Jon White

There you have Cakewalk in its current state -- a seemingly bad audio engine design that can glitch beyond that seen in any other DAW of note. Don't let defense of Cakewalk and ideas on tweaking ASIO settings distract you from the point (your settings are fine -- in fact, you should be able to use even smaller buffer size). Adjusting to higher buffer to chase at the problem ignores that it doesn't happen with other software and asks you to effectively compromise. Cake just doesn't handle audio well at times (many times and configs).

Hi Frank! Great tool, Addictive Drums 2. Make sure on install you chose to include the VST2 plugin on that setup list. Then make sure it's going to a directory that you have entered as a scanned directory within Cakewalk. I have a subdirectory "VST Instruments" as well as "VST Plugins" in my Cakewalk directory. Make sure the VST setup in Cake has whatever one you are using listed, then rescan. From then on it should show up in your list of soft synths. If it's not there, it's not getting scanned. Should work wonderfully.

I wish THIS worked. I can in no way get two input tracks to mix to one single track, no matter what I try. I've panned L-R (two tracks), selected them and tried every combination of settings and it ALWAYs creates as many tracks as I start with.

Okay, I sent the panned mono tracks to a bus and then bounced that bus to a stereo track. Great. In ProTools you can drag two clips/tracks into a new stereo track and they stack up as found. Was hoping for the kind of graphic editing here. Any chance? Thank you!

So frustrating. How can I combine two mono tracks to one stereo. Drummer sent me his overhead mics in two mono tracks. Can't bounce two of them panned opposite to one track. Argghhhh! Any help is very appreciated. Jonas

Hi. It really depends upon how hard you drive a particular CPU. I lightly overclock most of the time on my video post system, and always do fine with normal fan cooling. Audio systems don't need superperformance in general. One other thing that helps my video system is the NVidia CUDA design structure. That makes having huge processing power in the CPU somewhat of a moot point. The GPU power takes care of things. SDD write performance these days makes it even nicer, although 4K calls for even more transfer efficiency if you don't like the waits.

Somewhat lightheartedly I mused that it sounds like a "trial mode" reminder on a plugin or something.

In my opinion this is worth asking. None of us know everything about it all, and I won't claim to or imply that I do, either. In my research, though, for the best decision on a PC to do video and audio processing on a fairly high level (I hate waiting), I've found that under the surface of the "Ryzen is the stuff!" cheers that I hear from every single tech at Micro Center and wherever, there is an assertion that it is in multi-core capability that that processor shines versus overal processing power. Those pointing that out clearly state that if your application is not written to utilize this aspect, Intel probably "wins". I don't mean a mere 4 cores, either. BUT, then if one compares benchmarks one finds that the percentage gaps may not be so dramatic that it matters. Both brands/approaches kick butt. CPU support for audio processing applications has been done pretty well for 15 years now, I feel. I'm watching interest to see how multi-multi-core (my fun term) capability will be adapted to by clever modern coding in the near future to give, if the claim is true, those Ryzens a track to race on. They seem to use more power to get the job done, too, and create more heat, according to articles I've read. Noel might have insights on whether Cakewalk feels this is valid and whether they have plans to exploit whatever it offers. That being said, my studio uses the Waves server approach to manage plugin loading (separate server via ethernet -- Super Rack, Sound Grid stuff) to relieve the DAW system from plugin loading. But you know, these days it really, for me, is a luxury. I have Pro Tools projects that do just fine with an older 4-core Intel system and have many plugins involved (although I strategize carefully with groups and bus inserts and whatnot). What a fun day we occupy.

I have found that select all has to be done on the project.

The external keyboard should work just fine. You may have to go into MIDI settings, though, and choose it as your input device. On the audio dropout, as long as it is only that, and not that you LOSE your audio driver functionality, it may be fine. Plug your keyboard in with Cakewalk not loaded and reboot, then open Cake and go to MIDI settings and choose that controller as your primary controller. Then, when you load a soft-synth, make sure that the track has that controller assigned (should be default if you selected only it as a viable device) and on OMNI or Channel 1. It should be fine. It should play the SI stuff fine. Yes, breverb is a plugin for audio processing, and not a soft synth. Also, if Arturia has a general MIDI driver, install that. Might only use the generic Windows driver and work fine.

Oh, where to start ... ? Your Microlab board is what is called a "controller". It sends MIDI (musical instrument digital interface) commands to other devices and triggers them to do various things. In using it with a DAW, you'll use it as a MIDI Input device as you see it has been designated. It will trigger "soft synths" (digital instrument programs) in your PC. Arturia makes some great ones, by the way, emulating historic synthesizers, pianos and organs. So, after doing a VST scan in your preferences menu, see what VST instruments you have listed. If none, find some you like and install. You will then call one up in a track "Insert | Soft Synth". Your MIDI Input device should be assigned to it in order to play it. You monitor the track and there it should be. Your Arturia's MIDI signals will be triggering the sounds. Those commands will show up in the track when you record, designating pitch and time and duration and strike velocity. There is a lot to learn, but there are lots of videos and help available. Your audio dropout might just correspond to a USB interrupt glitch when the PC changes its status upon plugging the device in. Make sure to consider getting a DAW-compatible audio device, as your built-in soundcard will most likely not be up to the task. Use WDM or ASIO audio drivers when at all possible.

Your integrated sound system would probably be safest to designate as unusable with a DAW. Get your Scarlett going!

With the highest level of respect stated for a DAW I've used, in one form or another, since 1990, it is time for Cakewalk to get technical and deep and figure out its audio engine. We can always find the other side of these things, but it seems the fact is that we are so often problematic. Something is not right, I believe. As stated before, my Nuendo, ProTools and Sequoia have NONE of these issues -- and I mean over years and years of use for projects. Bandlab/Cake, if you can, it is time to drive a new day in software reliability and integration with Windows. We all love this framework, but it is not reliable enough to be top-shelf production programming on the average. We can site many instances of success and lack of issues, yet we must all be very honest in asking ourselves, would we have the scenario put forth, "Would I use this to make my living, or even (as I) to bring artists in and produce their work?" I'm sure we will get a chorus of "Yes!", but I, one who loves this interface for workflow, would NEVER do such, YET. Cake, get after this. Really.

I use WIDI, and design my own control visuals. I carry my iPad around the studio and control Cake from it (in isolation rooms and whatnot). It truly depends on your needs.

TDehan, you might want to 1) catch some videos on Cake/Sonar operation; 2) read instructions about the software.

Didn't know this!

Yes, Antonio! I used Span last night! Great display! Let's try the ProChannel EQ!

What's hard to deal with is that it seems Cake is much more sensitive to these things than ProTools, Cubase/Nuendo, Samplitude/Sequoia, and others.

Hi Antonio! I battled with it all night last night, wanting to see what it revealed about my Allen&Heath signal path (and to see what plugins looked like under frequency analysis. I've only learned how to make it work through my mixer path. I'd love to eliminate that loop and just check plugins, but haven't figured that out yet. Anyway, just insert two audio tracks. Set the input for the first track to be the input channel of your audio interface and set the output to be the output from the DAW to the interface. This is to create a loop. Insert Q-Capture there. Insert Q-Clone in the effects section of the second track. It's going to just listen to the first audio track. Mine works this way. Not sure how track two hears the loop. Anyone? So, on my mixer, the main output of my sound device goes to a stereo channel that, like all the channels of the mixer, has sends that feed the audio interface inputs. So I engage the sends to route the sound device output (audio channel with Q-Capture feeding the main outs of the audio interface). This closes the loop, and only one thing remains to see Q-Clone and Q-Capture start to roll. Click the monitor button on the audio channel. Things should be rolling now. You don't have to listen to any sounds for it all to work. You can do the same loop with a cable, as well, if you don't have a send path setup on your monitoring device for the room speakers or headphones. I found that my mixer pathway is quite flat, and now know the channel eq characteristics of the board. Slight rolloff (-2db) at 30 Hz when set flat ... It was also neat to view the effect of varioius go-to plugins on the eq curve. Just pop any plugin you like above the Q-Capture plugin in the audio channel. Q-Clone will show the effects of it (pun intended). I love Trueverb plates for sax and guitar, and found that the plugin does nothing destructive to the frequency base. Some verb plugins showed dramatic frequency changes even when completely dry. Odd. If anyone knows how to set this up so that one just routes the Q-Capture in a loop in just the software, let me know! Although the graphic plot is very small, it still is good info for a view of what's going on with the base eq state. Jonas

Bandlab staff have to engage the resources someday in the future to get this right. REAL audio engine problems.

What audiio hardware and driver type (ASIO, etc.) are you using?

And THAT ("Why would Cake ...") is the million dollar question, and I must sadly say it gets asked way too often about our audio engine.

Who could be defensive with intelligent, considerate folks like you and the others in this thread all sharing ideas and being resilient enough to not let it go south with personal preferences dominating the discussion. Bravo to you and all here!

Hi Kevin, I meant that Starship's comments taught me a bit. In terms of what I learned from the vendors: very little. Lynx turned out to even be unaware that Cake has the checkbox. I was disappointed all the way around. I now have it checked in both Cakewalk and the Lynx driver. I wish I knew the actual details. And when I put a heavy song into Cake, I really can't tell which setting makes the audio troubles better, because the results change on restart of Cakewalk. Very odd stuff.