bitflipper

Bite your tongue! The sacred memory of Neil Peart will not be besmirched by even suggesting that a song might be nailed down at 4/4 120 bpm from start to finish! You start thinking that way and the next thing you know you're insulting your listeners with a four-on-the-floor 808 accompanied by a looped 1-bar arpeggio and referring to your compositions as "beatz". Yes, your memory is correct. The Tempo window used to be dockable, scalable and floatable. That changed in 2021, to generally favorable reactions among the user base, many of whom had been previously requesting the change. There is definitely a benefit to locking the tempo track visually to the track view timeline and treating it like a track (which it technically is), but imo it feels vertically cramped now, especially when you want to insert large tempo changes. These days I'll often just build large changes into the MIDI sequence itself, e.g. ignoring the grid for a ritardando ending.

Running a dependency check would be a great convenience, but afaik this installer does not do that. And yes, APE definitely predates Kontakt 7 by years. Either way, it's wrong because I do in fact have Kontakt 7 installed. I was able to get the update to complete by running Native Access as Administrator. However, NA is still insisting that there is an update for APE. Screw it, APE still works fine. I'm not going to bother trying to update it. But clearly, NA still has a way to go before it can be trusted.

I totally forgot that I'd tried v2 back when it was first made available, didn't like it and rolled back to v1. Like John, I was confused that there is no "check for updates" feature in v1. Well, now due to fomo I'm at v2/3 and it still fails to update some products, just like v1 did. For example, it tells me Apocalypse Percussion Micro needs an update, but the update fails because it thinks I don't have Kontakt 7 installed:

Just temporarily disable real-time protection during the update. It will turn itself back on later.

Now this is weird and feels like a bug. I went to the Spectrasonics site and it clearly shows I am out of date. It says the current versions of the executable, patch library and sound sources should be version 1.5. My instance of Keyscape reports the following but still insists I am up to date: I was able to update by bypassing the built-in updater and just downloading the install files directly from Spectrasonics.

iirc, the last time this happened - not being able to update - it was with Omnisphere. After several attempts, the update button just suddenly appeared the next day. I have to wonder if they aren't purposefully throttling downloads to avoid the expense of adding hosting capacity to accommodate a big rush of requests.

Spectrasonics has added a new piano to the Keyscape library, one with extra-thick felt on the hammers to give a muted, mellow tone. It's a free update for Keyscape users. To get it, start up Keyscape and click the "Get Update" button on the splash screen. [EDIT] I just tried it but it said I'm already up-to-date and did not display the update button. Didn't this happen the last time there was an update?

Clearly the Brits are not as litigious as us Yanks.

Amadeus has been my go-to since its release. It doesn't have all the articulations of the biggest orchestral libraries, but it's got the essentials. Here are the ones for all the string instruments (violin, viola, cello, bass). There are both ensemble and solo instruments for all the strings, brass and woodwinds. It's pretty complete for the casual composer, and even includes the lazy composer's favorite shortcut, symphony.nki.

Yeh, I read the entire license agreement (so you wouldn't have to). Sure, if you bounce the tracks it's now audio and beyond their reach. But they make it clear that they can pull the plug on you at their discretion. Not saying that would necessarily be a big issue, but it is an argument for buying libraries outright. Now, I'm not faulting them for protecting their partners' IP, which they are obligated to do. But if I just buy the product, protecting developers' intellectual property isn't even a concern. I think general resistance to subscriptions is pretty widespread. Remember when Cakewalk offered to let you buy SONAR in installments? Many users freaked out, mistakenly thinking it was a subscription model. Now we've got Waves going down the subscription path, and I believe they're going to regret it in the end. It's just one more way for Waves plugins to stop working, as if their fragile license scheme wasn't bad enough already.

Musio. I don't quite know what to think of it, but my kneejerk reaction is to not like it. It costs $150 per year, an introductory price that will become either $200 or $240, depending on which page you look at. What you're buying is a licensing scheme where you rent sample libraries on demand and get to use them for as long as your subscription is paid up. Granted, buying all those libraries (~40 at the moment) outright would cost more than the subscription. But most people neither need nor would use that many libraries (and I say this as a compulsive library collector). You'll still need the same disk space as if you were buying the products. The Musio software must always be running in the background, and your DAW must have an internet connection. Once installed, the instruments remain on your computer - but if you cancel your subscription they become unusable. Even though they promote "instant, endless inspiration" you'll still have to wait for the download and installation, which seems like an inspiration killer to me. Once you give them your credit card, your subscription will be automatically renewed unless you explicitly cancel it ("no refunds"). They can cancel you as a result of a DMCA takedown notice, which unfortunately is a common occurrence in YouTube land. I'm trying to come up with positives. Being able to preview libraries before buying, maybe? You could pay for a $20 monthly subscription and spend the month testing various libraries. Automatic updates, that's a positive. Not that big orchestral libraries get a lot of updates. Potentially saving money, that's another plus. For example, you want to create a big orchestral piece and use all those pricey Cinesamples libraries - you could do it for $20 if you work fast. If later you want to make edits, you could buy another month for another $20.

Weird indeed. Certainly not a pin-compatible replacement for the Sonitus Delay, but it has a wonderful quirkiness I really like on vocals and synth leads. Can new users still get the Blue Tubes stuff? I'm thinking no.

Full to spilling out the ears some days. I used to play piano for the residents at the facility where my dad lived in the months leading up to his death. They were a great audience. I haven't seen a roomful of people so into the music since the 60's when it was not unusual for an entire audience to be on LSD. Or to have such an appreciation for pudding.

Well, there's also the registry of course. But I've never heard of the registry being referred to as a "config file", even if it technically is. I don't know of any other repositories used by Cakewalk that aren't plain text. That's why I assumed it wasn't actually a problem reading a config file, but rather an issue of passing data to the CLR. Grain of salt, yes. I suspect that Andy is not the programmer, and may have just misspoke trying to relay a more complicated answer given to him by the coder.

For most users, they do indeed work quite well, but they do have a few quirks that can be bothersome for the few who encounter them. For example, the delay sometimes doesn't do well with fast tempo changes when the delay interval is locked to the project tempo. I once had an issue where Sonar would crash with a specific chain of three Sonitus plugins in a specific order. Such glitches are rare, though, and don't warrant preemptively replacing the plugins. Plus I don't know of any freebies that are as good as, and as easy to use as, the Sonitus suite.

True, you never want to underestimate the creativity of coders when it comes to finding ways to crash a program! In this case, though, it's unlikely to be a matter of some junior dev copying sample code from an online post and calling it a day. The error code shown in the dialog is a generic code, a broad "something went wrong" kind of code from the CLR, the common runtime that underpins C# and its .net siblings. It could be anything. My guess would be that some data is being passed to a CLR function that it chokes on. And that's partly why I'm curious: Cakewalk's config files are plain text. But I also can't imagine why a plugin would be reading those files in the first place. All of a plugin's communication with its host should happen exclusively via the VST interface. Which is not to say there haven't been issues with some plugins in the past. Most recently, there was an issue with Spectrasonics instruments causing Cakewalk to crash, and although the problem was Spectrasonics' doing, Noel & company managed to write a workaround to avoid that crash.

I once smoked some weed that was so ridiculously OP that I forgot how to put on socks. No kidding. By the next morning, however, that particular skill had returned to me. My father, his sister, his mother and my mother's mother all died from Alzheimer's, so it's a real concern that I may have a genetic ticking bomb in my brain. I panic any time I forget a song lyric, thinking "oh sh*t, this is how it starts". The other day I spent hours fretting that I couldn't remember the word "curate". I tried to console myself by reminding myself that it's not a word I use every day - but then freaked out all over again when I realized that I could not remember the last time I'd used it, or even in what context. Maybe if I used it in a song lyric...it does, after, all rhyme with many easy-to-remember words such as oblate, satiate, inundate and exfoliate. I take comfort in the fact that my maternal grandfather, who everyone says I'm a carbon copy of, died suddenly from heart failure. In lieu of a meteorite, that would be my preference.

Please beg Andy to "go into deep technical jargon". Inquiring minds want to know. What Cakewalk config file would a plugin be reading? And how could reading a text file cause .net to blow up anyway?

Based solely on stated features, it appears to be an impressively full-featured dynamics processor (e.g. can act as a gate or a limiter). However, the Pace prerequisite prevents it from ever holding a place on my watchlist.

TTS-1 requires registration before it can be recognized by Windows, and must be re-registered if you physically move it. Open a DOS window and execute the following command: regsvr32 "c:\program files\cakewalk\shared dxi\tts-1\tts-1.dll" Note that this example assumes the default location for TTS-1. Use your actual path if different. If regsvr32 shows an error message, first check that you've typed the path correctly. If it still fails, you may need to give yourself Administrator rights.

These are not the droids you're looking for.

My belief hope is that every bit of tech trivia that I shove into my head forces out something else that I didn't need anyway.

Tip: when googling or searching YouTube, don't forget that "SONAR" and "Cakewalk" are essentially synonyms. Most topics related to SONAR are relevant.

Nobody has answered Doug's question re video tutorials. I didn't, because I haven't seen enough beginner tutorials to gauge their helpfulness. You only get one shot at learning something for the first time. That said, there are a number of regulars here on this forum that have done tutorials. Here's one: Here's somebody who seems to specialize in beginners' tutorials:

That's a fairly typical curve for an 1176 emulation.