Starship Krupa

I have a hunch that the BandLab Link Digital interfaces are probably pretty compatible, and should you happen to encounter any issues whatsoever, you'd find the support people to be motivated to help resolve them. It's funny how insulated we of this forum are from the rest of what BandLab does. Did anyone else know or remember that BandLab makes/markets interfaces? I vaguely remembered that they had a couple of iRig types in development a while back, but look what they're shipping now and....doesn't it seem a little odd that a potential market for audio interfaces such as Cakewalk users hasn't been pitched to more aggressively? Not that I'm complaining, I don't mind a lack of hucksterism. It does seem like something of a missed opportunity here, and they look like nice enough little interfaces, although if the rate is fixed at or tops out at 48K as the ad copy implies I would pass.

As a former software QA engineer I have often said that if John Godfrey Saxe had lived to see the computer age he would have added software to the list of things, along with laws and sausages, that cease to inspire respect in proportion as we know how they are made. Having said that, I do hold respect for what the team that BandLab have assembled are up to with Cakewalk. They have demonstrated a commitment to quality over the years that they have had stewardship of the program. They don't like it when it doesn't work right and take steps quickly to fix it, and you can't ask for much more than that. Our personal prioritization of "works right" may not always agree with the development team's but at least when it comes to crash-y bugs, they are on top of it.

It's been over 2 years now since BandLab picked up SONAR and dusted it off and returned it to life as Cakewalk. Along the way it acquired a lot of long-requested what I call "convenience" features, things that aren't that flashy, but that greatly improve ease-of-use of the program on a daily basis. I'd put things like the Ripple Edit Button, Smart Tool configurability, note value display in Piano Roll and Staff View, Channel Strip colors, etc. in that category. Recently, though, we saw the introduction of a major new feature, the Arranger Track. Quite powerful feature with many possible uses. One issue I've run into, and it's a luxury problem to be sure, is that I've never used a DAW with one. My suggestion: Cakewalk has never updated the demo projects it ships with. Considering the ephemeral nature of popular music, 2 1/2 years is a long time. I'm pushing 60 and I'm not even into exactly the same kind of music I was when I first started using CbB. I've shifted more in the direction of EDM production styles, less so the traditional rock band format. So how about we get at least one new demo project, one that utilizes the Arranger Track? I don't know how this was done in the past, if Cakewalk, Inc. put out a call for submissions with the winners getting compensation and exposure, but, however, it can be done again. I would like to use the Arranger Track to the fullest extent of its capability, but frankly, I've never had a DAW that had one before and I'm not sure what all I can do with it. Demo projects are good for things like that.

Oh. If you're referring to the pile of goodies that came with Platinum, and I'm not that familiar with it because I only started using the program in its Cakewalk by BandLab incarnation, BandLab unfortunately don't have access to a lot of those plug-ins. Based on my understanding, when Cakewalk, Inc. was dissolved, most of the bundling agreements became null and would have needed to be renegotiated (for a price) by anyone who wanted to distribute the SONAR Platinum suite as it had been. Since the new owners wanted to distribute the new suite under a freeware subscription model, I guess they decided that it wasn't feasible to bundle all the pricey licenses they didn't own. Cakewalk bought the Sonitus IP lock, stock, and barrel in the early 2000's, so those plug-ins can be included, others were developed in-house or under contract, such as CA-2A and the ProChannel modules. Speaking of which, the PC modules do include some nice compressors with pleasing UI's, as well as both an algo and convolution reverb. The only remaining FX processing plug-ins that I know of that remain unincluded are a few PC modules, Channel Tools, and the LP EQ and Multiband Compressor. I would love to see these last two included (I think the others are in the pipeline), but since they have licensing mechanisms built into them that would need to be removed or retooled to somehow work with BandLab's servers instead of the old Cakewalk licensing server, it's a bigger hassle. As far as I can tell, the only "fact" we disagree on is whether the Sonitus FX sound good and are worth updating with more modern UI's. I think they sound good, you don't. It's really a matter of taste. I read Admiral "Why I Hate Windows" review in the past. He agrees with you on half of the FX, thinks one of them is brilliant, another one "more than sufficient," and the others, the most specialized ones you'd be unlikely to find in another DAW, he left unreviewed because he doesn't work with surround. Whatever. My take on basic bundled plug-ins is that these days, because of the availability of such great free and cheap alternatives, they don't even have to be world-beaters anyway. Just good enough and easy enough to use to get new users started. But they should look good. Also, I am in the "Sonitus fx sound pretty dang good" camp, so I'd like them to get better UI's so I don't have to squint to see them. That and the ability for the LFO's and delay times to tempo sync. ? When comparison shopping for DAW's, especially one that comes at such a bargain, "bundled plug-ins" isn't going to make or break my decision whether to use it or not at this stage. It's whether I like the features and workflow of the DAW itself. I already have every plug-in I need and they work in every DAW. And as for FX, if it came down to it, give me any DAW and an internet connection and in 30 minutes I'll have all the FX I need to do an excellent mix. Heck, restrict me to the Meldaproduction Free Bundle and Oril River reverb and it's on.

Here's an old forum post outlining the steps to take to enable not only those three, but the Boost 11 limiter. For the record, I think they're power-packed:

Ooh, yeah, you have a special case there, I didn't think of hidden tracks. Well, glad I could help with the info on Quick Groups at least. You may be able to figure out a workaround while you're waiting for the feature to percolate?

Can you describe in more detail what this means? I don't have any NI hardware, but I have installed their free Komplete Kontrol package and it seemed to work fine with Cakewalk and Mixcraft. How is it integrated? What change needs to be made in the DAW to make it happen? I notice that FL Studio, Tracktion Waveform, Samplitude, REAPER, Digital Performer, and Studio One are missing from the list of DAW's you posted, so it seems like a rather restricted feature. Especially if you consider that though there are five DAW's, only three manufacturers are represented on the list, Ableton, Apple, and Steinberg.

@Mark Morgon-Shaw, you have some interesting insights into the history of the DAW market. "Guitar-playing dads?" Excellent. I suppose I fit that demographic, sans kids. Where does Cubase fit into it? Digital Performer? I remember when SONAR came with a tiny "lite" version of Fruity Loops! I think it was on a floppy. I liked it. Just got a license for Break Tweaker, though, so look out. Fortunately, the world of the EDM genre tends to be less ageist, at least in my perception. And for live gigs, you can always pull a deadmau5/Daft Punk and wear a helmet to conceal your geezerhood. Thing is, even though I'm getting into EDM production, and I want to do more of that, not only do I want to do things like using live drum tracks with the rest being electronic production, a la Air, I still do indie rock songs that don't go near the Piano Roll view, so I need a DAW that has reasonably powerful audio recording and editing/comping workflow. I read that Ableton Live! either doesn't have comping or didn't until recently? The thing is, with Ableton, and FL, recording full audio tracks is a tacked-on afterthought, kind of like the perception of EDM work in Cakewalk.

She said MIDI cable to USB, so I'm assuming it's a MIDI-to-USB interface. If it's one of those $10 oval-shaped eBay cheapos that were around a few years ago, I found the one that I bought to be prone to stuck notes. I've noticed a new generation of reasonably-priced USB-MIDI interfaces, maybe they work better, but if she has one of those older ones, it may be the source of the problem or a contributing factor, if it's sending spurious info. It could be sending patch changes or heaven knows what.

Just as another data point, I've been using Cakewalk by BandLab for a couple of years now and TTS-1 is the default instrument in every project template I have that includes a MIDI track. TTS-1 has never crashed on me. Why are you working with older, unsupported software when you could be using a fully-compatible updated, supported version at no cost?

Oy. I haven't run up against any of this because so far I've only used a single drum instrument while composing/producing (and used the composition workflow within the other drum machine to bring in my other beat). I am disturbed to hear you say that there are issues with composing with multiple drum instruments. What you say has me thinking I'm going to go with the @chuckebaby method of using the instrument names over on the left and then using the normal MIDI blobs instead of the Drum Grid. My favorite new plaything is Break Tweaker, I've been getting way into David Tipper's most recent collection of insane sound holograms. So far I've been using Break Tweaker's internal workflow separately and having Cakewalk tell it "Play" rather than triggering it as a drum instrument, but I also want to start doing it the other way, where I use its editing capabilities and trigger individual shots as a sampler. My other DAW, Mixcraft, drum maps are very simple, you have the PRV open and it's under a button. You pick the one you want to use and if there isn't one, select "new" and make a new one. No Zork adventuring. Pick up axe, hit zombie with axe. Done. Now you may commence to program your beatz. That's what you mean by "track-based," I think?

I stand corrected! Thank you. For some of the reasons both you and I have stated: in many categories there are plenty of free and cheap alternatives, so why not when they get the job done? Someone downloads Cakewalk and wants to start right in working with it, they have some very good tools to work with that may look a little dowdy. If they or their clients are discerning enough to care about the UI, they are discerning enough to download other plug-ins to use in their place. Nobody forces anyone to use the stock plug-ins with the UI's open while paying clients watch. Also, some of the functions they perform are still not so common, such as the surround compressor and surround panner/encoder. Feature-wise, W.A. recently put out something called the Sphere Compressor that has a very similar feature set to the Sonitus Compressor. Since you are so adamant that many better free and cheap alternatives exist, and I love free and cheap plug-ins, please turn me on to some of your favorite freeware 5-band multiband compressors, surround compressors, surround panner/encoders, and 6-band versatile EQ's. Even a "far superior" delay would be welcome. Although I think AIR's keyboards and synths are good bargains when I can get them for under $20, I am much less impressed with their FX. Last week I tried a trial of their Vocalizer Pro, which attempts to emulate a classic vocoder but is lacking in a couple of crucial features. First, it can't do the basic vocoder task of accepting an external carrier (you can only use its internal synth), second, despite appearing quite feature-packed and complex, it has no manual. Whatsoever. I am now patiently waiting for the trial to expire so that I can hide its existence from my iLok control panel. The UI was pretty, though, it looked better than a Las Vegas casino at night. I'm also quite interested to read or watch some of those consistently mediocre "particularly in more recent times" reviews of the Sonitus fx suite because I'm relatively new to the Cakewalk scene and apparently didn't get those memos. I'll direct you to a couple of articles written about them just a year ago in Sound on Sound by Craig Anderton: https://www.soundonsound.com/techniques/cakewalk-sonitus-effects https://www.soundonsound.com/techniques/cakewalk-sonitus-plug-suite And a video by Scott of Chernobyl Studios, who is well-known for pulling no punches when he has something critical to say about Cakewalk:

So what the OP should try, if he has access, is install a version of SONAR that has Rapture or just use Rapture if he already has it? In a pinch, if he has a Cakewalk, Inc. login, I believe it may still be possible to obtain the free version of SONAR Home Studio that was given away as magware (Computer Music, I think) a few years back. I did so myself about a year ago; believe it or not my sole aim was to get my hands on the 2,000 page pdf SONAR manual. However, in the process I also got a nice handful of useful plug-ins, the Project5 DXi processors and Rapture Session. Which of course work a treat in modern day Cakewalk.

I think if you download the presets for MModernCompressor, one of my early attempts at an LA-2A is in there. Can't say as I'd vouch for it at this point, necessarily. I was just kinda taken aback by the lack of Preset Exchange material for that compressor and wanted to put something out there for people to download. My favorite personal preset these days is one I modeled on the parameters of the dbx 165, using the psychoacoustic detector. I call it "Psycho X." I should upload it to the Exchange. Every kick and snare track I do starts with Psycho X. I copied some of the parameters from the Sonitus fx preset. As you know, I'm one of the lonely defenders of MModernCompressor, I think even Vojtech sort of regrets having put it out. Or he would if he experiences emotions such as regret. ? But I'm one to love the unloved, and after my initial frustrations and buyer's remorse developed an affection for it, as well as a determination to get my investment's worth. I was rewarded, because as it turns out, MModern is the compressor in the Meldaproduction line that makes it easiest to find the psychoacoustic detector setting. On the others that I have tried (because I have the temporary C19 Complete Bundle license), that setting is buried deeper behind sliding panels, and it might have taken me much longer to discover it.

Maybe so, although there are plenty who disagree. Thing is, context: BandLab own the code for these plug-ins and BandLab are marketing a Windows DAW that ships with a rather small and increasingly dated-looking collection of plug-ins (which is why I started the freeware FX thread, to help new users on tight budgets augment that). To paraphrase "Desiderata," there will always be greater and lesser plug-ins. In my experience, they're at least the equal of their counterparts in most other DAW's. ReaComp, ReaDelay, etc. They don't try to put phony "analog warmth" into your signal, who cares, like the ReaPlugs, they allow access to a multitude of parameters that other processors distill down to one or two knobs. If they got a UI update and were included in VST64 form (which we know already exists, because they used to sell the package separately for $19.99), then that's another incentive to download and try CbB. It would come with a dozen or so FX and instruments that could be used in any DAW (and would have Cakewalk branding).

I love this idea, but until such time as it's implemented, a macro that would seek out and bypass only iZotope suite FX* would take care of 90% of my issues in this area. ? *leaving Exponential Audio stuff alone

Don't get me started on compressors and EQ's. Maybe since my studio work back in the day was as "the talent" and I did my real learning using the Meldaproduction Free Bundle, I've tended not to chase emulations of "classic" compressors. I'm more likely to set up MModernCompressor with a 10mS attack and 400mS release and go from there as I am to use CA-2A, unless I want the ProChannel version. And I keep forgetting that I'm supposed to splash "color EQ" around on my tracks, although I guess the Quadcurve set to "E" might count as that. I turn on the console emulation because it's there. I don't drive it too hard, though. There may be a "Pultec" somewhere in my collection of EQ's, but I've forgotten about it. Perhaps someday one will become my favorite new/old toy.

I understand that Sound Center was an old 32-bit synth that was later replaced by 64-bit Rapture, so depending on what license(s) you own, if you go the canonical route of installing the latest version of SONAR you paid for, then installing the newest version of Cakewalk by BandLab, you should end up with a version of Rapture (either Session or Pro) that will play your Sound Center content without incurring the overhead of the 32-bit wrapper. (I don't have firsthand knowledge of this process, as I am new to Cakewalk as of BandLab's tenure, but I pay attention on the forums and have a good memory for issues I've read about. Also good Google-Fu.) Check this out: http://forum.cakewalk.com/Can-Cakewalk-Sound-Center-be-used-with-other-DAWs-m3709641.aspx

Hmm. I didn't hear the "static" you describe with the DB-33 in the sections where they weren't using the crappy distortion modeling. I have wondered if there is anything left to the AIR company any more. No new product development in years, their website hasn't been updated in over a year. It seems like they're just squeezing whatever licensing fees they can out of the existing products. As long as DB-33 doesn't crash, who cares if the distortion modeling sounds like a bad phone connection? ?

You'll be happy to know that the functionality you want is there, but you have to take an extra step. Are you aware of Quick Grouping? That's Cakewalk's ability to group track functions on an ad hoc basis by selecting the Tracks, then holding down Ctrl while clicking or dragging. Input Echo toggle is a Quick Groupable function. There are many Quick Groupable functions, such as fader moves, pan moves, mute, solo and record toggles, etc. It really speeds up the work when used in tandem with swipe selection of track headers. So in your case, you'd select the tracks you want to toggle Input Echo (which you can quickly do by holding the left mouse button down and swiping across the Track Numbers), then hold Ctrl when you click on the icon. For a specific example, let's say I have Tracks 1-16. Tracks 1-12 and 14-16 have Input Echo on, 13 does not, and I want to invert that. In Console View, I'd swipe select all 16 tracks, then Ctrl-click on any Input Echo button. Done. This takes about a second with 16 tracks. In Track View, maybe a touch longer, depending on if I have lanes open and have to scroll. Also, if you're a big Input Echo toggler, you can assign a keystroke to it, but it only works on a per-track basis.

Yes, I was reading the thread while enjoying the jazz and thinking "Uhh, on Bandcamp I can usually buy the album for $10 and have it in FLAC form, so if I wanted to buy one or all of Hidden's songs, how would I do it here...." So it's more like Soundcloud, I guess? I see Bandcamp as a listening/sales/promotion platform that does pretty well at all 3. You can follow artists and labels, they can send out messages to the people who follow them to let them know about releases and tour dates, etc. Tracks are usually available in FLAC and WAV, and when listening to my music collection through their app, their CODEC sounds really good. The purchasing process gives the buyer warm fuzzies, with encouragement to leave a note to the artist (which I have done and gotten at least one very nice reply). It looks like BandLab are so far going for only the promotion and listening (haven't given their CODEC any critical listening), which matches their usual M.O. of doing their best to confound anyone trying to figure out how they'll make money from a given part of their operations. ? I'll be up on it as soon as I have enough finished songs....yeah.

Considering all the hassle I had getting my serial for Elements (so totally worth it, BTW), I sort of stumbled into this one. I went to serialcenter.de and just put in my username and password and they sent me a valid coupon. Not sure that it's supposed to work that way but I will not complain. I didn't have to buy the issue or answer any questions or anything. And good heavens is that Sigmund a monster of an effect. I think I'd need to take a few days to study the manual to get an idea of what it's capable of. When I downloaded it, all I had to go by was Eusebio's description of "nice delay for pads," so I was startled to see the UI with so many different sections, like a synthesizer.

I have my ex' K1 in front of me, also main MIDI controller. It's compact, has a great feel. The only drawback is that I have to put the TenCrazy plug-in on every MIDI track to filter out the "nervous nellie" All Notes Off that it sends when I lift off the last key. I used to audition all these great ambient VSTi's and wonder why they didn't sound quite right, got glitches and pops in very non-CPU-hungry synths. Then I noticed that they only happened when I would pick up all my fingers.... Then I got busy with MIDI-Ox and saw that some silly bugger had programmed the thing to basically panic button every time the player lifts. Probably the same dork responsible for the joystick not being able to transmit MIDI (oh the sadness). Seems like you could get at your internal sound engine with sysex messages even with broken bank buttons? Why risk forming some weird event horizon paradox and having an army of Daleks come flying through? "I heard you liked your K1, so I installed a K1 that you could play using your K1."

Quick Grouping, indeed, one of my favorite and most often used features. It's especially useful when a mix has gotten too "hot" and I need to pull all the faders back except one.

I found your rantings literally incomprehensible. Some problem with feeling cheated buying Asian food? I've never heard of Pinao Rolls before, although they sound delicious. I don't know why you would post about your restaurant troubles here, but if you felt like this new place clipped you on your pinao rolls or any other dish, take it up with the manager if you can, and if you don't find satisfaction through that channel, hit them on Yelp. This forum is for Cakewalk by BandLab.