Gswitz

I'm guessing as you get more practice mixing, this problem will burn off like a morning fog. Share your files and I'll do a mix and show you what I did. You may not like it, but you might.

I play on a couple of champs every week at a friend's. I play on my fender 4x10 at other times. It's is loud but sounds stunning. Deville. I use a rock crusher to cut the volume. Some tube amps have this built in now. The champs don't break up a ton. A distortion pedal might be useful with the champ. The are rivera amps that will diffuse some power prior to the speakers. Kinda a built in rock crusher. I think the internet has hurt chances of getting a super cheap local deal, but watch Craig's list. Stuff does pop up. https://seattle.craigslist.org/tac/msg/d/puyallup-crate-palamino-v8/7352179097.html

Seems like glitchy cache stuff to me. Recompute image?

You can set the meter to pre fader.

@Noel Borthwick isn't there a way to change the default snap value for volume faders with a right click?

Omg i went there! It's how i got to where i am today!

Automating clip gain before the compressor helps.

There is a way to disable all fx. My bet is you have accidentally done this. https://www.cakewalk.com/Documentation?product=SONAR&language=3&help=Mixing.30.html#:~:text=In the Control Bar's Mix,active project are temporarily bypassed.

Don't give up. We all struggled when we first started recording with computers. Play some music. Feel good. Revisit later.

did it help?

Yes on high performance setting mentioned by @msmcleod. If your network card isn't WiFi, it is usually sufficient to disable power saving setting. When it is WiFi, the Wi-Fi part can usually be disabled. But you know how to disable it... I was just trying to help. What happens if you disable the network monitor thing? Or some of those other items under the network card?

If you go to device manager, find the device and double click it, click power management tab, you can control whether the device can be switched to save power. For some reason this action kills dpc performance. So, change it to not save power.

Well, cpus are complicated. They can overheat. So when things get hot, they auto slow. While this is good for protecting your cpu while gaming, when recording audio it may not be necessary. For now, i think you're biggest problem is your wlan. I think your wlan device is still configured to save battery power. Go into device manager open the device and disable the power saving choice. I show how to do this in my video.

Hi. I had some confusion myself around items set as midi controllers. If your midi device is assigned as a controller, when you set it as a track input, the level will not bounce and the notes with not play. Delete the midi controller entry and now it can work as a midi instrument driver.

Obviously you can re-enable it after you check latency monitor. The fact that you use a wired connection doesn't mean there isn't some part of your network card causing an issue. If you disable it and get a pass from latency monitor, you next try changing settings on it so it doesn't mess you up.