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Tim Flannagin

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Posts posted by Tim Flannagin

    Shortcut for opening VST on Instrument Track

    in Feedback Loop

    Posted

    I have finally set up my Nektar P6 to run Cakewalk in a good way. However, there is one exception that would be immensely helpful for us ITB guys. I would like to see a shortcut (key binding, alt + key, don't care) to open the Instrument VST on a selected Instrument Track. It would really make the world a better place. Currently the only way I can find to do this is by clicking the mouse over the Instrument Icon. This means that it's one of the few things I can't assign to a controller function.

    • Great Idea 2

    2020.05 Feedback

    in Cakewalk by BandLab

    Posted · Edited by Tim Flannagin

    I just wanted to thank the Bakers and Noel for all the hard work. About a year ago, I gave up on Cakewalk. After working with all the usual helpers on this forum including a great list of suggestions from Alexey, I was unable to get CW to run in a stable way.

    As happens about yearly (as far as I can tell) I got the urge to try CW again. I installed the latest version (2020.01 at that time) and without much trouble, I was able to begin working in a stable environment. I have updated as they became available and have been continually amazed at the quality and improvements being rolled out. I did notice on the latest update that it was necessary to tweak the buffer settings on my Delta 1010LT initially to stop the program from experiencing  Audio Dropouts, but interestingly enough, returning it to the original settings later seemed to work as well. Not sure what was going on there. Bottom line is that CW is working well on a 2011 vintage Dell T5400 2 X Xeon Windows 10 system that couldn't run it reliably before. 

    On another note, thanks for the Arranger function! This is very similar to the "Regions" functionality in Reaper and one of by favorite things to use. Keep up the good work and thanks again!

    • Thanks 1

    System optimization, tuning and tweaking thread

    in Cakewalk by BandLab

    Posted

    Quote
    11 hours ago, Starship Krupa said:

    For those posting and for those reading: we're all just users, nobody speaks for BandLab, and it's anecdotal. Tuner beware, YMMV. My hope is that perhaps some of what we post here will eventually replace the out-of-date suggestions in the current documentation, but for now, it's just us.

    We already have conflicting opinions, which is great.

    +1 on this statement.

    There are so many configurations out there that one man's fix might be another's downfall. I agree with the "proceed with caution" sentiment. In my case, the DAW machine in question is a hodgepodge of parts accumulated over several years. Most are obsolete in one way or another. That's just how I roll.

    So to the noob, proceed with caution and most of all, make sure you understand what was said. Perception is a funny thing with reading these suggestions! Make sure you know what was being suggested, but perhaps even more than that, consider the context of the suggestion.

     

    • Like 1

    System optimization, tuning and tweaking thread

    in Cakewalk by BandLab

    Posted

    Good thread. I wasn't aware of the Microsoft real time scanning thing. Changes shall be made this afternoon. While on the subject of Anti-Virus / Malware scanning programs, if you are running McAffee  or Nortons, just get it off your machine NOW. You don't need it. These programs are worse on a DAW machine than an actual virus! I had issues all last year with audio dropouts and the machine bogging so badly that the screens would stop updating. I made 4 changes that completely changed the stability of my machine when running CW.

    1. Removed ALL McAffee products and started using the build in Windows anti-virus solution.
    2. Removed ALL Nvidia drivers from my machine and reverted to using the stock Windows display drivers. This includes removing that pesky high definition audio driver that Nvidia installs.
    3.  I was running a wireless NIC in my machine because I was too lazy to run a hard wire to my building NIC. I removed the wireless card along with all of the drivers and reverted to using the built in NIC on a wired connection.
    4.  I swapped out the system drive for an SSD and rearranged my files so that the CW audio has its on dedicated drive.

    Bottom line is that I never have an issue now. After swearing that I'd never go back to CW, here I am. My changes along with the improvements made to the program by the Bakers in the last year have completely changed my mind.

    My specs are in my signature and you can see that I'm not exactly running a state of the art rig, but it's back to being rock solid with these few changes.

    • Like 1

    Cakewalk by Bandlab Issues / Fustrations

    in Q&A

    Posted

    12 hours ago, azslow3 said:

    While many things can be tweaked so Sonar/CbB can run fine, expecting it can work as most performance optimized DAW to the date (I mean REAPER) is hopeless. One responsible for fluent operations with small buffers feature, the anticipative processing,  simply does not exist in the Cakewalk engine.

    But it should be possible to make CbB working. With bigger buffer size and less plug-ins, but still. When I think I have troubles, I normally start with my personal list: http://www.azslow.com/index.php?topic=395.0

     

     

    23 hours ago, RBH said:

    One game changer for me was tweaking the  ( mix thread count ). I'm using an Appollo interface and I presumed that using all cores was the  most efficient way to process. But I had to reduced the number of cores to 6 before all was well. I presumed that maybe the Appllo required core for it's internal processing. I don't really know but - I luckily found a very old thread on the forum that eluded to this and sure enough that was the key. I don't know enough about how this all works - but you might try to see if it helps. Hopefully it couldn't hurt.

     

    On 1/24/2019 at 11:37 AM, razor7music said:

    Check your buffer size too, in the audio controls. I'm not in front of my DAW or I would post a screen capture.

    I love, love low latency, and I used to push the low buffer to the point where I would have similar cracking symptoms like you describe, and I'd have to increase a little with the buffer size. Sometimes you have to play with the buffer size until you find just the right balance of performance.

    Might be worth a try.

    Good luck!

     

    On 1/24/2019 at 11:29 AM, scook said:

    There are a few things about the AUD.INI. None of which appear to big performance issues but each machine is different.

    The project and picture cache are on the system drive. Given the machine has multiple drives, it may be better to put these elsewhere. This may already be done with directory junctions. Can't tell from AUD.INI entries. If possible put the picture cache on a non-system drive that does not contain project audio.

    I use a regular HD for my project audio and needed a little larger DiskBufSize.  I double the default to 512.

    UseMMCSS is set to 0. The default is 1 and the help advises to leave it at 1. Sometimes the help is not accurate but it may be worth testing the default value.

    FileBitDepth is set to 16. This is not a performance issue but most would recommend projects record bit depth of at least 24.

    ExtraPluginBufs is set to 0. With 32GB of RAM it can't hurt to give a little extra memory to plug-ins. I changed this to 32.

    DropoutMsec is set to 250. I increased this on my PC to 750.

     

    With the exception of UseMMCSS and FileBitDepth, I cannot recommend my values for any machine but my own. These just stand out as differences from my config.

     

     

    Guys, I appreciate all your help. I've either verified or implemented most of the changes you've suggested along with going through Alexey's  recommendations. I've used Latency Mon and gotten validation that the machine is good enough to run as a Daw without dropouts. I've run a project with resource monitor up, and never reached over a 50% CPU load. The downside is that on the test project, I still have the issue with little improvement. So at this point I'll conclude my effort and carry on. Again, thanks for the help. I've learned a lot from you all this week.

    Cakewalk by Bandlab Issues / Fustrations

    in Q&A

    Posted

    53 minutes ago, azslow3 said:

    While many things can be tweaked so Sonar/CbB can run fine, expecting it can work as most performance optimized DAW to the date (I mean REAPER) is hopeless. One responsible for fluent operations with small buffers feature, the anticipative processing,  simply does not exist in the Cakewalk engine.

    But it should be possible to make CbB working. With bigger buffer size and less plug-ins, but still. When I think I have troubles, I normally start with my personal list: http://www.azslow.com/index.php?topic=395.0

     

    Thank you for the information Alexey. I will look over your list this weekend and see if there is anything I've missed. At this point, I suspect that it's related to the multi-cpu configuration I'm running. However, that is purely speculation after trying a multitude of other tweaks. I don't see my hardware configuration changing anytime soon, so the answer at the end may be that I stick with the DAW which can best take advantage of it.

    Cakewalk by Bandlab Issues / Fustrations

    in Q&A

    Posted

    4 hours ago, scook said:

    There are a few things about the AUD.INI. None of which appear to big performance issues but each machine is different.

    The project and picture cache are on the system drive. Given the machine has multiple drives, it may be better to put these elsewhere. This may already be done with directory junctions. Can't tell from AUD.INI entries. If possible put the picture cache on a non-system drive that does not contain project audio.

    I use a regular HD for my project audio and needed a little larger DiskBufSize.  I double the default to 512.

    UseMMCSS is set to 0. The default is 1 and the help advises to leave it at 1. Sometimes the help is not accurate but it may be worth testing the default value.

    FileBitDepth is set to 16. This is not a performance issue but most would recommend projects record bit depth of at least 24.

    ExtraPluginBufs is set to 0. With 32GB of RAM it can't hurt to give a little extra memory to plug-ins. I changed this to 32.

    DropoutMsec is set to 250. I increased this on my PC to 750.

     

    With the exception of UseMMCSS and FileBitDepth, I cannot recommend my values for any machine but my own. These just stand out as differences from my config.

     

     

    Thanks for the feedback Scook. I'll give these suggestions a go. 

    Cakewalk by Bandlab Issues / Fustrations

    in Q&A

    Posted · Edited by cheap_guitar

    10 hours ago, scook said:

    CbB will use all the CPUs made available by the OS. One the thing I noticed about the Xeon E5420 is its slow clock speed. This could be an issue. That said, WRT to CbB settings, in preferences:

    A 2X Xeon 5420 system running at 2.5ghz might be too slow!? I can take the same project, pull it over to Reaper using Alexy's plugin and the project plays perfectly. I can have 20 tracks all with their own plugins (Soundspot included) and NEVER worry about issues of the kind I've seen in trying to get CW to run. It makes no sense to me that the two programs would run so differently on the same machine. If BOTH programs ran poorly, then I might agree that it was the machine, but being able to run the same project in one DAW but not the other tells me the issue lies somewhere else. CW has some really nice features, and I ran it exclusively for over 20 years in it's various forms, so I'm really puzzled and disappointed by this experience. Ok, enough of my venting. And for the record I appreciate you all taking time to give this a look. It does mean a great deal to me that this community is so willing to assist.

    Here is the relevant portion of my AUD.INI file:

    [Aud]
    DataDir=C:\Cakewalk Projects\Audio Data
    PictureDir=C:\Cakewalk Projects\Picture Cache
    PicCacheMB=500
    PicCacheZoom=128
    PicCacheLevels=2
    EnablePicCacheThreads=1
    ComputePicturesWhilePlaying=1
    CopyOnImport=1
    ReadCache=0
    WriteCache=0
    EnableCacheWriteThru=1
    VolMethod=1
    PanMethod=1
    DiskBufSize=256
    DiskRecBufSize=256
    ExtraDiskBuffers=2
    DitherAlgorithm=0
    ZeroFillMethod=2
    RecordPreAllocSeconds=0
    ZeroFillDB=300
    FlushWriteBeforeRead=0
    FlushMultiple=1
    DefaultEqPosition=0
    DefaultAudSnapOfflineStretchMethod=11
    DefaultAudSnapOnlineStretchMethod=12
    RadiusStretchingPitchCoherence=50
    RadiusStretchingPhaseCoherence=50
    DefaultVocalSyncOfflineStretchMethod=7
    DefaultVocalSyncOnlineStretchMethod=12
    RealtimePreroll=0
    SuspendPluginsOnBounce=1
    [Wave]
    DefaultSampleRate=44100
    DriverID=0
    WaveInID=0
    OpenInputFirst=0
    SmpteMode=1
    TimingOffsetMsec=0.000000
    TimingOffsetBuffers=0
    LatencyMsec=11
    BounceBufSizeMsec=0
    AlwaysStreamAudioThroughFx=1
    MaxInputChannels=16
    MaxOutputChannels=16
    ThreadSchedulingModel=2
    TransDetectorModel=1
    EnableMixThreads=1
    MixThreadCount=0
    EnableSetThreadIdealProcessor=1 (I'll assume 1=True)
    EnablePluginLoadBalancing=1
    MinPluginLoadBalancingBufferSamples=128
    CSUseSpin=1
    AllowOfflineRenderMixThreads=1
    UseMMCSS=0
    MMCSSThreadPriority=2
    MMCSSTaskKey=Pro Audio
    FreeMemOnUnload=1
    AlwaysOpenAllDevices=0
    MinimizeDriverStateChanges=1
    RemoveDCOffset=0
    EnableAsioBufferSwitchTimeInfo=1
    EnableDeviceOutputLatencyCompensation=1
    UseHardwareSamplePosition=1
    BitsPerSample=24
    FileBitDepth=16
    RenderBitDepth=32
    ImportBitDepth=0
    ExtraPluginBufs=0
    MixDezipperUsec=50
    GapDezipperUsec=500
    WaveInBuffers=8
    WaveOutBuffersMME=4
    WaveOutBuffersKS=2
    MeterFrameSizeMS=40
    SyncMaxDriftMsec=2
    SyncDivisor=8
    ProfiledMME=0
    ProfiledKS=0
    ProfiledWASAPI=0
    UseWDMDmaForWASAPI=1
    LinkSendPan=0
    LinkPFSendMute=0
    StopOnEmptyPlayQueue=0
    KsUseInputEvent=0
    WaveOutExtraBuffers=1
    AutomationDecimationMsec=50
    EnableSSEMixing=1
    ThumbnailCacheSize=100
    ManageASIOThreadPriority=1
    EnableLiveADCRecalc=1
    UseAlias=0
    DropoutMsec=250
    StartFadeMsec=0
    StopFadeMsec=0
    PanLaw=0
    PanLawCompatMode=0
    DisableIMDuringPlay=0
    ShowMultiChannelInputs=1
    ShowMultiChannelOutputs=1
    MaxPreviewMsec=300000
    EnableWasapiDSP=1

     

    Cakewalk by Bandlab Issues / Fustrations

    in Q&A

    Posted

    All of the power settings are in High Performance mode . Both the minimum and maximum processor states are set to 100%. A question for anyone that knows:

    Is CW able to utilize multiple CPUs? Is there a setting I should tweak? All 8 cores are showing in the performance meter of CW.

    Cakewalk by Bandlab Issues / Fustrations

    in Q&A

    Posted · Edited by cheap_guitar

    For the past couple of weeks I've been trying to get Cakewalk by Bandlab to run in a good way on my DAW machine. This is after almost a year of using Reaper as my main DAW. Cakewalk appeals to me due to familiarity and some pretty slick features such as Pro Channel, which I always loved.

    My experience so far hasn't been as good as I'd hoped. I've had issues with crackling audio while using certain plugins, at least one flat out crash, crackling audio on a track that had a section which was copy / pasted. Just a lot of random stuff. I found that Automap (which worked with legacy Cakewalk) no longer seems to work properly. Just a lot of annoying issues.

    These are issues that I really haven't had with Reaper. Same soundcard, same drivers, same plugins, better performance all the way around. So, I find it hard to believe that the machine has any real issues. Granted, it's not the latest and greatest on all fronts. Some of the components are getting quite old. However, the performance issues between CWbB versus Reaper are pretty eye opening.

    Now that brings up my question: I know a great number of people are happily using CW on a daily basis with no big issues. What am I missing here? Is is such a trick to properly configure the darned program? I didn't have to jump through hoops like this in the past. I was running SPLAT on a Quad Core Intel machine with 8gb of ram not long ago. I'm running dual Xeons with 32gb and 5.75 freaking tb of HDD spread over 4 drives for pete's sake! I don't understand.

    For the record, I live and breathe computers on a daily basis, so configuration and programming is my bread and butter.

    Any ideas are appreciated.
    Signed,

    Frustrated in Louisianastan. (I'm a multi core squirrel is a single core world)

    • Like 1

    Is 192kHz hi-res audio recording in studio worth it?

    in The Coffee House

    Posted

    4 hours ago, pwalpwal said:

    yeah but they're listening to the the master encoded to mp3/whatever, so pre-encoding should be as hi-res as possible, and avoid transcoding... having said that, we've always listened to, for example, abbey road mastered stuff on our cheap hi-fi's, so what's the difference really? that's why we check the final version on multiple systems :)

    Yep, I agree. It's funny though, I spend a lot of time getting my stuff tracked so that it's the highest quality I can produce. I check and double check through my AKG Studio grade headphones. Next I tweak while listening on the BX5a monitors, listen on my Kenwood home studio for a bit and export the file. Then I listen to the results through my cheap earbuds playing while attached to my cellphone, and through the stereo in my funky OLD pickup truck. If the mix can't pass the cheap headphone and funky old pickup truck test, it's back to the drawing board. I realize that somewhere in the world, someone will actually listen to my music under ideal conditions, so it's that possibility that makes me take the time to try and get everything else right I guess.

    Arranging entire sections of a piece of music

    in Q&A

    Posted · Edited by cheap_guitar
    Englishing..

    2 hours ago, Base 57 said:

    I place markers for each section. Put the cursor at the top of the timeline (it changes to a magnifying glass) between two markers and double click to select a region. Then ripple edit to move parts around.

    Thanks! I'll give that a try. It doesn't sound too dissimilar to Reaper's solution.

    Arranging entire sections of a piece of music

    in Q&A

    Posted · Edited by cheap_guitar

    When legacy Cakewalk went defunct, I started using Reaper as my new DAW. One of the features I really love is the ability to set a time selection from a set of markers and then create a region from the time selection. Once you have your regions defined (Intro, Verse 1, Chorus, etc) it's very easy to duplicate or rearrange entire sections. I realize that Cakewalk doesn't have the exact same functionality, but I'm wondering how other users handle that within the current program? I'd welcome your tips and tricks.

    I'm really trying to get back into Cakewalk due to the fact that I have so much time with it.

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