worth 15 minutes if you want some insight...

Me too! An open source product acquiring another? I fail to see a business plan in that... although that might make sense from a development resources standpoint.

Since Tracktion has apparently been giving away free instruments lately, maybe they give me this one!