Re: FYI - Cubase 4 No Longer Supports DirectX Plugins

[LarsErik]

Nice post Stag

+1

+1

[Alex Westner]

in truth i wish that cakewalk would have the honesty of people like fxpansion who will actually tell you what the bugs are in their programs and the failings/confusion between their marketing and product delivery

everything is always sunny in cakewalk land - i guess i'm just such a cynic that I don't beleive it

If you spend any time on the Cakewalk Forums I believe you'll find us to be quite honest, helpful and very direct with our customers.

We talk very openly about issues and feature requests with our customers, and I think we're pretty good at addressing them.

Maybe the sun is shining on us right now because we have a pretty strong product in SONAR 6, and most of our customers really like what we gave them in this update.

[Alex Westner]

So how do you explain the fact that Sonar and all its plugs apparently run fine in Vista?

Sonar 64 bit on a 64 bit OS, they don't mention elder plug 16 bit DX plug. Sonar + Vista, that's all i read.

Well you could ask your fellas at the Cakewalk forum if they tested it with Waves Platinum 1.0 or something of that caliber.

We did extensive testing with SONAR, but we haven't thoroughly tested products from other companies on Vista, so we can't vouch for them.

That said, DX and VST plug-ins were included in our SONAR testing, so I'd expect most third party plug-ins to work just fine on Vista.

[Alex Westner]

Did you notice that the lengthy courtship between Microsoft and Cakewalk seems to be moving towards engagement ring time, or at least significant sponsorship/investment?

Well, quite the opposite: Cakewalk (actually TwelveTone Systems) are former Microsoft employees, so this relationship is not surprising.

--th

Huh?!

[derek]

That said, DX and VST plug-ins were included in our SONAR testing, so I'd expect most third party plug-ins to work just fine on Vista.

"vista" as in "32bit vista but not 64bit vista" or both? not so unimportant detail there.

[Alex Westner]

That said, DX and VST plug-ins were included in our SONAR testing, so I'd expect most third party plug-ins to work just fine on Vista.

"vista" as in "32bit vista but not 64bit vista" or both? not so unimportant detail there.

32-bit Vista.

[derek]

thanks for clearing that up. do i understand that correctly that with 64bit vista, theres no way of getting older DX plugins to run? or would wrappers still work?

[mojkarma]

in truth i wish that cakewalk would have the honesty of people like fxpansion who will actually tell you what the bugs are in their programs and the failings/confusion between their marketing and product delivery

everything is always sunny in cakewalk land - i guess i'm just such a cynic that I don't beleive it

If you spend any time on the Cakewalk Forums I believe you'll find us to be quite honest, helpful and very direct with our customers.

We talk very openly about issues and feature requests with our customers, and I think we're pretty good at addressing them.

Maybe the sun is shining on us right now because we have a pretty strong product in SONAR 6, and most of our customers really like what we gave them in this update.

Dear Alex,

yes, Sonar 6 has nice new features, making it an attractive product. What users of other sequencers often do not see are the little things that cakewalk doesn't get right, version after version.
An example:
1. Sonar finally has the "famous new" lasso behavior.
Can you explain, why on earth doesn't it work on midi events in the pianoroll. The midi events still have to be selected with the lasso completeley rounded. If you put in something new, and you are the last one without this feature, why can't you make it right.
2. Mute tool: it is there for clips in the track view, but of course not for midi events!
3. In the pianoroll, when you move events, there is a small pop up window, telling you the position, where one moves at. (Also finally). Why doesn't we get the same for the clips in the track view.

The list could go on and on. I'm talking about existent, not properly implemented features. Why does this mistakes happen over and over again.

A lot of people appreciate your customers relation, but after all, we all have to do our jobs, and often you make us doing it unnecessarely complicated.

[Alex Westner]

thanks for clearing that up. do i understand that correctly that with 64bit vista, theres no way of getting older DX plugins to run? or would wrappers still work?

Our BitBridge technology allows 32-bit VSTs to work in a 64-bit app, but older 32-bit DX plugs are not supported in a 64-bit app.

[derek]

Our BitBridge technology allows 32-bit VSTs to work in a 64-bit app, but older 32-bit DX plugs are not supported in a 64-bit app.

thats nicely put, but "older 32-bit DX plugs" means "all that currently are used in 32bit systems", so more or less all of them, right?

not trying to be a pain in the ass here, just trying to get to the bottom line, which sounds to me like "in 64bit vista, all current DX plugins dont work while current VST plugins may work depending on the host". is that correct?

[Alex Westner]

in truth i wish that cakewalk would have the honesty of people like fxpansion who will actually tell you what the bugs are in their programs and the failings/confusion between their marketing and product delivery

everything is always sunny in cakewalk land - i guess i'm just such a cynic that I don't beleive it

If you spend any time on the Cakewalk Forums I believe you'll find us to be quite honest, helpful and very direct with our customers.

We talk very openly about issues and feature requests with our customers, and I think we're pretty good at addressing them.

Maybe the sun is shining on us right now because we have a pretty strong product in SONAR 6, and most of our customers really like what we gave them in this update.

Dear Alex,

yes, Sonar 6 has nice new features, making it an attractive product. What users of other sequencers often do not see are the little things that cakewalk doesn't get right, version after version.
An example:
1. Sonar finally has the "famous new" lasso behavior.
Can you explain, why on earth doesn't it work on midi events in the pianoroll. The midi events still have to be selected with the lasso completeley rounded.

Yes, we just talked about this today at Cakewalk, and we'll be addressing this in a free update soon.

If you put in something new, and you are the last one without this feature, why can't you make it right.

Well, we're usually pretty good about this. Our surround sound and freeze implementations introduced in SONAR 4 went above and beyond what some other products already had. Same is true with our AudioSnap feature set (compared to AudioWarp, Beat Detective, etc.)

2. Mute tool: it is there for clips in the track view, but of course not for midi events!

Actually, it works for MIDI notes, too, when working in clip mode.

3. In the pianoroll, when you move events, there is a small pop up window, telling you the position, where one moves at. (Also finally). Why doesn't we get the same for the clips in the track view.

That's a good suggestion - we'll look into that.

The list could go on and on. I'm talking about existent, not properly implemented features. Why does this mistakes happen over and over again.

A lot of people appreciate your customers relation, but after all, we all have to do our jobs, and often you make us doing it unnecessarely complicated.

Sure, we make mistakes sometimes. But, I think the point of this thread is that we do actually own up to them.

[derek]

Our surround sound and freeze implementations introduced in SONAR 4 went above and beyond what some other products already had. Same is true with our AudioSnap feature set (compared to AudioWarp, Beat Detective, etc.)

sounds interesting. guess its time to take another look. those certainly are important features and im curious to see how its done in sonar. is there a sonar 6 demo version?

[Alex Westner]

Our BitBridge technology allows 32-bit VSTs to work in a 64-bit app, but older 32-bit DX plugs are not supported in a 64-bit app.

thats nicely put, but "older 32-bit DX plugs" means "all that currently are used in 32bit systems", so more or less all of them, right?

not trying to be a pain in the ass here, just trying to get to the bottom line, which sounds to me like "in 64bit vista, all current DX plugins dont work while current VST plugins may work depending on the host". is that correct?

Obviously 64-bit VSTs should work just fine under the 64-bit version of SONAR. And thanks to SONAR's BitBridge technology, all of your current 32-bit VSTs will work under the 64-bit version of SONAR, too.

64-bit DXs will work under the 64-bit version of SONAR.

However, 32-bit DXs (those running in today's 32-bit systems) will not work in the 64-bit version of SONAR, because BitBridge only works with VSTs.

[Alex Westner]

Our surround sound and freeze implementations introduced in SONAR 4 went above and beyond what some other products already had. Same is true with our AudioSnap feature set (compared to AudioWarp, Beat Detective, etc.)

sounds interesting. guess its time to take another look. those certainly are important features and im curious to see how its done in sonar. is there a sonar 6 demo version?

Not yet, but it should be available very soon.

[derek]

so, essentially, by not making the "bitbridge" DX compatible, support of all DX plugins currently known to man will be dropped in sonar too, at least in the 64bit version.

thats on the one hand still better than steinberg (who essentially forced this move onto their customers ahead of time), yet, to be honest, it essentially means that *everyone* will have to make this painful move sooner or later, only in sonar it will be done later.

im starting to understand steinbergs motives now a bit better. seems like anything that has to do with the current DX standard is doomed in 64bit land for some technical reason unknown to us users. i mean, i consider cakewalk *the* major DX supporter, after all it was your company (iirc) that even introduced new DX standards (DXI) in the past. if there is not going to be support for all of todays DX plugins even from your company, then i guess DX is *really* dead. the theoretical possibility of getting ones DX plugins updated to 64bit DX seems like beating a dead horse in that case, cause you might as well then just update to VST, which seems a much safer bet at this point. users that interpreted the quote in your forums about "taking backwards compability seriously" as "DX support forever" should also be aware of this, since it essentially means that theyre facing exactly the same stuff as steinberg users do now, only not ahead of time.

thank you for being (somewhat ;-) straightforward on this one. i will still download a demo when its avaiable, cause you now got me interested with the "better than beat detective" bit :-)