adittemore Posted January 6, 2022 Share Posted January 6, 2022 (edited) Has anyone been able to successfully use automation with external inserts? Basically what I've found is that automation plays back incorrectly if inserts are in use anywhere in the project and, the more inserts you have, the worse it gets. This is especially bad if you're doing quick automations like gating toms, or if you're trying to automate a vst parameter. Here's how to see this: New project Record some audio Add a vst, enable automation write and twiddle a knob to create an automation envelope. Playback will be fine. Add an external insert. Route it back to itself in a loopback. Be sure to let it calculate the latency. Playback will probably still be close to fine. Watch that knob you automated. It's going to stop moving smoothly soon. Add another external insert as above then playback. Things are a little weird now. Knob is moving a little rough and you may hear a difference. Add another insert and you'll definitely see the automation playing back incorrectly. The more inserts you add, the worse this gets. With five or more inserts in use, you're in big trouble. Sometimes you're in trouble with even just one. You can even watch that knob you automated jump around during the "pre roll" latency compensation time after initiating playback but before sound begins. One sort-of fix is to click on the time ruler and jump around after playback starts which will mostly correct the problem. You'd need to do this each time playback starts again. Maybe use a keyboard macro to add "go to start of previous measure" or something to your spacebar. Ugh.. Even if this was a good workaround, you can't export via command anymore, you'd have to loop your master bus back to a track like analog summing. In my case, I've been dealing with this issue for quite a while. Judging by other forum posts, external inserts have had big issues for what seems like forever. As my studio has grown and acquired more outboard gear, this problem grows too. Now I'm using seven inserts in a project and Cakewalk just cannot do it. Hoping someone has seen something similar and maybe has a suggestion or workaround. I'm pretty much at a standstill now mixing two full length records. I really, *really* hate to be considering "outgrowing" Cakewalk after so many years, especially when the devs clearly have a good eye toward the future, so many other longstanding issues are being addressed. and great, useful features like recent changes to track templates are being implemented. Man I'd love a solution or workaround here .. or even just some hope. PT is looming in the shadows like an abusive ex.. Cheers Alex Win10 Pro - RME MADI x64 Edited January 6, 2022 by adittemore Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
adittemore Posted January 7, 2022 Author Share Posted January 7, 2022 It would be especially helpful if anyone who has the extra I/Os could try the above and see if you find the same issues. Whether this is just happening to me or not would be very valuable information as I figure out a way forward here. Thanks -A Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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