What are /r/Cakewalk's favorite Products & Services?

From 3.5 billion Reddit comments

There is no Sonar anymore. Cakewalk/Sonar/Pro Audio went out of business a number of years ago. However, a company called Bandlab bought it and is continuing to development it. Even better, they are offering it for FREE! Yay!

It's the same Cakewalk product you are familiar with, plus some new features. As far as I know everything that used to work, still works. But don't take my word for it. Download it and try it out for yourself. It's FREE!!!!!

https://www.bandlab.com/products/cakewalk?lang=en

I use it all the time and I love it!

Def peep this guide on all things mics

All questions answered in this audio engineers ebook. The Mix Practice - A Walkthrough from Client Acquisition to Final Deliverables

A real audio engineer with real deal advice

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0B3F7TNRR/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_8GWM3NHA2WMQ4KZTDH3R

If your into ebooks this one really get u going on this

All questions answered in this audio engineers ebook. The Mix Practice - A Walkthrough from Client Acquisition to Final Deliverables

A real audio engineer with real deal advice

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0B3F7TNRR/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_8GWM3NHA2WMQ4KZTDH3R

Would the SOLO version of the SCARLETT not cater even more directly to my humble needs? Why would I need more than one mic preamp? The rare times I'll have to record actual sound, it will be one instrument/track at a time.

Or does this thing not do MIDI? I can't find any photos of the back end on this one, like I could the 4i4 you recommended.

So yeah you could just grab a midi to usb adapter for now, this is just a random cheap one but they all do the same thing.

Built in soundcards are much much better today than they were say 20 years ago, so yeah if you're just doing midi/vst stuff for now you'll get by fine. If you want to invest in some studio monitors you'll want to look into getting a dedicated audio interface at that point.

The Focusrite Scarlett 4i4 would work well for your needs, preamps are great and it's got the midi in/out built in. I've had the 2i2 for a few years and it's been fantastic.

https://www.bandlab.com/products/cakewalk

Its been free for a while, you need to download it through another launcher though but it at least doesn't have add or pop ups or anything anoying like that, just a try to get you into their site.

May I ask why you are uninstalling? If Cakewalk thinks it is running, then I would recommend restarting computer and then trying again with the uninstall because maybe some part of application didn't close properly. Another thing I'd like to point out, is that BandLab Assistant has always been buggy, and is no longer needed for updating Cakewalk. If you can't get it to uninstall or update within BandLab Assistant, then you can uninstall through Windows control panel or update directly from Cakewalk.

https://www.bandlab.com/products/cakewalk/whats-new?lang=en

Generic isolation pads from Amazon

Sound Addicted - Studio Monitor Isolation Pads for 3-4.5 inches Small Speakers, Pair of 2 High Density Dampening Acoustic Stands Foam which Fits most Bookshelf’s and Desktops | SMPad 4 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07BRPM8K8/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_glt_i_4Q6AD05V1JNA8RSMTMYQ

For reference sake; I bit the bullet and uninstalled Sonar Producer X3 completely, using the excellent Revo Uninstaller Pro (which is the most thorough of any programs available). Then a scan with CCleaner to remove any potential lingering leftovers.

I re-installed Sonar Platinum and everything's working perfectly now, without another redundant Sonar X3 hogging my Windows 8,1 memory.

By the way, anyone using Windows 10 should read through and share this great website about all things internet privacy and security. Windows 10 is a privacy nightmare, as well as a completely unnecessary upgrade from Win 8.1.

https://www.privacytools.io

Are you using a dedicated audio interface? To get the most out of Cakewalk, you really need ASIO support.

ASIO will give you low latency, high performance audio.

If you're on a budget, the Focusrite Scarlett Solo is a good option, and you can get one for around $125 or so.

You may have success if you install "ASIOForAll" : http://www.asio4all.org/ .... You'll need to choose that driver in the audio settings once you do.

As /u/buttfacenosehead has said you'll need an ASIO driver to get a useable level of latency.

If you're using a built in soundcard I'd recommend using the ASIO4ALL driver available for free here http://www.asio4all.org/

hmm okay....

I'm running Win 10 as well and it looks like this for me https://imgur.com/a/sgeZmvj

Are you running a Win 10 Tablet or just a normal Desktop/Laptop?

Did you use the 'Desktop Assistant' download from this page? https://www.bandlab.com/download

Final question, did you create a BandLab account and login?

If your Dad hasn't had any luck finding a cheap copy of Sonar, have you tried Rosegarden? It's free and open-source. It might fit your dad's needs, and is more focused toward MIDI. Sonar can still do it as well - it's more of a jack-of-all-trades - but it depends on what he needs to do.

By the way, plugins are not necessarily resource-intensive, though they certainly can be, particularly complex synths or huge samplers.

Yes, absolutely it is still viable, especially if you are running the latest version: Go here and download the latest version of the DAW formerly known as SONAR.

It is now called "Cakewalk By Bandlab" and is 100% free. It is exactly the same product as SONAR Platinum, without the bundled third-party licenced stuff, and with about 18 months worth of monthly bug fixes and new features.

For some reason, it doesn't get a lot of publicity and I think this is partly because it is free, has no advertising budget and the usual suspect magazines have ignored it. Travesty.

Like already said. You'll need something to make the initial sound of a guitar, like a soundfont, which is basically a collection of sounds that can be triggers by midi/ piano roll/ staff. https://musescore.org/en/handbook/soundfonts-and-sfz-files#list Cakewalk has a soundfont loader.

Get a soundfont. Setup a midi instrument track using sfz Load the soundfont and add a guitar amp vst to the audio track.

Midi based guitar isn't great and as said before, simulating the nuances of guitar playing using a midi editor is difficult.

It'll work in a pinch.

Might be an idea to hunt around for sample libraries instead.

Thank you for replying. So I have a piece that I'm trying to import into Cakewalk to beef up, already fully made in MidSequer, which uses general MIDI. Each track in my MidSequer piece already has a MIDI instrument assigned to it, which Cakewalk is recognizing, and, well, refusing to change one bit.

This is what I've been doing:

1. Open a blank project and import the .MID.
2. Right-click the number of any of the piece's 10 imported MIDI tracks, select Insert Instrument…, and click Create.
3. Click the little icon to the right of any track's number and try to change any instrument.
4. It reverts whenever I play back. I don't see anything weird going on in Alt+8's Event Manager, either (only the message 110), which makes this even more annoying.

I bought this best seller one on Amazon that has mostly all positive reviews link

Get Sonar X3 Power! by Scott Garrigus first and foremost. He'll be updating via E-Book soon for Sonar 2015 and beyond but the core information you should learn will be in that book. His stuff is top notch and that's become sort of a bible for Sonar users.