Starship Krupa

I think the freebie from last month at PB was MSW2, Nebula, and Percolate, so if you got last month's freebie, never mind any of those three, and avoid Percolate no matter what. They are full versions. No, it looks like they reneged on Renegade. You'll probably have the most fun with Hiku, FireFly, Kinetik, Overtone, Oracle, Kara, Renegade Mini....

I have no problem with any of these statements or claims. Nowhere in the first three sentences do they actually say that they're talking about Waveform. I do think that it's presumptuous to call any DAW "the world's best," but I happen to prefer Cakewalk over all others, and it's FREE for all music creators and anyone else, so for me, the first three sentences are true, although the grammar is not quite right. I admit to a bit of puzzlement that Larry felt the need to remind us of those things on a forum devoted to Cakewalk, out of the blue, but thanks. (note: Cakewalk also supports unpopular plug-ins, like Sonic Anomaly and Dead Duck) At the moment I shall refrain from taking his suggestion that I download another doubtlessly worthy freeware DAW, but I appreciate his calling it to my attention. It's always good to have a backup recording solution. Tracktion's former insistence on "single window, track headers on the right, no mixer" used to drive me nuts whenever I'd try it, but it looks like they came to their senses.

I've been slowly acquiring SoundSpot's products over the years as they've been available as PB giveaways and $5 twofers and some are good and some were not and that somewhere along the way they at least got a good UI designer. I think that it's unfortunate that their website is so crappy, and that half of the products don't even have manuals, but look how every page of the documentation for CbB still has instructions on how to enable "offline help" 2 years after the first release of CbB, which has never had offline help. The critical eye I turn to their products is different to other companies. I think they might develop their products more toward the DJ/dance track/ DAW-as-instrument paradigm than toward the record, mix, master and print paradigm. What makes a plug-in better suited to purpose in each paradigm may be different. So when critiquing SoundSpot's product, maybe I take 30-40 years off my age perspective. ? Beware: when you're shopping in this sale, there are two pages that list their products, and the pages have different lists of products. https://www.soundspot.audio/audio-plugins-2/ Has a shorter list than: https://www.soundspot.audio/ For instance, Overtone Mastering EQ isn't listed on the first url I posted, and it's probably worth putting on your list of 5. Hiku and Nebula are unique FX that are both "Buy It Now's" for a buck. I don't think you can get what they do in that form anywhere else. FireFly is a nice versatile bus compressor, MSW2 is a spatial controller similar to Boz' Mongoose but with a more informative display and sadly, no documentation. Overtone is a stereo mastering para EQ with a big shiny GUI. Orbit is a transient shaper. If you are bored with your current mastering type EQ or transient shaper or want ones to give to someone, get them. Kickbox is a nice all-in-one for kick shaping, the compressor in it can bring some serious boom. Focus is a handy hi pass/lo pass with a graphic in the center. Do not get Percolate. It is bad. Similar to Larry, I just ticked off the ones I don't have that interest me, Kinetix, VoxBox, Kara, Glitch and Oracle. I'm sure the algo in Oracle can't touch the one in Phoenix Verb, but it has some interesting SoundSpot-ty things like LFO and compression.

An interesting exercise in key/mood is to sit on the sofa with your guitar or a small keyboard controller as you're watching TV and figure out what key the incidental music scorer is using under each scene. I binged Game of Thrones a few months ago and most of it seemed to be in Dm.

I downloaded the PDF and read it and the only reference to SONAR is in the filename and the first line. The rest of the instructions are only "how to use an iPad as a MIDI controller with Windows" with no further references to Cakewalk by BandLab or SONAR. It describes downloading and installing the necessary software, then testing it using nanoHost, then stops. Are you sure you uploaded the correct file? It seems to me like there should be another page of instructions in there for setting up rtpMIDI as a MIDI device in Cakewalk, testing it Cakewalk, something along those lines? I'm not trying to be a dick, just asking if the file might not be what you intended to upload and if it is, let you know that one person who read it finds it helpful but a little incomplete. The instructions should probably work with CbB in place of nanoHost for anyone who wants to try it, and I'm sure you wouldn't have uploaded it if you hadn't tried it, so thanks! I found a wifi keyboard app for iOS with a small server component that works a treat. "WiFi Keyboard"

By "user" I mean a party who is not a commercial entity, doesn't wish to earn money from creating Kontakt instruments/libraries. From my understanding there is Native Instruments, the company who licenses Kontakt, the tool for making these libraries for money, and licenses Kontakt Player for free. And then they and other companies use Kontakt to create libraries to license that can always be played with Kontakt and sometimes with the Player. My understanding of the licensing is that anyone who owns a license for Kontakt may create and distribute Kontakt libraries that can be played in Kontakt, but the library creator must pay Native Instruments if they wish to create and distribute libraries that are playable in Kontakt Player. Do I have this right?

Good on ya for taking the trouble to find it and put the bump on. I happen to have another nice giveaway, this one from our friend Boz Millar of Boz Digital. It was actually released a couple of days ago, it's designed to ease the psychological effects of isolation. It's a virtual companion for the studio, uses AI technology to mimic human behavior: Boz Digital Labs Studio Companion Make sure to hit the button for "Live" mode. I found out that interesting effects may be achieved by clicking on a companion icon before another has finished its output.

Nice to see @ChernobylStudios happy with Cakewalk again. Scott, I posted a comment (as Euthymia) on the video regarding bus strip width. I thought the video implied that it wasn't possible to narrow bus strips, but that's only true when you do it from the pull-down menu. It's doable if you use the right click context menu, you do know that, correct? The way you rip around in Cakewalk it should only take you half a second to narrow and widen all of your bus strips if you use shift-click to select all of them.

If you are not running 32-bit audio software, then there's no reason to install 32-bit versions of your plug-ins. Unless your version of Reason is 32-bit, in which case you would have both Reason and a reason. IMO, there are multiple reasons for not installing them. First, if you are like most and have an SSD as your system/program/plug-in drive, you may be like me and consider space on that drive to be at a premium. I am currently disabled and working at reduced capacity so was only able to afford a 240G drive for my computer. The first time I did a sweep I reclaimed about 4G, which for me, is a Cakewalk project or two's worth of SSD space. My system drive is also my only SSD, so it gets the projects, too. As you noted, this stuff builds up! Second, there's the matter of plug-in scanning and registering, which for most happens each time Cakewalk starts up. If you still wish to have a few legacy 32-bit plug-ins, you need to have Cakewalk scan your 32-bit plug-in directory. If it's full of iZotope and Native Instruments plug-ins, Cakewalk (and other DAW's that natively support 32-bit plug-ins) still scans and makes registry entries for all of them It's smart enough to hide 32-bit plug-ins that it knows you have 64-bit versions of, but that takes more time, makes for more possibility for error, etc. It's needless work for your DAW. (what you did with leaving the .dll's in there is fine in this scenario, because the devs recently made it so that Cakewalk will ignore VST2 .dll's in VST3 folders) Third, I'm a cantankerous sort of person who doesn't want companies putting software on my computer that I didn't ask for. I'm willing to jump through the hoop of installing their installation/authorization manager, I'm fine with iZotope Portal, Cakewalk Command Center, Waves Central, BandLab Assistant, Native Access, iLok et al, but what I want is 64-bit VST3's, and if they only have VST2's, then those. Period. I don't use 32-bit VST2's or VST3's, I don't use AAX's and I sure as heck don't use RTAS, thank you iZotope, A|A|S and Celemony for heaven's sake. I've gone to the trouble of learning that the VST2 spec has both a registry entry and an environment variable that installers may query to find out where the system's VST plug-ins directory is, and I have set my systems up to have that. Not many installers seem to look for it, though.

It's not really my world. my only use for sampling at this point is for phrases, but I am a consumer of sampled instruments for sure. Most of my sampled instrument money has flowed in the direction of SONIVOX so far. I am curious about that end of it from the creators' viewpoint. It seems like there are some pretty advanced products out there. I have been poking around the new free version of SampleTank 4 and am curious about it, and there is Halion, and then the MAGIX Independence mentioned earlier. Kontakt seems to have the most devoted following in these parts. To them, Kontakt seems to be the kindest, bravest, warmest, most wonderful sampler they've used in their lives. To me, I have the need for playing sampled instruments that doesn't include the need for all of the cool stuff that Kontakt can do on the sampling side. They have the freeware Player, but have library licensing locked down tighter than the iOS App Store so that user-created libraries that can be played on the freeware Player do not exist to my knowledge.

Maybe this topic ought to be made a "sticky" it comes up so often. Mostly because every so often I go poking around my system/program/plug-ins drive to see what sort of cruft program installers are leaving behind. Having noticed that plug-in manufacturers don't like to waste support money answering the eternal question "why aren't my plug-ins showing up?" when instead they could be wasting space on my SSD, I've learned about all these different types of plug-ins that I don't use that get installed anyway by certain companies' installers. Because room on my hard drive is free (to them), while support inquiries cost effort and irritation (to them). Today I learned about the "DAE" folder, because I stumbled across "C:\Program Files (x86)\Common Files\Digidesign\DAE\Plug-ins" that was harboring 20 files from iZotope, Celemony, AIR, and of course, A|A|S. Because Applied Acoustics Systems, while being my favorite supplier of soft synths, is also far and away the worst when it comes to scattering copies of their plug-ins all over the place. The other companies had, oddly, just one or two in this folder. iZotope had a couple Neutron 3 components, there was Melodyne, and although I have several AIR instruments, Vacuum Pro was the only one in this odd rabbit hole. A|A|S had everything I own from them. I had to do some Googling to find out what this folder was about and as it turns out, DAE was the location for storing the since-deprecated (7 years ago) RTAS format plug-ins. Which explains why there is no corresponding such folder below the non-(x86)Program Files folder. Not a lot of 64-bit RTAS pluggos, I guess. So how about that for "gee, thanks?" If asked, I would have told the installer "64-bit VST3's only." I don't run Pro Tools, and even if I did, it would be using AAX's and those AAX's would be 64-bit. Bad installer! If you want to be nervous nellies about it, just put in a dialog after your doofus customer has clicked "Custom" saying that if they are not sure, just leave everything checked. But let the people who know what we are doing choose what we get. If you have it, and many if not most of us do, either from owning the Platinum Suite or freebie deals at Pluginboutique, search your system drive for Strum Session 2. I can think of 9 locations A|A|S puts that plug-in in different forms when I run the installer just off the top of my head and I'm sure there are a couple more. It wouldn't surprise me to find out that the installer scans every folder on your system and if it has the string "VST" in its name, they put a copy of the VST2 in it. Waves is the other company that's insane about this, but I'm too scared to delete any of their .DLL's. I used to have one of those Waves issues where whenever I'd start a DAW, Waves would ask me for its own file location over and over again and finally let me start the DAW only after the last drop of my creativity had been converted to irritation. Now I realize why the poor plug-in couldn't figure out where it belonged, its DLL's are strewn all over the disk. Whatever that bit of code in Cakewalk is that checks to see if a plug-in has already been scanned, that bit of code must get a pretty good workout. So, at this point, if you want to check your precious SSD space for plug-in clutter, assuming that you're a Cakewalk user who doesn't run another program that needs 32-bit plug-ins, here's where to look for overzealous installer clutter: Your regular 32-bit plug-in folder, wherever it is C:\Program Files (x86)\Steinberg\VSTPlugins C:\Program Files (x86)\VSTPlugins C:\Program Files (x86)\Common Files\VST3 C:\Program Files\Common Files\Avid\Audio\Plug-ins C:\Program Files\Common Files (x86)\Avid\Audio\Plug-ins If you don't keep your VST2 plug-ins in C:\Program Files\Steinberg\VSTPlugins check there for extra copies C:\Program Files\Common Files (x86)\Digidesign\DAE\Plug-ins C:\Program Files\Cakewalk\VstPlugins I've found spurious copies of plug-ins in all of those locations. With some it's no big deal, but with others, like iZotope, you can reclaim a lot of disk space. Meldaproduction installs 32-bit plug-ins whether you want them or not. Same with Native Instruments. You're getting 32-bit copies of Kontakt and Reaktor whether you want them or not.

Thanks, Freyja. I've messed about with the VSCO samples in a couple of different forms but being able to load them into a version of SampleTank that doesn't crash will really help. (BTW, Freya is the name of one of my favorite characters on one of my favorite TV shows, Norsemen)

It should show up in the Browser under Meldaproduction if you sort by manufacturer. Did you use the Meldaproduction installer from their website? I've been using their stuff for years, am a big fan of Vojtech's work, so I'm sure we can get this sorted. He actually makes an effort to use the "category" string, so it may be tucked away in a category you are not expecting. On my system too many Meldaproduction plug-ins appear, if you get my drift.? 37 plug-ins in the Free Bundle and all you want is MAutoPitch? MEqualizer, MCompressor and MTuner are some of the best plug-ins of their type. Embrace the Melda!

BTW, I think this thread may help answer the perennial question "why hasn't BandLab released the other Cakewalk software that came with SONAR."

Way to go, seriously. Running a DAW on a system like this puts the "stud" in "studio" as far as I'm concerned. Both of the systems I use to run Cakewalk were hand-me-down castoffs I got for free because someone at some big company or other considered them obsolete. My laptop is an i5 that ran just fine with 4G of RAM before I maxed it out to 8G. Honestly, I saw little difference in performance after the upgrade, but hey. It's still running off its 7200RPM drive. I imagine it will seem like a rocket sled once I put an SSD in it. My desktop is more in line with what someone would expect in a hobbyist DAW, but not exactly a powerhouse, you can see in my sig. As you can also see in my sig, I'm a Firewire jockey. I started with a PreSonus Firebox and the thing worked so well on low end hardware compared to the USB interfaces of the day that I've stuck with it as long as I can. Even when USB 2.0 has more raw speed, Firewire has inherent advantages that translate well to use with audio. For instance, Firewire is full-duplex, so information can go in both directions at once. That is a huge advantage when you're doing A/V work. USB below 3.0 doesn't do that. A USB 2.X interface has to time slice in order to do things like real time monitoring. Firewire also offloads a lot of the processing so that the main CPU and bus don't have to work as hard. Anyway, back to your issue. Given that your Firewire controller is onboard, I'm less inclined to go with it as a source of IRQ conflicts. Windows 10 is good at managing that sort of thing. You might take a look at your video card driver, also make sure that if it has an HDMI sound device that it is disabled. Something to look for is whether you have shut down all other programs that might be trying to use that sound device. I'm sure that with a lower-end system like yours you practice good hygiene as far as making sure Cakewalk is the only thing running, but make sure. There's a program I use called Process Lasso that's good for finding and terminating unnecessary processes. Just in general, with an older system, we have to be more careful about giving it too much to juggle. Also make sure that system sounds are turned off, etc. If another program is trying to grab your sound device, you are more likely to see errors like these. A good thing to do is journey into the past and run Control Panel (yes, it still exists in Windows 10) and run the Sound app and check the settings there. Windows shouldn't be trying to use your sound device when Cakewalk is. As scook said, Windows doesn't know about ASIO. It can jump in and try to use a sound device while it's in ASIO mode. Most ASIO drivers, in my experience, will tolerate this, but some will not. Best of luck, I suspect you can sort this out without resorting to dumping your interface.

I've been having outlandish amounts of fun playing around with The Free Orchestra by Project Sam, which is a Kontakt instrument that is compatible with Kontakt Player, the free version of Kontakt that has been mentioned in this thread and that everyone should get because it comes with a load of great freeware sampled instruments all by itself. The Free Orchestra is a set of instruments specifically oriented toward cinema scoring. It has a bunch of those workhorse cues and hits that signify "this is scary, heroic, funny, tense, or whatever," plus gloomy drones, evocative strings, I've been exploring it for literally hours now. I dare you not to hit the "Octaver" button and work out the first 9 notes of "Dragnet" after you load up "Pandora Bursts." Also, if anyone were not aware, IK Multimedia SampleTank 4 CS has finally shipped, and I am pleased to report that unlike its predecessor the VST3 works without crashing its host. I know this has been announced in this forum more than once, but since the intent of this thread is to be a "virtual sticky" compendium and resource, I wanted to mention it here. The free version comes with a ton of content, it looks like they're taking on Native Instruments in that regard. It's nice to see that IK have sorted that nasty crash issue. It's now my go-to acoustic piano.

There are several freeware ones listed in The Freeware Instruments Thread, which is overdue for a good bump anyway. Big news being Sampletank 4 CS. Like Sampletank 3 CS, but doesn't crash its hosts.

Let's break this down more step by step. We need more information. Are you looking for it in the Browser at the right side of the Track View? Or are you trying to insert it from the FX bin on a Console strip or Track header? If you're trying to insert it from an FX bin, is your list of effects sorted by Category or Manufacturer or Type? If it's Category, new effects often appear in Uncategorized. Plug-in manufacturers don't add that string to their code I guess. There are multiple ways to add an effect. If you find it in the Browser, you may drag and drop it onto the track header.

As someone who doesn't own Kontakt, who runs his home studio hobby on a shoestring budget, the big difference is that libraries created with/for TX16Wx aren't proprietary. Just something to consider: proprietary format vs. open. It limits the audience, or user base or whatever of people who can enjoy your libraries.

@msmcleod has a nice set of definitions for using the nanoKONTROL II in Cakewalk.

Dude, I was at that show. You were so wasted you got the name of the venue mixed up with the name of the band. When Stacia offers you a strawberry soaked in "wine," hang on.

Hey, calm down. We're trying to help here. As I said, you had it coming with calling your issue "Blue Sticky Finger Bar." I did the best I could with the information you posted, really I did, including looking closely at your screen grab, which appeared to me to show the Inspector with a white box around it. Your Inspector just so happened to be inspecting a track that you had colored blue. I have helped people with simpler questions. Pretend for a moment that I can't read your mind and that terms like "blue highlight" or "blue highlight box when dragging window" or something mundane like that might help me understand what you're talking about and that I might not think of it in terms of "finger" "sticky" or even "bar" no matter what you personally call it. ? Now I understand what you mean, you're talking about how when you move an undocked window back over the main Skylight, there's a blue highlight that appears showing you the place your undocked window will dock into if you let go of it. Right? To my knowledge, there is no way to switch it off, the only workaround is to hold the Ctrl key when dragging those windows. Please give it a shot in the Feedback Forum. I, too would like to be able to turn this off, as I, too, like to work with floating windows.

Do you have any other VST hosts to try them in? That may help narrow down the issue to "working on your system" vs. "working with Cakewalk on your system."

i-yi-yi, I thought that was the case, then I opened the Views menu and there was no "i" shown as the shortcut. Thanks for setting me straight!

BTW, Percolate, I'm sorry to say, is not even worthy of unZIPping. Absolute poo. I don't think they even list it on their website any more. It's the kind of plug-in that probably gave SoundSpot a poor reputation early in their history. Ho-hum processing in a needlessly obscure UI. SoundSpot seem to be focusing more on the "hot producer" EDM market, which I think is a good idea for them. They have cool-looking UI's that inspire messing about, but when it comes to more straightforward "I need a warm-sounding compressor for this acoustic drum bus," or "let's put some EQ on the master bus," I haven't found as much use for their offerings. And....ho-lee virtual space, does Phoenix sound amazing! I did a simple, quick A-B putting it into my reverb send bus with Oril River on a drum mix and the difference was spectacular. I just left Phoenix on its default preset, with similar levels and whatnot on Oril River. With Phoenix, my mix' image extended beyond the monitors both left and right and up and down and front and back. It was stunning, and at first of course I didn't trust myself, so I switched back and forth, checked the settings on Oril River....nope, pretty similar. Up to this point, I've loved Oril River. It just slaughtered every reverb I've ever auditioned, instantly and decisively. Never heard anything like it. Of course, I am wary of FX that instantly make a mix sound like a million bucks, so I will revisit this phenomenon and see how it holds up, but for now it's the best $9 I've spent on a plug-in in quite some time. Also, the first reverb I've liked enough more than TrueVerb or OrilRiver to even pay for, and the descriptiveness and abundance of presets will help a great deal in guiding me to select the right one for the sonic space I'm trying to create.