Starship Krupa

Is it possible you have a stuck custom color set? That's not normal, stock Tungsten doesn't look like that. I figured out what you meant by the colors below the Track List and Track Pane, I agree and will get on it. Thanks!

I'm not sure what you mean, even with the illustrations. Do you know where in TE I can find these colours? I'm definitely up for less jarring. (speaking of colours (sic), have you found the Easter Egg that honours the theme's British heritage?) I just updated it to add some more green in the menu bar arrows, as well as changing the backgrounds of the Color Picker and HUD. Also made some of the greens more unified and removed the gradient from the menu bars to further flatten things.

Is that how the PRV looks on your system? That is indeed heinous. On all of mine, it's like this:

You will get better help in the Instruments and Effects forum. The first thing I would do is open Cakewalk Plug-In Manager and check to see if they have been excluded, and if so, enable them. I have multiple SONIVOX instruments myself, and they work fine in Cakewalk.

C'mon, no jokes yet about "Mesa by BandLab?" I'm sure that Meng is excited about this development.

My favorite is Speedrum Lite. Sitala is another favorite. Both are freeware and quite simple to use. As for how to do it, it couldn't be much simpler: set up Speedrum or Sitala as an instrument track, then drag and drop whatever audio sample(s) you wish to use onto the pad(s). You can drag and drop from Windows Explorer or from within Cakewalk (clips). They both have 16 pads, so it's straightforward to create an entire drum kit if that's what you'd like to do. From there, trigger the note(s) with a MIDI track. They're great for "one shots," but neither of them does velocity layering with multiple samples (yet).

I don't have Studio One, but I can vouch for major improvements in stability and performance since the SONAR days. I've been using CbB since the very first issue, and 3 years ago, that program had some issues. Crashing, lots of having to restart the audio engine, but that stuff is long gone. Lots of under the hood optimizations have happened in addition to the new features. The new features seem focused on usability rather than license grubbing, which makes sense given the licensing model. There is ARA2 support for tight integration with Melodyne and whatever other software uses it. Hardware integration seems to be behind the curve, according to what I read in the forum. As it is now, I would choose it even if it weren't freeware, but I wouldn't have said that back in 2018. It looks and sound great, and it isn't lacking in any features I can't Rewire in. I love the way I can float and reconfigure all the windows on my 2 monitors. I'm a believer in keeping proficient in at least 2 DAW's (my other one is Mixcraft), I saw what you all went through when Gibson pulled the plug. Download it, keep it around just in case. See what your old buddy is up to these days.

I'll chime in and say that I always leave my hardwired or wi-fi connection enabled as I have found this to have no impact whatsoever on audio performance or dropouts on modern-day systems. When I run Latency Monitor or other performance measuring tools, the NIC drivers are way down the list of impactful interrupts. It's not necessary for me to turn my network connection off and back on every time I want to do DAW work. The optimization that has had the largest impact on performance in Cakewalk is disabling realtime malware scanning for the various folders where Cakewalk does most of its reading and writing of files. On systems I configure I exclude the Cakewalk projects folder, plug-ins folders, and Cakewalk program directory. On my own systems I have disabled realtime scanning entirely, but I realize that's not an option for some. The reason this has such an impact is because when Cakewalk is playing back audio, it streams it from the disk every time, and that includes muted takes and tracks. The only way to keep an audio file from streaming in a project is to archive the track it's in. And without disabling realtime scanning, every time Cakewalk uses the disk, whatever file it reads or writes will be run through the anti-malware software's scanning program.

Meant to evoke the experience of going for an evening drive in a classic British sports car, Racing Green uses green buttons and arrows, with brown and gold accents. It's a darker theme, meant to be easy on the eyes at night. It's green, the greenest you've seen, never was a theme so green, except for Green Glow. Thanks to @Colin Nicholls for the Primer and use of his Browser folders image, thanks to @Matthew White for the bright red buttons that indicate my FX racks are disabled. Thanks to both and all for inspiration and assistance. It uses the alternate convention of a keyboard to indicate a Synth track and a keyboard/MIDI sandwich to indicate a Simple Instrument track. Why it's the other way 'round from the factory is beyond me. There are also some things meant to ease confusion about such matters as "does that button mean PDC is off or on?" The state of something being enabled or disabled should be clear. If it's turned off it's either visibly darkened, red, or has a red line across it. If it's enabled it will be lit up, usually in green. It also uses my dark theme convention of selected clips having a dark background so as to better see the data within. Unselected clips revert to displaying their standard backgrounds (or as you choose). It's my first custom Cakewalk theme, Racing Green. Let me how you like it! UPDATE: the Racing Green folder now includes an optional custom color preset file which may be imported and extends the customization, including greater visibility of grid lines in the Piano Roll View. Update: 5/18/2021 Added images for Meter/Key (and related) dialogs, minor image changes and recoloring Update: 5/24/2021 Redesigned arrows and buttons, replaced EQ grids, many other small art changes

Been saying this for a long time: have separate email addresses for software purchases/downloading and for security-critical sites such as financial institutions, insurance, etc. They're still free at yahoo.com, and they even let you create multiple addresses for the same Yahoo account, so you don't have to hassle with different logins (or messina for that matter). This isn't because small plug-in houses are likely to swipe your info, it's because (as you say) their security is softer. One of the reasons that it seems like large institutions are the only targets is that hacks against credit reporting agencies and so forth get reported and hacks on Audio Masterclass don't. Another thing: if you can, use a unique password at every site. There are various ways of accomplishing this without the need to memorize dozens of passwords. Even if you just use the form mypassword*plug-ins or mypassword&banking or whatever, mix it up. This will go a long way toward thwarting dictionary attacks and social engineering attacks (fans of Mr. Robot have seen Elliot successfully use social engineering hacks to pwn everyone).

I will vouch for the usefulness of Fender Tune. Even the free version has a library of fun alternate tunings, like "Raga."

The default mousewheel behavior is to zoom tracks horizontally, if you have something similar to a Logitech Marathon with the super fast wheel turned on, it will zoom very quickly.

Another heads-up: I'm not an iLok hater, although I see no advantage to using it with iZotope products; even if I'm taking a project to another studio, they're probably going to have the same iZotope plug-ins that I do anyway. I have 4 computers, so their multiple seat licensing works great here at home. I decided to finally buy a used iLok dongle in order to be able to use certain licenses on my extra, third system. Unfortunately, I bought an original iLok thinking that the only difference was capacity, and it's now possible for companies to make their plug-ins require an iLok 2 (or PACE driver), so two of my most important iLok'd plug-ins, Phoenix Stereo Reverb and Excalibur (both iZotope, both single seat licenses) don't work with my iLok.

Thing is, I'm pretty much okay with how Drum Maps work once they're set up. The drum names show up over on the left, they don't disappear after you close the project, and unlike doing it the "note names" way, they don't usurp the note names for other MIDI tracks you may wish to edit. It's the obscurity/hassle/complexity/uncertain results I'd like to see reduced.

I don't have a "worst" purchase to share, but I got slightly "chumped" on one of my favorite purchases, Sandman Pro. In late November I remembered the $25 voucher I had for them from filling out a survey, minimum purchase $39. Since I'm getting more into in-the-box glitchy weirdness, I downloaded the trial for Sandman Pro/Instant Delay and it was love at first mix. $49, but I figured with a 15-day trial and all the sales coming up I would sit tight, worst case scenario it never goes on sale and I drop $25 on it. Sat out the "most plug-ins $29" sale, then a few of their subsequent ones where they were putting selected products on deep discount. Finally decided to just say the heck with it, Unfiltered aren't participating in the Dec. sales, my voucher expires on the 30th, so $24 for a pair of insanely great tools it is. Christmas comes and goes, and I get a no-minimum voucher for $20 and Sandman Pro drops to $19.99, making it effectively free. No skin off any body part, I paid the price of a trip for 2 to Burger King (or half the price of discount admission to Six Flags Marine World) to be able to use a great tool for 3 weeks, and I got Fault for free instead (oh did BYOME call to me). Still, worst deal on a favorite plug-in. But considering that I got enough plug-ins for free (Including the $29 Fault) this year that I will be literally unable to explore all of them as long as I live, I'm fine with supporting one of my favorite manufacturers. Now I hope that they don't renew that dang voucher code again so I don't have to struggle over whether to get BYOME....

Also access to the reverb parameter either via knob or automation. Their reverb algorithm is fantastic, but the presets tend to drench the sound in it. It was fun to go through Arturia's free pack of "ambient" sounds (and thanks to you, mate, for listing all the free packs) and hear the classic ambient synth sounds without all the modulation and reverb that those sounds are usually draped in. The silliest fun may be had in the Present to Future pack, where they nail a bunch of synth sounds from classic songs.

I mentioned this in passing earlier. There is even another way to get the drum names showing, which is to use alternate note names. Unfortunately just now that functionality is a bit broken inasmuch as applying those note names is not persistent across closing and opening the PRV. That's what led to this most recent match with the drum map demon. The other DAW's I've used also put the two things under one feature called "drum maps." If you want to see your drum names in Mixcraft, you use a drum map. If you want to do the MIDI note and port remapping, you use a drum map for that, too. I mostly just want to see instrument/note names, but of course I want to have the other part of the feature available. The instrument names part is why I think there should be access to the feature from the PRV/Drum Pane. If all you want is to see the drum names, it can be a heck of a lot of bother to go through. All I wanted was drum names and I wound up with a spurious patch/bank message in there somewhere.

I may have been thinking of some ProChannel panel images. There must be something, it's a dark theme and you are the Dark sth lord. I'll special thanks for anything I cop. It's a unique enough theme that at this point it's not even "inspired" by anything other than me looking at Tungsten and thinking that I'd like to have one where everything is green instead of orange and blue. Later on some brown crept in around window borders. It's started reminding me of a 1960's Jaguar sports car, so I'm going to call it Racing Green. I thought I had it almost ready then (and I'm sure I'm not the first one who's done this) noticed that there was still a pocket of images that I hadn't converted to my theme color (green). I also want to change some button state images; that's one that can get mixed up when putting hundreds of images through the hue-changer into the wee hours of the morn.

I actually have no plans at this time to use any; I think there's all of one image in my theme that I'm copying as-is and it's from Colin 'cause he made the browser folders tan like real life folders and I like his browser icons for VST3's. Both of these design elements happen to be in the same image. I'll credit him.

I use both Home and Pro, but like others, only because my laptop is a corporate hand-me-down that had Windows 7 Pro on it when the upgrade came around. There is nothing, including the "advanced" settings (such as disabling real time malware scanning), that I can do with Pro that I can't do with Home. It took some finagling to enable the more advanced settings on the Home systems, but it is possible. The few that exist are just not enabled by default, and they have little to do with DAW performance except for my disabling of realtime malware scanning, which most people are afraid of doing anyway. Microsoft have even given Home users greater ability to defer updates, so I wouldn't worry about that.

There are several available in the thread below, and I second Meldaproduction Monastery Grand as an excellent option. Freebie Sampletank 4 SE also comes with an excellent sampled grand. https://discuss.cakewalk.com/index.php?/topic/5229-freeware-instruments-thread/

Welcome. What you're likely running into is that first, while even low end Yamaha keyboards have excellent built-in sounds, TTS-1 dates back a lot longer than 16 years. The default piano sound in TTS-1 is....a lackluster mono thing. Fortunately, you can easily change to one of the other piano sounds in it, and things improve. Just switch the sound to Piano 1 st. and you'll get a stereo sound. An even better option is to get a 3rd-party freeware piano VST. There are excellent ones available. My favorite is the Meldaproduction Monastery Grand, but at this point in your learning, installing it is kind of involved. Check this thread for a ton of freeware instruments including sampled grand pianos: One I suggest is IK Multimedia Sampletank 4 SE, which comes with an excellent sampled grand. Native Instruments' Kontakt Player also comes with a decent sampled grand. Both of these free products come with a ton of other useful sounds as well. As for the note plunk factor, one of the differences from playing on your velocity-sensitive keyboard is in expressiveness. You play with dynamics and slight timing variations that sound good. When entering notes by hand one at a time in Piano Roll, they all go in at the same default velocity setting. Assuming that you have Snap enabled, they go in "on the grid" as well. One remedy for this is to use the Humanize process command, which adds velocity and slight timing variations. Another is to manually adjust the notes' velocities. As for the disconnect between the chords and the melody line, I don't quite understand the issue, so I can't speak to it. If your Yamaha is 16 years old, its lack of "modern inputs and outputs" can actually make things easier for you, as it likely has a 5-pin DIN MIDI out jack on it. You can get a USB MIDI interface and instead of having to draw notes on the screen, play your whole song into Cakewalk as MIDI using the Yamaha. I bought this one when it was $15 and it works great. You can get it now for $11: https://smile.amazon.com/gp/product/B08549TD7G/ As for using the internal sound chip, that's fine for what you're doing, but of course if you want to record any audio, then it's time to step up to an external interface. You'll get the best results using it in WASAPI Exclusive mode, and turn the latency down to 10mS or below. Your Dell is new, so should have no trouble getting quite low latency with the Realtek chip in WASAPI. Avoid ASIO4ALL, it won't give you anything that WASAPI Exclusive doesn't.

I got the Earos and have tried them out a few times at the drum kit. Impressions so far: I prefer these to anything I've used in the past as far as fit. The Etymotics and Earasers never quite felt like I got a consistent seal. As far as attenuation and clarity, they seem about on par with the Earasers, which I liked better than the Etymotics. There aren't little pieces that can fall out and get lost, either. Conversation is easy to hear. They come with 2 sizes of insert, the default ones work great in my ear canal. Unless you don't care about (or can't tell) the difference between ear protection designed for jackhammer operators and ear protection designed for musicians, check them out. Otherwise, rock out with your foam in.

This is just crazy great. Like their version of A|A|S' Swatches.

I trialed it when I was looking for a straight up vocoder, one where I could feed it an external carrier and vocal track modulator. I couldn't really get it to do that. TAL Vocoder 2 turned out to be the answer. It seems to do a lot of other fun stuff. Try before you buy if you're expecting to get a certain sound from it. As always, YMMV, and just because I wasn't able to figure out how to get it to work that way doesn't necessarily mean someone else can't. It's supposed to be able to, I think, according to the user guide.