Starship Krupa

Toneboosters have retired their TrackEssentials and BusTools plug-ins and released them as freeware. These are top-quality FX packages. Compressors, equalizers, meters, reverb, limiter, and more, pretty much every effect you need to mix and master from the mind of Jeroen Breebart. I've long been a fan due to their FX being bundled with my other DAW, Mixcraft. They produced some of the first top-quality FX I ever worked with. These packages include such industry-standard FX as Barricade limiter and Sibalance de-esser. Plus lots more, including an EQ with mid-side capability and what is now my favorite vocal pitch shifter. To get them, go to this page and scroll to the bottom: https://www.toneboosters.com/changelog.html Manuals may be downloaded at the bottom of this page: https://www.toneboosters.com/support.html When installing, take care to set the correct path to your VST2 plug-ins folder. By default, the installer puts them in C:\Program Files\Common Files\VST2.

Another interrupt-y background process you might wish to banish during DAW sessions is your Canon Inkjet network scan utility.

Each bus has a "destination" menu down at the bottom of its channel strip, just under "IN/OUT." Use that menu to select where you wish the bus' audio to be routed.

I can't help you with any understanding why setting larger buffers would negatively impact a plug-in. I just take it on faith that there is a matter of diminishing returns with buffers and that I should start freezing tracks before I get to 1024. One thing I can offer is that most Meldaproduction plug-ins can be tuned to run a little leaner than they come from the factory. In the menubar along the right side of the plug-in's UI, make sure that it's set to run at 1X normal, and turn off High-quality oversampling. I'm not sure, but I think the default may be 2X with High-quality oversampling enabled. Oversampling can be an "expensive" feature when resources are tight.

And your cited example of this is a peripheral manufacturer's lack of support for an operating system that was superseded 10 years ago. I think we're far enough along the road of personal computer history that most people realize that if we get 10 years of service life from any computer component, that's exceptional. I'm very much "trailing edge" when it comes to computer hardware. A few days ago I made a purchase/trade for a new-in-box Focusrite Saffire Pro 40. I still prefer Firewire, when it comes to connecting A/V equipment, I like my protocols to be full-duplex. I probably paid 1/5 what it was going for 10 years ago, also a fraction of whatever the feature-comparable version of it is in the Focusrite or Presonus lineup. And I also took on the risk of buying something where the manufacturer explicitly announced that they were no longer supporting it a year ago. It's a gamble, seeing how long it will remain usable. It will never get a Windows 11 driver. I have no idea how long Windows in any of its forms will be able to communicate with any Firewire interface. The interface that it replaced, a Presonus Firepod/FP10, was still working as well as it did the day it came off the assembly line in 2008 or so. As long as you install the Presonus "Windows 7" driver in compatibility mode, it cruises right along in all its 1st-generation prosumer ADC/DAC glory. If I hadn't made the mistake of listening to a brand-new Presonus Studio 2|4c that sounded holographic by comparison, I'd still be running the wheels off of it. Turns out that there were some big advances in jitter-avoidance/correction after my old interface was made. Whaddaya know. Presonus' driver for the Firepod still works 14 years after the product was news. The Firepod was designed for XP. If you ask me, I'd give Presonus excellent marks for software/OS support.

Anyone know where to find documentation for TB Evoke? It's included in the package but I can't find it in either the TrackEssentials or BusTools manual.

Well, that's where it is if you haven't rearranged your Control Bar modules (or even hidden the Mix Module)! It's in the Mix Module, so make sure your Mix Module is visible in the Control Bar.

Notes: The v. 3 plug-in collection referred to in the OP is not crippled in any way. Perpetual license keys are included in the installation. The demos of the current TB products are the ones that function with all features except for saving presets. Tone Boosters don't allow the user to change the install path during installation, instead by default they install everything to C:\Program Files\Common Files\VST2\. You must either move them to your usual VST2 location or add that path to your DAW's VST2 search paths. The link in the OP goes to a download page that has no link to manuals, which you will need in order to operate these feature-deep FX. Archives containing the manuals may be found down at the bottom of this page, in the help topic about where to find older plug-ins. The installer includes an option to install "Free" plug-ins, by which it means the ones that have always been free, which includes the excellent Broadcast Compressor and Omnisone, now compiled for 64 bit. Broadcast Compressor was my first single-plug-in mastering tool, and even though I had no idea what I was doing with it, it managed to let me get listenable results on some early mixes. It has some interesting psychoacoustic processing built in to it. Jeroen Breebart, the proprietor of Tone Boosters, is this genius academic type guy who publishes papers on psychoacoustics. And yes, if his stuff (including the v. 3 line that is now free) were available at Pluginboutique for twice the price and put on sale for 50% off every 6 months, we would be throwing "no brainer" around every time. ?

I can see multiple ways to implement this. My first thought was be to be able to select multiple destinations in a MIDI track's "output" pulldown, but then I remembered that Cakewalk's MIDI tracks also have those pulldowns for Bank and Patch (which I never use, although maybe I might at some point). That might cause trouble. MIDI sends from MIDI and Simple Instrument tracks might be the best option. I believe that someone mentioned that this is how it's implemented in another popular DAW, and it seems tidy and straightforward, and mirrors a similar function that Cakewalk has in its Audio tracks. As with any solution, MIDI loops would have to be prevented. Another way would be for MIDI and Instrument tracks to set their input to be other MIDI track(s), although this would need to have protection against forming MIDI feedback loops. Yet another way would be to allow a Synth track to choose which MIDI track(s) it's taking input from. That way, just like you can have as many tracks as you want being fed from Audio Input 1 or the MIDI output of your interface, a Synth track could choose from whatever MIDI track(s) it wants to listen to. This is the second place I looked, but as Mr. Cook will point out, Synth tracks are just Audio tracks that have their input set to be a virtual instrument. Soft synths actually live in the Synth Rack, not the Synth Track, although some operations are possible from the Synth track, like replacing. It confounded me at first when I went to change the input of a Synth track and saw that its input was the synth itself. Made no sense. That is, until you consider how Cakewalk evolved. An option to enable MIDI output for synths that don't implement it themselves, from the "VST" menu in the plug-in properties window is yet another option. This would allow daisy chaining multiple synths and mirrors physical world MIDI functionality., like a virtual "Thru box." After this, Aux Tracks/Patch Points. Aux tracks would have the advantage that you could also have the Bank and Patch menus. In another program I use, Instrument tracks are allowed to have multiple synths (each one has a synth rack that you can rearrange), and that's a possibility too, although it would seem like the most complicated to implement. Any of the above would be fine with me.

The best way is to "bump" the feature request (in this case, Colin's) by adding a reply in its thread. This keeps it in view of the Cakewalk bakers as well as other users. Even just replying with "+1" puts it back at the top.

Dang, with Ozone Elements in my master FX rack, I'd expect to measure latency with a sundial.

Even though I never owned a SONAR Platinum license, I have that same elastique Timestretch plug-in. I have both Vegas Pro and SoundForge, so it must have been delivered with one of those. Ain't it great that Cakewalk still supports DX plug-ins? My guess is that it would install with demos of SoundForge or Vegas, too. This is provided for informational purposes only.

For those who had trouble understanding what's going on in the video (because you can't see keystrokes), if you want to toggle track height with keystrokes, click so that the track is in focus, then hit your right arrow key and then hit Enter. At that point you can also navigate up and down using the arrow keys and the Enter key will still work for toggling track height. I'm not sure that I could get good at that, but it's good to know it's there.

This is a pain in the neck for me, too. Also the fact that whatever folder you moved it to stays open, which makes for a cluttered browser after a couple of plug-in moves. How about a special "New Plug-ins" folder where a plug-in could be found the first 5 times you opened Cakewalk after installing it?

There's the inline piano roll view or are you referring to something else? MIDI notes and audio waveform color is already linked to the Track color. I would like for there to be a quicker way to access a clip's color picker than having to open Explorer, but I haven't come up with any ideas.

Sri, I'm flattered that you chose my themes as a starting point! I think they're good references for deep-diving, because I've changed so many things from the defaults. With Racing Green, especially, almost everything that can be changed has been changed. BTW, I suggest you open a new thread to describe your adventures in theming. I think it would help others to learn from what you're doing; they're more likely to see it if you have your own thread.

Maybe you're thinking of something along these lines? You may be happy to know that the Export Audio dialog is one of the most recently renovated features of Cakewalk. It seems to be the direction things are headed. For people who prefer lighter themes, we hope that the menu appearances will be made a Preferences setting:

I kinda had this experience at first ("oh lord, she's using ASIO4ALL and a 32-bit version of Supermassive and she can't get her VSTi to load because she's trying to install the 32-bit version and getting confused between Program Files and Program Files (x86)"). But in defense of Lorene's style and what I think she's trying to teach (not that she needs any), she bills it as "Learning Cakewalk WITH Lorene." And I think she means it exactly that way, she refers to what she does as "Cakestumbling." It's a TV show of a woman with a sense of humor having fun teaching herself how to use a DAW. I've comforted frustrated newbies by saying "don't worry, I made all those mistakes while I was learning?" (ASIO4ALL, check, 32-bit plug-ins, check, VSTi wouldn't load because I had the path wrong, check). It won't sink in as much as seeing someone make all those mistakes and keep trying, and even keep smiling and laughing at their own frustrations. The message I get is "don't be put off from trying this because you're not a 16-year-old techno wunderkind or a computer or studio veteran, don't be afraid of looking clueless, it's still fun even if you screw something up and have to sort your way out of it." Picked up a valuable trick from her: using Arranger Track to analyze the structure of someone else's song (she used her old band's song as an example). This is something I am struggling with right now and I can say this IS a technique I will try, at least once or twice. I try to promote the forum wherever I can, YouTube, Facebook, whatever.

This isn't important for me. Perhaps when I say "replace effect," you're thinking of replacing an effect like this: With something like this: But when I think of it, it's more like replacing this: With this: As you can see, Dumpster Fire has no control that maps into "HAMMING," choice of celestial body emulation, or choice of dimension. Nor does SILO have parameters that match up with "DentureTentacle" "Magic8-ballSpikes," Magic8-ballVintageShockmount" or "AlchemicalDisks." I'm with b and Kevin, when I swap out FX it's when I'm trying a different approach. Even if it is a compressor or EQ, I'll probably be trying a different type. Character vs. precision or whatever.

A great deal on a really nice mic. I have a pair of them I use for drum overheads.

I've never wanted to put my takes into separate tracks, does it not work properly? The first thing I'd want to do would be to drag all the takes into one track! I always have "create new lane" selected, so if you want to know what happens when I set that just look at my screenshots up there. I think I tried turning it off once years ago just to see what would happen and that was trippy. Figuring out which mode and options would get me the closest to the results I wanted was tough when I first started using Cakewalk because the documentation hadn't been gone over in quite some time, and there was no Reference Guide.

Bespectacled geek girls make my rockin' world go 'round.

Good heavens, searching? My muscle memory for Ctrl-Shift-A is locked in. Up there with Ctrl-Z when it comes to wearing shiny spots on the keys. Followed by Ctrl-Alt-F. I use it as a preventative before various actions, especially inserting Time/Measures. It's like looking both ways before crossing a street. Binding it to a single key is a good idea at this point. "~" is not otherwise taken in the Cakeverse. You are not alone in this. I've called up many a context menu in other programs by right-click dragging. It's so essential in Cakewalk to get friendly with that right mouse button select. I didn't twig this at first and spent way too much time switching to the Select Tool to avoid trouble. Now that I have the hang of it, I don't crave left button lassoing. I do wish that tools other than Smart and Move would let you set the Now Time by clicking in the "whitespace" at the bottom of the Clips Pane.

Would you say that it's gotten better in that respect in recent years? I mean with the Shift modifier and the customizable Smart Tool. Those two together allowed me to really take control of comping/editing.

"Need?" All I can say about that is that it makes using Cakewalk more difficult for me and others. How about "want?" ? What happened this time around was that someone in the know finally told me why Cakewalk does this: it's taking a guess at where you want to make your edits. Previously, I couldn't tell whether it was a bug or a feature that gets in my way. Now I know that it's a feature that I would like to be able to turn off. I keep bringing it up because that's how things get noticed, and how I can tell whether it's important to other users. If nobody else cares, I drop it. Try replacing a synth in the latest EA build and watch what happens. Joy! I like being allowed turn off features that I don't wish to use, look at the change made to the Smart Tool to allow users to switch it in and out of Speed Comping mode. I used to get in big trouble with the Smart Tool when comping. The ability to turn off the numeric display on the Aim Assist was an early one that helps me greatly every time I work in Track View. Cakewalk's ability to reconfigure to suit individual workflows is one of its greatest strengths.