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I agree that Waves should really improve their licensing process to make it more end-user friendly. It is a pain, but I do like some of their plug-ins.

Am curious about Captain Chords. Please do let us know what you discover!

Make sure that you record each instrument on a separate track. And only "Arm" your current track for recording. See example in video below. It is queued up to start at 11:44 mm:ss. There are some excellent tutorial videos posted online. Suggest watching them. ?

I'm of the opinion that Ableton Live is a good companion to a traditional DAW. A good alternate DAW, so to speak, that offers some rather unique creative workflows that are difficult to achieve otherwise. If Cakewalk is your main DAW, then you would probably not want the overlap of another traditional DAW like Reaper, Studio One, Cubase, etc. But Ableton Live has less overlap. And Ableton has a friendly upgrade policy, so you do not have to upgrade every version. I was able to upgrade a license for Live v5 from years ago to Live v9, for a low upgrade price same as any existing user. But as far as Live v10 goes, Ableton finally added VST3 support in v10.1, so that's important!

I would suggest that you get Iris 2 for free (currently) and add Loom II for $4.99. That will give you spectral sample filtering and additive synthesis (sounds created from sine wave partials) to add to your synth types. These two can create some truly unique sounds, compared to traditional VA or wavetable synthesis. Just add your favorite subtractive VA synth, Wavetable synth, FM synth, and Physical Modeling synth and you have most synthesis types covered. My favorites by category in my current collection are: Virtual Analog: Arturia Analog Lab Wavetable: Arturia Pigments 2 FM: Waves Flow Motion Physical Modeling: AAS Chromaphone 3 Spectral filtering: iZotope Iris 2 (even though this one uses sample based oscillators, I consider the filtering a special class of synthesis) Additive synthesis: AIR Loom II

Had any success yet?

If you like Loom, you get 500 new presets for $5. Yup!

AIR Loom II for $4.99 https://www.jrrshop.com/air-music-tech-loom

I upgraded from Live 5 to Live 9 Standard, and they threw in an upgrade to Live 10 Standard for free. So far I haven't seen anything that made me wish I had Suite, except maybe for some tutorials that used Suite-exclusive features. Hate when they do that!

That's the lowest I've seen it on sale... Good value for an old collection! Great starter plug-in pack for new users.

But what? Wobble and Twist are $4.99... ?

I dunno, it worked for me. If you haven't used the license recovery within the last 12 months, that should also work. I've had to use that before. But I would wait for support to respond first, as they might be able to avoid recovery. And you can always move your licenses to a USB connected drive. It doesn't have to be a flash drive. I've even moved them to a connected spinner USB.

Well if you still have the NIC, just re-enable it and access to the licenses is restored.

No...no...no...

But the quality! Might as well get a new SSD while you are at it! ? C7 Grand Classical is 3.1GB C7 Grand Binaural 11.7GB Black LP (Les Paul) Full Keyswitch 4.7GB Red Strat Full Keyswitch 6.1GB And so forth...

Omnisphere 2 for $407.15 with "HOLIDAY15" coupon. Good until November 11th. ? https://www.guitarcenter.com/Spectrasonics/Omnisphere-2-1423090919119.gc

I think that sounds like the OP is looking for a virtual sampler to drop the samples into, that can be triggered by a MIDI controller.

Any chance you are using your mod wheel?

I still haven't tried one of their chicken sandwiches. Heard they were really good!

You can create multis with layers or splits (hi/lo key ranges assignable for each) with up to 8 plug-in instruments from your VST collection. Each instrument has 4 insert FX plug-in slots, and sends to the 4 available busses. Looks like a mixer window in a DAW. The instruments don't have to be NKS ready. They just need to be able to share preset info with VIP. Most plugins work for this, but some do not. VIP can't fix this if the plug-in developer did not provide this ability. Some instruments have factory preset maps, but they can be user generated. The browser will index the presets based on the factory and user maps, and tags can be assigned. I have over 23,000+ presets listed in mine, that can be filtered by tags such as instrument, timbre, style, and articulation. The presets generally load fast, and don't need to open the plugin UI to play. The instrument UI is optional, and not needed to browse and select presets. Downside: Does not support loading VST3. The workaround for this is to insert VIP as a plugin in your DAW, and then insert any VST3 instruments side by side with VIP in the DAW mixer. In this manner VIP functions as a virtual sub-mixer for any VIP multis that you created.

Maybe Spectrasonics will beat the ugly out of that UI when they release v3...

The PG Music offer for an upgrade from 2019/2020 Pro to the 2020 UltraPak is $279. But for a first timer the 2020 UltrPak is $479. If I had $479 lying around, I would probably get Omnisphere. ?

Yep, their clever marketing does a good job of creating that nagging little doubt. For a first timer, the entry level is probably just fine. Then they will probably release the 2021 upgrade in December.

The US ebay site has a few sellers offering the box for $479 with free shipping.

I see one drawback with that deal. This item doesn't post to United States