Missing note in Cakewalk

[Joseph Bourke]

When I'm in Cakewalk (latest version), and I play the note G2 (note 55), there is no sound. All other notes work just fine in any native Cakewalk instrument or 3rd party VST instrument. When I play the note in MIDI Monitor, it sends the on-off signals just fine, showing the note on and off, velocity, etc.. When I open ACID 10 Studio Pro everything is working just fine with all notes playing. When I open the free-standing version of Unify everything plays just fine. It is most definitely Cakewalk. This is driving me crazy! My first thought was that it was a bad key on my AKAI MPK49 MIDI controller. This is not the case. Is it possible that the G2 note has been assigned somehow to trigger a different, out of range note? Or is there a way to reset Cakewalk without doing a full reinstall? With all of my plugins and VST instruments this would take DAYS! As a matter of fact, this is a recent fresh install of Cakewalk, since I moved from Win7 to Win10. I am running on an HP Z800 dual Xeon machine with 48GB of RAM. There are no latency problems, and my setting is 500 in the preferences. Thanks for any help you can give. 

    Joe Bourke

[Andres Medina]

1 hour ago, Joseph Bourke said:

When I'm in Cakewalk (latest version), and I play the note G2 (note 55), there is no sound. All other notes work just fine in any native Cakewalk instrument or 3rd party VST instrument. When I play the note in MIDI Monitor, it sends the on-off signals just fine, showing the note on and off, velocity, etc.. When I open ACID 10 Studio Pro everything is working just fine with all notes playing. When I open the free-standing version of Unify everything plays just fine. It is most definitely Cakewalk. This is driving me crazy! My first thought was that it was a bad key on my AKAI MPK49 MIDI controller. This is not the case. Is it possible that the G2 note has been assigned somehow to trigger a different, out of range note? Or is there a way to reset Cakewalk without doing a full reinstall? With all of my plugins and VST instruments this would take DAYS! As a matter of fact, this is a recent fresh install of Cakewalk, since I moved from Win7 to Win10. I am running on an HP Z800 dual Xeon machine with 48GB of RAM. There are no latency problems, and my setting is 500 in the preferences. Thanks for any help you can give. 

    Joe Bourke

It's very weird... comes to mind to make sure that your midi track is not transposed, because this could make any VST having your G2 out of range.

It seems to me that this is a problem with your VST destination...

[John Vere]

To test that it isn't truly your controller, open the Virtual Keyboard. My Akai Synth station has an intermittent dead note right in the middle.  

[bvideo]

Check for the MIDI 'shift' key configuration.

Quote

You can designate a MIDI Key or Controller (usually a pedal) to act as a key binding shift key. That way you can require that the key binding shift key be depressed before any command is triggered, so you only lose one note or pedal from its regular function.

Check in the upper right of this "preferences" subwindow.

 

[Joseph Bourke]

21 hours ago, John Vere said:

To test that it isn't truly your controller, open the Virtual Keyboard. My Akai Synth station has an intermittent dead note right in the middle.  

 

[Joseph Bourke]

Thanks everyone for your quick responses! I've tried all the suggested possibilities, going in to the keyboard shortcuts and seeing the pedal assignment (which is a default) but the assignment is not turned on - I also reassigned it but still no G2 (55) in any of my Cakewalk instruments or third party VST instruments. What gets me is the fact that the G2 key works just fine in ACID Pro Suite using any of the VST instruments which don't have the silent G2 in Cakewalk! I also tried the virtual keyboard, and the G2 key plays fine in there - I'm not sure what that means, but I'll be trying to track down what's going on, short of reinstalling Cakewalk (which I'm avoiding at all costs). As I said above, it's a relatively fresh install of Cakewalk on Win10, and the G2 key was working just fine until a week ago. The only major change I worked on was getting my AKAI transport working again, so it's possible I may have hit a learn key in APK by mistake, and replaced the key assignment with something else. This is a real mystery!

[David Baay]

Is this happening with a new project started from the Basic template? Can you record the note into a MIDI track regardless of whether you're hearing anything?

[John Vere]

If the virtual keyboard triggers the G2 and your Akai controller doesn’t what does that tell you? 
One thing it does tell you is that Cakewalk is not the problem here. 
It sounds like you might have assigned that note to a midi function but that is stored in the controller in it’s set up menu. If so that’s were the answer will be. 

Edited March 8, 2023 by John Vere

[Joseph Bourke]

Well...thank you again for all the help. I just figured it out. It had nothing to do with the AKAI controller, and everything to do with Cakewalk! I started Cakewalk up while holding down the CTRL key. This apparently deleted the .ini file (or some configuration file), and now the pesky G2 (note 55) is working just fine! I now have to do some housecleaning - some of my VST instruments are no longer finding their libraries, but that's a pretty easy fix. This was an odd one, and one of the first true mysteries I've run across in Cakewalk. It has been pretty seamless and easy to set up (other than the transport keys on my AKAI - finally figured out after weeks of head scratching). Most of my problems are attributable to user error.