Cakewalk Going Unresponsive Every Few Seconds

[James Kinney]

I just downloaded and installed BandLab and Cakewalk today, along with all the accompanying plug-ins. I have been fighting with it for a few hours, and cannot get CakeWalk to run properly.  Every time I launch it and open a blank project, it starts freezing up every few seconds, not allowing me to do anything at all. It doesn't completely crash, just keeps going unresponsive. I have searched this forum for similar issues, and tried the suggestions I found (disabling antivirus software and cloud programs... tried disabling my NVidia graphics card to force it to run on the Intel... Uninstalled and reinstalled CakeWalk). Nothing has made any difference.

I am running on an Intel Core I7-8750, 2.2GHz Dell with 16GB of RAM. It's a 64 bit system. 

Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

[Lord Tim]

Are you using an audio interface or the built in sound device, like a Realtek? This sounds very much like the dodgy Realtek ASIO driver issue that a few people have reported so far.

[msmcleod]

4 hours ago, Lord Tim said:

Are you using an audio interface or the built in sound device, like a Realtek? This sounds very much like the dodgy Realtek ASIO driver issue that a few people have reported so far.

^^^ This .

Switch your driver mode to WASAPI  within preferences, and see if the problem goes away.:



Note there's two modes of WASAPI:

WASAPI Exclusive:  lower latency, but Cakewalk will have exclusive control over your audio device (i.e. you'll no longer be able to listen to YouTube etc when Cakewalk is using it).  If this is an issue for your workflow, consider checking "Suspend Audio Engine When Cakewalk is Not in Focus".  Also, not all audio devices support this mode.

WASAPI Shared: higher latency, but the audio device will be shared with all other applications.  You'll want "Suspend Audio Engine When Cakewalk is Not in Focus" to be unchecked in this mode.

You may find WASAPI Exclusive is more suitable for recording real-time MIDI, or recording guitar/vocals when monitoring through FX.  WASAPI Shared should be fine for everything else.
 

[James Kinney]

Thanks, Gentlemen!!  That fixed the problem.  I ended up having to use WASAPI Shared, because WASAPI Exclusive created a crazy buzzing sound regardless of what instrument I tried. But things appear to be working fine with Shared.

I appreciate the help!

[Yuqiao Guan]

That is just an EXCELLENT solution without causing any other problems so far. Many thanks, fellows.