Starship Krupa

MAGIX are always full of surprises, a lot of that is probably because while they are supposedly huge in Europe, they don't seem to work the US market as much. Also, they have absorbed so many product lines that things seem to get tucked into the corner. I just discovered they have their own Halion/Kontakt/Sampletank sampler, called Independence, and you can register and run it in free mode. https://www.magix.com/us/free-download/independence-free-sampler-software/ Installation notes: At one point the process will stop and show a dialog saying that there are missing files. Just click on the button that says to agree to download them. Registration is free, but does require that you set up a MAGIX account. Out of the box it comes with an acoustic piano, after you install all the extra sounds it's over 100 instruments including some nice drum kits, both acoustic and electronic, and a variety of world percussion instruments. Also pianos, a pipe organ, many synths, basses. A worthy download if you want more sampled instruments.

I'm doing my first "for reals" theme with actual global art changes, it will be on its way to public consumption soon. I would really like to have the pan knobs be like the ones @Adam Compeau did in his AC DA with the C option. Digits in the center of the knob. That's the only theme I've seen use them. I imagine it was done using a button editor, but I've never used one of those. I'd swipe Adam's, but they are not quite right for my theme. Also, one swoopy idea I had was for the knob or digits to change in color or shade as you pan to one side or the other. Like the digits would get darker or something. That would provide a very quick assessment of where you're panned. Hints, suggestions?

I'm doing one based initially on Tungsten, but with green taking the place of where Tungsten uses orange, and using hue shift in Paint.NET has delivered. I got a rhythm to it after a while. I will soon be posting the results of this, my first full theme for public consumption. It's sort of evocative of an old school country club, rich greens and browns.

Just a note: the comparison section of the FAQ still says that the Classic Creative Suite is missing from CbB. I love the new features list on that page!

I am all about consistency. It's important for the new user, learning curve and skill retention. The idea is that once someone learns "how Cakewalk does things" in one View, that skill and knowledge can be immediately put to use in the next one they tackle. "Oh, cool, there's a list of track headers here, so I should be able to work it like the list of track headers in the other views." One of my peeves is that the Track Manager is under different menus in Track View and Console View. The root of the request came from realizing that in the View where I do the most work with MIDI/Instrument tracks, Piano Roll, I couldn't add a MIDI track without switching out of it and back to the Track or Console view. It cuts into efficiency. Especially for people on laptops who only have one screen and have the PRV maximized. While I'm beating the efficiency drum, Drum Maps are my prime example of this kind of inefficiency: if you're working in the PRV and decide that you want to add a drum track (using a map), you must switch over to Track View both to add the track and to assign the map. You can show and hide the Drum Pane in the PRV, but from there, there's no way to proceed without going over to Track (to add the track and access the menu that assigns the Map), then going into the Drum Map dialog, then it's back to PRV. By which time, the mad beat (yo) that I wanted to lay down may or may not still be in my head.? This kind of thing is what makes a program's workflow feel "tight" or "loose" to me. How many context switches does it take to perform common tasks like adding a track? Even the beloved Track View, while it has a button for adding tracks, and you can do it from the right click, technically has no menu command for inserting tracks (it's up on the Global menu). With a PRV right-click menu command to add a track and a right-click menu in the empty Drum Pane header that launches Drum Map manager, it would eliminate the trip to the Track View (with its mental context switch) entirely. I could even right-click, add a drum track template and be ready to go.

Excellent and informative review. Been working on mine, may end up pushing that 10,000 character limit. ? Here's the link to the CbB listing

Ah, I now notice that the thing that @Will_Kaydo quoted says that "freeware and donationware should not be voted for...." It didn't say may not be voted for. ? Besides, CbB''s not really freeware. ? Seriously, should people not vote for Acon Digital Multiply or any of their other beloved loss-leader freebies from companies that use them to market their payware products? I get that KVR need advertising to support what they do, but it reduces the credibility of their poll if it's not open to all products. Ghettoizing freeware just perpetuates the unwarranted stigma against free licensed software.

I guess they have to give the other DAW's a fighting chance. Maybe we could enlist one of those "it's not really free because you have to register on their website using a valid email address" people who show up here from time to time to make their case with KVR.

I think I found an addition: Console View/Strip Label Text (as referred to on p. 49 of my copy of the YLIP) is the color for the digits used to display peaks (the Console View's counterpart to the Track View's Header Peak Text). Like Header Peak Text, it won't reveal itself unless you change its value and then run the transport a bit.

By suggestion of @Jim Fogle, I'm making this a separate feature request: I would like to be able to right click in the Track Pane of the Piano Roll View to Insert MIDI (or Instrument) tracks. Since the Staff View also has a similar Track Pane, I'd like to see it there, too. This would be accessed right-clicking anywhere in the Track Panes, including the space below the track list, the same way it works in Track View.

I have either never seen this or never noticed it. but I have one idea: in Preferences/Audio Data, do you have your Record Bit Depth and Render Bit Depth set to different numbers?

I know you asked abacab, but I'm with you on every point except 4.1 and 4.2. There is no need to go out of your way to avoid audio interfaces that have 5-pin MIDI, rather you don't need to be concerned with whether it has one or not. There is no downside to an interface having one of those ports. Many (most?) interfaces still include them because they are not expensive to include and there are still many MIDI-capable devices in use that use the connector.

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."