Starship Krupa

Beats me (pardon the expression). This is what I got/get immediately after doing 2 full takes on the drum kit, plus that little overrun before I hit the Stop button. It's been happening for the 3+ years I've been a Cakewalk user. I've brought it up several times. It seems to be "as designed," but nobody can tell me why, what workflow it's supposed to serve. I would like to know, maybe there's a possible use I haven't considered. It looks like some sort of automatic punch, and I don't have automatic punch-in enabled in Preferences. It's not hard to repro: just set up to record in loop mode, then do several takes of varying lengths. If you start and stop because you've made a flub, things get even more chopped up. It makes no difference whether lanes are open or closed, nor does it matter if reuse lanes is on or off, nor new takes on top or bottom, clips linked or not.

I know I've asked about this feature of Cakewalk many times, and nobody's ever given me an answer about why it happens. The documentation says that it will happen but doesn't say why. I am willing to spot that for someone, it may be a cherished part of their workflow, but for me it's just frustrating: It is what I see every time I record in Loop mode. All previous takes get cut into spurious clips the same length as the final take. (Don't worry about the takes being in a different order in the two tracks, that's odd but not as bothersome) I learned years ago that I can repair (heal) the clips by swiping the Comp tool across them, but I'd rather not have to every time. Whenever one takes an editing tool to a clip, one runs a risk, however small, of unforeseen consequences. Especially if one is taking the tool to grouped clips across multiple tracks. All I want is a way to turn it off before it happens. It's fine if it stays default behavior, I can go to Preferences, edit an .INI file, edit the registry, whatever it takes. I just don't want Cakewalk making edits for me when I didn't ask it to, when I don't want it to.

For example they could sit just to the right of the clip name (if any). They'd be subject to the same display rules that clip names and the Tetris button on MIDI clips are now (what is that button called anyway?). I hate tossing out the "other DAW" argument, but disclosure: Mixcraft has these buttons and they're a super handy way to access audition and mute/unmute.

I thought that once you've purchased a license in their store, that license is supposed to be yours alone and transferring it will cost the recipient $20.

Oh yes, it was a great and happy day for me when that first release came out that would allow turning off the comp function of the Smart Tool. Since I didn't yet understand Cakewalk's Speed Comping (those were the days before the Reference Guide came out), I was, over and over, selecting bits of clips and having the Smart Tool assume that my selection boundaries were Speed Comping cuts. When trying to do this with clips that were Grouped, especially, I made some miserable messes. I just couldn't understand why selecting a region would make these automatic cuts (the answer is: I was in Speed Comping mode without knowing it). I did finally twig that switching to the Select and Edit Tools was the way to go for the style of comping I was trying do, and now I can have the Smart Tool enabled without injuring myself. I still do switch to the Edit Tool sometimes for slip editing.

I filled out a ticket too. Trying for UfA TRIAD for $14.99. ?‍♂️ They say they'll get back within 24 hours, which of course puts last month's voucher solidly into the expiration zone. Whatever, I've gotten such insane deals from them, so many high end plugins for free or close to it, that it's hard for me to begrudge them making a mistake from time to time. Fair play is fair play, though, and my voucher ain't supposed to expire until midnight tonight. ?

Excellent choice. BYOME is capable of so many things it intimidates me, in a good way.

I'm posting this because when I came to Cakewalk from using other DAW's, it took me some time to figure this out, and it's not as obvious as it might be.* If you want to lasso select multiple elements on the screen, such as clips in Track View and notes in Piano Roll, rather than switching to the Select Tool, hold your right mouse button and drag. This feels odd at first because we're so used to clicking and holding with the left button to drag select in other programs, but things sometimes work a bit differently in Cakewalk, which predates many programs that we grew up with. Also, I thought that the Select Tool was the only way to....select things. So I had been using the Select Tool (which has its limitations, and it's at least a couple of keystrokes to change tools back and forth) or relying on the Smart Tool (which too often gave unexpected results). Once I figured this one out, it made things go a lot quicker! *(If you think this is the most basic thing to be ignorant of, I didn't have the benefit of the Reference Guide!)

Y'know, even though I've been using CbB since about the day it first came out in 2018, I love watching "beginners" videos, because Cakewalk is such a feature-deep beast that I inevitably end up learning something or remembering something I might have forgotten. Just because your way of doing things is different from mine. For instance, I'm 2 minutes in and really like what you point out about the interaction between Track View and Console View. It can be faster and easier to organize tracks in Track View rather than dragging them around in Console View. You get into valuable information that took me months to figure out, like the order of signal flow (I had only the then-outdated web-based documentation to go by, no Reference Guide).

Yes, I have several custom keystrokes, one of which is Rename Clip. I use the keystroke "K" to mute clips all the time. This request is for buttons on the clip headers. It's not about whether those functions already exist, rather another handy way to access them. I think it would be especially handy for new users. Also, EDM performers, because if you want to mute and unmute clips on the fly, you can keep one hand on the mouse and the other one waving around in the air. It makes a difference between something to interest the crowd vs. an experience where they might as well be watching someone in a cubicle filling in HR forms.

Somewhere along the way, Chorus and Reverb got baked into the MIDI spec along with pitch bend. It's to control those parameters when an instrument has them built in (and is designed to respond to the MIDI chorus and reverb parameters). Unfortunately not all soft synths with built in reverb respond. I like to disable the synths' built in reverb and instead use whatever reverb I have on my Reverb Send bus.

I'm not sure what you mean by this. Are you referring to the Track view/Focused Track Background highlight? It works as it should whether I have Synth Rack docked or undocked.

There is real estate available on clip headers that could be used for buttons to perform various functions and indications. This would help minimize trips to the very long context menu and provide immediate visual access. The functions I would like most are clip audition, which would be a play button to audition what's in the clip (sent to the Preview bus like with the Media Browser). Another one is a mute button, with visible indication that the clip is in a muted state (which I know we already have with the color shift, but an indicator in the clip header would add more visibility). Along with this, I'd like double-clicking on a clip's name to bring up the Rename dialog.

I'm glad to hear that work on Matrix is somewhere on the to-do list. It looks to have a lot of potential for developing Abletonesque workflows. One thing I would like is a right-click (or Tetris button, not sure what that thing on MIDI clips is called) Send to Matrix Cell for both audio and MIDI clips. I like integration between the various views.

Here's an excellent one thanks to @Xel Ohh. Cymatics Origin, which is a multifunction lo-fi effect. You may be thinking, as I did, "I have a boatload of lo-fi FX already," but this one nailed effects I wanted to get instantly. I was working on an ambient EDM track with a dialog sample pulled from Amazon Prime Video (Star Trek Deep Space 9), using MAGIX Audio Cleaning Lab to record the Windows sound output. Great way to sample dialog, but it comes out in pristine clarity, doesn't sound right when dropped into an ambient track. The contrast between ambient ear candy and lo-fi dialog samples is part of what makes the sound. I had already tried the "telephone" preset in the ProChannel EQ, and that helped, but it didn't get the sound I was looking for (the sound of holding a cheap cassette recorder mic up to a transistor radio speaker like I used to do when I was a little kid 50 years ago). I dropped Origin onto the vocal sample track, just using the default preset, turned the main knob down a couple of notches and bullseye, I had the lo-fi dialog sound down. Matter of fact, I liked it so much I tried it on my drum machine track and it sounded great there, too. It has several different modes, including multiple tape emulations like microcassette and vinyl, complete with background hiss and crackle if you want to include that. All these parameters are adjustable. I can already tell I'm going to have fun automating the main knob. If you want to nail the "underwater" sound, it's in there, automate the main knob and it will get that sound where your whole mix sounds like it's submerged and then comes up to the surface. Pretty much all of the lo-fi effects on Daft Punk's Discovery can be had with this thing. As always, 64 bit and tested to work with Cakewalk (by XEL and me, at least). While you're at Cymatics' site, they have a couple other useful freebies.

This plug-in is excellent. I put it to good use immediately, which is always a sign of good FX. Specifically, I'm working on an ambient EDM track with dialog samples. My samples are direct from Amazon Prime Video, via capture, so they're too high fidelity for the genre. I put Origin on the sample and within less than a minute nailed that ambient lo-fi sample sound. I haven't tried it on any other sources yet, but if this is any indication, it might end up in many, many of my productions. I can see automating the main knob.

I couldn't find it anywhere. Who knows, it may be one of those oddballs that's controlled by something completely unexpected. I wonder if it's still white when @Colin Nicholls loads Purpletrator.

Voxbox is my favorite plug-in of its (ADT) type, The display makes it simple to visualize just what the plug-in is doing. Glitch is a sound choppy tool, if you like those, you can never get enough of 'em, I have been meaning to try throwing MSW2 on something to see if the rhythmically expanding and contracting stereo field effect it claims to do is ear candy or not. Some of Soundspot's plug-ins eat too much CPU for what they do, others seem to be just fine. I don't think they all come from the same source. I remember being interested in Firefly, but I prefer their own Cyclone as a bus compressor and I now have some top notch compressors from Melda and elysia that had the effect of making most of my previous compressor acquisitions obsolete. Dodge Pro is another one of those W A Production plug-ins that I almost wish weren't so inexpensive, because it's got a lot under the hood and I think it's gotten lost among my quiver of W A Production sound design-y tools. Some of which are pretty amazing, all of which at least do what they claim to do without chewing up more than their share of resources. I already have a license for MDynamicEQ and nobody to gift the freebie to, but as dynamic EQ's go, it will (not surprisingly given its company of origin) serve any need one has for a dynamic EQ and then some.

If you liked Nickel Mint, you might also like my other new light theme, Blue Ice. It's a similar idea, but with the accents/highlights blues rather than greens. The main highlight color is the blue from Mercury, so it looks a bit similar to Mercury but with a light Control Bar and lighter backgrounds elsewhere. Like Nickel Mint, it's built for legibility and features my usual easy-to-remember iconography. I strive to improve upon the stock Cakewalk themes where I think they leave things ambiguous or difficult to read. When things are lit up, that means they are enabled. This is sometimes counter to how Cakewalk does it. For instance in my themes the PDC and FX buttons are lit up in color when FX and PDC are on rather than lit up when they are bypassed or overridden. No trying to remember whether a bright button means that something is on or if it means that the bypass for it is on. In the FX bin, highlight color means enabled and grey means bypassed, both for the plug-in UI button and the rack bypass button. You get the idea, if it's grey or dark, it's bypassed or disabled. If it's lit up in color, it's on, or active. "+" signs add things, "-" signs delete things, arrows open and close things. X's close dialogs. The track icon for a synth track is a little piano keyboard, the icon for an instrument track is a similar image with a MIDI jack superimposed to indicate that an instrument track is a synth with a MIDI track, all in one. There's a bit of color added to the Track and Piano Roll view backgrounds; this blue theme is a blue theme. As with all of my themes, the accompanying color preset very much enhances the theme, so try it. As always, comments and critiques are most welcome.

A way to access the PDF from inside Cakewalk is to add a link to it from the Utilities menu. Very handy, saves having to minimize or switch out of the program to launch it. @scook's CbB Tools include a utility for managing Utility menu entries.

I knew I had seen someone mention it.

What is FXReverb? What I would do if I were trying to match two different reverb plug-ins to each other is, first, realize that it's not going to be a perfect match, then just go down the list of available parameters like time, damping, room size, whatever, and copy as many as I could. Sonitus fx reverb is a place to start, or BREVERB, both come with Cakewalk. For free alternatives, Oril River and MCharmVerb.

I'm sure this has already been requested. Since I've been doing a lot of work in PRV lately, I think not a day goes by when I don't reflexively double-click on one of those track names trying to rename it. (While we're at it, Replace Synth would be nice, too.)

Man that would be awesome. It's a far-off blue sky wish. ? Seriously, thanks to all in this thread and elsewhere who contributed ideas, what we now have in this Early Access release is amazing. I would have been happy with much less.

I take it as a good sign that the devs were able to change the dialog colors so quickly. That bodes well for later customizability via whatever method. The advantage that theming has over user preferences is that publicly-available themes are somewhat "curated," and there's also the matter of theming being a discipline unto itself, so it's harder for the average not-somewhere-on-the-spectrum Cakewalk user to get themselves into trouble by making half their text illegible.