Starship Krupa

Yes, if CAL is a deprecated feature, any of its common uses should be implemented directly. I've seen plenty of questions here on the forum answered with "run this CAL script," which shouldn't really be happening any more.

That did it. What I had been doing was clicking on the Tetris button. I wonder why the Tetris button doesn't open it centred....

Is there a way to have Piano Roll View launch from the Track View to show the notes or clip I have selected? Scenario I've just recorded a MIDI clip, then I click on the "tetris" menu button (I don't know what it's actually called) in the clip's upper right corner and select Piano Roll. It seems to be anyone's guess how much scrolling and zooming out I'll need to do to see the notes in the clip I just clicked on. Same with selecting the clip, then calling Piano Roll from the Global Menu. This causes needless wasted time and frustration scrolling and zooming. Why aren't the notes I've just selected front and center? Is there any way to set things up so that my selected clip, or linear selection, is what appears in the PRV when I open it? (If not, hello feature request)

And, wonderfully, there are so many of them. Hmm, it seems like there should be a key modifier that will slow down node adjustment. I agree in theory when it's in the case of audio volume. Still, even if no human can perceive it, if John sets out to pan something at 75%, he shouldn't have to settle for 74% or 76% just because the UI is fiddly. Same with a change in level. If he wants to automate a 3 db drop from -2db, why should he have to settle for -5.1db? It throws in a bit of frustration, maybe you start thinking "I need to improve my mouse hand" instead of keeping your attention on the mix. Even then, I've automated highpass filter adjustments to tame plosives, and I have a friend who hates gating, so he automates volume drops between every snare hit to stop hi-hat bleed. Or if you're automating a plug-in that you want to kick in and out or change a parameter at just the right moment. As in "throw" delays, where you might switch on the delay plug-in at the right moment, then kill it before the next sound on the track. You might even need to do that between syllables.

Downvoted. With all respect for the frustration expressed, the OP selected the Q&A subforum to post a general complaint in rant form, with no actual questions asked. This suggests to me that they may not be the greatest at watching what they're doing. As for the suggestions in this thread, which, if they are truly "done" they won't be reading anyway, yes, check the project's Audio folder for the condition of the original audio files. If they're corrupted, there's very likely a dying drive to blame. If they're good, they can at least be used to salvage the project. Import the raw WAV's into whatever other DAW you're not "done" with. If the issue is somewhere within Cakewalk, then for future reference, Preferences/File/Advanced/Enable Versioning of Project Files is an option that allows the user to easily revert to earlier versions of the project, one for each time it's saved. And for heaven's sake, before you get to the "whole songs ready for mastering" stage, especially with a program that's new to you, back your projects up to a different drive or CD-R or something.

Of course I do. It was actually the first thing I tried when I wanted to add tracks. I wrote that from the perspective of a new user who may not be so right click oriented, and to point out how counterintuitive the menu system is. The menus in the major views are confusing and inconsistent. If we assume that the Track View is the "default" view, then the other views should follow the same menu logic (such as it is) and layout. As much as I love the Console View, its menus are baffling. "Track" menu instead of "Tracks" menu, Modules and Strips should be consolidated into a View menu, Track Manager is in the Strips menu rather than the Track(s) menu as it is in Track View, and Track and Bus should be consolidated into a single menu. Options is the only one that makes complete sense, and it's in a different location from the Track View's Options menu. In Piano Roll View, the commands that are in the Notes menu and Controllers menu should be in the missing Options menu, and again, there's no way to add new tracks from inside the PRV (even with a right click in the Track pane), you have to switch to another view or the Global menu to do that. Also, and this is the most egregious omission, there's no way to go directly to Drum Map Manager from the Piano Roll View, which is where drum maps are used. None of these changes require revisions to code in the functions themselves, they're just shuffling menus around, and, before the moaning geezers chime in, there could be an option to use the old menu configuration. @abacab, it's there, it's just easy to miss. When you select "Intrument," down at the very bottom of the list of synths is "MIDI Only." I think it would be better to have it as a checkbox or even a tab, with options to set the output, etc., but it's there.

My personal WTF DAW is Reason. I got the Lite version as a PluginBoutique freebie. Can't do diddly squat with it. I spent most of my time just starting at it dumbly because I couldn't figure out how to do anything. I couldn't even figure out how to get to the MIDI editor, if it even has one. And of course, Cakewalk's Console View has me spoiled for anything else.

Re: the OP, I agree that CbB has a learning curve. It has been in development for 32 years and it shows. Why are the menu commands for inserting new tracks up on the global menu instead of down in the Track Pane? Who knows. At least it has the buttons up above the Track Headers. The analogy to learning to play guitar is a good one. If you just pick up a guitar, yes, you can learn how to play music on it without studying anything, but it will be frustrating and take a long time. Learn the E, A, D, G and C chords, though, and you're good to start off. Even learning those chords takes hours. When I first started playing guitar I tried stringing it left handed, because it was my impression that the guitar was designed backward for a righty. The stronger and more dexterous hand just strumming and picking, and the weaker hand doing the hard work on the frets. It was counterintuitive, it made no sense. The experiment didn't last, though. These days, a DAW is as much an instrument as it is a means for recording and mixing performances, maybe more so. How long does it take to learn an instrument? I've been playing drums for over 5 years and I try to sit at the kit and practice every day. It's just 6 objects that I hit with sticks and 2 that I operate with pedals.

All three of my systems are on it. It was weird, the first one that got the update was my oldest system, a 15-year-old Gateway Quad Core 2 system. Then months later, my Dell Optiplex tower and E6410 laptop got it.

Yes, make the glossary entries links to the full topic. Just knowing what people on the forum or the docs themselves are referring to when we say "Comping Mode." When I was learning to sail a boat, before I left the dock I learned what a "tiller" and "rudder" and "centerboard" and "cleat" and "boom" were. "Forward," "aft," "port," "starboard," "winch," "jib," you can't even crew for someone unless you know those terms. How about teaching someone how to start a car if they had never seen a car before. A friend who grew up in a hunter-gatherer tribe in South America and is visiting a city for the first time. If I say "sit down behind the wheel," they might think I'm telling them to go around behind the car and sit on the concrete.

Similar to that one, except it would have descriptive entries for Cakewalk-specific things like "Console View," "Clips Pane," "Multidock," "Matrix View," "Step Sequencer," "Smart Tool," "Track Header," "Take Lane," "Clip Automation," "Track Automation," "Drum Pane," "Drum Grid," etc. Imagine never having seen SONAR (or maybe even a DAW) and coming to this forum for help and seeing all these terms thrown around. I was a complete n00b to Cakewalk 2 1/2 years ago, when there was no Reference Guide, and while I knew what those things were from using other DAW's, I didn't know the Cakewalk-specific nomenclature. Even if I had had access to this glossary, it would not have helped me. In general it also needs updating, about which I shall alert the authorities. It refers to WASAPI as a "new" driver mode and makes no mention of ASIO, VST, Freeze, and many other commonly used terms.

Ooh, the Cakewalk Glossary. That would be a very handy tool for new users.

There is no way to "send you a copy" of Cakewalk and have it work when you tried to install it. It would still require BandLab Assistant and a BandLab account in order to validate. You already have a functioning BandLab account. If you are able to log in to this forum, you are able to log in using BandLab Assistant using the same email and password. If the install process is not completing using BandLab Assistant, that is a matter for Cakewalk by BandLab technical support, who will probably be able to sort the issue in less than 24 hours. All of the above is, of course, as free of charge as when you first installed the program.

Unfortunately, that's how people are and have long been, and I include myself for many things. We want the prize without thinking about what we're exchanging. In the matter of companies' tracking my web habits, etc., I go in with the assumption that I'm trading their selling my info in exchange for the service they provide. I never think of it as their somehow benevolently bestowing upon me a wonderful gift, no strings attached. Back when retailer loyalty cards first came on the scene, I remember reading alarmist articles about what an invasion of privacy they were, how now any company or agency who wanted to pay could know every item I had bought. I had a chuckle at the idea that people believed that the data wasn't already out there due to being tracked through credit and debit card purchases. Even in the case of Cakewalk, I'm exchanging my awareness of their company and its other products for use of the software. I do my part and use that awareness to recommend their other products to people as well. Even if it's not an explicit recommendation, just mentioning "BandLab also owns Heritage Guitars" in a musicians' forum puts that (very much for profit) brand in front of people's eyes. So instead of spending millions on print or web advertising, BandLab pays a handful of people to work in their homes on the Cakewalk code. I like that way of doing business, but I don't have the illusion that it's not a way of doing business. Having me and others rave about how the excellence level of Cakewalk has moved so far puts out the idea that "brands benefit from BandLab's ownership." I follow Formula 1 auto racing, and Mercedes and Ferrari and Renault and Honda spend many, many millions doing it just to bolster and maintain their brands' reputation for excellence. Mercedes' F1 driver Lewis Hamilton is the world's highest paid athlete. I don't pay any cash to enjoy F1, but I do hear those brand names at least every 5 seconds when watching a race. BandLab could be sponsoring Battles of the Bands, instead they "sponsor" Cakewalk by BandLab. There doesn't have to be anything more sinister than that to it.

I love all the updates, but I checked, and it still says it was authored by the original guy. It's your theme now, and you should give yourself credit. The way to change that in Theme Editor is in Properties.

I'm sorry if this is a hijack, but I'm asking these questions because I don't know, and you all seem better versed in automation: does the Shift key modifier work to slow the change down? I use it in Console View when I'm putting fine touches on panning and sends. (of course, the longer a feature request stays at the top, the more likely the devs will take notice of it, and I like this one)

Most definitely. When they have inconsistencies, it slows me down by having to memorize what does and doesn't work in a particular View. It also makes a program feel disjointed. Fortunately, in the case of CbB, a lot of the changes are cosmetic, or enabling functionality that exists in the other Views.

Excellent idea. I always just "eyeball it" as you describe, but is it possible to fine tune points by typing in the exact value (via right click or whatever)? It is in other DAW's I use.

Another use case scenario: I download one of W.A. Production's sample packs, which always include "one hit" or "one shot" drum samples. Instead of building a beat using them in clips, I can just drag and drop them onto sampler cells and within minutes, I have a whole kit using these drum samples. And, importantly, if I want to massage them using a stutter tool or something like that, I can load them into a Cakewalk audio track, mess around, then send the resulting clip(s) directly to a sampler pad with a right click or by clicking on the "tetris" button each clip already has in its upper right corner. Yet another use case scenario: I've been building a song, "The Greatest Persuader," around dialog samples from the (in)famous "punk rock" episode of Quincy, M.E. At one point Quincy (Jack Klugman) and his assistant make the scene at a punk club, prompting Quincy to ask her "what could persuade a kid to act like that?" to which she replies "the greatest persuader there is. Music." So, using TX16w, I've cut those samples into "what could persuade a kid," "to act like that," "the greatest persuader there is," and "music." Then mapped each phrase to a slot. In the project, I have Klugman saying the first phrase 3x, then resolve to the second phrase. Then for the next verse, the actress' samples in the same form. (look closely and if you know about poetic metre, the phrases conform to commonly used metres, and the actors deliver their lines in metre). Then later on, I use "music" by itself as an occasional repeated interjection. So the "lyrics" to my song are: "What could persuade a kid/To act like that/The greatest persuader there is/Music" with a refrain of "Music. Music. Music." This all could be done in Cakewalk using clips, but it's so much easier to have it all in an instrument and use Piano Roll to place the events. I can also experiment in real time by hitting the keys on my controller. If I have the pads set to retrigger, I can stutter it like "Mu-mu-music." Also use note lengths to truncate. The thing is, I had to create those clips in one program (it might have been Sound Forge), then load TX16w into Cakewalk, then map them. Having it integrated would save so much work, be so much more intuitive and handy. My estimate is that being able to do the above with an integrated sampler would have knocked 45 minutes to an hour off the process. And not incidentally, the phrases would be included when saving as a .CWB. Under the hood, within a project, CbB wouldn't even need to render out the clip, it can read it non-destructively from the original audio file, although doing a bounce to a new clip on the way would be an option, in the case of wanting to use the preset/kit across multiple projects. @Xel Ohh, am I on track here? Is this what you want for an integrated sampler?

Kontakt will do all of the above. AFAIK, so will Sampletank, but it is oriented more toward playback of existing libraries. It has many features to manipulate the sounds in whatever libraries one installs. sforzando is playback-only, it uses .SFZ's. You must use a separate .SFZ authoring utility in order to be able to use the library in sforzando. The keysplitting, layering, multisampling, etc. is their purview. Each of them can map phrases, but I would consider them overkill, and for this, a purpose-made tool with a short learning curve is called for. This is not the kind of "sampler" I'm talking about. And I may be off-base in speaking for the others, maybe they want a Sampletank-like instrument. I am not interested in that at all, I already have Sampletank. And those types of samplers are more "long game," where you spend time creating a library and then use that whole library in various projects. I don't think such a thing needs to be integrated, it's fine being more standalone, IMO. The pad/phrase samplers that I describe usually use the DAW itself to do the heavy lifting of capturing and editing the audio, although they can take dragging and dropping from outside the program onto a pad (or "slot"). They are able to "digitize/tweak/modify/edit/apply built-in functions to/etc. recorded audio," to varying degrees, but usually at least include the ability to reverse, filter, ADSR, and trim. Again, the idea is that if you really want to massage the sample, you use other tools already available in the DAW, then click a button or use a menu that says "send to phrase sampler." Those tools should be easily accessed from within the sampler UI as well, if you want to do further editing. So all the slicing, warping, beat matching, all of that, you just use the existing tools that Cakewalk already has, you don't need to learn a whole new instrument. Yes, absolutely they can store presets that can be played in realtime. That's a big part of the fun! It allows the composer/producer/performer to improvise using a MIDI controller, and that improvised performance can be captured just like any other MIDI performance as well. As far as "a complete and fully implemented multi-timbral synth engine (with a minimum of 32 midi channels, each channel having a full set of controllable parameters) including an extensive system exclusive implementation," that's more Kontakt/Sampletank territory, but since it's an integrated tool, and therefore light on CPU, rather than multitimbral, multichannel, it would be more efficient to just load multiple instances. Really, for anyone who wants to understand this kind of sampler, 5 minutes with that Mixcraft demo video will answer questions better than I can. Also, you could download and mess about with Sitala, which has similar functionality, but lacks the full integration. The way I see it is that this instrument wouldn't involve anything that Cakewalk can't already do, it would just consolidate it and present it in this type of UI. Cakewalk already has similar functionality in the Matrix, but the Matrix isn't an instrument that you can load onto a track and trigger with MIDI events, it's a separate view.

Pretty simple, I'd like to be able to double click in one or all of the areas of a Console Strip that aren't mapped to any function and have it toggle Narrow Strip. That is, any place where you can right click and get the context menu with Narrow Strip, I'd like to double click and have that narrow/widen the strips. A similar function already works in Track View, where you can double click on a track header and it toggles minimize/restore. (this should be Quick Groupable)

Must have been a temporary glitch with their site, 'cause the download is working now.

Drat, I keep getting an incomplete download.

Notes: Mixcraft 9 Recording Studio is the new Mixcraft, not the new Home Studio. Home Studio had a track count limit, Mixcraft Recording Studio doesn't. The Recording Studio and Pro versions differ only in which bundled plug-ins you get, so if you're already covered in that department, there's nothing to fret about. Pianissimo is one of the good add-ons, and it comes in the Hunble Dundle. Pro comes with a Melodyne Essentials license, and most people reading this probably have a couple of those sitting around. A user of both, I prefer to work in Cakewalk these days, but there are some features of Mixcraft that Cakewalk doesn't have that I dearly miss, like the easy ability to stack multiple VSTi's and markers with tails that run all the way down to the bottom of the project window. The ease of applying drum maps is another. The company's commitment to bug annihilation is a thing to behold. Mixcraft is amazingly stable and bug-free.

I'm trying to use MSoundFactory as the first in the chain, because it supports MIDI out. The next one in line is Surge, which doesn't. This is mostly learning how to do it so that I can apply it in the future. So far, and this seems odd, I've gotten it to work when playing my external keyboard routed to the MIDI track, but not with the MIDI data in the track. So close, yet still not there.