Craig Anderton

Well, there's always this...and this is still mostly relevant, too.

FWIW I think the biggest problem was "guilt by association." Yours looked similar to the (many) posts in the past where someone would come into the forum, complain vociferously about how Cakewalk was total crap, get their questions answered politely, and then would never come back or respond. The main difference, which should have been a clue, was you didn't say you were now going to try Reaper After enough of these, I think the community lost its patience with posts that fit that profile. In general the community here is helpful and patient, to a much greater extent than most forums. I hope you didn't think my comment was a dig, it was more of a general comment due to a thread in my own forum about what can be done about the complexity of today's music software, which seemed relevant to this thread. Finally, Markleford is right - if you can produce a recipe that documents a reproducible bug, Noel & Company are very good about doing a fix. Over the past 20 years or so of using Sonar/Cakewalk, every time I was able to submit a reproducible bug, it was fixed (and often sooner rather than later).

FWIW, I use a ton of different DAWs. My experience: There is no such thing as an intuitive DAW, any more than there is an intuitive electric guitar. Any DAW that can do complex musical operations will be complex. All software is not as buggy as people think it is, because often the definition of a bug is "something that happened the way I didn't expect it to happen," rather than an inherent program flaw. Reading a DAW's manual will keep you from ever using that DAW ...just dive in, and when you run into a problem, do a search on the manual. Learn what you need, and keep going. Extra credit: when you have some spare time, read random sections of the manual to find out the cool things you're missing. Just because you use complex software doesn't mean all complex software is the same. All DAWs have certain common operations you can trace back to Cubase and Notator, and not straying too far from the paradigm makes life easier for users. But a DAW isn't going to have the same paradigm as, say, Photoshop. Some DAWs have unique features that will make a user gravitate toward a particular DAW. The limiting factor on the music made in most DAWs is the musician

FWIW, here's an alternative approach. I almost always record guitar primarily in mono (one mic or direct). I started doing this years ago, when recording the late classical guitarist Linda Cohen, because: Setup is easier - find the sweet spot, and start recording. I usually position the mic about 6 to 12 inches directly in front of the 14th fret, angled in slightly so it points toward the fingerboard between the body’s edge and the sound hole. Zero phase issues. Only one mic preamp contributes hiss. Much easier comping. More repeatable setups if a session is interrupted (make sure you take a picture of the mic's position). I use taped "marks" on the floor for the chair and the mic stand, like the marks actors use on stage in theaters. I then use EQ to create a stereo image. This can involve any of several different techniques, depending on the program material. The reason I said "primarily" in mono is that I may also use a direct out if it's available, or stereo room mics to fill in the space. If quality stereo room mics aren't available, I'll use electronic ambiance processors. When going direct, though, you have to "nudge" the audio slightly behind to line up with the miked audio. I use EQ-based stereo imaging only when doing guitars that need to sound "solo." If it's a situation where the guitar needs to sound doubled, I do delay-based stereo, but using techniques that allow collapsing it to mono without artifacts. I'm certainly not saying this is the way to record acoustic guitar! But sometimes it's the best option for particular circumstances.

Even with RME, you can't aggregate ASIO at a system level. RME, PreSonus, MOTU, Lynx, Roland, and possibly some others (Echo?) have solutions for using multiple ASIO devices, but they have to be from the same company, and almost always, use the same port technology. You can't, for example, use ASIO to aggregate a PreSonus Thunderbolt interface with an RME USB interface. The way it works is that their proprietary ASIO drivers don't treat the aggregated interfaces individually, but as a single, big interface.

Windows native drivers do support aggregation. It's actually easier to set up than on the Mac - you just plug in your interfaces, and they show up as input or output devices. But, the latency is an issue compared to ASIO. I haven't tested aggregation with WASAPI but it should work.

Weird...the OP uses ASIO4ALL on Windows, and ASIO instead of CoreAudio on the Mac. Perhaps he was using ASIO4ALL to aggregate I/O, which the Mac does really well, but on Windows, you have to use the native drivers instead of ASIO. Then again, I don't think you can aggregate interfaces with ASIO on the Mac, so...I don't get it.

This is just one reason why I wish ReWire had been expanded instead of killed. Ableton Live is (or I guess was) a ReWire client, so you could use all their instruments with Cakewalk. Studio One was never a ReWire client, but if ReWire had become really popular, then there would be have been more pressure on DAWs to be ReWire clients.

PreSonus doesn't make it super-obvious which plug-ins are hub-compatible and which aren't. I do know that the Analog Effects packages are hub-compatible, as are the Fat Channel add-ons.

It's kind of like the person who bumps into you at a sdtore, glares at you like it's your fault, and then you never see him again.

PC Audio Labs is good about support. Give them remote access for a few minutes, and they can probably find out what went wrong between Windows 7 and 10, and fix it. They kept my computer going for 10 years until I got a new one about a year ago. Jim Roseberry is great as well. Either one will take care of you.

I use Vegas, but I have done some video stuff in the past with Cakewalk. You probably won't run into any issues loading your video file, but if you do, check out this info about switching between the two available video engines.

Glad it worked for you! Don't forget to try WASAPI to see if you can reduce the latency. I also use this technique to listen on a variety of Bluetooth devices to sort of get an average of what the typical consumer might hear. It helps make for more transportable mixes. Oh, and of course, I would be remiss not to point out that the book is full of other useful tips...like over 400 pages of them 😉

In the "can't hurt, could help" category: Check Device Manager under Sound, Video, and Game controllers, and disable any "HD Audio" or similar drivers related to graphics cards. I did this once and noticed an immediate, dramatic decrease in latency and other problems. I posted about it in the Sonar forum and it seemed to be a hit or miss solution - some people also noticed a striking improvement in performance, others noticed no change. If it helps, great. Also see if disabling an audio drivers not related to your audio interface helps. I assume you don't have ASIO4ALL installed on your machine, but I had a friend with problems almost identical to yours, and removing all traces of ASIO4ALL solved the problem. The issue wasn't so much ASIO4ALL per se as it was about a conflict with a different audio interface driver installed on the same computer. Finally, I've always relied on obedia.com for intractable problems. I give them desktop access, and it usually takes them a few minutes to locate the problem and solve it. They charge $30 for 30 support minutes within a one-month time frame.

Don't forget you can also stream from Cakewalk directly to a Bluetooth device, you don't need a separate transmitter unless you specifically need to stream from the hardware. The following is excerpted from my book, The Huge Book of Cakewalk by BandLab Tips. If you have the book, the complete section with illustrations starts on page 395. But the following should be enough to get you going. It’s entirely possible to stream Cakewalk by BandLab’s audio. Bluetooth adds about 30-40 ms of latency so you probably won’t be doing any overdubbing, but for listening back it’s fine. To do so, you need to use the Windows drivers, not ASIO. MME is the fail-safe option, however it adds lots more latency. WASAPI Exclusive or WASAPI Shared mode is a much better option. I’ll use iLoud as an example, but the protocol for other Bluetooth devices is essentially the same. 1. Pair your Bluetooth device with your laptop or desktop Bluetooth. Your device will provide instructions on how to do this, but it generally involves pushing a button while the two Bluetooth-friendly devices are turned on, and in close proximity to each other. 2. Choose Start > Settings > Devices, then click on the Bluetooth category. Verify that Bluetooth is turned on, and make sure that your Bluetooth device is shown as Connected, not just Paired. 3. Return to Settings, then click on Personalization. Next, click on Themes, then Advanced Sound Settings. 4. Your Bluetooth device should appear in the list of potential playback devices. Click on it, and use Set Default to make the Bluetooth device your default playback device. 5. In Cakewalk by BandLab, under Preferences > Audio > Playback and Recording, choose MME as the driver mode. I’ve also used Bluetooth successfully with the WASAPI driver mode. Note that you will not be able to obtain latencies comparable to ASIO, so if there’s distortion, aliasing, etc., try increasing the latency. 6. Also in Cakewalk by BandLab, under Preferences > Audio > Devices, choose your Bluetooth playback system as the output device.

The problem isn't the bundle as much as it's the storage medium. Bundles are like ZIP files - lose a bit, and you can't open it. Pulling a bundle file off something like a 10-year-old USB drive is fraught.

...which is what I'd recommend as well. I consider the bundle a remnant from the days when storage was super-expensive.

The only way I've ever been able to get into a hardware control is to ban using a mouse, and force myself to use the controller. It's always uncomfortable at first, but once you learn it, it's worth the effort. I think a lot of people underrated Pro Channel modules like the QuadCurve because it was "free." The ProChannel modules are by and large excellent (and regarding those that aren't available any more, they were by and large excellent). They're my go-to processors in Cakewalk, and not just because I like staying in a DAW's ecosystem as much as possible.

So far, the only way I've found to create really long LFO-like waveforms is to draw a single cycle, and copy/paste.

Both come with a selection of MIDI drum loops, just drag and drop into a project.

If you're thinking of the MIDI files that come with Session Drummer, you should be able to download Sonar from your account and install Session Drummer. Addictive Drums also comes with a bunch of loops. If you purchased any of the Session Drummer expansion packs, like from Digital Sound Factory, those will be in your account as well. There was also a free Rock Legends Kit for SD3, not sure if it came with loops or not but it might also be in your account.

If you haven't already, try a plug-in Reset and Re-Scan...that sometimes solves mysterious plug-in issues.

I back up per-project files on Blu-Ray discs. 25 GB discs are about a dollar each, and a recordable drive is about $100. Blu-Ray is a far more robust backup medium than DVDs. Then there's a second copy on a backup hard drive that gets refreshed every few months. There's nothing about the bundle format itself that's a problem, the problem is that it's like a zip file - if there's some kind of corruption in the storage media, you probably won't be able to access the project. The nature of that kind of backup is you come back to it years later, and who knows what might have happened to the media. With individual files, maybe corruption will nuke a vocal clip or something, but you should still be able to access more of what you need.

I'm just guessing here, but maybe you need to un-install the old one before installing the new one?

FWIW Waves has great tech support. You almost get the sense they like finding out if something's wrong, so they can make their stuff better.