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Any chance for deep hardware integration?

Batwaffel

By Batwaffel
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Batwaffel

Batwaffel

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I was wondering what the chances would be that Bandlab would be willing to work with hardware manufacturers such as Avid to bring Cakewalk into their hardware ecosystem? I've been eyeing up an S4 EUCON Control Surface but sadly Cakewalk is not on the list of supported DAWs. This is sadly the case for most hardware integrations and has been for a long time. It would be nice if this could change because I feel the lack of deep hardware integration is one major drawback to using Cakewalk at this point.

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Batwaffel

Batwaffel

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On 12/21/2020 at 5:16 PM, azslow3 said:

Do I understand that right, the proposal is support $30k device?

Roland has tried with $5k device... that was epic fail ?

But Cakewalk was supporting some EUCON, so can happened.

Correct. There's no reason it shouldn't be unless AVID doesn't care enough to do the leg work on their part but that would be a discussion between Bandlab and them to come to that decision. I doubt it would ever happen if there was no discussion though.

The Roland console was fantastic. I had one. I really liked it when it worked. The crumbling relationship between Cakewalk and Roland though didn't help with keeping it supported though. With AVID, if it meant the possibility of selling their consoles to another market, they may just be willing to put the work in.

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razor7music

razor7music

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Agreed with other poster, partnership with two other hardware manufacturers didn't end well, (Roland/ Gibson).

Also, I know you used Avid as an example, but since they own Protocols, they are competitors and that would not be a good thing.

Personally, I'd rather see Cakewalk take the path of releasing more plugins--maybe in partnership with some third-party plug in makers (Eventide, SSL come to mind)

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msmcleod

msmcleod

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FWIW, there's a pretty good relationship between most DAW manufacturers.

PreSonus have been great with regards to Cakewalk - the FaderPort range have Cakewalk/SONAR modes, however this does piggy back on the existing MackieControl support.

Steinberg & Cakewalk also have a good relationship.

With the AVID product though, it gets tricky.  Writing a custom surface DLL from scratch takes a fair amount of time & investment.

The question AVID will be asking is, "How many more $30K surfaces would we sell if we did support Cakewalk?"  For Cakewalk it would be, "How many more users would we get if we supported this $30K surface?"

The answer to both is most likely, "...not enough to justify the investment."

The solution might be for the OP to pay a developer to write a custom Control Surface DLL (or configure AZ Controller if this is feasible). However, from experience I can confidently say the majority of time developing a Control Surface DLL is spent in testing... and a developer will need access to one of those $30K control surfaces (and the physical space to set it up somewhere!).
 

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Craig Anderton

Craig Anderton

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Cakewalk works with EUCON controllers, I wrote an article about it that Noel posted on his blog.  I haven't tested EUCON lately, I sold the Artist controller and bought a FaderPort 8 instead.  However I don't see any reason why it still won't work.

It was a little squirrely to figure out at first - certain things have to be done in certain orders - but if you follow the steps in the article, it should work.

As to Avid, I doubt they would have any interest in supporting Cakewalk.

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Batwaffel

Batwaffel

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11 hours ago, Craig Anderton said:

Cakewalk works with EUCON controllers, I wrote an article about it that Noel posted on his blog.  I haven't tested EUCON lately, I sold the Artist controller and bought a FaderPort 8 instead.  However I don't see any reason why it still won't work.

It was a little squirrely to figure out at first - certain things have to be done in certain orders - but if you follow the steps in the article, it should work.

As to Avid, I doubt they would have any interest in supporting Cakewalk.

Thanks for that. Certainly gives me some more to consider. I would do a pretty extensive test with this before I jump but it's nice to know the option is available and it mostly works as intended.

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Noel Borthwick

Noel Borthwick

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On 12/23/2020 at 12:57 AM, Batwaffel said:

Correct. There's no reason it shouldn't be unless AVID doesn't care enough to do the leg work on their part but that would be a discussion between Bandlab and them to come to that decision. I doubt it would ever happen if there was no discussion though.

The Roland console was fantastic. I had one. I really liked it when it worked. The crumbling relationship between Cakewalk and Roland though didn't help with keeping it supported though. With AVID, if it meant the possibility of selling their consoles to another market, they may just be willing to put the work in.

It had nothing to do with Cakewalk not wanting to support it. Roland stopped supporting their hardware. If they still supported it we would have continued. We put a lot of effort into the VS700 and even extended our control surface SDK to do all sorts of editing stuff. This is all open source on Github if someone wants to utilize it for a different product.

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ptheisen

ptheisen

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On 12/24/2020 at 2:54 PM, paulo said:

I'd be happy just to have a decent quality midi controller keyboard that fully worked with CW. 

I just received a Nektar LX+49 for Christmas. The LX+ series has a dedicated Cakewalk plug-in, which is why I chose that series instead of the more expensive T or P series. It works as advertised when set up per the instructions, I am very happy with it so far. I don't know if the overall specifications of the LX+ series meet your needs, but you might want to check them out.

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paulo

paulo

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1 hour ago, ptheisen said:

I just received a Nektar LX+49 for Christmas. The LX+ series has a dedicated Cakewalk plug-in, which is why I chose that series instead of the more expensive T or P series. It works as advertised when set up per the instructions, I am very happy with it so far. I don't know if the overall specifications of the LX+ series meet your needs, but you might want to check them out.

Thanks for the info. I did consider and haven't 100% written off the 88+ version, but I haven't actually seen one in the flesh so my main concern based on Nektar controllers that I have seen is with the build quality and 2020 hasn't made it easy to actually get in front of one. Good to know that it works though. Many of the more premium brands seem to ignore that CW exists and it seems there is always something that won't quite work properly with them.

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ptheisen

ptheisen

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I saw on another thread that you are also considering a Roland RD-88 and other higher end keyboards for your midi controller. The Nektar LX+ series is definitely not in the same league as something like that as far as the keyboard is concerned. Even though Nektar say that the 88 key version is semi-weighted, the whole thing weighs only 18#, compared to the RD-88's 30#. There's just no way to get even a half-decent piano action in something that weighs much under 30#, so if that is a priority, the LX+ is probably not what you're looking for. Also, the layer/split capability of the LX+88 is simpler than the RD-88. They are different in so many ways, they can't really be compared. The DAW integration of the LX+, on the other hand, is good, while the RD-88 has none that I can see. ?

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paulo

paulo

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21 minutes ago, ptheisen said:

I saw on another thread that you are also considering a Roland RD-88 and other higher end keyboards for your midi controller. The Nektar LX+ series is definitely not in the same league as something like that as far as the keyboard is concerned. Even though Nektar say that the 88 key version is semi-weighted, the whole thing weighs only 18#, compared to the RD-88's 30#. There's just no way to get even a half-decent piano action in something that weighs much under 30#, so if that is a priority, the LX+ is probably not what you're looking for. Also, the layer/split capability of the LX+88 is simpler than the RD-88. They are different in so many ways, they can't really be compared. The DAW integration of the LX+, on the other hand, is good, while the RD-88 has none that I can see. ?

Yes I know it's apples v oranges.I've considered just about every option and unfortunately they all seem to have a compromise to make. I'm not a pianist, so piano action doesn't bother me, it's just that 61 keys seems to be too small to be able to get the best experience with things like NI and Omnisphere. The NI controllers seem nice enough but are a bit too geared towards NI and going by what I read here are not ideal with CW.Most other brands lack anything beyond 61 keys, hence why I stared looking beyond mere controllers even though I don't really need anything beyond a midi controller, but there doesn't seem to be much choice above 61 keys that plays nice with CW, hence my original comment. Anyway, sorry to the OP for hijacking...I was just hoping that it might prompt Noel to get Meng to dig around his sofa cushions and hopefully find enough money to buy Roland and then make the keyboard controller that the program deserves. Gotta have something to hope for after 2020........?

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Batwaffel

Batwaffel

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On 12/26/2020 at 9:39 AM, Noel Borthwick said:

It had nothing to do with Cakewalk not wanting to support it. Roland stopped supporting their hardware. If they still supported it we would have continued. We put a lot of effort into the VS700 and even extended our control surface SDK to do all sorts of editing stuff. This is all open source on Github if someone wants to utilize it for a different product.

Yup, I'm aware and it's a damn shame that it went down the way it did because it was a really nice piece of hardware. I'd likely still be using it in some capacity if it didn't require 40 steps to get it somewhat working. I'm actually really surprised they didn't continue supporting it considering the work and money that must have gone into producing it.

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Jim Fogle

Jim Fogle

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@Noel Borthwick, Has there been any consideration to integrate support of Native Instrument's  NKS specification for hardware and software into CbB?  NKS for Developers

My understanding is NKS is to Native Instruments as ARA is to Melodyne.  I would think as popular as Native Instruments hardware and software products are concerned supporting the specification would be a win / win for both companies.

Edited by Jim Fogle
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