John Vere

Here's a screen shot of a typical finished song. I choose one that I have absolutely no sub busses on for clarity. You can see that most faders are at unity with the exception of the guitars which have automation and are turned down. Things like the bass and drums I have used the gain control to lower them so peaks are around -10.0 and you see the vocals at around -8.0 . Not shown is the Pro Channel where there will be some EQ and compression.

If this is the vocal track your refering as to being too quiet then there's a bit of a mystery because -2.9 is dangerously close to clipping. It would be nice to see a little more detail in the screen shot like all the track settings, faders and outputs etc. Drag out the track inspector part so it shows all the details and select ALL I think your on Custom which hides important stuff. . And at this point there's not a lot of other tracks playing. A shot at the busiest part of the song would be nice. But right off, the one track with piano is showing -5.0 peak and the drums are also -2.0 which is also loud. When you said you were recording at -18.0 I was thinking you were a bit to low as I aim for around -10.0 for instruments and -8.0 for vocals. The video I made is about turning up levels but I'm thinking you need to defiantly turn the instruments down if they are all peaking between -5 and -2 db. In my video I demonstrate using the Gain to turn things up,,, just do the opposite and turn down your instruments so they are closer to -8.0 or even -10.0

Looking at the screen shot the blue track is showing 2.4 peak level. Is that the vocal?

Watch the video before you delete anything. I give you 4 ways to fix this. Good luck

No because I’m testing this on my office computer as is my usual habit. I don’t commit anything to my main daw unless I’m dead sure of it. So I don’t have any recording stuff there other than my interface. I was also thinking it’s hard to have an accurate reading because now a human is involved ? But I’ll grab a guitar and plug it in later once I get my 4 th coffee I gather you are referring to an auto punch And I’ll add I’m pretty impressed with how quickly staff responded to this. Try that with any other daw

Mine is showing good now on the loopback. Thanks.

Thinking about this and the fact that there isn’t any GM ready VST’s out there. Well I do have Steinbergs Halcyon which has real good quality sounds but that’s difficult to use in Cakewalk But seems TTS-1 is an important part of Cakewalk. How hard would it be to update it? Is it impossible? What would be cool would be if it became a VST and used basic samples. They could integrate SI instruments. Just think how great it would be to NOT have to swap out most of the sounds.

I didn't read all of this but I made 2 videos that show you how to use 2 instances to get 8 audio tracks. in my example I output the first 4 as instruments and the second instance I use as a 4 track drum module. I was having crashes back a few years ago but it seems Cakewalk updates have eliminated that for me. I don't really use it on any finished songs other than I might steal the brushes or percussion. I'm not a fan of it's lo fi sounds. But it's a super important tool for pre viewing midi files and getting a start. Oh and way back someone mentioned Xpand 2 as a replacement. Ya, Xpand 2 is not GM so will not play midi files out of the box. But I will say it's what I do use to replace TTS-1 for horns, woodwinds and percussion.

I think the OP is being confused because Google search often brings up old web pages and they really need to delete those as they are misleading. Here's a example. I simply typed in Sonar Home Studio to Google and this is what you get... It say's Buy Now-

SI instruments are a separate download than the main Program. It is found in the install ad ons tab

And believe it or not there is a lot of music and projects recorded in Cakewalk that would not use drums. I often use Cakewalk to record dialog for tutorials. I also record Bluegrass. Sorry, Cakewalk is not a Cell phone App. It's a fully featured DAW that can do just about everything Audio and Midi.

But I think it might be inconsistent. I'm sure they'll fix it. There's seems to be a few threads reporting issues already. Lets draw out some staff and see what they say. @Jesse Jost @Noel Borthwick

This was interesting as well. I changed buffer size which in past experiences has never had any bearing on loopback results at all. But as you know it does change the reported RTL in SYnc and Cashing settings. I got different results and different settings. At 64 ms buffer it was late only 500 samples now. But at 560 ms buffer it was late by over 1,000 samples. So it would seem the calculation is totally broken. top track is frozen drums, / 2nd track build 98/ 3rd track 256 buffer / 4th track 64 buffer/ 5th track 560 buffer

@DeeringAmps and @Base 57 So I ran the loopback test using my Scarlett 6i6 ASIO mode with version 2021.01 build 98 and as expected it was right on as seen in track 3. Up updated to 2021. 04 build 144 and now it is late by what appears to be 800 samples. see track 4 So defiantly don't update to the new release folks until they fix this. Its a big one. How the heck did they break that?? And I was going to update soon. Thanks for pointing this out most of the people using this software would not even notice.

Glad I didn't update yet. This is a serious issue. I'll update one of my computers and test later tonight.

Hasn’t there alway been a reason we are told never put data at ground zero? I think when you hit play there is always a delay before stuff happens so we are advised to start at at least measure 1 and many use 2. A long standing feature request is to have a negative measure at the start because of this. It would be used for count in and pick up notes And if you need a good tool to perform the loop back try latency monitor https://www.resplendence.com/latencymon

They have that info on the early access thread open the second thread it’s in the first post sorry I’m on my phone so can’t copy links

Yes none of my interfaces have a setting for depth. What is a bit confusing is having that setting in the 2 places where the logical place does nothing and the obscure place does. You would assume it would be in the same place as the clock rate.

And just so it’s clear to others who might read this thread. If you have issues with midi changing patches or volume or pa or effects. Go to the event list and delete any data events that would cause this. You can unselect data you want to keep like notes so it’s easier to see the unwanted data Any bank or patch changes entered in the midi track pane will always override the soft synth GUI. You should set these to none.

+1 to what Colin said. I still have 8.5 installed because there is a few VST's I steal from it and it doesn't take up any room on my hard drive. I stayed with 8.5 right up until Sonar X3 e came out. I skipped the x Series more or less. I didn't like the change and there were a lot of complaints about bugs etc. Besides it cost a lot of money back then to stay on the upgrade path. I figured out the interface within a few sessions and never looked back. Now if I open 8.5 all I see is a zillion missing tools I use everyday. And one thing for sure is they have made huge improvements to stability and its near to bug free now. There's absolutely 1,000's of reason to install and give it a few weeks until your up to speed. All your projects will open and run exactly the same and you can leave 8.5 alone.

@msmcleod My confusion, as I posted above,, I was setting the bit depth in the wrong location in preferences. It's one of those things I never touch and it was probably set 6 years ago and as I do believe Cakewalk copies these setting from upgrade to upgrade it has always stayed put.. It probably doesn't matter which interface I use etc. Reading the OP's last post I think they are aware of this location too. My desktop and my Laptop were set to 16 and I now fixed this. The desktop I never record on, just editing, but I have been using the Laptop for live recordings. No loss there as they are not for making a hit records. Actually 44.1/16 is the perfect setting for that type of stuff.

Open the help module and point the mouse on one it might tell you what they are. Personally I've never seen those. The new Tempo map?

OK I feel stupid. There's 2 places and I should know these things but I totally forgot about this preference dialog. Problem solved. @Hrabe EM @scook

This I think is an old bug with the playlist. I really tried hard a few years ago to make it work and funny things are I also wanted to use my MX 200 and possibly set up lights. I used to do this with my Atari! But I found the playlist buggy and it resulted in delays between most songs. I’m used to having no delay between songs and I use a USB foot switch to advance WinAmps playlist. But of course Win Amp cannot send midi. Otherwise I’m fine with stereo backing tracks. There was one user here who had successfully used it for years so try google to see if you can find Playlist threads from the older forum.

In my signature is a link to my tutorials and I have a whole series on using midi files.