Robert Bone

In the stand-alone mode, go to the Options or Settings or Preferences (whatever they call it), and look at the settings for the Audio. 1) What audio driver mode is selected? 2) If you have an audio interface, and it is running in ASIO driver mode, you should be able to select ASIO as your audio driver mode, in Addictive Drums. 3) Once you select your audio driver mode in Addictive Drums, load a drum kit into it, then you should be able to simply click on the various drums and cymbals in the kit, in the Addictive Drums user interface window, and they should produce sound - routed to whatever audio driver mode/device you selected in the preferences. Bob Bone

The reason I had finally figured out why my device was acting so strangely, was in that when I took it out of my midi devices and added it back in, then it would work, so I thought maybe something similar had happened to you. AND, it does not matter if the midi device had not moved ports, but it DOES matter if some OTHER device got plugged in to a different USB port. (in terms of the ports internally getting renumbered, though might not have anything to do with your particular issue). Bob Bone

I went round and round with trying to figure out why Cakewalk or Sonar would not accept midi data from an external USB midi controller, and it turned out to because a friend of mine had accidentally unplugged my USB-connected audio interface, and after I immediately threatened him with bodily harm, he had plugged it back in to a different USB port on the back of the computer. It took me forever to figure out this had happened, because the midi controller was plugged into a USB on the front of the computer, so I knew IT had not been moved, but it didn't occur to me that he had used a different USB port in the back of the computer for reconnecting the audio interface. I know you are dealing with midi output - but am wondering if this sort of thing might have happened to you, because Windows internally renumbers USB devices - not by name, so even if the name of the device is the same, in Cakewalk Preferences Midi Devices, it might be known to Windows internally by a different identifier. Try going into Device Manager in Windows, under Sound, Video, and Game Controllers, then clicking on View and checking the box for showing hidden devices, and see if there is a faint icon on a 2nd entry for your midi device. If there IS, then it was plugged in, at some point, to a different USB port. Plugging your midi device into where it was previously connected might help it work again. Bob Bone

I think I would disagree slightly on the notion that CbB is not as good as Sonar Platinum - the thing is, those bundled 3rd-party plugins were all extras - the cost of which was absorbed into the license purchase price of the product. They never 'owned' those, so they would never have been able to continue to be part of the core product. The CbB core product has continued to see remarkable maintenance and clean up of bugs, as well as new development, which for free is outstanding, and CbB is outstanding, in its stability, increased functionality, and that it exists at all, given Gibson's involvement in dumping Cakewalk. Folks legitimately got a bit hacked at paying the one-time lifetime maintenance charge, but as far as I have ever viewed that, that was done by Gibson, the owner of the company at the time, and they seem to have done a cash grab before turning Cakewalk to the wolves and abandoning the company. THANKFULLY, CbB not only exists, but does so with continued development and maintenance. Bob Bone

Good post - I would like to add: Guitar Rig, and the Overloud amp modeling replacement to Guitar Rig, and Addictive Drums, and the old V-Vocal, and maybe some additional ones I may have missed - LOTS and LOTS of 3rd-party plugins. I was always amazed at their ability to bundle in those additional components. (AND, quite pleased). Bob Bone

Why would anybody get mad at a question? No sweat. For the record, if you take a chord, say C major, that would be C-E-G, in the root position. To invert the chord, you take the lowest note - currently the C, and move it up one octave, so the notes become E-G-C. (lowest note on left moving to the highest note on the right). E-G-C is a C major chord, in the 1st inversion. Take the E, and move THAT up an octave, and you get G-C-E, and this is a C major chord in the 2nd inversion. That's all there is to that. If you look at the notes on a piano keyboard, in the different inversions, and also play them, so you can both see and hear how they sound, they will all sound like C major chords, because that is what they are, but you will also eventually be able to hear a major chord, and be able to visualize its shape (meaning which inversion it is in, or if it is in the root position of 1-3-5, or C-E-G for our example). Visualizing the shapes of chords will make your compositions better, as in more interesting, because you will learn to create inner voice movement from one chord to the next, that will vary in its sound, because of the inversions or root combinations you use. I hope that helps - it's off to eat my gumbo soup, yum yum. Bob Bone

Well THERE'S your problem - it's in French! (kidding, and, as a side note, I can still read French somewhat, after taking 9 years of it in school and playing basketball in France years ago. To me, it is one of the most beautiful languages to hear spoken). Anyways - indeed it is Play that crashed, which is the sampler sound engine that EastWest uses for their sounds. The error itself is an access violation, and is caused when a program (Play) tries to access a memory location that doesn't 'belong' to it - programs allocate chunks of memory and then they load various things into it and manage it, and access it, etc. Well, if an address pointer gets corrupted (filled with either all zeros or some errant value), or the program has released previously allocated memory but then still tries to access it, and then the program's logic tries to work on something using that bad address pointer, VOILA - an access violation will occur, and the program will crash. I would suggest you run the EastWest Installation Manager software, and make sure you have the most recent version of Play installed (if an update to Play is available, it will show up in the top section of the EastWest Installation Manager window). I would also suggest you make sure Windows is also up to date with updates. Bob Bone

What version of Windows are you on? Is Windows maintenance up to date? Dim Pro hasn't been updated in a long while, but there was an update. What version of Dim Pro is installed on your system? Are you using any 32-bit plugins in your project(s) that are crashing? If so, one or more of these could be causing problems, as they must use bridging software to be able to run in a 64-bit environment, and the bridging process is not a guarantee that a given 32-bit plugin will run properly when bridged. Cakewalk/Sonar include a bridging route called Bit Bridge, and there is also a commercially available product called J-Bridge, which costs about $20. Some folks find success using J-Bridge, when they have had prior crashes using the included Bit Bridge. Bob Bone

Cannot read the error message - please use one of the image hosting sites and post a link to the image there, and we can then read it properly. Or, type out the text of the error message. Otherwise, nobody will be able to discern what is in the error message. Bob Bone

G:\Cakewalk Content\Cakewalk Core\CAL Scripts (I relocated to G: drive, so wherever your Cakewalk Core folder is, the CAL Scripts sub-folder should be there, and will have a bunch of CAL scripts in it). You can launch these from within Cakewalk, under the Process tab - Run CAL. PRIOR to running any of them, go look at them outside of Cakewalk, by opening them into Notepad, or a CAL editor (there may still be links out there for CAL editors you could find on the web). You can modify existing ones, either in an editor, or in Notepad, or create new ones. Again, though, many of the kinds of things doable in CAL were simply incorporated into Sonar/Cakewalk functionality, so not sure what you are trying to do with CAL. Here is one link to an editor - I have not reviewed this one or used it: https://www.softpedia.com/get/Office-tools/Text-editors/CAL-Editor.shtml And, here is a link to an old Sonar Forums thread, with some CAL links to various resources, if you are intent on pursuing using CAL: http://forum.cakewalk.com/FindPost/2677768 Bob Bone

Hi Noel - I hadn't checked using the other DAW software, but tomorrow, after finishing up the commitments I have, I would be happy to recreate the issue, since I now what caused it - and I can then see the order display of devices in the various recording software suites I have. Look for me to post this Sunday late afternoon. Bob Bone

Also, you can still create and modify CAL scripts - however it really is as scook described, unsupported and orphaned many many years ago. If you really want to work with CAL, I think I have some of the programming documentation and possibly even an editor that might still work. Bob Bone

Can you please elaborate on what music theory tools you are referring to? There may be multiple options out there, depending on what it is you seek to be able to do. Bob Bone

Hi, Jim. Thanks for the replies - I was too burnt and sore to respond earlier, but I laid down for a bit and let a round of meds kick in, so am back at it. Anyways, I posted my solution - and I had considered using a different DAW to test, but when it worked fine outside of CbB, and also failed with both CbB and SPLAT, I knew I could narrow it down to something peculiar with the midi devices and the two flavors of Cakewalk and Sonar. The thing that threw me, was that I knew, ABSOLUTELY, that I had not moved the USB cable to the Roland A-800 Pro midi controller to a different port, because firstly I would never seek to do that, (because I know better), but also because that USB cable and port are literally right in front of me, as the port is on the top of the computer chassis, which sits immediately to the left of the stand holding the midi controller, and it never moved. It was the accidental moving of the USB cable for the audio interface that actually caused the nightmares for me, and since I hadn't done that move (again, I never would), I naively thought my friend had plugged it back into the same port he had unplugged it from. SO - my NEW sign going up along the gravel driveway, next to the Trespassers Will Be Shot signs, will add, And So Will USB Cable Shifters! That should do it. Oh - I also have Ableton, Pro Tools, and Studio One Pro, but had figured that somehow this was all inexplicably connected to USB ports and Windows and CbB, but since I hadn't moved the audio interface cable, I was stumped for a long while. All good now

ZACTLY! I am too medicated from pain, and far too evolved over time (old), to try to keep lists of what is plugged into what, and I don't have a good means of keeping track of those ports and connections, other than to know not to plug stuff in differently, EVER. Had I thought my friend's accidental shifting that USB connection was done, I would have figured all of this out last night, but because I was literally staring at the correct port for the midi controller to be plugged into, it just didn't enter my head as anything to need to look at. I welcome thoughts on an easy way to see what is connected to what, and specially to know when it has changed. Maybe, some industrious developer of utilities could think of some kind of utility to snapshot the USB connection/port/device info and also spit out an indication that something changed..............(he states hopefully) DOH! Bob Bone

I am too tired and sore to keep typing - but the bottom line is that my issues were caused by the alteration of which USB port the AUDIO INTERFACE got plugged into, which then affected the numbering assignment Windows made for which device was plugged into which port. I guess when that happened, it confused CbB, or at least under the hood, it changed things enough to where its prior internals were no longer correctly associating the displayed and checked A-Pro midi device, to the actual midi controller, but because it only ever displayed A-Pro, no matter how it was internally assigned, I did not know that connection was actually no longer valid. Deselecting the A-Pro as a midi input device, and then selecting it again, seems to have fixed it - I think I also cycled CbP and SPLAT in between the removal and declaring it again as a midi input device, anyways - it now seems to work. So, YEAH, that whole ASSumption thing is still lurking out there, no matter HOW experienced one is. The second thing that was painfully reinforced into my forever way of thinking, is that never again will I let anybody but ME unplug or plug USB cables into my computer. I guess the last thing would be that I wish there was some better way to associate the displayed midi input devices with the USB ports they are actually plugged into. Maybe there is a way to know this, but I am too foggy to think that through. Bob Bone

Hi - I thought this was solved, but it turns out while it briefly was, it is broken again. I do NOT understand why this began doing this sometime yesterday. I have an URGENT need to complete some work and deliver it to someone - I was supposed to have sent the completed work last night, as it will be needed for use tomorrow, so this is a HUGELY urgent thing for me to fix. I have had an unchanged configuration with CbB and SPLAT, for more than a year, where my midi controller has been plugged into the same ports, everything worked great, etc., when all of a sudden, yesterday afternoon I discovered my midi controller's activity was no longer being detected within CbB OR in SPLAT. Meaning, pressing keys on the midi controller, should have produced midi data in CbB or in SPLAT, and it was not, though it all worked fine the night before, and I had made no changes. I THOUGHT I had this fixed, by doing an uninstall/delete/install of the USB drivers for the midi controller, and it began to work in a new project, after doing the above, but when I loaded up an existing project, it quit working again, and now setting up a VSTi instance, midi track, audio track, and routing assignments, it only works when I press notes on the FM8 virtual keyboard, but NOT when I press notes on the midi controller. (It does also work outside of CbB, if I run FM8 (or any synth) in stand-alone mode - notes pressed on the midi controller trigger sounds in the synth, as is supposed to be the case. Additionally, midi activity is detected by the Windows System Tray's MIDI Input/Output Activity monitor, and by MIDI Ox, if I run that - while in the CbB project. MY APPARENT solution - I uninstalled and deleted the midi drivers for my class-compliant Roland A-800 Pro midi controller, unplugged the USB cable, restarted my computer, logged in, and plugged the USB cable back into the same port I had it in prior to uninstalling. Windows went through the device setup process, and it began working again after that. Nothing else I had tried (including Windows corruption detection/repair or ripping out CbB and doing a clean install) had fixed anything, but for whatever reason, uninstalling the Roland device drivers and letting Windows install the same drivers again did the trick). This WORKED, and I saved the new project I had set up, but now is again no longer working. 01) The midi controller was properly declared/selected in Preferences>MIDI>Devices under Inputs, and available to CbB 02) The A-Pro USB drivers were properly loaded and working properly when viewed in Device Manager 03) The routing assignments in the CbB project are properly made, between audio/midi/VSTi, including specifying Omni for Input on the midi track 04) Playing notes using the VSTi virtual keyboard for FM8 properly produces midi data and sound (same for other synths) 05) Existing midi track data properly plays back for all midi tracks and VSTi instances/instruments, so even the Midi Output Channel specified for the midi tracks are correct and unchanged. 06) MIDI Ox shows proper midi data for keys pressed on the midi controller, as does the indicator light in the Windows System Tray MIDI Input/Output Activity app 07) No related errors seen in Windows Event Viewer 08) Antivirus software is temporarily disabled, (though I already had anything needed already listed as exclusions to being scanned) 09) There is no detected corruption in Windows, after running diagnostics 10) I performed a complete uninstall, including removing any vestigial Registry entries or Windows folders, and a clean install of CbB 11) SAME issues when trying to work in SPLAT, and same conditions as above, except I did not also do a clean reinstall of SPLAT. 12) I also do not have a spare midi controller at this location, to try swapping it out, but by all indications, my Roland A-800 Pro seems to be working properly, and both Windows and MIDI Ox ARE detecting the appropriate midi note event data when I press keys on the midi controller - it is just not being recognized/'seen' by either CbB or Splat. I am ALL EARS for any ideas - I really really really need to get this resolved as soon as possible, because I have commitments I cannot currently deliver on time, and that is a problem. I hope I am just a paranoid idiot, and there is something I am overlooking. The pain meds don't exactly help me properly reason through things, either, but I just cannot figure out why this is happening. THANKS to anyone who even read all of the above, and for anybody's assistance in my quickly getting past this. Bob Bone

Before you invest in an M.2 2280 PCIe NVME, you need to make sure the computer you are planning to install it into supports that kind of hardware. I happen to have an Alienware 17 R5, which has the support for the M.2 2280 PCIe drives (comes with 1, supports a total of 2 of them, and the drives can either be the NVME or SATA III type). I upgraded the boot drive from a 128 GB M2. 2280 PCIe SATA III drive to an NVME drive that is 2 TB, and added a 2nd identical 2 TB NVME drive, and then I also replaced the 1 TB SATA III HDD, with a 2 TB SATA III SSD. (so, there are 3 2 TB drives after the upgrades, 2 NVME and 1 SATA III SSD) This laptop also has a Thunderbolt 3 port, which transmits data from a Thunderbolt 3 audio interface I bought - at ridiculous speeds. Anyways - check the laptop/desktop specs to make sure NVME support is indeed there. Bob Bone

Just a thought for you - (glad scook's typical brilliance fixed you up, by the way). I have a small number of 32-bit plugins that I choose to continue to use, as they provide unique sounds/functionality for certain projects. Other than those, I do NOT generally use any plugin that isn't 64-bit. I have a VST32 folder in my Program Files (x86) folder, with a number of 32-bit plugins, but since I haven't tried most of those in my current 64-bit environment, I do not even want these to show up as potential plugins to be loaded into any projects - until I test them. SOOOO - I created an additional folder, that lives in the VST32 folder. In Cakewalk's Plugin Manager's VST Scan Paths dialog, I do NOT include the VST32 bit folder, but instead I have added the Bridged sub-folder only, (for 32-bit plugins I have tested and determined they still work in a 64-bit environment). Before loading any untested 32-bit plugin into any projects, I place potential 32-bit plugins, one at a time, into the Bridged folder, and then test out that plugin in a separate new project. If all goes well, I leave it in the Bridged folder, and if not, then I just delete it, as I will never use a 32-bit plugin that causes any problems in any projects. Since I pretty much have entirely quit using 32-bit plugins, other than the super small number of ones that are so unique and helpful that I would use them in certain situations, AND that have been tested and found to work OK in 64-bit Cakewalk, my system has been SUPER stable, and I just do not have any weird issues in Cakewalk - I am LOVING the stability of Cakewalk. So - perhaps the above info might help you with 32-bit plugins in Cakewalk. Bob Bone

You might also consider doing a 'Refresh' of Windows, where Microsoft essentially replaces your current Windows installation, with a shiny new copy of Windows, and it is my understanding that this preserves your current installed programs and settings and such. I have not performed this refresh of Windows, but I DID replace a bad motherboard with a completely different one from another manufacturer, and unbelievably, Windows dealt with that MASSIVE change internally, as they use what they call an 'Abstraction Layer', where the hardware and the software are fairly independent of each other, making things like swapping out a motherboard possible. If you cannot locate information on doing this refresh - just post back here on that, and I will spend a little time digging up the info for you. (I will also cruise through the info, to make sure what I am suggesting you look into doing would actually be helpful for you). Bob Bone

Count me in Bob Bone

If you own Sonar and have it installed, all the stuff that came with it will work in Cakewalk. Bob Bone

I have never heard of an ASIO Buffer Size of 96 samples - could that be the sample rate at 96k? Also, unless you use pretty much no effects - certainly not any convolution reverb or those that use linear phase processing, you will never have a single buffer size setting that works for mixing and recording - just does not work that way. Bob Bone

If needed, I just edit the instrument and alter the key switch assigned note values down an extra octave or two to get them out of the way if I am playing low notes. Bob Bone

No probs - was just suggesting adding exclusions to whatever involved with your Cakewalk sessions that was having issues with the antivirus, rather than disabling the antivirus software altogether. When I have had issues in the past with antivirus software and music apps in the past, adding exclusions for the music app software and data folders made MY issues go away, and allowed me to keep the antivirus software running, while no longer interfering, additionally benefiting performance of the music software. Bob Bone