Canopus

I have to admit, I did too. Only a few days ago I was pretty sure I wouldn’t buy any more plugins, like ever, but with an upgrade price of €299 for all of this, UVI made me an offer I simply couldn’t refuse.

My upgrade offer is €299. It's a lot of stuff, but do I need it?

I reported this a year ago. Still, nothing. Goodluck.

Does it make any difference whether you in UVI Workstation have Preferences > General > Use OpenGL Renderer turned On of Off? Also, do you have Preferences > General > UI Scaling and Preferences > General > Script UI Scaling set to some other value than 100%? If so, does it make any difference if you set them both to 100%? Or, any combination of the settings mentioned above? FWIW, I’ve never experienced this myself and I’ve used UVI Workstation with Cakewalk SONAR/CbB/Sonar for well over 10 years.

It was like that two days ago. But I tested again right now, and if I enter the 2FA code when first starting Sonar and then exit Sonar, I am indeed able to start Sonar a second time without being asked to log on and go through 2FA yet again. I guess something has been changed on the server since Monday, because I haven’t changed anything on my side. So, hopefully this change of behaviour will last. The constant 2FA nagging two days ago made me seriously start considering my alternatives.

This is getting pretty ridiculous. I've had to do 2FA every time I've started Sonar today. Sure, I have to do 2FA to gain access to quite a lot of sites these days, but that's mostly when I'm out travelling and start using a different IP address. Also, I have absolutely no problem with 2FA when it comes to things like banking or card purchases. But every time I start an effing DAW? C'mon.

I think you previously had to own three instruments in the collection to get an upgrade price of $150. For me, only having two instruments, it was never below $199. So, I'm currently being offered an upgrade to KORG Collection 5 for $132.45. Although it's a pretty good price, $99 would have been better. Hm.

Welcome home, Larry! Hm, haven’t I said that once before?

The voucher amount doesn’t seem to be as large as it used to only a few years ago. I also got a €40/$40 voucher yesterday, but considering my purchases last year, I had honestly expected more. Well, it’s valid until January 31. Maybe some interesting deal will show up until then. Otherwise, it will at least cover the purchase of a UVI Falcon expansion.

The first thing for you to do, would be to install the UVI Portal from here. That’s the software that manages the installation of all UVI plugins and libraries. You can read more in the pdf document here. Skip everything that’s said about about SonicPass, as that’s UVI’s all-encompassing subscription program. Instead, look at the parts that talks about permanent licenses, as I assume that would be the route for you to go in order to get World Suite 3. As you haven’t got UVI Workstation already installed, you need to install that one on your PC first. Once UVI Portal is installed and started, you can download and install UVI Workstation from there. If you’re using Cakewalk by BandLab, you might choose to install UVI Workstation to C:\Program Files\Cakewalk\VST Plugins\UVI. Read more about UVI Worktation in this pdf. As you don’t have an iLok account, you can create that as well from inside UVI Portal. Look at the instructions on page 6 in the UVI Portal pdf. If you then would like to buy, say, UVI World Suite 3, you do that at https://www.uvi.net/en/world/world-suite-3.html, or possibly some third-party vendor. Of course, you would need to create your own account at UVI, as this would be the first time. Once purchased, you would then refresh UVI Portal, and that library would turn up, ready to be installed. Once everything is installed, when you start Cakewalk by BandLab (CbB) the next time, it would by default scan your specified plugin paths. If you have chosen my recommended path above, everything should work automatically and UVI Workstation would turn up among your installed plugins. Then you can simply create a new instrument track inside a new Cakewalk project, select UVI Workstation as your instrument, and UVI World Suite 3 would be available among your soundbanks inside. Double-click your library/soundbank and the GUI would open. And, hey presto.

UVI Workstation has a very long history and is a well-established VST3 plugin. World Suite 3 is a library that runs inside the free UVI Workstation, much like Native Instruments Kontakt is a VST3 plugin where Kontakt libraries can be loaded and run. Indeed, UVI Workstation requires iLok, just as all commercial plugins have some sort of copy protection, but iLok nowadays doesn’t require a USB dongle. I’ve personally used both UVI Workstation and iLok for ten years without ever running into any sort of trouble. Also, iLok is in no way specifically related to Apple; it works on both PC and Mac computers.

Yes, the Control Surface Status field hieroglyphics seem to be a never-ending issue. I think I’ve mentioned the problem when using the Nektar Impact Control Surface on multiple occasions, but I’ve never got any reaction. There’s probably a null character missing or ignored somewhere, either located in the DLL or in the Cakewalk code. Today it looks like this on my computer; from left to right: Sonar, CbB, and SONAR Platinum: Nice, and it’s always good to know when the Control Surface Status is "0□,0¨↑+□□□□,©0□□+□□□□7<□□□”, but I really don’t know what to do with that information. And every time it's different. The good thing is that it doesn’t have any impact (no pun intended) on the functionality. And, for sure, it does add a bit of crunch and character to the Control Bar.

Yesterday both Sonar and CbB crashed on me. Sonar 2024.12 didn’t even start (I tried three times), while CbB 2024.12 did start but crashed as soon as I pressed Ctrl+N to create a new project. So, I updated my Visual C++ Redistributable package from here, and everything just started to work again. I don’t know if it was the 2024-12 Cumulative Update for Windows 10, or the BandLab installers, or a combination of those, that wreaked havoc on my system, but regardless; the redist update certainly fixed the problems on my computer.

While waiting for that, you could always create your own Plug-In Menu Layout and call it something like "My Coolest Instruments". That way, even drag-and-drop will work. Something like this:

I try to only update every fourth version or so of Komplete, like going from K10U to K14U. True, that way I won’t get a megazillion of new Expansions each year, but I couldn't care less. It saves me a lot of money. The only exception was back in 2019 when I purchased an upgrade from K10U to K12CE. The reason being there were indications at that time NI was considering going subscription. As software subscriptions are a definite no-no for me, I decided to get the latest and greatest as a perpetual license while it was still possible. Thankfully, I was later proved wrong; NI came to their senses.