BandLab assistant

[Irene]

I have the BandLab assistant icon in the taskbar. When it opens there is an image of a happy drummer but beyond that it will not open further. My account is set up but getting into it conveniently is the problem.

 

[Lord Tim]

Don't bother using that, you can uninstall it entirely if you're just planning to use it for Cakewalk by Bandlab. Scroll down for the download link for the Cakewalk Installer on THIS PAGE and use that instead.

Any further updates to Cakewalk are all done inside Cakewalk itself.

[Irene]

OK. Thanks. But earlier today I couldn't save the project because I hadn't activated Cakewalk and didn't know how to do that.

[Lord Tim]

In Cakewalk, go to Help > Sign In and use the account details you signed up to Bandlab with. That should refresh the activation, but if not, after that go to Help > Refresh Activation.

If that fails for whatever reason, you may need to uninstall Cakewalk and start again by downloading it with the Cakewalk Installer.

[John Vere]

I thought you had to leave the Assistant installed to activate Cakewalk every 6 months?

 I know you don’t need to ever open it or use it, but my understanding was it is the “ manager” for Cakewalk just like XLN and Izotope use. 

I googled the question “Do you need the Bandlab Assistant installed to use Cakewalk?”  And as usual there’s a zillion different outdated answers.  

Edited June 29, 2022 by John Vere

[Lord Tim]

Nope, from... sometime over the last year or so (I can't remember which version exactly) it's all handled entirely in-app in Cakewalk, so long as you're online.

If you need to do an offline Auth from another machine, this is still handled externally.

Apart from that, the only reason to have Bandlab Assistant these days is to access the loop library, but it wouldn't surprise me if that ends up in the Browser pane sometime in the future too, given how much they're trying to cut Bandlab Assistant out of the picture (that's made by the devs in Singapore and Cakewalk was kind of bolted onto that when it first came out, but I think the preference is to keep as much stuff in-house as possible)

So basically, if you grab the Cakewalk Installer and use that to download Cakewalk, if you're online, you'll never really need to ever see Bandlab Assistant if you don't want to.

[Promidi]

5 hours ago, Lord Tim said:

So basically, if you grab the Cakewalk Installer and use that to download Cakewalk, if you're online, you'll never really need to ever see Bandlab Assistant if you don't want to.

I turfed BA ages ago and CbB has never gone in to demo mode. Also, CbB refreshes the activation with every update.

[John Vere]

Good to know, thanks. Cakewalk‘s info on the internet is mostly outdated. The best info is actually found here on this forum but you need to pay attention to the posting dates. 
Sad thing is the majority of Cakewalk users now post on Facebook and not this Forum. Facebook is useless for gathering the correct answers and info.  

[Starship Krupa]

56 minutes ago, John Vere said:

Cakewalk‘s info on the internet is mostly outdated.

It does have its own Wikipedia article, which goes into the need (or lack of it) for BandLab Assistant:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cakewalk_by_BandLab#Licensing

(some Wikipedia cop deleted the list of notable features I included, citing a lack of references. The reference I used was the Cakewalk feature list published on the official website ?)