Bill Phillips

I have a separate Resources drive and use separate 64-bit & 32-bit 3rd-Party VST folders. Example "3rd-Party VST/64-bit/Sample Tank" for the Sample Tank VSTs.

Me too. I appreciate their service, straight talk and product knowledge. The candy's not bad either.

The documentation at this link may solve my long term intermittent MIDI input problems as well. Thanks abacab.

If I waited till the end of a project to update, I'd never update. 🤣

Note that this article and others that it links to were posted in 2016.

Woops. I meant WASAPI. Thanks for the correction. I'll try WASAPI if I'm still not happy with Focusrite's 1.10 beta drivers.

Thanks. I'm going to try it. Tomorrow morning.

Are you still happy? I'm happy that they are updating firmware and the drivers. From the release notes, it looks like this update is an attempt to might be what's needed for better performance with Windows 10 version 1809. At least I hope so. But I worry that being an early adopter might cause me more problems. Let me know. I noticed some mention of WDM which also encourages me. Does the new driver allow you to select WDM instead of ASIO drivers? If yes, have you tried them and how do they work? My understanding based on very little information is that WDM audio is Microsoft's attempt to provide low latency native audio drivers. About the time that Gibson was shutting down Cakewalk, I remember reading some encouraging words from Cakewalk folks about achieving very low latencies with WDM drivers, but haven't heard anything since. Thanks.

Please consider adding CD and streaming distribution processing to Cakewalk. I've noticed that audio distribution finalizing products like CD Architect and Sound Forge have been vertically integrated into audio/video production suites that cost $1,000's per year. CD Baby seems to be the only cost effective PC based distribution alternative for indpendant artists. Why not add that meta data integration capabilities to Cakewalk to provide a complete PC based audio production suite.

azslow3, thanks. It would be nice if that information was available when we're making interface buying decisions. However, the tests were done with Windows 7. I would hope that performance with Windows 10, which I think is reported to have better audio performance, and newer more powerful processors. Looks like the successor to my 828 mkII didn't fare very well. My Scarlett 18i8 is probably most similar to the Scarlett 6i6, which didn't do to well either, in the testing. However my 18i8 has a buffer size settings range of 1-20 ms not in samples as shown in the charts. At the 1 ms setting Cakewalk reports 45 samples. At the 20 ms setting 883 samples are reported. Looks like it's about 44 samples/ms.

Thanks Cactus Music. I've verified that I have the latest Focusrite drivers though they appear to have been written back in 2014. It's hard for me to imagine that that driver could be tweaked to improve performance with the Win 10 1809. The drivers I have for my ancient MOTU 828 mkII are newer than that. I use the INTEL Driver Assistant to keep other drivers up to date.

abacab, thanks. I've gone from minimum (1 ms) to maximum (20 ms). I currently have it set at 15 ms because settings below that periodically stop playback. So far I'm avoiding freezing tracks because I bounce around a lot.

Jim this is very useful information for me. I have an ASUS X99 DELUXE II motherboard with the ASUS/INTEL ThunderboltEX 3 PCIe card. It's good to hear that, once the prices drop to within my price range, I'll be able to use a Thunderbolt interface and benefit from the extremely low latencies they are capable of.

This works for me most of the time. I'm usually looking for help using functions that I don't use often and have been available for a long time.

The SONAR PDF was over 2,000 pages and hadn't been available in printed form for years. I doubt that there was ever a more comprehensive DAW reference manual. I still use what I think is the last version ever issued.

I have a 1st gen 18i8 and agree 1st gen USB hardware, firmware & drivers were not up to par. My ancient MOTU 828 mill firewire has lower latency. I wish there was some way to know that before you buy.

I need help understanding and hopefully improving the performance of my DAW PC. While mixing, I experience more or less constant dropouts though the dropouts aren't so bad as to prevent me from mixing and making adjustments. At no point do, either the Cakewalk Performance Monitor or the Windows Resource Monitor show any CPU thread exceeding 25%. Why isn't my CPU working harder? What can I do to improve performance. I've run through Sweetwater's DPC Latency recommendations and results look good. (See 4 attached results screenshots) I've run through Sweetwater's DAW PC Optimazation recommendations and provided more details about my DAW PC in the attached PDF summary. I have Use Multiprocessor Engine and Plug-in Load Balancing ticked. (See attached Audio Driver Settings screenshot) My Focusrite 8i18 (original USB 2.0 version) audio interface adjust the Mixing Latency Buffer Size based on a user selected latency in ms. It's usually set to between 15 ms and the maximum of 20 ms for mixing. A setting of 20 ms sets the Mixing Latency Buffer Size to 883 samples. (See Audio Driver Settings screenshot attached. Also note ASIO reported latency values which far exceed the 883 samples. During playback, all threads hover around the bottom on the Performance module. No threads ever goes above 25% but there's a lot of audible popping and cracking and I don't know why. I've only recently started using the iZotope Production Suite which I really like and I suspect that products represent a significant CPU load, but the CPU doesn't seem to notice them. Any ideas why this is happening or what I can do about it? Mixing projects I'm working on now tend to have 8-12 audio tracks, 8-10 aux tracks and 3 buses. Sample rate is 44.1 or 48 kbps and recording bit depth is 24 bits. I usually record no more that 12 audio tracks at a time with no processing and don't incur any problems. DAW PC Optimization.pdf

Misha, I think you are right. I really like iZotope's user interface, dynamic EQ and compression, the Tonal Balance display and the Masking view. I'm not ready to give up yet. I thought I had a rocket of a machine, but so far it's sputtering and I don't know why. I suspect that I'm doing something really stupid, but being really stupid, I can't figure out what it is. 🙄 I'm going to take scook's advice and make a separate post asking for help with that.

Understood. That makes sense. I'll do that. Thanks for the patience.

Thanks scottfa. I did that and it didn't appear to help. scottfa, I think all these questions in my earlier post quoted below. I've verified that my Focusrite 18i8 drivers are up to date and I'm using the intel Driver Support Assistant to keep other drives up to date.

Thanks scook. Do you mean the Q&A forum or something else? Also, is there a good place on the Cakewalk forum for system issues? Are you referring to setting the audio interface to the maximum latency? Thanks for the suggestions.

Scook, thanks. I'd forgotten about those. Both the Pause and Scroll Lock keys are present on my desktop keyboard and work as described. They reduce dropouts but don't stop them. My main question is why am I getting dropouts at all? My CPU seems to be idling along with plenty of capacity left, but I'm still getting dropouts? Is there anything I can do to make the CPU work harder to reduce dropouts? See quoted DAW performance information below. Thanks.

I have Use Multiprocessor Engine and Plug-in Load Balancing ticked. I'm using iZotope mixing, mastering and metering plugins. My CPU is a 6 core, 12 thread i7-6850K @ 3.6GHz with 32 GB memory. All drives are 256 GB SSD. Two have M.2 interfaces. I have a Radeon R7 250 series video card.The projects I'm working on now tend to have 8-10 audio tracks, 8-10 aux tracks and 3 buses. Sample rate is 44.1 or 48 kbps and recording bit depth is 24 bits. My Focusrite 8i18 (original USB 2.0 version) audio interface adjust the Mixing Latency Buffer Size based on a user selected latency in ms. I have it set to the maximum of 20 ms for mixing which sets the Mixing Latency Buffer Size to 883 samples. See screenshot attached. Also note ASIO reported latency values which far exceed the 883 samples. During playback, all threads hover around the bottom on the Performance module. No threads ever goes above 25% but there's a lot of audible popping and cracking and I don't know why. I've only recently started using the iZotope Production Suite which I really like and I suspect that products represent a significant CPU load, but the CPU doesn't seem to notice them. Any ideas why this is happening or what I can do about it? Under CPU conservation option, I read the link but didn't understand how to implement GPU throttling. I'm sure I'm missing something obvious but I don't even know where the "pause" key is. Also, I keep the Radeon Settings app in the system tray for hidden icons and wonder if that could contribute to the problem.

Can it embed the text album info and ISRC codes and anything else that comercial CDs have? Also, since it's still apparently available through amazon for about $100 do you see any reason, other than it's been discontinued, that I shouldn't buy CD Architect and not Soundforge Pro 12 for $600, (on sale right now for $400)? The Soundforge Pro 15 features list seems to focus on Mastering capabilities that I do in Cakewalk rather than the CD production capabilities that I'm looking to get.

What do you use to use to produce songs for streaming and cd tracks ready for publishing? I'd like to make sure that the cds have the text information that some cd players can read and display (red book), and anything else that should be on a CD, and that both cds and tracks for streaming have any registration codes (like ISRC) needed for proper attribution. I recall hearing that Sony CD Architect was the gold standard, but when I look for information about CD Architect all I get are download sites that seem questionable to me and amazon all referencing version 5.2. I looked on Sony's website and found nothing. Any online reviews or forum discussions (Cakewalk SONAR forum and the SoundonSound articles & forum )I find are really old. Any help appreciated. This article is the most recent thing I could find on CD mastering: https://www.audiorecording.me/how-to-make-a-cd-master-that-complies-with-red-book-cd-audio-standard.html Also it looks like CD Baby offers lots of music publishing assistance but I haven't dug into what it will cost for them to produce tracks suitable for streaming and cd release. Thanks.