Starship Krupa

Shucks, I'll pop for just about any Pluginboutique freebie deal. The only things that hold no interest are sample packs. I keep a cache of low-cost items in my Wish List just in case I can't find anything else. SoundSpot plug-ins and Hybrid 3 preset packs are good for this. I'm just about full up on AIR and SONiVOX instruments. I held out hope for a long time that iZotope would eventually put RX Elements up for the giveaway, but finally caved for a $9.99 deal. Glad I did, RX Elements is a great tool.

The hit count boost thing is really weird, especially given the theory about the Italian piano maker that I'd never heard of! Perhaps that piano maker intends to remedy that. Successfully in my case. And thanks for all the updates on some of my favorite "dark" themes, Canopus. The ability to switch themes, and the availability of such great-looking ones as the ones that you do really add a great deal to the Cakewalk user experience.

In regard to Cakewalk by BandLab, it is. BandLab has promised that Cakewalk will remain free, and to the disappointment of several doomsayers, they have kept their promise with no sign of changing the policy. So if your DAW experience must include paying for the license, you must indeed look elsewhere.

As long as there have been people inventing newer methods of creating music, there have been grumps to grouse about them, often with some claim that the newer method mostly exists in order for the people using them to attempt to attract ***** partners. Those who look down upon looping and digital sampling as methods of song creation might be amused to know that Steely Dan used a tape loop for rhythm tracks as early as Countdown to Ecstasy in 1973 and their engineer purpose-built a 12-bit digital audio sampler to use for drum tracks on Gaucho in 1980. As for stealing other people's work, one need look no further than Led Zeppelin's long history of plunder-for-profit, but since Jim and Bob took the trouble to work the chords out on guitar before becoming millionaires rejiggering other people's songs, maybe they get a pass? I've argued with people who claimed that Frank Sinatra wasn't really a talented musician because all he did was sing other people's songs. Maybe some would make a similar claim about Sir George Martin (although he did do a bit of composing) as a producer. Hey whatever. I think Fatboy Slim's "Rockafeller Skank" and "Praise You" were freakin' brilliant pop songs that I would LOVE to have had anything to do with creating. Who cares whether they were all made from samples or what? Same with Orb's "Little Fluffy Clouds." "My Kid Could Paint That!"

It says in the description at Pluginboutique that it's for voice, as in podcasts and the like, makes no mention of singing. I'm considering it because I have interest in such a plug-in.

Indeed, it is. "....use the new ERA Voice Leveler to normalize the volume levels of speech or dialogue recordings." I do a bit of voice recording and I'm thinking that for $9 it might be a handy tool to have around. This trinket caught my eye as well: https://www.pluginboutique.com/product/3-Studio-Tools/72-Utility/5046-Reverse I can do it with clip manipulation in any DAW, but just hitting a button has its appeal.

This v11 update encouraged me to open up Super Tap and get a reminder how outdated and Windows-for-Workgroups 3.11 butt-ugly the UI still is, poor thing. Lovely company, though, always handing out a freebie every year, and their products seem to be rock solid. I even like the way they make my cursor briefly turn into a spinning 3-D "W" when they are loading.

Purchased Firefly bus compressor, thankee kindly. I loves me some SoundSpot plug-ins.

This. Not to diminish the complaints of any specific user, but as has been pointed out before to other users who have claimed that Cakewalk must have suddenly taken a turn for the buggy/slow/crashy because it suddenly stopped working on their system, this forum would be exploding with complaints if that were the case. The original post contains ad hominem attacks and negative speculation as to the competence and intentions of the management of the Cakewalk development staff, and nothing specific about the actual troubles the poster is having with the software. As such, it is a mystery what they intended to accomplish with it. I can only add that I, too am a veteran of both software development and IT and have seen no degradation in the quality of the Cakewalk product over the last few builds. Quite the contrary, it has continued its overall upward path of bug elimination and feature enhancement. I would suggest that the OP be patient and allow the support staff to do their job or do as suggested and begin with a Windows 10 fresh install.

I'd love for the Split to have an option to go to the nearest zero crossing or to add a micro fade. As it is, I snapping to the nearest zero crossing and then splitting is my answer.

There's not an official mechanism for doing that, but it's quite easy. @scook even has a utility for doing it. All you need to do is copy your Cakewalk Core folder, as many versions back as you wish to archive.

Somehow it worked out that my meagre collection of Waves plug-ins were all eligible for update to v11 except for the much-loved VU Meter. I sprung for the Waves Update a while back, I think it was $15 for the stuff that I had, turns out it's about to crap out next month. I like the look of the new Waves Central, it's more like the NI version. Looking forward to the sleek new resizable GUI and slew of presets they've no doubt added to TrueVerb. ?

https://www.pluginboutique.com/product/1-Instruments/64-Virtual-Instrument/1560-Xpand-2 For 13,50 euro you will be amazed. This instrument is very popular among Cakewalk users.

1. The developers at BandLab continue to take steps to integrate Cakewalk and the other BandLab DAW's. It is possible to start projects in one and transfer them to the other and back and forth, but so far only as audio stems. Plug-ins and automation do not transfer. 2. Not sure what you mean by this. Keep project files on a network folder and launch them in Cakewalk? Cakewalk needs to stream audio files directly from the drive, so network latency would preclude this, if that is what you mean. If you mean keeping a single installation on a network server, I believe that Cakewalk must validate to each local system via BandLab Assistant, and again, loading plug-ins and loops and so forth might be slow over a school network. 3. If you post the specification range of your "fairly old machines," we can answer this question. RAM, processor, processor speed, hard disk type and RPM are most critical. A feature that makes Cakewalk especially suited to the educational environment is Lenses. They allow you to select what elements are visible/available to the user. They can be used to hide more advanced features that would be confusing or superfluous to your coursework. So for instance, if you don't want to see the Inspector, you can hide that, or the Matrix, or many other features that might be distracting. They can be hard to get your head around at first, but quite powerful once you grasp the concept.

Be sure to try the different instruments that are available via the browser in SI-String Section. Some of them may have the extended range that you need. I don't know what version you have, but CbB is actually less resource-hungry than the last version of Splonar. If you post the hardware specifications of your DAW computer (as I have done in my signature), we can tell you whether it's up to the task of what you are trying to do. OS, processor, processor speed, RAM, what kind of hard drive (spinny, SSD, if spinny, what RPM). As for being able to use the plug-ins that came with whatever version of SONAR you own, AFAIK the best way to do that is reportedly to install the newest version of SONAR you have a license for with all the trimmings, then install CbB. At that point, you'll have the best of both worlds, the stability and features of CbB and the bundled software and content of SONAR. Congratulations on your first composition! Next bit of fun is learning how to mix, which I also love and see as a creative process in itself. There are so many resources available these days, here in this forum and on the web, YouTube, etc.

I think you're in for a treat when you sit down with Xpand!2. TTS-1 ain't a bad entry in the "GM player that comes with my DAW" sweepstakes. Xpand!2 will do everything that TTS-1 does and a whole lot more. My only complaint is that my cursor keeps slipping off the preset menu when I'm browsing presets.

You may have covered this already, but I had a bear of a time getting Drum Maps to work, understanding them, figuring out where the commands were to add them to a project, get them to show up in the Piano Roll, etc. My batting average for having it work the first time was ZERO for 6 months. Something always went wrong. I'd bat it all around and think I had it ready to go and then....no sound, or no drum pane, or whatever, and I'd have to go back and fix something. And sometimes I'd have to start over completely. Finally I found the time to sit down with a blank project and the Reference Guide and drill over and over and ask questions on the forum and tried and failed until I finally understood what was going on and how to add them to a project and assign them. My hope is that someday we will be able to set up and assign Drum Maps entirely from the Piano Roll View, but for now, we set them up from the Console or Track View. Those savvy with Track Templates can skip all that hassle, but why is it such a hassle? Anyway, Drum Maps For The Uninitiated would be most welcome, and if it also included a how-to on getting the drum note names to appear on the notes in the PRV, that would be splendid.

AIR's Xpand!2 wins this category by a mile. 2500+ sounds, and it's usually available at Pluginboutique for $14.99, sometimes less if you look around. As far as which sounds get replaced, as with most such instruments, piano and orchestrals will usually get replaced by larger, slower to load instruments down the line. Basses, ambient pads, organs, drum machines, synths, percussion and so forth can hold their own and often stay in the mix.

Worst case scenario: Bandlab announces that they will immediately cease development of Cakewalk and shut down all support of it including the validation server. Everything dark, everything offline, bye-bye. Noel and company are forbidden to release a last build with offline registration. Why I am not troubled about this highly unlikely scenario, off the top of my head: It gives everyone 6 months of CbB working just as it always has, to finish things up, export what they need to export, whatever. And the only crippling in Demo mode as I understand it is that it won't save projects, but it can still export. It also gives a clever anonymous 3rd-party who wishes to try 6 months to come up with their own "mechanism" to get Cakewalk out of demo mode that doesn't require BandLab Assistant contacting the validation server. There's also the most obvious fallback: setting the realtime clock on your DAW computer to fool CbB that it hasn't been 6 months since it last talked to the validation server. So I'm not losing any sleep. BandLab have so far shown no tendency toward treating their customers poorly, quite the opposite as a matter of fact. They have far exceeded expectations. I think it reasonable to believe that if they needed to discontinue Cakewalk as a product that they would do the right thing and create a last version that did not require the BandLab Assistant to validate it.

AARRGH! I hate when this happens. This thread is on page 2 already and none of us has mentioned the obvious. There is of course the IMO pretty darn good sounding Cakewalk SI-String Section that you can download for free with the BandLab Assistant. It has dozens of sampled string sections, both acoustic and synth. Some of the "synth" samples are kind of Mellotronesque if you like that sort of thing, and I do. And as a matter of fact, although I still prefer my Orchestral Companion Strings for versimilitude, if I had already had the SI-String Section I wouldn't have been looking for something else and would probably just now be buying up the Orchestral Companions for $3.99. BTW, @coffincoffee, if what you're starting with is Cakewalk by BandLab, how is it that you also have TruePiano? I thought that was a Splonar goodie?

I use that up and down bow bowing all the time time, just like Sister Ray said. ?

"Cello Sustain Up Bow" is misnamed? Wouldn't surprise me with SONiVOX. It sounds solo-y to me, but I'm not an expert. Most of them are multiples, which is what I usually want anyway. I believe the gentleman requested embiggening? That's a way to get it. Whatever, it's worth 4 bucks, innit?

Pluginboutique currently has SONiVOX' Orchestral Companion Strings, Woodwinds, and Brass each for $3.99. Get the strings at least, and the woodwinds and brass if you want to also use those. All of them have solo and ensemble samples.

You should know that InfoWorld didn't start out as the buzzword-crammed manager's delight that it became in the '90's. When it started in 1978 it was much more of a hippie futurist tabloid. It retained some of that heritage for the first 5 years of its existence. It used to be sold in health food stores. Then it was sold to a larger publishing company and that was all over. My friend Michael Swaine, one of the founding editors of InfoWorld, left to take the helm of Dr. Dobbs soon after. He unwittingly became the lyricist for my most recent song, "Half An Hour Ago...." when I set a Facebook update of his to music.

Because someone a box or two above Zombie Safe in the org chart read an exciting article in InfoWorld about how that was the wave of the future and everyone would be left behind if they didn't start doing it. ?‍♀️ One IT department I worked in back in the '90's, I swear, we fantasized about intercepting our boss' copies of InfoWorld and tossing them in the dumpster before he could read the articles and get any "great ideas." Good lord, do Vice Presidents of IT go through conditioning to have the truism "if it ain't broke don't fix it" removed from their memory?