https://discuss.cakewalk.com/index.php?/topic/21450-current-release-202011/
2020.11 Highlights
Articulation Maps
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Articulation maps are a universal way to deal with expressions/articulations in VST instruments or hardware MIDI instruments that may be controlled by various methods including:
- Note “key switches”
- The velocity of a note
- Control change events
- Grouping of patches across different MIDI channels (e.g. legato strings patch on ch 1, pizzicato patch on ch 2, etc.)
If you work with sample libraries and virtual instruments, articulation maps are sure to improve your MIDI and articulation/keyswitch workflow.
Recreating a convincing performance with sample libraries and virtual instruments can be a difficult task. The process is made somewhat easier if the sampled instrument includes a range of performance articulations, which is commonly controlled via “keyswitches”. These are used to trigger different sample layers that contain the various performance options. Cakewalk's support for articulation maps make it easy to work with articulations and keyswitches.
Articulation maps provide a much simpler way of switching articulations, without having to manually edit MIDI events in the track. All articulations appear neatly at the top of the PRV instead of spread across the Notes pane, which helps you to better visualize and edit the articulations and keyswitches.
When recording, you can focus on the actual performance — getting the right notes, rather than building expression into the performance — then use articulations to add expression after the basic performance has been recorded. Adding articulations as part of the editing process is often easier than trying to play keyswitches in live via your keyboard.
Articulations do either, or both, of the following:
- Trigger new MIDI events (create ‘MIDI Events’ in the Articulation Map Editor)
- Alter existing MIDI events (create ‘MIDI Transforms’ in the Articulation Map Editor)
Articulations that are added to MIDI and Instrument tracks are automatically applied during playback.
Cakewalk includes a few general-purpose articulation maps that let you experiment with the feature. You can create your own articulation maps, or download maps for orchestra libraries and virtual instruments.
Cakewalk can import Cubase expression maps, so you can get started quickly by downloading maps for popular instrument libraries such as Vienna Symphonic Library, Garritan, Kontakt, etc.
In-app activation
You can now activate Cakewalk directly from within the app, without requiring BandLab Assistant. Cakewalk must be activate once every 6 months.
When starting Cakewalk for the first time, if the app has not yet been activated via BandLab assistant, you will be presented with a BandLab sign-in dialog box. After signing in, Cakewalk will automatically activate itself. You must use your BandLab
user name in the sign-in prompt, not your email address. Please note that sign-in is completely optional and only used to activate Cakewalk independently from BandLab Assistant. Sign-in currently does not support Single sign-on. If you do not have your BandLab username and password, please use BandLab Assistant to perform activation.
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Activation will occur automatically when launching the app if it is in the “grace period”, the period that begins when you see the timeout toast notification asking you to sign in to BandLab to activate soon.
Under normal circumstances, activation will require no manual user intervention going forward, beyond the initial sign-in.
Note that an Internet connection is required for performing activation as described above but not required for general Cakewalk usage. Offline activation is also an option, which requires use of BandLab Assistant to
submit an offline activation request.
You can force an activation refresh with the
Help > Refresh Activation command.
ARA/Melodyne algorithm picker (pre-release)
When converting audio to MIDI by dragging an audio clip to a MIDI track, or performing tempo extraction by dragging an audio clip to the time ruler, you can now select the desired algorithm.
Note: The algorithm picker is a pre-release feature and will only be visible if you are running Melodyne 5 and higher.
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VST instruments can use custom instrument definitions
Some VST instruments do not expose their patch list, either because they are emulating a hardware device and solely rely on MIDI bank select/program changes, or in the case of library hosts such as Kontakt, they have no fixed list of instruments - in other words its up to the user to choose their instrument mapping.
You can now use any instrument definition with a VSTi from a new drop-down menu in the
Patch Browser dialog box (click
Patch Browser in the Inspector).
If
< default for instrument > is selected, then the patches are retrieved from the VSTi as normal, otherwise the patch list is taken from the selected instrument definition.
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Piano Roll view enhancements
- Piano Roll view Note drawing now automatically switches direction as necessary during the gesture (left to right or right to left).
- Open Piano Roll view when double-clicking white space on a MIDI or Instrument track.
VST enhancements
- Updated to VST3 SDK 3.7.0
- Support MIDI CCs via VST3 MIDI output (allows generative MIDI out VST3 plug-ins such as the Reason Rack plug-in to send MIDI CCs to Cakewalk)
- Support channel aftertouch sent from VST3 plugins
Misc. enhancements
Application memory footprint has been reduced (dynamic VST Plug-in Buffer sizes)
In prior versions of Cakewalk, cached plug-in buffers would be allocated at a size of 32K samples irrespective of the audio buffer size. This gets quite expensive when you have a project with hundreds of plug-ins especially with plug-ins having multiple inputs and outputs.
Plug-in buffer sizes are now dynamically adjusted to be based on the audio buffer size rather than an arbitrary max limit. This makes a big difference in projects running at low latency buffers.
Support for mono only ASIO input devices
Cakewalk now supports ASIO devices with a single mono input, such as the iRig Pro.
Relative resizing of selected tracks
You can resize all selected tracks to the same size, or by a relative amount, by using the following modifiers:
- SHIFT+drag resizes all selected tracks to the same size
- CTRL+drag resizes all selected tracks by the same amount relative to their current size
ARA updates
Cakewalk supports the latest ARA SDK from Celemony.
Adjust split point on a single Take lane
If you have several clips in a track with a common split point, the Move Split Point tool always moves all the split points together.
To move only the split point on a single lane, hold down the ALT key when using the Move Split Point tool.
CTRL-click Duplicate Track button to specify settings
To specify settings when duplicating a track, hold down the CTRL key and click the
Duplicate Track button
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Allow track FX bin to be bypassed via control surfaces rather than just individual FX
In addition to individual effects, entire track FX Racks can now be bypassed via control surfaces.
Passing an FX index of -1 (65535) will bypass the entire track FX Rack.
The Mackie Control surface has been updated to use M1+Select button to toggle track FX Rack bypass.
Update installer has option to launch Cakewalk
When installing an update from within Cakewalk, you can now choose to automatically relaunch Cakewalk after the installation completes.
New Project File dialog improvements
The
New Project File dialog box (
File > New) now lets you specify folder paths, tempo, meter, bit depth, and sample rate settings for the
-- No Tracks or Buses -- option (previously named
-- Blank Project --).
File Stats improvements
When starting a new project from a project template, the File Stats window in the Notes Browser now start the
Editing Time and
Revision counters at 0.
To reset the file stats, right-click in the File Stats window and select
Reset File Stats.
Early Access Notifications
Cakewalk now presents a toast notification when an Early Access build is available. Early Access builds are completely optional, providing access to the next version of Cakewalk before its official release.
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Optimizations
Clips pane drawing and scrolling optimizations
- Major optimizations to clips view drawing to eliminate redundant drawing of clips.
- Projects with tracks containing many Take lanes with muted clips now draw and scroll more than 20x faster.
- Scrolling with Display Muted Takes In Parent Track enabled now has almost similar performance to having that option disabled.
- Waveform drawing is now optimized for faster drawing.
Note: The
Display Muted Takes In Parent Track option now defaults to OFF for new installations.
Bus pane optimizations
- Drawing and mouse handling in the Bus pane has been optimized to prevent audio glitches and late buffers
Bug fixes
Stability
- Crash on insert of Track Template
- Crash on Delete Hole of project
- Crash closing project after loading track template containing VST3 synth
- Crash when loading project with Melodyne via Play List
- Crash when deleting Vienna Synchron
- User reported crash when looping audio clip
- User Reported Crash with the Play List
- Random crashes with dead pointers when step recording
- Crash when displaying dropout toast message
- Intermittent crashes in Arranger Track
- nullptr crash in Staff view
- Adding ProChannel Track Compressor on surround bus crashes
UI
- CTRL-click Duplicate Track button should bring up Duplicate Track(s) dialog
- Hidden Clips can be edited in Track view
- Mute Tool operates on hidden clips in Track
- Select Tool selecting invisible muted clips when Display Muted Clips In Parent Track is unchecked
- Scrolling view left while dragging note causes PRV to fail to Snap By
- Center on Now Time with Keyboard Zoom only works if Mouse Zoom is set to Now Time
- Sluggish Scrolling in project
- Enable/Disable Read Automation shortcut not working
- Replace Synth can fail to rename track
- Unexpected changes to track input when using MIDI transformation synths
- Hiding icons in Synth Rack causes alignment error
- Enabling MIDI Out on some synths causes all synths to appear in MIDI Input picker
- Track view would steal focus back after clicking on an Arranger section
- Disallow Step Record during playback
- Add performance warning when disabling Only for Inputs in Project option in Preferences > Project - Record
Arranger
- Section Rename can unexpectedly run into Browser
- F2 Rename on Section Headers does not always work
- Section Rename could occasionally hang the application
- Section menus would occasionally not dismiss resulting in multiple menus being displayed
- Setting now time in arranger during playback doesn't respect the Set Time During Playback click behavior
- Clicking away from Rename of section causes Windows "ping"
- Arranger not automatically fixing overlapping sections in some circumstances
- ALT+mouse wheel zoom unavailable in Arranger track
- Arranger picker fails to open after clicking away from menu
- Arranger menu commands could sometimes fail to execute
- Arranger section move should include data during playback
- Arranger section move is now blocked during record
- Arranger labels now support Unicode characters
Misc.
- Moving mouse over Bus pane causes audio glitches and late buffers
- ARA projects redundantly saving document controller state for deleted items in undo history
- Projects created using Cyrillic characters in the audio file names, fail to load on a system using a different language pack
- Cannot enter the "ö" character using a non-English keyboard layout in Lyrics view
- Ripple Paste not always working after cut
- Clip fails to split during existing fade if Auto Crossfades is enabled
- Slow Cakewalk startup time when using MackieControl.dll
- Export Audio doesn't work when exporting from a surround bus
- Improve handling for "Blank Project" in File > New
- Step Record can glitch with instruments that have long tails when Auto Advance is enabled
- Allow Arm Changes During Playback/Record causes wave file creation when adding certain VST3 plug-ins
- Temporary files for Allow Arm Changes During Playback/Record can be created in wrong folder
- Allow Arm Changes During Playback/Record causes Instrument track audio to fail to record
- Setting multiple tracks to the same input can cause record to fail if Allow Arm Changes during Playback/Record is enabled
- When Automation lanes are visible in the Bus pane, the drop target for reordering gets interfered with causing misplacement
- BandLab Login can appear on incorrect monitor
