Canopus

The original image on page 1 in this thread (the one where everybody still have their heads attached to their bodies) is quite easy to geolocate; it’s shot at the amusement park Gröna Lund in Stockholm, about a kilometer from the XLN Audio head office. Although I’m only guessing, I’m pretty sure that the reason for the event was to have a 5-kamp (pentathlon) for the purpose of team-building. I’m also pretty sure that the evening ended with a beer or two at some local pub. They usually do.

That’s extraordinary! They all seem to elevate at least a feet above the ground! And the tall guy in the back to the left has no throat. So that's what they are doing? Anti-gravity and invisibility plugins? The mystery deepens.

Signed, sealed and delivered (or at least in my ASC) . You can thank me later.

It’s €149 including VAT for me as well and I’ve only got V Collection 5 (and Pigments, if that matters). Hm, at that price maybe I should go ahead and hit the Checkout button? It would normally not go on sale for as low as €99 on BF, but of course, if I buy it now, it will.

Thanks! I’ve downloaded the new version and will soon check it out. The reason I asked for the possibility to have multiple file arguments was that I assumed it would be more efficient during a batch conversion not having to call CakeArp.exe for each file to be processed, but as you say it might very well be that the utility is so lean that it wouldn't have made any noticeable difference. Still, many thanks for the addition! Edit: As for the reason why SONAR was unable to save PTN files; of course, I’m only guessing here, but I can’t help wonder if the reason might have been that the ability to save PTN files could have been regarded as a unique selling point of Project5. Adding that ability to SONAR as well might have been regarded as product cannibalizing.

I made some small initial tests where I took a very simple pattern-like MIDI file and had it processed by your converter. I was then able to run the resulting PTN file through the CbB arpeggiator without any problems. I will make some more tests but as for the above use-case it worked very well. Great! Question: would it be possible to have the program optionally accept more than one file argument? That way I could write my own Windows GUI frontend and through your utility have it make a batch conversion of multiple MIDI files in one single operation?

I thought I’d never buy another effect plugin again, but of course I couldn’t resist FET Compressor at this price, as it will make a nice addition to my ProChannel. Let’s hope that Softube in the future will have a similar 90 % discount for the remaining four ProChannel effects that once was part of the now defunct Softube Mix Bundle. When it was still available I think the regular price for the whole bundle was $299 and never got below $179 during sales. You can currently buy the TSAR-1R reverb for $39 and the three EQ’s in the Passive-Active pack for $149. A 90 % discount would make them pretty irresistible for anyone suffering from PC-OCD (like me).

I’m pretty happy with what I've got. As I’m not going to buy mostly the same libraries over and over again, I’ll be waiting a fair number of releases before I’m even going to consider an upgrade. NI wants me to pay €499 for an upgrade from K12U CE to K14U CE, which to me is pretty ridiculous; Brainworx stuff I don't really care for and when it's time for me to upgrade my MPS 3.1 I'll turn to iZotope directly.

I updated the FX, PDC and 2x buttons in my themes Lead, Gran Vista and Carbon in November last year in such a way. The picture below shows the first two buttons in themes Gran Vista and Lead respectively before and after the change. The 2x button was changed in a similar way (not shown in this image). As for the default PDC button being confusing, Noel actually agreed that it was in a recent post.

Yes, I noticed a couple of days ago that there actually is a P5 Pattern filter available when selecting File > Import > MIDI. The pattern will be displayed as MIDI in Cakewalk and thus be available for modification, but the problem is of course that there is no way of saving MIDI as a pattern file. I can't really understand why that function was omitted in SONAR as the Bakers at that time definitely had access to the P5 program code. But who knows, maybe they still have it stored in some long-forgotten repository and quite easily can dust it off and integrate it into CbB? Or, otherwise, that "Magic Fingers" azslow3 might find it an interesting challenge to write an external MID > PTN converter?

Sorry, I don’t have Project5 and know nothing about it, but if it's of any help there is a 378 page pdf manual for Project5 version 2 online. Edit: Updated the url slightly.

Didn’t you notice that scook supplied a link to that file in his post? I have previously also been looking for that zip all over the internet and the Wayback Machine but always hit a dead end, but thanks to Steve it's now downloaded.

My personal experience is that any mouse with buttons near my thumb is a potential problem. Why? Because there will be so many unintended clicks/actions I will then have to undo. Maybe I’ve got a restless thumb, I don’t know, but my first criteria when buying a mouse is that there should be no left-side buttons.

If you somehow have deleted the Track Icons folder and you don’t have a backup copy, I think the only way to get it back is to install Cakewalk yet again. That would most likely recreate the folder and the icons that are supplied by Cakewalk. Track icons have nothing to do with themes, by the way.

I admit, I’ve made a couple of track icons over the years. When I have to take a break from some boring task, I find it relaxing to do something completely different just for fun. Sometimes it's track icons. Yeah, I know. Today I noticed that I had made more than 500 of them, so I thought maybe someone else might have some use for them as well. They’re all virtual instruments and in some cases preset libraries. Of course, there’s a LOT of virtual instruments out there so please don’t expect to find every conceivable VSTi or library in this collection. They are all in png format with a size of 96x96 pixels. The image files are named [Developer]-[Plugin]_cnps.png. That way they should be quite easy to locate despite the large number of files and also not inadvertently overwrite any existing track icons you might have. Some of them come in a few different variants as well. How to use them in Sonar and CbB Track icons are normally placed in the folder Cakewalk Content\Sonar\Track Icons for Sonar, or Cakewalk Content\Cakewalk Core\Track Icons for CbB, and can be inserted into a project by right-clicking on a track’s default track icon and then selecting Load Track Icon. Navigate to the folder where your icons of choice are kept and take your pick. They can be added separately to Track View, Track Inspector and Console View. Just make sure that Views > Icons > Show Icons is selected and they should turn up. You can optionally just drag-and-drop a track icon from File Explorer onto the track. Any part of the track will work as destination, so you won't have to drop it on the existing track icon. This action will also (almost always) automatically update the icon in the Track Inspector and the Console View as well. Fun fact: This drag-and-drop feature is not documented in the Online Help, nor in the Reference Guide. I simply found it out by trying. I would suggest that these track icons are kept inside the attached folder so that they are kept separate from all legacy icons that come with a Sonar or CbB installation. And no, I certainly don’t have all of these plugins and libraries. Far from it. But I do have a couple of them … How to get them These icons may be downloaded as a zip file from here: https://1drv.ms/u/s!AmXDCxaGb7JEgQTra_vTlaGww6zr?e=aBShc5 Disclaimer I certainly don’t claim ownership of any of the trademarks faintly discernible on these track icons. Just in case someone wondered.

My guess is that you have some clips on tracks 1-4 (not shown in your screenshot) and the Sync Play/Stop button activated on the Beats tab in AD2. That would make your selected beat in AD2 start as soon as you press the Play button in CbB. Deactivate that button in AD2 and your issue will most likely disappear.

Yes, but the voices, phrases and chord progressions are still triggered by MIDI. Watch the official Electric Mint walkthrough at 1:57.

First of all you need to update Kontakt to version 6, because Session Guitarist Electric Mint requires Kontakt Player or full Kontakt version 6.7 or higher. Kontakt Player can be downloaded here. If you own full Kontakt 6, you download it through Native Access. Secondly, you can only play Session Guitarist through Kontakt, so it’s not possible to drag the “sounds” into a DAW. When Kontakt (Player) 6 has been downloaded and installed, you need to scan Cakewalk (CbB) for new plugins for it to show. By default this will happen automatically. If it doesn’t, you need to open Edit > Preferences > File > VST Settings and press the Scan button for a manual scan. When that is done, you add the plugin into an instrument track in CbB. Once you’ve found a combination of Preset, Melody (i.e. articulation) and Pattern in Session Guitarist that you’d like to use in your project, you arm your instrument track in CbB, press R to record and start playing. After recording, you should be able to play back your MIDI in CbB and hear the proper guitar patterns being played. Of course, you'd still need the plugin in your instrument track to hear anything. As for the future, these kind of Cakewalk related questions are better posted in other parts of the forum, like Cakewalk by BandLab or Instruments & Effects.

I’ve also got a Nektar Impact LX88+ and it works pretty well with Cakewalk. However, the SE series you are mentioning is Nektar’s entry level keyboard and doesn‘t have as many DAW controls as the LX series, so if I were you I’d consider going for the slightly more expensive LX49+.

The very first third-party purchase I ever made after having upgraded to Cakewalk Sonar X1 almost ten years ago were some Z3TA preset packs from Xenos Soundworks. Yay! Since then the carousel has never stopped spinning. In fact, I had a look at my dedicated Excel sheet just now and noticed that I’ve made exactly 250 additional purchases since then (hardware not included). The total amount spent I’ll keep as a well-guarded secret.

I think the problem is that you haven't got a project loaded. All controls in the Control Bar are disabled until a project is created or loaded, but they will light up once you've done that. How much is of course depending on the theme.

When it comes to transferring MIDI patterns between different drum program’s proprietary maps, I’m using Toontrack’s discontinued EZplayer Pro. That plugin is absolutely perfect for persistent remapping. I have started to convert MIDI grooves from Addictive Drums 2 through EZplayer Pro with EZD as destination. When automatically remapped, I drag the converted MIDI into a separate folder accessible by EZD3. That way I can actually include beats that originates from AD2 in EZD’s Tap2Find. Now how cool is that? As I’ve also got K12U I could theoretically do the same for all the MIDI drum patterns found in Komplete (Abbey Road, Studio Drummer and Battery) as they are also available as valid sources in EZplayer Pro. Groove Agent is available as well, as are e.g. BFD and SSD. Too bad Toontrack stopped selling EZplayer Pro many years ago, but from a commercial standpoint I can actually understand why.

I’ve had a discussion with myself today whether I should level up my Groove Agent SE and get Groove Agent, but after looking at the comparison chart at Steinberg my left brain finally told me no. I do have a lot of options when it comes to drums so I can’t find the motivation even at 50% off. The biggest benefit for me would have been to be able to use it outside Cubase.

To be clear, we’re not talking about GIFs, but I think it could simply be a matter of repainting all currently active animated buttons when one of those is activated to make them appear as synchronized. But I could be wrong.