Long overdue request and make-over.

[HIBI]

18 hours ago, Starship Krupa said:

Here's an old forum post outlining the steps to take to enable not only those three, but the Boost 11 limiter. For the record, I think they're power-packed:

@Starship Krupa Boost 11 Peak Limiter comes standard with Cakewalk. Actually, Cakewalk which is installed on my secondary PC (SONAR is not installed) also has it. Seems it comes standard since April 2018. So Kurre's claim in the old thread seems correct. Boost11 be listed as both "Enabled" and "Excluded" in the Plugin manager. (In short, there are two Boost11 in different locations and one of them is listed as "Excluded".)

Edited July 9, 2020 by HIBI

[Trensharo]

13 hours ago, Will_Kaydo said:

The thing with this is statement is . . . If it gives you a better feel of a 80's chorus effect and depth on drums, vocals or guitars with a second reverb, chorus and delay within your chain - why wouldn't you want to use them? I mean, mixing goes both ways. What sounds "ugly and degraded" can sound pleasing to the listeners ears, and what sounds "clean and beautiful not so pleasing." There's no right or wrong way in sound creation - only taste. We all have different taste in food, clothing, and cars. 

Because it doesn't?

Third party Delay Plugins available for Free or Very Cheap are just better, so I'm not sure what Cars, Food, and Clothing has to do with this.

You may like cheese, but I'm pretty sure you will choose gourmet over commodity if both were offered to you.

Sonitus are commodity plugins, and you don't have to spend much (or anything) to get something of better quality.

The resources are better spent on other parts of the DAW, IMHO.

Edited July 9, 2020 by Trensharo

[Trensharo]

On 7/8/2020 at 4:07 AM, Starship Krupa said:

I stand corrected! Thank you.

For some of the reasons both you and I have stated: in many categories there are plenty of free and cheap alternatives, so why not when they get the job done? Someone downloads Cakewalk and wants to start right in working with it, they have some very good tools to work with that may look a little dowdy. If they or their clients are discerning enough to care about the UI, they are discerning enough to download other plug-ins to use in their place. Nobody forces anyone to use the stock plug-ins with the UI's open while paying clients watch.

My point is that Cakewalk had a lot of plugins - many of which can basically replace Sonitus, so they could have easily delivered better stock plugins with CbB.

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Also, some of the functions they perform are still not so common, such as the surround compressor and surround panner/encoder. Feature-wise, W.A. recently put out something called the Sphere Compressor that has a very similar feature set to the Sonitus Compressor.

Since you are so adamant that many better free and cheap alternatives exist, and I love free and cheap plug-ins, please turn me on to some of your favorite freeware 5-band multiband compressors, surround compressors, surround panner/encoders, and 6-band versatile EQ's. Even a "far superior" delay would be welcome.

 

 

 

 

 

 

My point is that Cakewalk had a lot of plugins - many of which can basically replace Sonitus, so they could have easily delivered better stock plugins with CbB.

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Although I think AIR's keyboards and synths are good bargains when I can get them for under $20, I am much less impressed with their FX. Last week I tried a trial of their Vocalizer Pro, which attempts to emulate a classic vocoder but is lacking in a couple of crucial features. First, it can't do the basic vocoder task of accepting an external carrier (you can only use its internal synth), second, despite appearing quite feature-packed and complex, it has no manual. Whatsoever. I am now patiently waiting for the trial to expire so that I can hide its existence from my iLok control panel. The UI was pretty, though, it looked better than a Las Vegas casino at night.

I'm also quite interested to read or watch some of those consistently mediocre "particularly in more recent times" reviews of the Sonitus fx suite because I'm relatively new to the Cakewalk scene and apparently didn't get those memos.

 

 

 

 

 

 

AIR didn't develop Vocalizer Pro, which I have never used or seen (outside of in an eStore front).  That is a SONiVOX product, not AIR's.  They are owned by the same parent company, but they do not develop and own each other's products.

Additionally, the Modulation and Creative Effects in AIR Creative FX Collection easily supercede what is in Sonitus:FX.  The Delays and Reverbs actually do sound pretty good.  They also deliver things that simply aren't covered by Sonitus:FX - which are really basic and more comparable to ReaPlugs.  The point of adding them is to fill in the gaps, and give better algorithms for things that exist - where possible.  However, I'd veer towards AIR in areas where there are overlap, because those are generally better.

In addition to that, there is a ton of stuff you can get for free that is of higher quality.  Melda, TAL, Valhalla, Tritik, TDR, Blue Cat, Plugin Alliance, U-he, Voxengo, Xfer, etc.  There are too many to list... Including a vocoders.  This has been the case for several years, it's just that SONAR Platinum users largely never had to supplement basic plugins because the DAW came with more than enough, and then some (comparable to DAWs like Cubase Pro and Studio One Professional, etc.).

How new is new.  You're been here quite a while, AFAICS.  Go to YouTube and look them up, and go read reviews of Sonar.  That's what I did.

https://www.admiralbumblebee.com/music/2018/12/22/Cakewalk-Part-1-Almost-Everything.html#effects

That's a good review of things.

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I'll direct you to a couple of articles written about them just a year ago in Sound on Sound by Craig Anderton:

https://www.soundonsound.com/techniques/cakewalk-sonitus-effects

https://www.soundonsound.com/techniques/cakewalk-sonitus-plug-suite

And a video by Scott of Chernobyl Studios, who is well-known for pulling no punches when he has something critical to say about Cakewalk:

 

I don't really consider Craig Anderton an unbiased source of opinion on this.  I don't think anyone would have to explain why that is the case.

Edited July 9, 2020 by Trensharo

[Starship Krupa]

2 hours ago, Trensharo said:

My point is that Cakewalk had a lot of plugins - many of which can basically replace Sonitus, so they could have easily delivered better stock plugins with CbB

Oh. If you're referring to the pile of goodies that came with Platinum, and I'm not that familiar with it because I only started using the program in its Cakewalk by BandLab incarnation, BandLab unfortunately don't have access to a lot of those plug-ins.

Based on my understanding, when Cakewalk, Inc. was dissolved, most of the bundling agreements became null and would have needed to be renegotiated (for a price) by anyone who wanted to distribute the SONAR Platinum suite as it had been.

Since the new owners wanted to distribute the new suite under a freeware subscription model, I guess they decided that it wasn't feasible to bundle all the pricey licenses they didn't own.

Cakewalk bought the Sonitus IP lock, stock, and barrel in the early 2000's, so those plug-ins can be included, others were developed in-house or under contract, such as CA-2A and the ProChannel modules. Speaking of which, the PC modules do include some nice compressors with pleasing UI's, as well as both an algo and convolution reverb.

The only remaining FX processing plug-ins that I know of that remain unincluded are a few PC modules, Channel Tools, and the LP EQ and Multiband Compressor. I would love to see these last two included (I think the others are in the pipeline), but since they have licensing mechanisms built into them that would need to be removed or retooled to somehow work with BandLab's servers instead of the old Cakewalk licensing server, it's a bigger hassle.

As far as I can tell, the only "fact" we disagree on is whether the Sonitus FX sound good and are worth updating with more modern UI's. I think they sound good, you don't. It's really a matter of taste. I read Admiral "Why I Hate Windows" review in the past. He agrees with you on half of the FX, thinks one of them is brilliant, another one "more than sufficient," and the others, the most specialized ones you'd be unlikely to find in another DAW, he left unreviewed because he doesn't work with surround. Whatever.

My take on basic bundled plug-ins is that these days, because of the availability of such great free and cheap alternatives, they don't even have to be world-beaters anyway. Just good enough and easy enough to use to get new users started. But they should look good. Also, I am in the "Sonitus fx sound pretty dang good" camp, so I'd like them to get better UI's so I don't have to squint to see them. That and the ability for the LFO's and delay times to tempo sync. ?

When comparison shopping for DAW's, especially one that comes at such a bargain, "bundled plug-ins" isn't going to make or break my decision whether to use it or not at this stage. It's whether I like the features and workflow of the DAW itself. I already have every plug-in  I need and they work in every DAW.

And as for FX, if it came down to it, give me any DAW and an internet connection and in 30 minutes I'll have all the FX I need to do an excellent mix. Heck, restrict me to the Meldaproduction Free Bundle and Oril River reverb and it's on.

[Base 57]

1 hour ago, Starship Krupa said:

that and the ability for the LFO's and delay times to tempo sync

I don't know about the LFO's but the delay does sync to host. Just toggle the button.

[Will.]

13 hours ago, Trensharo said:

You may like cheese, but I'm pretty sure you will choose gourmet over commodity if both were offered to you.

 

 

Lol! Why would you insist and assume that we have the same taste in food, when I've already said we have different taste in "cars, food and clothing."? That will always be the reality.  I love the Sonitus delay, you dont - AKA  "different taste." Every mixing engineer has it's own taste in plugins. I'm not agreeing, nor am I disagreeing on the free plugins. Reason for that is . . . There is better plugins, but than there's not too. Again, it's about taste. 

 

[Will.]

Guy's let's not turn this thread into a political debate about plugins - please.

 

Keep the peace. Begging. 

Edited July 10, 2020 by Will_Kaydo