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Whole Cakewalk is extremely BUGgy, unworkable. Can't take it anymore.


pulsewalk

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43 minutes ago, pulsewalk said:

maybe the developers are more interested in taking a look at it.

I wouldn't worry about that. They definitely don't want people to have such troubles with the software.

The tough part is figuring out how to force it to happen again in such a way that they can examine it and correct the problem.

I've been trying off and on for years to get the "MIDI track stops talking to Synth track" one pinned down. I started another topic just for that to see if we can work together on it. It's been happening every once in a while since I started using Cakewalk. Not often enough to cause real problems, but annoying when it does happen. Oddly enough, it tends to happen early on in a project, once I sacrifice the chicken to it, it's solid thereafter.

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1 minute ago, Lord Tim said:

One thing that did cross my mind, and it did when Lynn posted a similar thread to this and now in here, I wonder if this is related to track indexing once sub folders were brought in? I'm not seeing this issue at all, personally, but if a project was built prior to or around the time sub folders were brought it, I know quite a lot of changes had to be made under the hood to accommodate it. Could it be possible this is what got these projects into the bad state in the first place, perhaps? @msmcleod - any thoughts?

Are you guys using a lot of sub folders? And about when did you first start working on these projects?

I might be just shooting into the breeze here, mind you, but it's something worth clarifying!

To answer your question, I did not use any folders at all at the point where these problems begun. Not in any of the projects I have problems with.

Although I've organised the project into folders and subfolders, but that did not make any difference that I know of. The project was corrupt before it, and likewise after it.

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12 minutes ago, Starship Krupa said:

I wouldn't worry about that. They definitely don't want people to have such troubles with the software.

I certainly hope so. I actually didn't even get a reply when I contacted the person I was told to contact regarding the below linked issue, which also seems to be a part of the problems stated in this thread. And this was like 4 months ago, so I'm not even sure they are listening to what I'm saying :D

 

 

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Could it be a problem with the internal "naming" or "tagging" of clips and/or tracks? When Cakewalk adds a certain ID number (or however it is done) to a certain clip or track, maybe it somehow accidentally assign the same ID to another clip in the project, which causes lots of reference problems and such?

This would explain the automation ghosting problems that I've described earlier, but also that when handling one track is affecting another, completely different, track regardless of VST's or VSTi's used.

I can't really see a connection between VST's and VSTi's and my problem considering the used ones are different from each other in the corrupted tracks and clips and what not.

If the problem only would occur with say the Serum VSTi only, or a certain FX VST plugin only, then one could say that "perhaps that specific VST/VSTi is the problem". But AFAIK there's no such connection there.

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20 minutes ago, Lord Tim said:

Please don't take this as me being combative or antagonistic (text can give the wrong impression!) but there's not a real lot that can be done unless you go through methodical steps, so this is going to be something that will keep happening unless there's definitive steps to try and lock the cause down and fix it. I'm sure you understand that :) I definitely get the amount of work involved in breaking it all down, though, and I sympathise. It's a no-win situation at this point.

One thing that did cross my mind, and it did when Lynn posted a similar thread to this and now in here, I wonder if this is related to track indexing once sub folders were brought in? I'm not seeing this issue at all, personally, but if a project was built prior to or around the time sub folders were brought it, I know quite a lot of changes had to be made under the hood to accommodate it. Could it be possible this is what got these projects into the bad state in the first place, perhaps? @msmcleod - any thoughts?

Are you guys using a lot of sub folders? And about when did you first start working on these projects?

I might be just shooting into the breeze here, mind you, but it's something worth clarifying!

Any bugs in subfolders would present themselves as UI issues - i.e. the track may appear in the wrong place, or be invisible.  The folder ownership is purely a UI property, and is completely separate from the track's data model.

The only bug I'm aware of that could cause corruption is to undoing a Ripple Delete with MIDI in lanes.  It's hard one to reproduce, and we've yet to identify the cause.

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45 minutes ago, pulsewalk said:

Could it be a problem with the internal "naming" or "tagging" of clips and/or tracks? When Cakewalk adds a certain ID number (or however it is done) to a certain clip or track, maybe it somehow accidentally assign the same ID to another clip in the project, which causes lots of reference problems and such?

This would explain the automation ghosting problems that I've described earlier, but also that when handling one track is affecting another, completely different, track regardless of VST's or VSTi's used.

I can't really see a connection between VST's and VSTi's and my problem considering the used ones are different from each other in the corrupted tracks and clips and what not.

If the problem only would occur with say the Serum VSTi only, or a certain FX VST plugin only, then one could say that "perhaps that specific VST/VSTi is the problem". But AFAIK there's no such connection there.

Well, as you alluded to, I too suspect that your project is getting corrupted at some point and all subsequent weirdness stems from that. A software engineer colleague of mine described it using a “cracked windshield” metaphor.

Windshield gets hit with a stone, then over months of driving, the crack spreads. But it’s all the result of that one stone.

Once you see the first sign of corruption it seems like it only gets worse after that.

 I’m suspecting a plug-in less as you describe it more, but it is true that really bad issues with Cakewalk very often come down to plug-in conflicts. So it’s worth keeping an eye on. Serum, obviously, is a very popular synth, and if it were causing problems like this the forum and Reddit would be in flames.

It’s crucial at this point to watch for the very first instance of corruption and then see if you can remember what operations you did right before it happened.

QA engineers, which I used to be, maintain a mental “buffer” of actions so that they can retrace their steps.

It’s a challenge, but not an impossible one.

When I saw a similar thing, it was in a project with a low track count, and it involved a couple of MeldaProduction plug-ins. Melda are known for having a large amount of shared code, so that might have had something to do with it. I might have been doing some sidechaining, which could also have helped.

IIRC, it did corrupt the project, but since it was a small project, I just salvaged it into a new project and the error didn’t happen again. Haven’t seen it since, so I called it a fluke. 🤷‍♂️

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9 minutes ago, Starship Krupa said:

Well, as you alluded to, I too suspect that your project is getting corrupted at some point and all subsequent weirdness stems from that. A software engineer colleague of mine described it using a “cracked windshield” metaphor.

Windshield gets hit with a stone, then over months of driving, the crack spreads. But it’s all the result of that one stone.

Once you see the first sign of corruption it seems like it only gets worse after that.

 I’m suspecting a plug-in less as you describe it more, but it is true that really bad issues with Cakewalk very often come down to plug-in conflicts. So it’s worth keeping an eye on. Serum, obviously, is a very popular synth, and if it were causing problems like this the forum and Reddit would be in flames.

It’s crucial at this point to watch for the very first instance of corruption and then see if you can remember what operations you did right before it happened.

QA engineers, which I used to be, maintain a mental “buffer” of actions so that they can retrace their steps.

It’s a challenge, but not an impossible one.

When I saw a similar thing, it was in a project with a low track count, and it involved a couple of MeldaProduction plug-ins. Melda are known for having a large amount of shared code, so that might have had something to do with it. I might have been doing some sidechaining, which could also have helped.

IIRC, it did corrupt the project, but since it was a small project, I just salvaged it into a new project and the error didn’t happen again. Haven’t seen it since, so I called it a fluke. 🤷‍♂️

Also, I guess it's a combination of plugin and DAW, in case a plugin is causing this, since if it only would be the plugin itself, it would've been happening in other DAW's too. What I mean by this is that Cakewalk somehow makes it possible for the plugin to corrupt the project, where's the same plugin can't cause this mess in other DAW's.

This is of course true if the said plugins problematic behaviour is not causing any problems in other DAW's. Well, if it's the plugin thats causing it in the first place.

 

Don't the DEV's have tools for opening CW project files and look at construct of them? Like opening an .INI file or something? So they can see what is what etc. Then, maybe it would be possible to check what's wrong. Becuase I very well know which tracks that are corrupt at the moment, so if one only could look at how that information looks "behind the scenes" so to speak.

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Also, is there no tool/function to check the health of a project? Corruptions or whatever? There are such things for Indesign, for example, where one can check problems with the document and let the software auto correct it. Same for Adobe PDF files and so forth.

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After using Cakewalk Pro Audio 9, Sonar and Cakewalk again, I've given up after the latest update. The system worked perfectly before 2022.11 update, but after that the latency is unworkable. I notice that its been a few months since they updated now, when before the 2022.11 update it was quite a regular occurance. Incidentally, I did read the 2022.11 release notes to see what was changed.

I've tried all the audio driver settings, reinstalling the UA-25EX drivers, installing ASIOFORALL, uninstalling ASIO for all when it made no difference, rolling back the update, and using a new audio interface UMC204HD. All to no avail. The live recording latency is seemingly random, but I now have to drag everything back to the correct time. Before the 2022.11 update, this never happened. If I play with the Audio settings, I either get no audio on recording or a long pause, or a dropout. Its impossible to predict. Even if I can get it semi stable, on occasion it just keels over and stops. It doesn't seem to matter which Audio interface I use.

I love the workflow in Cakewalk, and as a long term user from the early 90s I know how to use the DAW. Editing, Audio recording, tracking and midi are all straight forward and simple. You could use the lanes and record multiple takes with ease, and not lose any recording. Playback and mixing is fine, as well as the export facility, although I did have one project go corrupt recently, but was able to recover from a backup.

The poor and unpredicatable latency simply kills it and makes recording almost impossible with Cakewalk. Whatever they have done, it affects the midi recording as well as the audio recording. I'm not able to get the system stable. I've tried to continue to use Cakewalk for the familiarity and ease of use, but I've got so frustrated I'm learning another DAW (which works fine and has no latency issue on the same system and audio interfaces), and porting over the numerous cakewalk projects .

its good that Bandlab have kept cakewalk going and  I really hope that they sort out these bugs, I think that it is the end of the line for me.

 

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5 hours ago, PeterWalker87 said:

I've tried all the audio driver settings, reinstalling the UA-25EX drivers, installing ASIOFORALL, uninstalling ASIO for all when it made no difference, rolling back the update, and using a new audio interface UMC204HD. All to no avail.

Old Obsolete Interface and a new one that has lots of complaints about the crummy asio driver. You need to spend a tiny bit more cash and your issues will go away. Think Focusrite, Tascam, RME, Motu etc. Behringer makes good stuff once you get away from the bottom end stuff. 

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I agree that the UA-25EX is old and obsolete and it was the first thing I replaced when I encountered the problem after the update. The New Behringer Audio interface works perfectly with other DAWs on my system and until the 2022.11 update the UA-25EX had worked with no glitches or problems for over 15 years, through the Sonar years and back onto Cakewalk. If the new one had issues it wouldn't work with the other DAW either, which has solid timing. When I hook up my USB Yamaha keyboard  (which doesn't use the interfaces ) and record midi, I get the same latency problems with that as well. Cakewalk is not reliable on my system. All this gear works perfectly with another DAW. The same issue is on all the audio and midi interfaces, when using cakewalk

According to the release notes, the last update made a fundemental change to the way the Audio drivers are utilised in Cakewalk. In my experience, big changes in software like this cause unforeseen problems. The point was that the development team work on the reported bugs and get some updates released. This won't be the only one.

I've championed Cakewalk and Sonar for years and like the user friendly interface and simple easy to use structure. I just want it to work.

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I was recording audio in. On pressing record the audio engine stuttered and then stopped, the program crashed and came up with a unhandled exception and stated that cakewalk must close down. The project then wouldn't open. Fortunately I do regular backups of my working folders and was able to recover the project without too much rework.

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4 hours ago, PeterWalker87 said:

I was recording audio in. On pressing record the audio engine stuttered and then stopped, the program crashed and came up with a unhandled exception and stated that cakewalk must close down. The project then wouldn't open. Fortunately I do regular backups of my working folders and was able to recover the project without too much rework.

The only time I've seen this behaviour is when some other process is trying to access the files that Cakewalk is writing to during record.  Anti-virus / Cloud Sync programs are the typical culprits.  Make sure you've got your Cakewalk Projects directory and Global Audio folder excluded from any of these type of apps.

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I have inadvertently muted sections of tracks by accidentally holding the shift button while clicking a note.  Then any highlighted notes are muted. Very frustrating when you don't know what happened or what to "undo".

Good luck.

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2 hours ago, pulsewalk said:

Who is "you"? Me, the OP? Or PeterWalker87?

Sorry - Peter with the crash. It was just a thought - nothing more.

 

BTW: I don't feel like Cakewalk is buggy but I do feel like there are so many shortcuts assigned that it might seem that way at times. It usually doesn't cause problem but I hit wrong keys semi regularly. Strange things can happen. (Backups, Backups, Backups)

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