NOLAGuy

I ordered the $5.99 Win10 Pro upgrade. Got the license key, followerd @Starship Krupa upgrade guidance, including doing a system restore before stating the upgrade. Win10 Activation screen accepted the new license key and I started the upgrade. Seemed to all go smoothly, but somewhere around the middle of the upgrde process I got a crash and a message that the upgrade ran into a problem and the changes made were being reversed. So about 15 min later, I was back to my normal Win10 environment. I checked the Blue Screen utility and the system crash was there but no simple clue as to the nature of the problem. So I'll hold on to the upgrade key and since I am considering a newer PC, I would expect it can be used on that Win10 standard version. Bottom line... The upgrade key was accepted by Microsoft and the upgrade program ran for about 15 min before the crash with the status messages indicating all was going well. So I feel it's a valid purchase.

One possibility on the support issue... I recall a conversation with a plugin vendor, I think it was Waves at the time, and the when I asked their support tech about the lack of endorsement for Cakewalk for a particular plugin, he made the comment that Cakewalk updates their software too frequently and users tend to have the latest update (because it's free?) so it's difficult for a vendor to constantly have to test their software to the latest version. I'm quite fine with that... versus the periodic upgrades on other DAWS and a cost for the upgrade!!

I'm still hoping/wishing for Cakewalk to implement a "hard stop" marker to make this process significantly easier and more logical. This forum has a lot of threads on the same issue over the years. ?

Since I happen to be on this thread this evening, I am happy to report that this week I ordered Jim's Pro Studio DAW tricked up with Jim's recommended i9-12900k chip, 32GB RAM, and one of dem der newfangled 1 TB M2 SSD drives for sample libraries, along with a few other extras. I found out about Jim's business through this site, looked at all his "Tower" computer family on his web site and decided on the Platinum Studio. Sent Jim an email with a couple questions and he responded within an hour with complete answers to my questions as well as suggesting to call him to discuss. I did so, and Jim talked me down from that higher priced model based on his understanding of my needs. We had a very informative (for me) conversation and I felt very comfortable with Jim's knowledge and guidance to entrust him to build my dream music machine. As an older retiree, long-time keyboardist/music hobbyist, and very long-time (25+ yrs) Cakewak user, I believe I will be getting a perfect PC to pursue my ongoing study of vocal recording and music production and being able to use some of the CPU-intensive applications (Izotope Nectar3, Ozone9, RX8) , Sampletank4, and IKMultimedia products & plugins that I already own (without having to do work-arounds!) and can now look seriously at other products that I couldn't run on my 11 yr old PC. I am sooo looking forward to being able to update my forum signature lines with my brand spankin' new music computer in September. Then going through the dreaded process of reloading my software products, plugins, instruments, etc onto the new machine. Hopefully I will have the fortitude to archive or delete many of the products I've acquired over the last 20 yrs, and skinny my rig down to the ones I really use, like a couple posters here have done.

I saw an email from Waves about hHarmony yesterday. Although I own Izotope Nectar 3, which has a harmony component that works great to enhance a solo vocal and I'm using it a lot, this Waves Harmony appears to be a different type of plugin, more intended to create a multi-singers effect like my older TC Helicon Voiceworks hardware module. At the current $40 price, seems like a useful add, but s I was reading the specs on which DAW hosts it works with, it states that the 2021 Cakewalk (latest Waves has tested) doesn't support the Harmony MIDI features. That seems odd but I don't know what it doesn't do or why, so hesitant to buy it. Here's a page link that opens up the specs tabs... https://www.waves.com/plugins/waves-harmony?utm_source=wnletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=waves-harmony-release-nl1-a#tab-tech-specs|tab-supported-hosts

@abacab That's a great idea!! Thanks!

@Cookie Jarvis Did you source all the parts for your PC from the same retailer? If so, which one. I starting to plan my new PC Desktop upgrade but was considering staying with a single retailer (like Newegg) and using their 3rd part assembly option for $100, since I have never built a PC from scratch, I'm just a parts swapper.

@Jonathan Sasor I posted the response I received from Waves in my original post. It appears that the reson I couldn't get the ClarityVX plugin to work was because Waves state that "the only AMD processor that's supported for Clarity VX is Rayzen 9 only." and I use an AMD chip that is a pre-Ryzen9 processor, so something in the the way Waves works their plugins (they don't use Vst or Vst3 labeled plugins) their process blocked the loading possibly because it identified an incompatible processor chip. You may also want to note that, at this time, Waves does not offer tech support for their plugins on Cakewalk2022 because they haven't yet tested on the new version.

This problem appears to be similar to the Feb 20th topic: Waves CR8 Sampler. Using CW 2022.02. I've installed correctly, it would appear, the new plugin noise reduction plugin from Waves... Clarity Vx, but using the CW Plugin Scan, I was not seeing the Clarity Vx plugin loadingI get the Cakewalk VST Scan box crash with the message "Cakewalk VST Scan has stopped working correctly. Windows will close the program...". The Scanner stopped at the file "Clarity Vx MONO" which would be the plugin I'm looking to load in. This is a Vst3 plugin and is in the Waves v13 series. It's a 64bit plugin, and Waves loads these plugins into the Program Files (x86) folder. I've tried reloading using the Waves Central installer twice and even ordered a demo of another v13 product, whic loaded in CW successfully as part of the same install instance. I've done some troubleshooting and have filed a support ticket with Waves this weekend, so will update once I get a reply. In the "Waves CR8 Sampler" thread from Feb 20 2002, several suggestions were made about other Vst3 files that CW had issues loading via the Plugin Scanner. Although I will wait a response from Waves before doing some of the suggested options which involve moving and deleting Waves files with users having mixed results, I'm posting this as an alert in case there is a problem with the Cakewalk Plugin Scanner/Loader which was suggested in that previous thread might be an issue since several other non-Waves products also encountered difficulties loading Vst3 plugins. UPDATE: I received a reply from Waves Support. Some interesting info, although I'm not going to purchase ClarityVx because I have an AMD processor pre-Ryzen9 and they are only supporting ClarityVx on the Ryzen9 chip. Here's the text... Thank you for contacting Waves Tech Support. Please note that Waves plugins are not yet supported on Cakewalk 2022, since it not had been tested yet. Also, the only AMD processor that's supported for Clarity VX is Rayzen 9 only. In the matter of files and locations - Waves do not install plugins in the form of .vst3 or .vst, but .bundle files, with the naming scheme being [PluginName].bundle. I.e. as you've seen, Clarity VX is installed in your Plug-Ins V13 folder as Clarity VX.bundle. The file that the host application reads when scanning is the WaveShell1-VST3 13.x_x64.vst3 (in Cakewalk's case). That is installed in C:\Program File\Common File\VST3.

Nice analysis! Since I have an older CPU, and I use ST4 with a MIDI track, I find the sound I want, tweak it as needed, and just create a WAV file for that track and "import" the WAV file into a track for further mix processing. Since I now use the full version of iZotope's Nectar3 for vocals, that consumes a lot of my available CPU, I ususally need to work on the instrumentals seperately in a seperate project and create a "mix" track which I transfer into the vocal project. Takes extra time and not ideal, but I'm a hobbyist and have plenty of time to spend on a project.

One minor comment... I have both ST3 and ST4 installed. Several past Cakewalk projects were set to use ST3 and I initially had problems getting ST4 to work right in Cakewalk. As I open those older projects to tinker with newer plugins and such, I do notice that ST3 is not as CPU intensive as ST4. Substituting ST4 in place of ST3 produced a notable spike on the processing meter. So since I think many sounds in ST4 when used "vanilla", are basically modified ST3 sounds, and I typically can't tell the diffence in a mix, so if CPU load is an issue on your projects, using ST3 with it's sound library may help.

Ah yes... bagpipes. We hired a bagpiper to play at my wife's funeral a few years back, as she was half Irish (which half I'll leave unsaid). We had no idea whether bagpipes were part of Ireland's music heritage, but seemed fitting. Bagpipe tunes sound appropriately sad for a sad occassion, and along with a version of Amazing Gace, he did play a couple of wife's favorite Irish tunes like Danny Boy and Irish Eyes are Smiling at the service. Admittedly, the bagpipes were a unique touch to the occasion, but as a long-time keyboardist, I would have to say a step in the wrong direction vis-a-vis organ or piano music.

@Doug Steinschneider probably very few are still browing this IK related thread, so you may not get responses, but here's my take... I used the Behringer ECM 8000 with IK ARC for an initial equalization test run to try out the ARC product. In general, to get the full benefit of the ARC equalization is a lot of work, and the end result of the process didn't really seem to make any significant difference to my hearing, yet eating up a lot of CPU in projects using those results. Without doing an A-B comparison of the Behringer vs IKM mikes, which may require some type of equaliztion analyzer, and likely not any audible differences, I would say using the Behringer would not be an issue, except perhaps to a "purist". The ARC product is something I've put aside for potential future use if I reach the point of caring about the fine nuances of sound in my listening environment. For the time being, I'm just focused on making changes to my projects to keep the sound I like similar across CD, streaming, phone and automobile/PC speaker playback situations and maybe trying out the several plugins I see in ads that make that process much easier.

Possibly related.... I've been having a crash problem using the Sampletank4 VST3 (or VST2 version) with Cakewalk on my music PC, although STank4 works fine in standalone mode and SampleTank3 works fine as a VST and standalone. However, on my desktop PC, ST4 works correctly with CW. I have filed a support request with IK Multimedia, and got an interim response from them. The support tech guy was having a similar CW crashing problem using their Amplitude product, and they are narrowing down to a recent Win10 update that altered some internal operating system parameter that ST4 uses. My desktop PC is indeed using an older release of Win10, so I'm temporarily freezing Win10 updating, but I don't want to mess with trying to backout an update(s) from the music PC. Per the IKM support tech they are making program changes and will be testing soon to see if that is the solution. If IK Multimedia has potentially found a Win10 operating system issue, it may also be affecting the EZBass/Toontrack issue, which means the application vendor may have to make changes.

Unfortunately, similar problems happen occasionally when CW is loading a project. It generally has to do with either an issue in your computer configuration or some option in your CW setup that you can change. I've found that the only answer is to use CW Support and file a problem report. If you're not getting an Error Screen popup showing an error code, then you need to make a setting change in CW. I had to do this some time ago and I don't recall exactly how I did it. but it's something like this: Under preferences | Initialization file you can set the ExceptionHandlingSeverity=7 You may have to type the string into a text box that comes up, but if you search around the CW Forum, I think there is there is a step-by-step explanation of how to file a problem report with CW Support and how you send them a crash dump. Likely there is no quick and easy answer since you changed your computer and there could be some differences in the configuration files.

Good solution. I think ST4 SE version still loads the full standard library.

@Grem I thought I had the same issue several weeks ago, but realized that the Promos highest on the list didn't show multiple freebies, but the Promos lower/lowest on the list did, so check the bottom one to see if you have multiple freebie selections. From my experience and confirmed by PeterIK, you can click the Promo and see, then back out without losing the promo.

I'm going to load up the ARC software and play around with it and the mike for a few hours this weekend. I think it will work fine based on reviews and Sweetwater's return policy and the 2-year warranty pretty much takes the risk out of this purchase!

I wrote too soon. Order got delivered today. Here's a pic.

I decided to buy the Behringer MEMS mike, which has a $100 MSRP, but Sweetwater offering on a special sale for $29 and free shipping plus their 2-yr warranty. It was out-of-stock and backordered when I purchased it earlier this week, but got an email that it's shipped and will arrive at my door on Monday.

Poifect!! I'll start getting ready for the 50th Anniversary Group Buy!!!

HAPPY 25th GREAT BUY!!! So anyone know if there will be any additional item(s) available to select with our freebies as a Thanks for hitting the 25K mark?

Yes, but if the GB ends tomorow, then is it 30 days from Oct 16th or is it based on the "official" revised end, i.e. 30 days from Oct 31st?

I'd like to start a rumor that an unidentified source said that @Peter - IK Multimediawill be adding 30 additional promo freebies if the GB reaches 25K, ten each at the $50, $100, and $150 levels!

Helping the cause... Did my 3rd Buy yesterday. Just wanted to scoop up the complete (22) Syntronik Synth libraries, adding 75Gb to my Sounds/Samples Drive. So this 25th GB has (so far) netted me 69 promo products and 3 Buys , 72 total products to keep me busy exploring my treasures! Thank you IKMultimedia and Peter!!!