RexRed

I think the point is, we pay for the program so the company can afford to keep paying the programmers to fix the bugs. I will probably not be able to afford Cakewalk Sonar the very day it comes out unless it is a subscription too. If it is a subscription I prefer to pay for that. If it is buy outright only and upgrade later I will probably buy it within the first month (around payday). A subscription would be very good for Cakewalk and the growth/maintenance of the program. Cakewalk is not a flat tire, I have been making songs with Cakewalk steady for 35 years. I have hundreds of them and even my oldest projects still open in Cakewalk.. I have tried the other DAWs and I would not use them even if they were free. But I will gladly pay for Cakewalk (lifetime updater here too). I might also add that I use Cakewalk almost every single day. I will get my money's worth out of a subscription. I sincerely hope that both models are offered a subscription and buy outright and maybe also, rent to own. Since when were options a bad thing? The point is, it is not free anymore and neither should it be..

I know it is a very complicated thing considering that sometimes you have file takes than have had clip gain edited and sometimes clip gain is enabled whilst recording over a Melodyne take. ...and then you get the dreaded disk full error and truncated project files that won't open. This area needs to be looked at. ...and the, "inherent limitations of the technology of editing pitch/formants, and very little to do with bit rate" It may have everything to do with bitrate. When you slice the wave into smaller bits it would seem that pitch algorithms would be more accurate. I have done testing and found that the pitch algorithms do not improve if you go to a higher khz rate. You get the same amount of wonky tones and obliterated syllables. So it must be the bitrate that would improve the pitch "technology". Now Melodyne must remain faithful to the khz when it resamples a project file into itself because Cakewalk can only handle one khz for all project files. But Melodyne can and does cheat on the bitrate conversion and does not follow the project preferred bitrate but chooses its own bitrate as I have been told it cannot work with 32 bit files at all, yet. My question is, can it even work with 24 bit files? So it would seem that bitrate is the frontier and forefront of better technology for editing pitch/formants. One could enlist AI but AI would just be rebuilding and making stuff up and not staying true to the ray tracing of the higher precision of bitrates.

Since we are talking about Bill Gates and features that work properly. One example is autohide the taskbar. Never leave taskbar autohide enabled. It will autohide the taskbar every time until you really need it to, then the taskbar will stubbornly sit there hiding vital icons underneath it that you need to access. This has been broken for as long as I can remember. The new print screen feature in Windows now opens up the snipping tool, that is until it doesn't and then the print screen key doesn't work either. You have to restart Windows to get it back. In the meantime, forget about what you were trying to snip. How long will this stay that way? The autohide taskbar problem has been carried over from several versions of Windows and still exists.

A little background on why this problem has even shown its face. One would think that with the right workflow that this entire problem could be avoided. This is not the case. I will lay out the process and why/how this problem occurs. I might also say that this problem comes with complications due to "other" problems. Complications meaning, one problem leads to another and then another and then another. Like being overweight, having heart disease and a brain tumor all at the same time. I might also add that when I make a song, I spend almost as much time in Melodyne as I do in Cakewalk. Why? Because, in my opinion, the vocal(s) is the most important track in a song. The volume, duration, pitch and quality of each and every syllable must be highly and minutely scrutinized. This goes also for, dub vocals, harmony vocals, ooohs and ahhs and any adlibs. Each syllable must be scrutinized. This leads to problem one... Melodyne is how you edit syllables and Melodyne seems to corrupt certain syllables. Why? I surmise that it is converting the wave file to a low bitrate, perhaps even 16 bit. ARA needs a higher standard for file conversion and Melodyne needs to become 32 bit so the samples have smaller precision slices. (in my opinion) So even the act of placing Melodyne on a sample in Cakewalk can degrade and distort a syllable without even editing it in any way. Furthermore, editing a syllable can have good or disastrous results. So that is one complication that there seems to be no solution for until Melodyne is "improved". So what is the work around? Well you have to place Melodyne on a vocal and figure out which syllables Melodyne converts crappy and re-sing those with new vocal versions that Melodyne can interpret better with its myopic bitrate. So there is no way to know which syllables Melodyne will get right or wrong until you place Melodyne on the take. This leads to complication number 2 You comp the track but you may have other takes in the same track and it is problematic placing Melodyne on all takes in the track. So you can only put Melodyne on your comp track. Because Celemony refuses to give Melodyne different colored blobs, so you end up with an orange mess of blobs all stacked on top of each other. Now, when you encounter a syllable that Melodyne corrupts (and there are many) you need to replace each syllable. You can't easily sing just that syllable, it is easier to re-sing the entire line and then extract the syllable (or word(s)) after. This leads to another complication, Cakewalk has not properly implemented Melodyne integration into the track (though it is much better than it was.) So when you sing a take over top of a Melodyne clip you end up with the old clip not erasing itself unless you close and reopen Cakewalk. (Otherwise you have an orange blob mess again) So, you need Melodyne on your take to figure out which syllables to replace and then you have to jump hoops for each and every syllable opening and closing Cakewalk for each syllable that you re-sing, then, place Melodyne on the syllable, listen to it and replace again if necessary until each one is right. Opening and closing Cakewalk like a door caught in the wind all day. And this has been the case for as long as Melodyne has been integrated into Cakewalk track takes. I just figured it was time to voice my thought about these issues. Complications. Melodyne is the only real game in town and it needs much better fidelity, it is ruining vocal tracks by its limited interpretation of sound waves and Cakewalk is missing functionality on top of that... Together it makes making music much harder than it should be. So is it a Cakewalk? In most regards it is a Cakewalk. In some aspects it is lacking still. Will the new Sonar simply carry on/inherit these issues. It seems likely. And, Melodyne is coming out with a new version soon. Will we see 32 bit support for wave files? I seriously doubt it. No one will ever need more than 56k of system ram anyway? (Some say erroneous quote from Bill Gates) I need 32 bit Melodyne yesterday... This seem to be the root of most of this problem, the way Melodyne converts wave files. If I did not have to re-sing so many syllables then Cakewalk's lack of some Melodyne integration would be less blaring.

Every so often, Cakewalk will not pick up my graphics card drivers correctly (That is the only way I know how to explain this. First off, I have 2x Nvidia 3090 graphics cards in my computer. (Yes, I have the latest studio drivers) This problem has occurred over a few years, so it does not seem graphics driver specific. It may be a result of having Cakewalk open in the background for hours on end while I do other things. This does not happen often but, to detail the problem. Cakewalk will play correctly but the graphics vertical play line will hitch and stutter across the timeline. Restarting Cakewalk will not always fix this, sometimes I have to restart my computer. But Cakewalk is the only program affected with this problem. Adobe Premiere, which I use a lot, never does this.

Yea, I thought for sure they fixed it but no. I just close Cakewalk and reopen it and the old clip is gone from within Melodyne which is a grotesque fix for this. I brought up this issue many months ago as well. I am not sure that buying Cakewalk Sonar is now on my agenda until I find this has been fixed. I am not so big on new features as I am on old features working correctly.

Thank you very much David for your astute assessment and time troubleshooting this issue. It is of great importance to me. Best to you! The new update has come out, it will take me a week or so to see if this issue has been addressed.

Ditto

This is because Cakewalk has not fully implemented comping abilities with Melodyne. The communication between Melodyne and Cakewalk is (much better than it was but still ) incomplete. Just put a take into a track with Melodyne on it. Record a second take in the same track over top of a section of it add Melodyne to it as well. Then go into Melodyne. You will see both takes superimposed over one another. Then go into Cakewalk and delete the grayed out old take section. Then go back into Melodyne. The old take has been deleted from Cakewalk but it is still there in Melodyne. Save your project and reopen it. Then the old take is gone. Now if you delete the section from Melodyne before you sing the new take in the same track it will be gone. But how do you know if your new take is going to be better than the old take until you sing it? The reason why I do not sing the new take into a new track is because I should not have to. My track has effects racks and is linked to a complex network of parallel effects busses and side chaining. I would have to copy all of that routing and busses just to replace a line, this should not be how it is done. Yes and I have also been using Melodyne since about when it came out and V-Vocal for many years before that. I encounter this problem, with every song that I make. And, Melodyne has been around for about 12 years.

On closer inspection it is not solved. Melodyne still does not erase deleted clips after a take has been recorded over it. Even if I close and reopen Melodyne within Cakewalk. I have to close Cakewalk and reopen it for the old deleted clip to go away within Melodyne. I have been dealing with this problem for a number of years now, I would really like it to get fixed. ? When a Melodyne clip gets deleted because a better take has been recorded over it and Melodyne applied to the new take, Cakewalk needs to tell Melodyne the old Melodyne clip is gone. If Cakewalk can tell Melodyne the new clip has been added and superimpose the new clip on top of the deleted clip in Melodyne, then Cakewalk should also be able to tell Melodyne when the old clip has been deleted. Cakewalk is failing to do so. When I record a vocal track I add Melodyne to the entire vocal track. At some point I may discover I do not like a certain line and I would like to try and re-sing that line. So I comp record a take above that line, then that section of my Melodyne vocal clip gets grayed out in the track. I add Melodyne to the new recorded clip. Since the Melodyne clip is grayed out it should not appear in Melodyne when I open Melodyne. But it does appear. I would rather just leave the old take muted but because I cannot work in Melodyne with the new take because it is a hodge podge of confusing old take on top of a new take. So I try and delete the old take ( which I would rather not do because I'm still trying to decide if I want to keep the new take) Even when I delete the old Melodyne take from Cakewalk it sill shows up as a hodge podge of notes underneath the new take in Melodyne. Because the new take is over top of where the old take was Cakewalk does not tell Melodyne the old take is muted or deleted. The only way to get rid of it is to save my project with the old take gone ( which I would have liked to have saved but just kept it muted). Then I have to close the project and reopen it for Cakewalk to finally tell Melodyne that the old take is gone. Muted Melodyne clips should not show in Melodyne and deleted Melodyne clips should not show in Melodyne. Now if I do not have a new melodyne take over top of the old melodyne clip and I just delete that melodyne clip segment and then I open melodyne it is gone. It only happens where there are two Melodyne clips superimposed. If clips are super imposed follow this routine sort of thing. When a clip is muted in Cakewalk it should be muted in Melodyne. It is not, it is still visible in Melodyne it just does not sound. Melodyne has a clip mute feature and the notes have no color and a black outline when muted. When a clip is muted in Cakewalk it should be displayed as such in Melodyne. This is impossible to work with as is because Celemony refuses to give us colored blobs. Just orange and gray ones. It would be better if the muted blob were even gray and can could not be selected or edited until they were unmuted in Cakewalk. Not having colored blobs is a nightmare when editing overlapping tracks. Such a simple thing as adding color to different takes and blobs should be a rudimentary feature. But many requests for color has fallen on deaf ears at Celemony. In my opinion the colored blobs do not necessarily have to correspond to the same color that each track in the DAW has. Just if you could color the blobs to differentiate one track or take from another. Having the same colored blobs from all tracks overlaid is a total mess.

Looking forward to the new Cakewalk Sonar! (I hope the new Sonar will not be inheriting these old problems.)

I learned how to use Scaler 2 from YouTube. It works the same in any DAW. Cakewalk works in every possible way that I know of with Scaler 2.. There are many things you can do with Scaler, pick one and tackle that. You can use Scaler to pick out the chords from a wave file, You can get Scaler to generate many different types of arpeggios. You can get it to generate a nice group of very complex chords. I use Scaler 2 to alter my style the same way other band members might suggest things I might not have thought of. YouTube is the place to learn Scaler. One of my tutorials with Scaler 2 and Cakewalk. Very few people watch my Cakewalk videos but I make them anyway. Please leave a like, subscribe (click the bell for "all" notifications) and leave comments, I read them all. You might catch me "live" doing a Cakewalk video. I have been making Cakewalk videos on YouTube for almost 10 years and never made a single dime from that effort.. Maybe one day Cakewalk will acquire the market share it deserves. Best to you Cakewalk peeps! ?

I think I need to test this out more. As for bouncing my Melodyne, I "never" freeze or bounce them. I leave them right through the final render. Having my tracks resampled to go into Melodyne is enough already I will not bounce them and thus resample them again. And, I am always hearing a slight thing in the vocals that are off even a tiny bit, or a formant that sounds wrong and need to go back sometimes even after a song has gone to an album, I will go back and adjust a note or syllable just to fix it in my project. I mix and master simultaneously as well.

Are you talking about something that you have actually witnessed happening in Cakewalk?

It is too bad that the last update to Cakewalk did not address this rather blaring problem with Melodyne.

I have been using Cakewalk since the early 80s (since the first version for MSDOS) and I would NEVER dream of leaving Cakewalk. I have over 500 song projects created in Cakewalk and I will continue supporting Cakewalk in whatever way solidifies the path forward for the company developing it. Besides, all the other DAWS are terrible. Many people failed to support Gibson and many people pirated the software and Cakewalk almost went under. I bought updates for life and paid for the subscription as well, I also understand that future development requires working capital. If Cakewalk goes subscription, I will probably pay it, if the price is reasonable, $9.95/month for Sonar and $15.95 for a subscription for both Sonar and Next would be around my sweet spot. (After a certain time you own it, unless you upgrade. Subscribers should get a deal on the upgrade.) If it requires purchase, I will purchase it, if the price is not too steep. (I will probably buy both versions of Cakewalk) I would like to see both a subscription and the option to buy it outright. I will probably choose the subscription because I don't like coming up with a lump sum all at once for a new version. It is better for me to pay for that new version gradually over time. In Maine we have a saying, "If you can't stand the winters, you don't deserve the summers."

Hello awesome Cakewalk peeps! Here is my latest song, "A Love for All Time". This song was created in Cakewalk and recorded at 32-bit 48khz. In this particular song, I did not use any samples or loops, just the ones that come with my various VST instruments. It was built from scratch. I hope you enjoy this tune friends! Critiques welcome. ? Enjoy!

It has been over a month since I started using 32 bit recording, I do have a 24 bit RME Fireface UCX II but the 32 bit recording is so noticeably better (to my ears) that I will not be going back to 24 bit recording. I am so completely sold on this, no product has improved my sound as much as this. I have always suspected that my was driving my audio interface too hard at times and it was distorting my sound. That is an impossibility now. The RME device works great routing out all of my other devices on my PC and running system sounds and I have the outputs of the Zoom going into the RME as well. Totally happy with the 32-bit change.

Yea, even my phone is enough real-estate to do it. I plan to use the Samsung tablet for live performance. It is just big enough to read words from. It would be nice if the new Cakewalk Sonar had a tablet app for performance... ?

This works very well over WIFI with no perceptible lag so far. I haven't tried this yet with a project full of oversampling and tons of effects yet. I tried deleting a track in Cakewalk with this connected to it and it crashed Cakewalk. So, the conclusion is to only use this when you are recording and would like some distance between you and your PC keyboard. It is not an editing solution but where it shines is as a midi input device. The square pads are very nice I need to find a better solution for the paint cans under my speakers. ? There is a hole in the wall under the table, my wiring goes through there, and my computer towers are in the room on the other side of the back wall. When I close the door to the right, my studio is fan free and silent.

Samsung Galaxy S9+ running TouchDAW Cakewalk tablet controller.

I bought a Samsung Galaxy S9+ today bought it from Samsung and picked it up same day at BestBuy (my poor credit card). Came with a free slim keyboard cover. TouchDAW looks really nice on it! Yes, it is overkill but still very nice. Have you all looked into wireless MIDI? Roland has a very nice offering. https://www.sweetwater.com/store/detail/WM1--roland-wm-1-wireless-midi-interface

This was not too hard to get set up and working and it does exactly what I was looking for! I wanted something to remotely click play record stop etc. and I wanted something so I could tap in a midi drum sequence on my phone with a light touch of my fingers. For tom rolls, cymbals, snare, bass drum etc. I do not think the XYpads have velocity sensitivity but that is okay, I usually set everything at 64 initially anyway. It also works smooth as could possibly be even when Cakewalk is in play mode, and there is no perceptible lag with midi but I assume that could change once my project is proliferated with track and buss effects. I just bought this to enter midi. KAT Percussion KTMP1 Multipad Drum and Percussion Pad https://www.sweetwater.com/store/detail/KTMP1--kat-percussion-ktmp1-multipad-drum-and-percussion-pad I thought I could just use my fingers to tap in a beat but even with the sensitivity set high on the drum controller it requires a pat rather than a tap/touch. It randomly misses a tap. The phone app responds to even the slightest tap. This app stays connected all the time I only need to open it on my phone and as long as the midi track is selected in my DAW this controls it. I would like to return the drum controller to Sweetwater but I think it is cool and it could come in handy someday. It did not cost too much either and it is really easy to use. I could have used my midi synth controller for this but it also seems less responsive than the glass surface of my Samsung Galaxy s22 phone. Thank you for this suggestion. I have a complete electronic drum kit I bought about a year ago that I am still paying for on my credit card, for this purpose and never used sitting in my spare room all set up and covered with a cloth. I seem to find out these solutions shortly after I buy something that does not quite work. And the solution to this problem was about 5 dollars for the TouchDAW app.

Will this work if your computer has a router IP address rather than a fully dedicated IP address?

Does anyone here use their Android (Galaxy s22) phone as a MIDI controller in Cakewalk? Wired, WIFI, and Bluetooth? How do you connect using Cakewalk? Solutions for all three are welcome here in this discussion.