Starship Krupa

Every few weeks you must sacrifice a chicken to your Cakewalk MIDI chain in order for it to begin making sound again. That's how it seems to work for me at least. I will start to think I have it all figured out, which of the approximately 5,000 outputs from the MIDI track I need to be concerned with and the rest of which seem to have no function I can determine, all this, then I will....do something or other that kills the whole deal to the point where I'll be loading up other programs just to make sure it's not hardware, and then I end up starting with a new project and batting it around until it works again, much as you did. I refer to this process as "sacrificing a chicken." Baron Samedi demands it in exchange for returning your MIDI tracks to the world of the living.

Paul McCartney was into the RAM thing, too, wasn't he? I sold out! I recently switched the system drive in my main DAW system to an SSD. Thanks to Black Friday freebies, I own several Wave plug-ins, including TrueVerb, my "go-to" reverb (even though it has steadfastly resisted my several attempts to understand its theory of operation). Mostly I put that in my sig because of coming across threads where someone would ask about how to tune their compressor settings to get a lead vocal to be more up front in the mix, and sure enough, if the discussion made it to page 3, they would have been counseled that Renaissance Vox was on sale for only $29, that 8G of RAM wasn't enough for a DAW, and that an SSD was mandatory if they were really serious. Because I guess, everybody needs to load humongous sample libraries, everybody mixes large band album projects that go up over 24 tracks with multiple overdubs, and you'll never really get the results you're after using the FX that come with a DAW. Meanwhile, there are all kinds of different things that people do (and in the case of Cakewalk, the FX that come with it are of excellent quality). I know lots of people who do acoustic music that never go above about 12 tracks, never use a single VSTi. Friends who do punk and indie derived music don't usually go near VSTi's either. Some friends, it's all in-the-box electronic, and they never touch a mic except to record vocals. None of these people load orchestral or percussion sample libraries. For these types of users, a system with 4G RAM and a 5400RPM hard drive will run Cakewalk just fine, and I know this because I have done it. To declare otherwise is merely to display ignorance of a wider variety of uses than one is used to oneself. To say that 16G of RAM and an SSD are the absolute minimum for a DAW computer is like saying that electric cars are useless because they can't go more than 300 miles on a single charge. In other words, all it does is expose the person saying it as having their head up their ass. They can't imagine someone using the tool other than for what they use it for. "Silly man, you can't run a DAW with only 4G of RAM, how will you ever load Miroslav? And that 5400RPM drive will never keep up when you try to record a 20pc. drum kit at 2mS latency!" And while I'm in rant mode, the Sonitus fx:Compressor has some pretty slick controls, although I don't use it myself. When it comes to advice, my best respect goes to those who tell the OP how to get there with what they have available, less so to those who tell them to go buy something (unless Pluginboutique are doing a BOGO iZotope giveaway!). Hmm, maybe having much respect for the included FX and instruments is part of being CWAF.

For those who know how to set Windows Environment Variables, a time-saving trick is to make one called VST_PATH that is set to your VST2 directory. Most plug-in installers will look for this variable and plug it into the dialogs as the default instead of the "Program Files\Steinberg\Vstplugins\Whatever" that I would otherwise need to delete and type in the actual path of my VST2 folder. If you're as much of a free plug-in 'ho as I am, and/or you ever need to rebuild your DAW system, it is a very nice thing to have in place. I install both the VST3 and VST2 versions of all plug-ins, if they have such, because I've found that some hosts play better with one or the other I'm not going to post full instructions on how to set environment variables, because it's just south of regedit as far as being able to cause trouble if you don't know what you're doing and mess something up. If you know, you can do it, if you don't, it's a good excuse to learn how.

https://www.pluginboutique.com/deals/show?sale_id=4958 The 3 Orchestral Companions we like so much are $4.99 each just like at JRR, plus a couple of synths named Twist and Wobble, and then a virtual ARP 2600 for $19.99 and a fancy vocoder for $19.99 We already discussed the Orchestral Companions, which are a great deal. Easily worth three times the price.? The only one you might not find useful is the Strings one, just because the strings instrument that comes with Cakewalk is already so good.

Are apologies in order? I have it in my sig now. To me it means I only ever run Cakewalk, not Sonar, and I never call it "Sonar" or "Splat" in the forum and I'm also down with Take Lanes. If any of my brothers or sisters comes here for help with "Sonar," I remind them that there's something better. ? (PLEASE understand that the above is meant to be an ironic parody of punk puritanism!) I don't know anyone's age or musical/cultural background, so I don't know if "punk as f---" rings any bells. I'm not sure where it originated, but it was a phrase that hardcore kids used to describe things that were totally "punk." Like if you brought your boombox into study hall and blasted Minor Threat and then flipped off the monitor and told them that they were a tool of governmental/corporate oppression when they asked you to turn it off. A new neon yellow mohawk could also be "punk as f---." In my specific scene in the '80's, it was a phrase that was parodied the instant we became aware of it, because everything was one big joke to us, and anyway, we were what is now known as post-punk, so talking about what was or was not "punk" was kiddy stuff. The most enduring one was "funk as puck" because there were a few West Coast Red Hot Chili Pepper Gang of Four slap bass/rap shout funk-punk bands around. "Hey, y'all are funk as PUCK!" Hilarity ensues.

Whenever I see that, I can't help thinking it stands for "CAKEWALK AS F**K!!" Maybe I'll offer that If the devs ever implement a record mode where we can switch off automatic comping, I'll get CWAF tattooed across the knuckles of my trackball hand.

Beats by Brian Wilson.

I was so bummed when the bakery thrift store near me closed.

On 12/25/2018 at 6:48 PM, Toddskins said: Sibelius and others (not Finale'), force all the notes in a measure to add up to one (1). Therefore, when you import the song you played as a MIDI file into these programs, it will force all your notes to be strange values because the measure must add up to one. My reply was more like a stand-up comedy routine, but represents of the frustration I feel when trying to use most notation software. It's notation software. When I start getting into editing with it, which is something that I will usually need to do if I've imported a MIDI file, things go sideways very quickly. I do get that for heavy duty editing, it's not the right tool for the job, but except for Finale, every one that I've tried has resulted in the explosion of tiny notes when I try to make changes. Yes, I'm doing something wrong. But why is it so easy to get into trouble in all these other programs and not in this one? The OP doesn't even know what the term "musical score" means. I'm for getting them the program that has fewer pitfalls for the clueless noob. https://www.finalemusic.com/products/notepad/

Oh, also, with stuff as big and complicated as Native Instruments' stuff, I usually prefer to either go into the settings of the NI download app and tell it to install its plug-ins where Cakewalk can find them or I let it install them and then gointo Cakewalk's preferences and tell it where to find them. Sometimes the plug-in has dependencies other than just the .dll that it can't function without.

Nice, Rick. Isn't it astonishing what we're getting for free these days? Cakewalk and the Kontakt Player and all those sounds. There is a good Rhodes and a couple of decent drum kits, and there's even Sennheiser's DrumMic'a instrument for the Kontakt Player. 5 or so years ago Sennheiser went into a studio and mic'd up a drum kit 4 different times with various models of their microphones, doing multi-velocity samples, then took the samples and made a Kontakt Instrument with this amazing GUI that lets you click on which individual mic you want to use for each piece of the kit. There's a mixer with built-in effects and you can split it into 8 individual outputs. Download it for free from Sennheiser's website, register it, and you have the best drum VSTi for the money I have heard. Sorry to hear of your bandmate's passing.

LOL kinda says it. Um, yeah. Maybe not with Bandlab the music collaboration site, although I have found it useful. YMMV. Take it or leave it. Cakewalk under Bandlab's stewardship is miles beyond Sonar in speed, stability, bug repair, and features.

It is rather obscure, isn't it? I just send people to www.cakewalk.com As far as why this might be, it could be that Bandlab are holding off until the import/export functions to and from Bandlab are fully integrated. I think "Bandlab" is very much the social media platform, and to the company, Cakewalk is a way to attract people to it, and promote their use of it. Until it's really part of the ecosystem, perhaps it doesn't need to be right there on the front page of the main site. You will notice that the iOS, Android, and web apps are featured there, so maybe when Cakewalk is as integrated as they are, it will assume its place alongside them. I will say that the main site steers you toward the Bandlab Assistant, which features Cakewalk prominently.

I believe that Noel knows about this issue and intends to take care of it in the next release.

I guess the Marines have to make do with Navy Morale, or maybe they don't need extra morale, they're Marines, ooh-RAH! But yeah, the Air Force needs morale, the Coast Guard needs morale (when it's in your job description to bust homemade submarines full of cocaine you surely need theme music).

One of the things that I do to check whether the new build of Cakewalk is legit or not is I wait until the Bandlab Assistant has it downloaded and installed, then I click on the button that says "Open." After the program starts I observe it for a moment. What I'm watching for is whether it quits. If it does not quit, I can proceed with my work, secure in the knowledge that it is legit.

Couple of suggestions: I quieted NDIS.SYS way down on my Dell tower by rolling back to the previous network driver. It was spiking all over the place according to Latency Monitor, then I rolled it back one revision and poof! Also, for troubleshooting, Resource Monitor is a great tool for figuring out what is going on with your system. You can start it up by running Task Manager, then clicking on the Performance tab, then down at the bottom there will be a button for starting Resource Monitor. It will allow you to see what process is doing what to each disk and each file, what is using memory, network activity, etc. I used it to find out that Windows Defender was scanning my audio files as they were being streamed from the disk, which prompted me to figure out how to put a stop to that silliness.

I can't help but wonder why you are setting your projects at 192 and 96 and so forth when you are using older virtual instruments. 192 and 96 are usually for people capturing cymbals with expensive tube condenser microphones and the like. I never go higher than 88.2 myself, and since the strain on the storage space and other system resources is higher, I just go for 44.1 and I think it sounds fine. Of course, I may be half deaf and/or deluded. Anyway, here's a Swiss Army Knife workstation VSTi that will give you over 2500 sounds, including several acoustic basses that are better than the one in the TTS-1, IMO: https://www.pluginboutique.com/product/1-Instruments/64-Virtual-Instrument/1560-Xpand-2 Another option, one you should probably just jump on anyway because it's free, is Native Instruments' Komplete Start bundle: https://www.native-instruments.com/en/products/komplete/bundles/komplete-start/ Among the many, many sample instruments it comes with is a killer upright bass. I was just playing it and it's so much fun. If you play it really fast on your keyboard, it throws in finger noise and stuff. Lastly, if you have a Cakewalk Command Center account, you can download and install Home Studio for free, and it comes with Rapture Session, which, in addition to tons of amazing sounds, also has a great acoustic bass. Your options are many. Whatever you do, get Komplete Start and Rapture Session.

Oh, no kidding. I just took advantage of having a Gibson Cakewalk account to download and install Home Studio, which got me (among other things) Rapture Session, which in itself just blew me away with how great it sounds. And my understanding is that it's just a preset player.

Others have already pointed you to the existing exhaustive, endless discussions, which leaves me to bat cleanup. Shut up about it.

The workflow of Theme Editor is: 1. Open an existing theme, either Mercury or Tungsten. These are the "Light" and "Dark" ones that Cakewalk comes with. Mercury is the default theme that is hard coded into the program. If you have downloaded one of the many user-created themes that are available, you may also edit one of those. 2. Make whatever changes you want to the art, colors, etc. 3. Save your edited theme under a new name. "Rick's Mercury" or whatever. Since you don't mention that you did this, it might be where your efforts came to naught. Default location for themes is C:\Cakewalk Content\Cakewalk Themes. 4. Start Cakewalk, go into Preferences, change the theme to the one with your new name. Since you don't mention this either, it might also be where you went wrong. You can also go into Preferences/Colors and change some of the colors there, and those changes will override the choices made in whatever theme you are using. Welcome to the world of theme editing. It's a lot of fun. You can also try out some of the themes that other users have created, there are some really good ones.

Mariano, since so many people like v. 1.1, maybe you could leave it available, or even give your new one a different name? Really looking forward to seeing the new changes! You're a bright new star in the Cakewalk theme world.

Cakewalk plays better with plug-ins than any other host I've tried. Maybe give it a try in a DAW that's specifically coded to work in Windows rather than ones whose code has to be compatible with multiple operating systems.

Confirming that: 1. Installer asked which of VST2, 3, and AAX I wished to install and obeyed my choice of VST2 and 3 2. Plugin asked me for license key upon CbB startup and accepted it, no dongle required 3. Nice resizable UI, and I threw it on a drum machine track and it gave it a crunchy, slightly pumpy depth that wasn't there before, so entirely worth the registration and d/l IMO

A good thing for CbB users to do is head over to Boz Digital Labs and download Bark of Dog version 1, which still comes with the PC module.