Giacco

Thnak you msmcleod! For sure I have to check Windows settings. Nswer to JohnnyV: I've been forced to pump high values of buffer size because of the dropout error code - (1), which, in the manual, points to a too low buffer size as the first and most common troubleshooting. Anyway, under WASAPI this seems to have some kind of influence. Not speaking of causality, though...

Thanks a lot JohnnyV! Very useful and pointful tutorial. I'm going to follow every instruction to make sure I've got everything correctly. And, of course thanks very much Lord Tim! I'm very gratetful to all the time and efforts you are putting into helping me. To answer you properly: Yes. Exactly. Yes, kindof. I know there are other great stereo imagers out there, and I use them. The Wider plugin, though, is one of my favourites mainly because of the effects it has on the mix and the ease of use. I've been using it for years now on submaster busses without any issues till now. That said, the thing is: under WASAPI/exc and huge of buffer sizes, Wider seems to prevent some tracks from playing, or better, some tracks show red Vmeters start to end, without any sound coming out trom them and disabling wider they too start to play. But this doesn't happen with all the other driver mode. If I got you correctly, it seems that the stream of audio data is taking a different route under WASAPI than under every other driver mode and that could also be causing the "strange sounding mix" symptom. To be clear: till now I've always been using FlexASIO, following some threads found in this very forum, with excellent results. Probably this defective project, that have been mixed under FlexASIO from the beginning, now sunds odd under WASAPI. *It is worth noticing that I can isolate other plugins that have negative effect on the dropout appearance rate: Vastaus distortion for example. And this is only a simple distortion, among many others... On top of that, I experienced the dropout error even with all the track frozen. My big question here, thus, is how can it be that sorting out all track plugins (not Wider, this is on a bus, though) I still have the same issue that I'm having without freezing but if I manually turn off some of them, i.e. Vastaus, I can playback more or less fine? *The "corrupt audio region" error came on the same project at an earlier stage but, as said, without a region find function, I didn't came across any audio issue and I ignored it. I want to stress, however, that I repeatedly performed both chkdsk, defrag and RAM check utilities, without any negative outcome. *Thank you for having sorted out the bit depth thing for me. Thank you for everything, anyway At this point, can I send the frozen project to someone for debugging or am I asking too much?

May I still hope for someone's help? I'm stuck with a almost completed mix that I need as hell...

Update: Ok. I cleaned up HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\ASIO again and have no other ASIO drivers than Focusrite's. - run CbB selecting WASAPI/shared: Realtek High Definition Audio does appear in Unit tab - No dropout message but no sound. Only a quick glitch - ASIO without Interface doesn't sound obviously, because no Units are available for it - Focusrite ASIO w/t interface give me dropout error at any buffer size - WASAPI/exclusive does strange but somewhat interesting things: does sound for some times with sudden freezing and a continuous repetition of the last buffer-size audio forever, like a broken superfast LP disk. No dropout messages in this case too. With buffer sizes above 9684 samples - 202 ms, however, it keeps on playing flawlessly till the end, provided I don't click, mute, solo anything. Only some tracks are not being played, but showing glowing Vmeters as if they were. That would be already supergreat for me! If only.... the sound itself is significantly different (much worse/boxy) to what I've been having with FlexASIO till that day, and I have been mixing accordig to that sound for months. Additional info 1: I've managed to isolate one particular plugin, Wider, on a semi-final bus, disablig which also the remaining "not playing" tracks are playing. Why? Additional info 2: Comes to my mind that weeks ago, on the same project but in an earlier stage, CbB woke up one morning telling me "A corrupt audio region was detected and padded with silence". I found no sign of this silenced region and kept mixing and saving on. Can it be related? Additional question: may or may not be an issue but I'm not sure what bit resolution I have to pick up for my drivers (the button on the right of "Enable double precision 64 bit engine", which I have disabled as said. Since Focusrite has only 24 bit I think everything is coded in 24, but WASAPI comes with 16 by dafault and FlexASIO 32, for example. What have I to choose?

Ok, now I see. Thank you very much! So, after implementing your suggestion precisely, I would expect to have cleaned up every possible conlict between drivers, having thus only Focusrite's ASIO installed, right? But working without the interface, am I still able to select WASAPI on the driver mode, even if I have no choice of drivers to select from (Focusrite ASIO is not listed as long as I don't have the interface phisically connected)? Sorry for the perhaps stupid question, I'm not expert at all on the topic. Yes, I'm mixing without interface, using my laptop, always plugged to the power source, so no battery saving setup is involved. the laptop in question, as listed above, is equipped with CPU i7-4720HQ and 16 GB RAM, a dedicated 4 GB GPU and SSD Hd. Is this really to be considered lower spec machine for the job? Sorry to know... Nono, my apologies, I talking badly: I'm always and only experiencing "A droppout has stopped the audio engine (1)" error messages from Cakewalk after few seonds of playback. Often anticipated by occasional pops and clicks. So, as far as I can understand, no proper crashing. Ok, I'll update you as soon as I try your suggestion (in the right way, this time). Thank you!

Hi! No luck todate. - I tried deletin all entries in HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\ASIO. There were FLexASIO, Focusrite Thunderbolt ASIO and Focusrite USB ASIO. Then I reinstalled FlexASIO, not the Focusrite because unfortunately I'm at home without the interface (left in rehersal garage). . So, this ended up being just a clean FlexASIO installation, if you want. No positive results. Like said, however When I tried to mix with the interface and drivers, I have had no luck eather. - I tried DISM /Online /Cleanup-Image /RestoreHealth and sfc /scannow. Screenshot attached (in Italian, sorry). Same result - I tried with safe Mode. The system message I got was not about plugins, though. Rely "No", like you said. Always dropout - I tried installing the Redistributable over my recent clean installation. No results At this point I'm thinking of adding details, maybe useless, but who knows: 1 - I noticed that this broken song version plays with no issues if some of the tracks are muted. i.e.: the harp aux and all the bass aux, surely the two most unrelated instruments. Still experience the nasty dropout with only one of those muted. Things in common between harp and bass tracks: they all have multiple compressors, reverb, MEqualizer, and, last to be added, Vastaus distortion. 2 - I have been forced to switch back to 32 bit driver resolution, from the default 64 - double precision. This choice has to be with TDR Nova plugin, known to have issues with 64 bits reso. Can this cause some issues to the other plugins. I thank you. But I'm even more desperate now...

Thank you very much Lord Tim! I'll try all your suggestions this evening after work. All my finger crossed... The only point I'd like to recall, however, is that even playing the project through Focusrite produce the same crashes, despite having solid ASIO drivers. Thank you thank you!

Hi Everyone! This is my first post and I have to thank you in advance for your patience and to the lots of knowledge I’ve been harvesting from this forum for years. I’m just a newbe but I’m having fun mixing the multitracks for an home-made album my band and I have been recording this year. Only recorded instruments and free plugins. I start from around 20 tracks (4 for drum kit, 2 for harmonic harp, 4 for vocals, 4 for bass, 2 for guitar and some additionals for environmental sounds). Mixing and duplicating and adding sends and auxs and busses and plugins and soon (many hours later) this ended to be a 65 tracks + 17 busses mix. And there he comes, eventually, the infamous “A droppout has stopped the audio engine (1)” when playing back. At first I didn’t bother too much, I had already experienced occasional errors like this and in the end I’ve only added some sends and a couple of distortions since last working version. But I was underevaluating the danger: since then I’ve been having the same error, in always different and apparently random portions of the mix, sistematically. So I’m stuck. Previous versions are working but they are many hours of work away from the current one. This is my setup: *Cakewalk by Bandlab Updated to 28.11.0.21 *Win10 in ASUS laptop *I7 4720-HQ CPU, 4 core, 8 threads, 2.6 GHz *16 GB RAM DDR3 *Samsung SSD 870 EVO 1TB *NvidiaGeforce GTX 950M GPU 4GB dedicated + 8GB shared and I was running Cakewalk in 48KHz, 32 bit, sampling rate 512KB playing I/O buffer 256KB recording I/O buffer Mixing only with my laptop, on FlexASIO in ASIO mode – 960 samples buffer but everything was recorded with Focusrite 18i8 – 2ndGen thu USB For days and nights I’ve scanning the forum and the internet. - I lengthened the Driver buffer size, downloading and using FlexASIO GUI. Crashes even at 4800 samples. Higher sizes, up to 8192 seems to reduce the error rate, but at the expenses of a spooky continuous rain of pops and clicks. - I kept the Driver buffer size to 4800 and the I/O internal buffer to 2048Kb. Crashes - I tried mixing using the Focusrite interface, with its own FocusriteASIO drivers. Crashes - I tried playng previous versions of the mix, many hours back and no crashes - I tried freezing every track before playing. Crashes - I sent the frozen mix to my band mate, who had no crashes whatsoever….. - I uninstalled FlexASIO and reinstalled - CHKDSK and a C: defrag - I downloaded all sort of memory checkers and run them overnight. No RAM failures - I Downloaded DPC Latency Checker and run it: no abnormal peaks at dropout - So I followed the forum (http://forum.cakewalk.com/Revert-to-default-settings-and-preferences-m3785831.aspx) again and deleted AUD.ini , Cakewalk.ini and TTSEQ.ini + perfomed a config reset startup with ctrl+cakewalk.exe + deleted regedit keys. All that doesn’t work eather. - Same as before + clean reinstallation of Cakewalk (http://www.cakewalk.com/Support/Knowledge-Base/2007013392/SONAR-2015-Clean-Install-Instructions). Same issue, always at random. At project export no interruptions but the final mp3 is missing some parts. The performance module is showing a 25% max CPU usage during playback and the disk icon is glowing yellow, but only when frozen tracks are being played. Please, help me. All the work done in this months could be lost and the album not seing the light of the day. Thank you all

Hi! This would be super handy for me too. Please, add @RAGNADUB: What plugin do you use to achieve this? Thanks a lot!