AxlBrutality

And this is the other reason why I'm leaving Cakewalk and it's forums. The default is always to blame to user or their hardware first and foremost; it's been that way since the height of Sonar's known instability issues. I'm not inexperienced. I could rant about how I've had this happen on numerous machines over the years. I could rant about how there's very few, if any, background processes that run on my machine while I'm working, including all the basic stuff that we caution people about (cloud syncing, antivirus, etc.) I could rant that my current machine has been just fine up to this point, and will likely be just fine long after I uninstall Cakewalk. I could rant about how I pay pretty close attention to performance stats; I could rant that this computer can easily handle 3x the load that gets put on it with the current project. I could rant about any number of things, but it doesn't matter because people treat you like a wet-behind-the-ears engineer fresh out of audio engineering school who doesn't know the basics of how computers work or what an optimal build is for this type of work. I understand that software can and will have issues regardless of the name on it or the devs behind it. But I also know firsthand how happy many of my peers are with the industry-standard programs...including a close friend of mine (a professional engineer who switched from Sonar to Cubase years ago) who has been screeching at me to switch every time a problem like this occurs. Again, there's a reason Cakewalk has never been able to compete on that level. Things like this are why. I have nothing to lose and everything to gain by switching to a more stable, more well-supported, industry-standard program that doesn't lose me hours of work at a time at least once a year for as long as I can remember.

I have stuck by Cakewalk for almost 15 years. Through all the highs and lows, through all the changes...I've been their biggest champion and their most intense apologist. I've spent hours and hours and hours with devs and customer service tracking down bugs and resolving issues. I stuck by CW/Sonar through the worst of the instability issues in years past. I've stuck by this program in spite of INFURIATING losses of work, and workflow stoppages, over the years due to random crashes, auto-save not actually working, and any variety of random problems over the years. Today was the final straw. I lost 4 HOURS worth of vocal recording at once due to a freeze that came out of the blue. No recent changes, no new plugins, everything is updated, nothing running in the background, etc. I simply clicked on my timeline as I have a million times before and the program froze, necessitating a force-close and the loss of ALL my work in spite of auto-save being enabled. This isn't the first time such a thing has happened, but it came at a VERY bad time and was the final straw. NO ONE I know who uses Cubase, PT, S1, etc. has these kinds of issues as routinely as I have with Cakewalk, nor have I in my time with other programs on this machine (which, by the way, is more than powerful enough to handle anything I throw at it). Could I go down the days, weeks, even months-long rabbit hole with CBB trying to track down the cause of this one? Sure. But I've been there before...multiple times. I'm not doing it again. I've given enough of my life to the devs tracking down issues over the years. I have better things to do with my time than spending hours not getting paid just to track down yet another issue that caused me hours of work loss in the first place. This kind of stuff, right here, is why Cakewalk has never been able to compete commercially with its peers....and never will. So long, CBB....you screwed me over for the last time. My sanity is worth more than wasting it contributing to your desperate attempts to stay relevant in this industry.

So...I'm kinda heated right now, not gonna lie. I created a new project. Got all my files imported, did about an hour and a half of work with some balancing and panning and editing and some light EQ and compression going on on the drums and bass...things are going good. I go to create a send and forget that all my tracks are selected, so it does it on every single track. Lol, whoops. So I'm going through and deleting sends...I get about halfway through and all of a sudden the second I delete another send, the entire project crashes to desktop without warning. No hang or freeze, no errors or warnings, saves literally none of the work done that entire time (even though I have auto-save enabled), no dump file, nothing. It straight up closes out, and it's like the project never even existed and nothing was ever done. I didn't really have a whole lot going on yet plugin-wise, so CPU load, RAM, etc. were all fine and I only had like 4 different plugins (maybe ten instances total) even inserted in the project...and those few plugins I've been using just fine in other projects and aren't very resource intensive (VBC-Grey, Sonitus Compressor, Infinity EQ, and a Slate FG-X on my master). I have HUGE, intensive projects I've been working on on this machine (that involve these same plugins as well) and have had no issues, fwiw. I know that's not a lot to go on, but I literally don't have anything to go on. Again, there was no hang/freeze, no warnings or errors, and no dump file was created. I will say it's eerily similar to a bug we had a couple of years ago where the same thing would happen occasionally when inserting a send (you would literally insert a send and the project would automatically crash out about 75% of the time, and you would lose all work done in the session, even if it had been auto-saving). Now apparently it does it rarely when deleting a send. It's bizarre. Anyway, it's late and I'm exhausted and angry and after literally just wasting two hours of my life and losing a bunch of work I'm gonna go to bed. I'll check back here in the morning, lol.

Thanks. I never used the in-app "Update now" function until now because I just kinda assumed it still used BA when actually updating, idk. Lol. I don't have a need for the loop library, so I'll go ahead and uninstall BA then. Thanks again!

So does this render BA pretty much obsolete at this point? Or do we need it installed still as an authenticator?

So, after spending about an hour trying to figure out why Ripple Edit wasn't correctly affecting the Tempo map, I realized there was an update to Cakewalk that specifically should address that issue. That's great and all, except I can't get Cake to update. BA just perpetually shows "Downloading...0/0" after hitting update. I've dealt with this for yet another hour. My computer is fully updated, I've restarted it twice, I've killed and restarted BA, I've uninstalled and reinstalled BA twice, Windows defender is turned off, I don't run any other AV, and my internet is just fine (gig internet with no current issues). Pretty frustrated right now, not gonna lie...especially considering the perpetual and historical issues with BA in general. Can anybody direct link the installer for the newest available version of Cakewalk, please? All I'm seeing are installers for rollback versions.

So, I guess my only question is, I'm assuming I should go in and change/turn on the new thread scheduling option? I'm assuming there's some sort of risk or possible adverse performance result involved, since it wasn't just made that way by default... I've sometimes actually encountered worse performance in the past when turning on things like the plugin load balancing option, hence my hesitation to try stuff like that.

Slightly off topic, but perhaps relevant considering the number of posts continuing to pop up in the feedback threads (and in bug threads in general). This is not directed towards any one person, and is something that has been said elsewhere recently by others, but yea. I will never understand people who cling for dear life to Windows 7, and then are surprised or dismayed when there are bugs or things that don't work with high-powered software such as DAWs when under load. You are using an OS which is over ten years (and several versions) old, in a day and age where technology, development, and coding literally changes every month. I get it. Change is hard and scary. But it's absolutely necessary and something I think older folks here are having a hard time accepting. It's 2020. Just upgrade to W10 and get it out of the way. It's not going to get any easier to adapt, change, and work out the kinks with your stuff, the longer you wait. And I can guarantee you'll have far fewer issues with bugs, incompatibilities, etc. The world is not going to wait for you. And frankly, it's not Cakewalk's (or anyone else's) responsibility to continue testing in W7 or trying to track down bugs in it. It's a waste of time and resources (especially for smaller dev teams) better spent improving the software for the other 95% of us who stay current with our configurations. And most of the excuses people often use really aren't valid anymore, or were never really rooted in fact in the first place. Sorry, just really needed to get that off my chest...and frankly, some people need to hear it.

So that's what that button is, lol. I was wondering. It's disabled, but I also can't reproduce the issue anymore, so I'm presuming I accidentally hit it at some point. Idk. I'll report back with specifics if it happens again.

Speaking of clip fade issues and such...I was curious. This may be an intentional feature, but a few months ago, Cakewalk started auto-fading the entire clip if I cut/copy and paste a section in a way that cut off sound. The problem here is that it's an awful lot of work to undo a fade on a clip that's a minute+ long (particularly common when I'm in the writing stages and just copy/pasting song sections), especially considering that Cakewalk isn't the smoothest when it comes to continuous scrolling (I often have to start/stop/start again to get CbB to continue scrolling....another issue perhaps?). Anyway, is this a feature that I can turn off? I remember disabling some auto-fade function somewhere in the preferences, but it didn't fix the issue.

Thanks...apparently I wasn't reading carefully enough or skipped past something the first time I went through it. Got it now.

@Noel Borthwick Just dropping in to say that (other than that annoying Toneforge issue y'all have been working on) I have had zero issues with anything. CbB has been running beautifully...this is the most stable and smooth Cakewalk (or Sonar, for that matter) has ever been for me. Keep up the great work, guys!

How do you copy *just* the envelope (for example, a volume envelope) from one track to the next? There's no data on the tracks (they're audio outputs for pieces of an AD2 kit). I need to copy a rather detailed and long volume envelope from a snare track to my 3 other snare tracks...would save me about 45 minutes of work, lol. Am I just blind or daft? Lol.

@Noel Borthwick I finally got JST to email you today.

Hmmm; that's frustrating.

@Noel Borthwick did JST ever get back to you or anybody on the team to share their info regarding Cakewalk not recalling Toneforge Jason Richardson parameters? They've still not released their promised update for the plugin itself (which may render the issue moot anyway once finally released, due to a change in how it handles parameters), but they were insistent that the issue with the current plugin was on Cakewalk's end. I've given everyone everyone else's contact info, but haven't heard anything about anything.

For anyone curious or not in the know, Emastered seems to be noticeably better than LANDR, from the [quite a few] reviews I've seen on both. LANDR is no longer the only game in town. Having said that, I'd have to agree that these online mastering services are still very hit or miss...especially with non-pop genres. As for me...most of what I do is death metal and hard rock, so I'm gonna stick to real mastering for a while yet. Lol.

Thanks! Yea, harsh vocals are definitely a challenge, and not something everyone can do. I myself (having done this for close to 20 years) can't hit all the super lows and super highs I used to (which is part of why I actually use high-pitched shrieking pretty sparingly these days, and stick mostly to growling and cookie monster type stuff). As far as that particular release goes (things change with each project and each release), nothing fancy gear wise on this one. Guitar was an Ibanez RG 6-string with Ernie Ball Skinny Top/Heavy Bottom strings in CGCFAD. Bass was actually just a cheap DanElectric 4-string tuned down to CGCF, using a Dunlop 5-string bass set of strings, lol). Amp modelling was all digital in Revalver. Guitars used a Tubescreamer in front of a 6505 head, and a combination of Mesa, Deizel, and EDVH cab IRs from Ownhammer. Bass used Ampeg cab IRs from OH. Drums were done in Addictive Drums 2. Vocal mic was an SM58. As far as plugins and processing goes, I rely pretty heavily on Slate and JST plugins, along with a few native Cakewalk ones. I'm actually just finishing up a new EP for that project...main vocal mic on the new one is a Rode NT2a, and most of my amp sims (guitar and bass) are Audio Assault rigs (with the exception of clean guitars, which I still use Revalver for). The new release also has some piano on it, for which I'm still using TruePianos for modelling. It's funny, because that project was kinda just meant to be a random side project that I didn't really know if I was going to put much effort or resources into...was just kindof a "I wanted to have fun and jam some catchier stuff, but still be heavy". But it's become my most popular project as far as listeners/fans goes. So I guess that's gonna become my main thing. Haha.

I have a pretty decent arsenal of stuff at my disposal these days; just experimenting with more stuff and figured I'd share my impressions. Particularly since death metal/core discussion isn't super common on here, and there's not a ton of reviews/info to be found on some of the smaller companies like AA.

@Noel Borthwick I just had a random weird thing happen where I adjusted my ASIO buffer from 256 to 1024 (went from tracking to mixing), and Cakewalk abruptly crashed to desktop. No warning, no dump file, nada. (Reopened and it was fine after that.) Luckily I didn't lose too much work, but yea. Figured I'd mention it. I'm on whatever build BA told me to update to a few days ago, so I should be good there.

I posted a while ago wondering if anyone had had any experience with Audio Assault's stuff, as he was having another ridiculous sale (as he does a lot). For those who are unaware, he's a Mexico-based guy that makes sims and plugins geared mostly towards extreme metal: www.audioassault.mx Well, I went ahead and picked up several of his sims (I mean, for $5-10 apiece, why the hell not). Now that I've had a few days to really, seriously play with them, I figured I'd share some quick thoughts and impressions for anyone else in the future who might also inquire or be curious. Disclaimer: I use a variety of my own cab IRs from Ownhammer, who are pretty much the kings of cab IRs for metal. So I can't speak too much to any of the included cabs, and the usability of these sims may vary for you if you just stick with those stock cabs. Duality Bass Studio: Decent little sim for metal bass. Very nice low end and sub tones, lots of good fuzz/distortion options and tones. NOT a good bass sim if you're looking for pure, clean tones....even for death metal stuff, I've had to dial the drives down quite a bit to get a cleaner top end (although I'm admittedly not a big fan of fuzz/distortion on bass anyway, and really only use it if I need it to stand out in a dense mix). I'll probably continue using it on occasion for my extreme metal stuff, but not so much for rock or acoustic stuff. (In all fairness, again, most AA stuff is geared specifically towards extreme metal). The VST2 is extremely unstable in CbB, and I can't get the standalone to work at all. But the VST3 works beautifully, and is currently being used on an EP I'm working on. Dominator: Easily the best of the bunch that I bought. Takes some dialing in, but I've gotten some nasty rhythm tones for metalcore/death metal stuff. It's pretty on par with, if not better than, most of what's in Revalver for high gain stuff. I think it takes a backseat to the JST Toneforge series sims though. Emperor: A close second to Dominator for extreme metal tones...it loses out because it's one of the noisier high gain amp sims I've encountered. Even with gates, the thing just generates too high of a signal to noise ratio for most of what I'm doing right now. This would be a great sim for black metal, grindcore, crust, etc., but just isn't clean enough for run of the mill death metal, deathcore, etc. Hellbeast: Also pretty close to the Dominator, except that even after extensive dialing in, it's still got a bit of that boxy, old-school "Line 6 metal", solid state practice amp tone...that really isn't good for rhythms. Having said that, that same cheap boxiness, when put on leads/solos, actually separates them nicely from the rhythms while still sitting in a high-gain mix very well. (It's the same reason that some metal guys will run a lead guitar through a wah in the mid position and just leave it [the wah] stationary.) I'm currently running this on my leads and solos over Dominator rhythms, and things are sounding pretty gnarly (in a good way). So basically.... I wouldn't pay full price for any of these, and they take some dialing in. None of them are really good enough or versatile enough to be that "workhorse" that you can just slap on anything. I've found them each to be decent-to-good at very specific things, individually. Having said that, they're definitely worth the sale price if you want some specialty/niche tools or some more blending options at your disposal....or if you just want/need to try something different...or if you're on a budget. And they're a bit more user-friendly than things like Revalver...and the GUIs are pretty sexy. But I think there's a reason these are on ridiculous sale all the time (besides the insane dollar to peso conversion rate, lmao). You often get what you pay for, and these sims don't quite stack up against other modern metal options like JST's Toneforge series. They're more than usable, but only if you really know what you're doing and have lots of other tools (like other IRs) at your disposal.

Are you using any plugins? Everyone is focused on the "feedback" descriptor, but that's not the only thing that causes meters to get pegged and sound to cut out. One or more of your plugs could be crashing. I had this happen just recently. Try disabling all of your plugins and see if that stops it. If so, then you need to narrow down which plugin is the culprit.

Haha; that was it! Must have accidentally hit it somewhere along the line. Seems stupid, but it's a pretty nice workflow/speed thing to have when working with loops and such.

I seem to have disabled (or it seems to have suddenly disappeared) the predictive line that appears across all tracks, up to the timeline, when you're moving/dragging audio clips and midi loops and such. The one that helps you align exactly where you're going with the clip....if that makes sense? Anybody know what I'm talking about?

Hey, can you PM me your email so I can forward it to them? I had it at one point but can't seem to find it.