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Here's an odd one. Latest version of Cakewalk on Win 10. When I open up a vst or Pro Channel module the UI stays frozen when playing back audio or MIDI. Examples that come to mind are Drumagog and the floating EQ of the Pro Channel. Is there a tweak somewhere I'm missing?

A friend of mine is a broadcast engineer. They use the cloud version of Audition of 58 different workstations throughout their company. They tried to negotiate a deal with Adobe to give them a blanket cost since there are so many licenses in use. Adobe told them "NO". The costs to my friend's company would have been staggering annually so they have dropped the program completely. If you ask me (and you didn't) this a shitty way for Adobe to treat customers.

Thanks for the offer Noel. I have 3 minidumps.......how do I send them to you?

If it's only larger projects crashing CbB, I'd test your system's RAM. It may also be tied to Drumagog. I've had that particular plug-in crash Cakewalk, Samplitude, as well at various times. My issue is when closing the program or the project. It plays fine, I save things, close out and the program hangs until I shut off my audio device's power then power on again. After that I can restart the program. Happens almost 6 out 10 times with big projects where Drumagog is in use. I may also try Craig Anderton's tip from way back of killing the HD Audio driver tied to my video card in Device Manager to see if that helps One other thing, I used Azlow's Sonar to Reaper converter and ported a few projects over and I don't have the shutdown problem even with Drumagog. But that obviously doesn't bring over the Pro Channel or effects chains.

Glad....well not glad 'cause it sux......to see I'm not the only one with this issue. I have 3 different devices on my system (running Win 10). A Behringer UMC 1820, and old M Audio 2496 PCI card and Macke Blackbird Firewire interface. Any large project that I have, large meaning over 20 tracks and a lot of Pro Channel stuff will have this problem. I have tried with all three audio devices individually and it happens regardless. Smaller projects are fine. This issue is with both Platinum and Cakewalk.

I don't like the frequent updates though, this seems to be something unique to Sonar users, who expect one a month and think that is a good thing If you were a SONAR user before the "Great Panic of 2017" you got used to this schedule for a few years. I think it's great the Noel & Co. still do updates on what seems a more quarterly basis, but I do like monthly updates for bug fixes etc. vs. feature updates. I'd rather have stability vs. a bunch of features I may or may not use. As for the program's popularity. Who really cares? It works, it's still here, it doesn't look to be going away anytime soon. This is great news for my work (commercials and post production) since we have almost 16 years of projects on back-up. If we did have to switch DAWS it would have been a major problem because we often have to go to projects from several years ago.

Several people I know have had similar issues recently. My answer is a little app called Shutup Windows 10. https://www.oo-software.com/en/shutup10 It blocks the updates. I do update my Win 10 PC from time to time but usually wait until the cycles have run their course and the bug fixes are implemented.

I gave a seminar about mixing at a university last week, and showed the tempo track extraction feature in CbB and some of the mixing features, as well as the Harmonic Editing in Studio One and the Reason instruments. With CbB being free, I'd bet that a lot of the attendees went home and downloaded it so they could use some of the CbB-exclusive features I mentioned. Had a similar experience last year. Did a class at a local college in broadcasting and radio production using Cakewalk, Adobe Audition, and Reaper. A lot of the students were initially enthused when I told them Cakewalk was now a free DAW. But that was tempered by the fact that a lot of them use MACs. Part of the curriculum requires that they take classes in sound design. Those were all taught on Pro Tools. It surprised me how most of them even as 18 & 19 year olds did not like using the program. One big change that has happened in recent years is that a lot of the instructors now let the students use their DAW of choice for projects and work outside of class, In fact one teacher there openly encourages it. We are at a time where it's good to have all these tools at our disposal.

I guess I would now qualify as a Reaper fanatic since the Great Panic of November of 2017. That being said we still and will always use either SONAR or Cakewalk at work. For what we do, nothing can beat its workflow. I have gotten very good with Reaper and been able to get its workflow (for my needs) close to that of Cakewalk, but never a perfect match to where there a few things that require an extra click or workaround. As to the whether or not Cakewalk is gaining ground, it reminded me of when our company merged with a larger broadcast company. Corporate did a survey of the producers in each market for everyone's software of choice. Cakewalk (then Sonar) was barely mentioned. I was surprised how many producers chose Pro Tools, especially given that Cakewalk is far more expedient when doing projects that need to be competed quickly. We're not exactly doing the type of work that would even warrant Pro Tools......simply put, it's overkill for what we need. Some of it is what your familiar with. I deal with another broadcast company that will be ending their relationship with Adobe due to the license fees for Audition. I told their people about Cakewalk and it being free yet they chose to switch to Reaper and hired me to create a workspace and theme to make it mimic Audition in single track mode. I think they would have been better off learning Cakewalk, but they wanted to stick with what they knew. Personally I have used or owned Pro Tools, Samplitude, Studio One, Ableton, Tracktion, Reason (used to teach it) and even an LE version of Cubase. Currently I use Reaper at home for all my projects, its stability is a huge factor but that's another thread. But I always come back to Cakewalk at some point for other work. Again for workflow and I love the ease of use of the Pro Channel.

I've had surprisingly good performance from a Behringer UMC 1820 going on 2 years. It's the big brother to the 404 mentioned upthread. I had a bad experience with a Scarlet 18i20 and never looked back once I got the Behringer. They did a major driver update about a year ago and that had helped. It also works fine in a USB 2.0 or 3.0 port. One thing I did on my machine was ad a PCIe card for additional USB ports. On a lot of machines the main chipset handles all the USB stuff and on older and slightly slower PCs this can hurt performance. By adding in the PCIe card (which is USB 3.0) for my USB interface all the number crunching is handled there and then passed on to the chipset. I noticed an improvement right away with big project loads and low latency. It also eliminated any of that occasional digital noise some systems get when files or effects are being rendered.

What I've learned after over a year is that Cakewalk is still a damn good DAW and probably has the best workflow right out of the box. Does it have quirks? Yes, but all programs do. The menus on Samplitude were a mess, they also took out the ability to organize your vsts with Pro X3. I need DirectX support for 3rd party editors like Adobe Audition which we rely on heavily in the broadcast world for meta data. Neither Cubase nor Studio One or even Pro Tools had that. Cakewalk does (as does Reaper and Samplitude). The list can go on. So while no one DAW will ever be everything to everybody, Cakewalk comes pretty close. I have moved on in a lot of ways but will always come back. At work we have 18 years of projects from SONAR 1 all the way up. As long as the program runs and I don;t get fired, I'll use it.

Yes the default UI for Reaper is UGLY. No way to sugar coat that. But there are plenty of free themes on their website that look great. The one I use looks like a cross between SONAR & Pro Tools. It took me a solid week to get to where I could record and edit, but once you "get" how the program works things speed up with workflow. I will never completely drop Cakewalk, this June will mark 20 years of use since Pro Audio 8 for me. But for my studio and bigger projects, Reaper is now my DAW of choice.

Demoed Studio One, Cubase, Reaper, Samplitude. Ended up buying Samplitude Pro X3 because of the price, but found it to be a resource hog on my machine. Ended up sticking with Reaper. I still use Cakewalk at work and probably always will, but for studio and band use, Reaper has taken over. It was not an easy transition, Reaper is HARD to learn, but it runs incredibly smooth on my system under heavy load. Can't say that about Samplitude or even Cakewalk.......I'm running Windows 95 on an Intel Pentium II with 64 MBs of RAM.....Ok that was a bad joke.