Recorded Audio Tapers off in volume/pumps

[Matthew Grant]

Hoping this is a known issue, and I'm just missing something and it's an easy fix. I've tried searching for an answer and came up empty - perhaps for the wrong wording. Here's what happens:

Open cakewalk and create a brand new  audio track. Record myself playing guitar. Sounds good while I'm monitoring while playing, but the resulting recorded audio (and waveform) starts out at one volume, and then tapers to a lower volume. It is not for the duration of the recording, it seems to be responding to incoming signal-- meaning, if I play a riff, stop, then start up playing again (continuous recording), the volume of the second riff starts at full volume again, and then tapers off a bit. It is almost like there is some compression happening, but It is a brand new track with no effects or processing that I'm aware of. 

For control, so I know it's not my guitar, playing, interface, or anything else in the signal chain - I've recorded to other recording software with the exact same set up and this does not happen. It is definitely something that cakewalk is doing, so I think I'm just missing a setting somewhere or something.

Hopefully i've described this adequately - but happy to answer follow up questions. Attached a link of my wave form to hopefully illustrate my issue. 

[David Baay]

I don't really have a good idea what could cause this, but I'm curious... what's the setup that's giving you a stereo recording?

[Matthew Grant]

8 hours ago, David Baay said:

I don't really have a good idea what could cause this, but I'm curious... what's the setup that's giving you a stereo recording?

After I shared that image, I realized I was getting stereo and that was odd. Then your comment made me think about it more, and I realized I never installed a proper driver for my interface (cheapo behringer um2), since it had been working for me right out of the box (again, no issues in other software, and I was getting audio into cakewalk, albeit with the volume issue). SO. I thought perhaps the driver might have had something to do with it, since I didn't even have an option to switch to mono. This lead me on a long morning of tragedy and regret. LOL.

I went to to behringer's site and they linked to AISO4ALL as the driver to use with this interface. So. Installed that, set it up in cakewalk, and got no audio whatsoever, no matter how hard I tried. Learned about an older behringer specific driver so I thought i'd give that a whirl. Uninstalled AISO4ALL, installed the new driver.... same thing, no audio no matter what I tried, and cakewalk ran like crap while it was installed. Attempts to record in other software showed I could not get audio there anymore either. Great.

 So I uninstalled THAT. After that my computer decided to stop powering the interface. Unplugged re-plugged.... no power. Put it on another machine. Powered up. WHAT?!?? did some research and found that I needed to completely remove it with the device manager. Then when I plugged it back in. Worked, as in powered on, but still no audio in cakewalk. Futzed about with the driver settings to try and get back to where I had started, and eventually got the audio working again, and this time I'm somehow able to get it as a mono input. However, the volume issue still persists. 

SO. Not sure what the next steps are. Seems like it is trying to regulate my input, but reacts slowly. Wondering if it has to do with me using external modeling on my guitar and running in distorted input. Not sure why that would make a difference, but I might try just doing the modeling in cakewalk and see if that gives me better results. I'll report back, once i've had a chance to experiment with that.

[scook]

ASIO4All was developed for programs that require ASIO where no ASIO driver exists.

ASIO4All is not a real ASIO driver; it is a wrapper for WDM drivers.

CbB does not require an ASIO driver.

CbB works with WDM and WASAPI drivers.

When running Win10 without a real ASIO driver, try using WASAPI driver modes in CbB.

 

Regardless of the driver, I have never seen a case where it was impossible to set the input on an audio track to a single channel on an interface and track interleave to mono.

[David Baay]

If it weren't for the fact that this reportedly isn't happening with other recording apps, I would have thought for sure it was automatic input sensitivity adjustment in the interface or possibly the microphone you're using. I suppose it could be the driver, but if the other app(s) are using WDM or WASAPI, Cakewalk should give the same result when using the same driver. I second Steve's suggestion to use WASAPI Exclusive if possible rather than either ASIO4ALL or WDM.

[Matthew Grant]

43 minutes ago, scook said:

ASIO4All was developed for programs that require ASIO where no ASIO driver exists.

ASIO4All is not a real ASIO driver; it is a wrapper for WDM drivers.

CbB does not require an ASIO driver.

CbB works with WDM and WASAPI drivers.

When running Win10 without a real ASIO driver, try using WASAPI driver modes in CbB.

 

Regardless of the driver, I have never seen a case where it was impossible to set the input on an audio track to a single channel on an interface and track interleave to mono.

Thank you. This was helpful. A few more updates.  (side note, I could have been wrong about not having a mono option in the beginning, but as I recall it was only giving me one option at that time and the result was stereo)

Where I had landed with it working was MME. As I said, I still had the volume issue. I attempted recording dry guitar and that seemed to work without the volume issue. Good. Went to put TH3 on it to see how it would work with modeling. No problems putting it on the pre-recorded dry track of course. But I wanted to monitor the audio as I record with the modeling on, and so I attempted that and it just didn't work. It sounded like garbage. Bad latency, etc. Just was not working.

Saw your post. I had tried WASAPI earlier trying to get things working and it didn't work for me, but i was doing so many things trying to get audio back, who knows what the configuration was. I gave it a shot again, and it works. 

So now I can record a dry signal and monitor with the modeling on (which helps me play better, I think-- )... there's some latency issues though. I'm trying to determine if it is workable or not. I think the latency is higher with th3 on. It might be just a tad too much. The latency buffer configuration is grayed out, so there is not much I can do there. So. Will need to think on that. Not sure if trying AISO4ALL again will help here or not.  Probably what I get for using a cheapo interface, though. 

With the dry guitar there is no volume issue. Which is great.  Now that this was working, I went on to attempt again, the hardware modeling before the interface. 

This time I thought I would lower the input level in case it was coming in too hot and that had something to do with it. Well, with WASAPI and even the lowered input level, I still experience the volume issue. Cannot figure this out. 

TL;DR - Solved some problems I didn't know I had, introduced some new ones, and still can't figure out the original issue. 

 

 

[Matthew Grant]

2 minutes ago, David Baay said:

If it weren't for the fact that this reportedly isn't happening with other recording apps, I would have thought for sure it was automatic input sensitivity adjustment in the interface or possibly the microphone you're using. I suppose it could be the driver, but if the other app(s) are using WDM or WASAPI, Cakewalk should give the same result when using the same driver. I second Steve's suggestion to use WASAPI Exclusive if possible rather than either ASIO4ALL or WDM.

Thanks. Was writing that novel when you posted, so I just saw this. WASAPI seems to be working the best so far. Not solving my volume issue. It is weird because if I record just the dry guitar signal in, doesn't happen, but if I have my modeling pedal in front of it, it does. Does not matter the input level going to Cakewalk. 

So. Now I'm thinking my best option is just to go dry signal with TH3, but I'm trying to tighten up some latency issues. 

 

[scook]

WASAPI Shared uses a buffer size fixed by the OS.

WASAPI Exclusive has an adjustable buffer size.

As with any driver mode with an adjustable buffer size, in the search for low latency, it is possible to make the buffer too small to work reliably.

[David Baay]

Does any of the outboard gear have MIDI control? Possibly Cakewalk is sending initialization messages that are altering the behavior of the hardware.

[Matthew Grant]

Both of you were a big help, thank you both very much. Here's where I'm at. I don't have anything going other than the interface.

Switched the WASAPI Share for Exclusive, which gave me buffer options and got the latency down. SOOOOOOOOOOO much better. 

No change on the volume thing. 

So - for now, I think that using the dry signal and modeling is a viable option. I have some settings in TH3 that are pretty close to what I want, and it's probably a better way to go anyway. I can't figure out the volume thing, but if using a dry signal is not having the problem I'm just going to go with that rather than spend any more time on this.

 

[John Vere]

It should be illegal to sell that interface to Cakewalk users. You're possibly the 10th person I've read about that has issues. Rule #1. Make sure the interface comes with a proper ASIO driver. The Generic drivers will often work fine with other software and no problem on a Mac so 100's of happy users, but Cakewalk is a bit more fussy and is heavily entrenched in the Windows system. 

You want a great interface, check out the PreSonus Audio Box USB 96. I just watched a video where this guy tested about 15 cheaper interfaces and this was his top pick for the price as it had all the right stuff.