Hi Guys. Long time since I've been here. I'm an old time Cake user, been through every version over the years, and have been using it successfully for years, with problems over the years like everyone else.
Two weeks ago while tracking vocals and guitars I started to notice some distortion in the recordings. I'd introduced one new bit of gear. A Focusrite Clarett OctoPre to add more channels. To cut a long story short, while tracking, every time I hit start stop, I'd gets clicks and pops. It was then evident that I indeed had clicks recorded along with the audio. Then I noticed on playback, bass that I had previously recorded before for the same song, seemed to have some distortion, then I noticed every time I moved a fader, I was getting, like static. But this is only low freq related. Only bass, or kick drum, or low end synth, will make this happen. Every thing else like guitars, snare's, vocals etc, is perfect. Just bass stuff.
Now this type of behaviour surfaced more than 10 years ago. Cake users collaborated, and to my memory, it really came down to Nvidia drivers for particularly new GTX cards, like the 750ti. Seemed the problem was solved for most. All these years later, and suddenly I have the same problem, except this time it forced me to shut down the tracking sessions, which was for the last songs of someone's album. So for me, this is serious. I'm hoping someone may have an answer, or had similar issues recently, so we can find a cause. My PC is now in complete rebuild, and I have not found either the cause or the fault. I've changed interfaces, drivers, new installs of pretty much everything, done multiple tests on software, hardware, taken out my GTX 1060 graphics and run onboard graphics. In short, every single I could think of. Nothing has worked, so I've essentially started from scratch, again.
My gear is: MSI Z390 A Pro MB with 16g high speed ram. i5 9600K 3.7Ghz. Can't remember what the PS is, but is 500watt high spec. I built this PC around 12months ago or so and it had been working extremely well. For now, it has a brand new 1tb Samsung 860 evo SSD as it's only drive. All installs direct, nothing from previous drives. So bare bones, to root out the issue. The installation as of 2 days ago is completely new. New windows 10 home install, cake, and all my essential plugs, just to get back up running. All drivers including everything for the MB and all devices, are all new updates. Fired up Cake. Exactly the same thing. I cannot move a slider with it causing severe noise while playback of bass things, cannot stop the clicks on start/stop, no matter what my setting are, cannot record clean audio, even direct into the interface. I've gone back to my old Focusrite 18i20 as it was never an issue. I had moved to an Audient, but that was nearly a year ago, with no issues until now.
What settings do I use I hear you ask. All my tracking is set up for direct monitor only. Vocals is direct with outboard effects returned to the vocalist, same as guitars, etc. So in general, I never vary from 1024 buffer settings, always record in 44.1 24bit depth. But, I've played with every setting, removed the audio.ini file numerous times. Just nothing works or changes anything whatsoever. I've loaded up working versions of Live10 suite, Samplitude X4 pro. They are fine. It's just Cake. I've two projects near completion and changing DAWS for those projects, with around 20 songs completed and mastered, waiting for the final songs, for now, is simply not an option.
Has anyone got any ideas pleeessee lol!! I've run out of ideas. Right now, I'm thinking my MB has an issue. But in the past, it's just never come down to that. Or. MS has done it again......
cheers. Dave.