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Read Urs Heckman's (u-he) comments about CLAP in that u-he link https://u-he.com/community/clap/. It's essentially an effort to unseat VST3 with an open plugin standard. With the possibility of a few other goodies in the implementation. There is more, so the quote below is just what is most relevant to musicians...

As far as I am concerned, Cakewalk is still the best in the biz at opening or previewing MIDI files, especially GM...

I like the UJAM basses the best, followed by the UJAM drummers. Great for jamming! The guitars maybe not so much, but are interesting... YMMV... The Toontrack stuff is awesome, especially with how the EZbass or EZdrummer can match up with an imported clip!

Just FYI, but the BandLab CEO committed to keeping the Cakewalk DAW free forever. It's posted on the legacy Cakewalk forum if you are interested...

It's very cool that Cakewalk gets these incremental updates on a regular basis, for free! By contrast, Studio One 6 is dropping soon, meaning that the current Studio One 5 will be forever stuck where it is, with no more bug fixes. ?

Hey Reid, enjoyed the groove! ?

Edited the OP today to add that Vital v1.5.3 is now available for all Vital users. Previously, the Early Access was for Pro and subscription users only.

Never mind. I could not get it to run without installing BattlEye Anti-Cheat. Uninstalled... ?

Same here. I picked up a cheap crossgrade to Studio One Pro back when Gibson dumped Cakewalk. Then Cakewalk made a great comeback. Stuck with both now LOL!

That's why I use only external displays with my laptop. No laptop screen suits my eyes anymore, except for maybe checking email when traveling. At this point I am still fine with 2x 24" 1080p screens.

Sure, use what works for you! I was a Sonar Platinum Lifer, but realize that the last version of Sonar Platinum is missing about 5 years worth of bug fixes and features that the Bakers have added to Cakewalk since...

Toontrack EZdrummer 3 does that really well.

The Deals forum is a mix of DAW users. Some are using Cakewalk, and some are not.

Ha! You just beat me to it! Got their email this morning in my inbox!

No need to go to the Youlean website for this free edition! No Youlean account or authorization is required. This download is available at Plugin Boutique and hosted in your account there. Anyway, I always scan downloaded installers in VirusTotal before running them, and 69 AV engines say this file is clean.

Read the NI forum. They are "working on it".

How so? Not a problem from here recently... maybe it's just getting hammered tonight. The Epic content servers seem to be OK. Downloading a game right now via Epic Games Launcher at my ISP max throughput rate.

I'm still using 1080p, and that's a stretch with my old eyes using K6. Usable but not great. I'm wondering about the HiDPI update in K7, as the NI info so far implies that is for the "Browser" only. The rest is probably for some future update...

I'm just about to embark on the ARK for the first time. Any recommendations for the best place to start? It looks massive!

Neither do I. Just waiting for a better price!

Interesting, and I have heard some folks recommend that setting for DAW use, and others say not to do that. In any case it can't hurt to try! Glad that it worked for you, but that would also tell me that your PC is probably running pretty close to the edge of what it can do in real-time.

Surge is actually many years old. The open source dev team has updated it to XT and added some things, but the core should still be well behaved.

That's a price you pay for having a plugin with very fancy eye candy! The dev has been reworking the Vital graphics engine, but there will always be a limit to how much that can be optimized. I have noticed via Windows task manager that my Nvidia GTX 1650 takes on some extra GPU load when using demanding plugins like this one.

AmpliTube 5 is pretty computationally intensive (CPU usage), with their new modeling technology. If you are using it on more than one track at a time it will add up quickly. Don't know why Reaper and Cakewalk would be that much different, but there could be differences in their audio engines or load balancing. Even if you are maxing out only 1 of your 6 cores, that will result in audio breakup. Anyway, try recording with AmpliTube 5, and then freezing your track as you go on to record the next track, etc. Freezing bounces that track down to audio in-place with the FX baked in, then sets the plugin to an offline state. Freezing is reversible as you can unfreeze a track with just a click if you want to modify the FX, then re-freeze it. The plugin is still there sleeping with settings intact if you need to access it again.

I hear ya, because my last PC had trouble running newer synth plugins. It definitely requires some resource management. I finally just stayed with older synths that were more CPU friendly until I could upgrade. One thing I have noticed with newer synths that use animated graphics for anything like waveforms, modulators, envelopes, etc. is that they tend to eat a lot more CPU when playing while the plugin GUI is open. When the GUI is closed, the graphics aren't constantly consuming CPU cycles. So try that out for resource management!