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2021.01 Feedback


Morten Saether

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4 hours ago, loq said:

It seems this version of Cakewalk has an issue with ilok's License Support - opening old projects containing plugins that it (e.g. Oxford Native plugins, Gullfoss, Slate Digital, etc.) gives the following error:

"The License Support software required to validate the license for this product is not installed. Please reinstall the product or download and run the License Support installer here: http://www.ilok.com"

As you can infer, the License Support software is already installed on my machine and is up-to-date. Opening these plugins in other DAWs (for example, Ableton) doesn't cause this issue.

I've tried reinstalling both the ilok and plugin software - do I need to rollback Cakewalk itself?

As an aside, can we please stop adding unnecessary features when there are still so many bugs? For example, a nasty bug regarding the silent re-ordering of plugins when dragging from one track to another (that I reported in 2019!!) has still not been addressed. Every project I work on that has more than fifty or so tracks is always the opposite of robust.  And every new release seems to bring new features that add to the bugs and instability. Why isn't there a formal bug reporting and tracking process? Why is the focus on new features, when the real killer feature of any serious tool is reliability and stability (which Cakewalk has seemingly always lacked)?

Plugin reordering bug: https://www.dropbox.com/s/m46gskzzu6s3af5/plugin_order_bug.mp4?dl=0

ILOK problems are not related to the DAW. You should report those to the plugin vendor or contact iLok support. We have no way of diagnosing those.

Regarding stability we have been fixing hundreds of issues since we started and the focus has been on stability. Have you been following the change log? Most reported bugs are fixed in short notice if reported through official channels. Your issue has not been reported officially. There has been a way to report issues to support from the get go. See the FAQ:

 

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18 hours ago, msmcleod said:

I'm pretty sure the iLok issue is not Cakewalk related.  All iLok integration is done within the plugin itself.  I had this message a couple of days ago - closing the project, opening up & signing into iLok manager, then re-opening the project fixed it for me.  

I'm not sure how your plugin ordering bug slipped through the cracks, but it's now logged & fixed it for the next release.

 

I just tried signing into ilok manager and then reopening the project - that didn't resolve the issue. If it was just one vendor's plugins that was exhibiting the behavior, I would have alerted that vendor - since it is more than one, it made sense to me to alert Cakewalk.

17 hours ago, Noel Borthwick said:


Regarding stability we have been fixing hundreds of issues since we started and the focus has been on stability. Have you been following the change log? Most reported bugs are fixed in short notice if reported through official channels. Your issue has not been reported officially. There has been a way to report issues to support from the get go. See the FAQ:

 

I beg your pardon sir - my issue *was* reported officially on December 30, 2019 through support@cakewalk.com. I attached the same video that was in my last post with steps to reproduce.  Happy to forward the email thread to you. It's not wise to speak so confidently without having the facts.

And my questions are left unanswered. I'm sorry, but clearly email and user forums aren't a sufficient mechanism for bug reporting and tracking.  And congrats on the impressive changelogs - but what percentage of the bug fixes in Update 1 of this recent release are related to ripple editing and the arranger? Forgive me, but it feels a bit like two steps forward, two steps back.

Also, don't mistake me as a user without skin in the game - I've been using Cakewalk for almost two decades and have spent hundreds of dollars on software now being given away for free. It seems like there's a real opportunity now for Cakewalk to fulfill its potential as the best DAW not named ProTools for serious mixing - I speak up because I don't want to see that opportunity squandered by feature bloat and bug infestation.

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My response was to your comment that there was no official channel to report bugs, when there has always been one. I apologize if your issue was previously reported. To clarify: reported issues go into a backlog and are prioritized based on user impact. We’re a very small team and your issue likely got missed somehow. The problem dates back to 2015 and isn’t something newly introduced so its not completely unexpected.

Bug fixes remain a priority but that isn’t all we do.

PS: I looked at the 5 cases you logged with support.
The plugin reorder issue is now fixed for next release.
The waves reset issue was fixed in early 2019. The other WAVES and autotune issues were 3rd party problems.
Re UAD we presently don't have a way to validate those in-house.

Regarding your comment about ripple editing and arranger I'm confused - are you referring to bugs you are encountering that are not fixed? If so what are the case numbers.

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21 hours ago, Noel Borthwick said:

My response was to your comment that there was no official channel to report bugs, when there has always been one. I apologize if your issue was previously reported. To clarify: reported issues go into a backlog and are prioritized based on user impact. We’re a very small team and your issue likely got missed somehow. The problem dates back to 2015 and isn’t something newly introduced so its not completely unexpected.

Bug fixes remain a priority but that isn’t all we do.

PS: I looked at the 5 cases you logged with support.
The plugin reorder issue is now fixed for next release.
The waves reset issue was fixed in early 2019. The other WAVES and autotune issues were 3rd party problems.
Re UAD we presently don't have a way to validate those in-house.

Regarding your comment about ripple editing and arranger I'm confused - are you referring to bugs you are encountering that are not fixed? If so what are the case numbers.

The five cases I've reported before are just the tip of the iceberg - literally every large mix I do in Cakewalk uncovers a bug. I've had clips disappear in take lanes when performing a series of operations on a track with the lanes collapsed. I've had glitches appear at the beginning of renders when they don't appear in playback. I mean, just this minute I opened an old mix just to refresh my memory of some bugs and Cakewalk didn't disappoint - I can't even recall a mix without encountering  a crash:

image.png.56841f5076c180bb929a3775886d2229.png

Is FabFilter to be blamed here? This is a recurring theme with Cakewalk - but Ableton, FL Studio, Reaper, etc. seem to not have this issue. If there was a way I could report every bug I encounter, and have faith that it would be taken seriously, perhaps I would report them all. An astute reader might have noticed by now that I have a lot of DAW's - this is because I've started the painful process of weaning myself off of Cakewalk and looking for a replacement, because time has shown that I can't trust it for serious work. I write this as a hail mary attempt at, perhaps, reversing this trend. Hopefully it isn't falling on deaf ears.

My comment about ripple editing and the arranger were meant to imply that a large portion of the bugs you're fixing are for recently introduced features that are at best, nice-to-haves, at worst, unnecessary.

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2 hours ago, loq said:

The five cases I've reported before are just the tip of the iceberg - literally every large mix I do in Cakewalk uncovers a bug. I've had clips disappear in take lanes when performing a series of operations on a track with the lanes collapsed. I've had glitches appear at the beginning of renders when they don't appear in playback. I mean, just this minute I opened an old mix just to refresh my memory of some bugs and Cakewalk didn't disappoint - I can't even recall a mix without encountering  a crash:

image.png.56841f5076c180bb929a3775886d2229.png

Is FabFilter to be blamed here? This is a recurring theme with Cakewalk - but Ableton, FL Studio, Reaper, etc. seem to not have this issue. If there was a way I could report every bug I encounter, and have faith that it would be taken seriously, perhaps I would report them all. An astute reader might have noticed by now that I have a lot of DAW's - this is because I've started the painful process of weaning myself off of Cakewalk and looking for a replacement, because time has shown that I can't trust it for serious work. I write this as a hail mary attempt at, perhaps, reversing this trend. Hopefully it isn't falling on deaf ears.

My comment about ripple editing and the arranger were meant to imply that a large portion of the bugs you're fixing are for recently introduced features that are at best, nice-to-haves, at worst, unnecessary.

If every mix you do uncovers a bug then most likely there is a recurring theme of something common in your workflow and plugins, that exposes these issues and the only way to to isolate it is to log specific cases and follow up with us to help us diagnose the cause.  This isn’t the normal experience for tens of thousands of users who use Cakewalk daily.  I understand your frustration and we want to help, but making assumptions that all your issues are cakewalk problems without going through a proper troubleshooting process, is not going to be productive to solve them in itself. I’ve written at length about how most plugin issues are caused by lack of testing by plugin developers in multiple hosts (many only test on Mac DAW’s). About 70% of the issues we find are bugs in the plugins that are host specific. When we isolate them I report them to the developers and they normally fix them promptly. In other cases when possible we implement workarounds in the DAW but that isn’t always possible.

Are you running the latest updates to Fabfilter? We use those plugins routinely and never have crashes. There were known crashes with it that the developer fixed in an update. Like us they are very proactive about fixing crashes. The bottom line is if a plugin crashes its almost certain that the root problem is unexpected code in the plugin. Always send all crash dumps for investigation. If the crash is in the plugin the dump should also be sent to the plugin developer since they are the most obvious candidate to fix the issue.  The fact that a plugin crashes in one daw but not another only means that the plugin was not tested enough in that DAW. Please read my article on diagnosing plugin problems in the FAQ where I go into further depth on this issue if you want to learn more about it.

2 hours ago, loq said:

My comment about ripple editing and the arranger were meant to imply that a large portion of the bugs you're fixing are for recently introduced features that are at best, nice-to-haves, at worst, unnecessary.

Many users would differ with you on this. Ripple editing is a fundamental editing feature that is used under the hood in a variety of operations which is why it needs to be robust. We can’t possible please every user with every update, but we do but we try to cover a broad area of stability and workflow fixes in every release. One of your reported issues is already in the next update. 
I realize that it takes time to report issues, time that you could be making music, but if errors encountered are not reported there is little chance of them being investigated. The use cases in a DAW are enormous so many others may never encounter the specific problems you see. We take every reported case seriously even if we don’t get to fixing them immediately. If you are willing to work with us, you may find that most of your problems can be solved quickly.
 

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I appreciate your most recent response. I will try to submit every bug I encounter and hope that it will be treated seriously.

13 hours ago, Noel Borthwick said:

Are you running the latest updates to Fabfilter? We use those plugins routinely and never have crashes.

I am running the latest version. Note that I already finished this mix years ago, so at some point it was loading fine. I will escalate this issue and include the dumps.

13 hours ago, Noel Borthwick said:

Many users would differ with you on this. Ripple editing is a fundamental editing feature that is used under the hood in a variety of operations which is why it needs to be robust. We can’t possible please every user with every update, but we do but we try to cover a broad area of stability and workflow fixes in every release. One of your reported issues is already in the next update.

Fair enough. I won't belabor the point and reasonable persons may disagree here. 

13 hours ago, Noel Borthwick said:

I realize that it takes time to report issues, time that you could be making music, but if errors encountered are not reported there is little chance of them being investigated. The use cases in a DAW are enormous so many others may never encounter the specific problems you see. We take every reported case seriously even if we don’t get to fixing them immediately. If you are willing to work with us, you may find that most of your problems can be solved quickly.

I'll take you at your word - thanks for taking the time.

Edited by loq
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On 4/6/2021 at 11:57 AM, loq said:

The five cases I've reported before are just the tip of the iceberg - literally every large mix I do in Cakewalk uncovers a bug. I've had clips disappear in take lanes when performing a series of operations on a track with the lanes collapsed. I've had glitches appear at the beginning of renders when they don't appear in playback. I mean, just this minute I opened an old mix just to refresh my memory of some bugs and Cakewalk didn't disappoint - I can't even recall a mix without encountering  a crash:

image.png.56841f5076c180bb929a3775886d2229.png

Is FabFilter to be blamed here? This is a recurring theme with Cakewalk - but Ableton, FL Studio, Reaper, etc. seem to not have this issue. If there was a way I could report every bug I encounter, and have faith that it would be taken seriously, perhaps I would report them all. An astute reader might have noticed by now that I have a lot of DAW's - this is because I've started the painful process of weaning myself off of Cakewalk and looking for a replacement, because time has shown that I can't trust it for serious work. I write this as a hail mary attempt at, perhaps, reversing this trend. Hopefully it isn't falling on deaf ears.

My comment about ripple editing and the arranger were meant to imply that a large portion of the bugs you're fixing are for recently introduced features that are at best, nice-to-haves, at worst, unnecessary.

 

On 4/6/2021 at 11:57 AM, loq said:

 literally every large mix I do in Cakewalk uncovers a bug.

Yep! True! 

However I've witness that certain mono plugins of fabfilter do crash in Cakewalk. At a studio I was at in London had this problem only in Cakewalk, and not in the other 4 they make use of. 

On 4/6/2021 at 2:47 PM, Noel Borthwick said:

This isn’t the normal experience for tens of thousands of users who use Cakewalk daily.  

This is highly due to users that don't bother to report on it / OR / turn to a different DAW, because of their frustration and mainly because of the Word "FREE" attached to it - Especially one that was a paid product and brand before. No brand under this umbrella will have a good name. 

With us that started their careers with Cakewalk. The handful of users it has - we can tolerate that. I say "We" cause Cakewalk was the first daw I had ever touched before moving to industry demands within the studio I had worked for at the time. 

We get, undestand and totally am greatful for the now small team running cakewalk, but maybe it's time to rebuild the DAW from scratch. Bring in people from presonus, cubase and reaper to look at it structure and engines to get it running on modern 64bit coding. 

This is asking - what could be impossible in resources at the moment, I know. Ask the question: Why don't DAWs have these many complaints, rants on the same issues after every update. Good example would be "Dropouts" and "Crashes" on the same Windows version builds and systems. 

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Um you are speculating. We don't need help to "rebuild the DAW" and building from scratch isnt a solution to any engineering problem. 
And your point that it crashes in X but not Y has no meaning. A crash is a bug in the plugin whether it doesnt happen in another DAW or not. 

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as an observation, going to PT, StudioOne, Cubase, Live, FL, REAPER forums you see complaints about crashing all the time. i've never seen a  high end (>$25K worth of IO and computer) ProTools installation on a Mac, for example, ever work for more than about 4 hours without crashing completely. even with no plugins or only stock ones. so not sure that CbB is the least stable of DAW out there. i know on my desktop and laptop, i've gone easily 8-10 hours a day for a few days before i start seeing weird things - like no doubt memory holes being drilled by plugins and various Windows processes.  then again, my workflows tend to be simple and i limit the number of cross-trakc/cross-buss routing and massive numbers of plugins and soft synths. probably no more than 40-50 tracks on a project and probably same number of plugins across all the tracks and busses. maybe a 12-15 soft synths which are typically then frozen during the mix.

Edited by Glenn Stanton
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2 hours ago, Noel Borthwick said:

Um you are speculating. We don't need help to "rebuild the DAW" and building from scratch isnt a solution to any engineering problem. 
And your point that it crashes in X but not Y has no meaning. A crash is a bug in the plugin whether it doesnt happen in another DAW or not. 

And this is the problem. The best response here would've been. We'll consider it - right there. No one was speculating anything. There's truth in what I've said - Cakewalk is the only DAW the crashes left and right for no reason. And for you that is in management to assume that speculating say's a lot to why we can't grow here. 

I was merely just suggesting things. "Trying to help," to look this from a different point of view, but it seems that it strucked a nerve which wasn't intended nor directed towards that.

What you need to know is - we/us, thats here on the ground using this DAW collaborating with other 10+ producers using Cakewalk, we see these issues everyday, where you guys dont - and through responses like that, which you given, that right there is why we don't bother to report. 

It's sad really. I hear you though. 

Edited by Will_Kaydo
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1 hour ago, Will_Kaydo said:

What you need to know is - we/us, thats here on the ground using this DAW collaborating with other 10+ producers using Cakewalk, we see these issues everyday, where you guys dont - and through responses like that, which you given, that right there is why we don't bother to report. 

You regularly report bugs, which is great. If those 10+ producers also report those issues each time they occur CbB will soon become a DAW outperforming in stability (as far as is possible with the infinite number of different hard/software installs and projects...).
From what you can see on the forum, issues directly reported to the bakers are handled fast and well (I've got the impression the last few months even more than before, maybe because after introducing large very welcome additions, there's now more focus on the lasting bugs?) so if your friends participate that will be for the good of everyone. 

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2 hours ago, Will_Kaydo said:

And this is the problem. The best response here would've been. We'll consider it - right there. No one was speculating anything. There's truth in what I've said - Cakewalk is the only DAW the crashes left and right for no reason. And for you that is in management to assume that speculating say's a lot to why we can't grow here. 

I was merely just suggesting things. "Trying to help," to look this from a different point of view, but it seems that it strucked a nerve which wasn't intended nor directed towards that.

What you need to know is - we/us, thats here on the ground using this DAW collaborating with other 10+ producers using Cakewalk, we see these issues everyday, where you guys dont - and through responses like that, which you given, that right there is why we don't bother to report. 

It's sad really. I hear you though. 

No. Whats sad is you speculate and complain .... but don’t report.

You’ve sort of shot yourself in the foot there matey !

J

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10 hours ago, Jeremy Oakes said:

No. Whats sad is you speculate and complain .... but don’t report.

You’ve sort of shot yourself in the foot there matey !

J

Dont shoot yourself in the foot by assuming things matey. Read to understand.

Answers given outside of comprehension are the reason why argument start here. 

Edited by Will_Kaydo
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11 hours ago, Teegarden said:

You regularly report bugs, which is great. If those 10+ producers also report those issues each time they occur CbB will soon become a DAW outperforming in stability (as far as is possible with the infinite number of different hard/software installs and projects...).
From what you can see on the forum, issues directly reported to the bakers are handled fast and well (I've got the impression the last few months even more than before, maybe because after introducing large very welcome additions, there's now more focus on the lasting bugs?) so if your friends participate that will be for the good of everyone. 

Thanks @Teegarden 

Yes, I try to bring my part. Like I've said: It's because I'm one of those handful that started their careers with Cakewalk. Handful meaning: Cakewalk being the 1st DAW I have touched. 

but, I'm one guy out of 18 guys I know and work with / AND / they all have their own guys they work and collaborate with on their own production. So if you put this under that "Pyramid umbrella chain thing" I can easily be part of a 1000+ producers underneath this chain. So it's difficult to get everyone to report here. Those I am close to, them I can't force if they don't want to. 

Try telling someone whom has been longer than you in the business and only starting out with cakewalk since it became free, to support the brand by reporting the bugs. You'll hear the answers you get. 

Now here the the thing: You that's forcing to look into Cakewalk to just try it out - that's promoting the product. Now come up here to report or give feedback and get answers like this - it gona start raising some questions like - why should I care about cakewalk anymore when I'm just here to help, but het answers like this in return? In return you also just dont care anymore. Coming on the forum with the mindset: If I report this they gona blame my system or windows or my workflow.

That's exhausting. 

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