bitflipper

Make sure your USB ports have been exempted from being powered off automatically. This is a common cause of suddenly losing connection to USB-connected interfaces and MIDI controllers. Open Device Manager, scroll down to Universal Serial Bus Controllers. There will probably be a bunch of entries. Right-click on each of them, go to Properties -> Power Management. Make sure the "Allow the computer to turn off this device to save power" option is unchecked. (If there is no "Power Management" tab in a device's properties, that just means it's not a port and you can skip it.)

I've always wondered why these performances sound so good, given that they're made in a tiny space. Well, first of all the space isn't really tiny, it's just made to look that way (see the second video, which is rotatable in 360 degrees). Pack enough bodies into any space and it's going to be acoustically forgiving. But mainly it's about audio guys who just really know what they're doing. And having players that don't require a lot of corrective surgery in post.

The true meaning of Black Friday hit me last night...it is the weaponization of FOMO. And because we're all friends here, I feel comfortable confiding in you without shame that I, the cynic, the skeptic, the experienced user totally fell for it. The ability to spend money late at night under the influence of cannabis wasn't selected for during 4 million years of human evolution. I saw a Kontakt library that I've wanted for a long time, saw that it was on sale, and bought it. Stupid! Stupid! Stupid! Long story short: the library is mundane, duplicates stuff I already have, and sounds like a ROMpler from 1986. The sale price was triple what I would have paid for it had I been able to try it out first. Next year, I will be wiser. Yeh, that's the ticket. Next year I won't fall for it again.

Amen, brother. I recently bought a plugin that I already owned and have never used. Still haven't used it. This will likely be the third Black Friday in a row where I haven't bought anything. I just can't think of anything I really need, regardless of price. That includes both software and hardware. Too bad you can't buy motivation. I'd pay full price for that. Wisdom, though, I'd wait for a sale.

Not seeing these prices (e.g. shows $200 for Cadenza Strings). Is there a discount code or do we just drop your name?

So it's a blank file? Sorry, couldn't resist. I only have a couple of their instruments, but they are quite good and a bargain even at regular prices.

This is why I chose long ago to not be a pioneer when it comes to mass-market software*. https://www.pcmag.com/news/all-versions-of-windows-are-vulnerable-to-a-new-zero-day-exploit Short version: a bug in the Windows installer lets malware do anything it wants to your system, and Microsoft can't fix it without breaking the installer. * No, being a beta tester for Cakewalk does not contradict this philosophy. Cakewalk cannot ruin my life beyond alienating me from my family on Thanksgiving.

I've always thought there might be shortcuts for this but never bothered looking it up. This is why I still read the forum after 33 years using the Cakewalk PRV.

One could make a case that once you've figured how to do everything you need to do, you're done. Time to get back to making music. Then one day you see a button and think "hmm, I wonder what this does?" and just like that, you've disappeared down another rabbit hole. After you've found your way out of the hole, you can go back to happily making music again - but now with a new trick up your sleeve. At least, until the next rabbit hole. Rinse and repeat.

You bestow upon me a frightening responsibility, Mr. Jones.

Skaka has become my go-to shaker maker for when I don't need all the bells 'n whistles of the likes of Shimmer Shake Strike. Ridiculously easy to use, I'd been looking for something like it for years. Just noticed it's been updated since I bought it at its introduction, with 10 new instruments added. So thanks for the post, Larry. I essentially just got a new percussion instrument for free.

FabFilter Pro-G.

Here's a transient shaper for free. Haven't used it, but it's free. I'm probably going to grab it and see if it's any good.

This is a much better deal than Transgressor. Boz's transient shaper does some very cool things, but I agree with Brian's assessment that it's too fiddly. Plus I've heard it insert some very ugly artifacts, so it's been relegated to the reserve team. I have at least a dozen transient shapers in my kit, and all of them are fiddly. I rarely use them anymore. When I do feel the need for one, it's usually the one from Meldaproduction. It's currently $36. No authorization hoops to jump through (no "installation manager" downloader required).

Better days...

We actually have a couple of bass solos. Well, not technically "solos" but bass + drum + everybody picks up a tambourine or shaker breaks. All but one potential bassist candidate jumped right in and produced energetic, if musically-disjointed thunder. The fellow that we ultimately chose did not do this. We had to explain the concept to him, as no one had ever asked him to be center stage before. Once we'd convinced him we were serious, he went home and worked up a great solo, a dynamic mini composition with a beginning, middle and end. How refreshing. The singer turned to me to gauge my response, but my head was back and my eyes were closed and I didn't notice her. Later, she said "all the pieces are in place now". I agreed.

You're lucky. Please remain ignorant for your own mental self-defense. It's something you cannot un-see.

Several interesting and unique fx here. Irid (32 EUR) is a personal favorite even if it is kind of a one-trick pony. Moodal is just strange if you're into bizarre sound design and accidental "hmm, that's different!" moments. But the only one I consider a must-have is tkDelay (also 32 EUR), which has been my first-string delay ever since I first used it. Easy to use and has every feature you'd want from a delay, e.g. ducking, blendable reverse, and micropitch modulation.

You can't put a lot of metadata into a standard wav file because the file spec it's based on (RIFF) simply doesn't provide any standardized place to put it. That's why most of that kind of information is handled at the host level, e.g. a CD's TOC or a DAW's project file. Mostly all you get in a standard wave file are essential technical information such as sample rate, word length, interleave and number of channels. Yes, the standard is extensible and can even contain ID3v2 tags, but such variants are not universal and can be problematic. Think about how many times users have come here for advice because they inadvertently imported a BWF (a RIFF-based format that does support metadata) and were confused when it didn't behave like the WAV file they assumed it was. MP3 and similar formats, OTOH, were designed specifically to have self-contained, portable metadata to facilitate music distribution. Consequently, there is almost no limit to what kinds of information they can contain. Even then, not all fields will be meaningful to all applications. Bottom line is that it's not an oversight in the DAW that prohibits you from entering metadata for a wav file. If an application does provide such features, it's probably writing a nonstandard format that other applications may not understand. The wave files that Cakewalk writes, however, can be read by any DAW and most players, making it possible to collaborate across different DAWs and platforms. As long as you stick to widely-used formats, anyway. Here's a reference that might help. It lists applications that can write ID3v2 tags to wave files. My longtime go-to for things like that are the free foobar2000. This is a very useful tool to have on hand.

Thanks for looking that up, Bill. I don't spend as much time at Tom's as I used to, so I miss little tidbits like that. Fortunately, they're talking about video drivers, which should impact almost no one. Even if you are one of the people affected by this, your DX plugins won't stop working in your DAW. For that matter, even if you're playing an 8-year-old video game on your 8-year-old computer you probably won't be affected, either. btw, I am on a 7-year-old computer myself and happily playing the latest video games on it at Ultra video settings (with a recently upgraded video card).

Every one of our regular venues from past years has either closed its doors or stopped having music. There does, however, seem to be a pent-up demand for live music. I heard that in Houston they are literally dying to attend concerts. Plus a lot of bands called it quits during quarantine, so there are fewer practitioners out there at the moment, reducing competition for gigs. We were determined to keep the band alive during the pandemic, renting a hall and building PVC frames to hang shower curtains as separators. (Which is when I found out there's such a thing as transparent shower curtains. Who was buying those before?)

DX is a software spec. It doesn't require any specific hardware support. It's not going obsolete. DX isn't just for music production. It's used by thousands, perhaps millions of business applications that Microsoft isn't going to suddenly kill. The "X" in X-Box has the same meaning as the "X" in DX. Bottom line is you needn't worry about your DX plugins suddenly dropping dead on you. As long as Cakewalk continues to support them, you're good. rev, what preceded this failure? New computer? Re-install of Windows? Did you get a crash dump? You may just have to re-register the Sonitus DLLs. By "re-register", I don't mean re-authorize, but rather letting Windows know they exist. This normally happens as part of the installation, but you can also do it manually if needed. Another possibility is that some dependency is missing. If that's the case, it will become apparent when you try to register the DLLs.

Right-click on each of the clips and see if the "convert to stereo" option is enabled. If it is I'd take that as an indication that CW knows it's a mono file.

Well, ain't that somethin'. No, I did not know about that. Clever fellow, that Azslow.

I dunno if I'd lay out 80 bucks for this, as cool as it seems. That's $80 to save maybe an hour's work. Perhaps if I had a few dozen more VIs it might pencil out better. Do they have an installer that lets you choose which maps you want, or do you have to add 7,000 unneeded files to your drive?