Starship Krupa

Ah, let's be gentle with the lad. Like all of us he just wants Cakewalk to work better for everyone. Why it took him so long to find the Freeware Instruments thread is that it scrolls away so quickly and people don't use the Search engine. As for #1, that's been suggested and decided against so far, as for #2, well, good question, but it just doesn't occur to people I guess. For decades, people have thought I'm some kind of computer genius because I can Google their error messages and spew back a solution that someone else has already figured out. All I can do as a service to new users is bump the threads when I remember. I don't believe Keyzone Classic or Amplesound have been mentioned, so I'm going to use them to bump the Instruments thread, so good. Also, well and good enough for him and for you and for me, but he's talking about other users of BandLab making the transition. Not everyone who downloads and installs Cakewalk registers for and reads this forum. Maybe not even most, although putting a link to the forum right on the Help menu was a move of awesomeness. I'm in agreement that in 2020, a freeware DAW no longer needs to ship with a pile of ancillary bonus plug-ins. Even as recently as 2 years ago I may have disagreed, but things have changed since Cakewalk first shipped. I wonder how Cakewalk's arrival may have helped change things. I think the old formula was "sell creative software to a small community of creative people for a decent chunk of change." The newer formula may be "expand the community of creative people by giving away some of our stuff and lower our license fees and sell a lot more." Speaking for myself, I have spent plenty of money I wouldn't have otherwise spent if I didn't have access to lower cost and free tools to attract me and learn with. So it may seem paradoxical, but giving things away can bring more money in. When I was learning how to mix on a DAW I had OrilRiver and learned how I wanted a reverb to sound. Then iZotope put Exponential Phoenix Stereo on sale for $10 and I knew enough to know that within 5 minutes of trying it that it was light years better than anything I'd ever tried and plunked down $20 for 2 licenses. When Exponential Excalibur went on sale for $10, there went $20 more. They don't have to sell that many more licenses for it to scale up pretty well. With lower fees, there's less incentive to crack, etc.

Here's a good bump* for the thread: RealSpread is an interesting single-knob stereoizer plug-in by TrualityAudio. Since I love to work with nasty little mono phone recordings where someone was standing in the corner behind the drum kit, I just can't have enough stereo processing plug-ins Truality is the brainchild of Antonakis Christoforides. a broadcast and recording engineer in Cyprus. I'm always interested to check out the results when people have psychoacoustic theories to put into practice and he has done so in the form of two plug-ins. The other is a one-knob compressor he calls TruPressor which he also says has some psychoacoustic magic under the hood but I haven't tried it much yet except to make sure it didn't crash Cakewalk so I could post it here. Although I was interested when I first ran across his stuff on KVR, they were both 32-bit, and we don't post 32-bit in the thread, but he has gotten busy with his Flowstone compiler and they are now both 64-bit VST2. *Since this and the Freeware Instruments thread are not stickied, they become invisible unless they get bumped. It's a nice thing to do to post in this thread whenever you spot a good freebie, not just for us freeware hounds, but as a service to new users, to have the thread on the first page. Since Cakewalk doesn't come with a large number of exotic plug-ins anymore, but there are excellent ones among its freeware brethren, new users can get a faster start if they know where to find the goodies.

Sigh. I started both the "Freeware FX Thread" and the "Freeware Instruments" threads on this forum in order to do just what you suggest. SampleTank, Syntronik, and Sitala have all been posted in that thread. I would love for the developers to partner with the developer of Sitala to integrate it with Cakewalk so that there could be a function where we could drag and drop clips to the sampler, back and forth from the Track View and Matrix. There are two issues with the threads: first, they scroll down into invisibility unless I or someone else bump them, which I don't always remember to do, despite the fact that there's always some new free gadget available these days. Second, people apparently either don't think to use the Search function, or their use of it isn't turning up those threads. When they were first created, there was talk of making them sticky, but @Jesse Jost and the other mods are trying to avoid overuse of sticky threads. I think it's important information given that Cakewalk itself is freeware and therefore attracts people who have limited budgets, and, as many have already pointed out, doesn't come bundled with a ton of extra slick plug-ins. And I wholeheartedly agree with the others who have said that it doesn't need to in these days of so much other excellent freeware. But I'm just a user with one opinion, don't run the forum, don't decide on the content vs. clutter. There are also many, many excellent inexpensive instruments such as those made by AIR. XPand2! for $15, SONIVOX' Orchestral Companion series, which are regularly put on sale as a bundle for $30, AIR's Hybrid 3, Vacuum Pro, both of which I got for $10. There's a subforum dedicated to Deals that people on a budget should not miss. Lots of freebies in there. If you want to help, I'd say the best thing to do at this point is remember that we have threads for freeware FX and instruments and bump them whenever you discover something new. That will help keep them near the top where new people can see them. As a veteran of the commercial software business, I can say that there are issues with official bundling of other companies' software, whether it be freeware or payware or whatever. The people involved still must work out issues of copyright, legal ownership, all that, and whenever the creator of the bundled content updates it, there must be some mechanism in place to update the bundled version, BandLab's Cakewalk support will be expected to also support the bundled content and so on. And really, I believe that if someone's savvy enough to become a BandLab bada55, and/or download Cakewalk, the most they should require is a list in order to be able to get the rest of what they need to fill out their DAW. It doesn't have to be part of the download. I am in favor of making it as easy as possible for Cakewalk users to acquire other free and inexpensive music making software. I would also love to see as much of the rest of the old Cakewalk, Inc. software released as is practical. Beyond that, an integrated clip-to-phrase sampler would be nice, but I have Break Tweaker (on sale for $8.88) and TX16Wx, and sforzando and even SampleTank CS will let me import samples.

Oddly, it was created to help ease people's way into using the program. I have, however, been the user who was so determined to have something go wrong that there was no stopping me. No wonder I wound up testing software for a living! I recently somehow depopulated my entire templates folder, stock and custom alike, except for Basic.cwt. It's a good excuse to roll up my sleeves and get serious about creating some new templates, but dang, what was I up to when that happened? Why isn't it in any of my backups?

I think this one, as it seems more like an instrument:

There are a few issues. And, sincerely, I'm not saying all this to be pedantic, but we need to clear the waters before we can dive, so to speak. There are companies named Arturia, Plug&Mix, and BandLab. BandLab makes Cakewalk, which is similar to an older program called SONAR. Cakewalk is named after the company that made SONAR, which has given rise to some confusion, which we need no more of at the moment. SONAR is gone, long live Cakewalk the program. As to your software, I think you probably meant "E-Max" rather than "Mix E-Max." However, there is no VST plug-in on the market named "Echoverb" sold by Arturia or Plug&Mix or anyone else according to Google. Are you 100% sure you are looking for the right name in the list? I've made...just as silly errors. From what I can gather, you have successfully installed: Cakewalk (by BandLab) Melllotron (by Arturia) E-Max (by Plug&Mix) Your issue is that you can't see Echoflex (by Plug&Mix) in Cakewalk, and perhaps one other unspecified plug-in. (You definitely can't see Echoverb, and since it has never existed, the best solution I can offer is to just accept it) This is actually encouraging news, because if you were able to successfully install plug-ins from both the companies you bought them from, that means that the install process for both of the companies' products works on your system. So if you just try it again for whatever product you aren't able to see in Cakewalk chances are it will work again. Also: Mellotron, excellent choice.

I love MCompressor. The Dead Duck Free Bundle of 25 effects includes a compressor and a gate.

Yes, once you have your tracks in MIDI format, the sky's the limit as far as what you can do with it in terms of sounds with Cakewalk, even if you have no money to invest at this time. Get SampleTank Free CS 4, which has many really good sounds, Kontakt Komplete Start, 6GB of free high quality content, or even just start with the SI Strings, Drums, and Piano, and TTS-1 and put on some effects.

Very entertaining thread. I'm a mid-field olde tymer, had the one college programming class back in '79 where I submitted my FORTRAN programs via deck of punched cards, built my first computer from a kit, Sinclair ZX-81 in 1981, then next one was a frankenclone XT out of castoff parts in 1990. Been participating in online forums since 1989. Was one of the founding architects of the SF Bay Area's notorious NirvanaNet; our first meetup was at one of my bands' gigs in the lower Haight. Good times. Been keeping an eye on Linux since I downloaded a copy in 1991 and gave it to a programmer friend at the company I worked for. Also obtained a pirated copy of "Chicago" for the same company via my sketchy BBS connections, delivered to my doorstep by what was known back in those days as a "courier." Nice feller, I met him again when we both worked at Macromedia a few years later, pre-Adobe. I agree with the OP for the most part, although in my impression, Linux-as-moonieware is nowhere near as rabid as it once was. Perhaps I've learned to tolerate the moonieware phenomenon. It has been my impression that most Linux desktop users had just settled into using "Windblows" DAWs under Wine. Let me dust off my Linux user trolling hat and remind them that the argument that the ongoing hilarity of trying to set a native DAW under Linux using the most common of audio interfaces is somehow the fault of the hardware manufacturers seems odd, because, hey, your pet platform is supposed to be all about this army of coders toiling away for the common good, isn't it? So why don't they just write the drivers you need for your hardware? Or is that beyond their capabilities? Why is this one area of code the one thing that the Linux world is sitting around on its collective utopian a55 waiting for commercial entities to hand them on a silver platter? Nobody can take a break from the Mr. Robot fan forum long enough to code up a driver for the Scarlett 2i2? Having said that, I don't think that there's anything holding it back from use in any field except serious NLE creation like audio and video. I use GIMP on Windows, it finally made it to the point where it will do what I need it to, and it's a native Linux app, so I'll give Linux photo editing, and Inkscape is a powerhouse as well. So as long as the content you're creating doesn't move it's great. Video and audio editing is just too close to the hardware. We find crash bugs in Cakewalk, and it has a dedicated team of veteran programmers who work on it for a living and have done for a long time. For productivity, with so much being done in browsers these days, and with Libre Office having matured, the underlying platform is becoming superfluous. My mom is 82 and her main system is a Chromebook she got a couple of years ago. Originally when it arrived at her place, she was going to wait for Mr. Family Tech Support Guy to come and set it up for her, but her curiosity got the best of her and the next day I spoke with her on the phone and she had it up and running and connected to her wifi router with no outside intervention. The hardest part for her was finding and typing the wifi password. I migrated her to Google Docs from Libre Office a bit before that, so she was good to go. She runs into bit of trouble from time to time when her friends and collaborators can't deal with something that's not in Word format, so I discovered Microsoft Office Online last week, and I hope she gets up to speed on that. I know that Google Docs can export as .doc, but I figured it might be the better route. So there you go, a desktop Linux computer passes the "old lady" test with (almost) flying colors. However. The hardware bugaboo again, when she needs to print something, she still fires up her old iMac, which sits next to her printer, even though I set up the Chromebook to print to her wireless printer. Something about the printing dialogs with the Chromebook escapes her. Next visit, after the pandemic dies down, we'll be investigating this. My girlfriend has an iPad and does everything on it, including photo editing. She does most things in Safari, even, I can't get her to use things there are native apps for, like YouTube and Google. Another friend of mine, who has a rippin' Mac Pro tower for Pro Tools, prefers his iPhone 6s for everything else, and I mean video editing, photo editing, screenplay writing, everything. I sometimes feel like a dinosaur for doing so much using, you know, a regular desktop Windows 10 computer. People ask me if I saw this or that that they posted on Instagram and I say not yet. I would browse Instagram more often if Instagram worked better in a damn browser. You still can't upload pictures from anything but a mobile device. I have some fun pictures I'd like to put up, but sometimes not taken with a phone, and I just don't stare at the thing as much as I do the 'puter. And I like to throw a bit of cropping and color correction on my photos, which I do using GIMP. Now, as a veteran IT guy, a few words about the clinging to Windows 7 phenomenon. I was a later adopter, mostly because my behind the curve computers worked, and I got cantankerous about Microsoft putting that unwanted tray icon on my system. What tipped it was Noel and Jon telling me that BandLab were no longer interested in active support for Windows 7. I upgraded my oldest system, and wonder of wonders, it actually seemed to work better than it did before, and a bunch of hardware that I couldn't get to work under Windows 7, like my old Canon scanner, started to work again. I had put an SSD in this because it was an older computer. Windows 10 must have a fast system drive. The first rule of Windows 10 is that it must have a fast system drive. My laptop, running 7 Pro, so went to 10 Pro, also great. 7200RPM spinny. The main system, however, has been more problematic. I'm still working on that, and I'm finding out that part of the issue was that Windows 10's behavior exposed a hardware issue on my system. I'm learning a lot about Windows 10 system optimization. I'm glad I made the upgrade, and consider it an upgrade for sure. One thing it does that I really do not like, it writes a LOT of logfiles, but these can be turned off. I'm going to post about this in the regular forum as a tuning tip. As far as staying with Windows 7, what's the big deal about "OMG, I'm not going to get security updates from Microsoft, so I must airgap my system from the internet!" I'm open to new information, what disastrous outcome do you imagine from having a computer system operated by you, connected to the internet, but no longer getting security updates from Microsoft? I presume that the system in question is mostly dedicated to DAW usage, so doesn't contain any sensitive information like email messages or personal documents, and since we're cautious about data loss, we're meticulously backing everything up. So tell me: what happens to systems connected to the internet that aren't getting patches from Microsoft? You want to know what my protection against malware is? I don't open executable email attachments. I run Malwarebytes on an ad hoc basis to clear the occasional browser hijack. And In 35 years of using computers, Windows 10 is the first time I've every had a permanently resident anti-malware program running, and that's because Microsoft forces it on you as part of the OS. I have, in all those years, gotten exactly one virus, 20 years ago, when I broke my rule about running sketchy downloaded executables. Hey, I thought it was an archive. I should have scanned it first. Since being on Windows 10, I have had this Coyote/Roadrunner battle with Windows Defender's Realtime Scanning. I found a way to turn it off permanently using Group Policy Editor, which I had to figure out how to enable on Windows 10 Home, then Microsoft figured out how to get around it and an update turned realtime scanning back on. Currently they are winning, but I'm working on a fix. My computer, my rules. In the meantime, at least I can exclude my audio and plug-in folders.

Probably Pianissimo. I'm familiar with the doings over at Acoustica and I know that Spin It hasn't been touched in at least half a dozen years and they've never included it in any kind of promotion in the past half dozen years either. I think it's not really a live product. I also don't think it's worth $19, or even a fraction of that. Pianissimo, on the other hand is a very nice-sounding, very easy on the CPU virtual piano made by combining sampling and modeling. twenty bucks is a rather good deal for it. And with IK Multimedia giving the superb Berlin Piano away for free with SampleTank 4 CS, I can see where they might feel the need to be more competitive on the price. And to clarify for those who may have misunderstood what Larry said: when you purchase a license for Mixcraft Pro Studio, Pianissimo is one of the bundled instruments. That's how I became familiar with it. I have a friend who bought an upgrade license from Mixcraft to Pro solely to get the Pianissimo license, although I don't think he minds having the Melodyne Essentials. Mixcraft has a few juicy features that would be sweet to have with Cakewalk. The integrated phrase sampler and performance panel are really useful, and their new vocoder looks cool. Not locked to Mixcraft Pro Studio either, far as I can tell.

For the great unwashed who don't own Kontakt (there are such people), it looks like it's basically the SynthOne instrument.

My experience so far is exactly similar to @iScream's. It would be nice to have another titler to play with, but if all I get is their one-knob de-esser, I ain't complaining.

I don't fully understand ARA2 technology, but I wonder if editing of wave files with an external program is an area where it might find an application.

XPand!2 at $14 is one of the best deals there is to be had for a virtual instrument, especially for someone with Cakewalk, which is a relatively bare-bones DAW when it comes to bundled instruments. 2000 patches. The only minor complaints for me are the limited parameter adjustments (you can adjust amplitude and filter ADSR and that's it, no glide) and, given the massive number of sounds in the thing, no way to do a text search for presets. Few synths have that feature anyway. TTS-1 is very much a 90's GM synth, excellent for its time but now dated. Still, there are some very usable sounds in there if you dig down below the top levels of the preset browser, especially the pianos and organs. I have a template for when I want to get ideas down quickly and TTS-1 with one of its pianos is in it. Light as a feather, loads in an instant. If you have a General MIDI file you need to work with, there's nothing better.

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.