Starship Krupa

Anyone remember H.G. Fortune? They managed to be uncanny before the A.I. craze.

Although the promo page for Cakewalk Sonar shows at least the LP EQ's in use, no mention has been made of possible 3rd-party bundling relationships. This is understandable due to the confidential nature of such negotiations. I was thinking of which ones might be valuable to include, and my frugal mind goes to ones that are already being distributed for free by their manufacturers as loss leaders. My number one suggestion is Kilohearts' Essentials. Over 30 FX, from bread-and-butter things like the simple Limiter, Compressor, and Transient Shaper to more exotic and advanced things like Tape Stop, Reverser, Pitch Shift, Ring Modulator, Comb Filter, Ensemble, etc. This would, in one swoop, take care of a huge swath of FX categories that are currently missing from CbB. They are sonically excellent, simple to use, have scalable UI's, and don't beat the user over the head with Kilohearts branding. This would give Sonar multiple effect categories that its competition (Studio One, Mixcraft, Waveform) don't have. From Kilohearts' perspective, since the package is a loss-leader freebie to begin with, they'd probably be happy to have such a relationship. It could even come with a demo license for Snap Heap, which is their effect chainer that these plug-ins are designed to work within. After that, Plugin Alliance's bx_masterdesk Classic is another loss-leader freebie. Mastering plug-in that sounds great, good for slapping on rough mixes as well as finished projects. As far as instruments go, unless plans for Sonar include resurrecting the old Cakewalk synths, CbB's collection of instruments is pretty sparse. I'd like to see a return to bundling the A|A|S Sessions package. Including A|A|S' (free) Swatches would sweeten things even further. What plug-ins do you think would go well with Sonar?

I haven't figured out a way to do this in Cakewalk with interfaces that don't support it with a loopback function. What I use when I want to sample things like TV and movie dialog are 3rd-party programs like MAGIX Audio Cleaning Lab.

I get it, if you're using orchestral libraries, you're trying different articulations, etc. Similar for ITB electronic music. Composing, sound design, they're all part of the process. It's not the same process as sitting down with a song already in mind, and your task is to turn your song into a recording. It's more recursive. I've not done commercial scoring for pay, but I've composed music to go along with short movies that I made myself. I've done the rock band, singer-songwriter thing, "write" a song on guitar or piano, and I've done it the other way, too. These days mostly the other way.

A quick Google search took me to AMD's page on the processor and they say it doesn't have onboard graphics, so your question is moot. If it did have onboard graphics, no, there's no danger in running it with onboard graphics when you intend to install a GPU later on. Matter of fact, it can even be a good idea down the road, because Windows will have the driver for the onboard graphics ready to go in case you want to take your GPU card out for any reason. As it is, though, you'll be waiting for that 1660.

Why, when the more feature-rich and bug-fixed supported Cakewalk by BandLab is available for free? I'm always curious about this.

SampleTank 4 MAX is currently on sale for $100. It comes with Miroslav Philharmonik, a comprehensive orchestral instrument. If free is your bag, the Winds instrument in this line has clarinets: https://musictop69.wixsite.com/orchestools/orchestools-two

In the past year, I acquired A|A|S Chromaphone 3 and VS-3. I really love A|A|S' engine. I wish they'd do a drum machine based on it.

Really? Nothing wrong with Syntronik 2, I own it myself (as part of SampleTank 4 MAX), and it has great sounds, but as a synth? Isn't it basically a ROMpler? Even if the criterion were best deal, the mighty Chromaphone 3 and String Studio VS-3 are on sale for 50% off.

Wow, no love for Sonarworks?

Validation of Cakewalk is and has always been good for 6 months from the last validation. It was part of the initial announcement thread, if memory serves. It cause a huge splash amongst the community of people who create CbB tutorials, because it will eventually make their tutorials less relevant.

If you're not part of the solution, you're insufficiently dissolved in the solvent.

I remember reading it as part of the statements about the upcoming changes. But memory is a funny thing.

The reason they are so vocal about begging developers to port their apps is of course that the platform lacks so many apps. A Linux loony who's trying to sell you on switching to the platform will go on and on about how Linux can do everything a Windows or Mac system can do, and how the FOSS apps that are available are the equal or better of anything available for those systems. Then they'll beg commercial developers endlessly to port their products to the platform. If the former were true, why would the latter be necessary?

I just went to Epic and searched for it.

The indication of very high power usage isn't necessarily cause for alarm in the DAW world. It probably just means that Cakewalk is keeping all the cores lit up and running, rather than letting them park or sleep. Not a bad thing, unless it leads to temperature throttling. The power usage stat is useful in situations where you're trying to figure out what's sucking down your laptop battery or making your system overheat. Your 850W power supply is probably at least 100W more than is necessary to run a system like yours, so you have plenty of safety there. Steev makes a good point (although your system isn't a "clusterturd," not wanting to freeze tracks isn't a sign of arrogance or laziness, and Windows has supported Thunderbolt since Windows 7 on Intel-based systems like yours. Older AMD motherboards and CPU's are another story as Intel made it difficult for AMD to implement the technology). Overclocking an i9-9900K isn't necessary for DAW work. Leave that for your gaming sessions. I game on my DAW system, so I do overclock, but the games I play aren't AAA titles, so they would probably run just fine at stock clock. The most demanding one I have is Red Dead Redemption 2. For DAW use of that system, that much overclocking just makes it more likely that you'll send your CPU into thermal throttling, which you do NOT want. A good tool to have for monitoring possible system issues is HWINFO64. It will let you see if there is any thermal throttling going on, monitor CPU and GPU clock speeds, fan speeds, etc. I completely understand not wanting to freeze if I can avoid it. I'm constantly trying different instrument sounds, patches, tweaking patches, adjusting the synths' internal FX, etc. when I'm composing with virtual instruments, so freezing just doesn't fit that workflow. Especially with scoring work like you're doing, when I'm using orchestral sounds a big part of the process is swapping different sounds in and out to see what fits best. Do I want a sax or a trumpet? Flute or clarinet? Bassoon or trombone? Cello or viola? Brass, Woodwind, or String section? That said, for a project with 60 instrument tracks, there might be a few you could freeze whilst you fiddle with the others? And if KONTAKT is your main sample player, might it be more efficient to use its multitimbral capabilities to minimize the number of instances? I know that this helps for some instruments but not others. SampleTank is said to use the same amount of resources whether you have 3 instances of it or use one instance with 3 different ST instruments. Also, try to exit other apps like Chrome when you're doing a project of this size and complexity.

As John said, on the front page it will give you its opinion of whether your system is in good shape. If you want to see what's limiting your performance, the best place to look is the Drivers page. That will show you what driver(s) are chewing up system latency. That's how I spotted my bad NIC driver, I saw that NDIS.SYS was clobbering my system. NDIS.SYS is a driver for network operations, so I started looking into it.

I hope you don't mean you dumpstered it. There are always folks who can use old stuff like that. People with older systems and such. (You know how I am about keeping legacy stuff running)

I'd like to see someone (or some publication) do a shootout between the various plug-ins that do headphone correction. Cheapskate that I am, the one I own is HoRNet VHS.

Updated the firmware/OS to the latest? I'm a fan of DD-WRT for my routers. Adds a lot of control and functionality that you don't usually get with stock firmware.

"Let's put our heads together and mix."

The entire post wasn't meant to rebut or even reply just to your post. I just took it as a starting point to sum up my thoughts on the subject. Apologies if it seemed otherwise.

I haven't found this to be true in my case, at least as long as said C drive is an SSD. VSTi's like SampleTank and UVI Falcon that need to load up large samples may make it more of an issue, but even then, everything loads into RAM by the time it's ready for playback. At this point, I don't know WHAT the heck is going on with Chris' rig. The Steinberg is a fine, industry standard interface, and his system specs leave mine in the dust. The various issues point to maybe problems with either RAM or possibly SSD. The other apps he runs are dissimilar from audio software in that their projects don't stream a lot of data from memory. One thing that comes to mind is that as he's doing the things that he does, at first the system is using areas of the RAM that might be okay, but then as RAM use increases, with more plug-ins in memory (Cakewalk also stores its undo states in RAM), areas of RAM that are having trouble start to fill up and cause problems. Or possibly Windows is starting to use its memory swap file in an area of the disk that is having trouble. Similar problem. Running a memory test might flush something out. Running the SSD manufacturer's diag software might also be of value. To fix RAM issues, sometimes all that's needed is to pull the sticks out and put them back in. The contacts can get dirty and therefore intermittent. Reseating them scrubs the crud off. If you're not blowing the dust out from time to time, this becomes more likely. With drive problems, back that sucker up and get it out of there ASAP.

I get the impatience. The people who make my favorite toy have announced there's a new version that will ship "sometime in the near future," but that was 6 months ago. As far as your personal needs go, I suspect that you could be happy with Cakewalk by BandLab in its current state for a long time. BandLab have announced no plans to turn off the validation server. They have also shown a history of not only leaving the Cakewalk, Inc. registration server and product repository turned on (for 6 years now), they even recently updated the front end program for it. Spending money to provide continued support for a defunct company's products, and they are products that are in direct competition with their own. From the start, it's been in BandLab's best interests for people to migrate/update from SONAR to CbB, yet they enable people to stick with SONAR for as long as they like. They've even kept the Steam validation going for people who bought it that way. I've even recently witnessed a Cakewalk developer patiently helping a SONAR 8.5 user on this forum. The idea that they would suddenly kick the cord out of their own Cakewalk's validation server....it would be out of character for them to do it. Yes, they say "at some point" Cakewalk by BandLab will no longer validate, but IIRC, they've also said that about the old Cakewalk, Inc. products. The ill will it would generate just wouldn't be worth it. At this point, BandLab are the company who saved SONAR. Now, after 6 years of letting everyone use SONAR's direct descendant for free, while they turned the dev staff loose on bug fixing like rabid wolves, they've announced a more extensively revamped DAW that will continue the "Sonar" branding and will be payware. This is all fine, they're heroes who are now going to be claiming a just reward. Why anyone would suspect that they would suddenly kick CbB users to the curb, with all the ill will that would generate, escapes me. The loss-leader concept is now firmly entrenched in the audio software market. MeldaProduction (wouldn't be an Erik post without a mention of MeldaProduction, would it?) was an early pioneer, with their MFreeFX Bundle. That package of freebies was (and still is) of incredibly value in my self-education as a mix engineer, and it so solidly hooked me on their products that I now have a lifetime license for everything they will ever produce. Many companies have followed suit, including iZotope and Kilohearts. There will be users who will wish to stay with CbB for whatever reason(s). Custom theming is one near to my heart that I will miss a great deal. Breaking things for people who took you up on the loss leader? I can't think of any audio software company who has done that. It would generate so much ill will. Why would any company deliberately do that? BandLab are smart cookies. The Cakewalk staff have been around the music software industry for a long time and know the score (no pun intended). Sonar is still a product of the same company, BandLab AFAIK didn't get bought up by a different conglomerate with a different agenda. Meng's vision of rescuing SONAR from oblivion is still driving it. Now, part of that vision is having it bring in direct revenue instead of just the brand recognition it's been supplying. Once Sonar ships, the plan is to no longer allow new users to adopt CbB. I suspect that this is partly to curtail the free version from cannibalizing sales of the new version. Fair enough, although I'd love it if the plan were to keep the legacy CbB around as a loss-leader. But they've given a huge advance warning that if you still want the freebie CbB, act NOW. Nothing sinister, ever, in 6 years. I just don't think it's going to start now. As for the licensing cost, I personally suspect that it will be a pleasant surprise. Sonar, as Jon alluded to, will probably get some of the Cakewalk IP plug-ins added back. But AFAIK, it's not going to ship with the huge bundle of 3rd-party goodies that Platinum did. Maybe I'm wrong, but there's been no indication of that. If that's the case, the starting point is SONAR Professional pricing. With the competition not exactly resting for the past half-dozen years, lots more action in the $100 range with Studio One Artist, Waveform, REAPER, and Mixcraft, I suspect something in that neighborhood. Maybe also some kind of subscription model in addition (some people prefer that for various reasons). Waves have taught us about the perils of trying to sell subscription-only to creative software users, so I wouldn't expect subscription-only.

I knew you would dig it most of all. First person I thought of when I found it. I came across it while doing comparative listening tests among my small collection of popular studio cans (see sig). The ones that turned out to be my favorites (AKG K240) kind of surprised me, as they are also the least expensive ones in my collection, at $50 from Amazon. This got me curious as to how they compared in more objective testing and I found that site linked from the head-fi.org site.