Simon Wilkinson

That's good to hear you've fixed it! I've always had Cakewalk setup that way too (with 'Stop at project end' selected, so I have to loop an empty project) but for whatever reason it doesn't seem to cause an issue on mine. Anyway, well found! One other thing I noticed with Wotja in Cakewalk is it does seem to make the now time marker move quite slowly and jittery if the plugin window is open while playing. As soon as I close the plugin's window, the now time marker moves a lot more smoothly. It doesn't affect the actual sound or cause dropouts for me but it seems to be pushing the processor a lot harder when the window is open, even if the visualiser part of Wotja isn't visible. Might be something worth trying if you get dropouts again at any point.

Hmm, not sure then. One thing that happened recently was I noticed my 1st gen 8i6 driver was outdated (maybe a year or more out of date). Even though it was working fine for me I saw something in the changelog that mentioned a fix for a Cakewalk issue so I thought I should update. After I did it actually seemed worse with a bit of occasional glitching and generally felt less reliable so I rolled back to my old version (4.87.4). Since then it's all buttery smooth again. Probably not at all related to your issue but it confirmed the old 'if it ain't broke' adage to me! Hope you have some luck getting it to work but if you've got it working in Reaper maybe that's enough.

I'm running a pretty old but stable i5-7500 PC with 16Gb RAM, Win 10, Focusrite 8i6. I've only been using Wotja for about a week but mainly running it as a VSTi in Cakewalk using its own audio output. I have tested echoing it to other VSTi's (e.g. Kontakt/Korg Wavestation) and it works fine but I prefer its own output for now. Haven't had any dropouts yet although I have set the 8i6 buffer size a bit higher than usual (256) as input latency isn't an issue with how I'm using it.

Just to chime in, the Wotja23 VST3 is working perfectly in Cakewalk for me. My PC isn't particularly high spec but it's working pretty smooth so far. I'm new to Wotja but bought the Pro license straight away because it looks such an interesting app. I haven't delved very deep yet but it seems there's a lot of scope and the devs are very responsive to feedback (I found a couple of minor aesthetic bugs).

Gotta say in the 20+ years I've been using Sonar/CbB I can't remember one single plugin I've tried that hasn't worked specifically in it. If not explicitly naming Cakewalk implies it isn't a serious/professional DAW I'd also have to say in that same timeframe I've been earning my main income from it. Don't worry about it.

Thanks Alexey, I have read and followed that post of yours before (and I spoke with you a while ago). Your plugin is really great and works well but whether I use AZSlow, ACT Midi Controller or Cakewalk Generic Surface I always get the same problem eventually. Sometimes ACT Learn picks up what I'm teaching it but after a while it just randomly stops recognising my movements (even if it's a parameter that it recognised previously). A restart of Cakewalk usually gets it working again (or as you say, by using your ACT Fix app). But then it happens again at some random point. The fact that after a restart it will then recognise exactly the same thing that it didn't recognise before the restart makes it look like some kind of bug in the way ACT works. ACT is *almost* usable but it's just a bit too buggy and fiddly in its current state. Hopefully at some point the use of control surfaces in Cakewalk will get an overhaul

I'm in the same situation as @Starship Krupa in that once or twice a year I dig out my MIDI controller (either a Behringer X-Mini or the rotaries/sliders on my MIDI keyboard) and try to get them to play nice with ACT so I can have a bit more physical control with some VSTs but I usually end up giving up out of frustration. I can occasionally get it to work but not consistently enough to stop breaking my musical workflow. I usually want something simple like ACT learn to pickup control of maybe a filter on a VST synth and it will work once or twice but then I might try to switch control to a different parameter and suddenly ACT learn just ignores anything I do. I'm pretty sure it isn't user error because I'll try quitting Cakewalk and restarting and doing exactly the same ACT learn process and then it works again for a while until I try changing something and suddenly ACT learn ignores me again (yes I make sure the VST is always in focus). I've also tried using AZSlow which is great but I still get the same result that sometimes ACT learn just won't pickup my movements. Then I restart and it works fine again. I've also followed all the videos and advice above but it never works consistently. There's so much potential in how ACT can bring a bit of physicality to my workflow but it always drives me to frustration in how inconsistent it works for me that I just give up and resort to dragging a mouse around a GUI!

Thanks John, yes I often use Audacity for batch processing and final trimming/tidying up of files but I have some very case-specific projects where I still use CW for a lot of exports to mp3 where I use VST FX processing first, so it's still useful for me to stay within CW for those instances.

Actually I think I've done it after downloading Lame separately, thanks!

I haven't delved too deeply into the external encoder. From what I've read, the LAME encoder is somehow incorporated into Cakewalk but does this mean you have to also download it separately if you want to configure it in the utility?

I'd really like this feature too. I'm working on a project that involves bulk processing lots of exports and I have to change it to 320 every time. I'm pretty sure it used to recall the last used setting in a session before the recent update. And also would be nice to have the option to turn off the blue post-export notification! It's really good to see the export process being updated so thoroughly though, thank you!

Thanks Colin, it's OK I'm happy to put in the work and create layered versions myself (in fact I've already made a good start on it). I just thought I'd check if there were any publicly available templates that would save me time. I'm pretty experienced with GIMP and Photoshop so I've already used a few colour shifting techniques but I'd like to get a bit more precise which is obviously easier when you can work on specific elements. Presumably the Cakewalk team have got these resources somewhere and seeing as how they already provide a theme editor it would be nice if they'd be willing to provide the icon templates to encourage more themers to give it a try (hint hint!)

Is there any way of finding a set of image files for the default icons that are in a layered or transparent format? I want to change the colour scheme of the default Tungsten theme and I can kind of work around it using GIMP to alter certain aspects but when you're working with flattened images there's always going to be instances where manipulating them causes pixelation and artefacts. I know I could create my own icons from scratch but I'm so familiar with the default ones, I just want to change the colour scheme and it would be much easier to work with the original icons in layered format. I just wondered if Cakewalk have ever made the default UI icons publicly available?

Love the latest build and all the great features that keep getting added, thank you! One thing I've noticed recently on my setup is that certain plugins (2 that I know for sure and I think there might have been 1 other) will have their GUI frozen or become blank after a certain time. The ones I know it happens on for me are Oeksound's Soothe 2 and Baby Audio's Smooth Operator. They start off working fine but after a random time, when I open their GUI it's either blank (like all whitespace) or it's visible but any real-time feedback (e.g. spectral movement or button animations etc) becomes frozen. The plugins still work but their GUI doesn't respond or update (happens on both VST2 and VST3). If I quit and restart they work fine again for a while. These 2 plugins are new for me and I see someone else reported the same issue in a CW Facebook group back in January, so it might not be from the last update. Soothe 2 has the option to turn off OpenGL but that doesn't help. I have a 3 monitor setup running on an Nvidia GT730 graphics card with all latest updates if that makes any difference.

Bingo! That's perfect, thanks so much Mark. At first I thought it wasn't going to work as it still looks very 'stepped' while you're recording the write automation but as soon as you stop it automatically smooths the nodes out. Just what I need I've been a Sonar/CbB user for years but goes to show there's so much stuff under the hood that I'm just not aware of! Thanks to everyone for all the suggestions, now back to the music...