Light Grenade

I have just checked this, and you can send the output of any bus to the input of any aux track. Furthermore, you can send the output of any aux track to the input of another aux track. I have all my kicks sending to a kick aux, and the kick aux then sending to a drum bus aux. In some cases I have chains of 3 or 4 aux tracks. It definitely works.

Use aux tracks instead of busses and Cakewalk will do exactly the same thing. You can totally ignore the bus pane if you want to, and do all your submixing and fx sends with aux tracks.

Agreed. Additionally when opening in safe mode, it's usually one plugin causing issues, rather than a certain instance of that plugin, so generating a list of plugins in the project you can turn off one by one (rather than clicking through each instance) would be great. I opened up an older project last week and it took me a good few hours to find out an analysis plugin on a bus was holding up the entire project.

Hi folks, Running into an issue here. I have loaded a bunch of files into a new project for mixing, and as standard I have selected 'Save as' and then 'Copy all audio with project' to the save the project and files to my drive. The project folder is created as standard along with the audio and audio export folder, however the audio files aren't being copied over. The standard windows progress dialog box isn't appearing and upon opening the project again, everything is being replaced with silence as Cakewalk can't find the files. All the paths are correct in the save as dialog box, and no files are going to the audio data folder. I have tried this a few times with different names and locations, but I can't get the files to copy. I'm on the latest build, 2021.11 Has anyone encountered this before? Looking for some help here before I file a support ticket. Cheers

Really great update overall. I have saved hours of work with the new export panel and tab to transient improvements makes drum editing infinitely easier. However, I have encountered a few potential bugs. I set up a task list which consisted of a main mix, stems and tracks through entire mix and left my PC for a few hours. Upon returning back, the tracks task seemed to have restarted and was rendering everything again. I checked the explorer and all the tracks had already been successful exported, yet Cakewalk was still exporting stuff, not sure where they were going or why. Additionally, after cancelling the export queue, I was unable to archive any of my tracks or folders, the archive button was just unresponsive. I closed and opened the session and everything was back to normal. I will log a ticket if this hasn't been picked up on already. One more thing, I tried to export stems in real time as 'tracks through entire mix' (I use aux tracks instead of busses) but this just bounced silence due to using an external insert on the mix bus. I'm aware this is a side effect of how the external insert works in Cakewalk, but it might be wise to flag users should turn off any external insert before bouncing tracks through entire mix. These are minor peeves though, Cakewalk has really came on leaps and bounds recently. It's really great to work on. Amazing work from the team!

This has been implemented in the latest early access update. Happy days!

No problem, I'll send this over to the support email.

Tab to transient is much more accurate now. It's no longer chopping the start off the majority of drum hits. This will speed up drum editing tenfold. It's still a bit out on some of the quieter transient but it's much, much better in general.

Amazing update, especially re exporting. I have been waiting for this for awhile, it was genuinely the only feature that nearly made me switch fully to Reaper, happy days! Probably the best update yet.

Thanks Glenn. I'm definitely going to use this in the mean time. The wildcard naming/export system in Reaper is one of the best things about it, would love to see something similar implemented in Cakewalk, massive timesaver.

Agreed!

Another longstanding bug with this, busses or aux tracks cannot be solo'd when using the external insert plugin anywhere in a project. To hear a specfific bus/aux in solo, you have to mute every other bus/aux. Tracks can be solo'd successfully, just not busses/auxs. It can be frustrating

Cheers Jack.

Hey folks, Thought I'd share this live jam. Roland Juno DS88, Novation Bass Station MKII and an Alesis Sample Pad Pro triggering NI battery. A really enjoyable way to write music, it was nice getting a break from a snare drum destroying my right ear. Of course, all recorded and mixed within Cakewalk. Cheers.

+1

Agreed, transient detection definitely needs improving. Tab to transient is guilty for chopping off the beginning of hits all over the place, so you normally need to zoom in and check which can be pretty time consuming. Quantizing drums is a necessity in some cases.

Yeah, I get this. I nearly defected to Reaper / Studio One, and I totally get why people did. I wasn't aware how buggy Sonar X1/X2/X3/ were at the time, X2 particularly was a nightmare, I corrupted more projects than I finished with X2. However, I didn't actually realise how bad it was until I used Reaper for awhile in the Gibson/Bandlab crossover period. Reaper is solid as a rock. Thankfully, Cakewalk in it's current form is very, very good and stable, the best it's ever been by far. I just don't think people are aware, or believe it. I get that though, as I had people telling me X2 was stable when it absolutely wasn't. Bugs are being taken way more seriously now, and are being fixed quickly which is great and a testament to the team.

Over the last few years, I've noticed some dry hire studios offering Reaper as an option on their systems. One studio owner specifically told me 'A lot of the youngsters have been asking if we have Reaper'. Reaper is arguably uglier, and more confusing than Cakewalk, so I don't think the Cakewalk GUI puts youngsters off. It is however, available on both Windows and Mac OS which makes collaboration easier, amongst other things. The reason I use Reaper as a comparison is because it's very sensibly priced, or 'free' if you never come out of evaluation mode. Until studios start using Windows en masse, or Cakewalk is properly developed for Apple, I can't see Cakewalk becoming a recording studio staple. However, people starting out could do a lot worse than learn Cakewalk inside out. It's always been my #1, but I have also learned Reaper and Pro Tools (yuck) for the basis of recording in other places. I then mix in Cake, and this setup is fine.

Apple's marketing department have been successful in their quest to solidify MacBooks as the ultimate portable computer, even though they are gravely overpriced and underpowered. This is why you have students using MacBooks for nothing more than word processing. You go into a coffee shop, how many folks are using Dell, Lenovo or HP laptops? Not many. Apple have created an environment where anything android or windows is seen as being cheap, not as good or not as cool, and sadly this matters to a lot people. Cakewalk's biggest hurdle is trying to compete in an industry, and wider creative landscape which is so apple focused. In my experience of recording studios and general music production, 95% of people are using Apple products, sometimes to their own detriment. For example, students shelling out 1.5k on a MacBook, only to find out it's has a Quad i5 CPU with 4gb of RAM which doesn't actually get them very far. Thankfully, there seems to have been a bit of a realisation recently due to even more obscene Apple prices. This has resulted in a lot of people I know going hackintosh, so hopefully this combined with stability of W10 will see a slow transition away from Apple over time, which will no doubt benefit programs like Cakewalk. This is only my opinion of course!

That is an option for sure, but I like to send my channels and FX returns to different places, so putting them in the same place doesn't work for me unfortunately. Grouping the write buttons works for now, but hopefully having the groups follow automation can be added in the future.

One of the best plugin suites, they have stood the test of time. Low CPU, solid as a rock, sound great and get the job done. I've been using the Oxford EQ for corrective EQ for about 8 years now and never found the need to switch, it's just so good. Inflator can transform your mix bus and drum bus too.

Everything feels really really good with this update, it's a lot easier on the eye. Enjoying the GUI enhancements a lot. Only issues I'm encountering are the clip gain issue (which I know has been addressed) and problems with certain plugins which I think are GUI related. Soothe2, Oxford Drum Gate and Neural DSP Archetype Cory Wong all play up. Displays are laggy, jumpy and eventually stop displaying at all and turn into white boxes. Opening them sometimes crashes the program. This issue doesn't happen in Sonar Platinum, and plugins work fine there.

I occasionally flirt with Reaper for listening to rough mixes. I really liked bus folders at first but I grew to dislike them. I prefer folders for straight organisation, nothing more. My clean guitars folder tracks don't all go to the same bus, sometimes I'll bus leads, rhythms and textural parts to different places and bus folders make this very convoluted. In Reaper, I'm always accidentally dragging tracks into folders which messes up my routing. If implemented in CbB, it should be switchable like OP suggests.

I didn't know this was a thing. I'll check it out, thanks!

It would be good if fader groups followed automation lines. For example, I create makeshift 'VCA Faders' and group a bunch of instruments to that fader. An example would be a Snare VCA and this gets my snare submix, snare verbs and snare parallel compression. I then tweak overall snare volumes with this fader. However, if I automate this fader, only that fader follows automation, the grouped faders don't. I then have to automate every channel individually, making the groups somewhat pointless. Video attached showing normal fader movement vs automation. Group automation.mp4