Starship Krupa

Frank Sinatra based his whole musical career around that model. As do most symphony orchestras.😄 Performers writing their own material didn't become a litmus test for "authenticity" until the 60's. Not everyone who's good at singing or playing is also good at writing, and vice versa. As for artists who usually do write their own material covering entire albums, or covering entire albums in different styles from the original, it's either for the laughs and/or out of genuine respect for the original material. The Moody Bluegrass project turned out so well that they eventually got Justin Hayward to sing with them. The whole thing was based on a pun in the name, but it so happens that the blokes in the Moody Blues wrote excellent songs that transplanted well to a different genre. I think that more people have realized that one of the reasons that people who manage to earn a living by writing, playing, recording and selling their own music become famous is that it happens so rarely, like airline crashes, shark attacks and earthquakes. All of which get extensive media coverage because they are so uncommon.

I got a free license for Antares' vocal ensemble plug-in, and once I saw what Codemeeter was doing (it ran its own service, complete with a tray icon), I uninstalled it. I actually liked what the plug-in could do, but I already have Quadravox and had no desire to have this licensing server running at all times just so I could use this one plug-in very infrequently. Recently I got email from Antares announcing that they were switching to iLok. PACE also installs a service, but since I have a couple dozen iLok'd plug-ins, I don't mind. So I downloaded their latest installer and ran it and lo and behold, while they had switched to iLok, the installer still installed the Codemeeter crap. So I tried getting rid of Codemeeter manually, deleting its files and disabling its service, and it didn't affect the Antares plug-in.

Thank you for replying to this. The more information we give the companies the better their chances to fix it. Preguntas: Do you have projects where this happens every time? When the crash occurs, do you get the following dialog? Have you tried contacting A|A|S' support and Cakewalk support through official channels? The more people who report a problem, the greater the chance that developers will use resources to fix it. One person reporting it is usually seen as a fluke, two people reporting it starts to form a pattern, and if we can get three reporting it, then it's way more likely that they will put attention to it. If you see the above dialog when it crashes, it would be of great help if you were to attach the .dmp file shown in the dialog to a reply in this topic or to me in a private message. If you have a project that crashes every time, or most of the time, it would also be of great help to send it (or a simplified version) to the developers (both A|A|S and Cakewalk) as well. If you would rather contact me directly to forward the files, I'd be happy to. I've been in contact with the development staff at Cakewalk and at A|A|S and know where to send them directly. I like to refer to plug-in problems as "compatibility issues" between the plug-in and host rather than try to figure out whom to blame. In the end, the products should work well together. Cakewalk SONAR Platinum once bundled 3 different A|A|S instruments, and my projects don't crash Cakewalk by BandLab, so this issue seems to be something new to Sonar. If Sonar has introduced an issue in its new code or the new code has exposed an issue with A|A|S' ( very popular) instruments (or both or neither), it's in both companies' interests to fix the problem. For my part, A|A|S' synths are without question my favorites, I've spent more on them than all of my other virtual instruments combined. If this problem persists, I'll be very sad.

Looks like we didn't have to wait until late 2025 to at least see MIDI 2.0 support and the new faster USB driver. I want to try this on my Windows 11 test system. It may be the tipping point for upgrading all of my Windows systems. https://www.thurrott.com/windows/316785/microsoft-releases-windows-midi-services-with-midi-2-0-support-in-public-preview I guess I'm not surprised that writing a real ASIO driver for the Realtek CODEC is taking longer.😂

I'm still using my Pro 40 on Windows 10 and it works a treat. I haven't tried it with my Windows 11 test system, but maybe I should. I know of no inherent reason that Firewire wouldn't work in Windows 11. Are you considering installing Windows 10 instead of 11 in order to be able to keep using your Pro 40? Or are you weighing the possibility of buying a newer USB interface? If the day ever comes that my Pro 40's (I have two of them) stop working with Windows, I hope to still be able to use their 8 inputs via ADAT connection to a newer interface.

Advice: yes, do update the BIOS, but check to see how many revisions there are between the version you have now and the latest. The only time in my 35 years of computing that a BIOS update bricked a motherboard was when I was resurrecting a hand-me-down motherboard and updated its original BIOS to the last released one. Did some research and it was a known issue. If updated incrementally, it went fine, but with too large a jump, brickdom happened, with no way to get back to the original BIOS. You don't necessarily need to do them one by one, but do research to find out how BIOS updates have gone for other users of your model.

Bork happens.

Shedding tears for ya, mate. Missi looks like a real sweetie. My departed doggy Kittery was one of the finest souls it's been my pleasure to encounter in this life. One day she will have a successor, replacement is impossible.

From my "white box" perspective, and longtime experience with A|A|S synths, I strongly suspect that it's something to do with Sonar sending data to the plug-in, and the plug-in not outputting data fast enough when Sonar expects it to be there. Or the plug-in not being in a state that Sonar expects it to be. Due to processing being diverted to drawing the UI or something. There's a race condition happening or something. Given that much has been done recently to speed up performance, specifically as regards plug-in performance, I have to suspect that it's down to that. Something that used to have enough time to happen now doesn't have enough time to happen. I recently crashed Sonar by scrolling through Vital's preset list too quickly, while the project was playing. Not a divide by zero error, but it crashed Sonar with a minidump. So a lot of UI drawing going on in the plug-in, and boom, down she goes. The developers so far can't get my submitted projects to crash on them, and it's very difficult to fix a problem that won't manifest its symptoms. Laypeople, I think, sometimes expect that programmers can just open their code and figure out what's going wrong by reading it, guided by the user's description of the error. While that's not impossible to do, it's very unlikely to happen. Especially when it's not being reported by hordes of users. But it can't be just me, it happens on two very different systems.

Information has been submitted in great detail, including the fact that the same projects work fine in CbB. I usedta be a pro software QA engineer, and believe me, I've thrown everything I have at this, trying to inform both companies. It's especially odd because Cakewalk and A|A|S were once bundle buddies. And Strum Session is one of the instruments that will trigger it.

No. For instance the same projects run fine in Cakewalk by BandLab. It's always the same, divide by zero.

I've been experiencing regular crashes specifically when using A|A|S instruments. What happens is that I start playback and as soon as the A|A|S synth tries to produce sound, Sonar crashes. This occurs on two very different systems, my main DAW and my Dell laptop, so I have a hard time believing that it's specific to me. However, I've submitted the crash dumps and test projects to both Cakewalk and A|A|S, and apparently they can't reproduce the crash. So for now, my favorite DAW and favorite virtual instruments don't get along.

Drum maps is a powerful, complex feature that's hard to get one's head around. But it can allow you to do neato things like this. And I like a good challenge too. What I dislike about Cakewalk's drum maps feature is that it's also necessary to employ it to perform what I believe should be a simple task. To my thinking, needing to go as deep into it as one must in order to display the drum editing grid with the names of the instruments you're using....it's as if you had to write a .CAL script in order to rename a clip. I'm reminded of this when I see how often another DAW I use tells me in its update dialog that it's adding new drum maps to the program's library of them. In that DAW, to use a drum map/drum editing grid, when you're in the Piano Roll, you click on the Scale selection button and there is a vast list of available drum maps you may use. This is actually kind of a step backward; it used to have a button in the PRV header marked "Drum Map." Imagine being able to apply a drum map from the Piano Roll, the actual place in the program where you use a drum editing grid! Rather than having to go to Track View or Console View. I'll never forget helping out a longtime Cakewalk user who started using this other DAW as a secondary and was befuddled as to how and where to apply a drum map. He couldn't find it because it was in the simplest, most obvious place for it to be. He was probably expecting it to be somewhere in a track header or console strip. But y'know, the reason that this other DAW is now my secondary where Sonar is my primary is Sonar's versatility. Routing and so forth. Also, I've never tried doing note remapping in that DAW, I'm not even sure you can do it.

Watchers of this space may be familiar with my fear and loathing around Cakewalk Sonar's drum map system, which I have been beating my head against since Cakewalk by BandLab shipped 7 years ago. Usually I've just wanted to display the drum kit piece names over on the left and use the drum grid to compose/edit and have been amazed at the obstacle course of hassle and confusion I've faced on the way to that (simple, I would think) goal. This time, I took on something much more involved and that makes deep use of the utility of what drum maps were originally designed to achieve. And in the spirit of fairness (as well as gloating), I'll tell the tale of how I used a drum map to accomplish something really useful that might not be possible with other DAW's. That is, the mapping of a given MIDI note to whatever you wish to map it to, to and from a hardware unit and/or virtual instrument. The function that when I've ranted about the hell I've gone through just to get note names to display with a drum editing grid, certain beloved users would sound off with protestations of "drum maps is the most magnificently awesome way of being able to use my original Roland Octapad to drive the brain of my Casio MIDI drum kit!" Which. Wasn't. What. I. Was. Talking. About. At. All.😡 "Of course I don't use drum maps just to display the note names, for actual programming and editing I use an instrument map and the normal piano roll view." Yes, of course you don't, because IT'S A MISERABLE HASSLE. 🤦‍♂️ But this time, what I wanted to do, were I able to pull it off, would use the note mapping function to map MIDI notes Background: "why would I deliberately inflict this on myself" tl/dr: I've been a fan of A|A|S' products ever since the DAW I was using 10 years ago started including a bespoke 2 soundpack version of their A|A|S Player, which is a synth that allows you to use A|A|S synth preset packs ("soundpacks") without having to buy the full synths the soundpacks are designed for. There is absolutely no control of any parameter, delay and reverb (often too much for my taste) are baked in and will be there until you buy the synth(s) that the soundpacks were designed for. Most of the soundpacks include up to a dozen drum/percussion single hits. Kicks, snares, hi hats, toms. I've never quite understood what I was supposed to do with these. Load up an entire virtual instrument just to get one note out of it? At least I determined that multiple instances of A|A|S Player share the same already-loaded engine, so overhead isn't so bad. Although these single hits often sound as compelling and complex and unusual as I expect from A|A|S, I've tried making multiple MIDI tracks (kick, snare, hat, tom) and it was too clumsy to have 4 separate MIDI tracks for drums, and it also makes it harder to visualize what the patterns are. Also, it's not really feasible to use Step Sequencer to program patterns if there are 4 different MIDI or Instrument tracks. But what if there were some way to have 4 synth tracks driven by a single MIDI track for simpler editing? And what if I could use the drum grid and even Step Sequencer for editing? Turns out my hunch was correct: it IS possible, and a custom drum map from scratch is the answer. Rather than starting with a GM or Default or even "blank" drum map as I normally would, I started a completely new one, for the first time following the "New Drum Map" menu selection to the letter. I created entries for note 36 (GM standard for kick), 38 (snare), 42 (closed hat), and 50 (hi tom). I loaded 4 instances of A|A|S Player into Synth Rack (a feature I never use for anything but troubleshooting) and named them AAS Kick (huh huh), AAS Snare, AAS Hat (huh huh huh), and AAS Tom. Then I set the Out Ports for each of these notes to the appropriate synth instances, and lo and behold, it worked: Maybe I could get even fancier with it and have the drum map send patch selection info to the synths. That's for another time. At the moment, I'm just having too much fun opening the different instances of A|A|S Player and trying different sounds. I still need to load the 4 instances of A|A|S Player before applying the drum map, so I'll make an A|A|S Beat (huh huh huh huh) project template with everything loaded up and ready to go.

I took "we stopped using that 20 years ago" to mean that they stopped using it for active development 20 years ago. Not that they purged all code that used the library 20 years ago. The library that Glenn found was dated 1999. There's plenty of Sonar, both in the UI and under the surface, that dates back as far as 2005. I remember using a version of SONAR over 20 years ago that had the same Staff View as still exists in Cakewalk Sonar (minus the menu bar at the top, which seems to have been updated with the new vector UI). Dialogs and guitar fretboard and all else looks the same.

😄I knew that Audio Git would wind up with an Ozone Elements license before he could blink. I checked to see if I had any extras floating around, but didn't find any. I was kind of surprised.

I am (and always have been) impressed by the amount of love that the Sonitus FX suite still gets. It seems that Cakewalk, Inc. knew what it was doing when it bought the suite (was it the entire company?) over 25 years ago. My nderstanding is that they began life as a premium commercial suite, then Cakewalk bought up the suite for inclusion with their DAW. They are kinda homely by 2025 standards (and the UI's are tiny), and I have resisted usiung them because they are effectively "DAW-locked" and can't be used in other audio and video hosts. I like to be able to use the same processors when I switch back and forth between different programs. But when I've tried them, they seem to sound great and have good workflows (esp. given that they are now over 25 years old). The multiband compressor and delay especially seem to have a lot going for them. Craig Anderton likes them so much that he uses a DXi-to-VST wrapper to be able to use them in other hosts. I'd love to see them get more contemporary (flatter, darker, resizable) UI's, and ported to VST3. And yes, while we're at it, making the Cakewalk linear phase EQ and multiband compressor available would be nice. They're great processors and would make good additions to Sonar.

Right, there's even a name for this process, "comfort reverb," to help the performer relax and deliver a more natural performance, rather than be confronted with a dry sound in the cans (revealing every detail).

Absolutely. Simplest way is probably the one in the Creative Sauce video (the one that Mark linked to). Put your FX in the track FX bin, adjust to taste. When you have a good take, turn off the FX and export your track. SONAR (and every other DAW I can think of) doesn't "print" FX when recording, so when you record something, the file created on the disk will be completely dry. My guess is that the client has supplied a backing track for you to play along to, which you'll import into a SONAR project, then play your part and export your track minus the backing track?

Sonar's built-in arpeggiator comes from a long-discontinued Cakewalk product named Project 5. Project 5 existed alongside SONAR, then the company decided to discontinue it and incorporate some of its features in SONAR. I believe Matrix also came from Project 5. It was possible to create new patterns using Project 5, but when the feature was added to SONAR, the ability to create arpeggiator patterns was not brought with it. I'm a big fan of Sonar's arpeggiator and I agree that it would greatly increase its usefulness to have some way to create our own patterns, and I was as surprised as you are to learn that there is no way. Fortunately I was able to track down a library of 500 patterns created by a Project 5 user, and they work. Adding them to the menu increases the usefulness of the feature but is of course no substitute for being able to create our own. Yes, you are able to save patterns. Unfortunately, there is no way to create new ones or change the existing ones, which makes the save feature....puzzling. I think it saves the parameters such as octave, rate, and maybe latch state? As far as I know, the arpeggiator parameters can't be automated, which further limits its usefulness.

This video is done for use with Studio One, but I followed the first part of it and it works a treat with Sonar. All you have to do after you've set it up per his instructions is go into Sonar's Preferences and add the new MIDI device as an input, then it will be available as an input to any MIDI track. It's fun to map buttons to note 36 and 38 and use it with a drum VI.

I followed the Studio One guy's video and got it to work in about 10 minutes with Sonar. It's fun to map some buttons to notes 36, 38 and so on and then use it with a drum VI. Now I have the idea to fire this up while I'm actually playing Elder Scrolls Online, recording whatever MIDI happens while I'm in combat.

The biggest issue I've run into when trying to find a way to control audio software with a game controller is that there seem to have been multiple ways to do it with hardware that the original PC game port spec. The Sidewinder was Microsoft's own line, right? I skipped over that specific area of PC development because I preferred keyboard/mouse up until about a year ago when a friend gave me a PS4 controller with a broken trigger. I fixed the trigger with parts from Amazon and found that I really liked it, it especially helped me with Outer Wilds, which I was obsessed with playing at the time. The game port ones are the solutions that Google's AI tries to give me. Maybe because it was born after the XBox/PS3 USB type took over and doesn't remember there being any other kind. 😄 But I'm trying to use an XBox controller (and/or PlayStation controller). I think that the Fergo one you linked to is the most promising, here's a guy who got it to work with Studio One. I also found a great rant from the MIDI Manufacturers Association about the pitfalls of using the common game port to MIDI port hack (and using computers for music in general): https://web.archive.org/web/20081222191817/http://www.midi.org/about-midi/electrical.shtml "Designers of personal computers are not generally audio engineers and apparently have not heard of ground loops. In fact, given the noisy fans and screaming disk drives that go into the PC, it is a wonder they can hear at all." I'm sensing frustration there, MIDI Manufacturers Association. Sometimes when I feel frustrated I remember the serenity prayer, which helps me remember that I am powerless over other people's design decisions. 😄 I do hope that whoever wrote that has kept their musical career going into this time when reducing ambient noise is a design goal.

If you could post links to them, I'd most appreciate it. I switched to using controllers for gaming a year and change ago and at the time had the idea that it would be interesting to use one for DAW control, but never found a way to do it. I found out the hard way that Steam intercepts controller input and uses it for Windows if you leave the Steam launcher app running. It was causing trouble with non-Steam games so I turned it off. But I could move the cursor, click on stuff etc. Too clumsy and non-specific for use in a DAW, but if the controller buttons and sticks could be made to control plug-in functions like a KAOSS pad or whatever, that would most definitely pique my interest.

I am sooooo lucky. Someone near me has donated fully-functional Wacom tablets to Salvation Army twice over the last couple of years. One smaller white one and a larger dark charcoal one. Usually Wacom tablets in thrift stores are missing their stylii, but not in this case, matter of fact both of them came with extra nibs. I bought a Corel Painter Humble Bundle just because I'd gotten a Wacom tablet for $7. Later I got a larger tablet from Salvation Army (which had disconnection problems until I replaced its USB cable) and then Rebelle on deep discount.