Starship Krupa

I already have an account because I scored the Mini-Filter freebie years ago, but I've been clicking on the button to get Plate 140 off and on for hours and nothing has happened. My possession of a license for it is not indicated on the website nor in the Arturia equivalent to BandLab Assistant/Native Access/Waves Central. I think of it as the "I'm fine, how are you?" response, from Bobby Pickett's "Star Drek." Captain Jerk and Mr. Schlock get in the turbo lift elevator and ask it repeatedly to go to the Transporter Room, to which it replies, repeatedly, "I'm fine, how are you?" until they give up and ask Mr. Snot to beam them down to the surface of the planet directly from the elevator. So whenever I make a repeated inquiry of a computer and it fails to respond, I imagine it replying "I'm fine, how are you?" Click here to get your Rev PLATE-140! Click. "I'm fine, how are you?" Synchronize. "I'm fine, how are you?" I even tried to use their AssistantAccessCentral thing to install the demo and can't see it in Cakewalk, so they're really in "I'm fine, how are you?" territory. I'm sure it will show up eventually.

Yes, when your intention was to record the MIDI, which is what I typically want to do. I've never used a program before that made it so easy to record the audio output of the synth, but thinking about it, it could really have its uses in the case of synths where their sound engine is such that no two performances are the same. Ah, Cakewalk. With more options comes greater likehood of unforseen consequences. Good news for those who use Split Instrument tracks as we do, you have the ability to show and hide entire types of tracks in the Track and Console views. So let's say you don't want Synth tracks to appear in the Track View, because you don't want to accidentally arm them for recording or perform other operations on them that you intend for their MIDI counterparts. Up at the top of the Track View, open the Tracks menu and select the Track Manager (or just hit "H"). From there you can hide individual tracks, or just turn off display of Synth (or MID or Audio) tracks entirely. This same functionality is under the Strips menu in the Console View (do not accuse Cakewalk of consistency here). I usually hide Synths in the Track View and MIDI in the Console View because I have no need to see MIDI tracks in my mixer. I don't adjust MIDI volumes during mixing except by accident.

This is how I see it and close to my experience as well. I see plug-ins and hosts as two different programs from two different companies, and if they work together, that's great, and if not, I'm not quick to start blaming one or the other. The bigger the companies involved, and the more commercial, the more I'll say, hey, work it out. Meldaproduction and Waves would have no business failing to work with Digital Performer and Samplitude. The users of all would have invested good money and headspace. But I also understand that my perspective is not everyone's, and I "get" how someone who switches around between three different DAW's, and the only one that won't run the new plug-in they just dropped $50 on is Cakewalk would draw the conclusion that it's Cakewalk's problem and only Cakewalk's. In most other situations, I would draw the same conclusion. That's why I wrote out my comedy "history of the VST spec." I once experienced firsthand the challenges of developing a plug-in host that was not the original host the plug-ins were written for. VST was never created as an industry standard the way that for instance, MIDI was. It was (and remains) a proprietary Cubase add-on that got released into the wild. If they were called "Cubase" plug-ins instead of "VST's," people might be more understanding. "This Cubase3 plug-in isn't working in Cakewalk!" Well, it's great that any of them work at all, considering that they're CUBASE plug-ins.... That is a fine idea in theory, but as Noel has pointed out, and you probably know too, there is no way to do this without slowing things down (adding latency at the plug-in level, which might be cumulative, adding to the time it takes to add a VST to a track, etc.). A step in the right direction was to allow sandboxing at scan time, so at least they don't crash or hang that process. It's a tradeoff that I guess they don't want to make. If people turn on sandboxing, perhaps it will get unacceptably sluggish. And the user still ends up not being able to use their plug-in. And still, no matter how much sandboxing you do, a program inside a program can still probably find a way to make the host program fall down and go boom if it tries hard enough. ? From my armchair, I like the approach of making CbB more bomb-resistant when a plug-in is found to crash it. That achieves the goal of compatibility as well as stability. After all, there is truth in the statement that if REAPER can run the plug-in then so can Cakewalk. It might indeed be a poorly-coded plug-in, but the fact that it runs without crashing in other hosts suggests that it's possible to "code around it" as the expression goes.

A programmer I had somehow missed until he recently updated one of his plug-ins and posted the update on KVR is Sender Spike. He has 3 freeware VST's, a tape machine emulator, a VCA compressor emulator, and a VU meter. I have been looking for a good 64-bit VCA compressor emulation for a to replace my much-loved dlm one sixty-five for a long time so will be checking out the VCA compressor in particular. One important and interesting thing to know is that he is a Cakewalk user himself and his plug-ins are thoroughly tested with CbB.

You created the instrument as a Split Instrument, with separate MIDI and Synth tracks visible and accessible. Then at record time, you armed the Synth track and not the MIDI track before recording. To get the result you want, you could either create the instrument as a Simple Instrument track, which is a hybrid combination of both the synth and MIDI tracks, or you could leave things as you have them and just remember that you need to arm the MIDI track for recording before you hit record.

Onboard chip is fine for playback. I've even hooked a mixer up with a 1/8" stereo jack and recorded some decent sounding vocals and guitar just to f- the haterz. And for those of you onboard soundcard jockeys I have a small bit (pun intended) of advice: for playback of your sound files, like your mixdowns or purchased or ripped music, try a media player that supports WASAPI and ASIO playback. MusicBee and Foobar2000 are the recognized champions. VLC is okay, but you have to go deep into its settings. I use MusicBee because I like the look, it's skinnable and supports VST plug-ins! I use it for internet streaming radio and ripping CD's too. The thing is to bypass the Windows sound playback engine with its layers of resampling. I won't start a debate, just get one of those players, set it up for WASAPI and listen. The difference is most obvious on cheapo D/A's for some reason. It's like swabbing the wax out of your ears.

The obvious of course is GarageBand. How "full-featured" do you mean? The only freeware cross platform DAW I can think of at the moment is Tracktion 7, which has a quirky interface that might make it not the best choice.

Right. When you're playing it back in Cakewalk, and you have your reverb on there, a little compression to bring it up front, you've EQ'd out the "honks," everything sounding good and deep and fat and present and with some air, then you can stop and go to File/Export/Audio. What you export from that dialog should sound just like what you hear on the playback. Sometimes people have trouble with the Export process. I did for a while. It's one of those things with Cakewalk where so many options led to confusion on my part. I didn't know which ones to choose and picked the wrong ones. But if you have any questions when you get there, we can answer them. Me especially because I had some confusion of my own to sort out.? One recommendation about exporting is that you consider what you're going to use the file for. If it's just a rough mix to listen to in the truck or give to your band so they can learn the song, MP3 is great. Doesn't take up space on your phone. But if it's to give to a radio station or something where better sound quality is important, a lossless format like FLAC (compressed) or WAV (uncompressed) might be better.

If you have only the player, they are offering loyal customers a free sound pack right now. My guess would be that you will find your '80's lead in the Plastic Pop collection. I have so many of their sound packs that I can't decide which one I want. The Ultra Analog Session 2 I referred to is a cut-down version of their synth, part of their Session Bundle, and I ran through a few presets on it. It gives you access to some of the parameters and the arpeggiator. It has presets that I can't find in any of the sound packs, but I may not be looking hard enough.

If you save the Cakewalk project and then open it again, your reverb and any other effects will be as you left them. You will be able to remove them if you wish. It's only when you Export (or bounce) that reverb or other effects get permanently applied to the finished product. Just a quick explanation: Cakewalk, like most DAW's, performs most of its operations non-destructively, meaning that in Cakewalk, you can split your audio into clips, cut, paste, edit, add effects, delete entire takes and tracks, and your original recorded or imported raw audio tracks will still be sitting on the hard drive, untouched. There are some operations that are destructive, meaning they do change your original audio files, but they are few and are advanced operations like some forms of pitch shifting, tempo matching, and time stretching. Nothing to be concerned with until you get to that level. The overall concept is that you have this raw audio that you record or import, and while you're doing all this mixing, processing, and editing, Cakewalk just "remembers" all your moves. Then when you tell it to export (or "mix down" or "bounce") the finished piece, it applies all of these things that you've done and spits out a finished audio file in whatever format you tell it to. And it still leaves the original audio untouched. If you don't like how the song sounds, you can go back and start the mixing process from scratch with entirely different plug-ins. Try a different reverb if you want. For this reason, it's hard for some DAW users to truly "finish" a mix, because we're always learning how to make it sound better. I'm not kidding. I wish I were.

If you have A|A|S' Ultra Analog Session 2 (I think it came with SPlum, I got it as a Pluginboutique BOGO), load it up and select the first bank, category "Leads." Crank the mod wheel and go through the patches and try to find one that doesn't sound like that. ? I remember it being a popular electro-pop lead sound back in the day, maybe a sawtooth and a sine with the filter modulated? Could have been an attempt at "violin." I can imagine it coming out of an SH-101 or Poly 800 or other price-smasher.

The initial tendency is to look outside the bundle for solutions, especially when it comes to the oft-overlooked Sonitus fx collection. I have this tendency myself. However, Sonitus Modulator has a subcategory of factory presets called "Ensemble" that might have what you're looking for, or at least use as a starting point. Their UI's are really dated and tiny, but I did a little digging and the Sonitus fx suite was highly regarded back in the day. The company that supplied them were (and are) some next-level signal processing eggheads. Their only real limitation is that they are DX and so are limited as to which hosts they will run in. For me, that's Cakewalk and Vegas. So they don't make good "go-to" FX for me. Certainly no worse than using the ProChannel modules that can't be used in other programs at all.

Check out the Favorite Free Instruments thread in this subforum. There is a plethora of stuff you can get for free, and pan flutes are a popular instrument. I think the Native Instruments Komplete Start freebie package has some in it somewhere, and probably Swatches from A|A|S.

Can you expand more on what you're trying to do and why? You have certain VST's installed and don't want to use them but also don't want to uninstall them? Perhaps you want to be able to use them in other programs but not in CbB? If you want to keep them, but don't want Cakewalk to scan them, you can move them to their own separate folder that is not listed in CbB's VST scan paths. I've done this with some plug-ins that I only use in other programs and some that are license locked to other programs. It speeds up the scanning process. If you just don't want them cluttering up your Browser you can do as scook suggests and use Plug-In Manager to exclude them.

The usual DAW workflow is to record everything with no processing and then add it later in the mixing process. The exception is when you have an external hardware unit such as a compressor or spring or plate reverb that you want to use at the time of recording. In most cases, when you have plug-in effects on a track during the recording process, even though you hear them while you're recording, the actual audio will be recorded "dry," without them. Once you've got your tracks recorded, that's where, IMO, the real fun starts. Taking those raw materials and shape them into something magical. Tracking is like visiting the lumber yard, mixing is like actually putting the project together. Welcome to the world of mixing, which is where Cakewalk stomps the living snot out of everything else I've used. Recording, comping, MIDI editing, most everything else in CbB is....powerful, and versatile, and flexible, but has taken getting used to. The first time I popped open the Console View, though, it was like "now that's what I'm talking about." Then I hit the button on one of the strips that pops open the ProChannel and it was truly all over. There is a wealth of tutorials on the web, especially YouTube, about how to approach every aspect of recording and mixing, how to get started with every processor. For the specifics of how to apply the principles to CbB, we on the forum love to show off, I mean share, what we know. For processing, the basics to start with are EQ, compression, and reverb. Find out how to apply each of them, what they do to your sounds. CbB comes with a great channel EQ in the ProChannel, and the Sonitus and BREVERB reverb plug-ins that come with it are good. The ProChannel has a couple of compressors and the Sonitus is a goodie as well. I might suggest downloading the Meldaproduction Free Bundle to get MEQualizer and MCompressor, as they were not only great to learn on but I still use them on every project. There will inevitably be one or more people along the way who say "just use your ears," when you ask about how to use these processors, which I think is as helpful as telling someone who wants to learn to drive an automobile "just use your eyes, hands and feet." Forums will have individual conflicting opinions based on what has worked for each individual. I prefer reading or watching tutorials to get the gist and then trying it out on my own material. There are things that I do that are not "by the book" and others that I probably need to work on. Jerry's hint about using a bus for reverb and then using sends is a good one. That's the next step to realistic ambience, if your goal is to have your song sound as if it exists in one sonic space. But don't worry about it for now. Throw a little BREVERB on your vocal and have fun.☺

When I saw that it had a factory preset called "Disintegration" little valentine hearts flew from the top of my head. Just seeing the name made me want to try running my drums through it and drench the snare and do a lot of "dug-a-da-bum" fills and drench the vocals and play ominous string pads. "Prayers For Rain" all the way.

Tried it out, and to loosely paraphrase some of Native Instruments' countrymen, "I'm fond, fond, fond of the 'verb called RAUM."

The first step on the road to recovery is admitting that you have a problem. Welcome, and keep coming back!?(except in this case, "coming back" will only make it worse) I decided in my first year or so of learning how to mix in the box that the best way for me was to decide on a "best of breed" or "go-to" for each major type of processor and focus on it. It's hard for newbies to "get" that because plug-in makers publish quotes from their celebrity endorsers making it seem like they must be deciding on a different compressor, EQ, and reverb for every track. Of course they make it seem that way so they can keep us excited about buying more flavors of processors we already know we have enough of. Reverb was the first one I decided to go through and audition every one I had downloaded and just pick the best-sounding one. It was Orilriver, a freeware one, followed by TrueVerb, an oldie that Waves gives away every Arbor Day, Flag Day, Presidents' Day, Easter.... Then once I decided on my first round of "go-to's," I built up a quiver of "special occasion" ones and sometimes change favorites as my tastes and skills evolve. There are also handy utilities such as MAutoalign that goes on every drum project because I have it and it makes the tracks sound better. But give me copies of MCompressor, MEQualizer, and Orilriver (freeware reverb) and the "house" delay and chorus of whatever DAW I'm in and I'm okay to mix. For free, any of my "best of breeds" are at risk of losing their jobs. The Meldas are at the least risk. If RAUM can dust off Orilriver or TrueVerb, we listen more closely. I do all my reverbing via sends, so if RAUM performs well in that role, I'll like it. Not all reverbs do. I think it may be a demanding task, more complex signals, but I don't know. They can start to sound muddy and cluttered no matter how I pre-process or what algorithm I choose. De gusti(reverb)bus.

Since I have nowhere else to turn for emotional support, I say it here: it's been 25 minutes since I clicked on the link to get the free license and Native Access is still telling me "YOU HAVE NO PRODUCTS TO INSTALL" The free plug-in junkie's worst nightmare! As if I didn't already know! My name is Erik and I have no products to install. I guess all I can do is keep coming back.

To have ambience is important to some So they gave us a 'verb, and the 'verb is RAUM!

For the effort you went to and as useful as it's going to be, its creator can name it anything, and I happen to like the name, and quirky "guide" names in general. "A Young Person's Guide To King Crimson," "The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy." All the funnier given how the demographic skews toward the male in our fair forum.

....and in case anyone wasn't aware, Cherry Audio, makers of Voltage Audio, is a new company formed by principals from Acoustica. I haven't spent much time with Voltage Audio, as I am an admitted "preset tweaker" when it comes to synthesis, but it looks great. Actually most of the plug-ins work in Cakewalk, including the Acoustica Studio Instruments, which is their really good-sounding GM player. Some off the top of my head that I can think of: the G-sonique plug-ins all do, although most of their VST FX are 32-bit. The VTD Psychedelic Delay is one of my favorite "weirdo" FX, sad that Acoustica haven't licensed the 64-bit version. The vintage synth emulations all do, the MemoryMoon, MiniMogue, ME80, Messiah, etc. Pianissimo, which along with Melodyne Essentials alone might make the upgrade to Pro Studio worth the money for some, works just fine in Cakewalk. All of the Acoustica FX, like their Pro Studio Reverb, and Vocal Zap, work in Cakewalk. Glass Viper does. A|A|S Journeys/Entangled Species works in Cakewalk. The ones I can think of that appear locked are the ToneBoosters ones, which say ""unregistered" down at the bottom when I load them in Cakewalk, the VB-3 organ, and the Lounge Lizard Session Piano v.3. Too bad about the ToneBoosters plug-ins, too, because they are niiiiiice. Mixcraft remains an excellent choice for people getting started with DAW's on Windows to get something done right away. That was one of the main criteria when I was doing my own personal shootout to choose which one to start with 5 years ago. I downloaded all the demos, my budget was $100, with the idea that as I learned more I would "graduate" if necessary. From the "Studio" versions to the "Pro" versions where applicable. And there were less mature ones (at the time) like Mixcraft, Tracktion, REAPER and others that might add features. One basic benchmark was how long did it take me from installing the program to being able to arm a track and record audio. I figured the faster I could perform that basic task with it, the more new-user friendly the program was and also specifically friendly to my needs. For those who know REAPER, it will be no surprise which program came in absolute dead last. I think it was over an hour including downloading the user guide and then some user's incomplete tutorial for first-time users. The documentation had the same blind spot that Linux and other open source software used to suffer terribly from: my task was too basic for it to occur to anyone to document. I wound up almost screaming at the computer screen. Mixcraft did it in under a minute. And it came with a remote app that runs on Android and iOS that lets you start and stop recording and playback and rewind and adjust the fader on the Master bus. Sold. The rest of them were all crippled in some way or other that ruled them out. Limited to 16 tracks? No VST support? Sticking every UI element into a single window when I have two monitors? Mixcraft is a meat-and-potatoes DAW that is easy to switch to and from as necessary. It's still an excellent backup, a go-to for when I can't get MIDI to work in Cakewalk no matter how many chickens I sacrifice. Like every DAW, it has its annoying blind spots. After this round of features, in which they nailed some of the biggies, like "Fisher-Price Mixer" and "Transport Stuck In The Middle" the worst remaining one for me is the lack of keystroke support. Many functions lack any keystroke at all, and there is no way to assign your own. That's just lame. Mouse in the right hand, left hand on the keyboard, people. No keystroke for an operation hampers possible efficiency.

I suspect that where things get difficult is when the document contains a lot of images with text that flows around the images, which of course describes the BRG. All those screenshots, tables, etc. seem like they would make it tougher. At this point I am so happy that the BRG was finally updated. I had my doubts for a long time due to the "online" focus of BandLab as a company.

I agree with your points in general principle, with specifics to be addressed by the developers as best suits. I, too would like help keep ing current with the version, especially now that we're seeing more substantial changes and additions to the features. Adding a date code to the file name is a good idea, and a bigger version number/date on page 2 wouldn't hurt either. I would even take your points 2 and 3 further and suggest that BA download the latest BRG (Blessed Ref Guide) with every CbB update, install it to the Cakewalk directory, and that there be an item under the Utilities Menu to allow the user to launch it. I do all of this manually, having used Steve Cook's utility to add menu items. It is so handy not to have to switch out of Cakewalk to launch the BRG. As for 4, here's my devil's advocacy: you and I of course recall the difficulty we had trying to get the thing into different formats. I'm keeping in mind that the devs have not yet even published the BRG in html form. I used to do tech writing, including publishing in electronic formats, and getting everything just right in a single format is a challenge, more so when it includes images. Making it work in multiple formats, and then making sure that all those formats are kept up to date with version control adds more difficulty. Just saying that while I, too would love to have the BRG available in as many formats as would be convenient for people to use, adding more formats might be more difficult that it seems, so we may have a wait on that. Manuals these days seem to come in PDF form, sometimes HTML if the product is open source. "Let them use iPads!"?

I just popped in to one of my favorite makers of virtual instruments, Applied Acoustics, to update my email preferences. Rumor has it that around this time of year they send out a free voucher for your choice of soundsets if you are signed up. They have a free VSTi called Swatches that offers a sampling of each of their many sound packs. Swatches is periodically updated to add more sounds as more sound packs are created, so I check in from time to time. There was a new version, now they are up to over 420 sounds in the thing! And they are really good sounds, obviously they choose some of the best ones to show off each soundset. A|A|S stuff, especially products that use only the player, like Swatches, is usually pretty resource-friendly.