Starship Krupa

Absolutely anything, not Drum Map Manager. ?

Well hello Robert. It's intrigued me very much to read about the history of Cakewalk, Inc.'s various mergers and acquisitions over the years. My stepfather was CEO at a couple of leisure product companies in my childhood, so I heard him talk about that stuff over the years. Then as an adult I toiled in the software industry, including a few shrink wrap houses like Adobe, prior to and during the advent of the www as a game-changer. My thesis has always been that as a freeware corporate giveaway, the quality of Cakewalk is likely to increase. This is because development will be driven by the developers' impulse to please their own needs (one of which is to do a job they can be proud of) and those of the user community rather than the survival need to acquire new licensees. I was called a dreamer on the old forum and this one, and well, I'm so happy to be able to say "neener-neener." There were (and still are) those who insist that the whole scheme is doomed and that there is no possible way to maintain high-quality software without charging people to use it. They'll post these assertions using Firefox, Chrome, and Edge, and apparently have never been to a trade show where companies are giving away tote bags or guitar picks with their logos on them. Just gotta think of Cakewalk now being the promotional item rather than the thing being promoted. I've seen people endlessly confounded when after almost a year, the developers have been working their butts off to ship the latest major version, and it finally ships. Yet it still carries all these bugs and design annoyances and oversights that people have been complaining about since 2 versions earlier. I've been both on the selling side and the buying side. The reason is simple: because fixing bugs and small featues doesn't bring in new licensees and upgraders. Fixing bugs costs money, adding flashy features makes money. It's why so many companies would love people to subscribe to their software as a service. With that model, if you continue to ship buggy crap, you open yourself to loss of subscribers due to people questioning that $30 per month bill, with competitors lining up to eat your lunch, and you can also afford to attract new users at a reasonable rate of uptake because you have a steady stream of cash coming in. Rather than depending on huge adoption right after the magazine reviews of the new features (which never mention bugs) are published. I've seen others wondering what effect Cakewalk's free license scheme is going to have on the DAW market. Will it take out a smaller program or two that someone might have used to get started? On that topic, I have no idea. Maybe there is less room for the Mixcrafts and Mu Studios of the world. I dunno. What I haven't given much thought to is the effect it might have on people who teach and produce instructional materials, like Warren and Robert. Did the companies that were doing this before Gibson binned Cakewalk Inc. suffer? Probably? Will there eventually be an uptick, or are we already seeing one? 3 years later, there are 4 YouTubers I know of who are publishing regular tutorials, which means there are probably more. Are colleges showing interest? Or do they still pretend that what you must do is learn Pro Tools prior to moving to L.A. to "make it" in the recording industry (iLok in hand)? Things will take longer than with payware programs due to there being nobody paid to go around and advocate for it. Always fun to watch the story unfold....

The mousewheel functionality currently being broken has nothing to do with Windows versions. It's right there in the manual, on the page that I linked to, and I've gotten confirmation from veteran users that it once worked as designed (as described in the documentation), then broke fairly recently in the fossil record.

Oh, yes, of course, Mixcraft preloads the dialog with a fairly informative default one. Far better than Regedit, Cakewalk could reuse the Drum Map Manager code, as it is already made for mapping/naming tasks such as this.

+1 here

Mixcraft implements a fully-configurable variable filenaming system in its Mix to Stems dialog. It's great for stems, 'cause there are variables that stand for track number, sequential file number, project name, track name, and other things. So you can have it export them exactly as you like, except when there's a collision, which I believe is handled by just appending a digit. It leaves the user with much less filename trimming and renaming.

Unfortunately, most benchmarks, like Passmark, evaluate systems for gaming, which does not line up exactly with DAW work. An i5 at 3.2GHz will jump up to 3.5GHz if you enable processor management in the BIOS (taboo, I know, but it's made my systems deliver the GHz when called upon), and then set your min and max processor speeds to 100% in Windows' power settings. My 3.4GHz Dell is idling at 3.67GHz right now due to me doing this. It's about the only "overclocking" trick you can do with BIOSes like Dell and Lenovo. Cakewalk's engine has gotten less demanding of resources in the past 3 years. I could record and mix a 4-piece rock band on the described system, using my preferred plug-ins. I might want to throw in a $15 used nVidia card in it just to make things look better on the screen. ITB electronic music would be fine as well. Might have to freeze a track or two if you're using CPU-hungry synths, but crank up the buffers while you're mixing and all is well.

I'm sorry, I see this company with all these possibly useful utilities, but I just can't get past the name. "Ashampoo?"

Mike is the king for traditional rock band audio work, and I've learned a lot of EDM techniques for Cakewalk from Xel Ohh and E-Woof. Forum favorite ADK Studios is also good (BTW, he took my suggestion to post his issues on the forum and got Los Panaderos to address his biggest issue). Not that I'd discourage Robert McClellan or anyone else for putting together commercial courses. He must believe that he has put together something that people can't get from the other tutorials, so more power to him and his efforts. I'm psyched to see Cakewalk get this kind of attention from someone like Warren. BTW, have you ever watched one of the videos where Warren sings? Based on his speaking voice, I did not expect that singing voice coming out of him.

Ugh, that's another can of worms, Mouse Wheel Zoom is so broken. It's supposed to allow the user to zoom vertically, too. The only way it works is for zooming horizontally, and then only if Simultaneous Horizontal and Vertical Zoom is checked. Thanks for reminding me about setting the zoom factor. Mine was set too fast. To see what I mean about broken, for instance try setting your horizontal zoom factor to 1.000 and then mouse wheel zooming. Oops.

Another possible solution may be Meldaproduction's free MLoudnessAnalyzer, which has a "Target" knob you can use in a couple of different ways. First way, set the Target knob to the loudness you want, let it analyze your audio, and it will set its own gain knob to make the result match your target. Second way, set the Target knob again, then you can load audio files into the plug-in and have it process them to the loudness value of the Target knob. (and if you want to buy anything at Meldaproduction, ask and I'll give you my referral code for a 20% discount)

That's one of the issues, I think, the controls are too coarse when we're looking for basically dots on a grid.

Yes! As things worked out, the SONAR Platinum license holders are getting their updates, and those updates are now developer-driven rather than marketing, so, bonus. To help you feel better, here are some things that people who only started with CbB don't get: Dimension, Drop Zone, Session Drummer, Square 1, Cyclone, PSYN II, Rapture, Z3ta, Lounge Lizard Session, Ultra Analog Session, Strum Session, True Pianos, Addictive Drums, Melodyne, BiFilter, Blue Tubes, BlueVerb, LP EQualizer, LP Multiband compressor, TS transient shaper, Channel Tools, ProChannel modules I'd love to have like Panipulator, Concrete Limiter and PC-2A. Some of those are proprietary Cakewalk products that seem less and less likely to see the light of day as time goes on. They can't be had for any amount of money. Also whatever amount of time you got to use the program between when you bought your license and April 2018.? I don't think that anyone else got over on the SONAR license holders, I'm really grateful that we all bought in and kept the company going for 30 years. I say "we" because I was one myself, back in 2000 or so, around the time that it became "SONAR."

Works great for zooming in and out horizontally. It doesn't help when the data is down at the bottom or up at the top. I'm looking for a command that centers the data vertically and horizontally. Ah, so that's it. Explains why when I have a couple of empty measures at the beginning of the project, I don't see any notes. Well, might be useful now that I know what it does. I'm used to using it, then still seeing nothing. Executing that, then using Ctrl+⬅➡ as Will suggests might speed things up, at least it's a workflow rather than a random hunt with the scroll bars. Los panaderos put a "fit horizontally" command (Ctrl+Alt+F) in the Track View that I requested on the old forum 3 years ago, so maybe they're in the mood for another similar convenience feature.

I spend way too much time dragging the scroll bars around in the Piano Roll just trying to find the notes I want to edit. It would be great to have a command that would adjust the horizontal and vertical zoom so that all the MIDI note information of the currently selected track were visible (or at least centered) in the window. We have a couple of commands in the Track View that work great for this, I'd like to have something similar for the Piano Roll. (I know that there is already a command in the PRV menu named "Fit MIDI content." The times I tried it, it seemed to function similarly to the shuffling algorithm in Minesweeper. I don't mind if this command stays for backward compatibility, although I seldom have use for it myself.)

Fine-looking light theme. Easy on the eyes, quite legible. I have but one suggestion: delete the theme images for Browser/Media Tab (collapsed), Browser/Plugins Tab (collapsed), Browser/Notes Tab (collapsed), Browser/Help Tab (collapsed), as well as the corresponding collapsed tabs for the Inspector (Arranger, Clip, Prochannel, etc.). This will make those icons more closely match the rest of the theme.

Best testament to the utility of Cakewalk's drum map system I've seen! I thought about using my P-Touch or a Sharpie, but board tape is less destructive to the controller. Another way to do it is right click on the piano keys and use the Note Names dialog and select Use These Notes Instead. There is a GM drum kit in there. HOWEVER, there is a bug in this that reverts the PRV to piano keys when you close and reopen the PRV. Also, if you have multiple MIDI tracks, changing note names will apply to all of them, including non-drum ones. In the end, it's just easier to memorize the keys for kick, snare, hi-hat and a few others. And I lobby for improvements to the drum map system and Drum Pane and wait.

Yes to both. And you get a free license for A|A|S ObjecDelay, which is pretty amazing plug-in. It's so simple and effective that yes, there is a temptation to overapply and leave too large a hole in the target track at first, but your ears will probably rein you in when you listen the next day. ? There are still occasions where I find that the ancient art of EQ carving works better, but I consider Trackspacer essential to my arsenal.

EXPOSE is a useful tool, Analog Lab Lite is cuh-razy what you get. Be sure to look in the Arturia store for free sound banks.

My current fave pad sampler to use with Cakewalk. Drag and drop clips from Cakewalk tracks right onto the pads.

Apple of course led the way by hiring a dude named "Guy" to be an evangelist, complete with that title. I've just usually been too broke to afford Macs for the most part. My computer background was from building XT clones out of junk parts so that I could get on BBSes, not from going to a university that had a lab with donated Macs and then getting my own as a graduation present at student discount.

Yeah, Freakshow live up to the promise of the name, or at least their promo videos do. They remind me of stuff that used to get on public access very late into the morning in Los Angeles. Meldaproduction, sure, on a product page for MWaveformTwiddlerMB, they'd link to a video about how to set up "multiparameters" in a compressor and you'd never find out about the features of MWaveformTwiddlerMB, or even what a "waveform twiddler" is supposed to do, only that it has the most advanced UI on the planet and more features and control than any other, plus it's "multiband."

That's for sure. Meldaproduction products are also smart enough to (I think) shut off all metering when you simply close the UI. I'm a fan of SoundSpot's graphical displays but avoid using the ones with the fancy animations because they eat so much engine, even with the UI closed. Meldaproduction are also the first plug-in developer I've seen who (in the latest version) turn off the plug-ins when no audio is flowing. They're irresistible to software geeks like me because of things like this. The modular design, reuse of code, commitment to bug-free products, tinkerability, "mad genius" developer, and, of course, the sound quality. Even the plainness of the UI's encourages me to understand what they're doing rather than assuming I'm extracting mojo from an imitation antique hardware unit. The band menu can be dragged away from the main window. I agree that having a separate dialog pop up just to be able to type in exact values can be annoying, but in the case of many of the plug-ins, MEqualizer included, that dialog exposes useful ways to enter the data, like a little piano keyboard at the bottom so you can click on it and cut or boost frequencies that correspond to notes without having to know the frequency. In time-based ones, it lets you click on beat divisions, etc. Typical Meldaproduction, useful complexity. I was curious enough to check this out, so I fired up an organ patch in TTS-1 and opened MPhaser. Checked for presets, the usual list of 5 descriptive ones, the rest random 2-words put together which don't exclude the "seven words." "Rotary," nope, not even close, so I started with Default. Starting from Default, it took me about a minute to cook up a respectable slow Leslie that when I tried my modwheel, the rate changed with it. I took me longer to type this than to get that Leslie sound, complete with a nice idiosyncrasy in the waveform thanks to the display and Shape morphing knob. The only clinker is that the "Saturation" knob only seems to make the sound louder, not saturated, so to get a distorted Leslie amp, you'd need another effect. All the other controls worked as I would expect on a Phaser. No abrupt click on the LFO, either. Our mileage varied, but in this case, I see a mad powerful phaser with all its important controls front-facing and labeled correctly, plus a very useful LFO shape display. Also (if you should want to spend more time playing with your phaser than making music) an "advanced" panel that opens into another, more bizarre world of options, including custom creation of waveform shapes and loading a sample to superimpose on the waveform (for fans of wrecked audio, I just tried this, and it gets crazy, ring-modulated sounds, and it even displays the sample's waveform on the main LFO waveform shape display). It goes to show how different two people's experiences can be. As for manuals and UX, my philosophy is that a program should allow a new user who is somewhat familiar with the type of software to figure out how to perform its standard functions. Controls and menus should be clearly labeled and located and right click context menus for anything that moves. Past that point, for deeper features, that is what the manual is for. MPhaser has the standard controls front-facing (plus a few more). It also has the Advanced panel, with another crazy dimension to explore. That's where things fall apart for me in the Meldaverse, because of the spotty docs. I'd love to tweak my sounds with the options under that Advanced panel, but I can't get anywhere with the generic boilerplate in the "manual." Whatever, MPhaser is still a powerhouse even if I don't touch "Advanced." P.S. MNotepad now takes only a single click to activate the redundant typing box.?

I don't know how they keep track, as it's not like Cakewalk where it knows the email address you used. I always assumed that they put a key file or registry entry somewhere that tracks how many times you've started it up. That doesn't account for you being timed out on multiple systems. Which, BTW, aren't you supposed to stop using it or pay for a license after the trial? That's not optional, it's the terms of their license.

I watched the video on the page hoping to, y'know, hear how it sounded, but it's a couple of guys sitting in a studio chatting with each other about one of the guys' careers. I'm not sure how this relates to the product as the interviewer doesn't introduce their roles. Best guess is that the musician, a sax player, was recorded for the library and the other guy is the developer? It's an interesting enough interview, but I don't know for sure why it's on the product page. Made me want to check out what they came up with, though, so I guess it worked.?