Kevin Walsh

Well, I already threw my hat in the ring for the Audient ID-22, which I dearly love. Audient has definitely nailed the preamp thing, the difference between my old MOTU 8pre and the Focusrite Solo v2 I bought on a whim at GC several years ago is quite noticeable to my battered old ears. As for the latency, the best thing I can say is that I no longer futz with the settings the way I used to. It just works and works well. But then I don't really need 5ms roundtrip speeds in my workflow either. I'd say get them both and ship back the one you don't want but that wouldn't be ethical, would it?

I've been testing the next early release (and wow, it's nice) and I found a small defect that's triggered by the unexpected presence of a segment of dotted-line automation. The developers were all over it but it got me to thinking about these things. I've been seeing these dotted line automation envelope things for a long time and never really understood what their purpose is or how they get created. They seem to breed like bunnies. So I spent a bit of time this morning trying to find information on automation envelopes and these mysterious dotted-line segments, but I couldn't find any real discussion about the circumstances under which they are created and what purpose they serve. Can anybody point me to some documentation, or maybe have some insider knowledge?

When you created the section, how did you insure that it was from 1:01:000 to 5:01:000?

I don't know if this issue is unique to the early adopter release, but here it is anyway. I'm trying to increase the gain of a clip in a small area, but after applying the new gain automation, the waveform view shows the wrong area being increased. If I bounce it to a clip it becomes apparent that the correct area of the clip was modified and that the waveform view was incorrect. Here's a video of the draw edit. You'll have to take my word for it that the gain is actually increased in the correct place. gain.mp4

Love these tunes, I studied Mississippi John Hurt quite a few years ago now. I might still be able to play Spikedriver Blues if I give myself a few days of plunking on it. The sound is great as is the playing! I do hear some distortion on the bass notes on the first track. I don't know if it's my listening set up or the recording, but it's something you might want to check in a few different contexts (assuming you haven't already done that.) Love this stuff!

I sent it to msmcleod and I've just now invited you to the conversation, my bad.

Noel, do I need to zip up the entire project folder or is the project file sufficient? I would think the former but just want to be sure. Update: PM sent with an upload location for the project

When it happens, it happens like this: 1. Select a section in the Arranger inspector 2. Right-mouse click on the section 3. Select "Rename" 4. In the text box that appears type in the new name 5. Try to dismiss the dialog either with the return key, tabbing out or clicking elsewhere to change focus. At this point, no matter where you click on the UI, the textbox retains focus and you get the familiar "ding" sound notification from windows letting you know that you're doing something wrong. Again, this doesn't happen often, but once it does, you have to restart the app.

You sound pretty tech-savvy, so I apologize in advance if I'm telling you stuff you already know. If good DAW performance was determined by your CPU's speed and processing power and by the amount of system memory you have, none of us would have DPC latency problems. Most PC's are not built for audio production, nor are they tuned to optimize audio processing in the system. I'll bet your PC absolutely screams at web browsing, watching videos, reading email and using Microsoft Office, though, because odds are that's what it's built to be best at. If you want to get great performance as a DAW, changes in hardware and software configurations will help you get there. The built-in sound card in PC's is designed primarily for audio playback. You can find amazingly decent audio interfaces with quality ASIO drivers (that completely bypass the Windows audio driver stack) for reasonably low prices these days, many with MIDI interfaces and XLR mic and instrument inputs included. You're in a much better position to achieve the kind of audio performance you need with an audio device built for the kind of work you're doing. And I think it bears repeating, some NVidia graphics cards, particularly ones of the GTX lineage (according to net lore and my own personal experience) are often reported to be not terribly DAW friendly when it comes to DPC. I pulled my GTX960 from my system and installed a Radeon RX 580 graphics card and very nearly burst into tears when I ran Latency Mon. Seriously. I still get the sniffles when I think about it. I do hope that you find the performance you're looking for with the set up you have.

I haven't been able to get it to happen since I reported it. Once I close the program then come back in, it doesn't happen until I really need it to work.

While I'm making videos, here's an issue that's driving me quietly insane. Clicking on the drag pad on the horizontal scroll bar and moving it a tiny fraction of an inch shifts the view some 600 or so measures deep. In the video watch the time line measure markers. scroll.mp4

Here is a short video of issue #3 from my previous post. As you can see, once the copied section is dropped, all the clips in the project are packed together and shifted all the way to to beginning of the timelines. I can provide project, can you provide an upload location for it? DxDiag runs successfully on this machine. I do lots of WPF programming work which uses DirectX on this box and I've not had and DX-related display issues with it. Sonar.mp4

I love Arranger and I'm really looking forward to the multiple arrangement track feature. I have seen a few glitches with Arrange inspector and Arrange tracks in the early release that I don't recall anyone else reporting: 1. Often when removing or renaming a section in the inspector, the popup menu doesn't go away after selecting rename or delete. In such cases the rename or delete operation does complete. I've also seen this behavior when renaming a section via right-mouse click operation on the arranger track. 2. When renaming a section in the Arrange inspector, once in a great while the text box in which you type the new name does not release focus. The only way out of this is to exit and restart Cakewalk. 3. Click on a section in the arranger track. Then click and drag while holding CTRL to do a copy operation. Often it will work just fine. But once it a while it will shift around all of the clips in the project. If you select multiple sections for drag/copy, it will happen more often. Once it starts happening, I've not been able to make it work again without restarting Cakewalk. All of these are intermittent issues but #3 seems to happen often enough that I might be able to make a screen capture video of it if it's needed.

HDAudBus.sys is the high definition audio driver for your computer. Something prevented the audio device from completing it's operation in time for real time audio to run glitch free, and the issue occurred while HDAudBus code was executing so it's possible that the issue is with the software or configuration associated with that device. The trick is now figuring out what the problem really is. I'd look into (Google) issues others have had with DPC latency on the specific device you're using, perhaps also the specific system. It's likely that others with similar hardware configurations are experiencing the same problem. The DPC performance on your system is completely independent of Cakewalk, and you should see LatencyMon report any problems with audio performance due to poor DPC latency whether or not Cakewalk is using the device. There are other more generic steps you can take. For example, since you're using the Realtek audio device, you might make sure that other audio devices such as the HD audio device on your graphics card is disabled. You can do this in Device Manager. Incidentally, to be clear, I was not recommending using Realtek's ASIO driver, and I couldn't find any reference about it by @scook so I can't say whether or not I agree with his position. I have no experience using a Realtek sound card with Cakewalk, but I have used many decent USB and Firewire devices with Cakewalk and have dealt with many dropout issues before, mostly unsuccessfully until (as I said above) I replaced my old NVidia card.

I use my phone's voice recorder built-in app. I don't think it allows folder creation/navigation but that's something you could do with a file manager outside the app easily enough, and my phone has plenty of storage for that stuff. I have a Samsun S10e. The built in mic has great quality for a phone and it's more than adequate and damned handy. As for organizing, I don't do that on my phone. I load them up to my computer every couple of days and clean then off my phone. Once they're on my computer I typically spend a couple of hours going through them, tossing out the crap and organizing ones with promise into folders. It works well and it's fast and convenient. A friend of mine has an old Tascam 8 track deck that he uses. I can't imagine using that bulky old thing. There's also the Zoom devices that do allow file management. I have one of those and they're great for band rehearsals. I have one with 4 XLR inputs plus the stereo condenser mic pair mounted on the device. They sound fantastic for that, but I've found it too cumbersome for capturing those fast-moving ideas that pop into my head and then all too quickly out again. Good luck!

I finally ended up replacing my NVidia GPU with an AMD GPU after years of intermittent dropouts and running at 1024 buffers (ASIO) just to be able to get anything done. Real time monitoring? Puh-leaze. Multiple computers and audio interfaces didn't solve the problem. I had pretty much come to the conclusion that it was Cakewalk, but I wasn't going to quit using my favorite DAW. I finally realized that I'd been bringing that old NVidia graphics adapter along in every build all this time. Runs great now. Doh. Anyway, LatencyMon is your best bet to get some insight into what causes the drop outs. Obtaining, installing and running the program is easy. Let it run for some time to get a good idea of what is happening on your machine. Post your results here and you might even have someone who knows what they're talking about see what the problem is. And if possible, I recommend finding yourself an inexpensive USB audio/MIDI interface with a true ASIO driver. It will at lease eliminate the sound device as the source of the problem and I you might find that you have better results than with a built-in sound card.

Great stuff!

You definitely have something going on with you 80's covers, really enjoyed it. And my wife really likes this. She spent 80's in dance clubs so she knows good 80's music.

Great melody! Great mix! Great singing! Great pop!

I agree, great vocals that deserve to be heard!

I'm grateful you guys are chiming in! Thanks DeeringAmps-tom for your kind words, it was a bit of a scary deal for me to make that video since I've not been a solo performer before, and getting a start with music pretty late in life hasn't done much for my confidence in what I'm writing or how well I can perform it. emeraldsould-Tom, you're raising exactly the kinds of issues that I struggled with on this mix. The lead vocal and guitar were done with the same mic and are the same track, so it's unclear how I can follow your advice with ducking the guitar while singing. (Duh, unless I just play quieter, lol). Perhaps having two mics, one predominantly guitar and one mostly vocals? Again, you input is very much appreciated!

Loved this song, Lynn! You have a great rock voice, in the same family with Peter Frampton I think, and this song suits it well. Love the guitar playing wherever it sits in the mix, and the changes are great fun to anticipate. Two thumbs and two toes up!

Pretty freakin' great cover, and a very, very polished mix. Hang in there, kid, I just know you've got what it takes to make it in this biz.

Great job! Love me some Bowie.

Really nice sounds, much too soothing for the end.