Starship Krupa

You need to find a way to "tell" the MIDI track to use the Monster Drums track instead of whatever synth it's now driving. We need more information before we can tell you exactly how to do it. These old project files, what soft synth are they using now? Are these drum parts that you programmed yourself or are they part of a General MIDI file you obtained from a 3rd party? As @JnTuneTech says, if the drum track is part of a GM file, it's a different process from when it's a drum track you programmed yourself. In my opinion, the Drum Map Manager is a difficult tool to figure out, at least at first, and there are other options. It might turn out to be the right option for you, but we may be able to come up with something easier. If you wish, you could even put a sample project up on a file sharing service for us to check out. That might be easiest if you find our questions confusing.

As of now, I know of no laptop that uses any audio hardware CODEC other than ones made by Realtek, all of which are similar to each other. Someday, some genius will design a laptop purpose-designed for music production that includes a better hardware CODEC than Realtek's, but as it stands today, the Realtek CODEC has plenty of "horsepower" to spare for DAW work. Basically, don't worry about it, they're all pretty much the same. Purchase the laptop based on your usual laptop criteria, use WASAPI as your driver mode, and have at it. It'll actually sound great. Realtek haven't been sleeping when it comes to working on their technology (with the exception of still not having an ASIO driver). Good-sounding, low-latency audio is also desirable for gaming, which is an important segment for driving computer hardware development. If cost were no object, I'd get the best gaming laptop money could buy, because the criteria for excellent gaming performance are similar to media production. Good sound, fast CPU, fast GPU.

They did. That's why Damien said "now you don't have to download everything within the six months following the purchase." Unless you thought they changed it back, which I don't think they did....

Probably not, if you have all the content you want from SampleTank 3 MAX. Look and see what instruments/packages it comes with, compare it to what you have. The engine itself is a free upgrade, of course. SampleTank 3 used to be really crashy, wouldn't last very long in Cakewalk, but 4 is much more stable.

Umm, SampleTank's UI is kind of dark, and dopey looking guys prefer UI's that look blurry and out of focus? Or what? I can tell you that I find the SampleTank UI (and user experience in general) to be more attractive (and easier to get around in) than the holy Kontakt. I have some Kontakt instruments that I really like, but every time I start up the Kontakt Player plug-in, I have to get a whole bunch of EZ screen crap out of the way before I get it to display the view I want. Of the sampler/sample player plug-ins on the market, I probably like Soundpaint's UI the best. Kontakt is about even with sforzando as far as being clunky and confusing. SampleTank is behind Soundpaint, but ahead of MSoundFactory, with sforzando and Kontakt on hind teat.

Dang, $50 seems to be What SampleTank 4 MAX Goes For these days. So useful. It's become a staple, go-to around these parts. For Syntronik and SampleTron alone it's worth the price (but of course it comes with so much more). SampleTron includes libraries from antique samplers other than just the Mellotron (like the Optigan), and also includes all the seldom heard oddball sound effects and loops that came in the libraries. Of all the vintage synth emulations I have in my plug-in library (which includes a couple of versions of Analog Lab Lite), I find myself reaching for Syntronik when I want a vintage synth sound (although Cherry Audio's DC-106 is my Juno 106 go-to).

Carl's just Stalling.

Innit? 😄 I identify as 39 years old.

I've gotten some great freebie (and cheap) games via deals posted here. Elder Scrolls Online has become a passion for me, I played and enjoyed Falconeer last night. Haven't gotten much further than starting out with Fallout '76, but I probably will eventually. Just as with free plug-ins, gotta pick and choose.

ReaFIR is really useful. The thing about 3rd-party add-ons, even free ones, is that there are a TON of people who have no idea what's out there and how to go about finding it. We know how to access that information, but laypeople....I've told people that there are great-sounding free Mellotron instruments and it's blown their minds. Since Cakewalk license some nice algorithms from iZotope, how about giving us a front end to them. Elastique pitch shifting as well, while we're at it.

Hold not thy breath, good sir.😀 As long as BandLab own Cakewalk, there is Next to zero chance that they will spend resources on developing a DAW that would compete with what they see as their main product.

Curious, have you tried running Sonar with Administrator privileges?

What exactly do you mean by "the extra stuff?"

On my iPhone and iPad, BandLab is an app that I got from the App Store. Downloads and installs just like any other. Also true for Android phones and tablets. On Windows and MacOS, BandLab runs in a web browser.

If I like it, I'll definitely write him and say thanks and suggest that he at least put his website address in the body of it somewhere.

Both of these. Thank you! The MIDI volume faders on the tracks control that volume control in the Kontakt instrument. My Kontakt is set to initialize at -6dB, so "0" on the MIDI fader=-6dB in the instrument. Once I whacked the faders up to 127, that took the volume up to 0dB. In light of this, the question should be "why wasn't the 2nd instance also doing it?" And my answer is "who cares?"😄 I got it working correctly, with your help I figured it out, and all is happy again. If I run across the phenomenon again, I'll know where to look.

Someone who calls themselves "CMDess" has written an extensive guide to getting the most from MeldaProduction plug-ins. I haven't read it yet, but the more documentation for these complex tools the better. Also, this week's Eternal Madness 50% off sale includes MAutoAlign, which I consider a must for anyone doing multiple-mic'd instruments, and MConvolutionMB, a very well-regarded convolution reverb (I can't personally vouch for it because I use MTurboReverb and Exponential Nimbus exclusively).

No, it's not. Next runs on MacOS and Windows.

I have a project with two instances of Kontakt Player 7, along with A|A|S Player and Hybrid 3, each synth having its corresponding MIDI track. They are set up as "split," where the synth tracks and MIDI tracks are not tied together in an "instrument" track. Somewhere along the way, an event has crept in, either automation or MIDI I can't tell because I can't find it. It acts like automation, but I won't be able to say for sure unless I manage to figure out why it's happening. What happens is that on the first Kontakt instance, Kontakt's master volume gets turned down to -6dB as soon as I start Sonar's transport. It doesn't matter where in the project I start it from, as soon as the transport starts, the volume drops to -6dB. Once the transport is rolling, I can open the plug-in UI and set the volume wherever I want and it will stay where it is, but as soon as I stop the transport and restart it, boing, back down to -6dB. It can loop all day long and be fine, it's just the act of starting the transport that makes the volume drop. I've been poking at and beating on this project for a couple of days now trying to get this not to happen. Your first thought was "simple: he has somehow put in an automation lane that controls that parameter in the plug-in." That was my first thought as well, so I turned off the reading of automation and it persisted. Then I examined automation lanes both in the MIDI track and the synth track, and while I did find that automation had somehow been written for the MIDI track's volume parameter, I deleted all of it and it still does this. I've examined the MIDI event list for the track, automation (which if it were that would be a bug, seeing that I turned of automation read). So I'm tossing it out to the hive mind: what could cause a synth parameter to change every time the transport is started? The other instance of Kontakt Player behaves just fine, the synth's volume stays wherever I set it. I'm going to save the project as it is and then create new tracks, copy the MIDI data to the new track and delete the "haunted" track(s) and instance of Kontakt Player. I doubt the issue will survive that. The only reason I'm asking at this point is out of curiosity. Is there something obvious that I'm missing? Keep in mind that I have two instances of Kontakt Player going and one of them is behaving normally. I never even moved the plug-in's volume control until after I noticed that the track was playing back at a lower volume than I expected. I turned automation off. Nothing weird shows up in the MIDI event list for that track, just the expected notes.

BandLab already has a DAW for iOS. It's called BandLab.

Especially in situations like yours where there may be a performance issue, you really should post your system specs. See my sig for an example. What processor, how much memory, what type of disk drive (spinny or SSD), what graphics (in your case, probably onboard in the CPU), what audio interface, these are all crucial to helping figure out what the issue might be.

Has clip gain automation somehow been accidentally applied?

Well, I kinda can't resist an offer like the one he made in the email, so now I must decide which of his plug-ins....

No, it's only their latest product, drum machine Battalion, that is excluded. It's not unusual for UfA's latest product to be excluded from promotions. Everything else, have at it.