Starship Krupa

Ah, okay, thanks for being patient with my confusion. ?

My apologies, and thank you for not docking a point from my house. I think I misunderstood the "not yet identified" for Alt Text #1. on p. 8. When you say that, do you mean that you haven't identified how the color parameter affects things in that section, or you haven't yet identified it anywhere?

Welcome to one of my favorite procrastination activities. ? In case you're not aware, there's a very friendly subforum for discussing Cakewalk themeing, with links to many current themes and @Colin Nicholls essential Young Lady's Primer to Creating Cakewalk Themes. It's a great place to get answers to the questions you will surely have.

My current solution is that I used Steve's program to create a link to the Cakewalk Reference Guide in the Utilities menu. This addresses the issue of having to switch out of my (possibly fully-maximized) Cakewalk session to access it. However it doesn't address the issue of context-sensitivity. It would be nice to be able to choose whether we want context-sensitive help to load from the web or the PDF. Steve Cook's Cakewalk Utilities

I want to bump this because I think it's important. Here's what I can vote for if I want to say CbB is my favorite audio program, same if I wanted to write a review for the KVR database (I put in Break Tweaker instead): @Jesse Jost, does BandLab have someone who handles this kind of thing? I've been working on a Wikipedia entry for CbB, but this takes an official representative of the developer.

I got DDLY years ago for free, and it seemed like a cool plug-in, but for some reason I haven't done [obvious pun] with it. Now that I've been getting into glitchier territory, perhaps it's time to revisit. Anything iZotope for <13 bucks is probably worth it just to look at the UI.

Spotted a couple of errors on p. 62: the YLIP refers to Global / Alternative Text #1 as specifying the color of the Header text on a selected PC module. I suspect it's actually Alternative Text #2, but in any case, it's not Alternative Text #1 (which seems to affect nothing). Next entry, Track view / Unfocused Track Text, refers to "Present name text color" s/b "Preset name color"

Very interesting documents, lots of good practices in there. They're very much oriented toward the traditional division of studio/engineer vs. client, which makes perfect sense given the professional organizations that sponsored their creation. Where I have trouble creating and adhering to good versioning practice is when I am both the engineer and the talent, and I am using the DAW as a composition/creative tool. Specifically, I may wish to "see what happens" if I apply certain creative effects, and that may turn out to be a dead end. When I do this, I usually do a Save As, and name the new project something that indicates that at this point I decided to add a string arrangement. The one with the string arrangement may be the version that becomes the Master project, but it also may not. I call it "forking," after the software industry term. Then I come back a week later and often have to look at the file dates to figure out which one was the last one I worked on. I haven't figured out a good system yet.

Whoa, I had no idea, I never tried it, I just assumed it would work. So yes, I agree, there in the Track Pane, let us rename tracks. Of course, please also extend it to the Track Pane in Staff View as well. (scope creep: also please let us right click and insert a MIDI or Instrument track in the Piano Roll and Staff Views' Track Pane)

I found out when trying to vote for Cakewalk by BandLab as my favorite audio software of 2020 at KVR that KVR doesn't have an entry for for Cakewalk. Instead it lists "SONAR Platinum by BandLab" at a price of $499. It looks like the site was updated after the announcement almost 3 years ago and not since. In order to update the information and allow CbB users to do things like vote in the polls, I'd like to see the information updated. In order to do it, someone who represents BandLab must claim the account and then enter the correct product information. BandLab might also consider it desirable to enter the other BandLab DAW's as well. It's free advertising and promotion. Developer application

Odd, it has its own page on their site, but no description whatsoever, nor is there any such information in the .ZIP, and nothing after the installation except for the .VST3 file. Not that it takes much guessing to figure out what it's supposed to do and which controls do what. But given the season and its name including "monster," should I be bracing myself for this seemingly mild-mannered vintage compressor's UI to start dripping blood in the middle of a session or something? Who knows what lurks behind its blue-grey visage?

Searching for the same string in the online documentation rewards us with this: https://www.cakewalk.com/Documentation?product=SONAR&language=3&help=Views.36.html

From p. 1650 of The Cakewalk Reference Guide: "Read Automation and Write Automation buttons are fully colored when they affect the entire channel strip. If only a subset of the channel strip’s controls are affected, the Read Automation button and Write Automation buttons are only partially colored." I found this by searching for "read automation."

I have an iMac with Logic Pro and Garageband, have installed Tracktion Waveform on it in the past (I should try Ableton Live now that I have my license for Lite). I've messed about with it, but it's never been part of my workflow. Money is very much an object in my life, and bang-for-the-buck, it's much easier to be a bottom feeder with Windows. As @MediaGary says, orphaned hardware from large companies and people upgrading is abundant. I have 3 Windows systems right now, 2 of which are used almost daily for music production. Those are my Dell tower and laptop. Both were given to me by friends who work for companies who retired them and let their employees pick them over. I even recently upgraded the processor in the laptop from a dual core i5 to a later generation quad i7. A cpu swap in a laptop?? The Windows world has much more free software available for it, Cakewalk being of course a prime example. Cost means nothing there, but it makes for a wider availability of software, music and otherwise. If money were no object, and I had to choose only one platform, it would still be Windows. I like to tinker, but if money were no object and remained no object, I presume I would be handing down my "obsolete" systems to friends who wanted to get into computer music, and Windows systems do that better than Macs. Apple is just so annoyingly worse at backward compatibility and forced upgrades. Older Mac, they stop allowing their OS upgrades to install, then they add bloat and hooks into the OS that encourage software incompatibility, which eventually forces the user to either upgrade their hardware or go without the latest software. I love using my iPhone, but I also do so with the dread that probably within a year Apple will stop allowing it the latest OS updates.

My suspicion is that it would be difficult to purchase a new Windows 10 Intel/AMD desktop or laptop that would not be more than sufficient to the task of recording a solo piano performance, be it mic'd acoustic, VSTi, or digital piano recorded direct. The only caveat would be that I prefer at least 12G of RAM, but even 8G would be fine. My 8-year-old Dell tower can do it without any strain; heck, my 10-year-old Dell notebook can do it with no problem. @Konskoo, one thing to know when reading our advice is that most of the people on this forum will assume that "build" means you wish to buy a separate case, power supply, motherboard, memory, disk drive(s), graphics card, keyboard, mouse, monitor and audio interface and either put it all together or have someone else put it all together. Is that what you mean? There is an advantage to buying a pre-configured system (Dell, HP, or smaller system integrator), which is that all of the components are guaranteed to function together. The specifications given by us can be applied to shopping for a system that meets them with few additions necessary (audio interface, 2nd SSD, possibly more RAM). Otherwise, if it is your intention to assemble a system from all these different components that you select yourself, go for it.

I should think it would not, as work has recently been done on it and the developers would be watching for regressions. Support would likely communicate your issue to them.

Considering that in order to even install and validate the license it used to be impossible on a computer that was not connected to the Internet, I would not characterize it as such. I've run Cakewalk for years and many times lost my connection to the Internet, and it never caused a crash. From what you describe, and from my Google search that revealed people having similar troubles with that CFND.DLL in other programs as well, I would say that Cakewalk will crash due to this defective .DLL situation. You also, BTW, are running CbB on an OS that is not officially supported. You do have my sympathy, I have friends who are clinging to old versions of Pro Tools, which in turn holds up their migration to current OSes. This is due to licensing changes and the lingering terror that upgrading PT and the OS will render their DAW useless. It looks like @Mad Musicologist figured out a solution to this a couple of years ago, as described in the Avid support forum. I will paste his entire message, with his solution, in the hope that it will help you. If it does, please let us know so that others may be helped by this thread:

I was going to ask you what you thought of Studio One, I tried the free version when I was DAW shopping back in 2013 and something about the UI put me off, can't quite remember what. Same with Cubase. I went with Mixcraft because of the friendly price, the contentment expressed on their user forum, and the no BS UI. I have a usability benchmark with DAW's, kind of like a first date, where you learn whether you're compatible at all. I open the main UI, plug in a mic and then see how long it takes (in time and frustration) to record a "test, test, one two three" clip (or region or whatever), then select a section of the clip and delete it. With Mixcraft, it took only a little bit longer than it took me to type the steps. With Reaper, I think it was 45 minutes, including poring over the (at the time) inadequate and poorly organized documentation. That thing where Reaper requires (required? Maybe they fixed it) you to create a clip before you record was my speedbump, and I don't like speedbumps when I'm trying to get ideas down. Reaper's great in other ways, I'm sure. The list you linked to seems as if it's influenced by certain....enthusiastic user communities that whipped up interest amongst the user base. I mean, LMMS beating out Pro Tools, Cubase, Digital Performer, Ableton Live? No way, the thing isn't even set up to deal with full audio tracks. I think these polls really amount to "which DAW's user community can get the word out that there's a DAW poll that they should vote in?" As many have noted, the "best DAW" is the one with the mix of features and UI design that best suits one's way of working. The "best DAW" for someone seeking a career in pro studios is still Pro Tools. Whatever floats one's boat, and we are lucky to have so many amazing ones to choose from, even if we restrict the choice to free licensing.

FL Studio = Skittles Ableton Live! = Electric Kool-Aid Serious, not smarty or rhetorical question, Brian: how new is "new?" If Cakewalk is the benchmark, then I think we're left with Cubase, Digital Performer, and Pro Tools. My experience with multiple DAW's is limited, and some of it comes from half a dozen years ago, but I would go as far as to say that the less time a DAW has been around, the more closely I'd want to examine whether it hadn't yet implemented or developed features I hold dear. Comping in Ableton Live, mixing in Reason, these ideas bring a shudder. But then I look on Wikipedia and see that they've been around for 20 years. Fruity Loops started 23 years ago, and became a "studio" 17 years ago. Yikes.

"Requires Ableton Live Standard 9.0 or better" ?

Unfortunately true, and really the only drawback I see to the BandLab lean and mean development freeware era. There is no longer a Cakewalk, Inc. with a staff of people to handle bundling deals with hardware and software companies, as well as doing things like encouraging use in educational institutions. Not that I would want it to go back, but it is a negative side to SONAR withdrawing from the payware world. We'll always think that BandLab could be doing more to push our favorite DAW, but that just doesn't seem to be their style. I'm happy that it even exists and is being developed with greater attention to excellence. Every time I work in another of the DAW's I have (Mixcraft, Reason, Logic Pro X, Garageband, and now Ableton Live), I appreciate what a good thing we have in Cakewalk. I get exasperated by things like the kluge-a-rama that is setting up drum maps, but it's a....cakewalk compared to the klutziness of trying to make a comp track in Ableton Live, and the last time I tried Logic, it locked up trying to load a Meldaproduction plug-in.

I guess that would be as opposed to MME/DirectX, which is supported, or ASIO4ALL, which is suggested in an onscreen tutorial within the program itself. I see where a couple of people chime in with how poorly WASAPI performs on their systems. Probably as long as there have been standards and commercial software, there have been users who defend their favorite programs' failure to support a technology by saying that the technology is crappy anyway. Latency with Cakewalk and WASAPI is just fine on my 10-year-old Dell notebook. Given the number of Ableton Live users who use the program on their laptops with no external interface, it seems like a big omission. It won't keep me from using it, it's just a pain and a WTF from an otherwise cool, really well-put-together program. It's probably something as mundane as their engineering department not wanting to bother with implementing it (although it's not as if there aren't canned libraries and sample code), their QA team not wanting to test it, and their helpdesk not wanting to support it. The company culture may play favorites with which OS platform gets the attention.

Is that because of the "flat" look? The default orangey colors? I just installed it and poked around a bit and the UI got a lot prettier when I started adjusting the theme in Preferences. I'm interested to take it for a spin, and it will be fun to explore some of the further features of things like W.A. Production loop packs where they include Ableton Live templates and sample projects. Obviously, Ableton Live is a very happening DAW, but it seems like every program has its basic sillinesses. Two that jump right out at me are that it only allows the user to specify one VST2 folder, and no support for WASAPI. Really, Ableton? On the other hand, I was able to switch the driver mode from MME/DirectX to ASIO with the transport running, without a hiccup. I guess if your program was built with live performance as its basic function, audio engine stability is foremost.

I snagged it at 11:57 last night. I'm away from the studio for a week, so doing everything on headphones, but so far I like the positioning ability with the head graphic. That's really what I'm after, spatial positioning capabilities, but if it turns out to be a threat to Phoenix (in my mind, unlikely in any product that doesn't have "Bricasti" in its name) as an all-around reverb, so much the better.

iZotope is one of my favorite plug-in houses because their products combine new-user friendliness and once you're not a n00b anymore, world-beater processors. When I was starting out with this DAW stuff half a dozen years ago, Ozone Elements with its presets and Mastering Assistant was educational. As in this is how good I can make my stuff sound, and what a difference mastering makes. Once I got to the point where I felt my own efforts at mastering were better than the Ozone wizard, I knew I was getting somewhere! My .02 as far as Neoverb vs. R4, I got iZotope/Exponential Phoenix Stereo when it went on sale for $9.99 and the default preset, Neutral Hall, sounds so good that I rarely even switch presets. So I'm not even a preset jockey with it, I'm more like a single preset jockey. So what I'm saying is that Exponential's presets are so good that I find it hard to imagine that you wouldn't find a perfect fit somewhere in R4. Neoverb interests me just because I'm curious to see what iZotope have done with the Exponential algorithms, but even an iZotope/Exponential fan such as me doesn't feel the need to acquire it.