More Specific Gear Section or Tutorials - Audio Interface Specific

[JnTuneTech]

So many posts here seem to be primarily involving non-Cakewalk native issues, that it seems like there would be a good use for more specific sub-sections in these forums. The existing subsections are fairly robust, but I would like to see a more specific sub-section for the information & troubleshooting using Cakewalk with audio interfaces specifically, since as it stands right now that category is lumped under "Gear", along with things like headphones, etc.  Much of that probably should remain as is, but there is so much happening each day with posts relating to specific audio interface problems & Cakewalk specific setup issues, that it might be best to have a full Audio Interface sub-section, and perhaps even major manufacturer categories in that.

I would also recommend, once Cakewalk again becomes a paid-for product, that there be some curation of the audio interface section(s) of the forum, to include organized hardware compatibility lists - testing notes, and hopefully basic Cakewalk-specific setup guides where possible, with appropriate caveats & links to the manufacturer's direct information and support.  -Without trying to give preference to any particular manufacturer, there still should be some easy groupings, or at least tags, to easily reference the most common interfaces, and a place for various lesser-known interfaces and legacy hardware notes, most of which can be user-provided.

[Byron Dickens]

99.9% of these issues can easily be solved in short order by READING THE F----  MANUAL.

If they had bothered to look at the documentation that came with their audio interface, they would have downloaded and installed the driver for it and it would be working properly from the beginning.

Edited June 29, 2023 by Byron Dickens

[JnTuneTech]

@Byron Dickens - Of course, but please, let's not try and scare people to death before they get comfortable using Cakewalk! 😶  -For this forum here , especially when Cakewalk went to a free licensing model, I have assumed we need to allow for general public access, including new users & casual creators, so maybe let's offer some basic help first?  -But yes, links to the hardware manuals would be on the top of the compatibility listings sections - I would think.

[Byron Dickens]

Being new to all this is even more of a reason to RTFM.

 

Maybe I'm just stupid but when FedEx drives by and drops off that box from Sweetwater, when I open it up and want to hook up my new toy, my first thought is where's the manual?

[Starship Krupa]

3 minutes ago, Byron Dickens said:

Maybe I'm just stupid but when FedEx drives by and drops off that box from Sweetwater, when I open it up and want to hook up my new toy, my first thought is where's the manual?

You're not stupid, but you're unusual. People don't tend to read manuals. They get in a big hurry to play with their new toys and don't want (or think) to sit down and read the manual.

I was born in 1961 and it was that way then and has certainly not improved since then. I was a technically-competent kid who liked to help people sort things out, and 9 times out of 10 the people having trouble hadn't cracked the manual.

Manufacturers are complicit in the fact that people tend not to read manuals. Everything is touted as being plug and play, a breeze to set up, no hassles. Apple doesn't ship manuals with iOS products.

Some people just don't do well with manuals, it starts to look like a confusing blur to them especially once their anxiety level goes up. Not all manuals are well-written.

No amount of kvetching and browbeating on our part is going to change that. It's getting exasperated over something that we can't change.

The only hope is that gentle suggestions that the information should be in the product instructions will be heeded and shown to be helpful.

As regards having Cakewalk Sonar/Next specific cheat sheets for getting hardware to work with the software is a good idea. As you yourself said, downloading and installing the latest driver from the mfrs' website is step one.

There are Cakewalk-specific issues that can come up, even with just interfaces. And those aren't going to be in the hardware's manual.

Cakewalk by BandLab (and I'm sure its successor, Cakewalk Sonar) unfortunately (IMO) supports too many driver modes. 32-bit MME has no place being a selection. Nor does WDM/KS. They're just confusing. ASIO, WASAPI Exclusive, WASAPI Shared are all that need to be there.

When someone installs a MAGIX or Steinberg program, or the full Realtek driver package and gets unwanted ASIO drivers (which can happen before they get their new interface), things can go to hell for them. Cakewalk for some reason just loves to grab those crappy drivers, after which you can't change back to the interface's native ASIO driver until you disable the outputs under Devices. I've had to do this myself.

That ain't in the interface's manual, and I'm not even sure it's in the Cakewalk Reference Guide.

It might be helpful to have a list, for beginners, of community-recommended interfaces. We recently discovered that M-Audio sells one for $50 that has full ASIO support. I consider that the price of entry for recording audio. The bottom rung. Well, that and a mic or instrument.

There's no reason to waste time with those low-end Behringer ones that don't have ASIO drivers. But if someone happens to have one, with no replacement in sight, they should know that running it in WASAPI Exclusive is the preferred way.

[JnTuneTech]

FWIW - I do have some software manuals, here & there, that have Sonar-specific instructions for install & setup - but very few. I suppose if a manufacturer finds it their interest to attract buyers with compatibility claims, that perhaps contributes to that type of info being created.  -My hope would be that, if it were posted publicly here, some vendors might actually use that information readily, or at least link to it. -Best case scenario, of course.

Worst case scenario is if things just go the way of negative comments and one-upmanship, like "such & such hardware sucks", etc., which really helps no one. And of course without some curation and user input, these things can go stale, and then folks just put the blame on the information supplier...  But perhaps all we can do is try to at least give topical, directed guides, especially when the forum posts reveal a certain need in some new hardware, or after a major update, for instance.

[Lord Tim]

I'd really like a "helpful tips, tricks, and FAQ" pinned thread at the top of the main CbB forum, where it's properly cultivated and presented well, but contains the "why don't I get any sound"  "Reaktek ASIO, ASIO4ALL issues" etc. etc. stuff that comes up time and time again, and then have the first post in the thread as the index that references the replies where it talks about each particular issue, and maybe a link to a discussion thread on the forum. And this would be locked and pinned by a mod, and added to as it becomes necessary.

That way, rather than the usual "OK, don't use ASIO4ALL, uninstall that, now go into the registry and..." song and dance, we can just refer to the pinned thread post.

I'm aware we have a FAQ forum, but people are inherently lazy - the easier we can make stuff to find, and the easier it is to link to, the better.

[JnTuneTech]

Isn't it amazing, that the more options we get as musicians, the more complicated it gets to just "find that sound"?  Of course, it's also a complication of the evolution in audio electronics,  -nay - the entire personal computing advances, of the past 60+ years now, in reality. But yeah, reading manuals on things in general has been a weak spot of many of us. -And I know, even posting guides here won't always stop that, but one can at least try!

I have to digress for a minute: I am of the similar musical generation as @Lord Tim - and as such, passed through times when I was lucky to find a computer audio interface I wanted at all, -much less a choice of ones that worked better or worse!  Local PC shops were my only source then too. -When I began getting together my 1st music-related PC add-ons, I thought I wanted a Turtle Beach Multisound Classic card - only to find they had stopped making them a few years prior. Then, I had to learn what MPU-401 compatible was, then backwards to General MIDI standards, and see if anything compatible with that, (and which I could afford) existed!

Now, there are so many audio interfaces available out there, and although the standards have coalesced into some easier groups, it still bewilders many casual creators, and even gung-ho gigging musicians wanting to record their own stuff, -not knowing what to expect or start with, for computer music interfaces & software. And we are still so, so far away from plug & play, with both even mid-quality audio interfaces, and the software that is used with them. -Hopefully apps like Cakewalk, and forum use like this can help push that forwards some more. Nowadays it is at least quite easy to create specific, illustrated guides, and keep them relatively current with regular keystrokes, instead of compiling & distributing printed manuals.  -I'd like to see more of the former done here. -Although, I don't necessarily want it assumed that folks will figure out all these things "intuitively" (I'm looking at you, Apple...) as they go along- so some effort has to be put into coordinating it and getting it easily available, even promoted within the DAW as well, I might add.

Edited June 30, 2023 by JnTuneTech

[Lord Tim]

Ahhh, back when you couldn't go to Google University or see Professor YouTube to learn how to do stuff, hey?

Man it would have saved me some hours back in the day choosing gear and recording drums especially! 🙄 But wow did I ever get stuck into manuals though. I couldn't afford other gear so I just wanted to know EVERYTHING about what I just bought so I could make the most of it.

[mettelus]

4 hours ago, Byron Dickens said:

drops off that box from Sweetwater, when I open it up and want to hook up my new toy, my first thought is where's the manual?

Not me... first thought is always, "Where's the candy!?"

[Byron Dickens]

5 hours ago, Starship Krupa said:

You're not stupid, but you're unusual. People don't tend to read manuals. They get in a big hurry to play with their new toys and don't want (or think) to sit down and read the manual.

Yeah, I know that. That's why, in my former life, I was able to fix cars that nobody else seem to be able to fix. Because after some other Jackleg hack had thrown hundreds or even thousands of dollars worth of parts at the car and not only not fixed it but created additional problems, I would inherit the repair order and the first thing I would do would be to close up my toolbox, grab a cup of coffee and go sit down and start looking through the service information.

And then I would often go put all the old parts back on and start over from the beginning and find out it was something stupid simple. Simple that is for someone who's not scared to crack open a book.

People wouldn't get it when I would tell them that I didn't know anything about cars, I just knew how to read.

5 hours ago, Starship Krupa said:

Some people just don't do well with manuals, it starts to look like a confusing blur to them especially once their anxiety level goes up. Not all manuals are well-written.

It just boggles my mind the thought process of some people: "this thing looks really complicated and difficult and the manual for it looks complicated and difficult too so I'll just start randomly plugging things into other things and randomly poking around on buttons and by some miracle I'm going to magically figure it out." Yeah. That makes a lot of sense.

I'm sure I'm in the minority here too as well, but what is there to be anxious about? Nobody had a heart attack, there's no arterial bleeding, no sucking chest wounds. It's just software. Nobody's going to die and nothing's going to blow up or catch on fire if you make a mistake.

5 hours ago, Starship Krupa said:

There are Cakewalk-specific issues that can come up, even with just interfaces. And those aren't going to be in the hardware's manual.

Cakewalk by BandLab (and I'm sure its successor, Cakewalk Sonar) unfortunately (IMO) supports too many driver modes. 32-bit MME has no place being a selection. Nor does WDM/KS. They're just confusing. ASIO, WASAPI Exclusive, WASAPI Shared are all that need to be there.

When someone installs a MAGIX or Steinberg program, or the full Realtek driver package and gets unwanted ASIO drivers (which can happen before they get their new interface), things can go to hell for them. Cakewalk for some reason just loves to grab those crappy drivers, after which you can't change back to the interface's native ASIO driver until you disable the outputs under Devices. I've had to do this myself.

True, some things aren't in the documentation but most things are. Certainly "how do I get my MIDI keyboard to make sound" and "how do I  get my microphone/ guitar to record " are.

 

4 hours ago, Lord Tim said:

but people are inherently lazy

It constantly amazes me how much harder people end up having to work from being lazy.

[JnTuneTech]

1 hour ago, Byron Dickens said:

It constantly amazes me how much harder people end up having to work from being lazy.

That is often quite true, and most of that seems to be realized only after the fact... However, I find that music relies a bit more on inspiration & creativity, which don't often work hand-in-hand with studious organization. -I will completely fess up - many of my own faults lie in laziness. I still fight it to this day.  -I also found myself tearing apart automotive engines (in fact entire cars) to learn what made them tick (even landed a few jobs throughout my life due to that fascination). but I never experienced the particular creative light in working with them. It became just a job in the end. Not enough interest to dig deeper into manuals there. -For me anyway.

Music, on the other hand, seems to always be something that pulls me beyond laziness (though my family never thought so, of course!), and then I want to read the manuals to figure more out (again, similar to what @Lord Tim mentioned), -but it still doesn't always work that way with all the musicians I have been around. And that doesn't make them bad - hell most of them are way better than I could ever be.  You do have to have an affinity for it. The music mojo is often separate from the technical mojo.

Looking back, I realized I had different views on music than some in my days right after high school. One time, we went to a recording studio (on a special deal for amateurs that would allow booking open slots for cheap, but with only 1 engineer..) and in the session, I knew the cover tune we were doing had an organ part, and the studio had a Hammond in the corner. I had never played one, and our vocalist had only begun to try some monophonic synth parts (we had no keys really at that point), but I looked at the organ, and just somehow knew what the basic functions were - the Leslie for accents, etc., and so I showed her the (maybe 5) chords to play, and how & generally when to use the Leslie... Technically I just understood it on a basic level, no manual required. -That time.   But using the studio gear, the board, effects patching... - way beyond my depth then for sure.

And in similar ironic fashion, for years I had no reasonable way to understand proper overdriven guitar sounds - it's so sad to look back now. No one I knew then had ever played on, or let me use a plexi-style amp in my early days. I thought for the longest time it had to be special pedals or studio tricks that got that sound. Couldn't figure that one out - go figure. I could patch a bunch of pedals together, even began recording & mixing back then, but without instructions, or examples to follow, -basic metal & heavy blues guitar sound creation just eluded me.

If I had encountered access to detailed discussion and how-tos like there is here (or can be anyway) earlier in my life, who knows what I would be recording now. Laziness aside, if information is passed on, presented properly, I think there is more opportunity to get past that than if we just expect people to always think like we do. -Technical manuals are great, but not always interesting for everyone with the creative urge. But peer sharing, like we do here, can be different. (Oops, I'd better watch stepping off the edge of this soapbox... doh!)

Edited June 30, 2023 by JnTuneTech
clarifications...

[Lord Tim]

Actually here's a bit of inspiration for what I was suggesting from the Vegas forums:

https://www.vegascreativesoftware.info/us/forum/important-information-required-to-help-you--110457/

https://www.vegascreativesoftware.info/us/forum/vegas-pro-faqs-and-troubleshooting-guides--104787/

Obviously this doesn't apply 1:1 with what we have here, but rather than guessing about stuff, having a "help us to help you" pinned post with what we need people to tell us so we're not going "ahh your audio dropped out because... ghosts? What are your computer specs?"  "It's a laptop"  "... definitely ghosts then I guess" and the usual questions we all see regarding audio interfaces (or lack thereof), driver models, etc.

This really goes back to that big "Clunky?" thread I started in the main forum. The more stuff we can put right in front of people's faces, or the easier it is to link to when they ask about stuff, the more familiar they'll be with the conventions of this particular software, and the less 10 pages of replies where there's 3 different conversations and possibly wrong information tripping over itself when people try to help.

EDIT: The reason I'm mentioning a pinned post rather than the links at the top of the page is ... well, nobody ever reads them. They go to the forum first and ask questions rather than looking for drop-down menus.

Edited June 30, 2023 by Lord Tim