Making the UI look like the old Home Studio 2002

[tjmicsak]

So I have been using (and still am) Cakewalk Home Studio 2002 pretty much as it loaded initially. I ran it al this time as the tracks displayed, not using the mixer style display with faders and all that, but just simple wave display tracks. If you are familiar you will know what I mean. The basic new project with 2 audio and 2 MIDI tracks, and then I record on the audio and delete the MIIDI tracks, then adding additional tracks below as many as I need. 

So is there a way to change the default new CW by BL display to look like that old one?

My current process right now is getting a new Win10 machine up in place of my trusty old WinXP and then bring all my old files into the new platform, so I'm looking to, at least for now, have continuity in the display to look like CWHS 2002. 

[Craig Anderton]

Probably your best option is to learn about Lenses, which doesn't allow for an interface overhaul necessarily, but does give you the option to hide elements you don't want to see or find on menus.

[57Gregy]

1 hour ago, tjmicsak said:

I ran it al this time as the tracks displayed, not using the mixer style display with faders and all that, but just simple wave display tracks.

If you mean you open Cakewalk and the Console view is showing, just close that view. The Track view should be beneath it.
And welcome to the forum.

[Noel Borthwick]

Using workspaces and a custom theme would probably be the closest way to do this.
At one point in 2016 we were actually heading towards making one universal app that could be skinned to all our SKU's and have dynamic feature sets. This was one of the primary goals for lenses at the time.

[tjmicsak]

Thanks all, I see that now and may even recall nudging the console view off of the original 2002 now. 

Can I import my old VST plugins (MP3 decoder, Sonic Maximizer, etc) into the new format simply by pasting in copies of the files?

[Starship Krupa]

1 hour ago, tjmicsak said:

Can I import my old VST plugins (MP3 decoder, Sonic Maximizer, etc) into the new format simply by pasting in copies of the files?

If you still have Home Studio installed it's not necessary to do anything but go into Preferences/File/VST Settings and add a path to the folder where your old VST's are.

Cakewalk supports import and export of MP3's natively, so no external decoder or encoder should be necessary.

[scook]

39 minutes ago, Starship Krupa said:

If you still have Home Studio installed it's not necessary to do anything but go into Preferences/File/VST Settings and add a path to the folder where your old VST's are.

Keep in mind all the plug-ins bundled with SHS 2002 are all 32bit and almost 20 years old.

The DX format plug-ins will not load into 64bit DAWs and the 32bit VSTs may no longer be supported.

Best to look for modern, supported 64bit replacements rather than holding on to outdated plug-ins.

Updating everything but a few plug-ins is not a good idea.

[Starship Krupa]

What Steve said.

I don't know what plug-ins were bundled with Home Studio, but I wouldn't be surprised if their functionality was surpassed by what comes with CbB and what you can find as freeware elsewhere. This forum has threads for posting freeware FX and software instruments, and they are many pages long and cover just about any category you can imagine.

[John Vere]

They were a lot of the same stuff but as said 32 bit. If the OP downloads and installs the Extra Content found in the Bandlab Assistant they will have a lot of the same but updated versions of those old VST's.  SO no point adding the scan path you really don't want to use 32 bit plug ins if you don't need them. 

There is a lot of free VST stuff out there. Just tell us the instruments or effects you like to use and we can point you to the right place. 

[Craig Anderton]

The Sonitus effects, which remain wonderful despite being over 20 years old, were updated to 64 bits and are included in CbB. I still use the Sonitus plug-ins, especially the delay and modulator. If a program doesn't support DX plug-ins, I use a wrapper and they work just fine. 

 

[scook]

While the Sonitus plug-ins have been around since the 1990's, as you noted the DX plug-ins were ported to 64bit allowing them to load into 64bit DX hosts.

IIRC, they were some of the first native 64bit plug-ins ever, bundled with SONAR 5 released in 2005.

The plug-ins are still supported and were last compiled in 2016.

And while I am a fan, If they were not ported or supported I doubt we would be discussing them today.

Unless the conversation were about finding suitable replacements.

[mark skinner]

 I still have music creator 4 , Sonar home studio 7, and le 8.5 installed. The latest version of CbB Now has all the plugins I used in these old programs. I have my screen set up real clean an simple but can easily call up different views when I need them. You can with a little effort , set up and keep everything like you want it to look . It makes learning the new software a lot less confusing.

[Jim Fogle]

 @tjmicsak, Welcome to the forum and to Cakewalk by Bandlab or CbB for short.  One plugin suite you will enjoy are Style Dials.  The online Reference Guide states:

Quote

Style Dial FX are powerful audio processing modules with a simple user interface. Each Style Dial FX module features only a single knob that lets you dial in the desired effect. The knob range goes from subtle to fully processed.

The eight style knob effects are available as add in selections in the Pro Channel.  The eight effects are described here:  https://www.cakewalk.com/Products/Style-Dials

Edited November 11, 2020 by Jim Fogle