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In addition, there is also the Add Track button shown simply as the big "+" at the top of the track view. You can choose audio or instrument tracks from the pop out menu. However, it seems to lack the "add MIDI track" option show in the other methods. Covered in detail here in the Cakewalk Documentation: http://www.cakewalk.com/Documentation?product=Cakewalk&language=3&help=0x18A8C

Agreed. I've tried Reason a few times and reached the same conclusion. Same with FL Studio... My favorite WTF DAW is Ableton Live. ☺️ I think it's actually worth the effort to learn, even if you are used to a linear DAW. There are some things in there that a conventional linear DAW can't touch.

I would give them another couple of days before concluding that... but the post title itself does scream out loud with a flame baiting topic, and is most likely the result of frustration. I think most here have handled that with a bit of restraint, but ... This is not fruity loops... which I tried once and could say the same about that one... and after screwing around with it have decided that the user interface is a bit cluttered IMHO...

Those topics can be searched for in the manual. Maybe just direct links from a glossary to the appropriate manual page would be useful. For example, "Console View": https://www.cakewalk.com/Documentation?product=Cakewalk&language=3&help=Views.30.html But alternatively, by just clicking on the "Index" button on the manual page as shown in the screen shot above, the index entries are already hot-linked to the appropriate manual page...

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Nope. I was stupid and downloaded that manually when it was first released. Wish I had the manager then, as it probably would have saved me a week or two, LOL! But I just recently had a go with it on some new IK purchases and it worked flawlessly. The default download folder should be updated to a location that you are aware of. The default is the IK folder in your documents. It would be nice to hear from someone who has used it to install ST4 Max. The manager downloads and installs one application at a time, but I wonder how it handles all the parts and pieces of ST4? And how many installer prompts you have to deal with for the sound content installers...

I understand the desire to avoid any extra background processes if you have achieved such low latency. I don't know what to recommend there except by doing offline images, or using the Windows 7 image utility. I don't know any way to avoid background tasks if you want to run an autopilot backup schedule. I just put up with the extra tasks for the convenience. And I have never bothered with incremental images. I have only ever used the "full" image option, where each image file is a self contained copy of the drive. And I usually retain two or three copies. It only takes me about 40 minutes to take a full image of a 500GB SSD with 240GB used space. That is fast enough for me when I can continue using the PC while the image is running in the background. As far as Windows 7 image goes, it seems that it doesn't use an intelligent sector copying method. That means it probably copies everything (the unused sectors) as well. The image file size is larger and takes longer that way. I don't run it that often, but I do like to keep an extra copy of my system drive on hand in that format.

For imaging, I prefer a "press one button" approach, or even a scheduled approach to taking an image. Windows 7 image is not that. Like you said, it can be so hands on that it's a pain to use. But I have noticed that all 3rd party backup images use a proprietary file format for the image file. To mount and read them, you need to use a proprietary program from the backup program manufacturer because Windows can't do that by itself with 3rd party images. But Windows 10 uses .vhdx format for image files, which can be mounted and accessed directly on the Windows file system, without extra software. Drag and drop copies of files and folders from the image file directly to wherever you need them. So even though I use better imaging products on a regular basis, I still take a Windows 7 image about once a month. Just as insurance. Belt and suspenders. ?

A single thread about your entire new computer build would be fine. You could just change the title of this thread, for example, "I want to build a computer for Cakewalk." That way you would capture all of the information in a single context. This would also help someone seeking the same answers in the future who happens to search and find your thread. Besides the Q and A, this forum is also knowledge base that others will reference, and it is indexed by Google.

I answered this in your other thread...

My recent experience was that AIR/AKAI/SONiVOX were even faster than Eventide in restoring my iLok activations on a dead laptop. Emailed the publishers on a Saturday morning, all fixed by Monday evening. To be fair to Eventide, they were only 5 hours slower... still acceptable. ☺️

Agreed. Except I wasn't planning to kill my laptop. But it died on the operating table unexpectedly during an attempted drive swap. Leaving my iLok license activations hanging on a dead device. Lesson learned!

"The Hammond was shiny". Yup. Me too!

You got a point there. On the flip side if you never bought anything because it might eventually be free, you would be wealthier, but would have missed out on using great products. And I'm one of the suckers that paid for lifetime Sonar Platinum. At least I get Cakewalk for free now. ?

Huh? They have a demo to try before buy!

There a couple things to check first. Separately just for troubleshooting the problem. Start with a fresh blank project. 1. Audio - insert an instrument that you can audition with your mouse, like SI Drummer. Tap on the drum kit UI with your mouse. This will bypass any MIDI dependency and trigger the audio engine directly. Any sound? If so, then your audio device is working. Move on to testing the MIDI. If not stop here and get your audio working. 2. MIDI - tap a key on your Akai MIDI keyboard. Does the vertical MIDI meter on the SI Drummer instrument track header flash when you do? If so your keyboard is connected correctly and sending MIDI to Cakewalk. If not, try opening the virtual piano keyboard. MENU > Views > Virtual Controllers > Piano Keyboard. Press some keys on that. Any sound? You can also try opening the Piano Roll View for that track and enter a few notes there. Press play on the transport. Any sound?

I use variant 2. One plus is that you have more data throughput bandwidth by using 2 drives vs. everything on 1 physical drive. I'm still using SATA drives, but M.2 may be much faster, so as not to make as much difference in that regard by using 2 physical drives. Plus I store hundreds of GBs of sampler libraries on my data drive. That would crowd my system drive if I had all that one one drive.

And for reference, I think it's only fair to compare modern DAWs, that are currently supported and developed. These are the top mainstream DAWs in use today. Many will disagree with the rankings in here, but I present it here with the disclaimer that rankings don't really count. If you made this list of their top 12, you're in. Two DAWs that didn't show up on the list that I know some folks around here use, are Samplitude and Tracktion, so consider them added as an honorable mention. I personally have several of these DAWs.. The best DAWs 2020: the best digital audio workstations for PC and Mac https://www.musicradar.com/news/the-best-daws-2020-the-best-music-production-software-for-pc-and-mac

Well, ummm right. But that's generally what they do. ? What kind of music do you make, and how do you plan to use a DAW to produce it?

Although Cakewalk was formerly a full fledged commercial DAW called Sonar that cost hundreds of $$$, 4 days of "screwing around" with it does not qualify as experience. If you are serious about getting help with Cakewalk, then there are plenty of helpful, friendly, experienced folks here that are willing to help get you started, if you let them.

Then I assume that you want something like NI Kontakt?

We should hit the next milestone within the next two weeks. There have been 53 new participants since yesterday morning. Only 528 more to go, and we still have 3 weeks!

Glad to hear that it's working again! @Matthew Sorrelsis a regular CSI detective when it comes to Cakewalk, and @scookis a virtual walking encyclopedia for all things Cakewalk. I'm not even certain he is human. Maybe a bot. Something dreamed up by Greg Hendershott to augment tech support back in the day? In any case it's fun and educational to watch them in action. ?

Will you be using an acoustic piano and recording via microphones, a digital piano with direct in, or will you be using a Virtual Instrument piano in the box? VI's take more CPU than audio tracks. Since you probably won't be using many simultaneous tracks of audio for your piano recording (just L and R for stereo), your needs should be modest. You would probably be fine with any quad core with the fastest clock that you can afford. But if you plan to use heavy mastering plugins, then the same rules would apply as with VI's. It all depends on exactly what you plan to use. Virtual Instruments and FX plugins can be very taxing on the CPU, but again, that depends exactly on which ones that you plan to use. And save some money for a professional audio interface. Good pre-amps will be very important to high quality acoustic recordings.

Then follow @scook's advice to save as MIDI. But then you would need to also follow @bitflipper's advice, because a MIDI file cannot save explicit instrument details, except for MIDI bank/patch info that correspond to your settings. And that only works automatically when played back on a MIDI GM synth, according to the GM instrument set, which happens to define Piano at the first patch slot. The other 127 instrument slots are pre-defined GM Standard instruments that you could work with. Otherwise, when using any other sound banks, you would need to set the MIDI file recipient up with the same sound bank as what you created the MIDI file with. The MIDI file is only going to call up the instrument sound by bank/patch number that you saved in the MIDI file, not by the instrument name. It will only sound the same if the recipient's instrument bank is loaded with the same bank as what you had loaded at the time you created the MIDI file and saved it. Always remember that the MIDI file format is rather quite limited to the types of data that it can store. Maybe you could explain your goal, such as where or how you would want want to use such a saved MIDI file. There might be better suggestions available for what you are trying to accomplish. In any case, you are working with MIDI inside of Cakewalk (the piano roll editor or step sequencer, for example), regardless of how you save the file or project.