Starship Krupa

Cakewalk by BandLab started being better than SONAR (disregarding the bundled software that used to come with SONAR) about halfway through 2018. I tried the very first Cakewalk by BandLab version and was not impressed by its stability or resource management. The next release improved upon it, and the one after that was so much better that I felt confident that switching from my previous favorite DAW was a safe bet. Since then it's gotten better in every way. The days when SONAR was bundled with a nice quiver of 3rd-party premium plug-ins are as gone as SONAR is, but those days didn't include the wealth of software available for free that we now enjoy.

? Jim, I thought with my drooling advocacy of it over in the Freeware Instruments Thread, you would have tried it by now. ?Almost 600 really useful preset sounds, including some for Strum, their virtual guitar program. https://www.applied-acoustics.com/swatches/ I'd humbly suggest that you choose one and get good at it, as abacab says, they'll all have learning curves. I think I have a stray extra license for Strum Session (which used to come with SONAR Platinum) around. If you're interested, PM me. I've used it on a couple of things and it sounds pretty good. It does chord detection, strums, individual notes. The Strum patches in Swatches can be confusing at first; I finally worked them out and can now use them. Downloading the Strum Session manual helped a lot with that.

No answer for you, except the not very useful information that Sonarworks' demos have always loaded okay on my system. To get up and running while you wait for whatever fix may come, is there an option to install the VST2 version? That may work better. Also, be sure to contact Sonarworks' support if you haven't already.

Cool! Thanks! The listener is supposed to speculate. "It" is whatever you make of it. The sample is someone else's words, so I have to think about what "it" is, even though I know the original context. To me, "it" is any experience that feels new every time, that's too much for us to remember exactly how it feels. Maybe "it" is something that happens on too deep or nonverbal a level for our verbally-oriented minds to recall accurately. Our minds say "get used to it" because that's what our minds do, but we never really get used to it.

Okay, mind blown. I've been friends with Kim Cascone for 35 years, actually played on (half composed) a PGR track. The thing is, we lost touch for a while and I never checked out his Heavenly Music Corporation stuff. We reconnected after the advent of the www, I think we last got together around the time that he regained the Silent Records trademark. I sent him the link to "Sensation" yesterday and he said "tres 90's ambient."

A friend of mine likes to add "including moderation."

I like the vocorder'd backing vox. Reminds me a bit of Sparks.

The Cakewallk Reference Guide refers to this variable in the Cakewalk.ini file. When set to "1," which is the default, "Global and view toolbars are drawn with a background gradient. If you prefer a flat background, set the value to 0." I'm not even sure what they're referring to with "global and view toolbars." I tried setting it to 0 and then back to 1, and could see no difference anywhere I looked in the program. Anyone? Is it deprecated?

It works the way you say it's supposed to on my system.

I think so. CHKDSK /F

You have set up a very nice input stage indeed. The input you were running into is designed for a hotter signal, so right there you were at a disadvantage. It's always best to feed whatever input on your card/interface the kind of signal it expects. And with as few cable adaptors as possible.? I get a red light when the adaptors start piling up, it can be a hint that there is a mismatch in the signal as well as the hardware. The Cakewalk Reference Guide suggests that you can run a 1/4" to 1/8" adapter to play your guitar into a computer's onboard mic connector. I tried to get them to take that out, but I think it's still in there. Big no-no.

Too low an impedance load for magnetic guitar pickups, those are line inputs, so you either need a breakout with hi-Z instrument inputs or a direct box to go between your guitar and the inputs you have. As far as doing tricks to reduce noise resulting from your tracks being recorded at too low a level, the solution to that issue is to not create the issue in the first place. Record a healthy, strong signal where the guitar's level is plenty far above the noise floor and you should be fine. The noise-killing technique I use when I am stuck with a source that was poorly recorded is to use ReaFIR, a freeware plug-in that allows me to sample the noise profile in an otherwise silent part of the recording and then process the recording to reduce it. Used only in circumstances where I can't obtain a good audio capture.

Nice track. Relatable lyrics. I agree with what has been said about your voice being attractive. Just the right amount of your gentle Ghanian accent comes through. And just enough electronic processing on it to sound interesting. I like the birdies on backing vox! Rather abrupt ending, though. Maybe a few more "fe-e-els" with a fade? Care to share what reverb you used? Sounds great.

Great sound! It's huge. When the big pad comes in, it's quite emotional. Agree with PhonoBrainer about the bass. Doing the same part, but on the grid in Piano Roll using a P-bass sample, would really improve it.

Here's a screenshot of the current Logical:

I'm kinda leaning toward nvelope. I downloaded both of them and the only thing the SPL Transient Designer + has that nvelope doesn't have is the external sidechain input. nvelope has that dual band mode, which I think I'll get more use out of. I was having fun putting it on drum loops and bringing the snare or kick up and down. Now that I know the trick for getting at the VST3 presets that PA ship with their stuff (at least Lindell, bx and elysia), it makes it easier to demo things. Picked up TRIAD yesterday. What a monster.

There are some "little" ones that would help me every day, in the "driving me nuts" category: A "replace effect" in the context menu like we have "replace synth." (I made this suggestion on the old forum almost 4 years ago and Noel liked it) The option to have new synths' property page automatically open when you replace another synth with them. Who doesn't want to immediately see the new synth's UI when they replace another synth? (this would also apply to #1 above) As much as I'd like having a built-in sampler (I don't know what chord tracks and VCA faders are), having these 2 would make me happier and impact my use of the program over and over in every session. I know that many people work the way I do, swapping multiple plug-ins and synths in and out looking for the one that best suits the song. Especially with creative FX like delays, I'll go through 3 or 4 of them before I find the right one.

You mean across the entire length of PRV rather than just the piano keys as it is done now?

I made one humongous change, which came after I actually looked at some Logic Pro screenshots: I gave the Piano Roll a Tungsten-style dark color scheme. This matches the rest of the dark UI and more closely resembles Logic's piano roll. I hope the change is welcome. If you want to revert to a light PRV, just open it in Theme Editor and remove the PRV colors.

Basically, what can be done with Theme Editor is change the colors and sometimes, the look of the buttons. So yes, the icons and time display are going to look very similar to Cakewalk, just in different colors. Logical is someone's idea of the Logic color scheme, applied to Cakewalk. I don't even know their name. If you want a dark theme that is more complete and IMO, even improves the clarity and legibility of the Cakewalk UI rather than just changing colors, try my Racing Green or Midnight Blue. Or one of Matthew's many dark "M" themes. They go further than just changing some colors. We put thought into legibility and visibility of control status as well as making it more attractive. I especially pay attention to making gridlines more visible, via the custom color presets that go with my themes. I find the stock gridlines difficult to see. Tungsten RS adds the clarity features without changing the Tungsten colors.

Okay, the ZIP in my post up there has the update for 2021.12, plus a few RS features. @Brian Nixon, if you would kindly edit your message to me to remove the quote that includes the link to the old file, I'd appreciate it.

I guess I could....let me see.... If I'm going to be the unofficial keeper of this one, it may get a few RS features....?

From what I understand, Command Center should allow you to download, install, and authorize CA-2A and Z3ta. I don't know about TH2, things are different for the 3rd-party pieces of the bundle.

The switch distortion is the most versatile.

This is the first I've even heard any reference to any "SSD Read/Write limitations," for audio or any other application. Rather, I've seen so many people recommending them for audio production rigs that I started making jokes about it on the old forum. When I Google "are there limitations to using SSD's for audio production?" I get nothing but people asking and being told "no, they're way superior." Therefore, I am going to stick to the belief that they are superior in every way to spinners except for cost per gigabyte. In my personal experience, my SSD's read and write the ones and zeroes way faster than my spinny drives, and they don't discriminate based on what kind of file the ones and zeroes belong to. Media production (and anything else with large file sizes) is probably the #3 task where a user is most likely to notice a performance improvement over a spinny drive. #1 is system startup and #2 is program launch. However, for anyone who has any SSD's that they feel might be holding them back, either now or in the future, I volunteer to help out and save you electronics recycling fees. For the cost of a 1st class stamp you can send them to me and I will dispose of them properly. If these limitations exist, I'm certain they would be worse for higher-capacity SSD's, so if you have any over 1TB capacity, I advise sending those right away. Seriously, though. I have seen people talking fidgety about the fact that SSD's have a finite number of reads and writes in them, as if that's unique to them, as if HDD's have unlimited rewrite capacity. Well, the Easter Bunny was our parents, and HDD's have a finite number of reads and writes in them. In this, the SSD again has the advantage, although not by as much as it does the speed advantage. SSD's are way less fragile, though, way less subject to failure by external forces (impact from your computer falling off the desk, being near magnetic fields, etc., SSD's can survive conditions like flooding that mean instant death to a HDD). The only advantage that HDD's have as far as reliability is that in some of their failure modes, they give warning that they are becoming flaky. So if you are using proper monitoring software, you will find out and maybe be able to replace it before it goes completely dead. Most people don't. When SSD's go, it's usually with no warning. They just suddenly won't be recognized by your controller. HDD's sometimes fail without any warning too. We shouldn't choose one or the other based on whether sometimes one will warn you when it's about to croak, with the idea that this makes our data more secure. The solution to concerns about data security is not in choosing a more or less reliable primary storage medium (they're both pretty reliable and they both eventually wear out), it's in making appropriately regular backups of your data. Disks fail, therefore we make backups.