AdK Studios

58 minutes ago, AdK Studios said:

They can't be edited too, unless we add more nodes in between the two nodes.

 @Will_Kaydo I already said what you are trying to show us. But, Cakewalk might be the only "professional DAW" in which the producer has to do that much to get there.
We can't control how much of a curve it should be. Adding nodes does not necessarily make the curves smooth. Also, with this method, if we wanna change the degree of the curve after a while, we will have to deal with all the additional nodes that we added for the "perfect curve"
The goal of the suggestions is to improve Cakewalk, not find workarounds.

Anyway, thank you...

11 hours ago, Will_Kaydo said:

He is referring to a "control point" that typically defines a continuous automation lane.

Sorry, but that wasn't what I was trying to say. My terminology must have been confusing. My apologies.

13 hours ago, Noel Borthwick said:

I'm not sure what you mean by Automation Curve Point.

Right now, we are limited to 4 types of curves in automation. One of them is jump and another is linear, leaving only two actual curves, available between two nodes (fast or slow). They can't be edited too, unless we add more nodes in between the two nodes.

The following is what I meant by automation curve point. My terminology might not have been right.

Linear should be able to do the S curves with that point.
Other curves that can be considered to be revealed on a right click are S Curve and Bezier curve; These are not actually necessities. Just wanted to put it out there.

And it will also be great to have this "curve points" on the fades of audio clips.

3 hours ago, Noel Borthwick said:

BTW did you you try the change with sharp cutoffs like you show in your video?

I didn't check that. But, I'm pretty sure thats taken care of with this fix. I was actually holding back on the automation because of this issue. Since, its been solved, I'll try making an extremely automation influenced genre soon. After all, that is the best method of testing.

3 hours ago, Noel Borthwick said:

Does it resolve the issues you saw where mixdown would be different from what you were hearing as well?

This does not always happen. Its a 1/2 probability case. I have been keeping the sharp jumps a bit early than required, to compensate that. From now on, I don't have to. Will let you know how it goes after a while.

3 hours ago, Noel Borthwick said:

Let me know if there are any remaining problems you notice with automation.

I had problems while trying to Copy Special. Will note them during my testing. I have also be making notes on the things that I notice that can be improved.
As of now, these are the first three suggestions I have written down:

1. Automation Curve Point to control the curve. Right now, we have to right click and can only choose between Jump, Linear, Fast and Slow. (Can also be considered for audio clip fades.
2. Duplicate the selected automation by CTRL + D (Like any clip)
3. Copy the selected automation by holding down CTRL and mouse drag.

Wrote those down just in case if they will be considered soon. There will be a separate post in this forum focused on automation improvement suggestions soon.

3 hours ago, Noel Borthwick said:

Perhaps once you get a build with the improvements you can do another video showing how you use CbB in your electronic music productions  

I already have around 11 videos showing music production on 10 subgenres of EDM. Here is the playlist.
Here is the entire playlist with production of other genres. The early ones might look beginner-ish, 'cus I was a beginner back then.
I haven't mentioned the problems I have been going through to get to the final result in those videos. That is one of the reasons I had to make the last video. To stay true to my viewers. And also as a desperate attempt to keep using CbB, by getting the attention of Bandlab.

I was wondering if I should make a video showing the fix that you shared. But decided to just share it as a youtube post, since you said the following.

11 hours ago, Noel Borthwick said:

I am also considering some changes that should make it independent of the decimation frequency for a future update.

Oh, I would like to mention something I noticed.
In that video, I had asked the viewers to comment down their problems with Cakewalk. One of the issues that popped up repeatedly was the absence of a sampler.

Even though not deal breakers, I'll be posting a few suggestions that I think Cakewalk needs, to be "up-to-date". If and when those features get implemented, I might do a video stating Cakewalk as THE best free DAW.

Cheers

-AdK

1 hour ago, Noel Borthwick said:

Please try lowering the AutomationDecimationMsec in prefs to something like 5 msec and try your test.

Yes this worked. Thank you so much.

I'm still hoping for the MIDI clip outlines of adjacent clips to be seen. But, its not a deal breaker. Since the main issue that I had with Cakewalk is fixed now, I have changed the video to unlisted (only a person with the link can view), in case the developers want to check it for any reference.

2 hours ago, Noel Borthwick said:

I am also considering some changes that should make it independent of the decimation frequency for a future update.

This might be something very much necessary, as I found another producer who switched away from Cakewalk because of the automation issue. The video is in hindi. At 2:10 he is talking about the slow response of automation. (The first issue he mentioned, was happening because he probably had MIDI output enabled on instrument tracks which was being picked up by other instrument tracks.)

Thanks again, for fixing the issue, that might have made me switch the DAW.

8 hours ago, Noel Borthwick said:

Right the reason DAW’s dont provide it is because its not the traditional use of stems. Stems by definition are in isolation.
You basically want the equivalent of a track solo and bounce macro.

I understand. May be someone might make a CAL function to do that. I might try it if and when I can code a CAL script

8 hours ago, Noel Borthwick said:

As far as your audio setup goes we don’t actively test or support ASIO4All. It is not a native ASIO driver and is simply wrapping WDM. 
I suggest getting a pro audio interface with good ASIO drivers. There are many inexpensive interfaces available such as those from Focusrite.

I'm actually disappointed to know that Cakewalk needs an audio interface to produce basic automated output with accuracy. The other 5 DAWs in the same system (without an audio interface) automated without any issue. Hope you found those outputs in the project that I submitted.

For the record, I did test out the other Audio Driver Modes { WDM/KS, WASAPI Exclusive, WASAPI Shared, MME (32bit) } with Cakewalk.

Let me share a personal view.

A lot of newbies will try out Cakewalk just because its free. I tried if for the same reason when I was a newbie. They necessarily won't be able to get an audio interface just so that Cakewalk can automate properly. This might turn them away from Cakewalk, making them look into the other free options.

I have been making videos involving production of different genres of music with Cakewalk. I had to limit my automation because Cakewalk couldn't handle it. I usually don't show the troubles I go through to get to the final result. But, when I share those videos, these are some of the responses I get

1. That Pro Channel looks interesting
2. I have tried Cakewalk, but found the MIDI editing to be clunky
3. I have tried Cakewalk, but the automation is bad (not the actual output)
4. Cakewalk is pretty good for recording and mixing, not for production

I just wanted to share what I was hearing as a Cakewalk "Youtuber".

Thanks anyway, for taking your time to look into these issues. Have a great day, sir.
-AdK

4 hours ago, Noel Borthwick said:

We’ll look into it for the future as well a mode to filter to selected data. CbB’s PRV is already very powerful to filter appropriate data if you show the pane on the right.

Thanks for the tip. I already use it extensively.

4 hours ago, Noel Borthwick said:

Number of buffers can’t be 64. For ASIO mode there is always a fixed number of 2. Can you post some screenshots of your audio settings in preferences? We’ll look at your project file.

I said the number of Buffers from the 'Record' menu in 'Playback & Recording'.  It was my mistake. Sorry

4 hours ago, Noel Borthwick said:

Regarding your export requirements, you basically want a macro to export single tracks but through their destinations. In general automating this gets more complicated since tracks can route through many tracks via aux tracks and correspondingly tracks can be sourced by other tracks as well as sidechains. So its not as simple it may seem on the surface to provide this functionality. I’m curious why this is such a common requirement for your workflow - i.e. to export individual tracks through buses?

I make beats for leasing. And there won't be any direct contact between me and the client. Since, I want to give the clients full control over the mixing, I prefer to give them track outs instead of stems. At the same time I want the tracks to be at the best mixed state (including the levels) so that they don't have to work on it again, or possibly ruin the vision. I work with a friend, who uses Cubase, and that too does not have the feature that I asked for (bus FX on track outs during export). However, there is a feature by which the producer can write bus processing onto the incoming tracks, printing them into new individual tracks, in one go.
I was kinda glad when I saw Cakewalk had that bus FX option in export window. Thought it might be a bug when it didn't work. Also, after you informed how it works, I looked at bouncing the tracks together inside the clips pane itself to see if anything like the "Cubase method" can be achieved in Cakewalk. But no...., bus processing can't be printed onto individual tracks in one go.

14 hours ago, Noel Borthwick said:

Regarding clip based workflow our piano roll is currently not particularly tailored for that but well consider allowing a mode to show only selected clips. Its not something that most of our users have requested in the past.

I understood that from the comments in the video. Therefore, if I may ask, will it be possible to just represent something to differentiate between the individual MIDI clips. Don't want the other MIDI clips to disappear. Just a means to understand the boundaries of each MIDI clip. It will be great for drum programming, or anything that has a "loop" nature.

15 hours ago, Noel Borthwick said:

Regarding automation accuracy, its not clear what your buffer size is. You are running a VST2 plugin and in VST2 automation is only accurate to the buffer size, unlike VST3 which is sample accurate. If you want sample accurate automation you should only use VST3 plugins or run at a very low latency.  This could also be something specific with the plugin since I have not encountered this specific issue. If you share a simple project file with a repro we can look into it.

My Cakewalk buffer size is 512 Samples (10.7msec). It does change from that value <Under driver settings>
Number of Buffers 64 <Under playback and recording>
Driver Mode = ASIO

I'm attaching a project that can demonstrate my automation issue in Cakewalk. It also has rendered output tracks from some other DAWs too for reference.
More detail on it will be in the 'notes' in Cakewalk itself.

15 hours ago, Noel Borthwick said:

This is inaccurate. Its by design that bus effects are not applied and has been this way in every version of Cakewalk going back all the way to 2003. As far as stems go its intentional that source category tracks does NOT include bus automation since this is the typical use of track stems. If you want bus stems you should export with source category buses and make specific buses for the stems that you wish to deliver. Alternatively you can simply solo tracks you want and export with source category set to buses to get the results you want.

Thanks for clearing that up. But, the solution is quite not a practical one when we have upwards of 100 tracks. Guess I'll have to find the work around for that myself. My apologies.

Automation issue.zip

On 1/26/2021 at 3:53 PM, msmcleod said:

@AdK Studios - can you retry automation with the latest hotfix?  Please let us know if you're still having problems with this.

We're aware of the "Show Clip Outlines" issue in the Tungsten theme (Mercury theme doesn't have this issue). I'll try to get it bumped up the to-do list.

I'll discuss the other issues with the team.

The automation problem still exists even after the updation. FYI, I tried different audio driver modes and varied buffer size (not sure that will actually help). Is there anything more I should try? Am I the only one who is experiencing this issue with automation?

Clip Outlines has improved. But, still we can't differentiate between adjacent MIDI clips.

On 1/24/2021 at 5:27 PM, Bruno de Souza Lino said:

Freezing deactivates the FX Rack and ProChannel. There's a way to keep the freeze by Freezing, then selecting "Bounce to Clips".

You can actually bounce the track from the top menu in the clip pane.
Select the clip you want to bounce (extend it a bit to keep any reverb that you might have) and select track , under which we have bounce to tracks. And we can literally bounce the clip into an audio track in a new audio track.

I didn't know this feedback loop thingy existed. Or else I wouldn't have made a video pointing out the most obvious problems I have been facing in Cakewalk. I was waiting for the comments to accumulate to see the opinion (and other suggestions) of others before reaching out to the social handles of Bandlab. And it is from the comments I came across this feedback loop. These are the points I stated in that video. These are the issues that were mentioned in it.

1. No MIDI Clip isolation
2. Automation Issues
3. Exporting issue with track outs

MIDI Clip isolation

Cakewalk must be the only DAW that I have used, that doesn't let us isolate or MIDI data inside a MIDI clip. From the comments, I figured many users actually prefer having to see the entire MIDI data in a track, even though it might be even above 10 minutes. So, I hope it can be brought in like an option that can be turned ON and OFF like the Clip outlines I showed in the video.

Automation Issues

There are too many automation issues that it can be a post of its own. I strongly suggest watching the video to see the obvious issues like unresponsive automation, delay in automation timing, and weird sound output. Apart from it is hard to carry out simple copy and paste with automation data.

Exporting issue with track outs

When we export track outs, the bus effects does not get applied to the tracks. I talked to someone who had used Cakewalk from 1998 and he said it wasn't like that. Back when Cakewalk was Sonar, the bus FX did get applied to individual track outs. This is necessary when we are working with other people.

Hope you look into these as soon as possible, at least the second and third issues.

-AdK