Starship Krupa

Not great at all. The developers have shown no interest in the format. As mentioned earlier, they've developed their own file format, which allows projects to be opened in and from the only other DAW that matters to them, Cakewalk Next.

I just tried it again and this time it worked just like it's supposed to, with the usual exception that I had to open the Drum Map Manager and set all of the outputs to route to the Addictive Drums 2 instrument rather than my Saffire Pro's MIDI in port. I've always had to do that anyway, and it's a trivial procedure with a good success rate. That is, it's successful at getting the controller's notes mapped to the soft synth's sounds. So I think what I'll do going forward is, rather than having my heart set on using the drum pane with Addictive Drums 2, I'll just try it once at the start of the project, and if it doesn't work, fall back to using the keyboard view with the AD2.INS definitions. Then if that doesn't work, I'll fall back to figuring out where the instruments are on the piano keyboard with a bit of educated trial and error. And however I end up editing my drum track is how I will edit my drum track. The idea is that while using the drum pane is my first choice, it's not guaranteed that it will work on any given attempt. So rather than letting the failure blow the mood, I'll be ready with a backup plan and then a failsafe in case the backup plan doesn't work. So at least sometimes I'll be able to work in my preferred view. When I can't I can't, no sense getting my knickers in a wad over something that's out of my control. My distress came from believing that I can get it to work reliably if I just follow the correct steps, but observed time after time that this belief was not true. If I just let go of that assumption, I'll be fine. After all, if the drink I like best at my favorite restaurant is iced tea, and I go there and they happen to be out of iced tea, I don't let it ruin the entire meal. Sometimes the drum grid fails to display correctly, and that's okay. If today's a day when it works, well, super. If not, I can still edit drums. If the drum pane works, it usually keeps working, so that's not a worry.

Dawg, I got more plug-ins on my laptop than 1K. I wouldn't think so. "Dry" suggests that the recording room was deadened, "dead" makes me think that the drums themselves were tuned for minimum sustain and/or had muffling applied.

Those of us who take our laptops out to coffee houses and don't wish to lug around our Studio 2|4 or Scarlett 2i2 thank you in advance. 😍 That said, I see improvements on my 2017 Dell Latitude with a 2-core i7 using WASAPI Exclusive. If any performance tuning has been done by a user within CbB, checking that AUD.INI is important. Thread Scheduling Model is key here.

Long requested feature, and one I would love to see. Since plug-ins are initially slotted into whatever category they report, and the display name of the plug-in is usually at least shortened, it can be a pain to see if a new one was successfully installed for Cakewalk. I usually switch my layout to "Sort by Manufacturer" to make it easier to track them down and edit their display names and/or put them into my preferred categories. Even a "New" category or indicator that only appears the first time a plug-in is scanned by Cakewalk would be so handy.

Nah, once I get the drum pane set up, it tends to keep going okay. The problem isn't getting sound to come out, it's getting a drum grid with note names on the left. And I don't use the note remapping feature for any synth that's not a drum machine. You're thinking in terms of "he's having trouble with drum maps." The "map" part of the feature is the part that actually works for me. Remapping controllers to different MIDI note numbers. Nice feature. A bit clunky, but it works solidly. The feature that tends to fail miserably is displaying the drum pane with the names of the notes on the left. They are two different aspects of "drum maps." Note mapping and drum grid editing. One works fairly well, the other one is frankly such a mess that even veteran, savvy Cakewalk users have given up on it. How many people chime in to say that the drum grid works just fine for them vs. how many say that they use Instrument Definitions or just memorize the note locations on their MIDI controller? I myself have a strip of board tape on my keyboard controller with the GM note numbers written on it. Which I submit is a less common goal than wanting to edit drums on a nice compact grid with note names on the left. One good thing is that XLN just issued a free upgrade to Addictive Drums 2 that makes accessing its own internal MIDI mapping more inviting, so I may be able to just use an extended GM mapping with AD2. Or, since they've made their own drum editing grid more inviting, I may get more into editing patterns with that. For AD2 users: this upgrade is a must, it has so many new features and such an extensive UI update that it could have been called Addictive Drums 3 and been a paid upgrade. It functions as a great preview of things to come when AD3 ships.

Not in decades. LibreOffice or Google Sheets here. What does Excel use Scroll Lock for?

I'll give credit where it's due and say that it's been quite a long time since I've had to sacrifice a chicken to Cakewalk's MIDI routing. You know the scenario, where a MIDI track and a synth track are happily joined and cooperating, but then....something changes and the synth stops producing sound. You check everything, all the inputs and outputs are set correctly, nothing solo'd, nothing muted, lights on the MIDI track indicate that data is flowing, yet somehow no sound is being produced. Then you start Trying Things, and eventually some combination of saving/deleting/exiting/reloading/reinserting the project/track/computer makes it start producing sound again. The sound comes back as mysteriously as it went away. There was a time in the past where you would try to retrace the steps that led to the dysfunction, in the hope of avoiding the situation in the future, but it is now as impossible to break as it was to fix. All you can do is Save As and thank the spirits that control such things for allowing you to continue. Anyway, I'm holding you to your earlier pledge to help more when you were back in the studio, assuming you are now back in the studio. How do I get my spiffy diamond drum editing grid without having to piddle around with forcing it to use Channel 10 or some such?

As a pro QA engineer for multiple companies, and a beta tester later, the reaction I usually get from software engineers when I refer to those is along the lines of "yeah, yeah, nobody likes a smartass." 😄 I'm not sure why this is so, perhaps by the time it's brought up they are so far into the design process that an outsider saying "no need to reinvent the wheel" is....unwelcome. Cakewalk was around long before Windows, so it mostly gets a pass on keystroke standardization. It's still the only program I've ever seen make use of Scroll Lock (and a damn good use it is), so deserves an award for avoiding a missed opportunity. Many programs could benefit from stopping scrolling, there's a dedicated key right there for it, so why is it so seldom implemented? As most people do, I use multiple programs, and every time I want to Deselect All I'm reminded of how miserable it is not to have a standard keystroke for such things. Interestingly, Google's AI Overview for "keystroke select none" currently show, in order, Adobe Lightroom, Cakewalk, Google Docs, and Microsoft Excel as its examples to demonstrate "The keyboard shortcut for "select none" varies depending on the application." I would chalk Cakewalk being in the #2 slot as due to how often I search Google for Cakewalk, except for the fact that I don't remember ever Googling Adobe Lightroom or Microsoft Excel.

At this point I'd say a brute force workaround is your best bet. What would you do if you had old projects on tape, with EQ settings written down by hand, and the hardware EQ now no longer functions properly? Probably duplicate the EQ settings as much as you can on your newer piece of gear. If the EQ settings are that critical to your old projects, either bounce the tracks with the EQ baked in or take some screen caps of the EQs' UI to transfer to a currently-supported EQ. My favorite is Soundly Shape It. For projects that I want to be more able to handle future twiddling, I try to avoid DAW-locked FX. You're fortunate in that you have an older version of the DAW to use to prepare the projects for your current DAW.

I've wanted to be able to do this from about day one with using the software.

I do like this new look for AD2. I didn't like plug-in GUI's made to look like 3-D brushed aluminum when they were new and they look even worse now. When AD2 first came out, even a real life drum machine that looked like that would have looked cheap and dated. And I don't think that was what they were aiming for. Don't get me started on simulated simulated woodgrain. At one point it was neato for something on a computer screen to resemble a real life object, but we are long past that point. For emulations of things that actually exist, like the faceplates of vintage compressors, it's still okay because it contributes to the sensory illusion of using the old piece of gear itself, but it's not so great for processors that are trying to be a whole new thing. My only complaints about NuSonar's look are that text is smaller in several places and I can no longer set grid lines to higher contrasting colors. Other than those things, it looks great. I did a facelift on Cakewalk Session Drummer to help it fit the new look, a link to the files is in my sig.

Most likely this. What a nightmare for someone doing keypad math. The software for my Logitech mouse has the (default) ability to throw a similar pop-up every time I switch on Caps Lock. Not so great in FP games where Caps Lock is used for "always run."

Just want to update this topic with a shout to the folks at Plugin Alliance. I didn't realize that the bundle of PA plug-ins that comes with the upgrade was identical to the one that came with 5.5 before I went and blew my registration number at the PA site. I wanted to pass it along to a friend and they kindly responded to my ticket their next business day with a replacement number, no further questions asked. Not a big deal, but they didn't have to do that and could have told me that the bundle wasn't intended to be split up anyway and I would have been fine with that, but they reversed my blunder and my friend was pleased and surprised. Regardless of how often I use the main iZotope components, a hundy well spent for an extra pair of licenses for the Expo 'verbs and some NI FX to mess around with (I think NI's FX are kind of underrated due to being in the shadow of their excellent instrument products). As an upgrade from versions even earlier than 5, it's a fine deal.

Burned CD-ROM's Zip drives, Jaz drives, 320K floppies, 1.44M floppies....

You are not. Anyone who DAW's on a laptop knows the woes of bumping up against drive space and having no easy way to remedy it. Suggestion: rename this topic "favorite Windows utilities?" LatencyMon and others that Cakewalk users find particularly useful.

That's how I read it. So you're almost definitely looking for an issue with VSOC on the dedicated computer. I hope there's a way to pre-load the samples.

I've been a longtime fan of Logitech pointing devices, going back 30 years when I was working at a company that shared a parking lot with Logitech. At the time they had a factory store for open box/refurb and I availed myself. Last time I was at my bank, I noticed the teller using an upright mouse. Instead of using the mouse with the palm facing down, you use the mouse with the palm facing down, the hand resting on its heel. Simple idea, but it blew my mind. The hand naturally wants to rest on its heel, with the palm facing inward. In order to use a standard mouse, you must rotate your forearm 90 degrees, so that the palm faces downward. eBay yielded an open box Logitech Lift upright mouse in very good condition, probably from someone who tried it and didn't like it. I, on the other hand like it enough to post about it here. It has the two standard left and right click buttons and wheel where you'd expect to find them, plus two programmable thumb buttons and another programmable button on the palm surface just aft of the wheel. The wheel click is also programmable. A couple of features that it lacks compared to other mice I've used are mousewheel tilt and the wieghted smartshift wheel that unlocks to freewheel. I did like the smartshift wheel, but never used wheel tilt. I keep the thumb buttons programmed to Ctrl and Alt, which allows for one-handed copy operations in Cakewalk. It's taking a bit of getting used to, gravity is different when the hand is upright, but I'm sure it will become at least as natural as palm down mousing. Gaming is fun, the upright mouse has a joystick feel to it.

This was geeksplained to me years ago by the much missed @scook. Yes, I understand why it's "and 50/100" rather than just "and 50 cents."😄 Still baffling for the poor soul seeing it for the first time. There is also a reason why I framed it as a rant of frustration rather than a well-considered feature request. I have submitted the latter multiple times, in details small and great, in moods frustrated and calm. From "here's exactly how I would like it to work" to "just a context menu pointing to the drum map options in the drum pane." The latter would have saved me hours, literally, when I was new to the program. As much as I detest the question, how hard could it be? I've feature requested all I'm gonna request until I'm requested to have my request featured. This is venting. TBF, I suspect that the devs know that it's messed up and needs a re-tooling. A big job to tackle that would take a chunk of time and resources to brainstorm how it should work and how to do it without breaking existing projects and workflows.

From the symptom, I'd say that the instrument is trying to use data that it doesn't have fast enough access to. After playing through the first time, it's been cached, so no problem. We trace it upstream to see what's going on. @Jerry Gerber, when you say that the non-DAW system is dedicated to the Vienna Symphonic Orchestral Cube, what exactly to you mean by that? Are you using the dedicated system as you would an external MIDI synth, where you send MIDI data to it and route the audio back to the DAW system? I assume that the cellos and basses are being played back by the VSOC system. If so, that narrows it down to the issue being with that system, since the DAW is just telling it to play the note. Does this project use the VSOC for instruments that occur before the cellos and basses kick in (probably so). You're loading samples from an SSD, so inherent disk transfer speed shouldn't be a bottleneck. Have you tried running your SSD diagnostics? The programs that you download from the drive's manufacturer, that is. When the glitch happens, is it the first time in the project that those instruments (or specific articulations) are used in the project? If you turn on the system(s) and play a cello or bass note from your controller before loading the project, do you get the same glitch? If so, that might indicate an issue with loading those specific samples, but if not, it could be that it only happens when VSOC loads all of the other samples first. It may be out of room for pre-loading. Finally, what does Vienna's support forum have to say about it?

What makes it superior to Windows' own indexing? My first guess is versatility, but what form does that take? Another fave utility of mine is Auslogics Duplicate File Finder. Not hard to figure out what its purpose is from the name. It's great for sniffing out things like redundant installers, and instances where I somehow installed program or plug-in content in multiple locations.

This requires getting it right in the first place, which is of course no mean feat. I've also had it happen where I've saved a track template from a working track and had it fail to load properly, with the point of failure either being the port routing or the blank drum pane. That is such an understatement that it should be written in 48pt. flashing red letters. It's ludicrously unintuitive. Even after the user searches with Google to figure out where to go to apply a drum map, what does the resulting menu say? "Create New Drum Map." WTH? I want to use an existing drum map, not create a new one. And yes, after nearly a decade of using the software I understand that what it really means is "create a new drum mapping." It's like saying that paper cheques and ATM-only cards were "not as convenient" as debit cards. And Cakewalk's configuration is a bank that doesn't issue debit cards in 2024 because it was founded in an era before debit cards existed. Mapping is the paper checks, still useful if you want to put one in snail mail to pay your utility bill. The nostalgic frisson of writing out the amount in long hand with the amount in cents written as "and 42/100." The Drum Pane is the card. Rather than being able to use it at the point of sale, the user has to locate an ATM, withdraw cash, then go to where they want to spend the money. Where they notice other things they want to buy and realize they didn't withdraw enough cash to get everything. Having the menu only accessible in either Console View or Track View, rather than a right click in the Drum Pane itself or the PRV menu, is like trying to use an ATM-only card for a bank that doesn't have ATM's in the town where the user is on vacation. First, find an ATM. Then hope that it still has money. Then memorize the location so that you can drive back there every time you need more money. And then when you find the ATM again, it's now out of money because it's the Monday of a three day weekend. Party like it's 1989 (in Ibiza and you're out of refreshments)! Yes, since you don't use the feature, it's not a problem for you. You get paid in cash and only use the ATM to make deposits so you can use checks when you need to pay bills. No problem if the farmer's market doesn't accept your debit card because you always have cash.😄 There's a reason why I titled this topic "drum pane" rather than "drum maps." It's because I'm talking about that specific use case and I wanted any discussion to be about displaying the note names and being able to use the drum grid rather than triggering the usual "being able to change the routing of controllers to notes is part of my workflow and the versatility of the drum maps is so awesome." It's a joint account with an estranged spouse. Note mapping is note mapping and the drum grid is the drum grid and whatever they originally had in common is no longer relevant. Long past time for a divorce. Dang, I stretched that banking metaphor like saltwater taffy🤪 The mapping part of the feature is great, I've used it myself when I wanted to remap to the GM note layout so I can play finger drums with my left thumb on the kick and middle finger on the snare, and high hats and toms with the right hand. That part of Drum Maps is wicked useful, if a bit of a slog to set up. The other use of Drum Maps is just wicked in the original sense of the term.

And I'm not going to go to the trouble of learning a new DAW just to do one instrument. TBH, with the exception of Breaktweaker, I rarely even use a drum machine's internal loops, much less the sequencer. I prefer to program my own beats. Fixed.😄

That's one of the frustrating things, it's worked okay in the past, but then I go to do it again and am faced with the blankness. Yes, I've obviously missed a step somewhere, but for heaven's sake, should the whole house of cards depend on so many fiddly little bits? I was spoiled by how easy it is in my previous primary DAW. There's a button in the piano roll view where you can select which scale you want to use, and drum maps are listed in there. You click the button and choose a map. Done. Similar to instrument definitions in Cakeland, except that the program knows to display a drum grid editor when the user selects a drum map vs. a scale. To make your own custom drum map, you edit a text file where the format is [MIDI Note Number] [Drum Hit Name]. If you want to get fancier, you can open this file as a CSV in a spreadsheet and add an instrument's GUID so that it will load automatically whenever you put that instrument on a track. The last represents a bit of MIDI-fiddly, but it's fully graspable by me and only needs to be done once per virtual drum instrument. Ever after, all you have to do is click that Scale button and select it. Nothing else, no changing the MIDI track's output, no having to manually tell the piano roll view to switch to a drum grid, no having to go into a dialog and reset the mappings to point to the instrument rather than the hardware out. I don't even mind the Cakewalk Drum Map Editor that much. It has its idiosyncrasies, but I can navigate it. It's where the drum map gets applied to the PRV with the intention of showing a grid editor with note names that the process falls apart. As if by magic (or more realistically, some kind of advanced AI), that other program "knows" that when I select a drum map, I want to use it on the currently-selected track, that I want to use the drum grid to edit and that I want to see the names of the drum instruments over on the left. How could a program know such things? Machine learning? Maybe they're licensing some iZotope tech. Admittedly Cakewalk covers a wider variety of use cases: What if I want to use a drum map but don't want to also edit with a drum grid and drum kit names visible? What if I want to use a drum map, but have it apply to a MIDI track other than the one I currently have selected and am displaying in the piano roll? What if I want all of the mappings set to my external MIDI port instead of the drum VI that's associated with my currently selected track? What if I want to select a drum map just for the sake of selecting a drum map and then have it sit there doing jack crap? What if I find that performing half a dozen conceptually unrelated steps before I start laying down a beat enhances my creativity? What if I want my virtual drum machines to be so virtual that they don't even produce sound? For those times, Cakewalk has them beat (no pun intended). Why has no attention been given to this feature for so long? Did programmed drum beats fall out of fashion with "the kids?" Is it just for us old people with our "Blue Monday" and "I Feel Love?" Yes, it's something I'm doing wrong or omitting, but really, must it be so fragile that a veteran user of the program finds themselves so thwarted? Why is it that when I post about my frustrations, the majority of follow-ups talk about how they don't use the feature?

Spill. How do I use the diamonds with a virtual drum instrument? The only way that's ever worked for me is an instrument definition set to use MIDI channel 10. Yeah, once I manage to get a map to work, it mostly keeps working. Sometimes it doesn't, for no reason I can figure out. Setting up new drum maps is the worst minefield.