Michael McBroom

I've been thinking about picking up a MOTU as well -- don't recall the model number offhand, but it sells for around $200. One thing I don't like about my Behringer is it uses ASIO only. From what I understand, the MOTU can use different audio drivers besides just ASIO. As for Focusrite, I've tried to like my 2i4, but it's dead in the water ever since I replaced a worn out USB jack. Still don't understand how soldering in a new jack could cause the device to just play dead. I like the idea of an SSD. Cheaper than buying all that other hardware, that's for sure. I'll try running LatencyMon, see if that does anything. I think I have a copy installed on this machine already. John, as I mentioned earlier, I'm still getting the distortion when I'm using my Behringer audio interface. So I don't think it's the Delta 66.

Heh, going back in time a few years don't sound so bad. But regarding your first comment above, if it were just hardware with CWbBL, then why do I have the same problem with Sonar?

I've thought of that. I've even tried running Sonar from a couple years ago to see if I'd get any different results. Nope. Same problems. Honestly I don't think it's the system hardware. I suspect either an earlier MS update or possibly my video card's audio conflicting -- but I've disabled its audio, both in the Device Manager and in the NVidia configuration utility. So I guess my theory about the HDMI card is probably not a good one. The problem suddenly appeared a couple years ago, and got steadily worse as the months passed -- which is why I suspect MS sabotage -- for my system at least. Maybe it is old and can't handle the new stuff MS tossed at it. But I will be so pissed if I buy a new MoBo and I still have the same problems. And WHY is this distortion happening only within my DAW software? That's what's got me stumped.

When I decided on the architecture of the piece I'm working on right now, I thought I was doing so to minimize any sort of MIDI issues. But they've managed to bite me anyway. Here's what I've got going on, and hopefully you can tell me what to look for. The piece of music is actually several different versions of a single piece that I've arrived at over the past couple years. Each version has five instrumental parts, except the first, which has three. The first version has a MIDI melody and two accompanying audio tracks. All of the other versions are straight MIDI. In order to maintain as much separation between MIDI instruments as I possibly could I've loaded five instances of TTS-1, each for one of the instruments: melody, keys, guitar (or something else), strings (or something else), and drums. The way I've laid it out is I've stacked each version on its own set of tracks. So I've wound up with a lot of tracks -- and a lot of measures, but there is only the briefest overlap between the tracks -- typically the last two measures of the earlier version overlap with the first two measures of the later version. Many of the tracks have the same instrument in common. If the Melody track has, let's say, piano for example, with more than one version of the tune, I'd keep the same channel number. If the melody has a different instrument, I'd select a different channel number. Same with the other tracks -- if they were the same exact instrument, I'd use the same channel, else each instrument got its own channel. Setting things up this way resulted in none of the incidences of TTS-1 having more than three channels in use in total, and none of the incidences of TTS-1 had more than one instrument being used at the same time, except for the brief two-measure overlaps. And even in these cases, the instruments are on different channels. What's happening now is a few different things. Some tracks will get stuck on a previous track's instrument within the same TTS-1, even though they're on separate channels, and these tracks are not always consecutive, that is, a track may get stuck on an instrument that was being used in an earlier version than the previous one. Some tracks lock on Piano 1 and are stuck there, but they don't show Piano 1 in the Console View -- they show the instrument that's supposed to be playing. If I reclick on that instrument it doesn't get off Piano 1. If I click on another instrument, it doesn't get off Piano 1. The only way I've been able to get it unstuck was to change the channel number. But this doesn't work permanently. Typically if I stop then start the music, it's reverted back to Piano 1. And with other instances, sometimes a track will begin to play an instrument at random that hasn't been used at all before on any track. I've checked to make sure, when there's instances where overlap occurs, that the same channel number is not being used on overlapping tracks. Other than this, I don't know what else to do. There is complete separation. I've checked several tracks' Event Lists and none of them contain any patch data. Right now, if I can't figure out why it's behaving like this, I'll have to employ the brute force method and call up the Event List for every track, and indicate its patch at the beginning of the list. That should take care of things. I hope. So, any ideas? Suggestions? If you like, I can post a copy of the CW file, but be warned. It's long. 26 minutes and 52 seconds long. Oh, and without the accompanying audio, the first version will be melody only. As I mentioned above, all subsequent versions are MIDI.

Thanks for your response, John. As for system specs, here they are -- at least what I know of them. The MoBo I bought in 2009. It uses an AMD quad-core processor. The system has 16 GB of RAM and a couple of terabytes of hard drive space, about half of which has been filled, mostly with photos and videos. My music comprises 8 albums and occupies several dozen gigs with all the associated files that have been created over the years. This old system's processor runs at 3.4 GHz, and it's always been plenty for what i do, and honestly I'd rather not have to upgrade -- mostly because it has PCI slots and I have to have at least one regular PCI slot for my sound card. Music specific: the sound card is a M-Audio Delta 66 with accompanying OMNI I/O box (acts like a 4-channel mixer with a lot of other ins-outs). This card supports 24/96, has great AD and DA converters and has never let me down. This is actually my second one. I found an unused set, including the card and the OMNI box, drivers, cords, etc., on eBay recently for cheap, so I bought it. Mostly as a backup. The original I bought 20 years ago. A couple years ago, the OMNI box went south, and I was able to pick up the "new" set for what some folks want for just the OMNI box. I went ahead and installed the unused sound card along with the new box. When the box went south, I bought a Behringer UMC404 audio interface. This has worked well for the most part, but it isn't as good as that old Delta 66. But it got the job done until I found a replacement for the M-Audio gear. I have a couple of keyboards hooked up to the machine via their USB connectors, but I seldom use them. I'm a guitarist first and foremost. The one piece of external gear I use the most is my Roland GR-33 guitar synth. This has the round MIDI plugs, so I have to use the audio interface to get its signal into the computer because there is no MIDI interface with the M-Audio gear. The system has been running Win7 since inception and I suppose is quite rickety now, since it errors out when I try to install Win10 over it. This is what I'd like to do so I don't have to do a clean install and then reinstall dozens of programs, some of which have some rather annoying copyright protection schemes associated with them, which will no-doubt cause me to beat my head against a solid surface more than once. My copy of Win10 I downloaded directly from Micro$oft's website, then burned to DVD. It seems to behave normally -- until it errors out on install. Just as an aside here, when the distortion got so bad I wasn't able to use CW at all anymore, I moved my music production over to my laptop, also an oldie from 2009. It has "only" a dual-core processor, but its performance specs are as good as a lot of new ones. The good thing about it is, it's run CW and Band in a Box without any Rice Crispies at all. So at least I have a reliable backup.

Ding ding ding! You got it John. I never usually pay attention to "Snap to Grid" so it just didn't occur to me to even look for it. But sure enough. Well, things are back to where I need them and all's good to go. Thanks again.

This is a topic I brought up maybe a couple years ago? But back then things weren't nearly as bad as they are now. So I thought I'd go ahead and mention it again, just in case somebody might have a bright idea or two why this is happening. First off, I think there's something about my computer that's causing this, but I don't have a good idea as to what the culprit is. The problem has to do with audio output. If I watch streaming video or if I play wave or MP3 files exterior to CW, everything sounds great. But when I play tunes within CW, both audio tracks and midi tracks have chronic distortion -- Rice Crispies everywhere. The kinda weird thing is, it varies. Sometimes it can be really bad -- bad enough where audio dropouts occur and it's impossible to get any work done. Other times it's rather light -- annoying but I've learned to work through it. And other times -- more rare than the others -- it behaves perfectly normally. This is an older system running Win7. I've tried to update it to Win10 but it errors out almost at the end of the installation process. So I continue to use Win7. I have a sound card that I really like -- it's always done a good job for me. But more recently I bought an audio interface, suspecting that the sound card might be the culprit. It wasn't. The problem exists with the audio interface as well. The problem first showed up a couple years ago, right about when I changed monitors to a LG 34" screen. Problem with this monitor is it is HDMI only, and my motherboard is old enough where it doesn't have an HDMI port. So I disabled the motherboard's video and installed a bare-bones card that has an HDMI port. I've always wondered if the card's audio might be corrupting CW's audio, so I did what I could to try and neutralize the problem. I went into Device Manager and disabled the card's audio. Unfortunately, this had no effect. About a month or so ago I bought a license for a cleaner sort of program called Restoro and ran it. It did what appeared to be a deep cleanse of my system and after it finished, I noticed that the distortion in CW was much less than it had previously been. Prior to running Restoro, the distortion was so heavy, CW had become unusable. So it helped some with whatever it did. One thing I did notice was that it seemed that, with each successive update my machine got from Micro$oft, the audio got worse. I'm not positive of this, but there's no question that things got worse over the past two years. With the current tune I'm working on, most of the tracks are MIDI -- there are only two audio tracks. The machine produces bursts of static every second or two. In CW, the little bars that correspond to the number of cores in my processor always jump whenever the distortion hits. It's worth noting that another piece of DAW software I use a lot -- Band in a Box -- has a similar problem. But it responds differently. If I've loaded a tune that is straight MIDI usually I don't get any distortion. But if I load a tune that has more than one audio track, I get distortion. Some tunes of mine are mostly audio tracks and they are heavily distorted. But usually within 8 bars or so the distortion disappears, and stays gone until I have to restart the tune. Then the cycle repeats. I'm convinced this same problem is affecting both DAWs, just each handles the problem differently. So anyway, there you have it. Excuse the length, but at least it's complete -- more or less. So, any ideas what might be the cause and a solution? Yeah, I know, buy a current motherboard and upgrade to Win10. That is definitely something that will happen in the near future. But until then, I'd sure like to solve this mystery.

I'm using what I believe to be the latest version of CWbBL. At least it hasn't shown that little update reminder, so I guess I'm current. I just ran into a weird situation that I've never encountered before. When I write music, I usually write at the Staff View. Just Old School, I guess. So anyway, I clicked on the 16th note icon and tried to write a group of 16ths, but the program is spacing them at 8th note intervals. I even went into the Piano Roll and tried it from there, but it wouldn't take the 16th spacing in the Piano Roll either. I had my resolution (in the Staff View: VIew>Display Resolution>1/16) set to 16ths. I increased it to 32nds, hoping that might make a difference. It didn't. I looked through a few other menus but didn't find anything helpful. I know there must be a setting somewhere that's set to what I don't want, but I don't have any idea where else to look. Help? Oh, and I tried it on multiple tracks and none of them seem to be going for the 16th spacing. So it must be some sort of global setting?

Yeah, I know, but it's complicated and I didn't want to weigh this thread down with all the quirky details. Like the fact that the original recording was done in Pro Audio 9 19 years ago. Back then I saved it as a bundle (.bun), which preserved everything, supposedly. I loaded this .bun file into CWbBL and then I recorded the Roland synth track as audio for sake of portability. I did this a few months back, but honestly I don't recall changing the sample setting to 48k. Getting old, I guess. To complicate things even more, I've been working on this tune on my laptop, using an audio interface that has MIDI ports. This current machine, my desktop, has a sound card and no MIDI ports. And I've had mixed luck using USB to MIDI converters, so I just decided not to mess with hooking the Roland up to this machine. I'm not using my laptop at the moment because it's down for the count in need of some repairs. As it was beginning to fail, I managed to back up all my CW files to a USB flash drive, which is how I got them into my desktop. So it might be a mismatch between the two systems that caused this, even though they're both running the same version of CW. But I haven't had a problem with any other files I copied over, many if not most of which also have audio data. So it's just kinda weird. I did finally get the audio track reset to 44.1k, but it was a mess. It had dropped over a semitone in pitch and it was slower. So I just deleted it.

Well, I found out what the offender was. It was an audio track that apparently had been recorded at 48k, and since I had CW set to 44.1k, this was a problem. Now, I don't understand why it didn't resolve things when I switched CW over to 48k, but oh well. Anyway, to get the tune to play, I had to delete the audio track. It was an audio recording of a MIDI track that I'd created with my Roland guitar synth, and the reason why I made it was because the Roland's MIDI track would only work when the Roland synth was on, and I wanted portability. But I was able to copy the Roland's track to another MIDI track using TTS-1 as the output device, and problem solved. I think I still liked the Roland's patch sound a bit better, but the differences are small, so I can live with TTS-1's patch.

I've already thought of this -- I'm just trying to avoid it. In fact, I have old Cakewalk archives of this tune from years ago that I can resurrect. Again, I was just trying to avoid this. But if worse turns into worst, this will be the path I will take.

Yes to all of the above, but no to ASIO4All or magix. They are not installed on this system. I even rebooted my computer just to have a clean slate when I called up the file in question. Still that same popup. I even went so far as renaming the file and saving it to a new location, just in case something might have been wonky with the last location, which caused CW to build a new folder for it. Same popup. It's worth noting that, since the last time I successfully worked on this file -- in Cakewalk -- a month ago, I have also worked on literally dozens of other music files and have had zero problems with playback. It's just this one file -- or group, including the autosaves -- that won't play back.

About the sample rate, as I mentioned, changing it had no effect. So I don't think that's it. I didn't check the audio interface control panel because nothing has changed with it. As I mentioned, I can play back other files, just not that particular one -- or group, including autosaves, as it turns out. Again, nothing's changed with respect to the system's audio device. If it had, this would have shown up as problems with other CW files, and they don't. You wrote, "in your case slow" No, it isn't slow -- it isn't playing at all. I get a pop-up with the subject message and advice to check that other songs aren't using the device and to contact CW support.

I've just run into this puzzler for the first time. When I try to play a file that I had previously been working on, I get the above message. It suggests that the device might be open in another tune -- which it isn't -- and instructs me to contact Support, but I thought I'd check in here first. You know how Cakewalk defaults to stacking up pieces you've previously worked on -- in a queue of sorts, I suppose? Well, I cleared out all the earlier pieces I'd been working on, wondering if that might make a difference. There's nothing unusual about this piece of music. In fact I had been successfully working on it when I saved it about a month ago. The file contains both MIDI and audio data. For MIDI output I'm using TTS-1. I tried playing a couple of autosaves that were still lingering around and I got the same message with them when I tried playing then. I double checked that something hadn't suddenly gone wrong with Cakewalk, and so I successfully opened and played a file I'd just been working on. To be clear, the file in question opens fine and I can navigate around in it. It just won't playback when I hit the "Play" button. I checked in Preferences to make sure nothing had changed in my audio preferences. Nothing had changed. The only oddity I've found is the tune shows it to have been developed at 48/16, although I have Cakewalk set to 44.1/16. So I went in to Preferences and changed the sampling rate to 48k. Didn't make a difference. I don't know even where to begin with this one, so I thought I'd toss it out to the forumind and see what y'all think. Any ideas? If I hit some parameter that I shouldn't have, it would have had to have been sometime during that last edit, I suppose. Well, except the autosaves, which have different save times/dates also won't playback. I dunno. I'm really stumped on this one.

Hey, thanks guys for your helpful advice. It is much appreciated. John, actually I tried the taper first with just MIDI, then I used the write function, which I'm guessing is audio? I didn't try the taper on an audio track. Bitflipper, I tried your suggestions, starting with the easiest. Read Automation was already toggled on, so I tried it both ways. DIdn't make a difference. The instruments I was attempting to control were the french horn selections in the first bank of TTS-1 -- two tracks worth -- really pretty vanilla stuff. Dunno why the program would respond to them differently. I've never used CC 11 before, so I thought I'd go ahead and give it a go. And whadyaknow? It worked! Not real clear why "expression" should handle a volume taper when "volume" doesn't. Lars, I'll check out that link. Thanks.

I've run into this before and the only solution I've found was using the brute force approach, engaging the Write Enable Parameter to cut the volume. I often apply a volume taper at the end of a piece so the sound just tapers off to nothing. Well, this piece I'm currently working on, I've activated the CC Volume control in the Piano Roll and drew the tapers -- like I always do with other MIDI tracks, even other MIDI tracks in this same piece. But for some reason, these two tracks are resistant. I even went to the brute force approach, enabling the Write function, and even it didn't reduce the volume. That was a surprise. I've never had that happen before. I'm thinking there's probably some obscure parameter that was set (accidentally) on these two tracks, which is causing this problem. But I haven't a clue what it would be, since their parameters appear identical to other tracks that are behaving normally. Got any ideas?

If your computer can take a half-height card, you might be in luck. I bought an LG 34" monitor about a year ago and had to add a video card because it is HDMI only and my computer doesn't have an HDMI port. The card I bought -- about a $50 NVidea card from Amazon -- is half-height and supports my monitor's resolution, which is "only" 2560 x 1080. Sorry, I don't recall the model. No issues with Cakewalk or anything else I've tried it with. The card has DVI and VGA ports, so you're also covered far as that goes.

I've run into this before. As Reginald mentioned, I ended up doing it that way. I create an Insert/Stereo Bus track, then select that track for output in the Console view. Then I bounce, selecting Buses as the Source Category. This is handy for another reason -- you can do additional tweaks to the combined audio tracks from this bus track, which will end up in the bounced track.

I can think of only one thing offhand, and this is something that all the versions of CW I've used do this, so it isn't unique to v.11, but I may as well mention in the hopes it might be addressed in the future. When I'm in the piano roll, for a particular track there may be all these CC events at the bottom, but only a few actually pertain to that track -- or channel. You can delete these events by clicking on the little box next to them, but they don't stay deleted. If I switch to another track, then switch back to the original, all the CC events have returned. I always prefer that, if I delete something, it stays deleted. Also, I've run into at least one situation where the volume that is controlling a channel is not associated with that channel number. I have an example where the channel's number is 1 but the CC Volume that is controlling it is 6. And I don't have a channel 6 even in use. I don't understand this.

Bend range was the solution. The GR-33 has three settings: 24, 12, and 7. It was set to 24, so I dropped it down to 12. Interestingly, it wrote the change to the patch I had selected, apparently. Just that patch? I dunno yet. So that problem seems to be licked. Now, the part is cutting in and out on me for some strange reason. If it isn't one thing . . .

The file has a track that I recorded using my Roland GR-33 guitar synth. I recorded this file back in my Pro Audio 9 days, 2001. This is just one of several dating from this time frame that exhibit this problem. When I bend a string using the GR-33, it lays the bent values (and vibrato too) as wheel events. I've determined by going into the event list and editing the wheel values that the existing values are exactly double what they need to be with CbB, and probably Sonar too, far as that goes. Honestly, I don't know if I should be posting this message here or in a forum from which I usually get support answers regarding my GR-33. That is, I dunno if there's something I've inadvertently changed with it such that it interprets these wheel values differently compared to the way it lays them down now. The GR-33 has to be active so I can hear its track at all, which is why I wonder if there might be a setting I've inadvertently changed. But to the point of editing the event lists -- is there a quicker way to change event list values besides changing each number one at a time? One file can have hundreds of wheel values that need to be adjusted, especially if I was playing with a lot of string bends and vibrato. So far, I've edited one file by hand and I'm about 10% through another with probably a couple hours at least of editing to do before I'll call this one finished.

I've been using the BT Brickwall as well -- extensively in fact. I've found that sometimes I still get clipping when I use it, so I end up turning down parts of the mix. I guess I should give the IK Brickwall a try. I have a bunch of IK stuff installed, guess I need to search through what I have. I agree with you about the saturation plug-ins and the console emulators. I have no use for the emulators, I've found. And after trying out the saturation plug-ins, I've deleted most instances of them. Seems mostly all they do is add distortion to an increased signal, which I have no use for.

I can recommend that above YouTube video. I came across it several months ago and it was a real eye-opener for me.

Thanks for your perspective, John. I think that perhaps the only reason why burnaware has worked as well as it has is because of the amount of mastering I'd already put into my songs. So it didn't have much to do. I've been using a plugin called TRacks CS Metering that provides me with a perceived loudness index as well as RMS, plus it has a couple of VU meters that are more detailed than what I get with the standard Cakewalk tracks. It also shows a readout of the file's actual frequency output. There's even a visual representation of left to right balance. I find it helpful, all in all. It gives me a decent glimpse of what's going on. So, I've been using this to monitor my Cakewalk files before I convert them to WAV for burning, which allows for me to make any last minute adjustments to the mix. Thanks for the tip on the YouLearn Loudness Meter. I'll certainly take a look at it. This whole process is still pretty much a learning experience for me, although I do feel I've come a long way.

I've been using burnaware recently instead of my old standby, CDBXP. Mostly because burnaware has one feature that CDBXP lacks. It allows the user to specify the volume balance between tracks. This is a feature that has ended up saving me a lot of time and aggravation. Previously I spent a lot of time with my mixes getting them to play at the same (or at least close) relative volumes. But burnaware takes care of this automatically. Because of this, I've used it to burn several CDs and it's worked well.