Jürgen B

This tip and explanation saved my day, thank you! I did struggle with NI Reaktor Monark which always changed the sound and did not stick to the preset - all because the mod wheel was >0 but Cakewalk reset it to 0 when playback stopped. This resulted in the desired sound when playing the first time, but changed sound for subsuquent playbacks. Turning off "Zero Controllers ..." solved the problem.

With version 2021.04 the plug-in menus were improved in many aspects, e.g., with color coded type indicators (VST2 vs. VST3) which I really like. Could the new style please be used as well in Matrix View submenu "Insert New Instrument Row", especially since duplicate VST2/VST3 instances cannot be differentiated. Thank you.

The problem is that I cannot trust the waveform anymore. If I see such a spike, I think that there is some click, pop, crackle, noise, whatever ... that I have to fix.

To add my two cents worth: technically, clipping only happens when the digital to analog converter has to create a signal at 0 dB or higher. As long as the "signal" is only floating point calculations within the computer, there is no real clipping, even if the signal is way above 0 dB. For instance, you can place a gain plugin into a track's FX rack with let's say +60 dB and another instance into the bus with -60 dB. You will hear a clean, unclipped sound. But of course, the meter on the track will go crazy and the clipping indicator goes off. I suspect that you might want to turn off the meter if your workflow only cares about gain staging at the A/D and D/A stages (which implies that you don't want to use any plugins or plugins that emulate analog gear).

In a project with imported wav file Cakewalk shows a spike in a silent section, depending on the zoom level. Both attached screenshots show the same bars of the track. The difference is one zoom step (with Alt + mouse wheel). Further zooming shows and hides these spikes again, at different positions! If this is of interest: The wav file was created by freezing a MIDI track in a different project. The rendered wav file was imported into a blank new project. I did not experience this behavior so far, so I assume it is related to the latest update 2021.06.

Hm, slightly different problem on my system: Immediately after installing and activating FatChannel XT via PreSonus Hub, the plugin worked fine within CbB. After a couple of days, I noticed that CbB checks "PreSonus VST3 Shell.vst3" on every startup, although the installation did not change. The plugin is not visible within CbB. The Cakewalk Plugin Manager doesn't show it, neither in the active nor in the excluded list. Updating CbB to 2021.06 did not change the behavior. In Reaper the plugin is available and works as desired. Any ideas?

Best improvement in this update: reorder multiple tracks simultaneously. Thank you for implementing this small yet invaluable usability enhancement!

@Noel Borthwick Thank you! Manual installation worked. First I was confused because it is a guided installation (I expected a silent installation), but the installation worked smoothly. Everything seems to be ok now. Thanks again.

Same here. BandLab Assistend doesn't download anything. It shows "Downloading... (0/0)" making no progress. Downloading from within Cakewalk works. After pressing "Install Now", a error message appears, telling me that the installer executable cannot be found. The displayed pathname is not correct, a special character in my user name (which is part of the download pathname) is corrupted. Any help would be appreciated. Thanks. Jürgen

Hi there, today I installed 2021.04 Update 1. I'm facing a problem with deleting tracks from the console view. I'm not sure if this is caused by the update or if I just didn't run into this problem so far. Situation: the project consists of many VSTis with separate MIDI and audio tracks. I set up the track view to show only the MIDI tracks and the console view to show only the audio tracks. I want to delete an empty audio track (not used by any VSTi). I select it in the console view, open the context menu and select to delete the track. Problem: The audio track does not get deleted but the selection changes to the next track. The selection change lead me to the impression that some other track may have been deleted (I asked myself if I really selected the correct track for deletion or if I unintentionally deleted a different track). As far as I can see, this didn't happen. Just nothing was deleted. After including the audio track in the track view, delete was successful when invoked from the track view.

For Solo there is the Exclusive Solo mode which can be toggled in the Control Bar's Mix module. Following this approach would provide a consistent user experience.

Not sure why, but it works again. Maybe the problem is related to bypassing some Region FX instances? Or Cakewalk had a hiccup and closing the project as well as the application eventually helped (but not the first time). After restarting Cakewalk multiple times with different projects and finally re-activating all Region FX instances in the project, the new instance of Drum Replacer showed up as desired.

Hi, with my latest project I started to use the Drum Replacer after installing it via BandLab Assistent. Since the recording of the Snare is very dynamic and Toms, Hi Hat etc. bleed into it, I wanted to deal with sections of the track separately in Drum Replacer instances on each section. It all worked fine up to five instances of Drum Replacer. But the next instance doesn't work anymore. When I create the Drum Replacer region FX, the UI opens in the Multi Dock but no waveforms are shown and no triggers found (see attached screen shot). Is there a limitations how many Drum Replacer region FX instances can be used within a project? I tried to remove the existing instances (after pulling out the MIDI tracks) but this didn't help. In this project it seems to be impossble now to create Drum Replacer instances anymore. So I expect this is rather a bug? Any help is appreciated. Thank you.

Hello Mark, Thanks for your reply. I see that my statement above was too generic ("every single-fader controller") and that I jumped to conclusions based on incorrect assumptions. Beside DAW-specific "Mackie Control" modes (but not for Cakewalk/Sonar), X-Touch One offers a "Standard" and a "User" Mackie Control mode. The device documentation implies that Standard and User mode are initially equal while the button assignment can be customised in User mode. I did some investigation with MIDI-OX between Cakewalk and the controller. In fact, in Standard mode the device sends different MIDI events depending on the current track. It looks like the device internally keeps track which of the 8 faders it currently represents. In this mode, switching between busses works fine (although there is no visual indication in Cakewalk, which bus is currently selected). In contrast, with user defined MCU button assignments, the device does not do any internal magic but always sends the same events. Setting "Select highlights track" in the Mackie Control plugin makes Cakewalk move the correct fader - in tracks. It does not work in busses, though. In summary (and with reservations), in Standard mode I can work with volume fader and pan encoder in tracks and busses. In User mode I can assign Track, Send, Flip, Edit, ... buttons to allow more parameters to be controlled by encoder and fader - but limited to tracks only. Greetings, Jürgen

What I missed to mention: Using the Mackie Control surface type, every single-fader controller faces an issue with Cakewalk by BandLab when working with busses: the channel Select button does not work for busses! You cannot select which bus to control with the fader and encoder.

Only a few weeks ago I ordered an X-Touch One and an Icon Platform Nano for evaluation. I used both devices with Cakewalk by Bandlab as type "Mackie Control". Other DAWs behave differently (for sure). Disclaimer: I'm a beginner, it's the first time I worked with control surfaces. As experienced MCU user you might focus on other aspects than I did. At first sight, the Platform Nano has advantages over the X-Touch One. In common, they both have a fader and an encoder above it on the left side of the device. The Platform Nano has 4 more encoders at the top (above the display). They are layered (toggle with button "5-8"), so you virtually have the 8 encoders of the MCU. This helps with editing parameters, especially in single channel mode, because you can manipulate 4 different values at once. With the X-Touch One, you have to step through each single parameter. On the other hand, the leftmost encoder behaves strange. At least in my tests, it always acted on the first of the 8 current tracks (first WAI track), no matter which track was selected. The fader always acts on the selected track. In other words, the encoder and fader most of the time act on different tracks. To me, this was very confusing and annoying. It also means, that the "fader encoder" duplicates the first "display encoder". There might be ways to change the behaviour of the encoder to follow the fader, but I didn't figure it out. Let's talk about the buttons. The X-Touch One provides a subset of MCU buttons. Basically, it has the lower haft of the MCU (Marker, Nudge, ... and below) and 6 function buttons (F1..F6). All the other button groups (Vpot Assign, Global View, Modifiers, Automation, Utilites) are missing. But there is a user mode where you can re-map each button of the X-Touch One to behave as any desired MCU button. This mapping is done direcly at the device, no software is needed. As with the MCU, none of the buttons are layered (beside the arrow keys for Zoom). The Platform Nano has a column of 6 buttons on the right which correspond to the Vpot Assign buttons of the MCU. In addition there are 8 big buttons (2x4) layered with 5 round, coloured buttons. This results in 40 virtual buttons (the MCU has 41). The Sonar overlay looks very crammed and the grouping to each layer is not always plausible. In fact, the layering has issues: Modifiers M1..M4 are on the purple layer (together with Aux, Main, Undo, Redo), while e.g., Marker, Loop, Punch are on the blue layer. This makes it impossible to press M2-Loop (Set Loop to Selection) or M2-Punch (Set Punch to Selection). The Platform Nano comes with a mapping software that allows you to redefine the buttons. So it is possible to define a reasonable button set on the various layers. Anyway, the out-of-the-box experience did not convince me. Touch and feel (Platform Nano was a B-Stock device): X-Touch One: fader moves gently, encoder is a bit plasticky Platform Nano: initial resistance when starting to move the fader, encoders very stiff (requires some force to move them) Buttons similar on both devices with solid and decent feel. I decided to go with the X-Touch One because it sticks to the principles of the MCU and because of the encoder/fader mismatch. In addition, the X-Touch One is cheaper. Hope this helps, Jürgen

Please add a gain control to the ProChannel EQ to allow level matching. This makes A/B comparisons easier and allows bypassing the EQ without changing volume.

Download starts correctly when add-on is selected in addition.

It looks like the problem was not related to VirtualBox. As far as I remember, when I installed CbB the first time, it was possible to install only the application without any add-on. Now, it looks like I have to select at least one add-on (I used Theme Editor) in order to get the download of the main application started.

Hi, there is this aged digital mixer I need to use for recording. It only provides drivers for Windows 7 but not for Windows 10. This is why I want to install Cakewalk by Bandlab in a VirtualBox with Windows 7 as guest system. The system works, it has network connectivity, I was able to download and install BandLab Assistent, but the installation of Cakewalk doesn't work. After clicking the Install button the button disappears but there seems to be no network traffic at all. Does anyone have experience with installing Cakewalk by Bandlab into VirualBox? Do I need special network settings to be able to download the installation files? Any help would be appreciated. Thanks. Jürgen

There is no visual indication if a plugin has sidechain inputs and whether something is routed to them. It would be very helpful to see which sources are sent to the secondary inputs of a plugin. So far, it's only possible to check routing from source to target by looking at the sends of all tracks and busses. Such a feature would make it much easier to verify that the plugin is set up correctly and gets the desired input from the desired sources. In the GUI, this could be placed somewhere in the common header section of a plugin window (where bypass, preset, learn, SRW, pin, ... are located). Even better would be the possibility to establish a new send from the target plugin, i.e., to select the track which should send to the sidechain input of the plugin.