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I think he finally said that he just needs 4 mono channels, which most any inexpensive active mixer should handle just fine. I'm not understanding the "passive" part, either. I think you would want active electronics to maintain impedance levels and unity gain with an instrument level signal.

Definitely helps to have the keyboard plugged in and ready before starting Cakewalk, otherwise it my not be available for use in Cakewalk if you start Cakewalk first. Check your Cakewalk "Preferences > MIDI Devices" to make sure that your keyboard is selected as an "Input". Check that your keyboard is set as an input for that track in the track header, then you must ensure that the "Input Echo = On" button is enabled in order to have the selected MIDI or instrument track respond to MIDI keyboard input. If "Input Echo = Off", then the instrument will not receive any MIDI input from the MIDI port that the keyboard is connected to. Also make sure that the same MIDI channel setting lines up with the keyboard, the track inspector, and the virtual instrument. Are you able to play the Kontakt factory instruments with your keyboard, or is this a global issue with the Kontakt plugin in Cakewalk? Can you play the instrument in Kontakt standalone?

I used to use an older version Mackie 1202 VLZ mixer to combine my various synths and modules into a "synth" mix, before sending it to the sound card in my PC.

That deal does require an existing Biotek v1 license. But it is a nice upgrade! I took advantage of a similar deal last year.

If I recall correctly, the keyswitches were an octave lower on my keyboard than listed on the UI. So experiment with transposing your keyboard down an octave or two until you hit them. Don't recall having any issues with the envelopes, though. Are you referring to the mouse on GUI, or the MIDI CC learn?

Anything would be an improvement over the current staff view. Agree that the educational market could be an attractive marketing point for Cakewalk. Rather than re-writing the existing staff view, some sort of integration with a better notation package would be fine. I have MuseScore, Notion, and Overture, and it would be cool if any one of those could be "plugged" into Cakewalk as the default staff view. Maybe since MuseScore is free and open source, the developers would have minimal trouble dealing with licensing to include that as a replacement. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MuseScore https://musescore.org/en

I believe that for the redeem code to work, you would need to first register as a user at the old Cakewalk site. New user registrations have been discontinued there for some time now. https://www.cakewalk.com/Redeem

@user6837321970577012 Thanks, but this problem was resolved a week ago.

The Flow Motion UI is good, but unfortunately not resizable. To their credit, they made the graphics use the space available so that the elements are not too tiny on a HD display. My only real gripe with Waves is the tiny preset browser. I already had the Scheps Omni Channel and the H-Series plugins, and always groaned at the Waves preset browser any time I loaded one of those onto a track. But I was totally shocked to see a new synth released in 2018 that uses the same plugin UI format for the browser! I was gong to set Flow up in Akai VIP to leverage that browser, but for some reason VIP cannot see the Waves synths? Probably something to do with that weird WaveShell design for the Waves plugins. So I just happened to be messing around with Komplete Kontrol and I noticed it had scooped up Waves Element and Flow Motion in the most recent scan. Cool! All set now! I agree that it is convenient to be able to load a synth + FX chain in KK without launching a DAW! Nice! Edit: In addition to Waves, I also noticed that AAS, Arturia, and UJAM are NKS compatible with KK.

Right, but I've never been a NKS user. No paid NI stuff at all, so I just stumbled on this "feature" with the free Komplete Start! The browser in the Waves UI sucks, so this was a huge "improvement" for free!

Just discovered that the Komplete Kontrol library works with the new Waves Flow Motion synth. Nice to have a decent preset browser for Flow Motion, with tags for sound type and/or character in Komplete Kontrol vs. the tiny pull-down menus in the Waves UI. If you select just the single instrument in the KK library, only presets for that one will show up in the list. Since it also works with Waves Element 2.0, I assume that any Waves synth may be compatible.

Good news! Just discovered that the Komplete Kontrol app included with the free Komplete Start bundle will work with the Waves synths! If you select a single instrument such as Flow Motion in the library panel, then you will have access to the KK preset tags for sound types and/or character. No more tiny pull-down menus!!! https://www.native-instruments.com/en/products/komplete/bundles/komplete-start/ Anybody else who bought the Flow Motion, but is disappointed with the lack of a decent preset browser in the new synth? I don't know what is up with Waves, but they are stuck in the 90's with their synth UIs. Still using the old nested pull down menu system! Sheesh!!!

I didn't mean to imply that Player would work with the older NI products. I was referring to the current lineup if NI instruments. So you are probably good to go with anything on this list: https://www.native-instruments.com/en/products/komplete/?search=poweredbykontakt For example, the NI "Vintage Organs" is Player compatible: https://www.native-instruments.com/en/products/komplete/keys/vintage-organs/

Can't beat the low, low, price of free! https://musescore.org/en A series of short video tutorials: https://musescore.org/en/tutorials Free sheet music in various downloadable formats (MuseScore, PDF, MusicXML, MIDI, MP3): https://musescore.com/sheetmusic

Michael, it sounds like you understand the fundamentals of hooking up the keyboard and arranging the tracks with different instrument sounds. Larry has provided some useful tips as far as changing from one sound to another. That mostly boils down to either switching the MIDI transmit channel on your keyboard, or by selecting the track that you want to be active in Cakewalk, which allows you to play the sound assigned to the selected track. So that part is clear, I think. But the second part about playing live and triggering beats, loops, and grooves is a bit more complicated in Cakewalk, but it can be done to a limited extent. This ability is really the forte of DAWs like Ableton Live, which were designed around this usage case. Cakewalk is a linear DAW and is designed to be more like a multi-track tape recorder that moves along a linear timeline as it plays back or records parts in the project tracks, so the only included tool that really supports independent looping of clips in this type of workflow is the Matrix View. Menu: "Views > Matrix View". This can be synchronized with your project. It works, and is worth checking out, but may not be the most flexible tool available. http://www.cakewalk.com/Documentation?product=Cakewalk&language=3&help=0x200C7 There are other 3rd party instruments that you can insert as plugins, such as various drum sampler/synths, with pads that will let you assign and trigger samples and beats. via MIDI.

The free Kontakt Player version will load most any first party library sold by NI in their online shop. There are also some commercial 3rd party libraries for sale that are licensed for the free Kontakt Player.

I don't think there would be any problem with that. They don't take up much space, so I just left them. If you have any libraries that only work in v5 would be the only reason you would really need to keep the old version.

I agree. These topics have been popping up in various places, such as the main Cakewalk forum, as well as the Coffee House. Good subject matter can get lost that way.

Providing the definition is probably much easier than actually getting one out of Cakewalk. Like it was mentioned above, you will most likely need to import your MIDI to another program suited for the task. https://www.audioenglish.org/dictionary/musical_score.htm

Agreed! Gotta have somewhere better to stash the SampleTank 4 MAX library!

Ozone Elements also has the correlation trace.

I never bothered to get Rapture Pro, as I already had Rapture Classic and Dimension Pro. And now I can use Rapture Session to browse and play all of the Rapture Classic and D-Pro imported presets. But it would be great if BandLab would re-release Rapture Pro.

Check out the free sforzando SFZ player: https://www.plogue.com/products/sforzando.html https://www.plogue.com/products/sforzando-banks.html My favorite sounds for it are the free Virtual Playing Orchestra: http://virtualplaying.com/virtual-playing-orchestra/ "This is a full, free orchestral instrument sound library featuring section and solo instruments for woodwinds, brass, strings and percussion."

I think that's about it in a nutshell. The newly produced instrument sample content is excellent! The new instruments have very clear and present sounds, with an excellent on-board FX rack to complement them! The scalable UI is here at last! And the browser improvements are very nice. The various new UI features will make workflow much more efficient. But there seem to be a few issues with usability, that IMHO may relate to the increased memory footprint and the large instrument samples. Hopefully IK will jump right into optimizing ST4 a bit more ASAP, as I feel that they may have rushed this out the door to make the delivery date. I think it will ultimately become a very useful product, once it performs without issues across the board. I have a system that exceeds the IK published minimum specs, and I can crash 3 different DAWs with ST4. But I will say there is still a lot that it can do well without crashing, if I stay away from the memory hog presets.

I was thinking about swapping my 7200 rpm sample drive with a SSD to get things to load quicker. I do like the sound of the new instruments, as they are excellent, but the sample files are humongous. ST3 is running very stable on my system, but ST4 may need a few more updates before it is ready for prime time, and they are currently prepping the 3rd update. ST4 mostly works well, but it's not perfect. In spite of a few minor issues, the sounds are very good, and it almost makes it worthwhile to be an early adopter! Most of the criticism recently directed at IK was related to the manual download and install process of a very large sample collection for the MAX edition. There are 60 content installers that have to be manually downloaded, unzipped, and run to install just the new content (that's 200GB+). In addition there are another 36 content installers for the included Sample Tank 3 MAX collection. The good thing there is that if you already have ST3 installed, you don't need to install that part again. I have heard that IK has realized that they need a better content delivery system, so they are looking into other options now. Many other companies have already implemented online installer apps, so I would expect IK to begin developing a solution soon. The current process leaves a lot of room for user error, for example overlooking sample content installers, or installing them in the wrong path, etc.