Starship Krupa

Aaaaargh! This is one of my personal peeves, if it is the case with Melodyne. When I am running an analysis program, and I kind of know where the data are going to fall, how about the program lets me do some of the heavy lifting before we start and I can tell it that for instance the song is definitely not going to wander beyond 150-160BPM? So then it can filter out glitch results like 78BPM. So that it can focus its powerful detection algorithm in that range rather than figuring out everything from 1BPM to 250BPM.

+1 on posting examples of the recorded files. It would be good to have examples of both acceptable and unacceptable recordings. If you use your BandLab profile to host the audio you can link to the files using a button right here in the message editor. Makes it simple. I endorse upgrading your system from Windows 7 to Windows 10. More and more software and hardware companies are abandoning development for Windows 7 and compatibility issues will only get worse the longer you wait. While Cakewalk will install and run in Windows 7, it is specifically optimized to take advantage of features in Windows 10, and is extensively tested in Windows 10.

One caution: when doing this, I consider it best practice to go easy on the FX I'm using. Just whatever I or the talent need to hear to get a good performance. Or if I have a rockabilly singer and they need to hear the slapback so they can do the "hug-a-mug-a-huh" thing in the right rhythm or whatever. If you find that there is a noticeable delay in monitoring, it could be caused by a plug-in. iZotope products are well-known for this. They sound amazing when I use them on mixdown, but I can't use them while I'm tracking because they cause so much latency. The thing to do in that case is only use the FX that you need for the vocal tracking session and disable the rest. Then flip the others back on at mixing time.

Good idea, unless the OP really just wants to skip that part and go straight to "acquiring effects."

Oh, the hopes I had for that part of the spec. Unlike the rest of it, which is redundant rubbish, this is something that I could get behind. That's really using your heads, thinks I. Instead of sitting there churning away, all these programs-within-a-program can intelligently go into a sleep state so that the processor-intensive cabinet simulation convolver you're using on nothing but the 4-bar guitar solo can just pop in and do its thing and then politely release its resources. Ah, but a couple of things about this spec that even I, as a cynical, informed veteran of the consumer software industry, didn't pick up on immediately. First, I'm going to hazard a guess that there's some kind of signaling protocol that comes from the host that tells compliant VST3's that they are allowed to go sleepy. Only if this=TRUE may VST3 go sleepy. Otherwise we play it safe and stay "on." This would be for processing FX that have long "tails" and perhaps for troubleshooting and such. So right off the bat the host has to be able to give it the okay to sleep. Maybe some hosts will decide that it's not worth the effort and just leave the condition=FALSE so that VST3's never go offline. Second, and this is most important, notice how the pitch says "can" rather than "will" or "must." That means that it's only a feature that the plug-in may implement or not at the choices of the developer. For now, most developers are still coding their VST plug-ins in both VST2 and VST3 formats. With the exception of Waves, have any of them touted any features that are exclusive the VST3 version of their product that are or were not available in the VST2 version? That would be a good way to find out. I am pretty sure that as much as possible they are keeping a common codebase for both the VST2 and VST3 versions, and/or in some cases, using their own portable VST2-to-VST3 wrappers. All of which seems to preclude using the "processing economy" feature. If I am remembering correctly, someone asked Vojtech on the Meldaproduction forum if he were using the feature or had any plans to in the immediate future and he replied that he had experimented with it and decided not to for whatever reason. He seemed a little dismissive, but dismissiveness toward other people's technology is kind of his default mode. From what I've seen on DAW forums in general, I've yet to find anyome who noticed a difference in resource usage doing side=by-side tests of the same plug in VST2 and VST3 versions. Still. I use VST3's wherever possible, because that's the way the industry is headed and if there are problems, I want the people I get my pluggies and hosts from to know about them.

I, too, found new possibilities with the option of turning the text box off and on. I thought I would want it either on or off, but as it turns out, I leave it off when I'm zoomed out, then switch it back on when I'm zoomed in for surgical work. Now I use it as the handy tool I think it's always been for most people. The Aim Assist line has been intermittently sticking and disappearing on my system as well. This is not due to the Alt-X feature, as it predates it. I haven't reported it due to not being able to reproduce the conditions that make it happen.

That's a pretty strong statement! Given that you are bringing this up in the "Themes" subforum, is this a matter of colors and text colors and button styles for you? If so, this is the right place to look, and I'll ask: if it's a matter of theming, then there may be an existing user-created one that might be less....um, repulsive, and if you give us better clues about what's so barf-o-bits we might be able to point you in the right direction. If it's not so much a matter of colors and such, then that's more fundamental than "theming," and voicing your dissatisfaction in the "feedback" forum would be better.

@msmcleod, who participated in this thread earlier, is a member of the development team, so it's on the radar.

@Dennis G Pelton, welcome to Cakewalk and welcome to the thread. As mentioned, orchestral sounds are the most difficult, but there are some recent posts in this thread about them. B3's are another toughie. The thread's supposed to be about free instruments, but the following are inexpensive enough to almost count. ? At Pluginboutique, you can currently pick up SONIVOX' Film Score Companion Suite for $29. It includes their Strings, Woodwinds, and Brass instruments, as well as a sampled piano and orchestral percussion. I've spent $10-$15 each on licenses for the Strings, Woodwinds, and Brass as individual instruments and consider it money well spent. As for the B3, they also have AIR's DB-33 for $15. It's one of the best B3 and Leslie emulations I've found. (and if you buy something from PB right now, you get licenses for 2 of their sound banks and the player to use them-a nice add on)

As I understand it through reading various fora and my experience with plug-ins, the VST3 spec added a few features that were already being implemented by many, if not most, plug-in manufacturers within the VST 2.4 spec. These were most notably sidechaining and UI scaling. Sidechaining is not inherently "difficult" with VST2.4 or DX plug-ins. The ones that implement it have a button or checkbox in the UI to turn it on, and the hosts interface with it in their own ways, just as with VST3. Similarly, there were/are plenty of VST2 plug-ins that implemented UI scaling before VST3 was published. All VST3 does is define how everyone should implement it if they choose to do so. Another thing to be aware of: as with most industry specs, just because sidechaining and UI scaling are defined in the VST3 spec, plug-in manufacturers are not obligated to do it. Nor are hosts. AFAIK, there is no organization that enforces compliance with the specification. Anyone can publish a plug-in and say "it's a VST3." In my experience, the only advantage that the VST3 spec brought was defining the install location as C:\Program Files\Common Files\VST3\ One big disadvantage is that as @marled mentioned, preset handling changed somehow. It used to be that when I installed a VST2, it could install presets to the host natively, but that seems to have been abandoned with VST3 in favor of each plug-in having its own poorly-implemented preset manager. Both plug-in and DAW manufacturers seem to be having a rocky time making the transition from VST2 to VST3. I've had several instances of crashy/buggy plug-in syndrome in different DAW's where the cure was to switch to the VST2 version. Cakewalk itself has had past issues with state-saving (now happily fixed) due to certain plug-in manufacturers being sloppy with their VST3 implementation. Unfortunately as scook says, Steinberg has deprecated the VST2 spec in favor of the VST3 spec, so going forward, we'll have the format that doesn't yet seem to work as well. I don't see any hosts except for maybe Cubase and Nuendo dropping VST2 support. It'll be a drag for Cubase users because they'll be stuck with libraries of legacy VST2's that they can't use. My current policy is to install the VST3 version if the plug-in has it, switch to the VST2 if it crashes my host(s).

To answer Music Radar's question: while it looks as if it should be of reasonable interest to people who compose and perform EDM, I do not think that this 1 euro soft synth will change the VST plug-in market forever.

Hello and welcome to Cakewalk and the Cakewalk forum. There is a variety of effects (FX for short) included with CbB, some of them quite good, some of them excellent. My guess is that you are new to the world of DAW's so I will suggest that as you start out, figure out how to use what's already there in Cakewalk. As I say, they sound good, but another benefit is that if you ask for advice on this forum, it will be easier for anyone on here to give you advice if you are using tools we all have access to. There are two EQ's supplied. One, the Sonitus Equalizer, may be added via the track or bus FX rack. The other is the Quadcurve EQ, which may be added via the ProChannel. Both are versatile parametric EQ's. There are three reverbs that come with Cakewalk. BREVERB (algorithmic reverb) may be added via FX rack or ProChannel, REMatrix Solo (convolution reverb) may be added via ProChannel, and Space (may be added as a ProChannel Style Dial). Space is the simplest, a one-knob "clockwise is more" reverb. Cakewalk comes with most of the tools one needs to mix a song (some might say all). Having said that, I augment it with a variety of plug-in FX, both free and commercial, which make it easier for me to get the sound I like. I'm putting links down below to sources for plug-ins to augment the ones that come with CbB. Here are relevant documentation pages regarding how to add effects to your projects' tracks: Included plug-ins Adding effects to a track ProChannel (humorous content ahead) Later, as you grow bored with recording and mixing music, you can start "acquiring" effects, a pastime which once you start engaging in it can help ensure that you never need play or record another note, just spend all your DAW time hunting down freebies and deals and auditioning plug-ins trying to find the "best" emulation of a hardware compressor you've never used in real life. Here is how you can get started (even for free): Favorite freeware FX thread Favorite freeware instruments thread Deals

Oh, that's cool, with its own fader? You can probably throw FX on there as well. That's nice, that Pro Tools is introducing a feature at 2020 Winter NAMM that Mixcraft introduced at 2016 Winter NAMM. It used to be that other DAW's imitated PT, but when was the last time that PT came out with a new feature that users of other DAW's coveted? I ask because I don't know, it's not a rhetorical question. I know they were busy for a couple of years implementing "not locking up at random and critical moments," which CbB also successfully did, but I'm not sure if they were strictly copying them or if it came out of user requests.

The Tungsten theme does have flatter buttons, and some of the many user-created themes also have flat buttons, but yes, the size of the various elements must be the same as the default theme. No resizing allowed. Resizable (vector) UI is a long-requested feature, so know the developers of Cakewalk know that many users would like it to be as you suggest. In the meantime, please avail yourself of the user-created themes. I usually run a user-created theme (slightly modified by me). I agree that Mercury, which is the current default theme, is starting to look a little dated. Tungsten is better. Given that the Theme Editor exists, I would like to see a more modern default look for Cakewalk, but such decisions are not mine to make.

I think it's cute when Pro Tools gets a feature that Cubase and Cakewalk and Digital Performer and Logic users have all been taking for granted for half a dozen years and their marketing department goes nuts and their smug users get further confirmation that PT is the greatest. I didn't watch the video, but I'm guessing that PT folders work the same way as Cakewalk folders? You can group tracks and mute, solo, arm? Collapse the folder to save real estate? The last one I saw that cracked me up was Clip Gain Automation. Pro Tools apparently only got the ability to automate gain within a clip in the previous revision and that was a HUGE DEAL. OMG THA CLIP GAINZ AUDDOMASHIONNZ BUY YOUR UPDATEZ NOWZERZ!! Even freaking little old Mixcraft has had all of those things for years. I would love for Cakewalk to handle folders the way that program does.

Confirmed, on my system, it's not a matter of monitor 1 or monitor 2. Behavior is that pinned plug-in UI's get covered up by any Cakewalk child window. In other words, they stay open, but will only stay visible on top of the Track View. If I float the Console, Piano Roll, Browser, Inspector, Synth Rack, Help, etc. and give them focus, they cover up plug-in UI's. That happens whether I have the Track View or child windows on monitor 1 or 2. I had a similar confusion to @Rod L. Short had because I usually have the Console max'd on monitor 2 during mixing and mastering. I thought my pinned plug-ins were closing. Now I know that they were buried. Thank you Rod for bringing this up. IMO they should stay on top when the Console View and Piano Roll have focus. Not sure about the other windows, but I don't undock the Browser, Synth Rack, etc. often enough for it to be an issue anyway.

Hey, a favorite freeware compressor of mine has gained some new features and is now Audio Damage Rough Rider 3. Try it on a drum bus you'd like to fatten up. Ohhhh yeah.

Good heavens, @User 905133, thank you so much for trying all these permutations and documenting them so well! It's going to take me some time to digest it, but rest assured that your work here is going to be very valuable. I'm acquainted with the people in the cadre that rhymes with "tater beam" and will alert them to this thread. From my standpoint, as to the way it "should" work, I think that first, whatever Cakewalk window the user has open, be it Track View, Console, Piano Roll, or whatever, minimized, maximized, docked, floating, on a single monitor or multiple monitors, if they have plug-in UI's open and pinned they should never wind up behind a Cakewalk window. Next, pinned plug-ins should stay open until the user closes them.

Funny thing is, at one point I had it working like that too, which is what I was used to before CbB. When I invoke something I like it to hang around until I explicitly banish it. Then at some point I started playing with the settings and switched video cards and the program went though half a dozen updates and things went sideways and I've never quite taken the time to figure out why it doesn't quite behave the way I want any more. I also want to be able to set things so that when I Replace Synth, the UI automatically opens, but that is a matter for a Feedback thread....

Charlie Daniels Band. Used to like him better when he wanted the world to "leave this long-haired country boy alone." Less a fan of his later work. (CBD is cannabidiol, an ingredient in a recreational substance that the leader of the CDB claimed to ingest in the morning)

Hit that "FX" button up at the top in the Control Bar and see if the problem goes away. If it does, you set up one or more of your FX in a weird way. Go through them and figure out what you did. Sounds like an interesting, possibly useful effect. Make note of it for possible future use. ?

No, it is past time to look for closed ear headphones. ? In the spirit of good humor, it does puzzle me when people say on forums that they are trying to salvage already-recorded tracks and then get suggestions that they use a different mic, or put a mic on the kick drum, or have the vocalist use a stand instead of hand-holding the mic....and this is when the OP has not self-identified as Time Lord nor are they in possession of any time travel device or method. I see that it's also past the time when processing suggestions would be useful for the OP, but I love the challenge of salvaging tracks. Maybe some future reader (see what I did there) can benefit. I might throw a dynamic EQ or gate at this one. First take a parametric like the Quadcurve or my favorite, MEqualizer. Dial in one of the bands to boost about 10dB. Then sweep the frequency across until the sound of the metronome click is at its most obnoxious and you've found the frequency you need to cut. You can start with trying to just cut it with the para and see if it sounds too intrusive. To get fancier, set up a dynamic eq to slap the frequency down a bit when it comes up. Another cool trick is to use something like Boz' Gatey-Watey to gate out only the frequencies you want to gate out. What, buy a $20 plug just for this? Nope, turns out that the Sonitus fx gate has this feature built right in, once you figure out what freq you want to nuke, just move the sliders, tell it how much, and set the detector. The thing is, usually while I'm playing, my guitar sound is covering up the click anyway (or it should be, ha).

It just means that the user 1. has Recycle Plug-In Windows set in Preferences and 2. clicks on the icon in the upper right corner of the plug-in UI that looks like a push-pin. If you have Recycle Plug-In Windows turned off by default, all your plug-in GUI's are "pinned" to begin with and you have to close them to get rid of them. This should have the effect of keeping all such "pinned" plug-in UI's open, but the behavior I have observed is that it only does so when the plug-in UI is open over the main window. It doesn't work over floated multidock windows. @Rod L. Short, maybe our issues are the same, and we always drag our floated windows to the second monitor! I'll try it the other way around and see which it is. IIRC, it's that the GUI's will stay open over your Track View, so please try it and we'll see.

It's possible that the custom uninstaller program is responsible for the antique version of the Visual C++ libraries. Those uninstaller programs can be a mixed bag, with the occasional baby going out with the bathwater in the case of such things as shared libraries. A few things that I have learned about AAS's software, being a big fan: First, they recently updated most of their stuff, so make sure you have the latest. Second, their installer is compliant with the Windows 10 uninstall list, so if you want to uninstall their stuff, it's all there in the Apps list in Windows Settings. Third, in my experience AAS are right behind Waves as far as strewing copies of their plug-ins all over the place. Seriously, I have wondered whether if a folder has the string "VST" in its name they just go ahead and stick a copy of their .DLL's in there. I've found copies of their plug-ins in my Cakewalk folder, my Programs folder, all over the place. 32-bit, AAX, 32-bit AAX, whatever. I don't like there to be more than one copy of a given plug-in on my system because multiple copies can cause issues with version control, so after an AAS install I go around and manually root out the extras. @Noel Borthwick, I, too, seem to now be having AAS woes in a project that previously played fine. My issue is more nebulous at the moment, so I can't chime in except to say that I'm also seeing higher resource usage with corresponding stutter and crackle in the audio output. This is on my lesser-powered i5 notebook using the onboard chip with WASAPI, not the system shown in my sig. Switching ThreadScheduling back and forth between 2 and 3 seems to result in a bit smoother operation with 2, but results are as yet inconclusive.

Always in motion is the future. If you had asked in late October 2017 about the next update of SONAR, you would have gotten all sorts of answers, probably none of which would have been "there will be no 'next' update of SONAR." On your computer you say Windows 10 itself worked correctly for a while then stopped working correctly, so who knows? People stay on Windows 7 to try to save money (and upgrade hassle) by holding on to their old computer for as long as possible before upgrading it or buying a new one. As time passes, the hassle level will continue to rise until it reaches a point at which it is more hassle to stay with Windows 7 than it would be to upgrade their system to Windows 10. The hassle comes first in the form of looming uncertainty about compatibility, later it will be in the form of incompatibility itself. How long a person wishes to hold out probably depends on their comfort level with the uncertainty until of course the wall is hit and the hardware breaks down or the software just plain won't run any more, and holding on to the old system is a false economy. Until that time: nothing is guaranteed. "Supported" means that the tech support staff and developers (including QA) will do what they can (within reason) to see to it that Cakewalk will run on any Windows 10 system that meets the spec. Also in the case of the developers, that they stay on top of the latest improvements to the way the OS deals with multimedia and use that information to make the program work better. With a supported platform you can breathe more easily. I was a Windows 7 user until last year when a Cakewalk developer said in this forum that they were no longer actively developing for that platform. I couldn't switch over fast enough once I heard that. I'm not going to be standing on the ice floe drifting away wondering why my computer programs are starting to act weird and I can't download any new ones because they need the current OS. Windows 10 didn't work as well as my very optimized Windows 7 system at first, but I spent some time and figured out why, and now I have a very optimized Windows 10 system where I can shut off realtime malware scans permanently, delay system updates for weeks at a time if I want, etc. because I learned how to control it.