David Govett

That fixed it Noel!  Thanks!   And it was ......CUBASE!!!    

Thanks Noel. I saw that in freezing the frame too.   I'll hunt that Generic ASIO drive down and identify and destroy it!  I'll post the information I learn about it here for you too. (most likely Cubase as I have that)   Thanks! 

Dave
 

I will try the new driver tonight and see what happens.  Thanks.

Dave

So, I got it to work temporarily.  Uncheck all the audio settings, closed it and started over again.  Checked Focusrite in and out, started a new song and played some audio and it worked great.  Saved song, closed Cakewalk.  Open Cakewalk, load song, and back to the error.    

However, if I disable the audio in preferences, exit program, come back and re-enable, I can get going again and be running fine until I close the program.  A workaround for now as I evaluate the program. 

Here is a video showing the whole process and what it's doing.  I can almost live with this if I don't run into other stability issues.  
https://www.dropbox.com/s/9hdz3mg9gv7aeqq/Cakewalk Workaround.mp4?dl=0

It simply doesn't like my focusrite interface.  If I choose generic ASIO, no problem, but.. no sound.   
MIDI devices don't seem to be the issue.  Thanks for any insight.  I love your tutorial videos!  
(edit)  Output device on focusrite is checked but scrolled to far.  
 

Here is a video of what it is doing.  The only way I can get it out of this loop is to uninstall and reinstall.  But as soon as I try to enable MIDI keyboard, it goes back to this.
https://www.dropbox.com/s/ajo0lwuvj12ig76/Cakewalk Glitch.mp4?dl=0

So, as soon as I make any changes to the configuration (midi devices, audio devices) I can't even do anything to the software unless I leave it empty with no new song loaded.  It just goes into a feedback loop with what looks like flashes of install meter dialog windows that flash too quick to see.  This goes on for ever.   I have never seen something this buggy and impossible to get into like this.  I love the layout and the way it's designed and I really want it to work but for the life of me, I can't even get it running.   Just selecting the audio and midi hardware and loading up an empty song kills it.  Changing sample rate kills it.   I have other sequencers working flawlessly on same system.   Any ideas before I go back to Reaper?  :)