Why "C:\Cakewalk Content" for the content folder?

Billy,

All of SONAR's content has been unified in X1 so its not floating around in 10 different folders all over your system. Now its all in the Cakewalk Content folder, which you can choose the location of when you choose Advanced Install when installing X1.

Of course, you can change it after the fact as well by moving the folder and changing the folder location in X1's Preferences.

Seth Perlstein [Cakewalk
]

Billy,

All of SONAR's content has been unified in X1 so its not floating around in 10 different folders all over your system. Now its all in the Cakewalk Content folder, which you can choose the location of when you choose Advanced Install when installing X1.

Of course, you can change it after the fact as well by moving the folder and changing the folder location in X1's Preferences.

Thanks Seth.

I was kind of hoping that was the reason.   So this means it could be moved off to a non OS drive, like sample drive, etc.   Or anywhere for that matter.

That's good!

Seth Perlstein [Cakewalk
]

Oh, absolutely. No reason to keep it on your system drive if you have a dedicated Audio and/ or Samples drive.

I'm letting the install default as it likes for now, so I can first learn my way around things.  But might move it later.

My drives are vast so I prefer to move it to a non-OS drive later anyway.

Current Setup as example:

C:  OS, plugins, Apps   300G Sata
D:  Mostly project data (some gets archived off as needed)  1 Terrabyte SATA
E: Samples/Misc.  1Terrabye SATA

Those are internal ...then ....

H: Samples, Downloads (like X1), purchases  1 Terrabyte eSATA (off the mboard ext port)
I:  Backups  External USB 2Terrabyte

Works out nicely ;)

And that doesn't include my multi-terrabyte NAS drives lol

You will need to fire up regedit to change the location of the arpeggiator presets if you move them from the default/installation "Cakewalk Content" folder.

Seth Perlstein [Cakewalk
]

Billy,

I love your drive scheme! And NAS RULES!!! The day I discovered NAS was a real eye opener, and its changed the way I network at home.

And whenever you're ready you can move that data to any of your 87 drives.

Hah, your count is off - I'll put in a bug report ;) 
 
But seriously - yes I have multiple NAS systems here as well (3 to be exact, each with two 1 or 2 terrabyte drives in them as well) and it makes backups, storage, etc., totally conveninet.   AND inexpensive!
 
I chose the D-LINK NAS DNS-323 system in case others are interested in having such a setup.
I've been using 2 of them for well over a year now without any problems whatsoever.
 
 

Seth Perlstein [Cakewalk]

Billy,

All of SONAR's content has been unified in X1 so its not floating around in 10 different folders all over your system. Now its all in the Cakewalk Content folder, which you can choose the location of when you choose Advanced Install when installing X1.

Of course, you can change it after the fact as well by moving the folder and changing the folder location in X1's Preferences.
 

I don't know Seth. It's very possible that I could be doing something wrong, but changing folder locations in Preferences doesn't fully work for me. At least not for the Content Location drop-down box in the Browser. I changed my Project Files folder in Preferences|File|Folder Locations to D:\Cakewalk\Projects but if you select Project Files in drop-down box, it still opens C:\Cakewalk Projects. I specified C:\ for the Track Templates folder and the drop-down selection for Track Templates still opens C:\Cakewalk Content\Sonar X1 Producer\Track Templates. I have decided that, for me, the safest way to move folders to a different drive is to move the folders and replace the original folder with an NTFS junction point using the original folder name as the Link name and the moved folder name as the Target name.
 
For example, I moved C:\Cakewalk Content\Audio Library to D:\Cakewalk\Audio Library and created a junction point in C:\Cakewalk Content named Audio Library by opening a command window in C:\Cakewalk Content and entering the command 'mklink /J "Audio Library" "D:\Cakewalk\Audio Library"'. I did the same for project files by replacing C:\Cakewalk Projects with a junction point to D:\Cakewalk\Projects. This way, I don't change any default paths so Sonar can look wherever it wants to and I let the Windows file system do the redirection. I've fought these bug-a-boos too many times and am tired of searching registry entries and ini files trying to customize Sonar file settings. Note that I would only do this in Windows 7 where Microsoft made it safe to delete junction points. As far as I know, Vista still has the issue that deleting a junction actually deletes the target folder, not just the shortcut.
 
Kind regards,
Don

So... it's been over a year, and this problem is still unresolved. Any help, Roland? Cakewalk? Sonar? X1? Studio? Anyone?

Right, you need to change the locations of the folders in the registry after manually moving the Content folder post-install in order for the new locations to show up in the Content Locations Presets list in the Browser. Or you could delete all of those and re-save them using the new locations manually.

Or you could re-install SONAR and choose Advanced Install and choose where to store the Cakewalk Content from there, which will write the correct registry locations when it installs.

SP

...wicked


Boooooooo.

Well, it is better than previous versions for sure, but eesh man having to reg edits just to have defaults change is totally blarg. I realize it's not a high priority but streamlining this process would be rad.

As would a mass-archival of settings/presets. I suppose people don't really wipe SONAR from their systems often, but there's still a bunch of places to go when you want to preserve your plugin layouts, color customizations, keybindings, etc. because they all use different methods to store their info.

Its not that big of a deal, IMHO. All this relates to is the content location presets not pointing to the right locations in the Browser when manually moving the SONAR Content folder. Its really not that hard to change the reg entries, and once its done its done. The best thing to do is just install it where you want it the first time, and then you never have to worry about it again.


SP

Seth Perlstein [Cakewalk
]

...wicked


Boooooooo.

Well, it is better than previous versions for sure, but eesh man having to reg edits just to have defaults change is totally blarg. I realize it's not a high priority but streamlining this process would be rad.

As would a mass-archival of settings/presets. I suppose people don't really wipe SONAR from their systems often, but there's still a bunch of places to go when you want to preserve your plugin layouts, color customizations, keybindings, etc. because they all use different methods to store their info.

Its not that big of a deal, IMHO. All this relates to is the content location presets not pointing to the right locations in the Browser when manually moving the SONAR Content folder. Its really not that hard to change the reg entries, and once its done its done. The best thing to do is just install it where you want it the first time, and then you never have to worry about it again.


SP

WIth all due respect - it's exactly THIS kind of decision and programming that kinda gets me upset with CW (and any company that does likewise).  How hard would it be to have an option to move the content folder without asking newbie users to be surgeons?


You already have "preferences" so why not let users easily make this adjustment?


As I always say - when you all do things good I will be a cheerleader - and have been.  But when things are less than thought out, I will be a critic.

ba_midi

Seth Perlstein [Cakewalk
]

...wicked


Boooooooo.

Well, it is better than previous versions for sure, but eesh man having to reg edits just to have defaults change is totally blarg. I realize it's not a high priority but streamlining this process would be rad.

As would a mass-archival of settings/presets. I suppose people don't really wipe SONAR from their systems often, but there's still a bunch of places to go when you want to preserve your plugin layouts, color customizations, keybindings, etc. because they all use different methods to store their info.

Its not that big of a deal, IMHO. All this relates to is the content location presets not pointing to the right locations in the Browser when manually moving the SONAR Content folder. Its really not that hard to change the reg entries, and once its done its done. The best thing to do is just install it where you want it the first time, and then you never have to worry about it again.


SP

WIth all due respect - it's exactly THIS kind of decision and programming that kinda gets me upset with CW (and any company that does likewise).  How hard would it be to have an option to move the content folder without asking newbie users to be surgeons?


You already have "preferences" so why not let users easily make this adjustment?


As I always say - when you all do things good I will be a cheerleader - and have been.  But when things are less than thought out, I will be a critic.

I don't know, I'm not a programmer nor am I a decision maker on these things. I'm just explaining that its not that hard to fix, and if you get it right the first time (Advanced Install), you don;t ever have to change a thing. If you want to write a custom script or something that would do this, be my guest.


SP

ba_midi

Seth Perlstein [Cakewalk
]

ba_midi

Seth Perlstein [Cakewalk
]

...wicked


Boooooooo.

Well, it is better than previous versions for sure, but eesh man having to reg edits just to have defaults change is totally blarg. I realize it's not a high priority but streamlining this process would be rad.

As would a mass-archival of settings/presets. I suppose people don't really wipe SONAR from their systems often, but there's still a bunch of places to go when you want to preserve your plugin layouts, color customizations, keybindings, etc. because they all use different methods to store their info.

Its not that big of a deal, IMHO. All this relates to is the content location presets not pointing to the right locations in the Browser when manually moving the SONAR Content folder. Its really not that hard to change the reg entries, and once its done its done. The best thing to do is just install it where you want it the first time, and then you never have to worry about it again.


SP

WIth all due respect - it's exactly THIS kind of decision and programming that kinda gets me upset with CW (and any company that does likewise).  How hard would it be to have an option to move the content folder without asking newbie users to be surgeons?


You already have "preferences" so why not let users easily make this adjustment?


As I always say - when you all do things good I will be a cheerleader - and have been.  But when things are less than thought out, I will be a critic.

I don't know, I'm not a programmer nor am I a decision maker on these things. I'm just explaining that its not that hard to fix, and if you get it right the first time (Advanced Install), you don;t ever have to change a thing. If you want to write a custom script or something that would do this, be my guest.


SP

I understand and I don't mean to imply this was your decision or doing, Seth.  I know it's not.


But for guys like you, me, and some others, messing with registry settings is a "cakewalk."  But I suspect for a somewhat large segment of Cake's audience it's not.  THat's why I don't understand why someone in programming or whever that decision is made, would even want to force a user to much around in the registry in the first place.


I suspect you probably agree ;)


Anyway - I do agree this is not a biggie really and using the default actually works out fine for most.

Ya, it would be cool to have some sort of auto-move feature, like a script or wizard or something. Considering that most of the content are tiny files like Step Sequencer patterns, MIDI files, etc., I doubt most noob users would even feel the need to move this stuff from the C drive. But ya, it would be cool if the process did everything, including reg entries.


SP

Seth Perlstein [Cakewalk
]
Its not that big of a deal, IMHO. All this relates to is the content location presets not pointing to the right locations in the Browser when manually moving the SONAR Content folder. Its really not that hard to change the reg entries, and once its done its done. The best thing to do is just install it where you want it the first time, and then you never have to worry about it again. 

Well I certainly don't want to make a bigger issue out of this than it is, but just for the sake of this conversation I'll add that SONAR is by far the ONLY application on my DAW machine where that's necessary. Plus, I can't imagine any situation where it's SOP to point users towards their registry, where a mere mis-click can bring down the whole system. All of that just because I want my reverbs to stay organized?  


But like you added later, yes some kind of import/export wizard that grabbed everything would be rad.

Well, okay good point, so lets break all this down. Assuming you have to do a nuke (maybe no imaging software or some such) you've got to think about:

• keybindings
• custom colors
• screensets
• default folder locations (all)
• plugin menus
• plugin presets (ALL)
• .ini tweaks
• custom arps

What else am I missing? Now how many of these are reg tweaks? I think at least two (arps and default folders?)

The point is to be aware of your drive scheme, and plan the advanced install accordingly. If the drive scheme changes, just do the reinstall. If there are custom presets and templates, restore those afterward. It's really not that hard, or frequent an operation, at least for me.