Hi All,
I just opened Cakewalk by Bandlab (my current DAW) and got a message that as of August 1st they will no longer be providing new program authorizations. [When using CWbyBL one must re-authorize the program every 6-8 months, sometimes sooner.] The latest revision of the program doesn’t even show the expiration date anymore. 
Bandlab’s recommendation (of course) is to move to Sonar, their new incantation. The good news is that all of my MIDI files seem to play OK in Sonar Lite. The bad news is that 1) I don’t really like the new UI; 2) about 10% of the screen real estate is taken up by a friendly prompt telling me I’m not using the paid version; and 3) they have decided to essentially shut down users who don’t migrate. They are also saying Sonar Lite is “free for now,” which is a little concerning given their recent actions. So, I’m thinking of biting the bullet and moving everything completely to Cantabile. (I probably should have done this a year ago.) I’m looking for some clarifications and pointers.
BACKGROUND
I’ve already moved all of the plugins to Cantabile. The audio files are played by MIDI events, too so Sonar is on required to be a MIDI file player. I also did some rearranging so that everything fits in one bank of 16 MIDI channels, so the files will convert to MIDI Type 0.
It also shows lyric hints to ~20% of the songs on screen.
QUESTIONS:
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Can I assume that Cantabile will play MIDI-file versions of my Cakewalk songs by just loading them into a Media Player and routing the MIDI Out of the player appropriately?
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Is there a way to create a window that displays lyrics along with some kind of ‘follow the bouncing ball’ highlighting? It doesn’t have to be 100% real time: I mostly just display the first 3-4 words of a verse to prompt my memory, and set of Lyric events in CW to trigger the highlighting. But it’s saved my bacon on a few gigs!
Thanks in advance for your thoughts.
-Bruce