Noel Borthwick

start screen uses the chrome embedded framework CEF. All apps built with that including chrome behave that way because they launch child processes.

18 hours ago, Bruce Searl said:

Hey All! Thanks for the help. I was out shooting the video yesterday and so I just got back to this to try to figure out my audio problem so I can start editing the thing together. 

CJ Jacobson - I playing either form the DAW, through the Focusrite 18i8 1/2 Outputs to my monitors, or the exported file, from my Windows Media Player through the Focusrite 18i8 1/2 Outputs to my monitors. I've set the volume levels on both the interface and the windows media player to 90 so they sound that same. That helped my level issue but not the distortion problem. 😉 

I double checked all my channels went to my master.  All did with the exception of Phones, PhonesFX and PhonesInstr which route to the Focusrite 3/4, 5/6, and 7/8 for artist to hear while tracking. These it appears are the problem as per:

Lord Tim and Noel Borthwick for the win!

When I mute those three outputs (that should have zero effect on, "What You Hear" mix down... the distortion and clipping go away. so they are in fact being summed into the master buss on mix down. Seems like a bug to me. I also notice, and this jogged my brain... with the update to Cakewalk from older Sonar product, the "Master Mix" preset, with Entire Mix selected, has source hardware outputs 1/2, 3/4, 5/6, 7/8 all selected with no way to deselect the extra outputs. I think that is the change that happened that started screwing things up. I assumed that since those out's were only used for phones back to the artist while tracking, and it was a master mix or what you hear mix going to my exported file... it would not include them... why should it? and when I tried "what you hear" I can deselect busses but the results were way to low output or no FX. If I kept FX and Master, it would go find and sum in the phones FX too!

So it definitely seems like a bug to me. 

Thank you so much to each you who helped me on this!

I'll post a link to the music video when its' up so you can know what you helped make possible!

Bruce

@Bruce Searl I think there is some confusion about how the bounce presets work and there has been no change in behavior. You will get the same result in any version of SONAR if you export the what you hear preset, or choose entire mix in the mix options.

Cakewalk presently has no way to distinguish a headphone/cue mix from the master mix. What your see as the master bus in your project is simply a bus named *master* that came from the default template when the project was created. It could have been called main/mix/speakers or anything you want.

The entire mix setting in the bounce options instructs the mixdown process to sum ALL bus outputs to a single stereo mix. This option should not be used when you have sub mixes in the project going to different outputs because it will result in a higher gain output. Instead, for this use case you should explicitly export just the bus you want which in your case would be master. Another way would be to solo the master bus before exporting with the entire mix setting enabled.

In short this is not a bug. That said we could do better to warn the user when using the entire mix option if we detect that included buses are going to different hardware outputs.

1 hour ago, HIBI said:

You might want to add one more reverb bus for that.

Yeah there is really no other way to do this other than having the reverb on an independent bus and automating the send. 

Or just put a reverb inline on that tracks effects bin which might be a simpler solution.

1 hour ago, CJ Jacobson said:

Check to make sure your tracks go the the master bus, All buses go to the master bus and that the Master Bus goes to the Main Outs 1/2.

 

Yes. The most common mistake is exporting a project where something is routed to multiple hardware outputs. If you have a hardware out muted externally outside of the DAW's mixer the project will sound fine when playing but when you export it will clip.

To troubleshoot solo your master bus in CbB and play. Does it sound correct? If so export with source category buses and choose ONLY that bus.

16 hours ago, Deckard said:

Thanks for the heads-up!

Just one question about the release info:

What does "asynchronous bounce" refer to? Compared to the recent fast bounce optimizations? That were introduced in 2019.03 but rolled back in the Mar 26 hotfix?)

Its the same thing being referred to. The issue was certain plugins like the IK multimedia plugins and some synths like Addictive drums apparently are not designed to be multiprocessing compliant so they exhibited problems. As a result we had to disable some changes until further notice.

Since you saw the same issue in platinum its definitely nothing that changed in this update so going back to a prior version is not going to help.
There are no changes to recording or waveform drawing for the March release. Since you had updated your RME drivers its likely some variable there. Did you flash the firmware as well?

Which build of CbB are you running and what is your OS version?
This wont have anything to do with VST scanning. Likely your audio driver or a control surface is hanging.

There are no limits to the number of sidechain inputs so I'm not sure why it didn't work. If you have a way to reproduce it let us know and we can look into it.

Yes a frozen track behaves the same as a normal track. Any effects prochannel or others will be applied if you subsequently bounce it.

Did you save the dump file?

9 hours ago, msmcleod said:

I noticed this as well.

Having modulation at zero making cutoff freq = zero is a totally mental decision. Modulation at zero is the default position (as is actually having some sound coming out).

Why on earth did NI not make it work in reverse?

My workaround was to insert a CC# 1 (modulation) = 127 at the very beginning of the  MIDI Event List.

I was going to suggest this as well. Its very strange that a standard zero controller MIDI CC value would change sound 🙂
Someone there hasn't used MIDI hardware CC's much haha.

Yep CTRL drag is your friend to move a linear section in the smart tool. You can do most editing just using the smart tool. I rarely switch tools for editing automation.
Also remember that shift CLICK will select a "ghosted" envelope - no need to use the edit filter to switch the envelope being edited.

Um that's an ancient thread and if you read it all the issues have long since been resolved. Most of the issues were with sidechaining in VST2 which was ill defined and implemented differently by different vendors.  If someone has an actual recipe to reproduce a crash with sidechaining we'll look into it,

That's good. As I said in my original message BIOS updates require updates to your chipset drivers as well. Its not sufficient to flash the BIOS in many cases since there are software components that also need updating. 

When doing troubleshooting one has to be careful not to confuse a symptom with the problem. In this case running a bunch of apps and trying to draw a conclusion from that is not going to lead you to the answer because you are comparing applications that use vastly different API's and services. One app may interact with the component affected by the BIOS update and the other may not at all and therefor not show any visible symptom of the problem. Unlike many other cross platform DAW's Cakewalk has always been a native Windows application.  Cross platform applications typically use a base set of Windows API's depending on the tools used to build the application. As a result they use fewer of the newer Windows API's and may not be affected by a system change. Cakewalk tends to use a lot of the new generation API's in Windows and as a result can be susceptible to latent system instability. 

Make sure the sample rate for new projects in audio preferences are set to same sample rate that the device is set to.
Silence while playing can mean that the device didn't properly switch to the requested sample rate from the DAW.  
Many ASIO drivers do not support multi-client use so you must give the ASIO application exclusive use of the device when it is being used. In cakewalk the setting for this is in preferences | Audio | playback and recording | Suspend audio engine when Cakewalk not in focus 

What complicates it further is that different applications may try and use the audio driver using different driver modes. Windows will use WASAPI and try and share the device while you are using it in ASIO mode. This can cause a problem with some drivers if Windows is using it at 48k and the DAW is trying to use it at 44.1 if the audio interface doesnt support it.  Some modern devices handle this without a problem if they handle true multiclient use but others have issues. The roland drivers definitely don't handle this well and I've even seen Focusrite devices have problems when another app tries to use the device (e.g youtube). RME on the other hand does this pretty seamlessly.

Here is a thread discussing similar considerations.

We have a fix for this issue that should be released soon.

Check if there is a popup on screen hiding under something. Sometimes load appears stuck because its waiting for user input.

The documentation is just requesting caution in case you ripple edit unknowingly and other track data moves around without you really wanting them to.
I don't think its suggesting that the actual ripple edit behavior may be unexpected

Its not solved because most likely nobody submitted a bug report with a recipe. We can look into it if you have some steps to repro it.
Can you make it happen with one of the Cakewalk sidechain plugins such as sonitus compressor or CA-2A, or LP Multiband?

I have not seen this crash personally.

Roland drivers are not well behaved with automatic switching of sample rates. In fact some require manual intervention. 

If you are using ASIO and Windows simultaneously with the same device its a bit of a crapshoot since the ASIO device may be using the device at one sample rate while Windows will try it the default in Windows. I even had some issues with Focusrite in this regard. I solved it by setting windows to use the same sample rate that I was using in Cakewalk and so far its been fine. It also works pretty well with RME devices.

But generally I would keep Windows independent from the device that you are using in ASIO mode and you should not have issues. There are many who are using the Quad Capture successfully in ASIO mode.

Interesting that you just saw this. Its fixed for an upcoming hotfix
I can send it to you if you are interested in testing it.

Its probably something that intersects with the bios update and the latest (Microsoft) Windows 10 platform SDK that CbB uses is my best guess. But the fact that Platinum doesnt exhibit any obvious issue is interesting. Maybe you had cbb set up to use a different drive or different hardware or a control surface. There are no major differences in CbB that could exhibit such a drastic change otherwise.

BTW you can always do a screen capture and look at it later to see what pop up messages were shown since those could have been a clue to whats wrong. Glad you were able to recover with a BIOS reflash however. BIOS updates don't always do the best thing (most changes are for new hardware additions or gaming support) and they sometimes require updates to your chipset drivers as well.

You can use the step sequencer or the Matrix view to get something similar to BandLab's drum machine view

5 hours ago, Mannymac said:

Can someone explain how "fast bounce rendering has been optimized" in more detail please?

Fast bounce now has better multiprocessing and uses another core to do the disk reading. It has some moderate gains in speed depending on the project. On a disk bound project I got about a 30 second gain on something that would normally take about 2.5 minutes. It really depends on the project however.

Looks like the help text is out of date. We'll update it. Thanks for the heads up...