Starship Krupa

How do we tell what version of Cakewalk Theme Editor we have, and/or update it accordingly? I'm going to presume that at some point the program will be updated. I don't know what the "current" version is, or if I am running it. How do I find out?

Indeed. And if you're inclined to clean up after it like I am make sure that you get the 32-bit VST3's that are in Program Files (x86)\Common Files\VST3 folder. I regularly make a tour of my Program Files\Common Files\Avid and Program Files (x86)\Common Files\VST3 folders to make sure nothing I have no need for is taking up space on my SSD. It's amusing to see the places that some of these plug-in companies put their stuff in addition to the places that I specify. Waves is the weirdest, those Wave shell dll's wind up all over the place, but I'd have to say that A|A|S is right behind them. It seems like if a folder even has the string "vst" somewhere in its name, A|A|S will plop copies of their .dll's in it just in case. And when I started using Cakewalk, the A|A|S installer decided it had found an old friend, probably because of the old SPlum bundling agreements, and started spewing .dll's across the Cakewalk folder system.

Whoo, this thread needs a bump, but I don't have any new freebies at the moment (although I will in the next few days). A couple of 2019 Black Friday freeware alerts: Make sure to go to Waves and sign up for their annual Black Friday freebie. Whatever it is, it's usually worth the cost of an email address. And remember, email addresses are free. Good idea to have one that you use for offers like this and not for more sensitive things like banking and whatnot. Next isn't exactly a freebie (and please don't raise any debates about why Vojtech calls his MFreeFXBundle "free" when it's possible to pay to upgrade it), but Meldaproduction has a 50% off everything sale, which includes the registration/upgrade license for the FreeFXBundle. If you've tried it and use the plug-ins regularly, $28 to access the advanced features is worthwhile. It's a bundle of 34 plug-ins, and he adds to the bundle from time to time, and all additions come under the "lifetime" license. Of course we Cakewalkers know about lifetime licenses: be happy with the software as it is when you buy your "lifetime" license.

For those who only have the Free Bundle, dropping the $28 to register/upgrade the 34 plug-ins is a worthwhile investment. While they are just fine unregistered, the features that are unlocked are handy. Resizable GUI, access to the multiparameters, sonograms, etc.

I see great possibilities in the use of tailored workspaces and they might even take off like user-created themes have. I'd be into checking out workspaces created by other users. Things like "Podcast," "Audiobook," "External MIDI Control," "Loops and MIDI," "Loop Construction," "Live Audio Recording," "Studio Session," all kinds of specialized clean workspaces. Once the project is started, of course the user can switch to a more comprehensive workspace if they want to work with types of tracks or other features that are hidden from the workspace that they started with. That's the cool part, you're not restricted to the features included with your original workspace.

Looks more like he's complaining about features rather than code as such. The XnView developer(s) couldn't be bothered to write their own dialog text? Annoying to the original developer, I guess, but if something works, you can change it for the sake of changing it, or "go with the tried and true." I lean toward the latter myself, although I haven't seen the two side by side. I, too have been using and recommending IrfanView since the '90's, used ACDsee before that in a professional environment. It's kind of odd how you have to do some digging to set up clean UI photo browsers on Windows and MacOS, to this day. The built in image viewers in both of them are kind of dire, IMO. Jim, what cloud storage provider do you find works best for posting images in this way? I have been eternally frustrated in my attempts to post legible screenshots to this forum. At the moment I've given up and just post the raw url. People can click on it if they're interested.

I hear ya. I have trouble with the contrasty-ness myself and usually run with a user-created theme and tuned colors. I'll assume that you've explored the excellent user-created themes? If not, there are some amazing ones available. Also, the people in the Themes sub forum are helpful when it comes to things like tuning color settings. https://discuss.cakewalk.com/index.php?/forum/31-ui-themes/

Hey, this is the Feedback Section. So if I say that your response comes from a "macho, shaming mentality," and you say that my "mentality" is "defensive" we can start throwing things, but how is attacking each others' "mentalities" constructive or helpful? ? Yes, it's great that you started with hardware sequencers and bought books and studied, so did I, at one point I had a QY70 (just recently sold it), but not everyone has the time, need, inclination, or concentration to do that. This guy just wants to make a marionette show with a synchronized backing track every so often. The OP had a suggestion that there could be a simplified version of Cakewalk for people with simpler uses for the software. This is a valid suggestion, and it is a fact that there are just such programs on the market. Cakewalk Inc. marketed such software. I think I remember reading that the Lens feature was created to make it easier to market simplified versions and was later expanded for the use of hiding features that were not pertinent to the user's task at hand. Logic Pro X has two modes, for basic and advanced use, this is a common thing in highly complex software. For all my ability to dive in and tweak values of MIDI parameters and all that, it's sometimes really valuable to have a tool that when I come up with a beat on the drums that I want to enter quickly into the DAW, I can run over and get right to it without much ado before I forget it. I don't see it as "spoon-feeding" more like acknowledging that Cakewalk is such a huge versatile beast that in some cases it will be convenient to tailor it for entirely different uses. And from a creativity standpoint, there can be something to be said for having an uncluttered workspace with fewer distractions. I started with SplatWalk at the first BandLab release, having already been recording with other DAW's and physical hardware for quite some time and found the learning curve quite steep, and not a small part of that was due to the depth. So many menus! Also, the Reference Guide was but a twinkle in the eye at that point.

I have all 3 of the Strings, Woodwind, and Brass, and they are fine tools indeed if you just want some good-sounding orchestrals at rock-bottom prices. Can't speak for the sampled Steinway or the cinematic percussion instruments, but if the quality of the samples is up to their usual standards, getting all these for $4 each will be a killer deal. I'd hit it for sure if I were doing scoring. https://www.pluginboutique.com/product/1-Instruments/58-Inst-Bundle/1856-Film-Score-Companion

Now that you all have had some time with Union, how is it? I'm a SoundSpot fan, heck I'm almost a SoundSpot completist after buying so many of their plug-ins for $5. Their UI's look great on modern high resolution monitors, with large controls. Usually CPU-friendly, although I understand that Union is rumored to be a hog?

I used the code, and Cakewalk doesn't recognize the new plug-ins. ? In other words, works perfectly!?

The Creative Collection has DB-33, their excellent Hammond emulation, Mini Grand, their piano, and XPand!2, their workstation ROMpler: https://www.pluginboutique.com/product/1-Instruments/58-Inst-Bundle/1685-AIR-Creative-Collection The Keyboard Collection has DB-33, Mini Grand, and Velvet, an electric piano that includes Rhodes, Wurlitzer, and Hohner Pianet emulations: https://www.pluginboutique.com/product/1-Instruments/58-Inst-Bundle/1686-AIR-Keyboard-Collection Since I already have 2 licenses for XPand!2, which covers all 4 of my computers, I'm looking at the Keyboard Collection. Demo the pianos and see how they sound.

https://www.pluginboutique.com/product/1-Instruments/64-Virtual-Instrument/1560-Xpand-2 A favorite of Cakewalkers as a supplement/replacement for the venerable TTS-1. At this price, if you don't already have it, just get it, don't even think about it. It also qualifies you for this month's PB freebie, iZotope Nectar Elements, if you haven't picked up on that yet.

Also, are these VSTi's, live instruments recorded through microphones, or what? Are you recording them at the same time, or overdubbing?

This is what I do once I've settled on a "keeper" track. Either that or as I said, move the unused takes to another track and then archive the track, which stops them from being streamed. Sometimes I like to keep alternate takes around for archival purposes in case it starts to nag at me that maaayyyyybeeee the other vocal take was better or I liked the other guitar track or something and that's one way to do it, but I have also used your method of renaming the project "XXXArchive" or whatever and then start deleting the leftovers. It can perk things up. Sometimes it has little effect, but I have a friend who likes to record drum take after drum take until he finds his groove, and I mean this guy will get up to like 20 takes, so even with my minimal mic'ing, that's 80 lanes!

As far as I know, SONAR by itself, excluding the add-ons, only takes up about 1G of disk space, so maybe this is not so much to worry about? The majority of the hard drive space is consumed by the extras, which is what you want. Others please correct me if I'm wrong.

Really, those higher sample rates that they put on interfaces have no bearing on any kind of real-life situation. The storage media companies pay the interface manufacturers to put them there so that people will use up more drive space. An analysis showing that it's freaking 2dB down by the time it hits 20KHz, then looks like Dr. Frankenstein's lightning storm above 25K isn't surprising when you try to record at sample rates higher than 48K. Just kidding! I own a pair of Firepods, actually Firepods with their firmware upgraded to the FP10 specification. After you posted this I decided to download the RightMark Analyzer and try it on my own system. No problem, looks great, at 96/24 my system is only down about 0.1 dB at 30KHz and about 0.6 dB at 20Hz, with none of that craziness above 20K.

Since Cakewalk streams project audio from the disk as it's playing it back, I keep my project (including audio) files on my SSD. There's actually a lot of disk reading overhead with Cakewalk's normal operation if one keeps a bunch of unused takes around, because Cakewalk streams everything, even if it's muted. There's no way (yet) to archive takes except to move them to another track and then archive the track.

My favorite free optical compressor emulation VST is the AdHd Leveling Tool.

Oh thank heaven. One that you pay for, I presume. I can only hope that it means you will be wasting no more time and energy here.

That's terrible. Vegas Pro Edit 15 is crashy for you where it was a big improvement for me. Video NLE is probably the application that is most finicky about system configuration. If it doesn't like your video card or sound interface, you'll find out about it. I've had to play around with different video cards on my main system. The one that I'm using now was originally causing trouble with Mixcraft when running the 64-bit version. Then after I upgraded my system to Windows 10, I was able to put it back in and it plays nice. But at various times I've used an nVidia, the onboard HD4000 (which caused Cakewalk to have lags drawing screen elements), and then finally, the Radeon. The FP10's still seem to be rock solid, thank heaven. They're good, workhorse interfaces, and a great way to get a lot of inputs.

So telling the world that a single user with a very poor command of grammar and spelling is having unspecified troubles with the software is supposed to motivate the development team at BandLab to deliver a product that better meets your requirements? Ad hominem attacks laced with obscenities, that's your idea of constructive criticism. I start with the assumption that the people making the software want the product to work properly, so if something's going wrong with it, I tell them, and they pretty much fix the trouble, sooner or later. When I'm having trouble I also ask other users if they, too are having the same issue to see if it's a problem with the software that I need to report or something going wrong with my computer setup or what. It's honestly never occurred to me to come here and start insulting the people who work on the product, but to each his own, I guess.

I got lucky and scored Vegas Pro Edit 15 along with Hitfilm Express, Sound Forge and a bunch of other stuff in a Humble Bundle a few months ago for $25. I had been running Vegas Pro 10, and the difference was astonishing, to say the least. Not so much in features or anything in the UI, but smoothness, speed and stability were vastly improved. I am far, far from being any kind of power user of Vegas. Every time I fire it up I have to re-learn how to do a fadeout, but the the improvement was immediately noticeable, so Magix are doing a good job. I've gotten good information in this forum: https://www.vegascreativesoftware.info/us/vegas-pro-forum/

That you eventually got Sampletank 3 to work without crashing the host is a mystery to me, because at least with Cakewalk, Mixcraft, and Cantabile, it doesn't last very long before going bye-bye, at least with the sampled grand. The free version at least.

You only need to run BandLab Assistant when you want to install Cakewalk and/or the Theme Editor. It can stay running all the time, but it's very easy to turn that off and just run it when you want to. Cakewalk itself will let you know when there is an update available or a couple of weeks in advance of when your subscription needs to be validated. The subscription needs to be validated at least once every 6 months. Cakewalk has a downloader, just like SONAR did. The difference is that you need to run the same program at least once every 6 months to re-validate your license. You are never forced to update Cakewalk if you don't want to, and SONAR and Cakewalk coexist happily without interfering with each other.