2019.09 Feedback

[Noel Borthwick]

On 10/4/2019 at 11:08 AM, Matthew Sorrels said:

Might want to take a look at EZ Drummer 2 not working right in the new version with a metronome count-in.  Not sure who's at fault, but it starts its own timeline during the count-in and is as a result off.

 

Thanks for the report. Indeed the time reporting with a metronome count in is not properly accounted for. I'll investigate it.

[James Argo]

7 hours ago, msmcleod said:

Ahh... I didn't go back as far as Sonar 8.5. I suspect you're right, it may have been broken with the introduction of the Skylight interface.

I've logged it as an issue.

Thanks a lot Mr Mark... I appreciate that. I'm glad to help the dev team make Cakewalk better ?

Regards.

[Stefan Bornhorst]

*** PROBLEM SOLVED, AIM ASSISTANT WAS DISABLED AFTER THE UPDATE. WORKS NOW. ***

 

I have finally switched from the last Sonar Platinum release to Cakewalk by Bandlab a few days ago and am really pleased with the application. I was especially happy that in the track view the program finally displays not only to where clips are being dragged but also by how many bars I have moved them. Back in the Sonar Platinum days I had requested this feature in the forum a few times but it was never realised...

Today I've installed the 2019.09 update and now this doesn't work anymore - even worse, when I drag clips there's no value shown at all... Or do I have to reactivate this function again somewhere? Some help would be greatly appreciated, thanks a lot in advance!

Edited October 5, 2019 by Stefan Bornhorst
Problem solved.

[Feral State Sound]

On 10/4/2019 at 7:16 PM, scook said:

Try holding the SHIFT key when starting CbB. This will restore files that are missing from the user directory such as the audio clips used in the metronome.

This didn't solve the problem but a clean re-install did.

Thank you!

[Noel Borthwick]

On 10/4/2019 at 3:28 PM, Helene Kolpakova said:

Is it possible to revert the Rewind behaviour to the one in previous versions? The fact that it keeps playing after the rewind button has been pressed, breaks my flow as it feels counter-intuitive and introduces an extra button press: [Space] to stop + [W] to rewind, instead of a single [W].

Typically when I work on a part, it's looped and I face two cases.

In 2019.07 and earlier versions:

Case1: Often, I need to Stop at a particular moment that I want to edit. Therefore my Stop behaviour doesn't Rewind to the loop start, to keep the focus of the problematic region. Once I'm done editing, I want to listen to the results in context, therefore I Rewind and Start playback.
In short (Stop doesn't rewind): [Space] [Space] [W] [Space]
Alternative (Stop rewinds): [Space] [Ctrl]+[Space] [W] [Space] 

Case2: Equally often, I need to Stop to get back to the beginning, because the part I need to edit is around where I started, I just kept on listening after the problematic part, for context/pleasure. Because my Stop behaviour doesn't Rewind to the loop start, I conveniently used the Rewind button to bring me back.
In short (Stop doesn't rewind): [Space] [W] [Space]
Alternative (Stop rewinds): [Space] [Space] [Space]

You can tell, that my preference up till now was much better - it relied on two keys instead of three and needed less key presses.

The 2019.09 breaks this flow:

Case1: remains unchanged
In short (Stop doesn't rewind): [Space] [Space] [W] [Space]
Alternative (Stop rewinds): [Space] [Ctrl]+[Space] [W] [Space] 

Case2: adds an extra and very unwanted Space press
In short (Stop doesn't rewind): [Space] [Space] [W] [Space]
Alternative (Stop rewinds): [Space] [Space] [Space]

Not to mention, that historically, many tape machines would not start the playback automatically after the rewind process had completed, unless you stopped the rewind with the play button. So the 2019.09 also breaks my intuitive expectations.

@Helene Kolpakova thanks for posting your use cases.

This change was made to align the behavior with the way most modern DAW's work as well as to cater better to the "always playing" workflow.  As you have already noticed most other DAW's do not stop in response to transport actions (other than stop itself). Prior to this change, there was no way to jump to the loop start dynamically without stopping playback, which IMO is a major omission. This can be important while mixing where you want to repeatedly audition a segment without stopping playback. Or even when playing or practicing a part before recording.  Also the behavior was very inconsistent since some operations like "W" would stop playback but yet others like go to previous measure would not stop. Its inconsistencies like this that make the application not intuitive to new users, so sometimes we need to make hard decisions to change behaviors even though it may impact some users. In the future we plan on adding more accessible transport control operations as well so unifying the behavior was a first step in this direction.

However I acknowledge the opposing workflow requirement to "seek with stop" in order to make an edit and then proceed post edit. So to accommodate this but in a more consistent way, we're considering adding a new preference. "Transport Seeking Stops Playback". When this is enabled any seek operation to change the transport position while playing (or hotkeys like W) will first stop playback before seeking to that position.  I believe this should address your two cases "Case1: Often, I need to Stop at a particular moment that I want to edit." and "Case2: Equally often, I need to Stop to get back to the beginning, because the part I need to edit is around where I started"

We will default to the new behavior but you will be able to turn on the stop behavior through the TV options menu. Sound OK?

 

 

[Matthew Carr]

Fantastic work on this release Bakers, great effort!

I tried out the new Playlist functionality, and this has really improved. The ability to  discard project changes during playback is great, and loading the next song at the end of the current song gets rid of audio glitches and other problems that used to happen when loading the next song whilst the current song starts.

I think there's still room for improvement though, to make this really useable in a live environment

Possible Bugs

•  When loading a project from the playlist, the now time is always set to the start of a project, rather than respecting where the now time has been set to when saving the file. Perhaps this is by design, if so there needs to be an option to respect the saved now time in projects.
   
•  When a song is manually loaded by double clicking on an entry, any existing projects are left open - manually jumping to a new point in the playlist should close any open projects (and respect the option to discard any changes made)

Enhancements

I'd like to be able to  control the playlist from my master keyboard transport controls - having to press keys on the laptop isn't so practical, and reminds the audience that a computer is involved. There are a few changes that would help in this regard

•  In the delay dialog, add an option along the lines of  'Just Load Song', which will mean 
  • The project is loaded, but not started.
  •  The project transport obeys the standard transport controls, so can be started, stopped, rewound etc using the transport controls
  •  When the project plays past the end, the next project is loaded as per normal
  •  No MsgBox dialogs are shown when the project starts. E,g right now if I press play on my master keyboard, the project doesn't start, instead it displays a dialog which I then have to accept on the laptop in order to start the song - Useless if I'm trying to cue backing to a live band member!
     
•  Allow the playlist to be toggled between minimised / maximised via a learned midi command. When using a laptop, the playlist obscures too much of cakewalk when always on top, but we need a way to quickly bring up and then hide the setlist during a show
   
• Add midi learnable commands to 
  •  Scroll up the list
  •  Scroll down the list
  •  Manually load the currently selected project (the same as pressing enter, or double clicking a file name)
     
•  Consider an additional 'Live' view of the setlist, which just displays the Status, File Name , BPM and Key in a larger font. The extra columns are needed for setting up the playlist, but not during the show - a larger font would be far more use!

Edited October 6, 2019 by Matthew Carr

[eli0s]

11 hours ago, Noel Borthwick said:

We will default to the new behavior but you will be able to turn on the stop behavior through the TV options menu. Sound OK?

Hijacking this thread, this would be a delight Noel!!!?

[Elena Kolpakova]

12 hours ago, Noel Borthwick said:

We will default to the new behavior but you will be able to turn on the stop behavior through the TV options menu. Sound OK?

Sounds great! I also wasn't much of a fan of the Ctrl+PageUp/Down keypresses keeping the playback, but that wasn't much of an issue for my workflow. So I'm looking forward to the change you've just described! I also like the consistency of such implementation.

Also, I understand the case for mixing as you described it, but for me looping a part has always worked wonders in that regard. And in those rare occasions when I needed to start playback from the loop start before the loop ends, a combo of [W]+[Space] was always there.

Anyway, thank you very much for the support and bringing hope I can enjoy CbB again ?

[Jaime Ramírez]

Reason (software) Rewire, MISSING NOTES. 

I have a track template that have 2 tracks midi and 2 audio from reason outputs, when record something and playback soma random notes are not playing... (sorry with my little English) 

[msmcleod]

4 hours ago, Jaime Ramírez said:

Reason (software) Rewire, MISSING NOTES. 

I have a track template that have 2 tracks midi and 2 audio from reason outputs, when record something and playback soma random notes are not playing... (sorry with my little English) 

Try increasing your MIDI prepare buffer. The default is 250 - I normally use 750:

[craigr68]

On 10/6/2019 at 4:45 AM, Matthew Carr said:

 Allow the playlist to be toggled between minimised / maximised via a learned midi command. When using a laptop, the playlist obscures too much of cakewalk when always on top, but we need a way to quickly bring up and then hide the setlist during a show

I realize this isn't exactly what you're looking for, but as a workaround I'm doing this with an Autohotkey script.  Here's a stripped down version and could be modified in various ways.  Alt- m loads LIVE.SET.  Alt-Shift-m minimizes it.  

!m::
IfWinExist, LIVE.SET
   WinActivate
Else
   run C:\CAKEWALK\PROJECTS\PLAYSETS\LIVE.SET
return

!+m::
WinMinimize, LIVE.SET
return
 

[Jaime Ramírez]

16 hours ago, msmcleod said:

Try increasing your MIDI prepare buffer. The default is 250 - I normally use 750:

@msmcleod Thank you for you answer. I will try and I let you know.

How this affect the midi performance and plugins? 

[scook]

Other than fixing the dropped note problem moderate increases in the buffer are not noticeable. Personally, I would start at 500 and increase by 250ms increments until the problem goes away. At large settings project startup may be a little sluggish because the buffer must fill up before the project starts to make sound.

[Tom Riggs]

So did I understand Noel correctly?  Is there a hotfix coming for the 2019.09 update?

 

[Noel Borthwick]

It is. very soon.

[Tom Riggs]

1 minute ago, Noel Borthwick said:

It is. very soon.

thanks

 

[wetdentist]

i remember that the "Go to Start" button on the Transport Module used to rewind to the beginning of a looped region, if there was one, but now that does not happen.  that is frustrating me

[Jonathan Sasor]

3 hours ago, wetdentist said:

i remember that the "Go to Start" button on the Transport Module used to rewind to the beginning of a looped region, if there was one, but now that does not happen.  that is frustrating me

"w" will do that behavior now

[Noel Borthwick]

2019.09 Hotfix is now available.

[mkerl]

Solid as a rock. Thanks