Terry Kelley

Yeah, that does seem high.

I am a VST/plugin hog and I am looking at a 45 track song at idle and I am pulling 11% CPU in the task manager and 773MB of memory. Part of the CPU usage it the number of cores and processor speed. Slow it down and it needs more CPU time to get things done. Also, various VST/plugins do run at idle due to the way they work and if they are being told to play tails (like finish the reverb after you press stop), etc. But 100% just sitting there seems beyond expectations. What does the CPU meeting in Cakewalk show in the Performance window for Audio, System and overall App?

We need Noel or MSMcLeod to give us the specific scoop.

Or have it tell you the selection is empty (or words to that effect.) I figure that if I select Entire Mix, I mean all of it track-wise. I can see where highlighting a specific section of time would be appropriate and there should still be a mechanism for exports down to a clip.

"The specified selection did not contain any audio data. Please ensure the selection contains audio data you wish to bounce." I clicked on File/Export/Audio.

We did a bunch of testing and certain plugins across different companies will break the surround panner mute/solo. Deleting the plugin won't fix it. You have to restart Cakewalk. VST/VST2/VST3/DX.

I'll leave it to support to tell me who's the issue. It's a coin toss which one's will work.

Edit 7/29: Support replied and told me to switch versions of the plugins. If it's a VST then use the 2 or 3 version and vice versa. They said it's helped others in the past .

Edit 12/16/21:  Support updated that they are still working on it.

You can click on the push pin on the top right of any plugin you want to keep open or turn off recycling the windows per scook's link.

When enabled. Just a thought.

Have you considered Cubase?

J/K

For a sampler, there are several free one's out there like TX16W that are really good. I am not sure what Cakewalk could bring to the table that you can't already get.

I thought sidechaining was pretty easy in Cakewalk. Maybe I am just used to the steps.

Some of your other suggestions are intriguing.

What interface? ASIO drivers? Block size? Bit rate and depth?

I logged a ticket with support.

Hi Mr. Cook.

Your point is probably the best way to infer what can and can't be done. I could never find someone that tried it and said it didn't work but only, "it probably won't work." Sounds like SteveT is the first to confirm it with real world results that I've seen.

Presonus has a long drawn out paper on how the clocks work and even gets close to saying that "reclocking" would allow multiple interfaces. But when they get to the meat of the subject their answer is get interfaces with external clock inputs and lots of BNC cables and tees or get an interface with more inputs and outputs.

After playing with multiple interfaces (and Mr. McLeod said it best) you can get close but not perfectly in sync with reclocking (meaning let the interface handle it.) Apparently Macs will allow some interfaces to be merged but staying in zero phase-sync is still an issue according to users. I did some phase measurements with several borrow interfaces using WASAPI Exclusive and I could never get them within more than a couple of milliseconds of delay. Even two identical interfaces drifted or had a measurable (and audible) delay. It would work but I couldn't expect to get a solid mono localized image between two interfaces (like front and rear left.) Ain't gonna happen unless it's pure luck and it's unlikely they will stay that way.

So I conceded (through testing), that if it works it's still not locked and stable. Get a multichannel interface or interfaces with external clock inputs.

And the ASIO driver for the Behringer UCA-222 just picked one interface, not both.  I never got to test two Presonus with ASIO.  You would think that given the bandwidth of even USB 2.0 you could send sync pulses or sync clock to multiple interfaces but it appears that's not in the cards.

On 7/18/2021 at 9:12 PM, Kawika said:

OK Terry....So a Vst2 controller can direct a  VST3 synth?

 

My initial answer is yes but what VST3 are you trying to control with a VST2?

I'm working in 5.1 Film surround. According to the manual I can click on any speaker in the surround panner and mute it. But when I click any speaker nothing happens.

To mute a surround speaker

In the large surround panner, click a speaker icon to mute its output. The speaker icon turns gray when the speaker is muted.

Or

In the small surround panner, click a white square to mute a speaker’s output. The square turns gray when the speaker is muted."

Am I missing something? My ultimate goal is to not have any center channel signal after a mix down. I don't know if muting the center channel in the panner would do that, but muting certainly doesn't happen to allow me to test it. Right clicking on the panner and selecting Mute C (or any speaker) doesn't mute it.

A friend tried it on his system and it doesn't mute either.

...........

Feesuat

Posted June 15, 2019 (edited)

I am working on a film project 5.1 and facing a strange issue. On the large surround panner the speaker icons are not working as I want to mute /unmute but nothing happens upon pressing/clicking on these icons. Whereas it is suppossed to be turning grey upon pressing/clicking  and mute that speaker output.

i am using TC electronics 24d konnect soundcard and windows7 64.

Yes. Most people have VST, VST2 and VST3 running at the same time.

Bleed from the headphones, LOL.

Is DIM highlighted at the top in the transport? If so, Solo Dim is on and the other tracks are just reduced and not just turned off.

1 minute ago, scook said:

The feature was added in 2019.11 http://www.cakewalk.com/Documentation?product=Cakewalk&language=3&help=NewFeatures.053.html

Then it's not just me.

I just noticed that I can change the buffer size for the Presonus iTwo from Preferences/Audio/Driver Settings. If I open Universal Control, I can watch it change after I move the slider and hit Apply.  Saves a lot of steps when I switch back and forth. I swear the slider was grayed out before but there it is.

43 minutes ago, John Vere said:

This depends on the interface.  Some do , some don't.  My Motu doesn't if I use 3/4 i get blasted out of the room and reaching for the big knob does nothing, I have to use my power amp. 

There are passive stereo pots in a nice housing available on Amazon. I might have to resort to a pair if I do go with line outs.

I do it for the buzz.

1 hour ago, azslow3 said:

If I understand correctly,  your primary wish was physical controls for all outputs. But we are in Cakewalk by Bandlab forum. So, if controlling different outputs in CbB is sufficient, any Control Surface with multichannel audio interface will do the trick.  The controller can be configured to change volumes in CbB  rather flexible way.

Sure, if software in question is not CbB (nor other DAW) or the sound does not come from software at all that approach is not going to work.

My issue is that, while very rare, Cakewalk or a plugin will flip out (and it could very well be the interface flipping out) and generating tons of noise far beyond the software volume levels. Imagine taking the Tape Out of your pre-amp and plugging it into your 500W stereo amp with the volume on the amp set to 11. If anything goes wrong, you have no way to turn it down without running over to the amp or as in the 21st century, to the back of the speakers to turn them down or off. I want something  on my desk I can grab. I have yet to find an interface with physical volume controls on the line outs or dual master outs without going to a console mixer.

I won't connect to an amp without some physical volume control (and the Presonus interfaces are true passive analog pots at the master output.)

And no, I am not doing a survey so people don't need to post that they've never had a problem!

You could also try:

1. Open the file.

2. Look at the events and note the number of channels

3. Create that many midi tracks.

4.  Go to Edit/Select/By Filter

5. Set the Channel to 1 (or the lowest) and hit Ok. This will highlight only those events on Channel one

6. Copy those with either Edit/Copy or CTRL-C.

7. Paste to the new Channel 1 track

8. Repeat for each channel.

Side note. I do see that Cal file but I don't have any Midi 0 files, only 1 and WRK files from the 1900's.

To MSMcLeod:

When running these interfaces without a common clock the setting of the Mixing Latency Buffer Size affects the sync of the two interfaces doesn't it ...

If I set it short it will start to cutout/jump or if too long sync starts to drift. There is a sweet spot but it's a guess.

10 minutes ago, John Vere said:

The test was a total failure. I could select both interfaces in preferences under WASAPI exclusive. I could also select either interface in the 2 tracks I set up but when you hit record it tells you the old pop up that the device in use does not support the currant driver mode. So testing individually it turns out the Motu does not support WASAPI exclusive. The Focusrite works fine under WASAPI exclusive. So once again every manufacture has a little bit different coding in its driver. 

 

 

When I select WASAPI Exclusive with my iTwo and UCA--222, Cakewalk complains that my format (44.1k/16b) isn't compatible with one interface (the UCA-222) and switches to 48k/16b. I can then assign four tracks to each of the four inputs and they do record.

Ok, so in Cakewalk/Preferences/Audio/Drivers you can select the Playback or Record Timing Master. Cakewalk is listening to the interfaces clock? I always thought Cakewalk specified and generated the clocks for the interface and these settings determined where the clock was going and coming from. I also didn't consider that the time bases probably aren't high enough that dividing it down would effective divide cut the error.

Very interesting insight. Thanks for taking the time to go over this.

Terry

Check your PMs. I sent you a test file. You can Open in Cakewalk, Import or Open With Cakewalk and it should give you multiple tracks.

I can't get it to not open as multiple tracks. If you don't mind, PM me your file and I will try it on my side.

1 hour ago, msmcleod said:

Actually it matters more for playback than recording.

Recording isn't an issue, as you can adjust the recording by nudging the waveform to align it.

Playback is more of an issue.  If the wordclocks aren't in sync, the devices won't be playing at exactly the same time for the same sample time.  This can cause phase issues or a chorus/flange effect if the wordclocks drift significantly.   More subtle wordclock drifting will mess with your stereo imaging, making your mix seem "wider" in places or even lop sided. 

You might get away with it if you carefully choose which instruments go to which output - i.e. make sure stereo pairs, or doubled parts always go to the same device.   But you can't rely on it.

To avoid any of these issues, I'd seriously recommend getting a multiple out audio interface.  You can get them pretty cheap nowadays off eBay, or even refurbished from the manufacturer (Focusrite quite often sells refurbished or older generation interfaces off cheap).  
 

I can see where this could effect the image of anything not exclusively in the front or rear pair. Where is the clock generated? I missed that.