Starship Krupa

My latest dance with the Drum Grid in the pale moonlight was learning that unlike with other virtual instrument tracks, if I create a track template with a drum map applied, it doesn't save the drum map or the virtual instrument. All I get is an instrument track with no instrument on it, routed to an empty drum map. And before anyone says "yes, of course, because you need to add the drum map first," yeah I figured that out. But sheesh, track templates are one of the best possible tools for sorting this out. If the track template could load the instrument and the drum map, that would be huge. So at this point, from what I can figure out, if I have a beat that I want to program before I forget it, the only way to jump into that without going through half a dozen steps that may or may not work depending on whether I do them in the right order is to load up a project template. Seems simple, but in cases where I don't start a project with that template, we're back to the buzzkill. And since I don't always use Addictive Drum Stew as my drum instrument, I can't just use that template all the time. There are such simple things that could make this way easier, it doesn't have to be a full on overhaul at first. Maybe not simple from the devs' standpoint, but not huge changes in the UX.

Yeah. That's why I usually embed a request not to do that when I post these rants. But at the end of the day, they're just trying to help ease a user's frustration. In a way, it builds a case for the Drum Pane really needing some attention, because it's this huge, and IMO, important, feature and it's so unfriendly to set up that most people have given up on it. Obviously, initially a LOT of work went into that UI. And there's a lot to like about it as opposed to similar views in other DAW's. The velocity tails, the way that you can drag the individual kit piece names around, those are the things that keep me coming back to it. The Drum Grid itself is great, it's setting it up that is its own circle of hell. So the fact that even multi-decade veterans have abandoned it speaks volumes. Heh, I know that, I was being ironic. I mean, making beats and drum programming in general is its own industry these days. I was thinking more of EDM when I typed that, I hadn't even thought of black metal, death metal, etc. I'll namedrop here, I used to play bass in a band with Jef "Wrest" Whitehead. AKA Leviathan. Freaking amazing drummer, he and I locked in way tight.

That's an odd one for sure. All I can offer at this point are general troubleshooting suggestions that you may already have tried, but no harm in going over them. A suggestion: when you're having issues like these, it's always a good idea to post the specs of the system you're running it on. In your case, the make and model of your laptop, amount of memory and HD, whether you're using its internal sound or an external audio interface. Is the battery in good shape, are you using it plugged in or on battery, and what sort of power plan(s) are you using? I ask because I just last night replaced the battery on my Dell Latitude. On every laptop I've ever done audio work with, their power plans are usually set up to throttle the processor when it's on battery, so I've turned that off and gone with a high performance plan for both cases. With laptops, as highly integrated as they are, it's always a good idea to check the manufacturer's website to make sure you have the latest drivers installed (especially, in your case, the video driver).

Heh, it chafes me that music with beats is called "ambient," but unfortunately, Aphex Twin had to go and call his album Selected Ambient Works over 30 years ago. With that guy, it seems possible that he meant it as a goof, but whatever, the toothpaste is out of the tube. The record was innovative and influential, and probably so among many people who were not already familiar with existing ambient music. So when asked to describe what they were trying to do, people who dug Aphex Twin probably said, "ambient, like Aphex Twin ambient" and the press ran with it. This is just my guess. For all I know, Richard D. James was uncharacteristically earnest and thought that all of the stuff was ambient music. I somehow doubt it, though. At the time, I had already been listening to Brian Eno for 10 years, and to me, Discreet Music was "ambient." In my mind, Eno coined the term, or at least brought it to light, and it specifically meant music that can be appreciated at the edge of attentiveness. But preferably, also reward close listening, with the occasional "what's that?" moments mixed in. To me, it's almost as if Throbbing Gristle's 20 Jazz Funk Greats had resulted in some strains of industrial noise subsequently coming under the banner of "jazz funk." But it is what it is. At least with the term "producer," it's become a term for someone who produces music, as in creates it rather than guides someone else in creating it. But whatever, when the day is done, I want to make music that I would want to listen to, influenced by artists and styles I like. It's only when I'm called upon to hang a term on it that it becomes an issue. I call what I'm currently doing "electronica" because it's electronic, but a friend of mine who owns a record label listened to my first single in this vein and called it "90's ambient." Whatever. We soldier on under our own banners. Mine's Superabbit music. And to me, it sounds like me.

That they surely do, thanks to the usage data that CbB and NuSonar collect. How many have left, how many new users have come in due to Sonar's inclusion in their BandLab membership, how many have left and would return in case of perpetual or hybrid, we can only guess. My suspicion is that if/when any changes are made, they will be around the time of quarterly reviews of the data. Who's using Sonar, who's using Next, who's still on CbB, how much clickthrough is CbB generating since the orange toast notification was installed.... There is a vast silent majority of Cakewalk users who have never posted a word in public regarding their use of it. Maybe too busy, um, using it to make audio recordings? Stranger things have been known to occur. It's the only program I use other than The Elder Scrolls Online where I give any thought to a "community" of people who might be using it. The MMORPG was subscription-only when it launched 10 years ago, then they started offering a perpetual license, one of which I got for free and have since been off and on with their subscription, which allows the user access to more content and some useful in-game quality of life features. Not my video editing software, nor my photo editing software, web browser, paint software, messaging software, mobile phone. No idea about any "politics" with any of them. Only the DAW and the MMORPG. Not sure what to make of that. They are the two programs I overwhelmingly spend the most time with.

Nice idea. Pre-roll for the punch-in. I keep forgetting and run into this while trying to punch in MIDI performances. With MIDI, if you press the keys before the punch, you won't actually record a note on event. An option to record from whenever you start the transport, not just at the start of the punch, would be useful.

It happened because you're using a build of the DAW that was deprecated a long time ago, made by a company that no longer exists, which includes plug-ins made by companies that also no longer exist. It's bit rot. I suppose that it's impressive on some level that you've been able to continue to make it even this far, but....what I don't know is why you keep posting 32-bit SPlat specific errors in the CbB/Sonar Feedback forum. I think you're a good guy and I'm not hatin', but has anything ever come of it?

I disagree. I they did a perpetual license or hybrid subscription and leveraged the advertisement toast in CbB to sell it, there would be much more uptake. The YouTubers like Mike and XELOhh would likely start up again if there were a clear path from CbB to permanent ownership of a Sonar license. As a fan of both CbB and NuSonar, I'd be shouting it from the rooftops on multiple forums. The CbB and Sonar userbase extends way beyond the people on this forum. We're like a flake of snow atop the tip of an iceberg.

Unfortunately, no.

Okay, I'm confused. What problem are you referring to? What I disagree with is your statement that "subscriptions are the result of pirates and stolen software." I don't understand what the link would be between software piracy and companies preferring that their products be licensed via subscription and/or as part of a membership package. Software piracy, if it causes anything, causes reduced revenue. The idea is that a percentage of people who would otherwise have paid for a license won't pay if they can find cracked copies. But that's equally true for both permanent and subscription licenses. Unless you're suggesting that insufficient revenue due to piracy drove software publishers to try to get more revenue by selling subscription licenses, I don't see a connection. From what I observe, cost of ownership over time is usually less with a subscription plan than it is with perpetual licenses and periodic paid upgrades. And if it costs less, that means the publisher is getting paid less by the consumer. In the case of SONAR, how would switching to charging $70 for a year's use of a program, bundling it with another DAW and a bunch of premium services result in more revenue for the publisher? Didn't it used to cost well over $200? It's not the lump sum they're after, it's the more reliable cash flow. Getting $100 a year, but only if you convince people to upgrade or attract new users, allowing them to upgrade only if they feel like it, isn't as good as getting $5 a month reliably. That's from an accounting standpoint as well as pleasing lenders and the all-important stock market analysts. 'cause newsflash, what Caldecott are selling isn't Sonar, it isn't even BandLab memberships. It's stock in Caldecott. And stock in Caldecott looks like a better buy when revenue is steady. Less so when it's waxing and waning due to long product release cycles. A finance person can grasp "we have 1,000,000 subscribers who pay $10 a month." That means that they can expect the company to get $10,000,000 in January, and $10,000,000 in February, all the way through December. "We have 1,500,000 existing users who paid us $300 each, we typically attract 1,000 new users each month, and we're expecting to sell most of them $150 upgrades when we ship the next major release some time in the next 6 months. This depends on whether they find it attractive enough to upgrade. We expect to get a spike in new users too, at $300 per" doesn't quite have the same ring as "$10,000,000 coming in every month." Even if it's more money, it's a gamble, it's more dependent on outside things like the state of the economy, we have to be sure that people feel secure enough to drop that $150 or $300. I'm saying that all of this is more relevant than piracy as a driving force toward subscription licensing.

Perhaps, but with software such as DAW software, there are very real concerns that go along with subscription-only. First and foremost, being able to use the software in case of financial emergency, failure of the manufacturer, whatever. It's been repeated endlessly that "subscription model is the future," but I look around and still, to this day, the only DAW's that have no perpetual option are Audition, Sonar, and Next. There are more DAW's that offer no subscription option than there are ones that offer no perpetual option. That's not speculation or prediction, it is how things actually are. I think that best way for a DAW manufacturer who wants to get people on a subscription/membership plan is to do as at least one popular DAW manufacturer is doing and offer a "hybrid" license, where after the user has paid for a year of subscription fees, if they choose to drop the subscription they get a license for the software in whatever release it was when they stopped. This allows the publisher to expose users of the software to the benefits of membership while easing the users' fears of not being able to work on their projects if they should find themselves unable to keep a subscription current. No they're not. Strict license enforcement is the result of piracy. If someone's going to pirate software, it's no more difficult to pirate a subscription-licensed program than a perpetual-licensed one. If someone is going to crack your licensing scheme, they will do it one way or the other. The reason publishers like subscriptions, and it's a very good reason, is that they represent stable cash flow. For software that is perpetual-only, if the publisher is going to keep getting paid, they need to keep selling both new licenses and upgrade licenses. That can have an unfortunate effect on software quality when developer hours are dedicated to feature expansion at the expense of bug fixing. I believe that SONAR had suffered from that at the time that BandLab acquired it. Sure, who doesn't love new features, but longtime users are more likely to want the existing features to work correctly than they are to want new features. The kind of things that faithful users want, which is bug fixes, tuning of existing performance, and refining of existing features, just don't sell licenses. So how do you get paid? Steady guaranteed flow of cash from the userbase is the best way. The banks and analysts love nothing better than a steady flow of cash. And that's fine, nobody has a problem with that, but people want to know that in the event of a catastrophe, which as we know, veteran Sonar users are not strangers to, they'll be able to keep using the tool(s) they've invested so much money and time into. I don't believe that the permanent license for people who fork out for a year's subscription fees would cannibalize subscription sales. If someone is enough of a loyal user that they'll pay for a year of it, and if the subscription/membership services are actually useful, they'll keep paying for it to get the new features, both large and small. If they're the sort that just refuses to pay software subscription fees out of principle or whatever, they're not going to get a subscription just because there's no other license option. They'll switch to a DAW that offers the kind of license they prefer. People in their first year of a hybrid plan may even start digging the extra benefits of membership as well, the music publishing stuff and all that. Heck, they may even understand that continuing to pay their membership dues is the best way to keep the program they love alive. They just need to know that if they run out of money, or the DAW ceases sales and development (in the case of SONAR, again), they won't be left with nothing. That's really all there is to it. So here's hoping that BandLab will eventually offer a hybrid licensing plan for Sonar. I think it would be a win for all.

Verily. The dev team are chefs, Ashwin is waitstaff. Neither have the ability to do anything about what or how restaurant customers pay for their meal except relay customers' preferences to management. Management have many other restaurants to manage. Maybe to them, NuSonar is the fresh baked bread that comes with a meal. You can't go into the restaurant and only order the bread. Whatever else, diners may not shout the names of other restaurants in the dining room.😉

One troubleshooting test to either confirm or eliminate the external preamp from the equation would be to run a cable directly to your interface, using its built-in preamp instead of the WA. If you do that and the ringing goes away, you've narrowed down the possible causes considerably. If it doesn't, it ain't the WA.

1/4" patch cables come in 2 flavors. There's unbalanced, which is 1 conductor with shield/ground, and balanced, which is 2 conductors with shield/ground. The way to tell them apart is to look at the plugs. Unbalanced will have only tip and sleeve contacts, whereas balanced will add a ring contact. Depending on how far your interface is from the monitors, there may be little advantage to using TRS balanced cables. There can be less 60 (or 50, depending on where in the world you are) cycle hum with balanced cables, but that's for runs of a meter or more.

Duplicate.

Wow, I'm checking out Stars of the Lid and they had my heart aching from the first...bar? Do we have "bars" in this kind of ambient?😄 First loop, maybe? And then they fade into a sample of their doggy whining....this is soul music. @jkoseattle, I can see why you find them inspiring. It sounds like they're doing long looping using synths and sampled string instruments. I also use movie and TV dialog samples, as did SotL. A problem that I ran into was that my samples were too good. As in crystal clear, sampled via loopback from Netflix from their original Pro Tool'd expensive mic'd studio perfection. My favorite tool for dustying up samples is XLN's RC-20. It's kind of the "industry standard" for that sort of thing. Cymatics' Origin is a free tool that has a subset of RC-20's feature set. If you want to stick with free, it's probably the best of the freeware that does what it does. iZotope Vinyl is also good. I picked up RC-20 on sale for $39.95. That looks like a lot of money for what is for me a single-use effect that I could probably achieve by stringing a few of my huge toolbox of plug-ins together, but I made the "mistake" of trying a demo, and it got me where I wanted to go so quickly and easily that I knew it would be worth it.

As @David Baay said, he and I recently spent some time exploring exactly how Workspaces, um, work. He asked a similar question to yours in a different forum. I wanted to help out and I wanted to sort some of his questions for myself. When I work on a project, I can get crazy with opening windows and moving them to my second monitor and so on, and sometimes I want a way to snap back to my default layout. This is what we learned: It's a feature with two basic uses. One of the uses is to remove UI elements that the user may find distracting. I never use that, because I know how to just close things that I don't need to see. That feature is the box on the left when you open the Manage Workspaces dialog. Some must find it useful because the 6.5 update to Studio One introduced a similar feature, obviously inspired by Cakewalk. The other part of the feature, the one that I find useful, lets you apply Control Bar Layout, Window Layout, Track Control Manager settings, Keyboard shortcut settings, and Display options that are set in Preferences. Some things to understand about this feature is that most of the the "Load From Workspace" settings, are also loaded from projects (and templates). So the easiest way to get where you want to go would be just to make a template (or templates) with all of the settings you listed and open that template when you start a new project. The Workspaces feature allows you to save these settings, and apply them to projects that you've already opened. So, for instance, you've been working on a project and you've made a bunch of changes to the window layout, you've got the Multidock open to show Step Sequencer, etc. and you want to switch to a layout where you're using Console View for mixing. That's when you load a Workspace. And David's correct when he says that it's best not to set Apply Workspace on Project Load unless you want to reset all those things every time you open a project or template. That's the part of Workspaces that makes them scary. You've set up a project just how you want it, you save it, and then when you open it, your workspace gets applied and you lose all of your options. To sum it up, you don't need to use the Workspaces feature to do what you want to do. Just make some templates with those settings the way you want them and load them when you start a new project and you'll be fine. The stock templates will reset the track controls and window layout, which is what you're struggling with, so either modify them or create your own. One of the slickest features of NuSonar is the ability to resize Console strips, and that also gets saved with projects and window layouts. Footnotes: 1. if you want to save project-specific window layouts once you get rolling with a project, maybe get cozy with Screensets. While David and I were shaking out Workspaces, I got to know them because I thought they might apply to his situation. I understand how they work, but haven't made them part of my workflow. 2. "None" is actually a workspace that gets saved when you load a named workspace. It's your safety net. If you get into trouble when applying a Workspace, go back to None and it will put your settings back to whatever they were before you applied the workspace. It's also a good idea to save your preferred options as a "Bronxio's" workspace so that if you forget that you have "Apply Workspace on Project Load" checked, you can revert back to it more easily. Good luck and let us know once you have a handle on it.

I agree. There have been people requesting it from the start of NuSonar. If there is resistance from TPTB, I don't understand why. Did it cause some kind of trouble back when CbB allowed us to not only set custom colors using theming, the custom colors in Preferences also worked on a lot of elements. The only side effect for me was that I could read everything better once I got a set of colors dialed in. I never hurt anyone with it.

For a feature to be added, it must first be requested, and the place to do that is in the Feedback forum.

It's not. So many stories of his jerk behavior have come out and it's harder for me to separate that from the art when it's a lyricist who writes a lot about the interpersonal. I can shrug off Eddie Van Halen's legendary jerkdom because his music doesn't require letting it in close to my heart. It's just kick-***** rock 'n' roll, and as such, who cares if the people making it made life miserable for those around them. Part of Simon's genius is that his music invites you to get close, to empathize with the singer(s). With music like that, if I know that the people creating it are jerks, it interferes.

Wow, @Sal Sorice, my mind can't shake the idea of "Ticking" being a Sidney Lumet picture. Guy who was bullied in school comes home from....maybe military service. He visits the neighborhood bar and grill because he hears that one of the few people he got along with, a black kid, is waiting tables there. The old crew who used to push him around shows up. Things go downhill, he pulls a knife. His friend tries to get it away from him, somehow gets stabbed. He remembers that the club owner used to keep his WWII service weapon underneath the till in case of robbery. Taupin fit a 2 hour movie into a 7-minute song.

Whoa, hadn't listened to that one in decades, forgot how great it was. Thanks for mentioning it. Caribou came out at the height of my appreciation for Elton John. 50 years ago, the hidden-in-plain-sight clue of "grow up straight and true blue" sailed right over my head. Adds more poignancy and clarity to the mystery of what triggered the tragedy. Now the picture it paints of this kid maybe just trying to have a beer in peace at a blue collar bar and maybe getting shoved around for his mannerisms....the story is more complete.

It's nice to think that they'd just sand the offending logo off and do something useful with them, but I don't think that's how it works. Unless there's some mechanism for Customs and Border Protection to be an agency that sells things, and I doubt that there is, it's going to be disposal for these musical instruments. I'm with those who say these no doubt playable instruments shouldn't have Gibson's trademarked logo on them at all. First off, and I know that as an aficionado of oddball guitars I am probably not neurotypical regarding these matters, I would not wish to own or play a guitar with Gibson's or Fender's logo on the headstock that wasn't made and sold by Gibson or Fender. I don't understand the appeal. I have a defiant punk attitude toward brand worship. And I've never wanted to play the same kind of guitar that everyone else is using. Give me something that's shaped like a 335 or a Strat but says Aria or Behringer on the headstock and I'm fine. Better still, give me something that's not shaped like a common guitar but plays and sounds great and I'm even happier. I felt this way almost from the start of my desire to play guitar back in the mid 70's. The axe I wanted was an Ovation Viper (which I eventually did own) or Fender Musicmaster (ditto). My first good instrument was a Hofner Club Bass like Tina Weymouth played in Talking Heads. The second was a (maligned at the time) non-reverse Gibson Firebird with (maligned at the time) P-90's. When I had to sell these instruments to get cash, I refrained from selling the Firebird to a guy who wanted to rip the P-90's out and put in humbuckers, as was the custom at the time. Nobody cares about the logo on the headstock but some musicians and guitar aficionados. If I'm playing in front of people and get a good sound with my plywood Behringer, anyone who knows anything about guitars is going to think "wow, he's getting such a good sound from that cheapo Behringer." If I'm getting a just okay sound out of a copy guitar with a Gibson logo on it, is anyone going to look at it and think "sounds okay, but wowee a GIBSON?" Moreover, the existence of counterfeit major brand guitars actually leads to guitar heads wondering if maybe you're playing a fake. Nobody is going to suspect that my beloved Peavey Foundation Bass is a fake because nobody would fake a Peavey. But they might squint at a sunburst Les Paul wondering if I'm actually playing a real one. The only context I can think of where it might be appropriate would be in a tribute band where you don't want to risk taking your real sunburst Les Paul out of the house.

I actually like the drum grid view. It's setting it up and keeping it set up that harshes my mellow. Thanks to the advice and encouragement given by some of the people in this topic, that seems to be more often now. I've learned better when it requires a chicken sacrifice rather than a goat, etc. I ain't hatin', I think it's a fine editing paradigm, one that not all other DAW's have. If the drum grid was poop, I'd forget about it and wouldn't whinge about how tricky it is to get it to work.

Well done. Now the thing to do is to sit down with a project with some audio or sequenced notes and run through a few presets in each of the 38. I should have done this sooner than I did. Anyone who does this is guaranteed some "holy crap I didn't know it could do this" moments. And we should all get the most we can from our tools, right? It's not a collection of simple "does what it says on the tin" FX as you might expect from something they let people use for free. As is customary with MeldaProduction, what you see on the front panel is the tip of an iceberg. You have a "tuner" that is polyphonic and also a realtime pitch-to-MIDI converter. You have a spectrum analyzer that lets you call up analysis profiles from different genres to compare with your song's overall balance. You have an EQ that lets you apply each band's settings to harmonics of the center frequency (great for taming cymbal pings). You have a compressor that lets you create custom compression or expansion curves using spline curves. They all share some features like the ability to analyze the level of incoming audio and adjust their output level to match it so that your ears are less likely to get fooled. I don't usually talk about it much, but with the bundle upgrade, the audio processors let you combine parameters within each plug-in, so that for instance you can make a single control that adjusts both filter Q and frequency at the same time. And then automate it. That's what the "multiparameter" system is. Some of them will now also let you modulate any parameter(s) you want. If the upgraded plug-in has that feature, you can choose any parameter (or multiparameter) and control it with an LFO, triggered ADSR, MIDI CC, or follower, where the parameter will change in response to input level. There's built-in oversampling, with separate settings for playback and render. Very importantly for those who think the stock UI's are frumpy, you can change theme (text, control style) and color. I switch to Argon theme and have my own custom color set that I exported and apply to all of the plug-ins. The Online Preset Exchange will let you download presets that other users have created. Unfortunately, a lot of rubbish presets got uploaded years ago when they were trying to encourage use of the feature, but (especially with MAnalyzer, MLoudnessAnalyzer, MRhythmizer and the synths) there are some gems. I think the Preset Exchange is an overlooked feature with a lot of unused potential. Upgraded or not, all of them are able to process in LR mode, MS mode, and left or right or mid or side only (and separately). So anything that affects stereo imaging can be switched so that whatever differences were being induced between left and right would now be differences between mid and side. This can make for some....interesting psychoacoustic effects and is one of my favorite tricks. Late in the v. 16 release cycle, they quietly introduced "machine learning" which means that you can choose a parameter (or multiple parameters, or combined parameters) and have the plug-in analyze the file and somehow adjust the parameter(s) based on what's in the file. I don't understand how this works at all, but welcome to the land of MeldaProduction, where there are always features that you ignore because you don't understand what they do or how to use them. There are only so many hours in a day, days in a week, years in a life, etc. and at least for now I will opt out of figuring out how my flanger settings might benefit from "machine learning." But it's there if I ever get bored with everything else and want to mess with it.🙄