Robert Bone

I don't remember how that works with multiple displays - I used to use 3, but that was years back, and since around 2015 I have gone back to a single screen (though I may use a 2nd one again in another week or so). Anyways, once I have had the console view opened, and then double-clicked on the tab at the bottom of it, to make it go full-size, I then use the 'D' key binding shortcut, to either display the console (still in full-size), or hide it again, and toggling with the 'D' key thereafter, will display it or hide it - in full-sized mode. I dimly recall telling Windows to extend the display to the right, when I had added at least one additional screen, and I could drag the 2nd screen to the left or keep it to the right, of the primary screen, so that when I moved my mouse off the screen to the right, it would appear on the screen to the right, and moving it back to the left would then bring the mouse back to the main display. That's about all that comes to mind at the moment - I am still on my 1st cup of coffee, and if nobody else responds to this thread in a while, I can hook up a 2nd screen to refresh my recollection on how that all works, and see if I can help you get this resolved. (hopefully, some more awake and more knowledgeable person will come in and save us both with a quick answer for you). Bob Bone

Well, I happen to love track folders, because I can easily collapse or expand them, to display or hide groups of tracks. For instance, I have track templates set up for every drum synth drum kit I use, where each kit piece has its own audio track, etc., and when working on anything other than the drums, I collapse that folder, and poof - 12-16 tracks collapse. For audio and midi tracks that are not part of a track template, I tend to create a track folder for my audio tracks, and another for all the midi tracks, and if I am tracking or editing midi, I will often collapse the audio tracks track folder, since any of those that are there for the audio coming from the soft-synths are empty until I bounce/freeze, again quickly collapsing/expanding sizable numbers of tracks. SO - I suggest you look at organizing your tracks into groups of them, based on seeing them when working on them, and collapsing them when working on others, and that will help keep the clutter down. Also, if you have a number of tracks in a track folder, where it is a combo of audio, midi, and synth tracks (synth tracks are the audio tracks connected to soft synth audio output), you can quickly hide or display one or more of those three groups of those tracks. Simply click on the downward-pointing double-arrow on the right side of the track folder, and it will open up a drop-down that allows you to hide/display any of those 3 groups of tracks in the track folder, by just clicking on any of the three categories the expansion of the track folder shows. Also, you can hide individual track folders, by right-clicking on one, and clicking on Hide Track Folder, and can use the Show All Tracks and Buses option in the Tracks tab in the Track Pane, or also in the Tracks tab options, you can selectively hide or display tracks, folders, or groups of tracks, using the Track Manager - which is in those Tracks tab options - and it has a shortcut key binding of In that same drop down menu - when you click on the Tracks tab, in the Track Pane, you can hide selected tracks, by first having them selected, via quick grouping them, and clicking on the Tracks Tab, then click on Hide Track. You can display them again, by clicking again on Tracks tab, and clicking on Show All Tracks and Buses, or you can selectively display them again using the Track Manager (in the Track tab options). Of the above, the quickest way to deal with hiding or display selected individual tracks, groups of tracks (synth, audio, midi), or track folders, is through using the Track Manager, and using its shortcut key binding 'H' to bring it up or to close it again. This is quick, and not difficult to remember, once you have done it a time or two. Bob Bone

Sorry - I should have been more clear - I meant to be able to change color for each individual markers and its text. Bob Bone

I have never in my life been able to convince any release of Sonar and now CbB, to let me delete a marker by hovering, threatening, or any other kind of 'ing', and have always had to pull up the Markers list and delete there. I would LOVE to be able to do that, someday.... I have great difficulty seeing things that small - in the markers on the timeline, and the font that the marker text uses is insanely small. I sincerely wish there was a way to adjust the timeline, markers, and marker text, to be a bit larger - I would gladly give up a little bit of vertical and horizontal space to be able to do that. I know markers aren't glamorous, or cutting-edge, or whatever, but just about all of us use markers, and some improvements with regard to both sizing, font choice, and the ability to color code sections of the timeline, or at least color code the markers and marker text, would be AMAZINGLY helpful. (caps for emphasis only, and not meant to convey anger or anything like that). Bob Bone

Understood - In the post the support folks had posted earlier, they had mentioned some fairly small number of support messages from the OP, and they had responded in some fashion - I was really just trying to say there hadn't been really any meaningful interaction with the forums, about whatever his issues were, so nobody here has any way of trying to help him get anything resolved, from the forums end of things. We will see how it all works out - hopefully for him, he will find something - whether elsewhere or with CbB, that allows him to create music. Bob Bone

Well, it doesn't bother me to remain following the thread, in case he chooses to come back and see if he can get things working with CbB. I wished him the best, in any case. Hopefully, he will circle back. There wasn't a lot of time between his joining the forums in August, until he decided support had ignored him, and had only posted 7 times at the point this thread began, so I am not sure how much of a chance the support folks had to interact with him - I do know they had some measure of communication back and forth - support posted in this thread. Anyways, if he comes back, I will try to help him, if possible. Bob Bone

The free Kontakt Player comes with good sounds - not the top of the line ones, but decent ones - they want you to like them, and to get an idea of how nice Kontakt is, and it is - so that you will end up buying it at some point. Here is the link to the free players that they offer - you get a couple of thousand sounds: https://www.native-instruments.com/en/products/free/ Bob Bone

I don't know what 86% of sRGB coverage does to me, adversely. I am not running any kind of graphics intensive applications - I just wanted the performance and the storage. And, I only provided the info on it as an example of some of the options that are out there - as well as indicating one does not need to lay out that kind of cash for a laptop that would work fine running CbB. I think a desktop is definitely the better choice, other than for mobility. Bob Bone

Until the OP actually chooses to share details about whatever is going on that is giving him grief, nobody much can do anything to help with analysis or resolution. He has sent some number of texts/messages/emails to support - I do not know if he and they are actively working through anything at this time. I had seen something in one of his earlier posts, having to do with either applying or not applying, or selectively applying - system maintenance. I do not recall if that was Windows maintenance, and/or drivers, BIOS, devices - I really am not sure. It was because of his comments that I began to suggest doing some examination of his computer's current state of maintenance, or lack of it, or the combination of some things being maintained and some not, etc.... We never got to a point of any willingness for him to enter into any discussion about any of that. SO - if he circles back and wants to try looking at his system, in case there is anything there that could be contributing to or causing his issues, kewl. If not, also kewl - it is all dependent on however he wants to deal with whatever is going on. Windows 10 does have a couple of nice things to run, diagnostically, and there is even update in place, to reset Windows while leaving the applications and data in place. I would absolutely avoid having to do a clean reinstall of Windows, with every molecule of my being. Bob Bone

I agree with you, @Some Guy, that without clear indications to warrant it, that going through the extraordinary step of a complete reinstall of Windows, and all applications and such, is a pretty brutal thing to undertake, and not needed, unless things are beyond repair, or there is a drive failure, etc... (that being said, it does make sense to run some of the Windows tools to check on any broken parts of Windows - like sfc /scannow, etc....) I do think that some looking into the state of maintenance, and of any 'tweaks' done in the attempted support of streaming audio, ARE warranted, particularly for this system, because of the lack of widespread showstoppers, and partly because of earlier comments the OP had made, about having been selective about what maintenance to apply, or words to that effect - so some examination of the system is warranted, in my opinion. I am following this thread, and will continue monitoring the thread posts, to nip any back and forth bashing in the bud, should it get to that. Additionally, by following the thread, if and when the OP does return to take another crack at CbB, I can be ready to assist, should he be interested in that. Hopefully, the OP will either find some other DAW suite that can do what he needs, trouble-free, or if he returns, that any issues still causing grief can be either resolved or mitigated, again with the hope that the software can meet his needs. Bob Bone

Best wishes for success, and thank you for the kind words. As it happens, I am not paid by Bandlab, nor are any of the fellow users in the forum community. I am simply following in the footsteps of those who have gone before me - the legendary Billy Arnell comes to mind. I have been helped countless times, over the years, by others in the user forums, and as such, am motivated to assist in areas where I can help, either through direct knowledge, or by doing some research. I also wholeheartedly support the product, and its continued success. The Cakewalk folks have also given me direct help many times. There are lots of folks in the forum community that do amazing things daily, to help others, and all of it motivates me to help. Bob Bone

Well - let's see: 1) Best wishes for success with music production - this goes out to anyone who strives to create music, regardless of staying with Cakewalk, or moving on, etc... 2) The prior releases of CbB can be user-maintained, and there have been posts that refer to a process that works to support installing prior releases. If you do a Google search for the following terms, without the quotes, you will see several threads returned that discuss precisely how to go about the process of saving off releases and rolling back as needed: "site: discuss.cakewalk.com scook utility prior release". Please note that these threads will not immediately benefit you, as you had not saved off any of the prior releases, but this certainly will help you with any future need to perform a rollback to undo some future release. It is possible that someone will also respond with an offer to send you one of the prior releases, so that you can at least have a version that allows your work to continue, until whatever your current issues are, get resolved. If you look through the threads returned by the Google search, using the suggested search terms, perhaps if you were to privately message some of the folks in the threads, who seem to have taken regular steps to save off prior versions of Cakewalk, well perhaps someone can and will send you the prior version. At this point, it seems to me like this would be worth your pursuing. 3) In the past, if there were any maintenance release that truly did contain systemic showstopper errors, there were immediate and massive numbers of posted reports about folks experiencing the issues - like within minutes of the maintenance release getting published for download by the user community. This has happened in the past, not at all frequently, but it has happened. The Cakewalk staff has always maintained a higher monitoring of the forums, immediately following putting releases out for download, for precisely that reason - to be able to quickly react and respond to whatever showstopper(s) were blowing things up for folks who had just done the maintenance update. There would soon be a 'hot fix' update to the updated version, to address whatever had gone so wrong as to produce systemic failures. I explain all of that, because this is NOT the situation that you are in. There are NOT widespread failures being reported by anyone out there, so that means that whatever is failing on YOUR system, is a direct consequence of some set of conditions only found on YOUR system. Regardless of your high regard for yourself, and your computer skills, it is a simple truth that there is something peculiar to YOUR system's environment - be it software or hardware, or both, likely in combination with some set of actions you are attempting to take in Cakewalk, that are producing the disastrous results that have frustrated you to the point of walking away from Cakewalk - for whatever period of time that ends up being. This is my observation - based on MY computer background, as well as my 30-year familiarity with using Cakewalk, since it first appeared, and my observations on the current LACK of other folks having recurring showstopper failures in Cakewalk. I will try another way of explaining my point - if you are in a roomful of people, and you smell smoke, and you are the only person with smoke coming off the top of your head, then it is YOUR head that is on fire, regardless of how good a hair dresser you may be,. 4) At this point, I have pretty much put forth my thoughts and position on where things stand. My offer to assist you stands, for now, for months from now, whenever you are ready to have me work with you to do some thorough analysis of whatever issues you are having - which WILL involve taking a look at your computer's hardware and software configuration and health. I will make sure I 'Follow' this thread, so that if you return to it, and express a desire to engage in cooperative analysis of your issues, I will make time available to assist you, as best I can, including my potentially contacting the Cakewalk support folks to review findings and such. What I am NOT interested in continuing to do, is to keep rehashing my above points, which I have essentially made now either twice or perhaps three times, in ever-increasing detail. I stand by my assessment of your current situation - being that your computer's environment is contributing to the issues that you are having (in all likelihood), and that you would achieve the quickest resolution of those issues, by your deciding to come down a notch or two on your self-assessment of computer skill level, and be willing to work with others to try to figure out how to resolve your issues and get you back to getting the things you want to do in Cakewalk, done. UNTIL you decide to engage, whether with me, or others in the forum, and/or the Cakewalk support folks, I will only monitor this thread to make sure that posts are 'civil', and to check to see if you have decided to engage in analysis of your issues cooperatively. 5) You are also welcome to discuss your situation through private messages with me - I always keep an eye out for messages from folks, and would certainly respond to your reaching out privately to me, if the purpose of the communication is to begin working through analysis of your issues. I have said all I choose to, regarding other aspects of this thread, but again, stand ready to assist with actual investigation of whatever your issues are with using Cakewalk. Bob Bone

Well, other than the cost, I added several expensive upgrades, detailed in my earlier post, my Dell Alienware 17 R5 laptop is a music production beast, and has given me zero issues. I have, however, had PREVIOUS Dell laptops that were constantly having to have things fixed - fortunately, I always had next-day onsite service contracts with Dell, for those, and one laptop - 11 years back, had pretty much every component on it repaired under that service contract, but again, my current Alienware 17 R5 laptop runs like a champ - doing heavy-duty lifting for live performance and for remote recording sessions. By the way, though I use a UAD Arrow Thunderbolt 3 audio interface with that laptop, I DO also own a couple of other audio interfaces, one of which is the Yamaha/Steinberg UR-22, and that thing runs solid - without ever having any problems, ever, so other than not too many inputs, it DOES work quite fine for remote projects, so not to worry about it working well with whatever desktop or laptop you end up with. Bob Bone

Hi, Dare - just wanted to mention (meant to do it that night of your posts, but forgot) - I happen to be one of the forum moderators, and I deliberately chose not to scold you, or banish you, or any of that - because you did engage with me - following your initial venting of frustration. We ALL can get frustrated when we get bogged down in problems that impact us working on the things we INTENDED to work on, when those problems force us to instead go through some number of hoops in dealing with resolving the unforeseen issues. SO, I did not negatively react to your initial post - other than to encourage you to engage and work with me - and others in the forum, to try to help you resolve whatever issues were causing your frustration. And, while it is unfortunate that you have, at least for the moment, seemingly gone off to search for some other DAW software suite - I DO hope you return to give Cakewalk another shot - and perhaps also be a bit more willing to work with me, and the other folks in the forum, to get any issues worked out. Take care - have a great day, and upcoming weekend, and may both be filled with the sounds of whatever music projects you are working on. Bob Bone

Yup. Plus, metronome count-in is per project, so you may want to set preferences that are per project, in a project template, so when you start a new project using that project template, those settings will all be set the way you want. Bob Bone

You can, however, get MUCH more bang for your buck with a desktop, as components are cheaper for desktops, versus laptops, other than disk drives, which for 2.5" drives, are identical. So, I agree with the above comments, by @Promidi, about the price of a desktop being cheaper than a comparable laptop, unless you need the mobility of a laptop. Bob Bone

My current laptop is way overkill - Dell Alienware 17 R5, with a 17" screen, M.2 SATA III boot drive, and a 1 TB HDD data drive. It has an Intel CPU, 16 GB, and Thunderbolt 3 support and port on its back panel. It was $1,999 prior to my upgrades to it, which included swapping out the original M.2 SATA III drive, and replacing it with a 2 TB M.2 2280 NVME PCIe drive, which transmits data ridiculously fast. I also swapped out the original 1 TB HDD, and put in a 2 TB SSD. Altogether, it ran about $3200 - you do NOT need something that over the top, to successfully run Cakewalk on a laptop. Just thought I would indicate something from the upper end, for reference. I have had laptops with i5 Intel CPU's work just fine, as well as some with AMD CPU's (don't recall the CPU model, but it was on par with the i5 Intel CPU), so something with that level of CPU or better, will work. You also will want a minimum of 8 GB, with 16 GB being a much better option. I could have upgraded my Dell to 32 GB, but have not found memory to be a bottleneck, nor did I on prior laptops running with 16 GB. For hard drives - ideally, your laptop would have support for 2 disk drives - one as a boot drive, and the other for your sample libraries, though this isn't essential, it IS VERY helpful to have 2 drives. Whether or not you have 1 or 2 disk drives, shoot for either an HDD spinning at 7,200 rpm, or go for a solid-state drive (SSD), as their seek times are much zippier, though the data throughput is still limited to the SATA III protocol. If your laptop has the support for either 1 or 2 M.2 drives - it should support either the M.2 SATA III types or the M.2 2280 NVME PCIe drives (fastest, by a lot), and should also support a standard additional SATA III drive, which means you could have either 2 or 3 drives, which means you would have to choose which to use as a boot drive, and which to have as a data drive (or 2 data drives and a boot drive if you can have 3 drives). Sample libraries benefit greatly, from being stored on a regular SATA III solid-state drive, and they absolutely ADORE being stored on an M.2 2280 NVME PCIe drive, which is a special kind of solid-state drive, with a data transfer protocol that is not limited to the standard 500 MB/sec of SATA III, but it limited only by the technology of the drive manufacture itself. You can buy M.2 2280 NVME PCIe drives that have read AND write speeds of up to 3.5 GB/sec. Some laptops have interference with streaming audio, because of their WiFi drivers, but if so, you can resolve that by temporarily disabling the WiFi drivers right before launching your Cakewalk session, and enabling it again once you finish with the Cakewalk session. So, a decent mid-range or better CPU, 16 GB memory, and decent hard drive(s), and your laptop will handle CbB just fine. Bob Bone

The lesson from all of this, is to be careful with the folder hierarchy of instruments, as they routinely pull associated samples or other sound content, from sub-folders, and that exact relationship between a dll and its associated sub-folder is most often REQUIRED to be as they placed it in the downloaded folder it comes in. This instrument and sub-folder arrangement is quite common with plugins - both instruments and, to a lesser extent, effects. Bob Bone

Yes, exactly. Bob Bone

I am just beginning to take a deeper dive into using Aux Tracks, versus Buses, and started with a quick Google and YouTube search on the matter, having recalled that Craig Anderton had written up some guidance on using Aux Tracks. I will circle back after I learn some more about the whole thing, but thought maybe some info in some of the following might be of value to you, in the meantime: Here are some links to pages and videos that have a lot of good info on Aux Tracks and Patch Points, and I threw in a couple additional ones that might be useful just to take a spin through: Here are some links to pages and videos that have a lot of good info on Aux Tracks and Patch Points, and I threw in a couple additional ones that might be useful just to take a spin through: Aux Tracks and Patch Points SONAR Platinum and Professional https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rCAlFThGvH8 Parallel Compression Using Aux Tracks https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GzZD-Cj_X1g&t=11s NoelBorthwick Best Practices Page 2 - there is some guidance on Aux Tracks here, along with some other great guidance http://www.noelborthwick.com/cakewalk/category/daw-best-practices/page/2/ This next one is just the 1st page of Noel's best practices guidance - not related to Aux Tracks, but might as well get both pages http://www.noelborthwick.com/cakewalk/category/daw-best-practices/page/1/ Videos on YouTube: What are Aux Tracks 7:20 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=umXC0z-Nc70 Using Aux Tracks in Sonar 7:03 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Oyyx76v9DSE Routing Busing Tracks in Cakewalk Sonar 14:40 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TqKROW94UuA How to set up project and track templates in Cakewalk Sonar 19:48 https://youtu.be/_GrACEsZOCs Even if you just take a quick peek at the pages - and maybe watch a tiny bit of any of the videos, hopefully you will find some useful info, I will be doing the same, and am QUITE sure I will learn a lot in the process, Bob Bone

I wasn't recommending one method over the other - sorry I wasn't clear about that. I was just indicating that I always use buses, rather than aux tracks, SO, i do not know if there are any issues or things to look out for, etc., when dealing with using aux tracks instead of buses. I will do some digging into this, because I did want to look at the pros and cons of potentially using aux tracks - so being as how it is already on my loooooong list of things to learn about, might as well be today. Bob Bone

If you right-click on the Cakewalk launch icon, one of the options you will then see, is Run As Administrator, and when you click that, you will then see a message pop up, asking if you want to allow that program (Cakewalk) to make changes, (or some text like that), and when you click OK, Cakewalk will be launched with the elevated execution privileges that come with Run As Administrator. Give that a shot - for whichever pain in the ' ' you were referring to. As far as your Iowa piano not finding its presets, I just downloaded the zip file for it, copied the contents of the zip folder (a folder named 'Iowa Piano - 64.instruments' and a 64-bit dll called 'Iowa Piano - 64.dll', into a folder I created, called Iowa Piano, in C:\\Program Files\VST64 (all my 64-bit VST2 plugins are in here), then launched Cakewalk. Cakewalk scanned the new plugin, and it became available in the Uncategorized category. When I loaded it into the project, it opened up to the Iowa Piano instrument, and works just fine. SO, as also mentioned in the above post, bi @HIBI, you need to have BOTH that sub-folder and the dll itself, copied into your VST Plugins folder - I suggest you put them into a folder called Iowa Piano, that you create in your VST Plugins folder, like I did. Works like a champ. If you need to download the Iowa Piano again, here is a link to it, which is where I got it: http://www.vst4free.com/free_vst.php?plugin=Iowa_Piano&id=2294 Bob Bone

I do not use instrument tracks, and if you use them with Kontakt, to the best of my understanding, you would not be able to take advantage of Kontakt's ability to load multiple instruments - like Piano on midi channel 1, organ on midi channel 2, strings on midi channel 3, etc.. (it is a limitation of Simple Instrument Tracks, not of Kontakt). If you don't mind using separate audio and midi tracks for Kontakt, rather than a simple instrument track, you can double-click on Kontakt in the Browser Pane, then when the Insert Soft Synth Options dialog box opens, if you check Midi Source, and First Synth Audio Output, and hit OK, CbB will set up a stereo audio track, a midi track, and it will route the audio track to pick up the audio output from Kontakt, and it will route the midi track output to point at the Kontakt instance, so that all you would have to do is load an instrument into Kontakt, and rename the audio and midi tracks, and you would be in business. Midi data would be captured on the midi track, and audio would be heard through the audio track, but not written until you bounce the midi data to 'print' the audio. (it would generate the audio when the midi data is played in the project, until you bounce the midi data to the audio track, or freeze the track). Now, there is more work to do when you want to use multiple instruments in Kontakt, but it works wonderfully well. There is a nice tutorial on setting up multiple outputs and synths in a Kontakt instance, in the Tutorials forum. Here is the link to that: Multiple-Kontakt-Outputs-Tutorial Bob Bone

I was unable to get to the web site to look at the manual, despite trying it in Edge, Chrome, and IE. Couldn't even get to the main web site, let alone any sub-links. Bob Bone

I have always gone the bus route - just habit, for me. Bob Bone