Starship Krupa

Other than a gateway drug? ? My favorites: there's a really good, useful para EQ and I wish every compressor had the same graphical display that MCompressor (which also has all the usual compressor parameters plus HP and LP filters for the sidechain and curves you can draw yourself) uses. My two most used EQ's are the one in the Cakewalk Pro Channel and MEQualizer. MLoudnessAnalyzer is on the mix output bus in every project I do, and MStereoScope is on every drum overheads bus. MComb is a very versatile 4-pole filter, each pole can be set up to have its frequency, Q, and boost/cut modulated, and the modulators can be LFO or envelope follower, in combination, and the LFO shapes (and speeds) can be set a bunch of different ways. MTuner is a polyphonic tuner that also includes a pitch-to-MIDI converter. Any one of those would be a pretty good value at $11 by itself. Most of the rest are of the "need to have in my toolbox for when I need one" category for me. Ring modulator, flanger, phaser, tremolo, saturator, autopanner, algo reverb, convo reverb, vibrasto, spectrum analyzer, test oscillator, noise generator, oscilloscope. MAutoPitch is, I am told, a not-too-shabby realtime pitch corrector. I don't use them myself. There are even more. One I've never tried but want to is MCCGenerator, which lets you send out up to 8 MIDI CC values driven by its modulators. I think the idea is that you can use the LFO's in this plug-in to sweep the controls of other plug-ins whose parameters don't have LFO's of their own. I had the bundle for years only using about half a dozen of them before one evening deciding to put a drum loop on and go down the MFreeFX list until I had tried all of the processors. I was....impressed, especially with MComb. I had thought before that that Arturia's Mini-Filter was pretty hot stuff for juicing up a drum loop. Not that it isn't, it's just that I haven't used it since I found out about MComb. I just bought my new-to-DAW's buddy a license and it came to $10.72 USD after setting up his account, etc.

Cakewalk’s Lyrics View is the most baffling, strangely-implemented feature I have ever encountered in a DAW, and is in at least the top 5 in any software I’ve tried. When I want to have lyrics written down as part of the project, I use the Notes feature or Meldaproduction’s plug-in. As for learning to use the Arranger Track, my approach was/is to just start making Sections that correspond to intro, verse, chorus, bridge and see if it inspires me to continue with the tool. It did, once I realized I could so quickly copy and paste and move Sections. If nothing else it’s a way to have bits of the song sort of permanently selected. Change something and wham-wham, it’s easy to chop ‘n’ drop the altered verse without going through all the steps of finding the markers, selecting, etc. It just streamlines the process. Along the way it’s gotten me to be more aware of and think in terms of arrangements rather than a song as a linear thing.

Not technically incorrect, as it does zoom horizontally, but unfortunately it also zooms your project vertically to fill the Track Pane with your project. Which if you only have a handful of tracks, results in Humongous Towering Tracks Syndrome. I would love for Cakewalk to have a command to zoom horizontally to fit the project, but it ain't there.

I just heard from another user on this forum, someone new to Meldaproduction products. With the newsletter signup bonus, the new user 20% credit and the BF 50% off everything deal their total outlay came to $11.36 for the FreeFXBundle upgrade, after tax. That's less than half what I paid (and there have been at least half a dozen new plug-ins added to it since then), and I consider it to be one of the most useful plug-in purchases I've ever made.

I kind of assumed that a lot of it was taking out instructions for use of Platinum Edition-only plug-ins. I noticed that Morten S. took out lots of pages from the "getting started" section that dealt with things like setting IRQ jumpers on boards and gameport-to- MIDI cables, outdated information about configuring a computer to be ready for SONAR. I think it went on for at least 50 pages about topics like disabling/enabling ACPI and plug 'n' play and making sure that AOL wasn't set up to automatically dial out with your modem and so forth. It mentioned that one way to get the latest drivers for your sound card might be by dialing up the card maker's BBS. There was no mention of the internet or web. ASIO and WASAPI were not included in the discussion about driver models. By my guess, it looked like most of the information dated back to before 1997. It was removed, the things that it covered are pretty much taken care of by running the manufacturer's installer, then plugging in a USB cable. Done, no IRQ conflicts or any of that. Even less if the person is just using the onboard hardware CODEC. Isn't it amazing the difference from those days? You can now literally go to Best Buy, buy a Windows notebook computer, and as long as it has 6G or more of RAM, there is nothing more that needs to be done if you are doing in-the-box electronic production. Sure, most people want to set up an external interface, but they don't have to. Back then you couldn't get sound of any kind out of the computer without dropping an extra $50-100 on an add-on card.

Where are you seeing this page count? The link at the top of this thread goes to the current manual, which is now down to around 1,700. Still quite a tome, but it's a substantial removal of outdated and redundant material. There is a getting started section. Your best bet, if you are okay with the YouTube format, is to go to the Tutorials Subforum and start browsing. With just the current ones that @Creative Sauce and @Xel Ohh (and others') are putting out, you should find plenty of guidance.

ADHD Leveling Tool is my favorite LA/2A workalike, it lets the user set attack, release, ratio, and dry/wet. Also freeware.

XPand!2 is a ROMpler, so what it has under its hood is a collection of sampled waveforms that can be tweaked (with filter and volume envelopes) and layered and effected and arpeggiated to create presets. It comes with 2500+ presets. Each preset can layer 4 of the waveforms. These are more presets, not more waveforms. Whether the folks at Patch Hut have done something interesting with the sounds is the big question. I went to their site and listened to some of the demos, and perhaps to their credit, they tend to leave the reverb out of the patch, which is my strong preference, I like to use my own way better sounding reverbs on synths rather than the ho-hum ones that tend to come built into synths.

Regarding the aforementioned Meldaproduction MFreeFX Bundle, if you don't already have an account with them, make one and sign up for their newsletter (you can cancel at any time, bla bla), and you will receive a voucher for 10 Euros store credit. On top of the 50% off, and the 10% for using an existing user's code credit. 10 Euro comes out to $8.42, which further brings the total down to....$15.58. Update: I set up a new account for a friend and bought this as a gift and my total came to $10.72 with tax.

This post is kinda outside the parameters of the thread, but also not, because I assume (hope) that many people who watch this thread have and use this free product and might want to upgrade it. It's come to my attention that starting Monday November 23rd, Meldaproduction will be running a 50% off everything sale. Everything, including the bundles. This will also include the MFreeFXBundle upgrade to the Pro versions for $30 (after the discount). There are currently 37 FX and utilities in that bundle, most of which are, IMO, best in their class in the industry regardless of price. MTuner (polyphonic tuner with MIDI out ?) by itself would be a worthy $30 buy, and that goes for MEQualizer, MCompressor, MComb and others, depending on what you regularly use. Not only FX, the utilities: I use MLoudness Analyzer and MStereoscope on every project. If this is your first purchase at Meldaproduction, you may also use my discount code (or any other Meldaproduction customer's) to get another 20% off, bringing the price down to $24: MELDA1923165. The person whose code you use gets 10% of the price of your order, but that's not why I'm posting this. Ask mibby for his if you like him better than me. ? The non-upgraded versions don't leave out much (upsampling, resizing the UI, and saving presets in their native format are the biggies), but it's nice to get rid of the box and give something back and encourage Vojtech to keep adding to the bundle (which, since their bundles are a lifetime license is like belonging to a plug-in club, he adds something new to the FreeFXBundle at least once every 6 months). One caution: exposure to the Meldaverse via the FreeBundle may lead to becoming a Meldamoonie (like me).

Maybe @Xel Ohh would like to chime in. Or at least I'm calling your attention to this thread, because I kind of see you as the flag-bearer for the "Cakewalk Needs A Phrase Sampler" movement. ?

This will also include the MFreeFXBundle upgrade to the Pro versions. There are currently 37 FX and utilities in that bundle, most of which are, IMO, best in class in the entire industry. MTuner (polyphonic tuner with MIDI out ?) by itself would be a worthy $30 buy, and that goes for MEQualizer, MCompressor, MComb and others, depending on what you regularly use. The non-upgraded versions don't leave much out, but it's nice to get rid of the box and give something back and encourage Vojtech to keep adding to the bundle (which is like belonging to a plug-in club, he adds something new to it at least once every 6 months).

"Unfortunately, serial numbers are no longer available for this software because the promotion has expired." (Google Translate)

Both Quick Grouping of Gain control and Gain (c hecked by using Drumazon) are working okay over here. Make sure you have the latest Preview build: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1l6juXQPYfPsNGupwdEoaV46yu4hC9h4U/view?usp=sharing

Try forcing an explicit re-scan in Cakewalk Plug-In Manager. Run it from the Utilities menu, then click on the Options button under VST Configuration. Make sure the folders are correct, then check Re-Scan existing plug-ins and Re-Scan failed plug-ins and click OK.

I came across this deal at Pluginboutique, 7.99 for 3 expansion packs for our favorite ROMpler, Xpand!2: https://www.pluginboutique.com/products/6717-Xpand-2-Expansion-Multivation-Bundle It's a total of 95 presets. Curious if anyone has tried any of these. I use Xpand!2 often enough that eight bucks for a bunch of new presets seems interesting, but it's a ROMpler with limited controls. I guess it would be the various sounds layered and tweaked. I usually end up using the more "vanilla" presets, like if I want a double bass or drum machine. I don't use it for inspiration like I do with say, Vacuum Pro or Hybrid 3 or Element or my AAS player packs.

Open Windows Task Manager, which you can access by pressing Win+X and selecting Task Manager from the menu, or by right clicking on your Task Bar and selecting it. Once you have Task Manager running, click the Performance tab at the top, then click on Memory. That will give you a graph of how much RAM your computer is using. 17 is a very specific number. Since it happens system-wide, I'm thinking iffy hard drive. Cakewalk does write to the disk for some caching tasks, most notably the picture cache. That folder is usually C:\CAKEWALK PROJECTS\PICTURE CACHE\ by default. You may delete all the .WOV files in it. Check the dates and times and see if there's any relation to your issue.

I'd like to add this, from the email: This is what was promised with the VST3 spec, and it's the first time I've seen a developer implement it. This is potentially huge.

I've had no problems whatsoever with the VST3, whereas neither the VST2 nor the VST3 of Sampletank 3 would crash Cakewalk after running a while.

Since CbB remains without an integrated or bundled phrase (drum machine style) sampler, my thought is that it might be helpful to compile a list of whatever we're using instead. I'm not talking about things like Kontakt or Sampletank, but rather instruments whose purpose is mostly to play back phrases when triggered by MIDI events. They all allow a certain amount of cropping and manipulation, reversing and loop options for the audio samples. My current favorite is Speedrum Lite, which is freeware, simple but not incomplete, pretty much along the lines of what I'd like to see bundled with Cakewalk. Others I've tried that fill the bill are Sitala, freeware, similar in features to Speedrum Lite, and TX16wx, also freeware, way more features than the others, but with corresponding complexity. I find I can get my phrase sampling jobs done more quickly with Speedrum and Sitala, but for fancy multivelocity stuff, I'd go with TX16wx. It would of course be great to have such a thing built into Cakewalk, but these are what I've been using to get by until the feature is included.

Unfiltered Audio Sandman Pro I have a $25 coupon for Plugin Alliance that requires a minimum purchase of $35. Sandman Pro is $49. I'd go for Instant Delay, but it's only $29 and it comes with Sandman Pro anyway. I'm hoping for Plugin Alliance to have a storewide discount so that I can shave a little bit more off.

Essential stuff for the glitch-oriented, and sound designers in general at $5 a pop for the FX and $10 each for the instruments. https://www.pluginboutique.com/meta_product/1-Instruments/57-Complete-Collection/6335-Glitchmachines-Plugins

Wow, I thought we'd seen the last of new plug-ins from SoundSpot. I imagine I'll wind up with it someday as a $5 buy at Pluginboutique.

My T-RackS management process is to move my unregistered ones to a folder not scanned by any of my audio (or video) software, then as I acquire licenses for them, move those back to the appropriate folder. I found out the hard way that the new install/authorizer doesn't re-download plug-ins that it thinks I already have installed, so I just keep them in quarantine until they're licensed. PITA, but IK Multimedia flows so much great stuff for free that I'll spot them a bit of hassle. BTW, while I do like that the VST3 spec calls for a centralized canonical install location, I don't like that I now have no easy way to separate VST FX from VSTi's. With VST2's, I have 2 folders, VSTInst and VSTFx, so I can tell audio editors to only scan VSTFx and instrument hosts to only scan VSTInst (if I choose not to use my FX in them). This used to save a lot of time and hassle, not having VSTi's in an audio editor that can't use them. Sound Forge, my editor of choice, makes no distinction between FX and instruments, so every launch I get it churning away installing instruments it can't use.

Dang, I guess I missed that one. I still haven't found the ideal dbx compressor to replace de la Mancha's, which is unfortunately 32-bit abandonware.