Cakewalk Keeps Crashing

[Taylor Carnell]

so a few days ago the gain on everything I was recording got unexplainably high and sounded terrible, I found out it was my drivers and I installed new ones meant for my focusrite interface. ever since I kept getting CPU overloads I have tried everything and even uninstalled it twice and then reinstalled it. now when I hit record it either doesn't record until I hit the button three times or crashes. when I hit record and it ends up working my voice cuts out randomly and it sounds terrible, if I add a track for a pre made beat it all just crashes when I hit play. so an answer would be very great right now.

 

I have been trying to figure out how to fix it all day and I'm getting to the point where I feel like buying FL is a better option because everything seems to be running very smoothly on the free version of that.

[Variorum]

Nope... I don't know why you'd get that message. Maybe @scook can help with that.

Unless you have ASIO4ALL installed and Cakewalk thinks you're choosing it?

Edited January 23, 2022 by Variorum

[Starship Krupa]

3 minutes ago, Taylor Carnell said:

when i click on ASIO it gives me a warning saying cakewalk doesnt work well with it... is there a reason

Yes. That's a sure sign that you selected the FL Studio ASIO wrapper, which is basically ASIO4ALL.

ASIO4ALL used to be pretty useful, but with the advent of WASAPI, it's needless, and Cakewalk doesn't like it, so the devs put in a checker. Plain ASIO4ALL will trigger it, the FL Studio ASIO will trigger it, and the Magix ASIO driver will trigger it. Probably others. They're all ASIO4ALL with just the logo changed.

Your problems are surely  down to using WASAPI Shared. The preferred driver is the Focusrite ASIO driver, and after that, WASAPI Exclusive.

Edited January 23, 2022 by Starship Krupa

[Byron Dickens]

3 minutes ago, Taylor Carnell said:

when i click on ASIO it gives me a warning saying cakewalk doesnt work well with it... is there a reason this is

 

Yeah because it's one of those garbage generic drivers scook was talking about. You need to uninstall though. Completely. And only use the Focusrite driver. That should be the only one on your system.

[scook]

5 minutes ago, Taylor Carnell said:

when i click on ASIO it gives me a warning saying cakewalk doesnt work well with it... is there a reason this is

 

Most likely because you are not using the Focusrite driver but have a generic driver installed.

If you cannot figure out how to uninstall the generic driver(s), remove all the entries from 

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\ASIO

except the Focusrite driver.

The Focusrite driver will work with all DAWs and is the best choice for Focusrite interfaces.

[Variorum]

I didn't know Cakewalk warned when choosing ASIO4ALL... Good!

Glad you're working...

(That was a flurry of help messages ?)

[Starship Krupa]

WASAPI Shared allows other programs and the OS, for example system sounds (which you should have disabled on a DAW system anyway) to jump in and use the audio system, and to do this, it sits there waiting to get input from them. WASAPI Exclusive lets the program that has focus have exclusive uninterrupted use of the audio system, so it gives full attention to that.

ASIO also gives exclusive attention to the program using it, and goes one better by bypassing the Windows audio subsystem for even greater efficiency and purity of audio playback.

[scook]

Just now, Taylor Carnell said:

i did have it installed i deleted it and tried it and we are back and rolling, thank you for your help 

ASIO4All and all the other generic ASIO "drivers" are wrappers for native Windows drivers.

Generic ASIO "drivers" allow software that require ASIO to work with devices that do not have an ASIO driver or ship with a broken ASIO driver such as the RealTek chip in most PCs.

These generic drivers conflict with real ASIO drivers.

Focusrite makes a quality ASIO drivers.

[scook]

1 minute ago, Variorum said:

I didn't know Cakewalk warned when choosing ASIO4ALL... Good!

It was added in 2021.09, see the

ASIO driver compatibility checking 

section in http://www.cakewalk.com/Documentation?product=Cakewalk&language=3&help=NewFeatures.015.html

 

[Byron Dickens]

32 minutes ago, Variorum said:

(That was a flurry of help messages ?)

A refreshing change from all those one post wonders who disappear and never bother to respond!

[Promidi]

With a Focusrite, there are BETA drivers that you might want to try - depending on the exact Focusrite model you have.

With a non Firefox browser (Edge will do), head over to beta.focusrite.com and search for your model name. (for example, for a Scarlett 2i2, search for Scarlett.

In the notes for many of these drivers it specifically mentions Cakewalk by Bandlab.

It states “Fixed an issue that could cause a crash in Cakewalk by Bandlab”

Maybe give these a go.

[Michael Finnity]

I just recently purchased a laptop with windows 11, and Holy cow have I had issues with cakewalk and the asio driver. Interestingly, I never had an issue on my old laptop with windows 10. I've actually had a crap ton of issues with windows 11 from an audio standpoint. One thing I learned, is if I'm using the asio driver with cakewalk and the asio driver with ezdrummer (standalone), my computer has a stroke. Again, never had these issues with my old laptop and windows 10, but my solution has been to use ezdrummer (standalone) with the asio driver and cakewalk with wasapi exclusive. Either way, so far windows 11 has been less than impressive 

[David Baay]

Random thought: symptoms sound a bit like effects of the 'Generic Low-Latency ASIO Driver' that Cubase (or other Steinberg software) installs.