Starship Krupa

I think that this question can't be answered without first clarifying the term "high definition MIDI." Sonar records and plays MIDI events. I've always assumed that it records and plays back whatever types of events are defined in the MIDI specification. I don't know why it wouldn't. Compared to recording and playing back audio, MIDI is (pardon the expression) a snap.

Dumpster Fire is one of my favorite sound design destroy FX, and it's now on sale for very little. Also Backmask, MISHBY, and Pocket Dimension. https://www.pluginboutique.com/manufacturers/277-Freakshow-Industries The newer Vaporware series FX aren't included, but they're pretty inexpensive from their website: https://freakshowindustries.com/vaporware I've demo'd the Vaporware FX and liked them, but dangit, I already have too many FX, even creative ones! My only complaint about their FX is the lack of dry/wet controls, although with their schtick, I understand it as a design choice. They make things that rip sounds apart and reassemble them, they don't make things that add subtle flavoring.

Just hold the Ctrl key while dragging it around and it will prevent the venus flytrap behavior. As for opening maximized or whatever, experiment with the "D" and "Shift+D" shortcuts. They may help get you where you want to go.

There is no special procedure to add instruments or any other type of plug-in. They are not added specifically to Plug-In Manager, but to your computer system as a whole, where multiple host programs may use them with a bit of configuration. Most plug-ins either come with an installer program or written instructions to place a .DLL or .VST3 in a certain folder. Once the file (or files) are in the folder(s) the DAW (Cakewalk, Sonar, or SONAR, or another) will scan the folders for the presence of .DLL or .VST3 files and automatically add the plug-ins to Plug-In Manager and the plug-in browser. The folder for VST3 plug-ins is standardized per the VST3 specification as C:\Program Files\Common Files\VST3. You may find the locations that Cakewalk products scan for plug-ins in Preferences/Files/VST Settings. The .DLL file for a VST2 plug-in must be placed in one of the locations listed there. If you click on "Instrumentos de VST" and "Instrumentos de VST3," you may discover that you do already have some instruments installed. Hope this helps.... P.S. In the future, you may get a faster response if you ask questions in the Q&A Forum. This forum is for Cakewalk staff to post answers to questions that users ask most frequently, although plug-in installation can be a snag for ANY VST/VST3 host. 😀 There is no user of VST host programs who has not had a problem, at least minor, with installing plug-ins.

Yeah, the only reason you'd want to focus on one or the other depends on what kind of material you're working on. If by some weird twist of fate I were coming up with a soundtrack and needed to get it done fast, I'd head straight for The Orchestra Essentials. It also allows you to use the individual instruments, which are kinda exquisitely recorded, but like I said, it's sort of restricted as far as articulations. You have to pick the articulations you want in separate instances.

I have them both, and on the basis of how much I liked The Orchestra Elements, I ponied up for The Orchestra Essentials when it was on sale. They are both fine instruments, but I don't think they can be compared. They have different intended uses. Berlin Free is of the more common type of library, it has multiple instrument sounds with multiple articulations and the composition is entirely up to the user. The Orchestra Elements is more notable for the stacked arpeggios that allow you to one-finger or chord these huge cinematic sounds. The Orchestra doesn't give you access to articulations until you go to the next level. So one is not "better" than the other, they have different uses. For your criteria, the Berlin Free Orchestra wins, but The Orchestra Elements is worth having around for quick inspiration.

Something I must applaud them for is that the VST ID remains the same, so you don't have a situation like Kontakt, where each time they come out with a new engine, it's Kontakt 6, then Kontakt 7, then Kontakt 8, all of which are different instruments as far as your DAW is concerned. It's still just Soundpaint. The result of changing the ID every time is that in order for older projects to load properly, you must keep all of the previous versions of the engine installed. Right now I have 3 versions of Kontakt Player installed, and it's going to be that way until I'm sure that I have no older projects that still use Kontakt 6 Player. Seeing as that I have a LOT of projects that might have used whatever version of Kontakt, that's a "foreseeable future" timeline. I'm not sure what the upside of changing the ID is for Native, as Kontakt is great about opening older libraries. It makes for more hassle for people who upgrade, they have to leave the clutter of multiple old versions laying about, and it's not as if the older ones have features that the newer ones don't (as far as I know). Why can't it just be "Kontakt?" Or even have the option of a DLL for the new one that gives the ID of the older one, which some companies do. Native are not the only ones guilty of this (corporate bed buddies iZotope are in a close second place for me), but they're the ones who bother me the most due to the size of the packages I have to leave around, as well as the hassle of reinstalling all of them when I build a new system.

These days, it's dang near only mag in da biz....

Disagree thoroughly. Before the devs introduced the renaming options described in this topic, I would have agreed with you, but as it is now, just the fact that it's possible to give them whatever name(s) you want puts them near the top of the list of DAW's (any audio programs) that I'm familiar with. I even have my first two inputs named as Mic/Inst and the remaining six named Mic/Line to remind me that I shouldn't plug a guitar directly into inputs 3-9. Or do you mean the way that Sonar presents the list of inputs if you don't use the renaming feature? 'cause yeah, I never had an issue with it until I started using CbB. The pushback I got from people on the forum when I inquired as to why it was so garbled was a sight to behold. Ranging from the usual "it's not a problem for me, therefore it's not a problem at all" to those who swore up and down that it wasn't even possible for it to be any different because Cakewalk was displaying the names the driver supplied. Which of course raised the question for me: if it wasn't possible to take the set of text strings supplied by a driver, analyze it, and present it in a format that made more sense, then why did every other audio program I had ever used do it?

Pepsi Syndrome

My first thought was "cool, I'll get Battalion." 🙄 Just have to wait....

Do you have the full ST MAX 4 v2 suite? I think you'd find some gems in there, especially with Syntronik 2 and all its add-on libraries, and SampleTron 2. I've spent hours just auditioning the sounds in SampleTron2. It's not just Mellotron, they dug up weird stuff like the Optigan, Talentmaker, and other obscure nuggets. Actually TBH, I've found the 3 instruments/libraries other than the SampleTank ones to be the most interesting and inspiring. The exceptions to this are the later add-on libraries like the Mojo Synthesis collection, Extraterrestrial Sax, Bionic Drums, Malletopia/Malletension, Alternate Keys, Spaceport '77, Beatmachines, Clavitube and so on. I found out the suite comes with over 5,000 MIDI patterns that you can access by clicking on the pattern icon down at the bottom, the inverted "V" thing. I had some stoopid fun by using the patterns with instruments they weren't intended for. Guitar strum loops with nasty sounding synth leads, hip hop loops with the cathedral organ or string sections, etc. Or fire up Bionic Drums and go through some of the celebrity drum loops. Billy Cobham rips it up on the Bionic kits and Neal Peart punishes a CR-78, it's as if the legendary Rush drummer sat in with Kraftwerk. I've overlooked these features, despite having had SampleTank CS since it first came out 5 years ago.

I know that lots of people bought this suite in the past year. I also know that it can be hard to figure out just what you need to install and what you can skip. The options about where to install everything can be confusing too. I wrote up my insights and install procedure in the hope that other people can get the most possible enjoyment from this amazing package.

Many people have picked up this amazing package in the past year or so, either when it went on sale back in late 2023 or when it was released more recently as a Humble Bundle. The installation process can be confusing, knowing what to install and where to install it. It's easy to end up with duplicated content and wasted disk space. It's also easy to miss some of the included add-on libraries, which is some of the best content. I wrote up my installation procedure in the hope that it will help people get more use from their purchase.

Here's my Guide to Installing SampleTank 4 MAX v2, based on my recent experiences. First, SampleTank 4 MAX isn't just SampleTank 4 with a bunch of SampleTank 4 add-on packages, it's SampleTank 4 and SampleTron 2, Miroslav Philharmonik 2, and Syntronik 2 and quite a few add-on packages for Syntronik 2 in addition to the ones for SampleTank 4. If you have previously installed less comprehensive (free or CS or SE) or earlier versions of SampleTank, SampleTron, Philharmonik or Syntronik, you would do well to just delete their soundware content before installing SampleTank 4 MAX. IK Product Manager makes no effort to avoid duplication, and you will likely wind up as I did, with multiple versions installed, taking up unnecessary drive space and making the SampleTank 4 browser even more difficult to navigate. Also, I noticed that the sample files for individual instruments of the same name in the CS and SE versions were smaller in many cases, which suggests to me that the audio quality was improved along the way. There's no downside to nuking the old installation, the newest installers have everything the lesser and earlier versions have and you can take the opportunity to organize things and make the installation almost as flexible as Kontakt's. I fiddled around with my original installation trying to sort things with a file duplicate finder and finally just burned it down and started fresh. The process went smoothly after that. I also recommend uninstalling any previous versions of the programs/plug-ins. They're just clutter at this point. The exception is if you've created your own presets, you'll want to find a way to back them up and you're probably savvy enough to have figured all of this out for yourself anyway. Before you start, you'll need 2 drives, each with 550GB free or one with more than 1.1TB free. One drive will hold your downloaded archive files and the other will hold the samples you're going to install. The download drive can be any old spinner or even external drive, but since the installation process involves unpacking the archives and copying the files to your sample drive, the speed of the process is affected by the speed of your download drive. I used extra space I had on a SATA SSD, then moved the downloaded files to an external backup drive after the installation was finished. If you keep the downloaded files around, you won't have to go through downloading 500+ GB of files the next time you want to install the package. After you've installed IK Product Manager and logged in with it, the next thing to do is go into its settings and set the Downloads folder to something easily accessed on your download drive, preferably an "IK Multimedia" folder either at the root level or in your Downloads folder (if there's enough room on that drive for the content). If you are doing this on a laptop with a single 1TB drive, you'll need an external drive. If you're doing it on a desktop, the fastest SSD you can use is always the best for samples. All of my fiddling around and realizing I hadn't installed all of the content came about because I wanted to move all of my sample content (Kontakt, Soundpaint, MeldaProduction and IK Multimedia) to a new, faster NVMe drive. For about $65 at Amazon I got a PCIe NVMe adapter and a 1TB 5,000MB/s (yeah right🙄) NVMe drive for $60. The speed increase of sample loading in all these instruments is worth it. Then check Allow selection of custom path for sounds installations under Sounds install settings (it's the only setting). That will let you specify which drive and folder to install each item of soundware. This is important for organization. Next, from the Software page in Product Manager install SampleTank 4 Max v2, Syntronik 2, SampleTron 2 and Miroslav Philharmonik 2. We'll install the soundware later. Once they're installed, and you've figured out where you want to install the samples, create an IK Multimedia folder there. I go to the trouble of creating a Users\Public\Public Documents folder, but you can put it at root level or wherever, so long as it's on a drive that has at least 550GB free. The eventual install size for me was 534GB, with Syntronik 2 taking up 217GB, Miroslav Philharmonik 2 taking up 56GB, and SampleTron 2 taking up 8GB, with the rest taken up by SampleTank 4 and its add-ons. Not quite the "800GB" claimed in the specs. There were some add-ons that I declined to install and some that were installed automatically that I carefully removed, but I don't see where the 800GB figure comes from. If you added up the content included with SampleTank SE, SampleTank 4, and SampleTank 4 MAX if they were all installed separately, you'd hit that number, but the content of SampleTank 4 SE and SampleTank 4 is also present in SampleTank 4 MAX. Anyway the next step is to go to the Sounds page of Product Manager and install the sounds for SampleTank 4 MAX v2. Despite the fact that they are probably listed on that page, do NOT install the soundware for any other versions of SampleTank. It's all in MAX. Installing the stuff from the others will take up more drive space and give you duplicates in the ST4 browser. Make a subfolder in your target IK Multimedia samples folder named SampleTank 4 MAX. When Product Manager asks you to specify where you want the sounds installed, that's the folder you give it. Don't worry about any other add-ons at this point, just install the stuff that downloads from the SampleTank 4 MAX v2 section. When that's done, do the same for Syntronik 2, SampleTron 2, and Miroslav Philharmonik 2. That is, create folders in the IK Multimedia folder with those names and when Product Manager asks, install their respective soundware to those folders. This step is what will give you more flexibility later when you wish to move your samples around. You will eventually outgrow your samples drive, get a bigger, faster one, etc. and this way you can just drag and drop the whole caboodle (or individual sub-caboodles) to the new location. No fuss. Again, don't install the Syntronik add-ons yet. When this is done, hit the refresh button in the upper right of the Product Manager UI. It should show that the soundware for those products is installed. Then open each of the 4 products' standalone versions, go to their Settings/Sound Content option and enter the locations where you put their sounds. In the case of SampleTank 4, you'll put all 4 of the locations in there. You can't just give it the IK Multimedia folder 'cause it doesn't search subfolders. Next, run SampleTank 4 and compare what it says is already installed with the ST4 MAX add-ons that Product Managersays are yet to be installed (be sure to "refresh" again). SampleTank is the one to believe, so only install the ST4 MAX add-ons that ST4 doesn't show as being installed. You want to avoid duplicates again. Install them to the SampleTank 4 MAX folder on your samples drive. There are many add-ons, and you'll have to specify the same install location each time for each one. This gets a bit tedious, but fortunately Product Manager is well-designed in this regard and asks you to specify it before it queues the download. So you can queue up a dozen installs, all with the install locations specified, and you can walk away and let Product Manager do its thing unattended. Repeat this for Syntronik 2., except that as long as you've refreshed Product Manager, you should be able to trust it to know what's been installed in Syntronik. Again, install the Syntronik add-ons to the Syntronik 2 folder on your samples drive. And that's it. You should end up with everything you want installed, and the fewest possible duplicates. Store the downloaded archive files if you have room for them, so you don't have to download them again in case of reinstall or installation on another system. I keep mine on a cheap external drive. If you need to move the libraries, you have them in separate subfolders, so you can do so without being concerned that you're messing things up. Further tips: SampleTank 4 still has a bug that manifests as a program or plug-in crash after you've loaded and unloaded 20-30 samples. It's been there for a long time and IK either can't or won't fix it. I don't know if it happens for everyone or if it only happens to preset-crazy people like me, but it's for real in my case and for others I've read about. So if you're working on a project and decide to embark on a journey of discovery to find the perfect sound for your song, be sure you're current with your saves. Alternately, if you're like me and use the Syntronik, Philharmonik, and SampleTron content more than the SampleTank 4 content, you can use those products' own plug-ins, which don't exhibit the bug. If, like me, you are bothered by the willy-nilly order that add-ons appear in the library browser along the left side of the SampleTank UI, it's possible to put them in any order you want. If you hover your cursor just to the left of the library's icon, you'll see up and down arrows appear. That's a click-and-drag handle, and you can drag them into whatever order you wish. The task gets even easier if you go to the top of the column and switch the library display to text rather than icons.