John Vere

I can sympathize if your on a limited internet connection. I used to have Xplornet satellite with a 50 GB cap. Not only that it would bonk out all the time and downloads would be messed up. My solution was take my laptop to a location with proper internet and update everything. That’s were I learned how to copy the ccc download folder to my other computer and then run the up dates. I have multiple backups of that folder as what is in there is worth a lot of cash. I haven’t needed to download anything since Sonar got the boot from Gibson

Ditto for me too. Been a long time. Seems the updates are solving weirdness issues little bit by little bit.

Thank you Bill. I get lots of positive feedback about my videos being easy to follow. I know what they mean. I get lost when I watch certain tutorials either because the person is mumbling the narration, moving way to fast, not exactly explaining what is going on, Assuming a newbie knows what a " insert technical name here" is, making errors and getting too complicated for beginners to follow. I've got a bunch more started but it's real nice weather here right now so no time for fun in the studio.

The create a separate user is what I did on one laptop as my goal was to build a daw from the ground up for free. I wanted to see how far I could go using Cakewalk and free or demo VST,s . I just logged on to Bandlab with another email address.

The noise floor I admit is only on the one computer I do use the on board audio on. My main daw when I tested it was more like 10 db which you won't really hear. It could even be the fans emitting RF to all those unsheilded audio cables and circuit boards. But it is worth thinking about if you want to optimize your system. To test I open Gold Wave audio editor and record the "silence" . You can even see it sometimes on cakewalks meters

If I'm correct I think the You lean is the only one with the drag and drop feature . But for sure the wonderful world of free effects is spectacular. I have my old laptop 100% loaded with free software. I have the free version of you lean on that which the only feature missing is the drag and drop instant analyzer

This is a common issue with people who have just purchased an Audio Interface and have not yet purchased proper studio monitors. You have to use the outputs on the back of the interface and they only have consumer computer speakers. The workaround is use headphones all the time or plug your cheapo computer speakers into the headphone jack of the interface using an 1/8" to 1/4" adaptor. Yes that's right, recording software might be free now, but the hobby does require a few bucks for some basic gear to set up even the most simple studio.

This topic has been beat to death and very, very few people seem to have reasons to not keep up to date. If any reason was valid, it would be a hardware issue, not a software one. For myself running an updated system is now 100% trouble free experience. I even invested in a new Interface for that reason alone. There's nothing wrong with my old ones, but the drivers will no longer be updated so eventually I expect trouble. The improvements to Cakewalk since SPlat are huge. I still have Splat installed and could never go back. It doesn't take up room so I just leave it sitting there abandoned like a car with flat tires.

There is absolutely no limit to Cakewalk installs. There actually never was with Sonar as well. I have Sonar on a bunch of machines. Only certain VST plug ins have limits. I have Cakewalk on 6 computers right now. But I can only have 2 running some of my purchased VST's. That's why I love the 3rd part freebies. I have one laptop that only has Cakewalk and free VST's loaded. Pretty powerful fully featured system for free.

As my video say's. You can " get by fine" with on board audio if it is set up properly as pre my instructions in the video. I made the video to try and help first time users get started with Cakewalk. It takes a while for first time users to get their feet under them. There's no point purchasing an audio interface if you are just starting out and only wanting to mess around with loops and midi. But I also say that if you plan on doing any serious audio recording then this is when a proper ASIO driver and interface is needed or you WILL have issues. I also show how to hook up a small mixer to record with a mike but I also warn of the substandard quality of the A/D convertors that computers use. Mine has a noise floor of around 30 db. And this is just in general as every computer uses different quality components. I use on board audio on my office computer just to mess around. It generally has no issues but it cannot handle complicated projects with a lot of VST instruments and effects as smoothly as my other machine that uses an ASIO interface. You can "feel" the difference in performance. It does not surprise me if it drops out or takes forever to start playback. This is expected. Do not attempt to use the Realtech ASIO driver Cakewalk staff have chimed in many times warning about it's instability.

So do all the boxes in the Preferences dialogs now show as your Steinberg asio interface including the the Record Latency adjustment? Are you using ASIO driver mode. When you click on the Windows Speaker icon in the systems tray does it say Steinberg? The front of your interface as in the picture below you should have the MIX control in the center and plug some headphones in to check. Do not use input echo or you will hear a delayed signal. Always use your interfaces direct monitoring system via the MIX control to avoid hearing your systems Round trip latency when recording audio tracks. You will use input echo when recording VST instruments only. Make sure the Output of your Master bus is set to the Steinberg 1/2 output. Your monitors must be plugged into the 1/2 output jacks of your interface. You cannot use on board audio for playback in ASIO mode. If all you have is computer speakers you will have to plug them into the headphone jack of the interface with an adaptor. You almost there just a few more steps and you'll be up and running smoothly. The Steinberg is a very good interface with good ASIO drivers. You did download the latest didn't you? Make sure to get the Windows version. Their driver page is kind of weird to get at, took me through 4 pages first. https://www.steinberg.net/en/support/downloads_hardware/yamaha_steinberg_usb_driver.html Defiantly watch the tutorials. In my signature is a link to my collection.

Could you post a screenshot of these 4 things. 1. Preferences /Audio/Devices 2. Preferences/Audio/ Driver settings 3. Preferences/Audio/ Playback and Recording 4. Preferences/Audio/ Sync and Caching If your not sure how to post screens shots. Use the Windows key and the PrtScn key and this will save the screenshot to your Pictures folderin a folder marked screenshots. Just drag and drop them to the Drag files here at the bottom, it will turn blue.

Here's a video I made shows you 4 ways to deal with quiet tracks. @Colin Nicholls actually I'm pretty sure that any rendering like normalization does alter the original audio file. That is why we call it destructive. There's no going back without an original back up copy. Every one should have a backup anyhow before they proceed with any audio editing. Sounds like the OP has this covered. And Normalization can possibly add artifacts as well. It's why most people have learned to avoid it. I only use it on tracks I don't care about like live recordings. But I never push it very far. Around -8 is my max. To me it's the quick lazy way to deal with some quiet tracks in a live recording. In my video I show 3 other ways to deal with quiet tracks that are non destructive.

The driver should not install on it’s own. That’s a generic driver. Go to your products support page and download the drivers from there. Then make Sure to follow the instructions once installed check in windows sound and make sure it is now the default device. You can click on the speaker icon in the lower right screen. Then open Cakewalk and preferences Audio and choose ASIO mode Then go to devices tab and make sure all the Stienberg boxes are checked and apply. Check the master buss is output to the jacks your speakers / monitor system are plugged into.

There's just something not set right in your views. I have never looked at that side bar and I just did and mine totally matches the meters. And another thing is -18 is certainly a bit overly safe. I did some research on the topic a while ago and the general advice is between -18 and - 8 with a target of -12 being the most popular target. I like to use the You Lean loudness meter to see what a whole tracks true peak is as well as the LUFS. I made this video about working with this method. https://youtu.be/8uyZ3ybILvw

If you even have a basic understanding of how a daw retrieves the audio playback data from your hardware you might expect it to freak out when you do that

The thing is that the majority of VST bass offerings are not traditional Fender P bass which is more or less what us old school jammers are used to. A lot of them I find absolutely terrible. Tts1 fingered bass is sort of an example of what I mean. Sounds like a tuned fart The Ample P bass was well done. I also use the Jazz bass patch in SI Bass with a compressor on it and that also comes close to the bass sound I’m used to hearing. I have a very good sounding bass rig with Yamaha bass and a Fender Rumble. But I only use that on real serious original tunes I’m trying to go for 1st class sound. Everything else I just record the bass direct with out fuss and convert to midi and use the Ample bass.

Dim Pro can be installed using the old Command Center system. You need to log on to your Gibson account etc. The other thing I know is you need to use “Run as Administrator “ When Gibson gave us the boot most made back up copies of all the Sonar files and installers by copying the Command Center download folder. Thus I haven’t needed to download for years now but I’m pretty sure the server is still there.

I think that might be the problem. You might want to see if there’s other users that got it to work with Cakewalk. Or see if there’s a forum for Alesis or just Google “ Does Alesis drum kit work with Cakewalk?” Cakewalk tends to be fussy about generic drivers. Probably they work for Mac and other daws but not Cakewalk. Try a different USB cable or port

You need to install the midi driver for the kit. Go to the web site and download the drivers.

The forum is full of old farts like us because forums are part of our era of the internet. My son laughs at my involvement on forums. His generation only uses forums as a tool or source of possible solutions to any issues they are having. Be it with a car or the refrigerator. They find the odd forum buy entering a Google search for an issue they have and mostly just looking. Google brings up a lot of hits that are forums. To actually join a forum you would need to be desperate for an answer. And many require a sign up process that you have to wait for a mod to approve. This forum I think your automatically signed into via the Assistant. We are told we have 1 million users now. Probably most of those are well under 40 years of age. Out of that we only have a few people who answer questions on the Q&A forum. The old farts.

I kept the original Hard drive that has Windows XP loaded for my Asus Netbook. I had upgraded to a SSD and W7 and upped the RAM to a whopping 4GB. But my Epson CD printer only has W XP drivers. So I just swap the drive back out and away I go. It still has Sonar 8.5 and X1 LE. And It will also run weird things like my old Microsoft Sidewinder Joystick and LIfe Cam. The other use I have for XP is to go super vintage and run STeam on it and load up old Atari software. With the joystick and the Steam emulator I can play old games like Buggy Boy or Tetrus. I can also run my original DrT Keyboard Controlled Sequencer software. I also keep an older desktop loaded with W7 and that way I can use stuff that was made for that era. More or less gathers dust but you never know!

Ya but will his overdubs be in sync with the prerecorded tracks? I doubt it. Sure the cable might “work” but will they be able to have trouble free performance?

What is your audio interface and what does the device in sync and caching show as. It’s important that you timing is controlled by your interface ASIO driver.