Robert Bone

Just curious - the Nova has a wide-band compression feature, here is a brief bit from page 11 of the Nova user manual on it, so wondering why you would be adding in the Tube Tech Channel and using its compression (again, just curious): "CHANNEL STRIP NOVA can also be used much like a conventional channel-strip: A compressor followed by an equalizer. This is basically just a mixture of the scenarios “PARAMETRIC EQUALIZATION” and “WIDEBAND COMPRESSION” highlighted above. But it works surprisingly well in the mixing stage." Bob Bone

Yup - LOTS and LOTS of folks had a mixture of bliss and horror, when folks started running 64-bit Sonar while still using a boatload of 32-bit plugins, and there were entire YEAR'S worth of folks complaining about 32-bit plugin x, y, or z crashing Sonar and why wasn't something done about it, etc... The answer now is the same as is was back then - 32-bit plugins are a crap shoot, no matter what bridging software is used, to try to have them work in 64-bit environments, and that is just the way it is. All of those folks who had nightmares with 32-bit plugins had to eventually decide to move to use only 64-bit plugins, whenever possible, and for any remaining 32-bit plugins they just "had to have", some worked with Bitbridge, some worked with J-Bridge, some partly worked with one or the other or both - with some things inexplicably causing crashes, and some just went belly up as soon as they got loaded. J-Bridge does offer some tweaks to try to assist individual 32-bit plugins running in a 64-bit environment. Another thing folks used to do, during that transition period before they finished moving to all/mostly 64-bit plugins, was that for any projects where certain 32-bit plugins were REQUIRED - well, they would have a 32-bit Sonar installed, and do those projects entirely in a 32-bit environment. Some folks even kept a 2nd computer available, usually with 32-bit XP or XP Pro, for working with 32-bit projects and all plugins therefore being 32-bit versions. I don't think Cakewalk comes in a 32-bit flavor (could be wrong), but if someone still had a 32-bit version of Sonar - and needed to do some work using 32-bit plugins, I would suggest installing that 32-bit Sonar, and creating finished tracks there for only those tracks that required 32-bit plugins, then consider bouncing and exporting those finished tracks to audio and then importing them to a 64-bit Cakewalk. I don't know - kind of winging it here - because it has been many years now since I had to deal with large numbers of 32-bit plugins being required for getting the sounds I needed. Once I moved to a 64-bit environment with only 64-bit plugins, I simply never looked back, nor do I want to now (except for the super small number of 32-bit plugins I find still work well in my 64-bit environment, FORTUNATELY, once folks moved over to 64-bit plugins in their 64-bit environments, things almost always INSTANTLY got rock solid with FAR fewer crashes - all the way down to YEARS going by without a crash. Almost all commercially available plugins offered free updates to 64-bit versions, though lots of the old freeware modules (many of which were amazingly good in a 32-bit Sonar), were just never ported over to a 64-bit version. I have a VERY small number of 32-bit plugins that I still use, and I keep the ones that I have thoroughly tested in a separate sub-folder in my VST32 folder in Program Files (x86). This way, only after I have tested out a 32-bit plugin, found it worked in J-Bridge - THAT is when I would move it into a sub-folder called Bridged (subordinate to VST32) and it is only the Bridged folder that I added to my VST search path in Cakewalk. So, I do have access to tested 32-bit plugins, and that is a very small number - I have well over 1200 plugins, and of them, perhaps 20 are 32-bit. Bob Bone

Try going into Cakewalk Preferences > Project > Midi > and remove the default check for the box for: "Zero Controllers When Play Stops" Some instruments tie volume to the mod wheel. Bob Bone

Try going into Cakewalk Preferences > Project > Midi > and remove the default check for the box for: "Zero Controllers When Play Stops". Some instruments tie volume to the mod wheel. Bob Bone

Well, assuming these 32-bit plugs aren't themselves not playing nicely with Bitbridge: 1) Try bumping up your ASIO Buffer Size - just to see if it make any difference 2) Look to see if 64-bit versions of those plugins exist 3) Try the commercially available J-Bridge (around $20), which might give you better results for 32-bit plugins 4) Try finding similar sounding replacement instruments that are 64-bit. Bob Bone

Is it possible your audio interface is getting disconnected because of the Windows USB Selective Suspend default? You can check this and fix this at the same time, EITHER by: 1) Go into Windows Device Manager, expand the USB Serial Bus Controllers tab, then for each Root/hub go into its Properties, and for every such root/hub that shows a Power Management tab, go into that, and remove the check for the option to let Windows shut off power to that device. 2) You can alternatively go into Windows Advanced Power Plan Settings, expand the USB Settings, then expand USB Selective Suspend, and make it Disabled. So - maybe check on the above, and then see if your audio interface still has problems shutting off or disconnecting. Bob Bone

Can you please give me some specific ensembles that do not work? I will give them a shot on my system, and try to help you figure out what is happening. Bob Bone

I would add that during recording, the ASIO Buffer Size should be kept relatively small - but not so small as to put too much a burden on the CPU, and then when moving on to mixing/mastering, the ASIO Buffer Size should be jacked way up, to give room for the types of effects that add lots of latency - like the Linear Phase or Convolution Reverb effects, to do their thing. While I could go smaller, I usually run at 128 samples during recording, and then change it to either 1024 or 2048 for mixing/mastering. Running at 128 samples gives me low enough latency to where the CPU isn't taxed too much, but is still small enough to where I do not experience audible lag during recording. I may change to 64 samples for recording, just to see if everything still hums along nicely. Bob Bone

Just to be clear - anytime I load up multiple instruments in a single Kontakt instance, they are left to be separate instruments, on different midi channels - and not layered into a composite for a single multi sound. And, everything gets properly reloaded when I load up the project again, without having to save anything beyond simply saving the project. Yeah - I probably have literally more than 50 free Kontakt libraries, and some number of purchased 3rd-party ones, as well. I LOVE Kontakt, and the many libraries available for it. Bob Bone

Hi - that is your ASIO Buffer Size, at 128 samples. I mean the Prepare Using buffer - Preferences > Midi > Playback and Recording - there is a buffer adjustment you can make there. The default is 250, but many folks find it better when set to either 500 or even 750. If set too low, sometimes notes can be skipped - meaning they won't sound. Bob Bone

Might still be something else - Can you please detail how you added Kontakt to the project, and how you loaded up the instruments and made track assignments? Bob Bone

Sometimes, the default Key-Switch notes set up for some instruments happen to be high enough on the low-end of the keyboard, where I accidentally hit one of them when I play octave notes with my left hand, and I will find the articulation has suddenly changed. Since I never want accidental key switch notes hit - I will alter those key switch note numbers, to go 1 or 2 octaves lower, and then save the instrument with my name added to the front of the instrument's name (example, Cellos would become Bob's Cellos). Take a look at your Key Switches. Kontakt also automatically increments the midi channel with every loaded instrument, so 1st will be assigned to respond to notes on midi channel 1, 2nd load instrument would get midi channel 2, etc... Then, on a given instrument's midi track, you would set the track's output midi channel to the appropriate one for the desired instrument. This way, the different instruments loaded will each play only when their midi channel gets data from its associated midi track. When a midi track is brought into focus, it automatically turns on the Input Echo for that track, and midi data will be transmitted for the midi channel set for that midi track's output midi channel (right under the FX bin). Additional sounds can be either recorded or simply heard (like a layered sound), by turning on additional midi Input Echo On buttons of additional midi tracks. Hope any of this helps - loading multiple instruments into a single Kontakt instance is VERY powerful and useful. Bob Bone

Please do not let my posts about a weird glitch I have, with how I load up instruments, take anything away from how absolutely awesome Kontakt is. I absolutely LOVE Kontakt, and despite having East West Play (and the Composer Cloud Plus libraries), along with SampleTank , Kontakt is by far, the most used instrument plugin in my Sonar/Cakewalk projects, and has been, for many years. I hope you have an absolutely fantastic time of getting to know Kontakt - don't forget to take a look for all the completely free libraries that are out there for Kontakt - you can really bolster your choices for instruments with these. Congrats on picking up Kontakt Bob Bone

Yup - I set up a track template for every drum kit I use - in my case I use Battery 4, but the same approach works for drum kits loaded into Kontakt. I set every kit piece (each cymbal, tom, the snare, hi-hat closed, hi-hat open, hi-hat pedal, and kick) to have its own output(s) (some are mono and some are stereo), and I create a track folder in Cakewalk, with audio tracks for all of the kit pieces, and one midi track to record all the drum midi data. I also make sure I get each kit piece properly level-balanced with the other kit pieces, and I additionally set up several buses for the kit - a toms bus, a cymbals bus, a parallel compression bus, a drums master bus - and then when everything is setup the way I like, I select all of the tracks for the kit, and export it as a track template. Over time, I have developed a number of these drum kit track templates, and it is INCREDIBLY effortless and fast, to insert all of the above, simply by inserting the desired track template. For other instrument groupings that I routinely use - like the various instruments I use for the Genesis tribute project I am getting things together for, track templates work equally as well - in this case, I have the all the tracks, instruments, buses, gain-staging, effects, etc., all set up - for the various instruments Tony Banks used (Yamaha Electric Grand, L122 organ, Mellotron, ARP 2600, Synclavier, ARP Quadra, ARP Pro Soloist, etc.), and it is just effortless to bring all of that in with a single track template. I save all of my track templates to sub-folders of my creation, so that they are easy to manage - like to copy over to a new computer, and because they are all in their own folder structure, they never get overwritten in Cakewalk updates. Track Templates ROCK - have a blast with them, they are insanely powerful, and great time and effort savers. Bob Bone

I looked at doing it that way - but I do not use any particular number of instruments, certainly not like a giant orchestral setup that many Kontakt users set up. I generally prefer to load up just the instruments I need. That being said, the reason I have always one my instrument and output section configuration on the fly - meaning per instance of Kontakt, is because (starting from the original default 1 output channel and a aux channel configuration of the Kontakt Output Section), I always found it much faster to first load up 5-6 instruments, then I would run one of the Batch Functions - the one that clears the output section and inserts a stereo output channel for each loaded instrument. I find doing it this way faster than setting up the default output section with - using your example - 16 stereo output channels, because doing it that way, when I would load up the same 5-6 instruments, they would all start off set to use St.1 output channel, and I would have to go into each instrument and change its output channel to use different ones from the 16 channels the modified default would bring in. I also always rename each output channel to something short that goes with the associated instrument, (and this is the same work doing it with your modified default output section or by my use of the batch function to automatically set up the output channels for each loaded instrument), so if a loaded instrument is called Bob's New York Grand Piano With Overtones, the batch function would have pretty much named its output channel some crazy mashed up attempt at it - like squishing it all together - I would manually rename that output channel as simply: Piano, etc. for the others (maybe Organ, Strings, Brass, Rhodes, Bass, whatever). SO - it has always been that there is some sort of naming and/or presentation issue resulting from my use of the Batch Function to wipe out the existing output section channels and set up 1 channel for each loaded instrument, and THIS is why I have always limited the number of loaded instruments in a single Kontakt instance to 5 or 6. I truly wish the approach I use didn't start messing up the list of available Kontakt output channels in assigning a Cakewalk audio track's input. I don't know if it is an issue within Kontakt, or with Cakewalk somehow getting confused. IF I didn't have the issues with the goofed up list of audio track input sources when using my approach, it does work faster, but if I want to load more than 5-6 instruments into a given Kontakt instance, I will have to use the method you outlined. In any case - I did NOT mean to skew this thread so far off base - it started with my simply offering up a couple of tips that I found work well with using Kontakt, and I apologize profusely. To ANYONE contemplating upgrading to Kontakt 6, or buying into it without an upgrade price - Kontakt is quite simply, in my opinion, THE best sample engine on the market - it IS my go to instrument plugin, and despite the now rather lengthy discussion about setting up multiple instruments in a Kontakt instance, I HIGHLY recommend folks buy and use Kontakt. It is amazing, in its massive number of available libraries, its included libraries, and its functionality. Bob Bone

Sure - the post started out in a different forum and got moved to deals, no probs. I LOVE Kontakt - it is my go to instrument plugin - it may be caused by how I do something in my use of it that results in Cakewalk having issues displaying the available input sources. Or maybe I am somehow causing to have Kontakt pass Cakewalk a messed up list of available sources for assignment to audio tracks. You mention loading up loads of instruments into a single instance - can you please let me know how you load up the instruments and set up the output section, when you load up a large number of instruments into one instance? THANKS, Bob Bone

For whatever the worth, I have a couple Nektar midi controllers, and I will be going over to my rehearsal space on Wednesday, and will bring them back with me, at which point I will see if I can get them properly mapped and the transport controls correctly triggering the correct functions in Cakewalk. I will follow up to this post sometime on Wednesday evening, hopefully with some good news. Bob Bone

I am a bit mystified as to why a Focusrite ASIO driver would not sound WAY better than a SoundBlaster. Did you have the Cakewalk Driver Mode when using the Focusrite , set to ASIO? And if so, what was the ASIO Buffer Size set to? Also, what Record Bit Depth was specified, and the Sample Rate? Also, if your sound quality issues were during recording, can you please tell me if your sound quality issues go away if you hit the letter 'E' on your computer keyboard, prior to hitting Play? (The letter 'E' toggles off/on the bypassing of audio effects, so if your sound quality issues are caused by one or more effects plugins, you would instantly hear things sounding better by temporarily bypassing the effects by hitting 'E' - once you do this test, hitting 'E' again will resume the processing of any effects that had been bypassed). Quite curious, Bob Bone

1) Sending in the dump was/is helpful to CbB support folks, and even more so if a good recipe for replicating a crash can be determined, and sent in to them as well. 2) As noted by others above, that particular error is a pretty common thing - trying to access memory not owned by the application, in this case the plugin. Things that can cause this are varied, and example would be if a memory pointer had not been valued - and contained all zeros, or wasn't repopulated properly due to falling through some set of If/Else conditions, and thereby executing code that should not have been reached in the normal programming logic. 3) If an error occurs within a plugin, there is pretty much no way for CbB to recover from it, as that plugin had control when the error occurred. If the error had occurred in some location within Cakewalk, you would have almost certainly seen Cakewalk as the failing module, and an offset within the program, rather than the way this crash message was displayed, (with the plugin being named as where the error occurred). 4) AWESOME, that you were, however weird it was, able to workaround the error, by using the VST3 version of the plugin. I have never before seen it go THAT way before - it has been (with some Waves plugins, mostly from what I recall), usually where a VST3 version fails but the VST2 version works. Congrats for even thinking to try using the VST3 version, AND for it allowing you to keep working on your project, and moving it forward. 5) Even when SOME plugins have gone belly up in the past, there have been occasions where the Sonar support folks were able to tweak the Sonar code to have special code to deal with some failures within some failing 3rd-party plugins. No guarantees this will happen here, or ever again - but it was pretty darned nice of those folks to do what they could to keep folks afloat by creating special logic to deal with some deficiency in one or more plugins that weren't their responsibility. Bob Bone

The vast majority of folks are running Windows 10 at this point, where maintenance to Windows, or even the version of Windows running, isn't the wild wild West it was, back in the days of Sonar (several flavors of Sonar 8, X1, X2, X3, and Platinum, on top of various Windows versions and maintenance levels of Windows, not to mention drivers, firmware, BIOS, etc...). There were, all kinds of different combinations of environments - and at times, a Sonar update version wouldn't play nicely because someone's Windows updates looked like Swiss cheese. Folks that chose to do rollbacks of Sonar had the freedom to choose how far back to go, or not to worry about it. I found it useful in trying to figure out if a given update version had broken something, versus my just not realizing a particular function hadn't worked in a while, or whatever - I found it QUITE helpful to be able to go back and forth as desired, with Sonar versions. I also frequently rolled back in my attempts to match some other user's version, to help them track down why something wasn't working any more. I hadn't considered retaining multiple versions of CbB and any associated folders, but may do so now or soon. Thanks for this thread - good idea, I think, to have a way of approximating rolling back. Bob Bone

Hi - for sure - the issue I referred to is NOT with Kontakt, but with how the list of available choices are displayed by Cakewalk, when assigning an audio input for a Kontakt instance when there are more than 4-5 loaded instruments in the Kontakt instance. I have hopefully created and properly shared a screen shot of the issue I refer to, where the list of available sources to assign as an Input to an Audio Track gets messed up, after 6-7 loaded instruments. Here is the link to the screen shot - look what starts to happen with the list - I outlined the area in the list with a red rectangle: https://imgur.com/lI3cCpn Now, in the above, the displayed input sources start to get messed up with the 6th and 7th instruments - you see Strings Left (Mono), and the next entry SHOULD be Strings Right (Mono), but instead, it improperly shows Choir Right (Mono). The actual order of instruments loaded into the single Kontakt instance are: Bass, Organ, Trumpets, Rhodes, Jazz Gtr, Strings, and Choir, for a total of 7 instruments. After loading up the instruments, I used the Batch Functions to delete the output section entries and create a stereo output channel for each loaded instrument, and then renamed each output channel to something shorter and clearer for each instrument. Now, if there is some way to have these available input sources display properly - by CbB, I would LOVE to be able to have more instruments loaded into a single Kontakt instance, I would love to learn about it. Bob Bone

FYI - I have had, in the past, Windows Update updates reset the USB Selective Suspend option in the Advanced Power Plan Options, so it is worth checking to see if that has gotten reset - don't know if this applies to the settings on individual Driver Management hub entries. One other thing - there are Power Management options for other USB connections, not just Root Hubs, for instance, I have several of these (maybe there is some sort of Intel flavor of these, as well, on Intel-based computers): "AMD USB 3.0 eXtensible Host Controller - 1.0 (Microsoft)" - I don't know what connects to them, but I also made sure these too all had the Power Management selective suspend option unchecked, as well. Bob Bone

While I have owned most of the Komplete series, going back to Komplete 3, and am now running Komplete 8 Ultimate, with additional updates (but not the Ultimate versions), of Komplete 9 and Komplete 11. I did not see much of a reason to keep paying the extra money for the Ultimate versions, and even the regular Komplete versions did not really offer any new instrument upgrades. I DID review Kontakt 6, and bought that one specifically, as a stand alone product. This is a quote from a KVR site post about what's new, with Kontakt 6 (their spelling below - not mine): "Three new instruments, in the Play Series: Sonically rich sample libraries (Analog Dreams, Ethereal Earth and Hybrid Keys) that combine powerful sound design with simple playability. Each offers eight intelligently mapped macro knobs giving you a wide-sweeping, intuitive range of control. They all showcase KONTAKT’s new wave table module, each offering two blendable sound sources and a unique take on a speciality style. Five new Effects (including 3 Reverbs) Wavetable Synthesis Creator Tools: A a standalone application designed to improve the workflows of library builders and instrument creators. It consists of two elements: A Debugger, for identifying and fixing problems in KONTAKT script, and an Instrument Editor, which can load and run Lua scripts to automap samples, duplicate and batch rename groups, and copy settings from one part of an instrument to another." I made the decision to go ahead and grab Kontakt 6, and am quite happy with it. They don't release whole version-level upgrades to Kontakt very often, so I deemed it worth grabbing. That said - there is nothing wrong with Kontakt 5, either. Bob Bone

FANTASTIC! You made a great purchase. There are some free libraries out there, and the ones that come with Kontakt are a good starting point. Do a Google search for the following search terms, and you will see a bunch of links to free Kontakt libraries: free Kontakt libraries As far as paid libraries, Digital Sound Factory has a bunch of them - there is a DSF Proteus Pack that has HUNDREDS of really nice sounds from all of the various Proteus hardware synths that were produced - that is well worth its reasonable cost. Here are some links to a bunch of free Kontakt libraries, to give you an idea of the kind of things out there: https://www.flstudiomusic.com/2017/03/38-best-free-kontakt-libraries.html https://www.standalone-music.com/2017/05/01/list-of-free-kontakt-libraries/ https://www.productionmusiclive.com/blogs/news/top-free-ni-kontakt-libraries-in-free-orchestra-guitars-pianos-vocal-world-instruments Do not limit yourself to the above - just go look for free libs, and you will find a bunch of them - I have just shy of 200 of them. 2 other tips, I would offer: 1) When you load up multiple instruments into a single instance of Kontakt, make sure the 'Output Section' is made visible (up at the top of the Kontakt window there are options for what gets displayed). Anyways, here is a good helpful practice: Click on Batch Functions, then on the option to clear the output section and create a separate stereo output for each loaded instrument. THEN, what I do is to rename each output in the output section, to a more concise name than it gives them. (it tries to stuff each output channel with a squished name of the associated instrument). So, instead of leaving it as some long garbled instrument name for the grand piano instrument I loaded, I rename that output channel to simply say Piano, and same with the other output channels. It just looks better that way. 2) I never load up more than 4-5 instruments into a single instance of Kontakt, because (at least at one point), otherwise after somewhere around 5 (might be 6) or more instruments in the Kontakt instance, when you are assigning the Outputs for the audio tracks for each instrument, the displayed list of Kontakt output channels starts to get garbled up. Leaving the max number of instruments for a single Kontakt instance at 4-5, and that issue does not occur. 3) When you DO pick up additional libraries, unless they have paid Native Instruments a fee for it, those libraries will not display in the regular list of Kontakt libraries on the left side of the Kontakt instance. You CAN switch the display to Files, rather than the default Libraries, but that gets annoying. I found that I can add any of my free libraries or even the paid ones that still do not display like the ones that come with Kontakt - anyways, I can add whichever of my additional libraries I choose, to end up being accessed through the factory-supplied libraries in their default display list. What you do to make this happen: Scroll down the list of factory included libraries, until you get to the Kontakt Factory Library, then click on the little arrow to the right of the 'Instruments' tab that is right below the icon with Kontakt Factory Library - this will open a little drop-down menu. Click on 'Open Containing Folder', and it opens up the folder where all of the Kontakt Factory Library instruments live. Double-click to get into the Instruments folder, and you will see folders, such as: Band, Choir, Orchestral, etc., just like you would see if you opened up Instruments from the main Kontakt window for the factory library. Then, add a new folder within that list of folders - I suggest calling it User Libs. Once that folder is created, you can copy/paste your free Kontakt libraries into that User Libs folder, and from that point on, you can stay on the default display list of Kontakt libraries, and when you want to go to one of your additional libraries, just go to the Kontakt Factory Library, expand the Instruments tab, then navigate to that User Libs folder, and you will have access to any libraries you added to that folder. Ta-Da. I hope the above helps - congrats on picking up the full-fledged Kontakt. WAHOO! Bob Bone

You can copy many folders to alternate locations and then update the paths in Cakewalk: Edit>Preferences>File>Folder Locations. I would suggest doing the same with the Sonar folders. When done, you can go back and delete old folders AFTER making sure everything copied OK. Look first in Preferences, to see which folders can have paths altered. Bob Bone