Noel Borthwick

For activation please read this FAQ on Activation, especially the section on in-app activation.

Some discussion of optimizations in win11 https://www.tomshardware.com/news/microsoft-details-how-it-made-windows-11-faster-than-windows-10

Oh God no, the cookie is only used to remember the users identity so that it doesn't have to prompt you to log in everytime we want to access something from Bandlab. The mystery of the overloud plugins activation is most likely because we install the original overloud TH3 installer which may be resetting the activation to what it used with SONAR. So this is probably why you see the custom code getting clobbered. Why it worked this time is when you updated you got our "thin installer" which only installed the program and anything that changed. This is another reason to update frequently since the updater will only get the differences rather than the full program installer No legal issues with Gibson, but your original FX chains referenced a lot of SONAR exclusive plugins which we don't ship with BL. So it did not make sense to include those chains out of the box since they would reference missing plugins for most users.

Correct. Also every time the activation is refreshed you get a new lease. You can also do it manually via refresh activation for the obsessive compulsives

Being "logged into BandLab" from Cakewalk simply means we save a cookie that allow you to reach user specific BandLab services such as the BandLab library view to download from BandLab, and of course activation itself. Cakewalk doesn't actually send any data to BandLab based on being logged in, so there is really zero need to log out unless multiple people use the system and you don't want them looking at your songs Regarding updating frequently if you don't use the program often that's really your call. Activation will still work automatically (if necessary) the next time you launch the program even if it's after a long time. I've never heard of overloud plugins losing activation as a result of updating Cakewalk. There is no correlation. Maybe you are confusing it with command center.

If you have logged into your BandLab account from within Cakewalk (and stay logged in), you should never need to manually reactivate even if you go past 6 months. As long as the PC is online it will automatically restore its activation whenever needed. Additionally if you ever install a new CbB update within a 6 month window it automatically restores activation. People complaining about this have been using an old version of CbB that didn't have these improvements. This was done back in April. Current CbB users will never see this message. The bottom line is issues like this is why we want people to keep up to date. Otherwise they complain about things that have been fixed ages ago.

Do you see the audio data in BandLab's mix editor when you edit the project there?

What audio device are you running currently? Post a screenshot of the drivers page if you don't know. If its onboard audio your best bet is to use WASAPI shared or WASAPI exclusive mode which are designed specifically to work well with onboard audio devices in Cakewalk.

What ASIO driver are you using. Do NOT use the RealTek asio driver as it is buggy.

interesting developments from Asus https://www.pcgamer.com/asus-is-issuing-bios-updates-to-support-windows-11-on-unsupported-intel-cpus/

Yes I know what the Fader is. We have the original Console One unit (and Cakewalk does work with it) but the fader is a more recent update.

Regarding the "secrets" of the console emulator and what it does internally, I have no clue lol. We purchased the technology many years ago for the prochannel. Only the original dev would know the technical details of circuit emulation are typically a closely guarded secret. I personally think there is some degree of snake oil in all this analog emulation stuff but I'm no expert on analog consoles

In theory this should work with Cakewalk. We support the original Console One but do not have the Fader version which is newer. If there is an issue we can look into it but the user should contact Softube support first.

Yes its primitive to discriminate on a product based on what users pay for it.

Have you contacted Softube support about this? We don't have a Console One fader to test here.

Yes a matrix cell has a full copy of the underlying data stream. While the base data type is similar, clips in tracks are more complex than data in matrix cel’s, hence its not trivial to share data directly across tracks. Editing operations are different etc.

you are running an old version and many such issues have been fixed since then. Update to the latest using this installer Also Win 7 is not supported as stated in the install message. It is not tested anymore by us and you use it at your own risk,

@Gavin Davies thanks for your interest. There is no way to contribute to actual development other than being a developer because Cakewalk isn't open source. Matrix cells store a copy of data and there is no linkage with tracks so it cannot be edited in realtime unlike the step sequencer which has native cel data. The cel data can be copied out of a cel into the TV via drag and drop and edited there and copied back but there is no direct way to do that in real time today. We have update to the matrix in our backlog but it won't be in the immediate future. Recording and direct editing were considered in the original spec for the Matrix but did not make it in.

@JamPro Which version of Cakewalk are you running and what version of Windows?

In 30 years of Cakewalk I have never seen this issue Glad you figured it out. I can assure you that it has nothing to do with any recent update. If you find out that markers are being created without user intervention please let us know.

Which version of Cakewalk are you running. We have not seen any issues with the VST3 version of Kontakt. In fact we worked with NI on ensuring compatibility for the 2021.06 release.

A new early access release is available with several new features. Please check it out and comment in the thread. This is a massive update so any testing and early feedback would be appreciated.

Can you share a copy of the project that has the issue? Include the audio data.

Some perspective from my viewpoint. Best by definition is going to be subjective, because even though Cakewalk is an incredibly deep and powerful DAW with its 30+ year lineage, there are other simpler DAW’s that may be more appropriate to some workflows because of their genre bias or other reasons. Live is a great example - if your primary interest is beatmaking you would be hard pressed to find something better for that workflow. If you leave behind very personal preferences or workflows, to the original question I would say that IMO Cakewalk has by far the deepest feature set of any free DAW out there. Its mature and has decades of experience baked into it which few other DAW’s including many paid ones have. Of course we have our share of quirks and bugs (that arguably others have too) but it has been our highest priority to solve the more serious issues since the last 3 years. To the last point I want to say that since day one our approach has never been “this is a free DAW now, so lets do the minimum to support it”. To the contrary, we have used this generous opportunity to obsessively make this as good as we can for our users. The effort that has gone in the last 3 years has been more than ever in the history of Cakewalk, to focus on improving stability as well as building truly usable and useful features. None of us have a free lunch mindset here - we do this because we care for the product and users and want to excel. As far as users cutting us slack because its free, while some more casual users might, we have thousands of professionals who make a living with this software, where the fact that its free makes no difference - the need to efficiently get their work done. We often work one on one with many users to ensure that our tools are robust and meet their needs as far as possible. The next release has a huge new feature directly based on feedback from many users working in exacting production environments with deadlines. All this to say that its as much of a pro product as anything out there and its being constantly improved with fixes and new features even more than some paid choices. Don’t let the free price tag fool you.

This is completely normal behavior. What you see when drawing is just a preview of the mouse drawing nodes. The actual recorded automation removes redundancy nodes but the net effect will be the same with fewer redundant nodes because they are converted to curves. There is no reason to have extra nodes and they would use excess CPU.