Starship Krupa

@Craig Anderton wrote up the procedure for enabling them in the April Sound On Sound magazine, singing the praises of VX-64 and PX-64. I believe that it was @scook who said that some of the Style Dials depended on VX-64, PX-64, and TL-64. This makes sense because there is a transient shaper Style Dial, a de-esser, gate, saturator, and those processors are all to be found in the "-64" modules we're talking about. Nothing else native to CbB has a transient shaper besides PX-64, and while you could roll up a de-esser using the sonitus fx, it would be easier to use the one in VX-64.

How can I Unsubscribe from Subscription offers? ? To the extent that the subscription model makes sense for anything to me, it's particularly silly for me to subscribe to a plug-in bundle. I'm a big ho-bag for plug-in deals in the first place so I have to watch it to make sure that my drive doesn't fill up with a bunch of great stuff that I wind up never using on projects. I need to be careful to only even download and keep things that I know I will make use of. The idea of paying monthly for a collection of plug-ins I might use 5% of is insanity. First, I'm not so into bundles. It would be like going to a woodworking store that carries Porter-Cable and telling them to give me one each of everything P-C makes whether I actually need a router, circular saw, jointer, planer, drill, etc. I may already have a Hitachi drill that works great, I might never use a jointer. I may not even like P-C's model of sabre saw. I might make an exception for Meldaproduction. ? Next is the subscription model itself. I think it works in situations where the software is used in a commercial environment where it's used to generate income. A graphic design house can just pay Adobe every month for their software and be done with it. It's another invoice. Where someone's a broke bedroom musician who saves up to buy one $25 Waves plug-in at a time every 2 months, and it's regularly going to be down to buying groceries or making rent vs. paying their $12.95 plug-in subscription, no way, not now, not ever dream on.

There is no reason to get rid of the Theme Editor, because its only function is to allow the user to make changes to the program's appearance. No user is forced to use Theme Editor. Most Cakewalk users don't, most users only ever use the Mercury and Tungsten themes. Theme Editor is not even part of the default installation. If a user wants to make changes to the default colors, there is a more direct way to do that in Preferences. It was originally only intended for use by in-house developers, then polished up and released for end users to use if they chose. I think the ability to create and alter themes/skins is wonderful and I am involved in it in a small way, doing my own alterations and participating in discussions when I can contribute. Theme Editor has nothing to do with interface scalability, that is a completely separate issue. Yes, I agree that right-click context menus are a very good way to access operations. That was the original intention of the right mouse button in the Windows 95 UI. I was working at Macromedia when Microsoft introduced Windows 95 and was trying to get companies used to the idea of how to use a right mouse button. If your program has any kind of object, a block of text, a picture, an equation, a sound file, whatever, to make changes to it you place your cursor on the object and click the right mouse button. I got it right away and became the world's fastest right-clicker. I was in QA and if they gave me a program to try out and it didn't have right-click context menu functionality I would march into the project manager's cube with eyes rolled and tell them that their stupid Macintosh Cmd-click stuff was history, that in a couple of years people would be hooking multiple button mice up to their Macs, etc. IMO, every operation pertinent to that area of the screen should be available on the context menu. Especially processing. Select a region, right click, boom. This has been discussed, and @Craig Anderton has said that one of the original functions of Lenses was to "hide" or "reveal" features for proposed different versions of Cakewalk. Logic has Basic and Advanced views and defaults to the Basic view on first run. The Start Screen would be a good place to choose a Basic or Advanced view. It just needs to be "sold" to TPTB and then someone needs to design the Lenses. I think Basic/Advanced views is a great idea and would love to see it implemented. This is one we can say is "easy to do," because it's just a couple of lenses. But then the question needs to be answered: what does the Basic view of Cakewalk look like?

I can only find Session Drums, which I found to be inferior. Session Drums has a bunch of electronic and highly processed sounds, which are useful, but I can do better with myriad drum machine plug-ins. Blue Jay instead has a lot of different acoustic kits, which is what I want from a sampled drum VSTi. I actually only wind up using a couple of them, but when the instrument has many to choose from, there's a greater chance that they'll suit my purpose.

The caravan to Aruba is not the road you'd choose.

It could be useful in a smaller project that you wish to keep more compact, but certainly I can see where that could get very confusing in a large project with many takes. My brain can only keep track of so many before I have to start thinking in terms of "the one at the top is the most recent, and probably the keeper." +1 for giving the user the ability to switch this behavior back to the way it used to work. I haven't encountered it yet, but if I did and didn't know it worked that way, I would find it confusing.

Thanks for the detailed information. That's a good attitude to go with: building a DAW is something of a project, so it may take a bit of fiddling and you may need to learn a thing or two about subjects you don't really care about. ? The behavior you are witnessing is not normal. You have downloaded the driver package for your Focusrite interface, and by running it, you install the driver. At that point, your system, including Cakewalk, should happily recognise that you have a Focusrite audio interface installed. This works just fine, but then you restart the computer, and the computer behaves as if the driver had never been installed. That's what the trouble is, and what we need to solve. I can only take educated guesses as to why this happens. My first two: your system may have anti-malware software that detects installation of drivers and removes them at next system restart, or your Windows user account may not have sufficient privileges when running the installer. These are the most common causes I've seen for this problem. To check for the first, you can look in the system tray in the lower right corner where your clock and sound icon and all that other stuff is. There might be a "^" icon as well that you can click on to see more system tray programs. One of the icons down there may be for an anti-malware program that you can temporarily disable while you install the driver. As for the second, you can try running the installer with elevated Administrator privileges. To do this, right click on the .EXE file in your download folder and select Properties. In the resulting page, you may see a notice down at the bottom that says "Security: This file came from another computer...." etc. with a checkbox marked Unblock. If so, check that box to unblock it and then click OK. Then right-click on the .EXE again and select Run as Administrator. Try these and see if they help. You don't have to try them in the order I suggest. If you don't find an anti-malware program, go ahead and try the elevated privilege thing anyway.

Ohhhh. Maybe I got that wrong. Well, maybe not. I did get into trouble a few times with having more than one project open and "mixing" the wrong one! I tried to figure out how Efrem might have possibly been seeing "multiple mixers" and that was all I could think of. I also agree that at first having those duplicate channel strips off to the left of the Track View was confusing, and it made things seem cluttered. All I really use it for now is advanced MIDI stuff like the arpeggiator. The rest of the time it stays collapsed. That is an unfortunate issue with the default layout of Cakewalk: when I first opened it, it looked "busy" and cluttered. Then I figured out what I could leave collapsed most of the time and I run with a much cleaner view now. But if you give new users a "clean" layout they will not know that all these features exist. The Inspector isn't a bad thing, as long as you know that you can keep it closed most of the time. It's handy when you have a 15" screen laptop and you want to use ProChannel.

I try to be sympathetic, and I am far, far from a "pro" user. I only started using Cakewalk by BandLab in April 2018. One scenario I dislike myself and try to avoid is being a Feature Request Apologist, where someone makes a good feature request and I respond with some convoluted workaround. I at least try to acknowledge that it's a reasonable feature request and that what I'm suggesting is a way to soldier through for now, not a way of saying that their request is unnecessary. ? It's often hard not to do that with Cakewalk because it's such a deep program and there are many ways to do things. I this case, however, I lost my cool, because the gentleman in question seemed to go out of his way to self-sabotage by trying to "fix" things, copying what he thought were installation files from various locations on one computer to other places and running them. Then when this resulted in a damaged installation, he responded to it with multiple suggestions that the current licensing and authentication model be "substituted" with pop-up ads at start time as some kind of trade-off. I ignored the first couple but he kept at it. Is the idea that we're somehow paying for the program in Annoyance, and rather than paying in one lump sum, it would be better to pay it off in small amounts over a long period of time? I don't know. I'm unclear on the concept. Unfortunately, BandLab support, which is where the issue should end, has been unable to undo this specific user's mess, but in the meantime, I maintain that the answer to the occasional authorization failure is not to "replace" authorization with pop-up notifications at start time. They do not serve the same or even a similar purpose. If users who experience authorization failures contact support, best case scenario is that the mechanism can be made more robust if it needs to be. If support knows there are issues and what they are, development will be informed. I'm one of the lucky vast majority who's never had a problem, but I can see where it would be really bad news if it happened at the wrong time. I have noticed from watching the forum that it seems to only happen at install time, not for Cakewalk installations that have already successfully authenticated, so there doesn't appear to be much danger of demo mode happening during a critical session.

Um, no, there are no new users to Sonar, and certainly none are hoped for. The product is dead and gone. Just because some users decide to do the computer equivalent of tying their shoelaces together and going out running instead of just following instructions and letting the installer program do its job doesn't mean that the free subscription licensing model is a bad idea. It just means that there's no such thing as "idiot-proof." Also, the fact that someone else decided that he needed to outsmart the installation program and hunt down setup files on one of his computers and copy them around to his different systems and then run them and thereby hosed everything up instead of simply getting in touch with support when he had an issue doesn't divert me from making music at all. If they wanted to, they could have popups on startup now. There is no "trade" in removing registration and activation because for more than 99 users in 100, the current way of handling it works smoothly. Infrequently, as with all computer programs, there is a glitch, and as long as the user doesn't make things worse, BandLab's support staff is able to straighten it out. BandLab doesn't make direct money from registration now, all it lets them do is track how many copies are installed and in use. People that moan about demo mode?? Really? You had to contact support to get your freeware DAW out of "demo mode," and because of that, you want the company who issues it to change the way they do their licensing activation so that you nor anyone else need ever, ever have to re-live the horror of that experience. My gawd, the inconvenience of it all!

When you attempt to run Cakewalk you get that red popup? If you have installed the latest version of BandLab Assistant and still have the same issue, and you have searched this site for "demo mode" and found no solutions, the only thing left to do is contact BandLab Support.

That one was fab! What was the company who did it? Also the MAGIX Humble Bundle that upgraded me to Vegas Pro Edit 15 with Sound Forge Audio Studio and DVD Architect and a couple of other titles tossed in all for $25 was pretty insane. The Pluginboutique free-with-any-purchase deals are usually stellar, usually an iZotope Elements suite or other top-notch plug-in or instrument. proximity eq+ was killer, and the current mix auditing program at least looks interesting. But the best bang-for-the-buck in recent weeks was, of all things, I happened to be in the market for a good sampled drum VSTi and found out that Reverb.com had Sonivox' Blue Sky Drums on sale for $1. This turned out to be an excellent drum VSTi, and I don't mean "for the price." It's better than the same company's Session Drums, so if you've tried only that don't think they sound similar or have similar scope. Blue Jay has more kits available, and to my tastes, they sound better.

When you are running BandLab Assistant, click on the "gear" icon in the upper left of the interface to access Settings and make sure you are signed in. I know I said to follow the prompts. Sorry for misleading you.

Going forward, please be more specific about certain things. You rebooted and "up comes a message." Is from Windows, Cakewalk, or what? You didn't mention starting Cakewalk. Previous to this, you said you had everything working, which was great, but at that point you did't tell us what you had selected in Cakewalk's Preferences or Windows Settings or any of that, so I have no way of knowing what configuration worked for you. All I know is what I suggested, but I think you went with something more like @John suggested, which is fine. After you've nailed a problem it's a good idea to post in the forum thread what your solution was. This has two purposes. First, some other poor sod who has the problem in the future can read it and do what you did and make it work. Second, the poor sod may be you!? So, first item of business, can you remember how you had it set up when it was working? Next, tell us how your audio system is configured now. Start with where everything is plugged in. What kind of speakers do you have and where are they plugged in? Where are your cans plugged in? When you go into Windows Settings/System/Sound/Output, what devices are listed in the pulldown? When you go into Cakewalk Preferences Playback and Recording/Driver Mode, what is that set to? What about Devices? Back in Windows, Hit Win-R then type Control Panel into the box and hit Enter. From Control Panel, select Sound. What do you see listed in the Playback tab? The forum will help you get this to work, mate. It's not a tall order.

Since @David Baay explained it to me, I understand it. I think I'll submit a documentation feature request to mention this in the description of Entire Mix. The Reference Guide is great and getting better. At 1700+ pages, no reason not to spell it out, right?

Sigh. I know, me too. But there's always at least one track that winds up by itself: bass guitar. I can group vocals, keys, guitars, drums, just about anything else, but that darn bass....

The thing is I had multiple hardware outputs active at the time I was experimenting with "Entire Mix," and didn't know that it was coming off of the hardware outputs. I do a separate cue mix for headphone monitoring while tracking. I also use the hardware output faders to control my monitor levels, so making a dedicated bus will work better as I won't have to be concerned with those faders affecting the level of my final bounce. Entire Mix is not the best choice for me, which is good to know and why I asked. It's all good, I now have a solution that will fit with my workflow and configuration.

It can, but when Cakewalk loads the ASIO driver, it should take over and load whatever settings you specify. Also, if you go into Windows' sound settings via Control Panel you can set sample rate and bit depth to match what you are using in Cakewalk so that the interface doesn't have to switch. I like using my Firepod/FP-10 for general Windows playback because it just sounds so good. Also, I don't use "computer speakers," I use one of my pairs of studio monitors. But whatever works best, and there are many ways to a successful solution.

I had similar issues with the very first releases of CbB, but they went away around the second round of bug fixes. If I moved the main window, the transport indicator (now time) would sometimes get disconnected on go floating off in space on the Windows desktop. But I thought those issues had been corrected. Maybe not for all systems, so I'd suggest that for anyone reporting the issue, please include what kind of graphics chip/card your system has. That will help the developers and QA staff reproduce the issue and correct it.

What kind of graphics card do you have? How many display monitors? I've found that Cakewalk is happiest with more graphics memory. It doesn't seem to care much about having a fancy GPU, but when I'm running on two monitors, it likes more graphics RAM.

ReWire. Also: https://www.cakewalk.com/Documentation?product=Cakewalk&language=3&help=SoftSynths.20.html

Can you clarify? You may certainly install them on your system and then import the resulting MIDI files into Cakewalk. As far as integrating them into Cakewalk itself, there may be ways to do it with ReWire or with a VST that allows MIDI editing that I'm not aware of.

Thanks. This is what I have been doing up until now, with my issues being the final level of the exported audio, and my not knowing precisely how it worked. I don't like having blind spots on something this critical. Getting input from other users on how you all do it is great. As usual in the Cakeiverse, barely any two are alike. Everything has always been routed to the Master bus, either directly or via sub mixes. That's one of the first places I look when things don't sound right. My initial problem with it sounding "off" was with the Entire Mix option, which I abandoned in favor of the same approach that BRainbow takes. I just tried one using the above method that I came up with after reading @David Baay's explanation, and it seems to work great. I opened the resulting bounce in Sound Forge and normalized it and it barely did anything, so I think I'm on the right track (so to speak). ? I don't want to come directly off the Master bus anymore because I want to set up my metering on a separate bus. I don't want to come off a Hardware out, because that's affected by where I have the hardware volume set, and I only want to adjust that to affect my monitoring level.

You should plug your speakers into the new interface as well. You have a great-sounding audio interface and no need to use that onboard chip. In Cakewalk's Preferences, switch your driver to use the Focusrite ASIO driver. In Windows settings, select the Focusrite as your audio output. At this point everything will be output to the Focusrite, you'll get better playback sound all around, and you'll be able to listen through headphones and/or speakers on the Focusrite. The sonic improvement through the speakers might impress you.

Which makes me wonder if it can be addressed in Preferences/Colors or the Theme Editor?