Starship Krupa

You don't say whether you did it as an upgrade or a fresh install, but I found out that it does make a big difference. Microsoft allow you the option of "Fresh Start" so that even if you did it as an upgrade, you can go the fresh install route. Also, 4G RAM is absolute minimum, 8G if you want to be okay. I run Cakewalk on Windows 10 Pro just fine on an old Dell i5 laptop with 8G of RAM, so what you're trying to do is not out of the question.

A properly acoustically treated one with as few standing wave nodes as possible. Yes, this deal kicks some serious AAS, and I recommend tappin' it while it's still out there.

That would be the best spent $49 in plug-ins I could possibly think of for someone who didn't already have them. Man, to have had Ozone and Neutron Elements 5 years ago when I was struggling to get things to sound okay and piling on the plug-ins willy-nilly on each channel would have been such an education. Boom, here's a tool with just an EQ, a compressor, and an exciter, and it's going to make your track sound like gold. Boom, same thing on the Master bus. Limiter, EQ, Spatializer. Wham, your mix sounds 100% better. Their genius of iZotope for me is in the gorgeous UI's, the integration of the suites, and the killer presets (and wizards, for the ones that have them). They provide such good starting points.

You put instances of it on each track you want to manage with the Visual Mixer, then those tracks appear on the grid in the Visual Mixer. I think it's used for other things if you have higher versions of the iZotope Suites, but that's the most basic.

Man, this is an odd one. The only thing I can think of is that there might be a Realtek HD control panel somewhere that is doing some processing and getting in the way. Look in the system tray, poke around, search in Cortana for HD Audio, Realtek, etc. and if you find something like that, make sure that any processing is disabled. They especially love to enhance the bass, which is what you're having trouble with. I'm starting to think that your best bet may be to create a template by deleting all the data from one of your existing projects that loads okay and just start your new projects from that! BTW, I use the onboard sound in my Dell Inspiron notebook for monitoring both through headphones and through powered monitors, and as long as I'm using WASAPI or ASIO4ALL, it sounds fine. Perfectly suitable for DAW monitoring, and I am very picky about things like bit perfect audio playback. All you're doing is mixing, not recording, right? The thing to avoid is getting the Windows resampling between your DAW and the chip, so WASAPI Exclusive or ASIO4ALL is the way to go. Windows resampling smears the transients like MP3 conversion. I've even, as an experiment, connected a small Yamaha mixer to the line in and done some recording just to see if I could get a halfway decent sound, and I did. Not as good as my PreSonus interfaces, but the Yamaha preamps were doing the heavy lifting and I used a nice condenser mic and people might be surprised to learn how it was recorded.

They can run side-by-side, but only on the same drive.

Finally! I saw it in time to snag a license!

What do Antares have to say about their product not being compatible with Cakewalk by BandLab? Compatibility issues are something that ideally require participation from both companies. Failing to test their software with a DAW that has been around for 31 years and is available to them for free? Seems kind of sloppy to me. I see that Sonar Platinum (along with FL Studio, Reaper, and Digital Performer) is listed as "possibly compatible" with Autotune EFX on their website and that for all "possibly compatible" listed hosts the user should try their free demo to see if it works. I guess "possibly compatible" means that they want the user to do their compatibility testing for them. In case anyone doesn't know how the industry works, ImageLine, Cockos and MOTU (and MAGIX, as I see that Samplitude is on the doesn't work list) would all be more than happy to give them copies of their latest builds to test their plug-ins with. Even if it were only to be able to tell users that they don't work, or to let the companies know. From their compatibility list, Antares seem to be interested in Pro Tools, Cubase, and Studio One, and sometimes Ableton Live, and everyone else can fend for themselves. Get your license fee back.

Do you mean Sonar or Cakewalk by BandLab? If the former, go download the BandLab Assistant and get Cakewalk by BandLab. Sonar is old, unsupported stuff. It's fine to keep around for the plug-ins that came with it, but Cakewalk is way ahead in features, stability, and speed. You need to tell us whether you're using ASIO4ALL, WDM, WASAPI Exclusive, WASAPI Shared, or what as your audio driver. Also, you can get further information by right clicking on the speaker icon in your Windows system tray and selecting Open Sound Settings, and from the resulting page, select Device Properties. From there, you can select Additional Device Properties, then Properties again, Change Settings, keep drilling down until you see how your sound chip is actually set up to operate with Windows. It should be set at 24 bits 44, 100 for running with Cakewalk.

This is a known issue, and one that the developers have been trying to track down and correct. It has been difficult, as it does not happen on every system. @Noel Borthwick might like to take a look at a .cwb file of your project to see if the developers can track down what is causing the problem, so please Save As in this format. You might be of help to the process of fixing this. Are you using the very latest version of Cakewalk by BandLab?

You should check. It's at least been updated to the v10 core, don't know about the algorithm. I think I noticed in the release notes that it got some update having to do with supporting surround mixing. It has been solid as a rock on everything I've used it on since I first got it for free on that Black Friday giveaway years ago. I didn't like it at first because I thought it was too complicated, but then I figured out how to work with it in bozo mode and then some of the subtleties came through. The manual just confused the heck out of me because of the front and back thing, I was new to reverb and couldn't get a handle on it with all the controls. Turns out I didn't really need to work all of the controls if I didn't want to, just the usual size, early ref, etc. My complaint at the time was that it didn't come with enough preset examples to demonstrate what the manual was trying to explain, even with the "celebrity" ones I downloaded from the Waves site. Now I just dial in a nice hall or room sound and use it as a send like I do any other reverb and it sounds nice, sparkly and full, yet natural and neutral if I want it to be. It scales back well. I might delve into using the advanced features someday, but for now it's just a great-sounding algo reverb.

I wish I could unconditionally recommend SongKey. I've gotten some use out of it, certainly my discounted money's worth. With my complex, ringing guitar chords, it hasn't "done what it says on the tin." I'll say that it has helped me figure out the key of some of my weird songs, but as far as doing it all by itself, not really. It can pick out the individual notes I'm playing, which saves time on dissecting my big droning chords. I'm glad Saverio made it so the display freezes when you pause the transport. @Grem, I recall you're a big fan of LU Meter, which I see is on sale for €2.00. I have a few fancy LUFS meters like dpMeter4, MLoudnessAnalyzer and YouLean, does LU Meter do anything that these other LU meters don't? Obviously the money is nothing, it's just that I already have over 500 plug-ins, and LUFS is one of those things that is still kind of confusing for me, so another metering plug-in is something I'm cautious about acquiring.

Seems fishy to me.

It looks like Avid are turning their backs on the hobbyist and semi-pro segment and focusing on the stratosphere a la Sequoia and Pyramix. They know where their money is coming in from, I don't. This might signify that they acknowledge that so many in that segment have already turned to Logic, Cubase, Cakewalk, Studio One, FL Studio, Ableton Live, Reaper, Samplitude, Waveform, Mixcraft et al that there's no sense in them trying to compete there. Is the DAWniverse split into these two segments: one where the users use the DAW as a music creation tool, composing, editing, recording, looping, making beats, singing, rapping, sampling, all that, and then another where the DAW is used strictly for recording, editing, mixing and mastering? From looking at the marketing pages for Sequoia and Pyramix, it would seem that way. Maybe Avid wants Pro Tools in that segment rather than bundling AIR softsynths and trying to come up with a performance panel or cloning some feature from Ableton Live, licensing loop packs, etc. If that market is lucrative enough, I actually think that might make sense for them, despite the traumatic effect it would have on the Pro Tools users in the other segment. Obviously, We Who Have Time To Post On Forums skew toward the hobbyist/semi-pro DAW-as-composing-tool segment, so we would tend to think it would be a shame for them to make such a move. What say ye?

TrueVerb is a great, natural-sounding reverb. It has a very thorough and comprehensive manual and if you dig into the Waves website's free downloads page, there's a file with celebrity presets including some good ones for TrueVerb.

Thank you, more precisely what Cakewalk by BandLab's licensing is is a free subscription, like Tape Op. We all know about Tape Op, right? Don't cost nothin', but once a year they contact you and at that time you need to confirm that you still want it and that your mailing address is still the same. Then they keep sending you your monthly issue. Similar deal with CbB, only the terms and mechanism are slightly different. There's a little program that contacts their servers and blesses your installation of CbB and it just needs to do that at least once every 6 months or CbB will slip back into demo mode. Anyone who wants to try to "bash" me for stating that obvious truth, step right up.

BandLab doesn't have a version of Sonar. Sonar was a program that used to licensed for a fee by a company called Cakewalk. Now a company called BandLab licenses a program called Cakewalk for free. Confusing, I know. All you need to know is that that Cakewalk is a thing. Sonar is defunct. It is no more. I have run Sampletank 3 under Cakewalk by BandLab and it has crashed the host program in both its VST2 and VST3 versions. I would not recommend attempting to run the combination in a live performance situation.

The L-Phase series would be such a joy to have available.

I love the way Mixcraft implemented it. Every folder is a submix, with full FX rack, automation, everything, and you can nest them infinitely and take stems from any of them you wish. Drag and drop a submix into another submix and it's nested. You can expand and collapse them to save screen real estate as you wish. The program also has buses that function just as buses do in Cakewalk. Mixcraft was obviously strongly influenced by Sonar, and it would be nice to see the influence come back around to Cakewalk.

Funny you should mention it, Grem, he already owns a Tascam Digital Portastudio, which he hasn't gotten around to using due to technophobia. I'm suggesting a workflow of tracking to the Tascam, then transferring to the notebook, where he can either work on it himself or pass it along to me. A friend bequeathed to me his Zoom Q8 camcorder with the X-Y mic pair and I did a band video shoot for some friends' 4-piece rock band using just the built-in X-Y pair and a single dynamic for the lead singer, and we were all very happy with the result. Now you know what my living room looks like. And my 1970 Slingerland New Rock kit (that's not me playing it).

Good to hear the news about Ryzen optimization. Also good to get the word on clock speed being the better thing to seek than number of cores. I'm trying to help a buddy spend some money on a Windows notebook, and he wants to run Cakewalk on it, he identifies as a comp-u-phobe and I figure that if he ever works his way up to 4 simultaneous tracks of audio that'll be pretty neat. He's been sending me iPhone Voice Memos of band practice jams that I've had fun seeing how good I can make sound using the tools I have available to me. I've been trying to ignite his interest from there by telling him that all he needs is a not-even-that-powerful notebook computer (I usually work my "magic" on my #2 system, an aging Core 2 Quad that just loves CbB), and he can get miles better audio quality even if he only just sets up a couple of dynamic mics into a mixer so he can give me a stereo recording to work with using the onboard sound chip. I know that anything that can boot Windows 10 would work for him, but I'd like to minimize his investment and maximize his gain. Keep it under a grand I guess. My hunch was AMD processor, go for clock speed, last year's technology? Optical drive might be nice to have for burning band CD's.

First, thank you for alerting me to the existence of this feature, second, I'm surprised it doesn't work that way in the first place. Or I would be if it weren't that Cakewalk seems rather non-real timey-wimey in odd places like when moving markers. Moving markers along the ruler always reminds me of playing fetch with a dog. I indicate where I want the marker to be and then it goes obediently charging off to take its place on the ruler. Same with moving clips and slip editing. I move a pale fragile ghost of the thing, then the actual thing comes along later.

Indeed, I agree that nested folders and submixes would make your task much simpler. There must be some way to adapt what I was suggesting, though, until such time as Cakewalk gets that feature. Perhaps by using Aux tracks? I would have to think about it more. How do you deal with this situation now when you are faced with it? Do you fork the project and set up all the routing manually as requested by the client? Do you do it in another DAW?

Another just outstanding theme, Matthew. I wish there were some kind of award I could nominate you for. And this theme should be called M-White?. I'm not a great fan of lighter themes myself, but this one I actually dig. Go figure. Are your latest "M" themes using what I think of as your "Netflix" wallpaper? I don't know because I have switched to my own custom one on my main DAW, but that was one sharp wallpaper, and served to remind me that I could set my own. I just wanted to sing your praises. I don't know why you do what you do, but if it's for "the nod," consider this a big one. Your work helps Cakewalk be more attractive and enjoyable for me to use, helps me to be enthusiastic about recording in general, and that's sharing the love.

Not once but twice for heaven's sake. And I wasn't being pedantic or nitpicking, it's common courtesy, and a gesture of parley when discussions like this one get heated, to show that one is not merely trolling. But I guess there wasn't much interest in that. I think it might be time to hit ye olde philtre of kille.