David Baay

12 minutes ago, John Vere said:

Therefore wouldn't  it work to delete the plug ins and then the project should open just fine but with a list of missing plug ins??

Yes, or just temporarily move them to a location that's not scanned.  This may well be faster than OKing the load of every plugin you want to keep in Safe Mode.

5 minutes ago, Misha said:

It's not a powerhouse gaming machine at all... but has a "lucky" combination of intestines to handle Cakewalk plus multiple instances of very heavy duty plugins without any sacrifices. I was genuinely surprised by what this laptop can pull. 

My point, exactly.

I don't recall ever having audio completely omitted from an export that didn't turn out to be due to an oversight on my part or some kind of plugin misbehavior when fast-bouncing. But because these and other issues can happen, I always recommend bouncing the Master bus to a phase-inverted track that outputs directly to main outs and playing it through against the live mix on the Master bus to hear if there are any gross nulling failures. Unfrozen synths and FX that behave slightly differently from one render to the next may produce slight nulling failures, but a significant omission of audio content or automation processing should be obvious. If that checks out, you can export that 'Master Bounce' track in whataver format is required, and you have a reference copy saved inside the project.

33 minutes ago, Misha said:

My conclusion is that something in architecture changed and life became beautiful.

The number one biggest factor in DAW host performance is Deferred Procedure Call (DPC latency). It needs to be both low and stable (consistently less than 300us is good, less than 150us is better, and I have heard tell of machines that run in the 25-50 range). DPC latency is highly dependent on motherboard architecture, chipsets and chipset drivers, and the activity of background processes that call them. The power management hardware, drivers and processes of battery-powered laptops tend to make them inherently inferior to desktops in this regard - even when plugged in - but some are better than others. Bluetooth and WiFi are two of the other common offenders and these also tend to be active on laptops and not so often on desktops.

Another big factor is clock speed and, again, desktops usually have an advantage over laptops because they can afford the extra power and cooling requirements of a higher clock speed at any given core count, and it's easier to keep them from throttling back because they're overheating or the power supply is not keeping up. As a result of all this, laptops tend to be kind of a crapshoot for DAW performance because you have little or no control over the hardware that goes into them, and the only way to know in advance what you're going to get is to have firsthand reports from a reliable source who has tested and optimized the exact machine you're considering.

5 minutes ago, John Vere said:

On the off chance I open those projects I would simply re include them.

You don't even need to do that. Excluding plugins just hides them from the menus so they can't be added to a new project; it won't stop the plugin from being loaded in an existing project that uses it.

FWIW, I just loaded Groove Synth into a project and ran some MIDI through it. Seems fine. DXs don't use Btibridge.  Any DX that's working in an x64 DAW has been ported to x64. A Bitbridge crash would be related to some 32-bit VST - could be an FX as well as an instrument.

I second the proposal to use Safe Mode.

Everything should just be working in CbB as it was in Sonar 8.5. The main challenge will be getting up to speed with the 'Skylight' interface, but you will soon come to appreciate CbB's many, many new features and improvements. Have fun!

14 minutes ago, John Vere said:

The USB system might have only been intended to be used for live board mixes and computer playback. 

I suspect this is right. And I have to agree with John that any interface that doesn't have native ASIO drivers and 24-bit converters is pretty much a non-starter. If it's not too late, I'd suggest you return the Alesis and get one of the more popular audio interfaces from Focusrite, MOTU, Presonus, Roland, UAD, etc. if your budget it tight, buy used.

Make sure the lower left button in the Select module (must be sized large to see them) to 'Select Events with Sections' is enabled.

Try disengaging that button and recording something even though you can't monitor it and see if you still get click in the recording. Also verify that you actually see the click transients in the recorded clip waveform; if not, that's not where it's coming from on playback.

Also, If you're using the "Optional ASIO4ALL" driver, try switching the driver mode in CbB to WASAPI or even WDM. If either of those works, you should just uninstall ASIO4ALL; it's just a wrapper for WDM and can be problematic.

https://7132afa424c2f1a2ab6d-54d68a14e2e7c1f76563a2d8c3e9fd82.ssl.cf2.rackcdn.com/954/documents/MultiMix 4 USB FX - User Guide - v1.6.pdf

I don't see anything offhand that could be causing this issue, except possibly this:

15. EXT/USB to Main: Engage this switch to route the audio from the "Ext In" input and USB audio from the computer to the mixer's Main Outs and Phones Out. 

Do you have anything plugged in to the EXT input?

I notice the clip appears to have been slip-edited or otherwise non-destructively edited already. This shouldn't be a problem, but you might try Bounce to Clip(s) before applying gain. Incidentally, if that's a bounce/freeze of the MIDI above it as it appears to be, I would suggest just using MIDI Volume or audio Gain on the synth track to get the "live" audio level up where you want it.

How are your recording and monitoring (e.g. microphone and headphones)? And how loud is the metronome in the recorded signal? If it's faint, it may well be due to poor isolation of analog circuits. inside the interface.  Or it could be getting picked up by a mic from acoustic "bleed" in the room.  But if it's loud, it's likely the setup of the interface is routing output to the input internally. Check the manual for a "What U Hear" or "Stereo Mix" input option for recording output from the PC. You don't want that; the input source needs to be Line/Mic In.

18 hours ago, Cobus Prinsloo said:

It is quite incredible that one has to wrestle so much getting such a simple feature to work.

But  quite uncommon. One way or another, something is likely not configured conventionally on your system, whether it's the project, the O/S or audio interface. Is other audio/synth playback working?

On 3/30/2024 at 10:23 PM, Cobus Prinsloo said:

notived two Grooveplayer folders in the Shared DXI folder: one is spelt as one word, and the other as two words.

I'm curious about this. Both of my PCs have versions of Cakewalk going back to Sonar 8.0 and foward to the new SONAR, and neither of them have a one-word GroovePlayer folder. Does it have the same contents as the "Groove Player" folder?  You might search the registry for the one-word path and see if something is mis-referenced.

Check that samples are in place at:

%AppData%\Cakewalk\Sonar\Metronome

If not, you can copy them from the Cakewalk Core\Metronome (CbB's) folder.

You can also try re-registering the dll from an Admin command prompt with:

regsvr32  C:\Program Files\Cakewalk\Shared DXi\Groove Player\GroovePlayer.dll

6 hours ago, Timothy Harris said:

It's definitely a 2024.02 thing.

Given how many users are not experiencing such a problem, even if the problem is specific to this release, there must also be some project/setup-specific factor involved, in which case nothing will get 'fixed' if you don't share the project in question with the Bakers or otherwise provide steps to reproduce it.

What instrument? Some note inadvertently interpreted as key-switched articulation?

1. No, there is no "Exclusive Arming" option like Exclusive Solo. You have to manage arming manually. But for MIDI/Instrument tracks there is an "Allow MIDI Recording without an Armed Track" option in Preferences > MIDI > Playback and Recording feature that will record the currently active/focused  track.

2. If a plugin induces delay, there is no way to eliminate that on the track that's using the plugin. You can override plugin delay compensation being applied to other input-monitored tracks by enabling the PDC  [override] button in the Mix module of the control bar, but this works only if the plugin isn't directly on that track or on a bus in its path to the output. Some delay-inducing plugins have a "draft" or "low-precision" mode that can be used to reduce the delay for real-time use at the cost of some audio quality. I don't know if this is possible with the one in question.

3. So far as I know, Bandlab is primarily conducting support by e-mail. You and they can leverage Google translate for that. In some cases, they might initiate a phone call or web session to assist further, but I doubt they are able to accomodate many languages other than English, if any. 

5 minutes ago, John Vere said:

One thing is in Cakewalk if you opened a. Project and then later saved and closed it would return to the inside of that project folder when you chose either the existing or recent projects tabs. That seems to have changed. 

Not sure what you're saying here. The Browse button in Sonar is the equivalent of Existing Projects in CbB. Both always default to the top level of your Projects folder, but the new Browse button added the ability to add alternate starting paths. And the Recent tab doesn't open an Explorer window.

3 hours ago, John Vere said:

Only weird thing is the start screen is sluggish and a circle gizmo goes round for what seems too long compared to Cakewalk. 

I don't really see sluggishness in the Start Screen, but I do sometimes get a persistent spinner/hourglass. It doesn't seem to prevent any action from being taken, but it's a little distracting and might make you think it's busy and isn't going to respond.

24 minutes ago, Bristol_Jonesey said:

It's got nothing to do with singing. Where did you get this from?

I think he was taking the you-know-what.

Yeah, no.

If you're playing along on a MIDI controller with the transport running to rehearse or record a part, having that enabled will apply any articulations you've added to the live MIDI input in real time.

Tracks > Copy Track Name(s) to Clip Names(s) will do what it says after the fact, but won't rename the underlying files.

Conversely, Clips > Bounce to Clip(s) won't change the clip names in the project, but it will apply the current track name to a newly created  audio file and append  "bounced" and a sequential number to ensure clip names are unique and distinguish them from original recordings. Note that it will also apply Clip Gain, Clip/ARA FX and Audiosnap edits (and merge clips if more than one is bounced at a time), which may or may not be desireable.

Utilities > Clean Audio Folder is the intended method of removing un-referenced audio files from the current project's folder and is generally quicker and less error prone than Save As to a new location which is an old workaround. 

3 hours ago, Sal Sorice said:

Is it just me or does anyone else find that the ProChannel strip overlaps the track strip?

I don't find that it overlaps, only that the strip divider goes with the strip that's displaced to the right, and no divider is added between the strip and the Prochannel. As I look more closely at CbB, the divider was sort of split between the two, becoming narrower on both sides, but the execution was slightly imperfect there as well with no divider between the section with the global controls and EQ graph.

Granted this looks a little unfinished in Sonar, but it doesn't hinder functionality at all, and I would expect the Bakers will revisit this as they continue to refine the new UI.

TLDR