Cakewalk Plugins Not Working

[Matty L'Ange]

Hi there! I am new to using Cakewalk, I installed it for the first time two ago. I recently have followed a YouTube video on how to set up and start using Cakewalk. Here is the link to that video.  After I followed the step of settinm up the vst plugins, my plugins don't start to work. Cake walk says that is ditects 44 plugins, but I'm not able to use any of them in the software. I've attched a photo to this post that shows that I have Instrument plugins installed in my plugins. (They are 32 bit however my friend says that it doesn't really matter) Neither of us could figure what was wrong. I am wondering if anyone here has had the same problem or can shade some light on what I need to do! Thank you! 

 

[scook]

Try running a VST reset from preferences.

[Jim Fogle]

Do you have the Studio Instrument Suite installed?  It has to be installed through the BandLab Assistant.  Just to the right of the Cakewalk button is a down arrow.  Clicking on the down arrow opens a new window with check box selections for the Studio Instrument Suite, a trial version of Melodyne, The Cakewalk (GUI) Theme Editor and the Cakewalk Drum Replacer.

[Nigel Mackay]

3 hours ago, scook said:

Try running a VST reset from preferences.

The instruments are showing in the audio effects plugins. That is why they don't work.

If the VST reset works they will be in the browser under instruments.

In the video, at time 03:12 he adds an instrument. Do it the same way. Notice that after clicking + he clicks Instrument.

Edited March 29, 2021 by Nigel Mackay

[Matty L'Ange]

On 3/28/2021 at 9:50 PM, Jim Fogle said:

Do you have the Studio Instrument Suite installed?  It has to be installed through the BandLab Assistant.  Just to the right of the Cakewalk button is a down arrow.  Clicking on the down arrow opens a new window with check box selections for the Studio Instrument Suite, a trial version of Melodyne, The Cakewalk (GUI) Theme Editor and the Cakewalk Drum Replacer.

Hi Jim!Thank you so much for the response! I do have The instrument suit installed, At first I didn't, but now that I have that nothing has changed

[Matty L'Ange]

On 3/29/2021 at 12:12 AM, Nigel Mackay said:

The instruments are showing in the audio effects plugins. That is why they don't work.

If the VST reset works they will be in the browser under instruments.

In the video, at time 03:12 he adds an instrument. Do it the same way. Notice that after clicking + he clicks Instrument.

Hi Nigal! Thank you for you response! I see what you mean and I do click on the instruments when I do "Add new" Resetting in Preferences didn't work, is there another way I can put my uncatigorized instruments into the instruments section in my plugins?

[Jim Fogle]

@Matty L'Ange,

Open the Uncategorized folder to find a VSTi.

Left click on the name of the VSTi to highlight it.

Right click on the VSTi name to open the  VSTi "Properties" window.

Select the desired category (folder) from the Category drop down menu.   Note the Properties window calls folder names "Category".

[Matty L'Ange]

23 minutes ago, Jim Fogle said:

@Matty L'Ange,

Open the Uncategorized folder to find a VSTi.

Left click on the name of the VSTi to highlight it.

Right click on the VSTi name to open the  VSTi "Properties" window.

Select the desired category (folder) from the Category drop down menu.   Note the Properties window calls folder names "Category".

@Jim Fogle Sorry,  I couldn't a VSTI in any of my plugins

[Jim Fogle]

@Matty L'Ange,

I'm sorry, I mispoke.  The Studio Instrument Suite of virtual instruments are DXi virtual instruments, not VSTi virtual instruments.  However you should be able to find them in the media browser; likely under the Uncatogorized folder.

Here's how to get to the virtual instruments:

Open the browser by selecting the letter "b" on your computer keyboard.

Select the "Plugins" tab.

Select the "Instruments" tab.

 

[Nigel Mackay]

You can also Sort by Manufacturer and look under Cakewalk.

[Starship Krupa]

16 hours ago, Jim Fogle said:

The Studio Instrument Suite of virtual instruments are DXi virtual instruments, not VSTi virtual instruments. 

Actually, they are VSTi's.

[Jim Fogle]

On 4/1/2021 at 1:22 PM, Starship Krupa said:

Actually, they are VSTi's.

So I was right the first time, imagine that.

Is the TTS-1 DXi?  I seem to remember reading either the Studio Instruments Suite or TTS-1 is a DXi.

Related question, when using the browser, how do you visually tell the difference between a VSTi and DXi?

[scook]

TTS-1 is a DX plug-in.

There are several plug-in format indicators:

• The plug-in browser may use different icons and colors. These are theme dependent.
• There is a "Sort by Type" layout
• Unlike VST2/3, DX plug-ins do not have a drop down in the standard header above the plug-in UI like this one above the Rapture Pro VST3

I am surprised a VST reset failed. In the past, this corrected SI suite initial scan failures.

[Starship Krupa]

21 minutes ago, Jim Fogle said:

Related question, when using the browser, how do you visually tell the difference between a VSTi and DXi?

If you're using one of the factory themes (Mercury, Tungsten), look closely at the small icon to the left of the instrument's name. It's different for each type of plug-in, VST2, VST3 or DX.

If you use one of @Colin Nicholls' themes or my own Racing Green, they feature a more differentiated set of icons in this location which Colin created and kindly allowed me to use. Each icon also has its own color, making it so that you don't have to squint to see right away.

And I do recommend using a custom theme if you can find one you like. A good theme can make Cakewalk easier on the eyes, more inviting to use, etc. I chose green because my eyes "relax" better with it. I go back to the green-on-black monitor days and still like that color combo.

His themes (and mine) also feature more contrasting colors for the names themselves, which is a themeable item.

[Music Meister]

So I am new to Cakewalk but I have some knowledge thanks to YouTube. I have been installing some third party plugins such as K1v by Nils and Vital. 

My issue is that when I apply an effect like Vital to a track, there's no audio whatsoever. Here's an example. 

I add in a new piano track and I want to modify the piano to sound more synth like. 

I then click the + next to FX directly from the piano track and select Vital. 

Once Vital is applied, the track loses all sound and I cannot get the sound unless the power button is clicked to disable the effect. 

The wierd thing is that I still see the audio levels going up when I click a key from the plugin but any existing MIDI I have on that track has no sound. 

I really need help with this because I don't want to uninstall Vital and I definitely don't want to move on to one of the paid DAW's.

Another plugin that I would like to know how to get working is Free Alpha and that much like Vital produces no sound. Free Alpha is much like Omnisphere 2 and Nexus in that it has sound banks and presets but I can't get the audio to play. 

1 more thing about Vital, I made this vocal preset in Vital and I would like to know how I can get that exact sound I made into the track that it's applied to. 

And finally, I have a MIDI keyboard and specifically the Worlde Panda Mini and that isn't working for some reason. I connected the keyboard, I tried to select all the parameters I needed but the "Input" section in the MIDI keyboard section from the Preferences tab is blank. There are no options on there for my keyboard so that led me to believe that my keyboard just isn't compatible with Cakewalk and maybe the same might be true for my plugins. I don't want to have to buy a new keyboard but if I have to then at least give me some compatible inexpensive keyboards. 

I don't want to accept the truth that neither my plugins nor my keyboard are incompatible with Cakewalk. I do hope there is a way to fix all my problems. Please and thank you. 

 

Label my problems like this. 

Vital: ...

Free Alpha: ...

Keyboard: ...

I do hope all of these problems have a solution. 

[Colin Nicholls]

40 minutes ago, Music Meister said:

I then click the + next to FX directly from the piano track and select Vital. 

Once Vital is applied, the track loses all sound and I cannot get the sound unless the power button is clicked to disable the effect. 

Vital is an instrument, not an effect. (I think?) Although you can use some instrument plugins as FX, it's not normal.

You need to drag Vital from the browser into an empty area of the track view, and Cakewalk will prompt you to set up the necessary tracks.

Or, you can do it the manual way which is more like connecting physical units in a recording studio:

• Open the Synth Rack
• Add the virtual instrument by pressing +
• Select the instrument
• When prompted, clear all the checkboxes (seriously)
• Now, right click in the Track View's Track Header Pane, and add 1 MIDI track
• Now, right click in the Track View's Track Header Pane, and add 1 Audio track
• Now comes the routing: You are going to connect the MIDI, Audio and VSTi together.
• Expand the Audio track, and set the INPUT of the audio track to be the Synth OUTPUT. 
• Expand the MIDI track, and set the OUTPUT to the VSTi.

That's the routing that Cakewalk will do for you automatically but it really helps to understand what is really going on behind the scenes.

Your hardware MIDI controller needs to be connected to the INPUT of the MIDI track. Your hardware MIDI interface (USB or whatever) should be showing up in Edit>Pref>MIDI>Devices and made available to select from in the MIDI track's input.

Feel free to follow up with any questions about anything I've written here. I recommend you try these steps.

[abacab]

3 minutes ago, Colin Nicholls said:

Vital is an instrument, not an effect. (I think?) Although you can use some instrument plugins as FX, it's not normal.

That's correct. Vital need to be run on it's own instrument track as a virtual instrument.

If you try to put any instrument into a track's FX bin that was not designed for that job, you will just get silence. Some developers ship an additional FX version of their instrument as a separate plugin, but that will usually include "FX" somewhere in the name.

To put it in basic terms:

Virtual instrument plugins take a MIDI input and use their internal sound generators to output an audio signal.

FX plugins take in an audio signal input, process it, and then output a modified audio signal.

[User 905133]

I don't have vital, so I looked it up and like others have said and as the webpage says (if we are talking about the same plug-in) "Vital is a visual synthesizer."

That being said, there are some virtual instruments that have FX that do allow the processing of sounds that are external to the instrument.  For years I used Z3ta+ to process audio from non-Z3ta+ virtual instruments.  More recently, I have done this with Surge.

In both those cases, the synths come with separate files (dll files) that handle the FX.

If Vital boasts the ability to process non-Vital audio, you might want to see how they do it.  Maybe they also use an FX dll that's in the wrong place.

ADDENDUM: I don't see anything in the Vital Press Kit that leads me to believe it can process external (non-Vital) sound sources.

FYI: The method I described does indeed work with Nils' K1v.

Edited June 19, 2021 by User 905133
(2) to comment on using Nils' K1v with bona fide Instrument/FX plug-ins; (1) to add an addendum based on info from Vital's website

[Music Meister]

14 hours ago, User 905133 said:

FYI: The method I described does indeed work with Nils' K1v.

Yes. For one, Vital is indeed a synthesizer. For two, I tried to install Nils' K1v but I didn't know how since all the files are dll files and none of them actually did anything. So if you could explain to me step by step on how to download K1v, then I would be very grateful. 

[User 905133]

57 minutes ago, Music Meister said:

Yes. For one, Vital is indeed a synthesizer. For two, I tried to install Nils' K1v but I didn't know how since all the files are dll files and none of them actually did anything. So if you could explain to me step by step on how to download K1v, then I would be very grateful. 

(1) I've had Nils' K1v for a little while and I forget how I installed it.  I probably used the basic method: (1) using the K1v installer and (2) re-scanning my plug-ins with Cakewalk's scanner (which is found under [P]references > File > VST Settings). I never just copy or move around *.dlls. I have heard of others doing that, sometimes with problems.  So, I generally just use the manufacturer's installer.

If you used the installer and the dlls are in the right place, running Cakewalk's VST Scanner could help.  Double check to make sure that the location of the K1v is in the scan path. 

[For info on rescanning, see scook's post/link from March 28th above--the second post in the thread.]

(2) My FYI might not have been as clear as it could have been.  I allowed the image to do some of the explaining.   

I wanted to test Nils' K1v only to make sure the K1v wasn't causing a conflict with Vital FX (if there were such a thing; but so far as I can see there isn't). 

To test, I loaded the K1v and tested it with both z3ta+ FX and Surge FX.  (See the image which has the K1v as an instrument with both z3ta+ FX and Surge FX in the FX bin.)

I hope it was clear from the image that the FYI wasn't saying the K1v processed external audio with FX.

 

Edited June 20, 2021 by User 905133
To add a reference to the second post in the thread