Starship Krupa

From the symptom, I'd say that the instrument is trying to use data that it doesn't have fast enough access to. After playing through the first time, it's been cached, so no problem. We trace it upstream to see what's going on. @Jerry Gerber, when you say that the non-DAW system is dedicated to the Vienna Symphonic Orchestral Cube, what exactly to you mean by that? Are you using the dedicated system as you would an external MIDI synth, where you send MIDI data to it and route the audio back to the DAW system? I assume that the cellos and basses are being played back by the VSOC system. If so, that narrows it down to the issue being with that system, since the DAW is just telling it to play the note. Does this project use the VSOC for instruments that occur before the cellos and basses kick in (probably so). You're loading samples from an SSD, so inherent disk transfer speed shouldn't be a bottleneck. Have you tried running your SSD diagnostics? The programs that you download from the drive's manufacturer, that is. When the glitch happens, is it the first time in the project that those instruments (or specific articulations) are used in the project? If you turn on the system(s) and play a cello or bass note from your controller before loading the project, do you get the same glitch? If so, that might indicate an issue with loading those specific samples, but if not, it could be that it only happens when VSOC loads all of the other samples first. It may be out of room for pre-loading. Finally, what does Vienna's support forum have to say about it?

What makes it superior to Windows' own indexing? My first guess is versatility, but what form does that take? Another fave utility of mine is Auslogics Duplicate File Finder. Not hard to figure out what its purpose is from the name. It's great for sniffing out things like redundant installers, and instances where I somehow installed program or plug-in content in multiple locations.

This requires getting it right in the first place, which is of course no mean feat. I've also had it happen where I've saved a track template from a working track and had it fail to load properly, with the point of failure either being the port routing or the blank drum pane. That is such an understatement that it should be written in 48pt. flashing red letters. It's ludicrously unintuitive. Even after the user searches with Google to figure out where to go to apply a drum map, what does the resulting menu say? "Create New Drum Map." WTH? I want to use an existing drum map, not create a new one. And yes, after nearly a decade of using the software I understand that what it really means is "create a new drum mapping." It's like saying that paper cheques and ATM-only cards were "not as convenient" as debit cards. And Cakewalk's configuration is a bank that doesn't issue debit cards in 2024 because it was founded in an era before debit cards existed. Mapping is the paper checks, still useful if you want to put one in snail mail to pay your utility bill. The nostalgic frisson of writing out the amount in long hand with the amount in cents written as "and 42/100." The Drum Pane is the card. Rather than being able to use it at the point of sale, the user has to locate an ATM, withdraw cash, then go to where they want to spend the money. Where they notice other things they want to buy and realize they didn't withdraw enough cash to get everything. Having the menu only accessible in either Console View or Track View, rather than a right click in the Drum Pane itself or the PRV menu, is like trying to use an ATM-only card for a bank that doesn't have ATM's in the town where the user is on vacation. First, find an ATM. Then hope that it still has money. Then memorize the location so that you can drive back there every time you need more money. And then when you find the ATM again, it's now out of money because it's the Monday of a three day weekend. Party like it's 1989 (in Ibiza and you're out of refreshments)! Yes, since you don't use the feature, it's not a problem for you. You get paid in cash and only use the ATM to make deposits so you can use checks when you need to pay bills. No problem if the farmer's market doesn't accept your debit card because you always have cash.😄 There's a reason why I titled this topic "drum pane" rather than "drum maps." It's because I'm talking about that specific use case and I wanted any discussion to be about displaying the note names and being able to use the drum grid rather than triggering the usual "being able to change the routing of controllers to notes is part of my workflow and the versatility of the drum maps is so awesome." It's a joint account with an estranged spouse. Note mapping is note mapping and the drum grid is the drum grid and whatever they originally had in common is no longer relevant. Long past time for a divorce. Dang, I stretched that banking metaphor like saltwater taffy🤪 The mapping part of the feature is great, I've used it myself when I wanted to remap to the GM note layout so I can play finger drums with my left thumb on the kick and middle finger on the snare, and high hats and toms with the right hand. That part of Drum Maps is wicked useful, if a bit of a slog to set up. The other use of Drum Maps is just wicked in the original sense of the term.

And I'm not going to go to the trouble of learning a new DAW just to do one instrument. TBH, with the exception of Breaktweaker, I rarely even use a drum machine's internal loops, much less the sequencer. I prefer to program my own beats. Fixed.😄

That's one of the frustrating things, it's worked okay in the past, but then I go to do it again and am faced with the blankness. Yes, I've obviously missed a step somewhere, but for heaven's sake, should the whole house of cards depend on so many fiddly little bits? I was spoiled by how easy it is in my previous primary DAW. There's a button in the piano roll view where you can select which scale you want to use, and drum maps are listed in there. You click the button and choose a map. Done. Similar to instrument definitions in Cakeland, except that the program knows to display a drum grid editor when the user selects a drum map vs. a scale. To make your own custom drum map, you edit a text file where the format is [MIDI Note Number] [Drum Hit Name]. If you want to get fancier, you can open this file as a CSV in a spreadsheet and add an instrument's GUID so that it will load automatically whenever you put that instrument on a track. The last represents a bit of MIDI-fiddly, but it's fully graspable by me and only needs to be done once per virtual drum instrument. Ever after, all you have to do is click that Scale button and select it. Nothing else, no changing the MIDI track's output, no having to manually tell the piano roll view to switch to a drum grid, no having to go into a dialog and reset the mappings to point to the instrument rather than the hardware out. I don't even mind the Cakewalk Drum Map Editor that much. It has its idiosyncrasies, but I can navigate it. It's where the drum map gets applied to the PRV with the intention of showing a grid editor with note names that the process falls apart. As if by magic (or more realistically, some kind of advanced AI), that other program "knows" that when I select a drum map, I want to use it on the currently-selected track, that I want to use the drum grid to edit and that I want to see the names of the drum instruments over on the left. How could a program know such things? Machine learning? Maybe they're licensing some iZotope tech. Admittedly Cakewalk covers a wider variety of use cases: What if I want to use a drum map but don't want to also edit with a drum grid and drum kit names visible? What if I want to use a drum map, but have it apply to a MIDI track other than the one I currently have selected and am displaying in the piano roll? What if I want all of the mappings set to my external MIDI port instead of the drum VI that's associated with my currently selected track? What if I want to select a drum map just for the sake of selecting a drum map and then have it sit there doing jack crap? What if I find that performing half a dozen conceptually unrelated steps before I start laying down a beat enhances my creativity? What if I want my virtual drum machines to be so virtual that they don't even produce sound? For those times, Cakewalk has them beat (no pun intended). Why has no attention been given to this feature for so long? Did programmed drum beats fall out of fashion with "the kids?" Is it just for us old people with our "Blue Monday" and "I Feel Love?" Yes, it's something I'm doing wrong or omitting, but really, must it be so fragile that a veteran user of the program finds themselves so thwarted? Why is it that when I post about my frustrations, the majority of follow-ups talk about how they don't use the feature?

Spill. How do I use the diamonds with a virtual drum instrument? The only way that's ever worked for me is an instrument definition set to use MIDI channel 10. Yeah, once I manage to get a map to work, it mostly keeps working. Sometimes it doesn't, for no reason I can figure out. Setting up new drum maps is the worst minefield.

Every window or view that can be opened with a keystroke should be able to close (or collapse) with the same keystroke.

There have been many fulfilled requests in this forum, and many unfulfilled requests. Why certain requests have gone unfulfilled is food for thought.

I know that trick and have used it in the past, but I actually like using the drum grid. The times I've gotten it to work, that is. Actually, my favorite visual drum editing view in Cakewalk-land is the diamonds one I can only get if I map to an external MIDI port. Which is another WTF. The best drum editing view in the DAW can't be used with soft synths. And I have gotten it to work, for drum instruments that obey the GM standard mapping. It's the ones like AD2 (hands down the best sounding hits and articulations I've tried) and MDrummer that follow their own path which results in:

Every couple of years I make an effort, I try, I really do, to use the drum grid. And every time it ends in failure. This time I'm attempting to use Addictive Drums 2 to program a beat. I want to use the drum grid, with the names of the notes over on the left hand side. Step 1 I make a simple instrument track with Addictive Drums on it. Step 2 I go to Preferences and create a new drum map using the Addictive Drums 2 map I downloaded from the forum (including the step of, for some reason, having to change the Out Port for all of the instruments to Addictive Drums 2 instead of my MIDI interface). I know it sounds weird to say that I create a new drum map using an existing drum map, but I didn't make up this terminology. Step 3 I set the output of the MIDI strip in Inspector to use the Addictive Drums 2 map I just set up in Preferences. At this point I can play the drums using my MIDI keyboard. Step 4 I open the Piano Roll View, and I see that under "View," "Show/Hide Drum Pane" is checked. Yet what I see in my Piano Roll View is an empty grey box on the left, and a space with a set of vertical grid lines to its right. What I do not see is a drum editing grid with the drum note names. This drum track is so far the only MIDI track in the project, and I see in the PRV that it is the selected track. Not only is the process too many steps to take for what is a simple matter in every other DAW I've used, it's also needlessly obscure, and having to dance back and forth between Track View, Preferences, Inspector, and Piano Roll View is absurd. And of course, the worst thing about all this hassle is at the end of it, I still didn't achieve my simple goal of setting up a grid for programming drums with the drum names on the left. Any inspiration or even desire I had to work on the drum beat has evaporated. After almost 9 years of beating my head against this and sharing my frustrations I'm past the point of asking for the process to be improved, streamlined, simplified, or getting any changes whatsoever. All I can do is vent, so I am venting. Here's the fruit of about an hour of hassle:

If it's any consolation, ST 4 MAX 2 seems to be offered for a deeply discounted price (usually $49) pretty regularly. With BF coming up, who knows what deals may be had in the near future.

In my opinion, Sonar is "worth it." Something that is different about Sonar vs. past Cakewalk DAW's is that the licensing model has changed. Research that, and if you're comfortable with it, Sonar is your best option of the bunch. "Already know how to use it" is at or near the top of a DAW's feature list. Learning a different one is not, IMO, the chore it once was. So many features have been copied back and forth between the programs that there is usually an equivalent feature. Not always. For instance not all DAW's have scripting languages. Not all DAW's have performance panels or chord tracks. Not all of them have staff views. With the mainstream payware DAW's it's now more a matter of how to access and use a feature than whether a feature exists or not. As with any major software purchase, demo, demo, demo.

IK Multimedia sometimes take a while to sort things out, but they will sort them out. Open a ticket and be patient. Maybe it will take a day or two to receive access to the content that you didn't even expect to get when you paid for the bundle, but you'll get the content and it is fine content indeed. Syntronik 2 and SampleTron 2 are excellent instruments/libraries, two of my very favorite ones. This is not a deal to get a refund and walk away from. You'll see.😀

As do I, but I also open all the top menus just to see what's there, and if I don't see a command, I sometimes get the initial impression that it doesn't exist. If someone is coming from the Mac world, where the law of "If It Was First Available In Windows It Must Never Be Added To MacOS" once ruled, the right mouse button and Steve Jobs couldn't exist at the same time. They may not be so up to speed on context menus. Experienced DAW users will take it for granted that any DAW that uses clips/regions/events/whatever has to have a Split command, somewhere. But there are always people who are entirely new to DAW's, who might not even know that clips can be split. They may assume that slip editing (or whatever) is the only way. With the current model of bundling Sonar with a BandLab membership, I think that there will be more users who open it up just to poke around. They're paying for it, so why not. I bet it would drive an experienced user nuts to look over the shoulder of a newer user and see all the fumbling and "long way around" methods they are using.😄

Longtime fan of WizTree. I consider it an essential Windows utility. Great for sniffing out redundant installers, as well as deciding whether a plug-in's data is taking up so much disk space that it's not worth keeping around.

I've always thought that the mighty MFreeFX bundle had a gap in this position. Looking forward to taking it for a spin.

I was one of the people who managed to battle my way through the timeouts, empty downloads, installer shell and iLok to actually get the plug-in in the original giveaway. It's sort of a stereoizing toolbox, with 4 stereo-related modules that can be rearranged in any order. There's an M/S module with delay, a pan module, a delay-based widener, and a tonal spectrum based widener. Rounding it out is a goniometer to show what's going on. So if you already have plug-ins that do those things, and you miss out on this, don't wail and gnash your teeth. With a Cakewalk DAW you can make plug-in chain presets, or in another DAW just insert them in whatever order you wish. As with omnibuses like RC-20, it's handy to have them all in one plug-in, but not necessary to get similar results.

I'd give the reverbs a shot. The algorithms in Stratus (same as in Phoenix and Nimbus) are the best I've heard. I was skeptical about Neoverb, and it does display iZotope's usual cavalier attitude toward resource usage, but when I tried it it really does sound good. Not getting Aurora and Plasma licenses is a drag, but Logic's continued inability to support VST is a shortcoming of Logic. Speaking of which, when reviewers list pros and cons of DAW software, I seldom see Logic's inadequacy in this regard mentioned. Sometimes they list "Mac only," but I don't think I've ever seen a review mention its lack of VST support a a "con." Which it is, in at least two senses of the word.

I'd like this, because I love to customize, but I think most would agree that it's the purpose of the Custom module.

Do you mean RX and Ozone or Stratus and Symphony won't be upgraded? I don't really need the reverbs to be upgraded (aside from maintenance updates). As for Ozone and RX, aren't those kinda their flagship products? How could they not upgrade them? Also, which 2 new plug-ins are they leaving out? The new Trash maybe? Which other one? It does seem kinda weird to leave Trash out of something called "Music Production Suite."

The only way to invoke the split clip command is to either use a keyboard shortcut ("S") or right click menu (or Alt-click). Less common operations such as Bounce to Clips and Convert to Stereo/Convert to Mono are included on the Track View Clips menu. This makes Sonar more difficult for new users to learn, at least those users who expect commands (especially common ones) to be in the menus. Which included me when I first started using CbB.

I feel sad at the news. It has gone the way of all things. The people who created it created something really useful and fun and I hope they will go on and create other really useful and fun things. The use of computers to make music was a disruptive technology that they surfed for many years. Now Computer Music has been done in by another disruptive technology. So it goes. The Colt .45 revolver "won the West." For someone to win the West, someone else had to lose it.

I'm scratching my chin about this one, especially if there's a GROUP discount at JRRShop. Wouldn't mind having a couple more licenses for Stratus/Symphony to use on my laptop. Other than that it would increment my RX and Ozone to 11, no idea if that's a worthy upgrade.

This should help. Sampletank 4, the engine and player/editor, is the same in all versions, they just vary greatly in the amount of content you get with it. With IK, it usually goes, in order of content: CS<SE<Standard<MAX CS is the free version, limited but quite useful. SE is the lightest paid version, then Standard, then MAX. Your Sampletank 4 CS has 4GB of samples and 50 patches. If you pay for the $1 Humble Bundle you get the Standard version, with 100GB of samples and 6000 patches. So, yes, it very much gives you something else. If you pay $30, you get MAX,. which includes Miroslav Philharmonik 2, Syntronik 2, and SampleTron 2. Those products may be used in Sampletank or separately. Then there's a whole lotta Sampletank modules, like Neil Peart Drums, Terry Bozzio Drums, Alan Parsons Piano, their Rhodes, Wurli, combo organs, just a ton of content. So much that I've had Sampletank 4 MAX for over a year and I still haven't gone through it all. 600GB of samples, 18, 096 patches. Some of the modules (like the drum modules) come with libraries of MIDI loops that are designed around the sounds. I haven't even messed about with those. It's a huge buffet of sounds. Think of a vintage keyboard or synth and it's likely in there somewhere.

No, that's the same Sampletank 4 MAX that has been kicking about for $49. This is a change they made to the bundle, an excellent one.