Jump to content

Matthew Simon Fletcher

Members
  • Posts

    212
  • Joined

  • Last visited

Posts posted by Matthew Simon Fletcher

  1. Thanks i'll have a listen! :)

    Oh small world! Lovely area.

    Best wishes,
    Matthew


    Edit: Oh cool looks i'm already subscribed to you on YT! Very cool :)

  2. 6 minutes ago, Bajan Blue said:

    Matthew

    Interesting track and enjoyed all the changes - mix sounds good as well - only comment really is about the cymbals from 1.20 - 1.60  - sounded a bit splashy to me, but in mitigation I've been tracking all day so ears a bit blown!!

    Liked the video - these days we all have to be videographers as well as musicians - I know we spend a great deal of time and effort on our videos, as we promote mainly through that medium these days.

    Cool

    Nigel

     

    Thank you kindly for your feedback Nigel!

    Have you got anything to share that I can check out and enjoy? :)

    I hear what you mean about the cymbals - we ended up having a fair few mixes on this track as it was very difficult getting all the elements balanced; if we were doing another one I'd probably agree on polishing those a little more!

    We've been experimenting with a few different engineers, although are trying to do as much basic mixing as possible to really let them focus on the polishing/production to really take it to the next level.

    Best wishes,
    Matthew

  3. 1 minute ago, evadianepug said:

    Well, hmmmmm.  Very interesting tune.  A bit long for my taste but I understand it.  I like the way the video works.  The scream metal (is that what he is?) guy adds color.  Not my cup of tea but worth listening to and watching.  I liked it.

    Thank you kindly! Would love to hear some of your music if you make it and have any available :)

    We're always really keen to do something a bit different - the balance can be difficult to find between going too out there conceptually/instrumentally and not far enough and creating something that feels like it's been done before.

    The length is an interesting point - I think sometimes we want to try and cram too many ideas into a song and that can lead to them going on beyond the usual radio length - in fact this track is probably one of the shorter ones. It is one of the things we're really trying to practice improving with newer material.

    I was really impressed with the video - I put out a call on FB for videographers and had several recommendations for the guy who did it. Affordable, prompt and good quality - so he's definitely being used again!

    I'm a big metal fan so I love the harsher vocals but we do try and strike a balance - they can be good for conveying specific moods, but wouldn't want to use them all the time.

    I think one of the big challenges we often have with this musical project is with marketing/promotion - metal is probably the closest but can throw people off due to perceptions of that genre, so it's trying to find open minded people/communities to share it with!

    Thank you one again :)

  4. Hi guys,

    My eclectic musical ensemble Disconnected Souls has recently released a new track called Kintsukuroi.
    I'd describe this one as being a ballad fused with some heavy djenty guitar, electronics, orchestral and world influences.

    There are some interesting concepts and instrumentation that we explore :)


    If you get chance to listen I hope you enjoy!

    Comments/feedback/criticism always welcomed.

    Best wishes,
    Matthew

  5. Probably worth trying the import with both AV disabled as a quick test.
    If that does return speed to normal then you'll want to put some exclusion rules in place for the Cakewalk process and also the music content directories.

    • Great Idea 2
  6. One other quick question - what's your CPU/RAM utilisation like?
    Are you using a system pagefile? How's that configured if so?

    Just wondering if there might be some contention for resource taking place elsewhere that could be causing the constraint that means you're not getting the full performance of the disks (as would seem to be indicated if other copies are occuring within reasonable time frames).

  7. I'd be inclined to agree with Lord Tim :)
    There are a lot of variables here to rule in/out and the OS rebuild will certainly address several in one go.

    Prior to doing so though i'd run a disk benchmark - this will verify whether the hard disk is achieving the expected latency/file transfer performance for different sizes of files. I appreciate that copying regular files appears to show performance as normal, but there's a always a chance that the issue is specific to a specific block size/configuration. That can then be compared against the figures for the brand new disk type of that model.

    Also prior to rebuilding the OS, i'd open up the PC and do some cleaning and checking all cables are securely connected.

    I can understand your frustrations with this one - so hopeful we can get to the bottom of this.

  8. Hmmm that is very weird.

    Do you notice issues with other content? Try copying some content to/from that drive and checking the transfer speed and how long it takes to open it in other programs.

    Points to a specific disk issue - might be worth running a benchmarking tool and checking if the score you're getting matches the quoted figures for that SSD type (i'm guessing not though given what you're seeing).

    Try some of the standard SSD performance troubleshooting:

    https://windowsreport.com/fix-slow-ssd-windows-10/

    How long have you had the drive - it might be it's on it's last legs.

  9. On 8/3/2022 at 6:25 AM, Paul Chan said:

    Hi,

    Unfortunately, I'm under NDA and can't provide links to the audio/video material I'm working on. However, most audio files (.wav) would trigger this slow import.

    I do notice that the status bar says either "sample rate conversion" or "loading audio data" and the process is very slow. However, these processes used to be quick back a few months ago. It's such a mystery that audio importing (even with sample rate conversion) has become super sluggish since then.

    Thank you for the File Monitor suggestion, could you please share what I need to watch for in the app? (I noticed the software says that it only supports up to Window 8?)

    I just tested importing a 3GB/12min video into Cakewalk and it took 2-3 mins with the sample rate conversion process happening second and taking about 20 seconds of that.

    So looks like it might be something specific to your project files and/or setup.
    Are these wav/ video files all from the same source? What's the bit rate? Just want to rule out that there could be something odd about the content of these causing it extra work. If they are the same then try importing some known files, such as CD audio.

    Not sure whether Cakewalk uses the Windows API or FFMPEG for file conversions, might be there was a change of versions there if it was working fine previously. Can you try reverting to an earlier build?

    With respect to File Monitor - it works fine on OS past 8 in my experience, it's just not fully tested.
    I would load up filemon and then do your import and see what activities are going on - if there's loads of non-Cakewalk activity on the same disk at the same time, it would suggest their might be contention for disk utilisation which might reduce your performance.

  10. Windows Insider is a voluntary program for more up-to date OS builds - I would personally recommend leaving this if you're in it for stability purposes; as often these builds do break things and can be difficult to troubleshoot. You shouldn't need to turn on optional diagnosis data if you're just using the standard OS builds.

    If your PC doesn't meet the minimum requirements then I would recommend remaining where you are - given Windows 10 will still be supported for some time to come and there aren't many real justifications for upgrading to 11 anyway - at least with respect to audio/DAW.

    If you really want to be on 11 then there is a custom installer that can be used which will remove the restrictions.
    These are TPM V2 which is a security restriction to make the device more secure and a minimum supported CPU age.
    Both of these restrictions are a little extreme and plenty of people are using it on devices not meeting these requirements, but you're taking a risk of things breaking when they roll out further patches/upgrades, as these older builds are unlikely to be tested as thoroughly, if at all.

    There was some talk of some of the restrictions being relaxed but as far as i'm aware these are just rumours at the moment - so I wouldn't hold out hope on that :)

    • Like 1
  11. On 7/27/2022 at 10:42 AM, Paul Chan said:

    Since about a couple months ago, I noticed that importing audio started becoming very slow. For example, a mere 10-second audio (wav) takes almost 30 seconds to import. A video of 500MB (about 20mins long) takes about an hour with the progress bar saying "import audio" the whole time. So, I am assuming that there is something not quite right with the audio importing process.

    Cakewalk and all the project/audio files are running on a dedicated internal SSD (Samsung SSD 980 1TB) with 200+ GB empty space running good temperature and in good health (only 1.6TB written on it so far during a year of usage). 

    System specs: Windows 10 (up-to-date), AMD Ryzen 7 5800H, 24GB RAM, MOTU M2 audio interface.

    Could anyone please share your knowledge and help me troubleshoot & fix this issue as it is severely slowing down my work?

    Thank you in advance!

    If you provide a link to the audio/video i'm happy to test to see if it's a general Cakewalk issue or might be unique to your system.

    Do you have any intensive processes also taking up disk IO that are now running at the same time? I've found a few things like Windows search can get in the way.
    To help valididate this you could try running Moo FileMonitor which show you reads/writes:
    https://www.moo0.com/?top=https://www.moo0.com/software/FileMonitor/

  12. I've been running Cakewalk on Win11 since release and have had no issues :) That includes running many plugins that weren't officially supported either.

    Not sure what issues others have referred to but in my experience Win11 is mostly cosmetic with a few additional features; not a huge amount having changed in terms of drivers/compatability; at least with respect to audio.

    • Like 1
  13. I have a few layers of backups to balance completeness and speed of recovery

    There's a whole drive backup to external hard drive , which is then mirrored to a second external HDD, and then I have a copy script that runs hourly to update some key content such as project files across these and other local drives. Then there's also Insync running on one the external drive to also back these up with the cloud.

    • Thanks 1
  14. I quite often see this in projects - If the audio was fine then don't worry about it!

    There was a bug I previously reported relating to routing of busses and I believe some additional sanity checking was added to a future Cakewalk build to avoid this, so that might be why it's not been visible before.

    As scook says this is likely that there's a send that's not going anywhere.

    Best wishes,
    Matthew

  15. 12 hours ago, Steve Harder said:

    i'll preface by saying I've been away from Cakewalk and midi since the beginning of the year. 

    I'm back and one of my first large tasks was to migrate VSL Synchron libraries to Ilok.  I have downloaded all of my previously owned VST libraries and can use Synchron vst3 in new Cakewalk projects, save and load projects with Synchron Ilok libraries, etc.

    However when I attempt to open an existing project that contains  Synchron vst3 (non-Ilok 8 months ago) as an instrument the loading proceeds to "loading synth data Synchron player" and Cakewalk closes and exits, and creates a minidump file in the minidump directory (not the plugins minidump directory).  I downloaded the minidump viewer but I'm not experienced at threading my way thru a dump.

    I'm trying to do my due diligence on this, I've searched here and on vsl forum, I haven't found any postings that seem related.

    I will eventually submit a issue request on this but didn't want to waste tech support time if the issue had been discussed and solved previously.

    Thanks for any comments.

     

    Have you still got your elicenser plugged in? There's a conversion process that the VSL projects do to make them ILok compatible. It can either do this using the elicenser or there's a cloud convert mechanism. I run my VSL projects in Vienna Ensemble Pro rather than natively in Cakewalk, but have had a few issues previously which were resolved by swapping which conversion method was used. There's usually an icon that shows up when it's doing the conversion proecess.

    Feel free to drop me a copy of the project and i'll see if I can replicate the error (though I may not have all the same VSL Synchron libraries).

  16. On 7/13/2020 at 1:12 AM, msmcleod said:

    Yes, deleting the picture cache is pretty harmless as they will get regenerated when you next load your project.

    However it doesn't regenerate them every time, it'll only regenerate them if the audio has changed or the the picture isn't there in the cache to begin with... otherwise it'll use the existing pictures in the cache.

    It's probably worth clearing out the cache from time to time, but too often will increase the time it takes for the project to load if it's having to regenerate them all the time. Especially projects with lots of audio clips.

    Hi Mark/all - apologies for reviving an old thread!

    You mentioend that the files in the picture cache will only regenerate if the audio has changed or no file exists - it appears to me that the wov files are updating even if I no changes are being made to the project/audio; is this expected or perhaps evidence of a bug?

    I noticed this as I was investigating slow project load (which I think may have been caused by the Windows corrupted zip bug) but figured i'd ask about this anyway!

×
×
  • Create New...