Jon White

On 4/7/2020 at 11:06 AM, Starship Krupa said:

Progress? Do you mean progress on learning whether Lynx are interpreting Steinberg's specification correctly when they say that no application should ever set the priority of the driver thread, and why they think they know that Cakewalk, Studio One, and Ableton Live! are setting the priority of the ASIO driver thread and if that's actually the problem when their card fails to work smoothly with these products?

That is cause for pondering. It seems odd, PreSonus has more than a little bit of experience working with ASIO drivers and the hardware that uses them,  and the team that started Studio One came to PreSonus from Steinberg. Shoot, my 15-year-old Firepods are still going strong, 4 versions of Windows down the line.

With a product that whines right out of the box about having driver compatibility issues with 3 different popular and established DAW's I guess you're kind of rollin' the dice anyway. Is it too late to maybe find a card with more robust drivers? If not, it sounds like Jon's good at finding audio software that's compatible with their cards. I think he said that on his system it's a matter of course that Cakewalk's the only one that the Lynx chokes on. I presume there's no Studio One or Ableton Live! in the picture?

@Jon White, if you were having problems this severe I'm sure you must have opened a ticket with BandLab's support about this issue, what did they say about it?

Note: MMCSS and ASIO have nothing to do with each other. MMCSS is part of Microsoft's WASAPI specification. ASIO is a Steinberg invention and designed to bypass Windows' built-in audio driver systems.

Very intelligent and emotional (human) response, Star.  I learned something.  Yes, I've received direct response from Cake.  I think I'll leave this one alone.  It's beyond just the technical.  Lynx stuff is very cool.  They didn't expect folks to be trying to control MMCSS.

1 hour ago, Starship Krupa said:

Jon, ...

Starship, what a wonderful response from you, amidst me probably irritating so many with my thoughts (and not by intention). 

Yes, my particular system may be quite vulnerable to performance weaknesses, and I appreciate your interest and have a very positive faith that you would help to the end in solving particular problems that I and others may have.  That is core human spirit.

But I'll work with my systems, if you'll accept my praise! 

As you know, my point is that Sonar is a bit more vulnerable in general to many little things, in my opinion.  I just left two really tough weeks in a professional recording studio (I'm a very humble bassist, and am hard on myself -- thus the "tough" part), and in the moments of control-room review of material I had some great discussions with the lead engineer (studio owner).  I bragged-up Sonar for four or five reasons that he totally agreed with, and then, very peacefully, he placed it in perspective for me with the question "How stable is it?" and the position "You do a great deal of recording in your own studio, so I would ask you to consider whether you'd use Sonar for paying clients on a deadline, amidst a studio that has overhead costs (rent, loans)."  I felt like he knew about Sonar. I'm pretty sure he did.  He even said that he was captive to a dated ProTools workflow under the attributes of its familiarity and stabiilty.

It was not more than the whisp of time between his last words and them hitting my ears that I sadly said "No, I would struggle to stay even."

Now, that being said, I COULD possibly have experts come in (maybe they'd have to be Cake dev teammates) and solve my PARTICULAR idiosyncratic setup issues (like this wonderful forum does for so many), but that's not the point.  Cake, a KILLER software platform for music production, has one more level to conquer.  

I'm an executive technical director type, by trade.  If I were with Cake, I'd joyfully drive the team to match the needs of at least close-to studio reliability.  Close-to.  I'd proudly say that we have one of the best human/PC interfaces ever made, and spur organizational pride in getting the core tech to kick major boodie.

And I'd definitely engage the bright minds at Cake/Bandlab to truly investigate why I might mistakenly belived that Sequoia has a sheen and comprehensive wholeness in its audio that other DAWs lack.

Are you a musician, Star?  Bless your engagement here.

Jonas

And let me add that Cake, being "free" of charge, is the complete Godzilla of a software DAW offering in the world.  Reaper is great, but can't hold a birthday cake candle to "Sonar".

3 hours ago, bitflipper said:

In my experience, the "audio engine" is not fragile. It's actually quite robust.

If there is ever an issue with a specific plugin, it's going to be with the VST interface and how it's been implemented by the plugin vendor. Sometimes, changes need to be made to CW to accommodate the peculiarities of a particular plugin. There have also been times when the plugin itself was buggy or did not conform to the VST spec. But those have nothing to do with the "audio engine".

Hmmm, well, not correct if you broaden what he may really mean: that adding anything complex (plugins) to an already-unstable (at times) Sonar/Cakewalk just tips the scale to overload and flaky behavior.  Funny, 'cause just this afternoon I created a simple three-channel Kontakt setup and the audio started segmenting like a machine gun when I started the second instrument.  I saved the file, restarted and it worked for a bit.  It just adds up to frustration.  I went to Nuendo and setup a 16-channel Kontakt project, loaded big pianos, orchestrals and whatnot into ten of the channels, added busses for group effects and even put Izotope 9 in the master bus and not one single glitch or hesitation, as usual.  I don't like ProTools (but have to use it at times for group work), but it never fails, either, but for once every four months just closing abruptly.  

C'mon Bandlab, let's see why this softwawe is touchy for some.  And posters, don't feel that it it logical to claim that it doesn't happen to you, because that's not the point.  It has to be how Cake coordinates with ASIO drivers and hardware flow/logic.  To really tickle a tough topic, I also believe that Sequoia/Samplitude SOUNDS better.  I've tried to deny it, but time after time I believe I hear it, and I don't want to, believe me. I want Cake to be everything it can be, because I love the layout and workflow.

That's fantastic, and exemplary of the help given here in the community.

I would add one thought: can the solution be explained so that we can understand the relationship of the setting to the performance issue?

That would go a long way in actually potentially arguing against my generally negative views posted here.  Let's understand the issue and learn from it, versus just changing a setting.

Sunset, in general, a problem that exists now didn't exist prior.  Windows and Cake seem to be, in my opinion, unpredictable.  The unfortunate thing about Cakewalk is that it is unpredictable in the very spine of its reality: the audio engine.  It has always, to me, been slow, risky and prone to dropouts well, well beyond almost any other DAW.  Sure, it may be working for some, sometimes, somewheres -- but that's not the point.  The point is that you can't count on it in general, on the average.  And in my experience, it is laggy as a rule compared to other DAWs.  Try some others and see if you need the stability.  I truly don't think you issue is hardware muscle.  I think it is an innocent, but all-too-common quirk between the details in the software and the Windows OS and your audio drivers.  Again, you can struggle for weeks and find the issue, but I feel that Cakewalk will always haunt the studio user with that looming possibility of various errors.  "General error" on saving a file is my latest ghost.  "Corrupt file, can't open (or the like" hits my most recent multi-track project IF I don't open a project before it and then close it and open that project.  Who can figure.  Clicks and pops, audio stoppage when Superior Drummer 3 loads, etc...

None of this happens with Nuendo, Sequoia or ProTools.

What is my system?!  What details am I stupidly not assessing?!  To the rescue, doubters!

My system is the same one that ran these types files two years ago or five months ago (but probably with different errors).

7 hours ago, fnordpow said:

Another test I have done was with both Reaper and Ableton. They will both track without issue and have no pops and clicks even at 64 buffer size. That is why I am leaning towards a Cakewalk issue and not hardware or drivers.

Any suggestions on what to try to correct it? I have been on Calkwalk for a long time and don't really want to fully switch to another DAW. CW is home to me for my work flow. I can use the others but they just don't feel right.

Yeah, I felt the same way about sticking with what I know, but it can't always work that way.  I have Sequoia/Samplutude Pro X now as my backup, and just added Nuendo 10.  Never, ever a glitch, although I like my familiar Cake/Sonar field of operation.  If steadiness and lack of audio struggling is needed, I'd go elsewhere.  I still use Cake, and am very pleased with the renewal of it with Bandlab, but it is second-rate for a producer in terms of audio engine lagging and odd behavior at times. I want to love it, but we have to be objective.

15 hours ago, JonD said:

The same DAW on my system doesn't have these problems, so what's your point?  The only way to isolate what's causing them on HIS system is to troubleshoot (Which is why everyone else is offering HELPFUL suggestions)...

My point is that Cakewalk seems rather plagued with these issues, compared to the other ones I've used routinely (and used so that I can get projects done with high surety of stabiity).  That's my point.  It's an objective reflection on functionality, and if we can't express these experiences, we will be in the land of illusion.  Cakewalk has stability issues in my experience (I've used it since 1988 under MS-DOS), and seems to also not do audio as well (stability and glitch-wise) as many mainstream DAWs.

Maybe my comment IS helpful, in that it may add to one's collection of input regarding DAW performance.

On 4/3/2020 at 3:01 PM, scook said:

Make sure to run the scanner from preferences with "Scan in Sandbox" enabled. Avoid running the scanner from the Plug-in Manager.

 

Interesting.  Why is this, friend?

Many DAWs don't have these problems.

Many other DAWs don't have this problem.

I've had very little luck with Focusrite interfaces. I actually don't use them at all now.

On 4/1/2020 at 7:18 AM, Jonathan Sasor said:

It's very much ongoing! We're just working on something that requires a little extra time in the oven right now.

Hopefully -- and I say this with due respect and no ill intent -- it will improve the audio engine's efficiency in working with audio drivers and processing.  

Although I'm a Cake/Sonar/Cake user since the late eighties, I've used many DAWs in that time and I find that we have the most audio glitches of any of them -- almost to the point of me changing at my home studio many times in favor of ones that don't blink an eye in terms of smooth playback of workfiles.

We, in my opinion, need to get really serious about finding out why many of the others seem to process audio so much more error/overload free.

Steev, that doesn't fix it.  My Waveshell 5 continually triggers this message (it is a Cakewalk message).  I say to use it anyway, then the (in this case of WS5) plugin works anyway.  But the hangup is annoying.

On 3/19/2020 at 7:25 PM, David Baay said:

Set the Edit Filter to Transients,

Quote

right-click the clip

and choose Edit Clip Tempo Map. Average tempo is shown at the bottom of the clip.

It may often be off by a factor of two. Play the track and verify that the downbeat markers are aligning roughly with the downbeat transients. If not, choose one of the alternate tempos from the dropdown. If all you want is that average tempo, you can just change the Edit Filter back to Clips.

Double left-click the clip ...

To delete the saved audio files in your project that are no longer in tracks, simply execute "Utilities/Clean Audio Folder".

That simple.

Another way is "Utilities/Consolidate Project Audio".  That will collect the active audio files into a subdirectory in the project, but you then must delete the audio directory files and put the files in the sub back up into your audio directory.

Another way is to go to Windows file explorer and select all of the audio files in the project's audio directory while the project is open.  Hit delete and all the ones not being used will be deleted.  Clean Audio Folder does it for you.

I have a Lynx PCI audio card that just got a new driver.  In the verbiage on changes, it says that DAW and audio application writers should not be implementing prioritization from within an ASIO application, and that this is stated in the ASIO spec.

What does this mean?  That we should not check "MMCSS" in our audio setup?  That checkbox is available in my Lynx driver utiity.  Should I check it there and not in Cakewalk?

I ask because my system falls apart (crackles, audio engine stoppage) whenever I do anything with graphics (open a new window, check the web, etc.).  Of course, Cake is my only DAW that does anything like this, so I'm hunting for ways to improve performance.

HERE IS LYNX' verbiage:

Quote

Added work-around for some ASIO applications (Cakewalk, Studio One, Ableton Live) that set the priority of the driver thread (setting the priority of the driver thread should never be done by an ASIO application per the ASIO specification).  Also added the ability for the end user to turn off the MMCSS priority of the driver thread for applications that insist on setting the drivers thread priority.

Cakewalk is consistently the worst at handling audio data flow amongst all my DAWs.  It clicks and pops and overloads consistently on mid-loaded projects that do just fine in Samplitude, Sequoia, Reaper, ProTools, FL Studio and Nuendo.  To have to adjust buffers over 128 asks for intolerable latency with soft-synths and direct monitoring.  I'm not saying that this isn't something in this particular case that will be figured out, but I am saying that Cakewalk and Sonar have always been the worst at handling audio flow.  I've been with Cakewalk since the eighties.

Thank you, Ab.  I'll set it back and push on with troubleshooting my system.  I DO have an old Quadcore system that I'm scared to upgrade!

In my projects using Kontakt instruments and Superior Drummer 3, I have click/pop issues now and then.  One thing I tried today was to opt for Superior Drummer to use multiple cores (I set at two to start).  The verdict is still out, but is this an overt conflict with having Cakewalk already using multiple cores?

Also, I note that any other PC activity, such as just asking another program to start, destroys my audio engine performance, yet my Lynx audio card is on a separate IRQ from all others.  Is it a matter of not IRQ but just pure processing scheduling that I'm up against?

Thank you all.  Always great responses here!

Jonas

I thinned-out my VST library today and deleted Groove Player as one of my cleanups.  Now I open every single project and it says that this is missing: "GroovePlayer (Track: 'LRS track bus').  

I have no idea what this means, and many of the projects now won't play, have noise coming out of the main bus, and show overloaded resource bars.

This is so, so disappointing.  Any ideas?

Thank you!

Jonas
 

9 minutes ago, scook said:

Assuming you have the tracks already routed to the master bus, solo the two mono tracks track to bounce with the master bus as the source

 

Excellent.  It worked fine.  Thank you very much, good Scook.  Very appreciated.

1 hour ago, scook said:

Bounce to Track(s)  with Channel Format set to "Split Mono" creates 2 mono tracks from a stereo track. There are a variety of other options in the dialog for other scenarios.

Thank you, Scook.  Works fine for splitting a stereo track into separate mono tracks.  Doesn't work for taking two monos and combining them into a stereo track, unfortunately.  But hey, I wasn't even aware of the BtoT option in the first place!

And dragging two mono tracks into separate take lanes in a new track never let's you bounce, after panning, into one main stereo clip as Anderton advised in 2017 with Sonar.  What changed?

I'm baffled.  I want to split a simple stereo clip or track into to mono tracks with a command.  No such thing?

Sure I can duplicate, pan, then bounce and make mono.  But how do I then combine them into one stereo track again?

Very odd this doesn't have a one-click split and one-click combine of two tracks.

My system does it too.  The higher the processing load, the more it does it.  Promidi, I happen to use a PCI care (Lynx Two).