Starship Krupa

If I have to get on Faecebook to get the content, I'll pass. The only time I do anything Cakewalk-y on there is when I have a new custom theme to *****. As far as crossposting, any information I post is property of ME and I will post it anywhere I please. Approaching BandLab for any kind of promo money is a good way to be disappointed. It's just not how they roll. As far as why YouTubers not being around the forum, well, unfortunately, it's apparently not even worth it for them to announce new content here, as so few hits come from this forum (or any, for that matter). That's according to @John Vere of Cactus Studios fame, who remains a stalwart forum participant. @AdK Studios is the only YouTuber who still bothers to announce new videos in the Tutorials section. It's sad. Not even XelOhh posts announcements here any more. One reason I can think of is that we of the forum tend to be veterans who feel less in need of tutorials. Which always turns out not to be true, at least in my 5-years-of-using-Cakewalk case. My eternal inability to figure out VocalSync was solved in a Lorene "The Produce Aisle" Anderson video. She only started using the program last year, and sometimes does videos she calls "Cakestumbles" where she just flounders around discovering things. Sounds useless, maybe, but is not at all. In those videos, due to her naivete, she stumbles across features and workflows that I've missed or forgotten about. She's one creator of Cakewalk videos that I've practically begged to check the place out, if only just to lurk and glean some good tips to share with her viewers, and AFAIK, she's had none of it. Of course, being female is unfortunately sometimes a gateway for poor treatment in forums (this one not included, our sistas in the pit are invariably warmly welcomed). I guess people would rather have valuable information scroll away into oblivion and answer the same basic questions over and over again. Faecebook. Reddit, YouTube comments....bleah. Although I do sometimes drop in and help on the Cakewalk Reddit. Anyway, we've all come through with the Plugin Alliance (and other) .spp's. Just about every PA effect has been covered in the past 48 hours. All hail the helpful Cakewalk forumites!

Whoa. Nastiness indeed. Good heavens. Doesn't get much worse than that. I had no idea about this. They came with the first version of Mixcraft I got and I didn't care for them (I'm a "mix with your ears and eyes" person and their GUI's were too rudimentary). Also my foray into the use of Mixcraft coincided with a wave of excellent loss-leader and other freeware plug-ins (MEqualizer, MCompressor, MPhaser, MFlanger, MComb, and OrilRiver beat the utter kiddy-fiddling snot out of that collection), which I migrated to. What Acoustica/Mixcraft are now doing with their installer is allowing optional installation of "legacy" bundled plug-ins so that longtime users can still open old projects without getting "missing plug-in" errors. The default is to not install them. They're listed on the website as "Classic," not by the developer name. Seems like they had to compromise between completely distancing themselves and making things difficult for their user base. It's not as if the "fiddler in the clink" makes any money from it. Acoustica are unfortunately not shy about still bundling 32-bit plug-ins (despite my bug reports informing them when 64-bit versions became available ?), so they probably didn't drop them for their 32-bithood. Maybe they dropped them because they're simply not as good as later freeware products (and their current bundle, which is a nice collection by ToneBoosters). Anyway, this is the DAW Users Hall of Shame rather than the DAW Manufacturers Hall of Shame. Still, thanks for pointing me in the direction of the dirt. Icky as it is, it's good to be informed. On the topic of DAW Users Hall of Shame, I probably qualify for my follies with REAPER. I first tried it about a decade ago and have every so often since and always come to the same conclusion: too much technology standing between me and the creation of music. The first few tries, it took me the better part of 2 hours just to get a track armed for recording (compared to a minute or two with Mixcraft and Cakewalk). This was back when the manual was user-written LINUX-style, with the basics (like, uh, how to start the damn thing recording audio or MIDI) being left out. Before the REAPER brigade chimes in, yes, this has been well-remedied in the intervening years, but the menus have gotten even bigger and more daunting. REAPER is just too powerful for little ol' me, I guess. So I'm either a dunderhead for having such a hard time with it or a dunderhead for continuing to try it even after my initial unfortunate experiences (trying the same thing expecting different results, etc.). It sounds like something I'd like, endlessly customizable, light on resources, stable....but it just reminds me of trying to use GIMP after learning on Photoshop. Also, despite my hunger for a platform for live improvisation of electronic music, I repeatedly come up blank when trying to use Ableton Live. Magazine tutorials, etc. No dice. I guess I still think of songs too much in linear form. It looks like so much fun, and so many people I admire get killer results with it. Not me, at least so far. WAAAHHH, I wanna use Ableton!

It's interesting to note the name of the musical it's from, and how if someone said "Gay Divorce" today, it would sound like the topic for a daytime talk show. "Today we're going to be talking about gay divorce and how it affects the lives...." I do sometimes trip about these cultural timeline things. Yup, the far off year that Prince sang about 40 years ago was 1999. The year The Matrix was released, which was 22 years ago. In 1972, when DSotM was released, Sergeant Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band had only been out for 5 years, yet it seemed like the equivalent of "classic rock" at the time. They made it in the hallowed halls of EMI Abbey Road with some of the same engineers that worked with The Beatles! I bought This is the Moody Blues in 1975 and to me (at the ripe old age of 13), that was "old" music. "Nights in White Satin" had been a hit a few years earlier as an "oldie," all of 5 years after its initial release. A greatest hits package where the earliest tracks were from 5 years previous was a career retrospective. Those guys had thrashed out 7 classic albums in 6 years, which is what you did back then, because you knew the ride would soon be over. Wait more than a year and the kids will have moved on to something else.

Ooh, do dish the dirt. I'm trying to figure out who that might be. Mixcraft have more to answer for from still be bundling 32-bit VST's in 2023, IMO.

Following @MimoJP's lead, I posted some .SPP files for Plugin Alliance (and others) FX that his list didn't cover. Elysia, SPL, etc. Here's the thread Mimo created (maybe Mimo can change the thread title to Preset Menu Dropdown Fix?):

Following the example set by @MimoJP, I've whipped up a few. elysia.spp contains the factory presets for: alpha master compressor alpha mix compressor mpressor more bx.spp contains the factory presets for: refinement boom rockrack saturator Masterdesk cleansweep pro tuner meter (it's a complement to the PA file that MimoJP will be uploading) Lindell-Maag.spp contains the factory presets for: EQ2 6X-500 7X-500 PEX-500 ChannelX SPL.pp has the presets for: Attacker Plus Mo-Verb Plus De-Verb Plus Ampeg B15N.spp and McDSP EC300.spp are self-explanatory Ampeg B15N.spp elysia.spp Lindell-Maag.spp McDsp EC300.spp more bx.spp SPL.spp

By whom?

Oh indeed, please do!

Oh is right click drag marquee select ever your friend in Cakewalk! I spent my first year or so unaware of it, and dang were things clunky.

I know, I know. They're actually still on their Holiday 50% off everything sale.

Also if you happen to acquire enough spares, you can build a system for a friend in need, which is what I did. A Gateway system that was a friend's daughter's middle school computer (she has since graduated from college!). I replaced its Core 2 Duo with a Q6600 and put an SSD in it and it was my main DAW system for a few years, then my shop computer until just last year. It originally had a preternaturally fast 500G WD Blue spinner. It now has an nVidia Quadro and a pulled HP 400W PSU that I dropped a Noctua fan into. I gave it to a computerless friend. Runs Cakewalk just fine as long as you don't load it up with too many fancy plug-ins, which he doesn't. Yeah, Cakewalk is based on ancient code, but that means that that code was made to run well on Pentium D's and the like. Throw it at a Core 2 Quad system with 8G of RAM and it's quite happy. I installed it on an old Core 2 Duo laptop that I fixed up for another friend, and whaddaya know: if you stick to lighter plug-ins like the stock plug-ins and ProChannel, it parties like it's 2009.

Oh, hey, not disputing that headroom is good when it comes to PSU's. My daily driver has a CorsairCX650 that I snagged new in box on Craig's List. Total top of the line. If you're going to order an aftermarket PSU, there's no reason to go with anything under 500W. I merely wanted to point out that it's not mandatory. I had a pulled HP 400W supply that I built into a Q6600 system for a friend. Over the years I'd replaced its fan with a Noctua, and it's pretty quiet.

I already have every one of the A|A|S products included in the bundle. The threshold would be two soundpacks and I'd give away the rest of the serials, but alas. My #1 feature request of A|A|S Player would be to expose reverb as a parameter. Those patches sound amazing, but I like to use my own reverb. But I get that they really want you to buy Chromophone and/or whatever synth goes with your soundpacks. BTW, even though their installer no longer spews duplicate DLL's all over the landscape, there's still no way to tell it which formats you want it to install. So if you don't want the VST2's and AAX's, you still have to manually delete them. And @User 905133, I know you love you some Objeq Delay, that wasn't directed at you. I, too think that in these days, as much communication as you can get with your MIDI controller is important. With the establishment of the DAW as a live performance instrument.

I will betray my age and suggest that the name "Cordoba" evokes (and always will) Fine Corinthian Leather.

Forgive my ignorance, but would something like MCCGenerator help control Objeq Delay? Objeq Delay is a secret weapon, in all its wacked out esoteric glory. More patches would always be welcome, of course (although it has over 250 stock ones). It's hard to have it not do something interesting to whatever sound I put it on. On the weird sound tool continuum, Glitchmachines' manglaz occupy the far end of controllability and ready gratification, then Freakshow Industries', then Unfiltered Audio's, with Objeq Delay the easiest to get usable weird sounds from.

Nice. Yeah, let's see it. I'd love to have access to a trove of retired PC components. Parts that IMO should never be tossed are case, power supply, fans, and CPU cooler (within a certain range of sockets). Right now, my DAW system is using a hand-me-down case, which also has fans in it from a Pentium D-based HP full-tower that I found on the curb about 10 years ago, then retired and mostly stripped about 6 years ago. The HP carcass had been sitting outside for the past half dozen years waiting to be taken to a metal scrapper. I needed a fan for a new build last week and voila, it still had a pair of pretty nice (Delta) ones. As long as they have at least 3 wire connectors, a modern motherboard can control their speed. The HP's 450W power supply is currently still running in a system I gave to a friend. Sometimes "office boxes" have nice fans in them, as quiet can be a selling point for office PC's. They get even quieter once you set up cooling profiles with your fancy motherboard and slow the speeds down. They're also rugged, because nobody wants their office computer's fan to start making funny noises. Since cases are pretty standardized, there's no reason to dump them until they are well and truly done for. I just spent $50 on a new one, and I'm sure that there are multiple retired possible case donor PC's sitting in garages within a block radius of me. The need for 500+W power supplies is exaggerated these days. CPU's and graphics cards are being built to use less power than they were 10 years ago, and if you're not gaming and just using your processor's on-board graphics, 350W is probably more than enough. My main rig has a passively cooled GT 1030 in it, which is very light on power consumption.

Getting your DAW on with less-than-cutting edge hardware is the opposite of shame. Until 6 months ago I was pretty happy with my i7-3770. Then I found too good a deal to pass up on Craigs List and I'm running an i7-6700. Your 4790 is quite capable of doing anything you're likely to ask of it, and sometimes sitting down at my older system feels like putting on a nice pair of perfectly worn-in shoes. Comfortable, familiar. I know where everything is, before I built a new computer and started keeping things tidier. Maybe it's the punk rock thing: it's cool to make music on banged up no-name instruments that "serious" musicians would shun. ?

I got the email complete with links to nowhere, then discovered that I had picked up an Aligner license somewhere along the way. I think I must have got it in exchange for taking the survey, tested it against MAutoAlign and found it wanting and then forgot about it. This year, none of the links in the mail work, but I did some window shopping anyway. Nugen must be one of those companies that Vojtech Meluzin really, uh, looks up to, because everything that looked useful to me was already duplicated or bested by a Meldaproduction product I already owned. MSpectralPan anyone? MLoudnessAnalyzer, MCompare? I also now have the iZotope Music Production Suite v.5, so what does Nugen have that I can use?

This was my bozo mistake.

A few years ago a friend was looking for just such a device (although she wanted it so that she could capture her piano playing and maybe some outdoor guitar playing). The H1 n was the best deal. I even got it to act as a recording interface using the ASIO driver for another of Zoom's products. Lotta latency, though, IIRC. @Brian Lawler, A friend gave me a Beats Pill from the "rubberized" era that had turned sticky. I couldn't get it to come off so I carefully dusted it with corn starch and it's been fine. Looks-wise, not so attractive, but at least I don't get gooey hands from picking it up. The corn starch just sticks to it and ends the stickiness.

No, you're not missing anything. The only way to load VST3 presets at this time is via the VST3 menu. The only way to get them into Cakewalk's internal preset manager is either manually or with something like AutoHotKey. IMO, it's fine for the Sonitus FX, because they have their own preset managers, but if you have a lot of brainworx (and their sub brands) plug-ins, it's a pain.

Just guessing, I'd say that the OP likely isn't much of a tempo extraction or audio-to-MIDI conversion person either. The things that Melodyne does in Cakewalk, I like having access to them, but I rarely (if ever) use them. The use cases just don't seem to come up. I don't tempo extract because I play everything to a click (and if I wander, I play it again rather than making the rest of the song wander with it). The audio-to-MIDI sounds cool, but I just never use it. If I want MIDI, I bang it in from a keyboard.

Nah. Those are instructions for doing a new installation. With an existing installation of Windows Home, you can do an in-place upgrade. All it does is download and enable the Pro features. No business with partitions or any of that. The way it went for me was that once I had the key I went to Settings/Update & Security/Activation and clicked on "Change Product Key." Windows accepted the key and then told me to stand by while it added the new features. That's all it is, just adding features, it's about as disruptive as upgrading any other piece of software. Of course, as with any other change you make to the OS, you would do well to create a System Restore Point before proceeding, and since you're already backing up your projects and data files anyway, no special action is suggested there. ? I did neither of these things since the system is no longer mission-critical. It did the downloads, the upgrade, and rebooted. Now it's running Windows 10 Pro. Since I already had a full license on it, and this is a full (not upgrade) license, I wrote down the old key before I did the Pro upgrade. We'll see if it can be reused elsewhere. It's a Dell system so it might be Dell-only.

I think that maybe not all "OEM" licenses are created equal. Dell, Lenovo, HP, the biggies ship with OEM licenses that are tightly tied to the motherboard. I'm a Dell man when it comes to pre-built. You can entirely wipe a Dell laptop and reinstall Windows 10 (and it's usually Pro, due to Dell's business PC orientation) and it won't even ask you for a key. With my recent build, the donor case was from a Micro Center PC. Was it a completely new build? I replaced everything but the optical drive and the case and fans. I'm sure the license is an OEM, but it behaved just as a retail one would have. It's like the "Grandpa's Hammer" thought puzzle: grandpa bought a hammer in 1947, broke the handle in 1977 and replaced it, then broke one of the claws in 1997 and replaced the head. You inherited his beloved hammer when he passed in 2017. Question: is that hammer one that was purchased by your grandpa in 1947? He owned it for 70 years. Or did he? At what point did it become not the same hammer? Were there actually 3 different hammers? For the first 16 years of my using PC clones, I had the grandpa's hammer computer. I frankensteined an XT clone in 1989. Then I upgraded it a few parts at a time, always transferring at least 2 or 3 things to the upgraded build. So effectively, until about 2005 when I got my first used Dell, I had the "same" computer. Starting with MS-DOS all the way up through Windows XP. Even though every single component wound up being replaced at some point or other, there was always a legacy from the previous build. Microsoft seem to lean toward the motherboard as being the "computer," but they will allow you to put in a new one and keep the license. So who can say when it becomes an entirely new system?

Yeah, but Massive has more of the sounds I can use. I'm a veteran of A|A|S' synths and Iris 2, so I know about limiting simultaneous voices. ? Diversity in tones, yes. As a guitar player and drummer, I've experimented with different pickups, materials, strings, heads in pursuit of the sound I hear in my head. With any instrument, it either inspires or it doesn't. I can fire up Hybrid 3 or Massive and become inspired to make a new song right just based on the patch. Synths like bx_oberhausen, Waves Elements, TAL Noisemaker, Surrealistic MG-1, they're for leads and basses (to me). A|A|S soundpacks, Hybrid, Massive, Vacuum Pro are where the songs start, with their huge pads and arps. Iris 2 is good for atmospheric intros and breakdowns.