Cakewalk doesn't keep recording

[Noel Borthwick]

1 hour ago, Nathan Gulla said:

I've experienced this issue quite a bit over several years and finally came back to do some research on it again.  Glad to see I'm not the only one experiencing these weird ghost takes.  I've also gone through many updates over the years hoping it will be resolved, but I just had a couple recording sessions ruined this past week due to it, as it was happening I'd say 80% of the time I tried to record.  If I'm looking at it during recording, I usually notice a screen blip of sorts and the recording timer line ends up visually ahead of the waveform.  When I stop recording, I only have about 1 or so measure of the take and as mentioned above, no feasible way of retrieving the data.

I will say, I've never experienced it on my desktops, but I use those mostly for MIDI and sample library recording.  It's on my laptop where I record audio that it's very prevalent.  For reference, it's an HP Spectre x360 with a 6 core Core i7 8th gen, 16 GB ram, 512GB SSD, and a Radeon Vega (for what that's worth).  I also use an Akai EIE Pro interface, which I've been using for years.

Does anyone know of any tricks for fixing this, or does anyone from BandLab know if there's going to be a bug fix for it in the near future?  I've really enjoyed using Cakewalk since the day I started producing, but this has become a deal-breaker issue that I can't waste any more time or recording sessions on.  Thank you all in advance for any advice!

Which version of Cakewalk are you running and what plugins do you have in your project. The OP had cases where no clip showed up after recording - is that what you are seeing? That can happen if something interfered with the recorded file being written. There were actually cases of plugins doing destructive things like this that I found, believe it or not. Positive Grid was one such example.

When it happens look in the audio folder for the project and check the latest timestamp of the wave files to find the newest file. Then drag it into your project and check if the recording is intact. If not something prevented the file being written.
 

[paulo]

FWIW I have had this happen to me now and again over the years in various versions - seemingly always a take when I thought I had just nailed it and never ever on the one where I coughed half way through (😬😀). It's funny that this thread has re-emerged now as I hadn't seen the issue for quite a while and then it happened a couple of days ago. I didn't bother taking notes or anything because I guess I've just come to accept that this sometimes happens now and nobody knows why, so I just curse and start again - the last thing I want to do is ruin the moment by spending time digging around  to see where, if anywhere, it might have gone. As others have said, the waveform is there being drawn before my eyes in all it's glorious freshness, press stop and it's gone.  If it's any help to Noel, I don't think that I've ever had it happen twice in a row, the next attempt usually sticks. You know, the one that I fluffed again, lol. To save Noel asking, I'm on 2020.09 at the moment, but this issue goes way back, maybe even as far back as when Mr and Mrs Sonar Number-Version were still deciding what to call their new child......... .I actually avoided X1/X2 so can't speak for those versions, but it was certainly a thing that happened in X3 onwards if not before.

 

 

 

[John Vere]

There is something weird happening to me as well. 
In comping mode. 
Record take one. 
Rewind record take two. 
there are two lanes and they both play at same time.  Never had that problem before?

Also old takes are underneath but greyed out and don’t exist in the audio folder. It will say Record 31 on the greyed out track but In the audio folder are other numbers but no 31?  
No problem if I use overwrite mode and just change lanes. 

So does this issue happen in comping mode only?

Edited July 17, 2021 by John Vere

[Noel Borthwick]

9 hours ago, paulo said:

FWIW I have had this happen to me now and again over the years in various versions - seemingly always a take when I thought I had just nailed it and never ever on the one where I coughed half way through (😬😀). It's funny that this thread has re-emerged now as I hadn't seen the issue for quite a while and then it happened a couple of days ago. I didn't bother taking notes or anything because I guess I've just come to accept that this sometimes happens now and nobody knows why, so I just curse and start again - the last thing I want to do is ruin the moment by spending time digging around  to see where, if anywhere, it might have gone. As others have said, the waveform is there being drawn before my eyes in all it's glorious freshness, press stop and it's gone.  If it's any help to Noel, I don't think that I've ever had it happen twice in a row, the next attempt usually sticks. You know, the one that I fluffed again, lol. To save Noel asking, I'm on 2020.09 at the moment, but this issue goes way back, maybe even as far back as when Mr and Mrs Sonar Number-Version were still deciding what to call their new child......... .I actually avoided X1/X2 so can't speak for those versions, but it was certainly a thing that happened in X3 onwards if not before.

 

The waveform is a preview to tell you the levels of the input signal coming in - its not the actual data in the recorded wave file. So if something failed while writing the file there could still be an issue. The fact that it goes away after recording possibly means that something failed at the end of the recording when it writes the wave file. Thats why I'm curious if the file is actually present on disk. It would be good to try and get to the bottom of why it happens if nothing a better error message may help find the cause.

[Kevin Walsh]

I've had this happen quite a few times too. It happened so frequently for a while that I started recording in Reaper and importing the wav files.

[paulo]

14 hours ago, Noel Borthwick said:

The waveform is a preview to tell you the levels of the input signal coming in - its not the actual data in the recorded wave file. So if something failed while writing the file there could still be an issue. The fact that it goes away after recording possibly means that something failed at the end of the recording when it writes the wave file. Thats why I'm curious if the file is actually present on disk. It would be good to try and get to the bottom of why it happens if nothing a better error message may help find the cause.

I understand that it must be equally frustrating to you as I'm sure you are aware that this subject has come up periodically on the forum for as long as I can remember and I don't recall anyone ever having reported finding the missing audio file, so as you say it appears that for some reason it just doesn't get written. I'm not computer savvy enough to know where to look beyond the obvious places (take lanes/project audio file) so I don't know how to help you other than to say that when I have looked in those places before it isn't there and that if it's any kind of clue at all I don't recall it ever happening on consecutive takes. I can't think of there being any kind of pattern to it (ie it's always the first take in a particular session or it only happens after I've been doing it for x amount of time or anything like that). The plug-ins that may be present in any given project are usually much the same in the recording phase as I tend to use the same custom template each time, but of course there are times when having entered the more serious mixing phase that I will decide that a particular section needs re-doing, so who knows what plug-ins are present by then compared to normal although having an older pc that by compared to some  is about as quick as an asthmatic ant with some heavy shopping, I would usually have to bypass the more intensive cpu munching ones anyway if recording anything in the latter stages of mixing. I have never used positive grid plug-ins so I can say that it isn't related to that in my case. I also only ever use sound on sound mode with auto punch disabled if that helps to narrow anything down. If I think of anything else I'll let you know.

[Noel Borthwick]

I meant look for the most recently created wave file in the project audio folder. If recording failed for some reason halfway through the file should still be present.