Starship Krupa

The Cakewalk subreddit can be entertaining in this regard, because its charter is to be about "all Cakewalk products," which now includes Next. Also because Reddit in general sort of has an "eternal sunshine of the spotless mind" thing going anyway. Each day dawns as if no question had ever been answered before. There was someone spluttering on there because they thought that when CbB stops activating, they were expected to switch to Cakewalk Next, which they'd tried and thought was too unlike CbB. Last week someone asked why there were two versions of "Cake Walk," and which one should they choose, Sonar or "Now." Thinking about it, I guess Ableton, Inc. would need to come up with a plan in the event they ever wish to release a product other than Live! IIRC, Twelve Tone Systems went the other direction, renaming the company Cakewalk after its biggest product. Then Cakewalk the program switched its name to SONAR (something I thought they'd never make stick, but they did), then Cakewalk the company ceased to exist and the product became Cakewalk (again), now Cakewalk is a sub brand of BandLab and has multiple DAW's, one named Sonar.

That feature existed in SONAR and Cakewalk by BandLab up until the Sonar UI. I'm sad that it was removed, and would like it to come back, even if it has to be an option rather than default. "Show clip color in clip headers"

I think this is a great idea.

I hadn't even noticed that. Another discrepancy between audio editing and MIDI editing that I'd like to see fixed. Swipe to heal is the biggest for me, but this is along the same lines, and since there's no other way to "heal" MIDI clips, we do end up using Bounce to Clip(s) often.

I see what you did there. I like that, too. "Snr" being the one with a few bits missing.

The lad is on fire. Okay, new set of contenders for fanonical abbreviations: "$onar" for the paid tier and "SoFT" for the freebie.

It would be nice if, for clarity's sake, free tier and membership versions had names that would distinguish one from the other. I like "Sonar Premium" for the one that has all the features. Or even "Sonar Full." Even if they're not official, we have to call them something. SPlat and CbB were widely used abbreviations that helped readers know what someone was using. I hereby propose to the forum "SoFT" as the abbreviation for Sonar Free Tier. The membership version could be "SoPre," maybe?

Since IMO, the "Entire Mix" option isn't spelled out enough in the documentation, I'm posting this description from one of the Cakewalk developers. What it boils down to is that if you are using more than one hardware out, for instance a headphone mix using sends, Entire Mix is not the best option. To expand, it's not an issue for people using interfaces that have only one stereo output, but for people like me, whose main interface has 5 stereo (10 mono) outputs. I use multiple outputs for things like referencing on different sets of speakers and cue mixes. In my projects, I have a dedicated bus where I can switch to whatever output I want. Instead of a hardware speaker switch, I use that bus. It works great, but if I were to export using "Entire Mix," Sonar would sum all of those outputs, whether my bus was switched to them or not. There are multiple ways to manage it. Of course there are, this is Sonar. My solution is to have a dedicated Export bus. All of my project templates include one. My Master bus routes to it rather than directly to a hardware out. It routes to the hardware out that feeds my main monitors. At export time, I choose to export only from this bus. That way I know that what I get in the export is what I'm hearing in the monitors. There are no FX on my Export bus except for a loudness meter. It's a great place to put it. Another solution is to mute any audio that's being routed to a hardware out. I don't do it this way because I might forget to mute it. I hope this clarifies what "Entire Mix" means and when you might not want to use it.

I believe that if you're having trouble activating legacy Soundspot plugins, you can contact Plugin Boutique support and they'll help you sort it out. Was never sure about the relationship between Soundspot and PB....

Since the new Cakewalk Core FX don't have any built-in help, I think that such a thing might be a way to go about equipping them with documentation.

Ah, I see the PA version has the usual bar along the bottom with the "?" on the right....thanks!

I had uninstalled due to, as Brian says, having other spread management tools like Mongoose, but I just now reinstalled it via Plugin Alliance. At least with the PA version, there don't seem to be any presets or any documentation or tooltips, so that might have also put me off. Does anyone know if there's documentation for the thing? It looks capable and has an attractive UI, but I can't figure out what all of the controls do. Mr. Swivel and his associates went to the trouble to create the thing, then gave me a license for it, and I'd like to give it a fair shake.

Doing a cleanup on a Windows system is not a bad thing to do. Programs like CCleaner that do it on autopilot can, as you discovered, lead to unintended consequences. I'm sure that there are settings in CCleaner Pro that will allow you to bypass certain procedures such as messing with your redistributables. CCleaner apparently believes that everything should run fine with only the very latest redistributables installed, and that's clearly not the case. Other than that issue, have you found your system to be "running better" after using CCleaner? There are many Windows tweaks that a user can do to extend the life of older PC's. Simple ones like disabling visual effects that look neato but actually just make things take longer to execute. Power plan settings. BIOS settings.

You're posting in the Sonar forum, so I'll assume that you are using Sonar (and probably also have Cakewalk by BandLab installed). The location you should place your metronome wave files is C:\Cakewalk Content\Sonar\Metronome. If you chose the default locations when you installed Sonar.

Ozone is not "a plugin." Ozone, Neutron, Nectar, and RX are all suites. iZotope calls them that. I agree with some of what people are saying here. The need to keep every version of every iZotope suite I've ever owned is a PITA, and it would be great if they could somehow fix that. For individual plugins, I don't care how high the version numbers get as long as they're not trying to charge me for upgrades in name only (Waves). Ozone 12 looks to have some interesting additions, and if I were a pro who used Ozone I'd likely snag it. But I'm a hobbyist who has Ozone Advanced and has not touched it in over a year. To me, it's a GREAT tool for applying to rough mixes to sweeten them up. Since the dismantling of my recording space, I haven't been recording anyone else, so no need for rough mixes. As for the individual plug-ins in the suite, they look great and sound great, but they are resource hogs. iZotope really needs to tighten their code. It was so disappointing to try Neoverb when I finally got it and see how they had wrapped the ecellent Exponential algorithms in their signature bloat code.

Thanks, 9! I would have missed this if you hadn't bumped it. Wasn't the Stay Creative bundle a gift during pandemic lockdown? IIRC, the first place I saw the name DJ Swivel was a collaboration with Soundspot. Since one of the most common uses of Soundspot plug-ins back when they existed was to qualify for PB BOGO's, I wound up with many Soundspot licenses. Some quite good, others useless (or worse). I don't have all of them installed any more, but there are still some gems.

This. Sampletron 2 is great because of the vast variety of samples from obscure analog sample players. Optigan sounds are not easy to find, and they include lots of stuff that the Mellotron tapes had that most Mellotron emulations omit, like the loops and sound effects. They are wonderfully lo-fi. With SampleTank 4 Max v2, the sounds I use the most are from Syntronik and SampleTron. Why they dropped those and kept the antique Miroslav Philharmonik is a mystery. Miroslav Philharmonik's samples are so old and sampling methods have advanced so much since it was created. Whereas the whole point of SampleTron is that the samples are lo-fi, so it's going to be a long time before it's obsolete. Syntronik's sounds are good and add-on packages were still being developed just a few years ago. The samples in the new packages are really good. As I've said before, "Forget it Jake, it's IK Multimedia." Their ways are often inscrutable. Their products are often quite a bargain.

This is supposed to be the latest (and likely last) version of the "CbB Tools" suite, which includes VST Inventory. Make sure you're running the latest. It's a link to Scook's Cakewalk utilities page.

It did, for the Music Production Suite. I picked it up at the time, despite not even having half of the products. One theory is that at some point in the checkout process, there was a Schrödinger's cat paradox where the purchaser both did and did not own Music Production Suite, and that the package itself acted as its own qualifying purchase. Another theory was based on the fact that the "glitch" was discovered and spread by the plug-in addict community within hours of the notification email going out but not corrected for weeks. This theory is that it was a deliberate error designed to bring in some cash flow toward the end of the financial year. I tend to lean toward the second theory, although I supposed they could possibly be complementary. In my case, I paid about $150 for a suite that had never gone on sale for less than about $550.00. Some would say that iZotope "lost" $400 on my purchase of the license, but the fact of the matter is that I would never have given them any money at all if I couldn't have gotten the license at the $150 price. Since there is no cost of goods in fulfilling a purchase, they only "lose" $400 if the buyer had been waiting for a sale and was willing to pay the $550. So in my case, and likely many others, they took in $150 each from a bunch of people who didn't feel that they needed all of those products (I already had licenses for Neutron, RX, and the Exponential reverbs in the suite), but who just couldn't turn down owning the whole enchilada for $150. In the case of this glitch, (and others like it) it came at just the right time of the year for the cash to make them look good to the bank. Also, a problem I think companies have with deep discounts is that they can lower the perceived value of the product as well as pi55ing off people who already paid a much higher price. Some companies go the route of having "educational" prices as a way to shake some money out of people who traditionally don't have enough discretionary income to pay the full price. So what we call "glitches" might sometimes be deliberate, ways to get less well-heeled people (also cheapskates and bargain hunters) to open our wallets, like educational discounts but unofficial. There's also the added benefit of a lot of eyes on the plug-in deals forums. People are usually way psyched to get a glitch deal, and they say so. Good advertising.

It's a good opportunity to get Compactor, which is a new dynamics processor that they added to the free Essentials bundle. I haven't tried it yet but it looks handy.

Hehe, amazing that we used almost the exact same words to describe Jon and the Nightriders! The Eternal Flame of rock instrumental music. Yeah, John can frickin' BURN on the mandolin picking.

Hmm. Turns out I already had this one, but when I open the About box it's credited to Steve "scook" Cook. S is the creator of multiple useful SONAR/CbB utilities and a user who is sorely missed around here. He split not long after the announcement that CbB was going to become Sonar and switch to payware. Maybe he took over maintenance from bitflipper? Anyway, my guess was that I had at least twice the number that @GTsongwriter does, and althought I fell short of that, I didn't fall short of it by much. Over 800. However, that doesn't count individual instruments in KONTAKT, MSoundFactory, and Decent Sampler Does anyone actually care to see my full list? Running this utility was a good thing to do for the sake of maintenance; I saw where there were a couple of duplicate installations.

I checked with Google, and the Adams 7V's were among the ones I tried at Guitar Center. I preferred the JBL's. They just sounded "right" to my ears. Which as I said, can potentially be an issue, but with monitors I like, I will listen more closely. Also, since my DAW computer is my main computer, I listen to everything through those monitors, so I get used to how they sound on every type of audio. Movies, TV, games, whatever. The real issue I can see: other people's tastes are other people's tastes. Especially with fellow hobbyists such as myself. When I was considering the JBL's, I Googled for reviews and determined that they could be a decent upgrade from what I had been using (passive Event 20/20's with a vintage Crown power amp). Despite having done so in the past, I would no longer buy monitors without being able to listen to them first. I don't know where you're located, I hope not too far from a store where you can do so? Especially with the budget you have, gotta listen first. GC near me has a nice setup where you can Bluetooth your phone into their mixer and reference with whatever music you want. One of the songs on my phone is "That's When I Reach For My Revolver" by Mission of Burma. This guy wandered into the monitor room and I got an "Oregon Trail Generation former post punker" vibe off him and switched to that song. He came over and told me that he used to cover it in one of his bands. Then he proceeded to take the used pair of 305p's I had been eyeing up to the counter! I wasn't bummed, I was psyched for him, and sure enough I found a pair for $40 cheaper in the next couple of days. I teased the GC guys about the possibility of getting a commission on the sale, but I guess commissions are not something to joke about with GC employees. Like joking about weapons at the TSA checkpoint. Really, despite there being MUCH pricier monitors in that room, I didn't have the "damn I wish I could afford those instead of the JBL's" experience. I really did like them the best. Maybe someday I'll find some I like better, but for now, I'm great with the cheaper sleepers.

I don't have experience with any of these, but I recently purchased a pair of JBL 305p mkII monitors and DANG I couldn't be happier with them. I figured that with 5" woofers, I'd be using my subwoofer, but I wound up turning it off. I don't know how they do it, but those things vibrated my desk until I put mouse pads under them. The waveguide tweeter seems to be responsible for an amazing stereo image. I see that the Neumann's have waveguide tweeters, so upvote for that. There's also a JBL 306p with (surprise) a 6" woofer, but when I auditioned them at GC, I determined that the 305's were plenty. 305p's can be found for around $200 a pair used. I realize that you're looking to spend 5X that, so they're probably not in your range of consideration. My only concern is that they sound so good that they may be flattering my mixes, so I'll still keep my multiple sets of reference speakers to make sure everything translates. Before I started packing things up I had 4 sets of monitors I could switch between. Now I'm down to 2.

Not known by whom? Back in the mid-90's there was a surf music revival inspired by its use in the soundtrack for Pulp Fiction. My girlfriend at the time and I were way into it, I'd been a fan from way back due to my Southern California childhood. There were some amazing players in the first round, and in the 90's revival as well. One of my favorite bands from back then is The Mermen. Saw them live many times in SF. Jon and the Nightriders were keeping the flame alive as early as 1981. Jon revived the band in the mid-90's and I got to see them at a KFJC festival. Jon is frickin' AMAZING on guitar. KFJC in Santa Clara, CA was having them back in the mid-90's. I see that they just had one in a club in San Jose last week. Likely an annual event to this day. I don't remember where you're located, but if it's near a city of size, you'll like be surprised if you Google for surf shows in the area. KFJC had a DJ named Phil Dirt who had started at the station in 1964 and had a weekly surf instrumentals show up until 2005. He and his show's popularity surged in the mid-90's. Since then, surf instrumental music has never really gone away. Here's an Australian surf instrumental supergroup, I think the only time I've seen a Gretsch used in the genre (recent fave of mine): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nf-do84rkKA&t=75s Here are The Mermen (creativity and virtuosity): https://youtu.be/f2XNeeR5iyk?si=EOfsIrGY6-9GsGyL&t=507 Here are reunited Jon and the Nightriders (virtuosity): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=41YvSrk5paQ I saw Jon and the Nightriders at one of the KFJC festivals and damn, that boy can PLAY. If you dig those Surf Coasters, there is a world of discovery awaiting you!