Cakewalk by BandLab v2021.01 Update 1 released

Cakewalk has released Cakewalk by BandLab (CbB) version 2021.01 Update 1.

The 2021.01 release introduces Arranger enhancements, SSO (Single Sign-On) for activation, import and export improvements, optimizations, and over 60 bug fixes that focus on stability and user reported issues.

2021.01 Highlights:

• Arranger section inclusion of outlying MIDI notes. When dragging sections or committing arrangements, Cakewalk has logic for dealing with leading/trailing MIDI notes that overlap section boundaries.
• Absolute time in Arranger tracks. The time base format for each Arranger track can be set to either Musical or Absolute. The time base format determines what happens to sections when you change the project tempo.
• Cakewalk supports SSO (Single Sign-On) for Cakewalk activation, which allows you to log in via any service supported by BandLab as your sign-in authority. Google, Facebook, Apple ID, mobile phone and BandLab user/password credentials are currently supported.

Misc. enhancements:

• Cancel VST scan. You can now cancel an in-progress VST scan with the new Cancel Scan button in Edit > Preferences > File - VST Settings or via the Cancel option in the VST Scan toast notification.
• Auto termination of VST scan. Shutting down Cakewalk will now automatically terminate any scan in progress.
• The new Zoom to Fit Project Horizontally shortcut (CTRL+ALT+F) zooms to fit the entire project in the Clips pane, without affecting the height of tracks.
• Improved selection with Arranger sections. If there are gaps between a range of selected sections, the unselected clips remain unselected. You can now also unselect fully selected clips from a selection and they will not be moved with the section.
• Cutting an Arranger section with Ripple Edit enabled now deletes the hole to make it consistent with the Delete command.
• Clicking on an articulation (without modifiers), or changing an articulation's type or MIDI channel now sends any triggered MIDI events associated with the articulation.
• Four new buttons have been added to the Control Bar's Select module in Large mode: Select Track Envelopes with Clips, Select Track Articulations with Clips, Select Events with Sections, and Select Sections with Time Ruler.
• Moving clips between Takes lanes on the same track now respects the Auto Crossfade setting.
• Insert Instrument track behavior. When selected from the track context menu, the Insert Instrument command now inserts the instrument before the current track rather than after the last track.
  Phase and Interleave buttons are now available in the Track view and Inspector for Instrument tracks.
• Option to only use external MIDI inputs. MIDI tracks now have a new All External Inputs input option, which only appears when at least one soft synth with a MIDI output is present in the project. All External Inputs means any MIDI input that isn't an output from a soft synth, such as hardware MIDI ports and virtual controllers.
• Export to Standard MIDI File now respects the selection. If there is no selection, the whole project is exported.
• The integrated LAME MP3 encoder has been updated to version 3.100. This includes bug fixes and stability improvements to MP3 encoding and also speeds up the encoding process. Additionally, Cakewalk has been updated to now handle discarding padding samples when importing MP3 files. i.e imported MP files will not contain extra data at the beginning of the file.
• The libsndfile library used for import and export of various audio formats has been updated to version 1.0.30. This fixes numerous issues with handling BWF, Wave64, AIFF, FLAC and Ogg files.

Optimizations:

• Dynamic plug-in parameter optimizations and improvements in responsiveness and memory footprint when loading and editing projects with lots of tracks and high parameter count plug-ins.
• Improved handling of ProChannel automation. ProChannel bypass automation is now UI independent and also buffer accurate. ProChannel bypass will also properly enable/disable with automation during fast bounce and freeze operations.

• MMCSS improvements. When MMCSS is enabled, all threads are assigned to the same MMCSS task groups for better efficiency.

  In prior releases on multicore systems with 16 or more cores MMCSS limits could be prematurely reached, resulting in lowered efficiency with some audio threads not running at pro audio priorities. The MMCSS thread limit has been boosted to 128 to handle machines with a higher number of cores.

• The VST3 Host Bypass button now also works when this parameter is not automatable.