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Cakewalk hangs ... bug or idiot me?


tulamide

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This problem follows me since the very first Cakewalk by Bandlab version. I can't say anything about Sonar, as I never used it. However, since I started using Cakewalk I went through 3 different PCs and 2 different OS, and the latest addition of an audio interface a few months ago didn't change it either.

This is what happens: I start Cakewalk. I start a new project. I add a plugin, start to play around. When I feel something's good, I start recording. I work on the midi, may have a 4 or 8 bar loop, that I set up. I now run this loop indefinitely. Add another plugin, work a bit. Add another, say, a drum plugin. Working within the plugin, loading a few dozen wav files, shape the drum sounds to my liking. Then all of a sudden, Cakewalk just hangs. I can still hear the loop playing just fine, so no plugin crashed, but the window is non-responsive anymore, and no matter how long I wait, at one point I have to kill Cakewalk through the Task Manager.

I also have the impression that this hanging is related to not saving. Because if I manually save the project, the hanging is at least happening way later, if at all. I have autosave active, which I rely on for my projects, and I do save often. But not, when starting a new project. It can take up to 2 or 3 hours, before I think that it is worth saving. My suspicion is that there is some kind of overflow, maybe a limit that overshoots.

See the introduction sentence before concluding my system. Also, I never experience this with Waveform or FL Studio, under the same conditions.

I tend to see this as a bug, because it is present for years under totally different circumstances. Also, no program should silently crash, and Cakewalk normally does a good job at catching errors, writing a dump file and properly closing itself.

Edited by tulamide
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1 hour ago, tulamide said:

I also have the impression that this hanging is related to not saving.

This ^^^.

Cntrl-S should be a habitual movement. Not only with Cakewalk but any program that your progress is important to you. 

Do not depend on Auto-Save. It is not the same thing as Save. Auto-Save creates a different file and does not clear the memory of recent changes to the main file. This is true for any App on any platform. If you lose unsaved work in a computer program, do not blame the app. It is your own fault.

This happens to everyone at least once. If it happens more than twice...

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9 minutes ago, Base 57 said:

If you lose unsaved work in a computer program, do not blame the app. It is your own fault.

I didn't, as you can see in my post. I just don't think a program should crash just because it is running for an hour or two.

Other than that, I get your point.

 

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It shouldn't, and for most people it doesn't. I've used Cakewalk stuff for many years and this is the most stable it's ever been for me, and most of us here on the forums, so there's something going on in your particular setup that's either broken, or is misconfigured, or is exposing some bug in Cakewalk that most of us aren't experiencing (not to say it can't be a bug at all - this could be something legitimately wrong inside Cakewalk, but something particular to how you have your system set up might be exposing it).

So to help us help you, please tell us:

What are the basic specs of your machine? CPU, RAM, etc.

What OS are you running and what version of it?

Are you running the latest version of Cakewalk?

What plugins you're using in this particular project that's crashing, and what type are they (VST2, VST3, DX, etc.)

What is your audio interface? And what driver mode are you running it in (ASIO, WASAPI, etc.)

What  other audio or video apps on your machine?

Have you installed any generic drivers like ASIO4ALL or any "low latency" driver from Magix or Steinberg?

 

As far as the crashing goes, my guess is it's almost certainly plugin related that's triggering it. You can set the error crash severity to catch more of these errors instead of Cakewalk crashing to the desktop silently, but let's start with the info above so we're not just pulling suggestions out of thin air for you.

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6 hours ago, tulamide said:

I went through 3 different PCs and 2 different OS, and the latest addition of an audio interface a few months ago didn't change it either.

If this is true: There's either some routing issue going wrong | or | it could be related to a specific "favorite" plugin you have been using for years. If it was a bug a lot of users would have reported this. 

Try replacing the plugins one-by-one and see if the problem disappears. If there's an improvement in your system - then you'll know its a plugin causing the issue. You can then report this plugin here and to its manufacturer for them to look at. A lot of plugins compatibility with CbB got improved this way over the years since Bandlab took over. 

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13 hours ago, Lord Tim said:

It shouldn't, and for most people it doesn't. I've used Cakewalk stuff for many years and this is the most stable it's ever been for me, and most of us here on the forums, so there's something going on in your particular setup that's either broken, or is misconfigured, or is exposing some bug in Cakewalk that most of us aren't experiencing (not to say it can't be a bug at all - this could be something legitimately wrong inside Cakewalk, but something particular to how you have your system set up might be exposing it).

So to help us help you, please tell us:

What are the basic specs of your machine? CPU, RAM, etc.

What OS are you running and what version of it?

Are you running the latest version of Cakewalk?

What plugins you're using in this particular project that's crashing, and what type are they (VST2, VST3, DX, etc.)

What is your audio interface? And what driver mode are you running it in (ASIO, WASAPI, etc.)

What  other audio or video apps on your machine?

Have you installed any generic drivers like ASIO4ALL or any "low latency" driver from Magix or Steinberg?

 

As far as the crashing goes, my guess is it's almost certainly plugin related that's triggering it. You can set the error crash severity to catch more of these errors instead of Cakewalk crashing to the desktop silently, but let's start with the info above so we're not just pulling suggestions out of thin air for you.

My machine is listed here with all parts, except 2 additional drives via SATA. One SSD and a HDD. Note, this is my current machine. The older one had an Intel i5, 8 BG RAM, a Radeon 7870, and just one SATA HDD. The one before was an i3 with 4 GB and a HDD.

On my current machine I'm running Windows 10 Pro, v 21H2, build 19044.2006 (one update pending), The machine before used the same OS but of course older build, and the third used Windows 7

Latest non-beta, non-early-access version of Cakewalk. Happened with all versions so far.

It's not one specific project that's hanging. It happens, as I described, everytime I start a new project and play around for more than an hour. Plugins used vary a lot, VST2 64 bit and VST3 64-bit, at least two dozen different plugins have been active over the time, while experiencing a hang (not all at once of course). Some examples are Synthmaster2, Ascension, Vacuum Pro, Vital, BreakTweaker, ModoDrum, SampleTank4, Orb Synth, Drum8, Sektor, Hybrid, FM8

My audio interface is now Behringer U-Phoria UMC204HD in ASIO mode at 128 sample buffer, but it happened as well in earlier days without audio interface and ASIO4ALL, which I switched to WASAPI when the Cakewalk developers declared it incompatible.

Waveform 11, FL Studio Demo, Audacity, Wavosaur, DaVinci Resolve.

No. On my current machine I only used WASAPI and now the specific driver for my audio interface (FL Studio installed FL Studio ASIO, which I don't use). On the previous machines, ASIO4ALL was installed.

Edited by tulamide
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The more I think about this now, the more I'm suspecting a power profile thing if it's happening after a specified amount of time no matter what. Something that may be hanging up the UMC's audio driver and Cakewalk is sitting there waiting for a response that never comes.

If this was a busted library or something it'd crash either immediately or far more sporadically.

OK, do this then:

Work as normal, wait for it to hang. When it does, follow the instructions here:

This will show exactly what's going on with the crash to the Cakewalk team and you'll have a place to start looking to see what's weird about your setup that's making this happen.

Like I said, this isn't normal. I can leave my stuff powered up overnight with a project open and come back the next day and just keep working (mind you, I make sure I save if I ever do anything like that! Computers are computers after all 😒)

Edited by Lord Tim
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4 minutes ago, Lord Tim said:

Work as normal, wait for it to hang. When it does, follow the instructions here

Will do so, this might help!
Regarding the audio interface: I've set all USB devices to NOT go to sleep, following a tutorial. But can that still be an issue? Because on the older 2 PCs I didn't do that.

 

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Yeah, if you've set that then it shouldn't be happening. Like I said, I'm just making educated guesses at this point, honestly. Without looking under the hood or checking out a crash dump (or more precisely, someone on the dev team doing that so they know exactly what they're looking at) it could be any number of things, even a faulty audio interface, heat issue... you name it. Let's get some solid facts. :) 

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