A Tolerable Quietude

You're welcome! Glad you found it useful!

I'm not sure I understand your question. Are you trying to recover audio that you may have deleted from old projects from 10 years ago? If so, you're probably out of luck, unless you have old backups. Or are you asking how to determine which Cakewalk-generated files you can safely delete, like old audio files that are not used in any current projects?

If I'm understanding your question, you can't remove the VST2 plugins from your system from inside Cakewalk. The best you can do is hide them with the plugin manager. If you want to remove them, you can presumably delete them from wherever they were installed on your c drive, or use the plugin manufacturer's install tool to uninstall the vst2 versions if that feels safer. Then the next time you open Cakewalk, it will rescan for plugins and remove the ones you've deleted (or you can manually rescan if you've turned off the automatic scanning on startup). That said, I don't mind having the VST2 plugins around, because I've had experiences in the past with buggy VST3 versions of plugins that work fine as VST2. Although that hasn't happened to me in a while.

Sure Scook. All I meant was that in my case, it turns out the VST *does* expose the controls to Cakewalk. I just needed a reboot to get there. Which means it turns out that my particular case isn't a good example of the general question I started the thread with: Is there any way to automate VST controls that *aren't* exposed to Cakewalk? Sure, I solved my technical issue, but I guess I was still a little curious about the more general question. Have a great day!

Sure, Scook, I will. The only reason I didn't is because I solved it for my specific situation by restarting, but the general problem remains. I think if restarting hadn't worked, Max Arwood's suggestion of experimenting with MIDI CCs, probably starting at CC 14 and working up from there, would be the best course of action.

A bundle of VSTs from Thenatan, and checking again just now, all the controls have now turned up in Cakewalk as expected. I think what may have made the difference is I restarted the machine--something I pretty much always do when installing software, and definitely do when I'm troubleshooting, so I don't know why I didn't this time right away! So my my specific problem is solved.

Hi All, I'm pretty sure the answer to this is "no", but often Cakewalk surprises me so it doesn't hurt to ask. I recently picked up a bargain basement VST synth, which for some reason doesn't expose any controls to the DAW. I mean there's controls I can manipulate while it plays, but none of them are listed as automation lane options in Cakewalk, and moving them around with write enabled on the track seems to send no data to Cakewalk. Is there any workaround I can use to automate these, or am I out of luck here. Thanks!

For what it's worth, I recently upgraded from my trusty Windows 10 machine to a new one with Windows 11 and much better specs, expecting to get much better performance in Cakewalk. I didn't, until I removed all traces of OneDrive and some other default cruft. I don't even use OneDrive, so I was rather surprised to find that Windows 11 default behavior is to make the local Documents folder on the account a OneDrive folder, and just start sending/syncing all my files to Microsoft in the background! I found this link from Focusrite helpful in optimizing the PC for audio production.

There is a free one called "SPAN" by Voxengo that I use for this. Can set it to meter in a bunch of different ways.

I don't do that normally! I usually master from a single mixdown in an entirely separate cakewalk project. But I'm trying to get better at mastering, specifically learning how to master a track while leaving the relative balance of the mix intact. So for this one project I've included my mastering chain in the main project file, to allow me to go back and forth between tracking mode, mixing and editing mode, and mastering mode. Trying to get a better sense of how choices I make in one stage of the process effect the possibilities in another.

Thanks, Scook! Very helpful! The FX bypass button got rid of the problem (and the problem plugin turned out to be a *very* resource-hungry iZotope mastering plugin). Funny that I've never noticed this situation before, but I guess my usual workflow is to record all my MIDI and audio before slapping any FX on things. Good to keep in mind going forward! I think I'm going to turn off FX by default in my templates, and be much more mindful of what I've got running when I'm recording, freezing tracks with FX as necessary to keep PDC to a minimum. Really appreciate the insight!

This is a weird problem, and it's not the end of the world if I can't resolve it, but I'm curious to understand what's going on. I've got a single project that's somehow developed a midi latency problem. For context, I've got two MIDI keyboards on my system, and normally they are very snappy--hit a key and the VST instrument in Cakewalk sounds instantly. In this one project though, there's a lag of about 1/8th of a second between playing the note, and the vst sounding. This happens with either MIDI keyboard, so it's not a hardware or interface issue (each keyboard uses a different interface into the computer). And besides, if I create a new project (or open any other existing project) the MIDI latency isn't there. It's only a problem for this single project. To make it even weirder: Midi notes on the piano roll play perfectly in time with the music when Cakewalk is playing. But if I use the mouse to manually select a note on the piano roll keyboard (on the left-hand side of the screen), it's got that same 1/8th-ish second delay in this single project. Where should I look to try to troubleshoot this? Have I accidentally changed a setting in this project that would create this behavior? Any insight would be welcome!

Not only that, but in my limited experience, Cakewalk's tech support is really good! I had a ticket open with them recently, and a ticket open with Native Instruments for a paid product. Cakewalk's tech support was prompt, courteous, and helpful. Native Instrument's has been extremely slow, inexpert, and ultimately incorrect. It's astonishing to me that Cakewalk's support team for a free product is leagues better than NI's for a paid one.

This is really, really welcome news to me! I love Cakewalk--I've used it in its various forms for over two decades, and I find the workflow intuitive in ways that other DAWs are not. It's been great what Bandlab has done with it, but it's felt precarious to me because there's no way the increased Bandlab user numbers can possibly pay for the Cakewalk's continued upkeep and development. So I'll personally feel much more comfortable if they're actually selling it, and their revenue stream comes from the actual users of the software, instead of however Bandlab memberships are monetized. That said, I REALLY hate subscription models. They seem so temporary and insecure. I'd hate to have all my previous work and projects held hostage, where I'd lose access to the ability to open the files and work with them if I quit paying a subject-to-change subscription fee. I bet this feeling is very common for Cakewalk users. After all, *continuity* has been one of Cakewalk's distinguishing features over its many years and iterations. I recently opened a .bun file I'd made in the '90s, and it opened just fine in CbB, which is freaking amazing! So I do hope Bandlab has a "buy it" option for the next chapter of Cakewalk/Sonar.

As someone who recently upgraded to a new computer myself, I found this pretty annoying as well. It seems like some plugins couldhandle a version change gracefully, and the project settings would still load in the new version of the plugin. For others, even minor bug-fixing updates would make the plugin present itself to Cakewalk as an entirely new thing. It's made me very hesitant to ever update plugins! If possible, I'd suggest saving all of your original installation files and/or .vst3s or .dlls, so you can swap in the old one where necessary.

He's likely talking about how Cakewalk's default behavior is to scan for new/changed/removed plugins when it loads. There's a toast that pops up briefly to indicate that.

I've been using Cakewalk/Sonar for quite a while, but I love how there's always new functionality to discover. Thought I'd share this little story: I had a mystery today. I was working in a project, and all of a sudden the spacebar began stopping the playback and resetting the now marker to where I was, the behavior normally associated with ctrl+spacebar. And ctrl+spacebar would stop playback and move the playhead back to the now marker. In other words, spacebar and ctrl+spacebar got switched. What had happened? I hadn't changed the keyboard shortcuts to reassign them, and looking at the keyboard shortcut menu I saw that spacebar is reserved and can't be reallocated at all, so I was really confused. It turns out hitting ctrl+w swaps the behavior of spacebar and ctrl+spacebar, as outlined here, without changing any of the key bindings. I routinely hit ctrl+s all the time when I'm working on a project, so I must have hit ctrl+w accidentally at one point. (It wouldn't be the first time I've accidentally hit the wrong key combination. I can't count the number of times I've accidentally switched to screenset 6 when trying to switch to the select tool, for example!) Anyway, I'm delighted to discover ctrl+w. It's really handy and I'll be using it a lot going forward. Makes me wonder how much else there is to still discover?

Thanks, I can use a plugin. Span looks useful! I just wanted to be sure I wasn't missing a setting somewhere.

I'd like to be able to see the RMS as well as the peak in the console. I know that I can set the meters themselves to show both, as outlined here. But that still shows only the peak as a displayed number below the meter. Is it possible to display the RMS as a number as well, or instead of the peak?

Wouldn't a drum map work just as well (or better) for this? I do have a "legacy" hardware synth, and I do have a .ins file for it which lets me change banks and patches, etc. I made this .ins file, believe it or not, over 20 years ago, when I first got the synth, and I think this was before Cakewalk even became Sonar. I remember this being a headache and a half, even though those instructions made a lot more sense back then, and my hardware synth manual made it very clear what the RPNs and NRPNs and whatnot were. So I'm super grateful that this legacy tech is still a working part of Cakewalk. And I'm even more grateful that I'll never have to make another .ins file as long as I live.

I'm not sure I've experienced exactly what you're talking about, but I have noticed that often if there seems to be a communication breakdown between a midi track in Cakewalk and a synth, it's because of the channel being wonky. I've gotten in the habit of loading any synth in "midi omni" mode, which seems to make things work more smoothly. Or, as you say, you can set the output channel of the track to 1. You also might want to look for stray midi sysex, patch change, volume, or other unwanted control codes that may have snuck into the track. The event list is always the first thing I look at if a midi track isn't behaving properly. Just today I was drawing some notes onto a track in the piano roll, and those notes weren't playing. Opening the event list, I saw that the new notes I'd drawn in were set to channel 10, for no reason I could discern. I changed them to channel 1 on the event list, saved the project, closed and reopened Cakewalk, and reloaded the project. Adding notes on the piano roll worked as expected. Was it a bug, or some weird error on my part? I'm not sure, but it was certainly something I could fix/work around. On the general topic of Cakewalk and stability/bugs, maybe I've just been lucky, but I've been using it daily for months now and found it impressively reliable and rock solid.

Francois, thanks for putting in the work and sharing this! If you feel comfortable sharing your code as well, you could include a github link too. It's too bad there isn't an obvious section of the Content forums to post this. I wonder why there isn't a CAL Scripts subforum there...

Along with what bitflipper says, another great reason to install TTS-1 is that as a multitibral General MIDI synth, it will let your friend easily preview GM files from Cakewalk's file browser. I've got it installed, and use it pretty much exclusively for that. As for the other instruments, I personally really like the sound of the bass and the epiano, and I've found them useful in final mixes. But that's down to taste.

Thanks for the replies! The effects were very noticeable in this case, and specifically the automation was much chunkier than the 50 millisecond default. I'm reassured that I'll probably hear problems if they crop up again. I can also make a habit of raising the buffer size for renders, and experiment with a BounceBufSizeMsec value in my config file. I tend to keep my buffer size as low as I can possibly get away with, since I hate latency more than I hate the occasional late/dropped buffer ;)

Happy new year everyone, Recently I noticed that one of the instruments in an audio export of a project just wasn't sounding as good as it did in the project mix--the automations weren't as smooth, the sound was thin, etc. After various troubleshooting, I discovered that this specific instrument (iZotope's Iris 2) does a bad job rendering faster than real-time. I solved the problem by freezing the track, with the freeze options set to "Render in real-time", then exporting the project audio. But this has got me wondering: Maybe there's been a bunch of less-obvious rendering problems in previous projects that I've missed?!! Should I use "Render in real-time" all the time, just to be sure (I see it's an option in the audio export dialog, defaulted to off)? Or is there a way I can tell definitively that a given synth or effect CAN render properly when Cakewalk speeds it up? Thanks!