Canopus

Yes! Welcome home, Larry.

With the old Cakewalk forum soon to be frozen, I’m adding links to the themes Gran Vista and Carbon here as well for easy access and future updates.

Gran Vista Black & Blue

This theme is called Gran Vista as some of the design elements are inspired by the graphical user interface once found in Windows Vista. Some would say that look is dated, but hey – so am I. 

There are four slightly different versions of this theme.

Gran Vista Black & Blue 000
No gloss on the PC modules and some other design elements being non-glossy as well, such as the track icons. This is a theme for the serious production-centric user.
Download from here: https://1drv.ms/u/s!AmXDCxaGb7JEbGpfDomY4iiHPfY
 
Gran Vista Black & Blue 030
Using 30% opacity on the gloss layer makes for a matte look-and-feel. This is a theme for the quite serious production-centric user who doesn’t want to have too little or too much of just about anything.
Download from here: https://1drv.ms/u/s!AmXDCxaGb7JEdCAuHOsrCAeaNP4
 
Gran Vista Black & Blue 060
Using 60% opacity on the gloss layer gives a subtle glare. This is a theme for the more casual production-centric user who, in the middle of a mixdown, still can appreciate some black plastic.
Download from here: https://1drv.ms/u/s!AmXDCxaGb7JEbfXIwcxnm-Y-WPA
 
Gran Vista Black & Blue 100
Full 100% opacity on the gloss layer. This is actually the original theme I made, something for all of us who likes shiny, black plastic without reservations.
Download from here: https://1drv.ms/u/s!AmXDCxaGb7JEblAVDPH9Yip3v7A

Carbon

The Carbon theme is for the really serious production-centric purist. It has an even darker look and also a flat, non-glossy Control Bar. All other design elements are shared with Gran Vista Black & Blue 000.
 

 
Download from here: https://1drv.ms/u/s!AmXDCxaGb7JEcOCxvwxFeFGalk4

Matching CA-2A Skins

Those using the Gran Vista or Carbon themes and also the Cakewalk CA-2A ProChannel module might find that the module’s brushed aluminum stands out like a sore thumb against the dark theme. As I lately needed to spend some quality time with my procrastinations, I’ve also created matching dark skins for each theme variant, plastic knobs and all. For consistency, I also did likewise with the non-ProChannel effect (not shown here).

As CA-2A predates SONAR/CbB themes and hasn’t been made aware of them, replacing the default skin can’t be done through a theme update. It involves some manual tweaking, but it’s still very easy. Instructions on how to install and uninstall the graphical resources are supplied in a pdf that comes with the zip file. After downloading, please begin by reading those instructions before proceeding.

The zip file containing all the matching CA-2A skins can be downloaded here:
https://1drv.ms/u/s!AmXDCxaGb7JEdYUVehZD7U-0cMY

Background

If the unlikely event that anyone would like to see the old thread describing the development of these themes, here’s the proper place to look. That thread also contains a few more preview images.

Here's also a link to the Release History of these themes: https://1drv.ms/b/s!AmXDCxaGb7JEdu3To6t7ZeQmmAo

Some final words: Please be patient when starting a download. Microsoft OneDrive is often painfully slow when responding to a download request.

It depends on which Browser you’re using. I normally use Firefox in which embedded BandLab hosted songs are just displayed as images. You would need Chrome to be able to play them directly. I have now bookmarked the Songs forum in Chrome just for that.

Yeah, I know.

I tried code BORTHWICK to see if that would give me an even higher discount, but that didn’t work.

3 hours ago, Kamikaze said:

I did buy mine from cakewalk they were included the full VKFX VST , but thought they were available from Overloud too. The VKFX is on Special a the moment of 49 Euros, so may be worth emailing them.

Just over a month ago I asked the support at Overloud whether the ProChannel modules were available as part of a VKFX purchase, but their answer was that the ProChannel modules were no longer available. To be honest, I was surprised by that answer. I had more or less taken that for granted that they would be possible to download separately, if not being bundled with VKFX itself.

2 hours ago, Tobias said:

Some would argue that overuse of signature space with pics and weird fonts/colors is what is so 80's

If you find a specific signature being too large or otherwise strenuous, it's possible to hide it on an individual user basis by hovering over the signature and click the X appearing to the right. Then you will have the option to either hide all signatures or opt-out specifically for the selected user. But I haven’t yet found a way to restore a user’s hidden signature.

This forum looks better than I’d feared but I’ve found one fundamental flaw: the fixed text area is much wider than the old forum so taking the default font size into consideration the width of each text line becomes unnecessary long. Comparing the line width with the old forum shows that there's about 35 % more text on each line now, just enough to cause eye strain (at least for me).