David Baay

I can't repro that. I would guess some corruption has occurred in RAM, and close/re-open (or save/close/re-open if necessary) will fix it. If not, you might need to recreate one or more tracks to fix internal indexing.

Hi Vidhi. Welcome to the Cakewalk forum. The video tutorial thread linked below is a good place ot start. If that doesn't get you going, let us know at what point you're getting stuck.

The track lane is for Writing (or drawing) an automation envelope that generates controller messages on playback. To record actual MIDI controller messaages, set the record mode to Sound on Sound, arm the MIDI track for recording, start recording, and 'perform' on the mod wheel in real time.

I'm not sure what this means. You should be able to hear the audio metronome when enabled for playback; it will just be out of sync with the music if the project tempo isn't matching the recording. Fit Improvisation is requires a MIDI click track as a guide. The best 'automatic' solution for audio is to drag-drop the audio on the timeline to have Melodyne extract tempos. If you don't already have some flavor of Melodyne installed, you can install the trial of Melodyne Essentials using the 'Install Add-ons' option on the Apps tab of Bandlab Assistant. The trial expires, but the drag-to-timeline function will continue to work indefinitely. Depending on the material, Melodyne can do a good job, but the Essentials version will sometimes mis-detect the tempos by a factor of 2, and doesn't allow for any correction. Also, it interpolates tempos at 8th-note resolution which I find to be excessive, and potentially problematic, expecially when the tempo is essentially fixed with just a bit of rushing/dragging drift over time. Personally, I prefer to do tempo extraction manually using Set Measure/Beat At Now. You can find a summary of the process here:

Pretty faint. If you Google 'Focusrite analog bleed problem', you'll get a some hits. Not sure how common or noticeable this problem is with different interfaces, but I do recall it coming up in reference to Focusrite in the past.

I meant no input signal - either nothing connected or a silent audio source like a keyboard synth, tape/CD/MP3 player, etc.

Yes, input gain on the interface.

Make sure you have each track;s Input set to only your keyboard's MIDI port, not Omni - All Inputs. If the problem persists, right-click Instrument tracks, choose Split Instrument Track, and check the routing of the MIDI track outputs. I haven't seen a problem, but a number of people have mentioned soft synth routing getting crossed up recently - usually in connection with connecting/disconnecting hardware MIDI devices with a project open.

That's gotta be bleed between the analog output and input sections of the interface. Sounds like the input sensitivity is cranked, which is exacerbating the issue. Try recording a flatline on a track with no input, and a drum track or something with loud transients playing back with no metronome. If you hear that playback track in your recording, it's an analog isolation problem.

I would htink almost any workstation could output a MIDI click on a specified channel Even if that channel also had a musical part on it, assigning a suitable note number/pitch to the click would make it easy to extract to a separate track. And when all else fails, Set Measure/Beat At Now is your best freind. I record a lot of improvisations without a click, and set the timeline to the MIDI after the fact using SM/BAN, both with fixed and deliberately variable tempos.

Yes, SMPTE sync may yield better MIDI timing precision, but it's not going to help with the tempo issue. And I suspect there are few hardware workstations that output SMPTE.

Though it's most common to use one MIDI track per channel with mult-timbral synths, it is possible to put some or all of the 16 parts on separate channels in a single track a la Type 0 MIDI files. And, of course, drum synths are often driven by a single MIDI track, using separate audio ouputs to allow processing the kit pieces independently.

Recording with MIDI sync, and reading MIDI files are two different things. If a MIDI file is opened in Cakewalk, any tempo changes in the file will be read into the project. Also, when you say "We want to capture what we are playing live and not re-do tempo after the fact", that's a different situation. If the MIDI was originally recorded into a sequencer running at a constant tempo, the sequence will play back correctly from SONAR when recorded at the same fixed tempo, but aligning the timeline to the variable tempo with tempo changes is never going to happen fully automatically. There are may ways to extract tempo from MIDI and audio, but none will yield perfect results without some work. But in the case that the hardware sequencer was providing a click (or acting as a drum machine) for the band at varying tempos, the quickest way to get those tempos into Cakewalk would be to record the sequence in an app that does derive tempos from MIDI sync, and then export/import that to Cakewalk via MIDI file.

The problem is that tempo changes aren't diescrete MIDI 'events' per se. The ability to capture the sync signal and convert it to tempo changes after recording is compete could most certanly be implemented, but it's not simply a matter of capturing bpm numbers sent from the the source with time stamps. I would think some sequencer/DAW app out there has this capability already, but have never looked into it.

That's right, Cakewalk does not 'record' tempo changes, it just follows the changing sync signal in real time. If you can get the workstation to output a MIDI click as one of the tracks, you can use that as a guide track for the Fit Improvisation function in Cakewalk to create a tempo map after the fact. Or an existing drum track might be 'massaged' to serve that purpose. Basically you need a MIDI track that has one note event on every quarter-note beat. If the tempo changes are at intervals smaller than beats, tempo mapping can still be done after the fact, but will require manual intervention.

Start a new project, enable the count-in, and then Save As, change the file type to Template, navigate to the Project Templates folder in Cakewalk Content and save over the existing template file or as a new custom template with a new name.

If you set Workspaces to 'None', the layout and current zoom level will be saved and restored on re-opening the project. Selecting a Workspace will override that, but the last saved 'internal' layout of the project will be restored whenever you set Workspaces to 'None'. Personally, I still am not using Workspaces as I'm so used to every project having it's own focus and layout that evolves over time and is appropriate for what I was doing with it when I last saved it (usually with a description of the last major change I made included in the name).

A little Googling suggests the A-800Pro should support the continuous output of the DP-10. But whatever synth you're using also needs to support continuous/intermediate sustain message values. You can check the pedal/keyboard functionality by recording pedal movements, and verifying you get intermedate controller values in the PRV Controller pane and/or Event List views.

Select the clips to be grouped; then right-click one of them, and choose 'Create Selection Group'. They do not need to be in the same folder.

If the same project is working in SONAR, we know the driver and project routing are working. In addition to comparing TTSSEQ.INI files as noted, you should check Preferences > MIDI > Control Surfaces to see if the keyboard has been set up as a control surface in a way that's causing Note events to be 'stolen'. I haven't messed around with ACT (Active Controller Technology) for a long time, so not sure if you just need to re-configure it, or remove it altogether.

Select the notes. Then go to the Event Inspector module in the Control Bar, enter -5 in the 'Vel' field and hit Enter.

Sounds familiar. I believe this has been a problem with some other remote control functions in the past; will likely need to be fixed by the Bakers. Could be an issue with pedal sending two messages when depressed and released. You might try remote controlling it with just Note ON or Note ON/OFF to see if one of those works as expected.

I asked whether you can record MIDI despite not being able to hear anything in order to determine whether it's a routing problem within Cakewalk, or a problem with MIDI actually not getting to the track input. If MIDI recording works, then it's just a matter of ensuring that the Output of MIDI track (or MIDI part of a Simple Intrument track) is properly assigned to the soft synth - with the correct channel if needed - and Input Echo is enabled. %appdata%\cakewalk is a directory path with automatic substitution of path variables unique to your system (mainly the username). Enter that into any Windows Explorer window, and the relevant folder will be displayed with Cakewalk Core and SONAR Platinum subdirectories for those two applications.

Regarding the MIDI re-routing issue, Jonathan Sasor of Cakewalk responded to another thread indicating they are aware of a problem that will likely be fixed in the next release:

See what's available and enabled under Preferences > MIDI > Devices. If that looks the same as in SONAR, and it's still not working, you might want to compare TTSSEQ.INI files in their respective paths under %appdata%\cakewalk. If problems persist, please clarify the symptoms of 'doesn't work'. Are you able to select it as an Input to a MIDI/Instrument track? If so, can you record MIDI from it even though you might not hear anything?