Misha

Hi Folks. Can anybody tell me how I can use a software limiter in Cakewalk in live scenario to reduce clipping while recording vocals (not after the recording)? Thank you!

Scook, Silly me, I was trying to go directly from synth splitting it to specific buses. Of course that did not work, but when I assigned plugin audio channels to different audio outputs, created audio tracks linking them to these plugin outputs and routing them into specific buses it did work perfectly. Two problems solved. You are helpful and correct as always. Thank you!

Scook, It worked perfectly, no issues with solo button. Thank you!!! Can I please bug you with one other question? I am assuming that if I decide to move a couple of MIDI tracks from same group to different buses, I would still have to create multiple instances of Halion, or there is a more intelligent way to do it? Thank you for your time.

I am ashamed to admit how little I know, and that I am a little lost... What does this mean: "When using multiple MIDI tracks to the same plug-in, it is best to avoid using an instrument track. Split the instrument track." How can I split it without loading multiple instances? Halion Sonic is a single plugin synth that has a multichannel "save" for my midi file that has 5 or more tracks. The only workaround I found is using multiple instances of Halion and routing specific midi tracks to specific Halion instance to specific bus. Please be patient with me P.S. Maybe I am being somewhat unclear. I create my multitrack midi file arrangement and corresponding Halion "multibank save state" outside of Cakewalk. Then, when I am in Cakewalk I create an instrument track (Halion) and use "import midi" to bring in my midi file (which has 5 or more tracks).

Scook, thank you for the reply. Halion is similar to Kontakt...Sampletank in a way. Usually I have my Multi instrument bank saved there. I do not believe opening multiple instances of Halion is wise for the purpose of solving solo button annoyance.

Hi Folks. Probably something ridiculous, just can't find the cure. Here is the scenario. 1) I create an Instrument track in Cakewalk (Halion VST). 2) I import my Midi arrangement (several tracks) to Cakewalk 3) Everything plays as it should... BUT If I solo a single track out of lets say 5 playing (In Cakewalk, not the Halion interface) it will solo that track and the solo is also automatically pressed on Halion instrument track in Cakewalk. If I un-click the solo on the midi track, the solo button on Halion (Instrument track) will remain active, so I have to unclick it manually. Is there a way to fix this, so the solo button is synced to unclick from actual Instrument? I hope I am making sense Thank you!

Hi Folks. One of the most annoying things for me in digital audio recording is audio latency. Especially when recording vocals. I am aware that there are a million reasons why this can happen and even more "tips@tricks" out there, trying to address the issue. So here is my request for the feature. A built in analyzer in Cakewalk, that would run tests on audio input/output of the audio card, system etc on the active setup, meaning with particular opened project or a "heavy" test dummy project....And which would recommend realistic steps, sorted by priority of particular items (Cakewalk or System) that can be addressed on that specific computer to reduce latency, yet preserve the project in original form (no bouncing of tracks, disabling FX etc.) Not "general" ideas as in latencymon, something more particular to the "current" setup/project in Cakewalk. I would call it CALA (Cakewalk Audio Latency Analyzer) I know, this is request is probably too far from reality, just thoughts.

Maybe it is there, I just didn't find it. I am learning something new all the time in Cakewalk, but would love to have a feature of hiding/un-hiding muted take lanes and whole muted tracks, so work space is more manageable. Maybe not a big thing for most of users, but it surely will help some. Thank you for considering!

Bob, thank you for extensive post and trying to help! To clear misunderstanding. I have very powerful computer (for my needs) , that I recorded my projects with. It handled everything absolutely great before recent Windows and Lenovo updates, which came almost simultaneously. After these updates, same projects that were flying under heavy load begun to experience severe problems. With help of folks (posts above), I got it under control. It has to do with power management mostly... I am afraid it is power management firmware that I am up against and not your average software that is possible to "unroll". Lenovo has a tendency of issuing half baked drivers and firmware. Hopefully their gurus correct on next update. You have some really important points written out. Especially about "look ahead" VSTs... and other items such as mixing/tracking buffers, etc. Which I knew, but you put in a compact, easy to read/understand form, which I am sure will be picked up by current and future users. I do have (actually 2) Asio interfaces, which I tried before posting this cry out

mettelus, Thanks! yes, one of the first 10 things I tried to fix this was "un-parked" CPU Turning off network discovery helped a lot. P.S. I am not tech guru, so forgive me if I sound silly, but I think it would be a very useful feature if Bandlab develops a built diagnostic tool that would pinpoint exact hardware / software tensions and clashes that particularly effect Cakewalk stability and would offer suggestion to remedy these.

mettelus, Thanks! Good wealth of information. (digesting :)) Actually turning off ACPI from control panel + disabling network discovery as you suggested, got me where I need to be. Part of Lenovo update was "power management firmware", I can not unroll it. I guess that what is happening... It manages processes differently than it was prior to update and somehow encroaches on my Cakewalk. Wondering if it is possible to move ACPI process to another core? Will do some reading later today. This forum is a treasure. I want to thank everybody who helped! Big thanks to mettelus! P.S. Now, that problem of what was chewing my Cakewalk is narrowed, I will post back when/if I find a solid solution without disabling ACPI.

HIBI, Thanks. Double checked. Not the BIOS. All power "savings" turned off. ---------------------------------- mettelus, Excellent suggestion! Thank you! Got much better. My issue is definitely resource related, but not very obvious. Processor is i7-8850H which is fairly decent for my tasks and it was pulling everything very well (30+ tracks whole bunch of VST FX/synths) without any issues/hiccups for several month. This recent "update" was not very polite... Turning off discovery, reduced latency significantly. Last thing on the list was (is) ACPI.... And that is telling me that it is power management related item. As soon as I switched that off in CP, Cakewalk started to behave like a good child. This is not a permanent solution as by turning ACPI off turns off battery charging, but at least now I know where the evil is coming from. I found one other item that now, I feel worth investigating. If I turn FX off in Cakewalk, everything runs smoothly... We had a discussion here a couple of month back about plugin "load balancing". To my understanding, this feature in Cakewalk was designed to spread the load of VST's onto multiple cores. Looking at CPU cores in Latencymon, while playing back VST heavy project, I saw that only first core (out of six) is taking most of the load... In Cakewalk monitoring window (upper right) it shows that all cores are active pretty much equally... Not sure how to explain this. In task manager CPU usage shows around 35-40% under full load., maybe Cakewalk has these dropouts because it is using less cores and putting more stress on these than it could...? Thank you.

Thank you to all who tried to help! Still, damn thing doesn't want to cooperate. Couple of more hours tackling the issue. Tried: Parking CPU (through regedit) Reinstalling Chipset drivers Creating new "High Performance" power profile Rolling back Realtek driver to previous version / reinstalling new Rolling back USB audio driver / reinstalling freshly downloaded Checking USB ports in device mgr for power saving... Even tried go back to one of restore points before the issue started about 6 days back... but got BSOD, so had to come back to latest build. I even thought that it might be Spectre and Meltdown patch related, as Microsof noted to expect decrease in performance... My machine falls into a 1 digit performance decrease (after the patch), so I doubt it is that. Do not know what else to try...

Spoke too soon., it is not wireless adapter. LatencyMon shows this wonderful thing: Wdf01000.sys that has issues. /creating latency. Not sure if IT is the actual problem, but the dropouts/audio engine has been stopped unexpectedly thing is not "occasional" ., Cakewalk starts acting up from first few seconds. Anybody? Thank you.

ok, getting some clues. I was looking at CPU monitor when dropouts occurred, and did not spot anything suspicious, but then I saw a spike on network window. I turned network "off" seems like it is helping. Caught that right before I left home, so need to do more testing. I know it considered to be "good manners" to turn off network when working with audio...but I am not very well mannered guy, as this was never an issue that effected me. Can somebody point me to the right direction to fix Network+Cakewalk issue? Is it to: give priority to programs and not to background services setting or something else? Thank you.

msmcleod, Thank you for trying! followed that.... did not help. I even reinstalled Cakewalk too, when suggestions failed. I do not believe it is directly related to specific card (internal or external), because both were working before without any issues and now both of them exhibit same pattern of behavior. Almost as computer does not have enough resources...But I know it has plenty because same projects were working absolutely fine last week. Man, I wish that little Cakewalk "Audio Dropout" pop up would have a specific cause of the issue. Not sure what else to try...

Hi Folks. Before I posted this, I tried tackling with the issue for good 2+ hours. Nothing seems to help, so here it goes. Never had such issues before on previous system or current. Current system: i7 (8th)Thinkpad 2.6ghz 6 core. 32Ram, nmve SSD. Since new system, I had been working with about 25 projects. Never gave me issue with audio dropouts. I stepped out for a few days from music making. Lenovo pushed some critical updates (Bios, Intel management and SSD firmware update) +Windows pushed their updates...Now I get: The audio engine has been stopped unexpectedly.... with same project settings in Cakewalk as before, when I did not have dropout issues. Before this thing happened on me, I was able to work either with native, Realtek chip with Asio4All set at 256 to 512 latency or standalone Asio card with similar settings. What I tried: Checked power plan. Everything is on High Perfomance. Tried native Realtek chip Wasapi Exclusive/Asio4All, pushing buffer to whooping 2048 Samples, just for the testing purposes. Same with standalone ASIO card, keeps droping that audio even with high buffer settings. Restarting computer, looking at BIOS (Power management is OFF, all set to High Performance) Task Manager shows the usage of resources at about 30% when playing project. Not spiking. -------------------------------------------------------------- Audio is crackling.... Getting that Audio Engine stop thing. I believe it is "update" related. But not sure what is causing this and how to fix it... The key here is: It was working fine now it does not. So not looking to "optimize" system, but to find the cause of the problem. Last resort scenario also looks bleak, since some hardware firmware was updated, I do not believe that re-imaging would help. Can anybody please try to help? Thank you!

Hi Folks / Bakers! Was thinking about this for a while. Maybe it is there, just bypassed me for some reason... When I finalize project for mixing, I usually try between 3 to 15 mixes, before I get it right. If it is something simple like volume levels of a couple of tracks, I just memorize that, but when it gets more complex, I try to do a "SAVE AS" project, so I have a copy of a previous, in case wind will take me to distant lands. I think it would be very cool to have snapshots of "mix saves" inside one project. So no file open/close thing. So it all happens on the background and user would only click, on lets assume choice of 10 "snapshots" to bring up any of the previously saved mix snapshots....

Ok, Figured it out! It is Sonic that is acting up. For those who might encounter same issue. You have to right click on individual Sonic mixer slider and click tiny menu "forget CC" on specific channel, then it would not reset on start/stop.

Scook, thanks for trying! Unfortunately disabling "Zero Controllers" in project did not help. Still some (not all) volumes snap to center after Stop-->Play... Any other suggestion please?

Hi Folks. Can somebody help me please. I have several Midi tracks in Cakewalk that I use with Halion Sonic. Sonic has 3 modes for program changes: Gm, Multi and OFF. Mine is set to OFF. I set my Halion Sonic mixer to desired values.... As soon as I stop and play from beginning, volume parameters are resetting in Halion Sonic... I have tried moving volumes to desired position and save VST preset and re-open, but have same issue. Is it possible to disable those program changes in Cakewalk tracks... or what would be the right way to deal with this? Thank you in advance!

oki doki

abacab, I do not believe I take your comments out of the context. My perspective is just a bit different from yours. I simply do not want an amazing DAW to become next fruity loop, just because it is hip at the moment. Again, I am all in for a sampler, especially the one which can accommodate people making all kinds of music, not based on only particular features for "certain" styles that is considered by some to be a market driver For me a good sampler should have GM2 / program change function. Rompler, freedom of importing my own samples or SF2 / SFZ libraries/ WAV etc., 16 channel internal mixer and a few other things. Actually, I think it would be very cool if Cakewalk would one day roll out a Sampler+Synth in one package that would replace TTS1 that is still used by many and which is due for update as it is 15+ years old. P.S. I am not going to throw names and dates here, I do not believe it will help the topic, I am somewhat familiar with electronic music . I just hope we are still talking about the sampler here....

abacab, I believe we seeing things differently. I think the beauty and a muscle of Cakewalk that things are modular. You can use what you need, resize what you need, display what you need. Sure new features! Yes for sampler! (Hopefully with GM2 on-board) But what you said here, I can not agree with: "Guitars and other real instruments are still cool, but electronic music seems to be the dominant market force now for computer based music." I strongly hope that Cakewalk would not become "tuned" for specific targeted group of beat "makers" or for any other "group" of music makers. It should be flexible and modular, to accommodate wide spectrum of artists of ALL genres.

Puddy, you might just overlooked... In case you did: "Again, I am all in for sampler +rompler+ tone generator and preferably that would have a full GM2 and other synths maps, that would eat SFz / SF2 / WAV, etc. formats. TTS1 is loooong due for overhaul..." I hope that explains my position. abacab, Thanks, interesting videos. Cool stuff. Sure, seems more robust than some 3rd party VSTs, but at the same time they would lack many things that 3rd party would offer. Every software title has some unique features. I am sure if Cakewalk would give a birth to sampler, it will have some unique features too.