Starship Krupa

I think Steinberg wouldn't make such a big deal on their website about the download version of Halion Sonic SE not coming with any extra content if there weren't a version somewhere on dvd that does come with extra content. Or maybe they're just making sure people don't get it mixed up with Kontakt Player and SampleTank and sforzando, all of which burden the people who download them with dozens of demo instruments. If that's the goal, maybe they could use some good ol' advertising slogans to help them stand out from the competition, to turn potential customers on to the benefit of downloading and installing their download manager and their licensing server and then downloading and installing and registering their virtual instrument at which point they will have a sample player with no samples. (I still haven't received any license code for the #stayhomeandwait promotion either) "Download Halion Sonic SE now and find out why it's the favorite free sample player of people with metered Internet service." "Halion Sonic SE by Steinberg. No stutter in your playback, no clutter in your download folder." "When space on your SSD is at a premium, the choice is clear: Halion Sonic SE." "Does your free sampler keep you up at night worrying how a company can remain solvent giving things away? For 'sound' sleep, the doctors at Steinberg prescribe Halion Sonic SE." "Shhhteinberg!"

Which all sound better, I bet. I was impressed when I got the decade-old ST2 libraries converted and working in ST4, how smoothly the features were migrated. Each SampleTank patch/instrument has the usual oscillator/filter/ADSR information, but also comes with information regarding their extensive effects rack. When I open the effects racks, they are populated and have settings, and since their FX have improved the instruments all sound better.

Aieee, Steinberg's site, Halion SE, #stayhomeelements, elicenser, that's hours of my life I'll never get back. I don't blame you, ZincT, it's my own desire to get something for "free." I ended up with....a sample player/synth with apparently no samples or patches to play back, or it won't recognize the ones it does have, and still no licenses for the elements programs. After I downloaded and installed Halion SE, it complained that I needed to license it using what is I guess their take on iLok, elicenser. So I figured out where the Halion installer had put that (not under the Steinberg folder) and requested a serial number a couple more times and finally got one. Went to authorize it and there's no softelicense in the elicenser, so I had to download their special "burn it down and start over" tool, finally I get everything installed and....it's Halion. There's a folder with VSTpresets in it, and the Steinberg Library Manager wakes up and registers them as such, but when I try to load them into Halion, as the Zombies said, don't you bother tryin' to find them, they're not there. I was thinking I'd like to try their free notation editor, Dorico, but I dunno if I want to even mess with Steinberg any more at this point. And lest anyone think that I'm just a leech who only sucks up free stuff, yes, I'm frugal, but I spend money at the companies whose freebies prove useful. Meldaproduction, for instance, has sold me several licenses after drawing me in with their free bundle, as have Boz and Hornet. I also try to play my part by promoting the free stuff that these companies release, to make sure that people know about it and are attracted to it. So I'm thinking that Steinberg is kinda failing in the freebie department if they want to attract us to purchase their other products as a result. I found my experience with Halion itself frustrating, the UI is cramped and confusing and the help was of no help. 3rd place to SampleTank and Kontakt Player.

How does one obtain this library? I was about to download Halion Sonic SE to check it out, figuring I could groove on some more free sampled instruments a la Kontakt Player and SampleTank 4 CS, but there's this big exclamation mark with the notice "The free HALion Sonic SE download version does not contain any content." By which I assumed they meant no instruments, but I couldn't see how to download them separately, so I passed on Halion. Right now they're failing to send me my registration code for their #stayhomeelements collection.

That would suggest a good chance that sforzando would as well, as they are quite similar.

Something on (or not on) his PC is possibly exposing a bug in the downloader, which, face it, ain't always the sharpest tool in the shed. If a program needs a specific missing library in order to function there are better ways to handle it than to go wandering among the daffodils. ? Does BA store its downloads in c:\users\<username>\AppData\Roaming\bandlab-assistant\Downloads? If so, it might be worth checking there or wherever it does keep them to see if there might be an aborted download sitting around Cakeblocking the process. I recall that being a problem for some in the past.

Whoa, really? Workspaces can hide things from the user in Preferences?

Unfortunately there are possible issues with bundling the old SONAR plug-ins now that Cakewalk has evolved 2 years from its origins as SONAR. Even if the plan were to include them as freeware, which we're still not certain they want to do that. There was mention of offering the Cakewalk, Inc. Platinum Suite content for sale at one point. There would have to be a storefront and licensing system set up for that, etc. It's also another feature to support, and if any incompatibilities are discovered, the current development team may not even have access to the code for some of those old plug-ins. We know they don't for the Sonitus suite or TTS-1. BTW, I only just now figured out what TTS-1 stands for: Twelve Tone Systems-1. It's so far removed at this point that it didn't even occur to me. I think it's awesome that this bit of that branding has survived into the BandLab era.

You got it. They're libraries that programs can use instead of the coders having to write them from scratch. For instance file open and save dialogs and menu lists and DirectX interfaces and color pickers, just a ton of stuff that Microsoft programmers put together. The main program calls them up when it needs them. It saves a lot of work on the part of the programmers and has the huge benefit of the look and feel of Windows programs being standardized. You can always spot a program where the programmers used their own code for the file dialogs, right? Unfortunately, I guess the libraries change as the different versions evolve, so the different versions all need to be available for the programs to access. It would be great if the latest installer could be backward compatible, but it's not. Hence we get Visual C++ runtime libraries up the rootie kazootie.

Man, I am sorry to hear that. I've just been up for hours playing the SampleTank 2 Free instruments I imported to SampleTank 3 so I could use them in SampleTank 4 CS. Which has been solid as a rock since the 4.1 release on my system, whereas ST3 crashed in both VST2 and 3 versions. The fact that it crashed after you loaded and unloaded and then loaded and unloaded instruments repeatedly before it crashed suggests to me the plug-in has a memory leak. That's exactly what I was just doing for hours, though, and it didn't happen for me, but I also have 16G of RAM on my system, which is a bigger margin for error if ST4 isn't releasing memory correctly when it unloads samples. If you know how to start up Task Manager/Resource Monitor to see if it's progressively running you out of memory, that would be a big clue. I was just being happily reunited with all the cool instruments that came with SampleTank 2 that I had forgotten about because I never bothered to import/convert them until now. Really great Mellotron/Chamberlain assortment and huge pads and a nice sampler of the Miroslav orchestral sounds. They work amazingly well in SampleTank 4, with all the effects and macros intact, so anyone who still has ST2 instruments around, it's worth the trouble to use ST3 to convert them. You need to do that because 4 won't import them directly. There are things in there that are not in the subsequent freebie packs: they have the Moog Radio Shack Concertmate MG-1! For Joe, or anyone else doing playback using their onboard sound chip, I discovered Alan Finotty's Modded Realtek Driver a few days ago whilst hot-rodding my Obama years Dell Latitude-With-Attitude E6410 laptop. Today she's getting the 240G Kingston SSD from my Dell tower since the tower just got a WD Blue 500G SSD. Unfortunately, I haven't been able to get the laptop to install the driver, likely due to the fact that it uses an IDT chip, not a Realtek or Intel. Alan's posts seem to say that his driver will work with IDT chips, but it's a hack, so who knows. Never heard of IDT, but I must say, with a good pair of cans, playing FLAC's with MusicBee in WASAPI mode sounds really, really good coming out of that thing. It appears that part of the package is a native ASIO driver that is not just a WDM wrapper.? Or it might be a WDM wrapper, but one that works better than ASIO4ALL so it's worth a shot I think. I might fiddle with it some more to see if I can get it to install. I would dig having a real ASIO driver. Or at least a better one than ASIO4ALL.

BandLab have said little new on the subject of bundled instruments and FX, even the ones that were developed by the old Cakewalk company, for a couple of years now. In that time, there has been a lot of action in the area of freeware music creation software. There's so much stuff for hobbyists. Professionals still need to drop some money, as is fair and as they should, for the tools of their trade. Using Sitala or TX16wx bothers you a lot? Halion, SampleTank, Kontakt, BreakTweaker? I would have agreed with you a year ago that Cakewalk really needed its own integrated sampler, but now I'm not so sure it's that high a priority for me. I'm working with BreakTweaker, and it's really specialized. It would be nice to edit a clip using the tools in Cakewalk, then right click and have "send to CakeSampler" be a menu item. Mixcraft's phrase sampler is that well-integrated and it is really handy.

It looks like a feature that was never a part of SONAR, hence not a part of Cakewalk by BandLab, so I'd say that nothing happened to it. You would like a needle-movement VU meter as a new ProChannel module? I would like a dbx165a-style compressor.

I'm trying not to sound condescending, because it's been something of a struggle for me to get used to flying with the keyboard when using a DAW. However, I've just had to learn to trust my touch and muscle memory similar to learning to play guitar, keyboards, and touch typing. It's a skill, to get fast, I have to practice. (Why do I keep running into that?) Force yourself to do it without looking for a few days, you'll eventually learn to trust yourself. That's the method that works for me, and thanks for reminding me I need to learn the Cakewalk key commands better. Even moreso, because I'm one of those people who uses a trackball (Logitech Marble Mouse) so I don't even have a wheel. 4 buttons and a big sphere. If you watch someone who's really good with their DAW, who's learned the keystrokes, they can just rip, they make me look like a toddler finger painting by comparison with all my mouse clicks. (searching for where I put my print-out of the Cakewalk keystrokes)

There have been some issues in this area addressed in the current release, so try it and see. These specifically apply to virtual instruments, but there will be more fixes dealing with remapping of diconnected and reconnected MIDI devices. The Reference Guide brags about how Cakewalk can keep track of disconnected and reconnected MIDI ports, so the program should live up to those promises!

Here is the section in the manual that deals with editing and arranging. It's not a simple answer. http://www.cakewalk.com/Documentation?product=Cakewalk&language=3&help=Arranging.01.html If you prefer a more visual approach there are many tutorials on YouTube about editing with SONAR that will also apply to Cakewalk. You can probably nail it after watching a couple. The functionality you're looking for will involve Groove Clip Looping. Cut out a section that you want to repeat, enable Groove Clip Looping and then you can just drag the end and it will loop.

The fact that their boilerplate response still refers to the most recent version of "Sonar" is telling. Also the fact that they drop a list of plug-in formats that doesn't include the one in question. Planet Earth calling Softube support: your boilerplate is failing. Repeat: your boilerplate is severely compromised. BTW, they say that they test in those hosts. They don't say that if their plug-in crashes the host during the testing whether they do anything about it. ? I wonder how well their stuff works in Samplitude, Reason, FL Studio, Sequoia, Waveform, Mixcraft, Mu-Lab, and Mixbus. In theory I suppose.

Cool, man! Your input as a sometimes frustrated new user is helpful, too, believe it or not. The developers and beta team members read and participate in the forum daily. The thing is, Helos, a statement to the effect of "this is really frustrating and I would like it to work better" is not an attack on the product and fortunately these days is usually not seen as such. If someone takes the time to set up an account and complain, as long as they're not a troll, it's because they want the program to work better. It's valuable to get the perspective of a new user who is invested in learning how to use the program because people who have been using it for 5 or 10 years don't even see these issues, they've memorized things like pressing (not clicking!) Delete to remove a marker and don't remember like I do that I only found it out by Googling. And once we know our way around, the inconsistency and illogic fades away because we're not struggling to figure everything out. We just put up with it like a sticky door lock where you have to jiggle the key a certain way.

By a fluke, I had/have a registered account with the Cakewalk, Inc. zombieservers. Back in 2015 I took them up on a free offer of the CA/2A compressor plug-in. In the years since CbB shipped I was able to parlay that account into a SONAR Home Studio license via an old offer they once ran with a magazine, and installed/uninstalled some demos and so have expanded CbB with Rapture Session (and a bunch of Rapture Pro sounds) and other content from the defunct Cakewalk, Inc. I am helpless against defects in the uninstall process. Helpless I tell you. So I've played the lite verson, and it sounds so good I agree that Rapture Pro would be a shame to just leave sitting on the servers. And I wholeheartedly agree that any PC modules should be released from captivity ASAP. Rapture Session would be a nice thing to let loose, to go with the Si Series instruments.

Johnny, I'm the user who started the thread that Brian linked to, and easy answer: just go register an account at IK Multimedia and get Sampletank 4 CS Free, then go to A|A|S and download Swatches and you'll have enough freeware sampled and modeled instrument content to keep you going for weeks, at which point go to Native Instruments and grab Komplete Start for free and get several more weeks' worth. Swatches has some great modeled guitars from A|A|S' Strum GS instrument. There's a point to what I'm saying beyond just getting you good sounds, which is that while BandLab could look for partners to bundle the kind of instruments you're talking about, at this point, just in the 2 years since the birth of Cakewalk by BandLab the music software picture has changed to the point that I'm not so sure that bundled instruments are as important as they once were. BandLab offer 4 freeware licensed DAW's. That's just one company. Too many other companies to list offer freeware plug-ins. I don't mean just one-person hobby coders and 2nd-tier outfits either, you can get freeware instruments and FX from industry powerhouses like the ones I mentioned earlier, plus iZotope, Meldaproduction, Steinberg.... CbB comes with TTS-1, which still works, still has some serviceable pianos and drumkits, and it comes with the Studio Instruments bundle. Piano, strings, drums, bass, it's enough to get someone started with writing songs and arranging.

Back when we were closer to the DOS era, I used to be able to tell a computer person who had spent time doing phone support because they would say "asterisk period asterisk" rather than "star dot star." You would learn (without being told) on your first day on the phones never to say "star dot star," nor to say "just press any key." You say "press Enter." Things would go more smoothly and calls would be resolved more quickly. Other sample phrase from that time: "backslash, that's the one that leans to the left." Seriously, though, Helos' experience, even in the face of being given instructions, serves to illustrate that a new user (rightly) expects the object itself to give clues as to how to perform important operations on itself. Having to memorize keystrokes just ain't fair play in 2020. The user base has long been requesting that markers of color be represented in the Cakewalk timeline. Observing the design of the Arranger View, it seems obvious that the current product management understands the value of color-coding different sections and events in a project so I'm hoping that we'll see it soon.

So bumpworthy, though. I just bought my second license.

I agree that it's needlessly obscure. Should be in the right-click context menu but it ain't.

This is my strategy for when I've started the mix and then wanted to lay down new parts, which is just about always. That's because of how I like to work when doing my own songs. Usually by the time I get a keeper take on any given instrument, I don't have much "musician" left in me, but I often have plenty of "mixing engineer" so I'll start messing with getting a happening preliminary drum mix, setting up the sidechain between bass and kick, mixing the "khorus o'Krupas" backing vocals I just recorded, whatever. For whatever reason, my first impulse to lighten the CPU load isn't to freeze, it's to hit the global FX button.

Go into Preferences, and under Audio/Configuration File, check to see what the ThreadSchedulingModel is set to. Should be 2 or 1 on your system. If it's set to 3 for some reason, that can cause these very symptoms. @Mark Morgon-Shaw, thanks for the link to the info about Microsoft messing with the Firewire drivers. I use a Firewire interface with Windows 10. I don't wish to stop doing so any time soon as long as Microsoft doesn't break its functionality. So far, PreSonus and Dell have held up their ends of the bargain, it's up to Microsoft not to foul up and make a very nice piece of audio equipment "obsolete."

Ah, thank you, lads. For any other nervous persons, you do have to get all the way to the payment page and then click on the aforementioned light blue link to get the box to open up. And then put in freesmasher20 and you don't have to give them your PayPal or credit card information. Now my drumbz overzheadsh will thundurrr....