BOBONA Posted July 17, 2023 Share Posted July 17, 2023 Hi. I'm trying to set up Cakewalk on a new laptop and can't seem to get the audio drivers configured right. MME does work however the input latency with my MIDI controller is prohibitive. Wasapi Shared has loud crackling whenever any sound is playing. Wasapi Exclusive seems to not be supported. And I'm worried about using Asio4All, since last time I tried it, my Cakewalk installation broke completely. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
gustabo Posted July 17, 2023 Share Posted July 17, 2023 Have you considered getting a real audio interface with native ASIO drivers? 1 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Byron Dickens Posted July 17, 2023 Share Posted July 17, 2023 ⬆️⬆️⬆️⬆️⬆️ Like he said: get a real audio interface. Problem solved. 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BOBONA Posted July 17, 2023 Author Share Posted July 17, 2023 (edited) That's really not answering my question. Yes, I can spend over a hundred dollars for another piece of equipment to lug around whenever I want to produce on my laptop. But honestly, I'd rather spend the hundred dollars on another DAW that can produce music without crackling. And really, I'd rather just fix the problem with Cakewalk. Is this an unsolvable problem? What even causes the crackling? Why don't I have Wasapi Exclusive and is there a way I can install that on my system? I'm just looking to understand more about this, since there isn't much info I could find online. Edited July 17, 2023 by BOBONA Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Byron Dickens Posted July 17, 2023 Share Posted July 17, 2023 (edited) That is answering your question. Cakewalk is not the problem. Your lack of proper equipment is. The crackling can be anything from improper buffer settings to other applications interrupting and taking away resources from an application that is very demanding of CPU and RAM to a substandard machine that is just not up to the task. The latency is absolutely from not having a proper interface. Edited July 17, 2023 by Byron Dickens 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
scook Posted July 17, 2023 Share Posted July 17, 2023 40 minutes ago, BOBONA said: Is this an unsolvable problem? What even causes the crackling? Why don't I have Wasapi Exclusive and is there a way I can install that on my system? I'm just looking to understand more about this, since there isn't much info I could find online. It is impossible to say with the information provided Even a purpose-built audio interface with an excellent ASIO driver may not be able to overcome a poorly setup computer. Laptop manufacturers make this even harder by restricting the ability to adjust the BIOS. That said, removing unnecessary software and checking DPC are good starts. Cakewalk does not write drivers for audio hardware. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BOBONA Posted July 17, 2023 Author Share Posted July 17, 2023 24 minutes ago, scook said: It is impossible to say with the information provided Even a purpose-built audio interface with an excellent ASIO driver may not be able to overcome a poorly setup computer. Laptop manufacturers make this even harder by restricting the ability to adjust the BIOS. That said, removing unnecessary software and checking DPC are good starts. Cakewalk does not write drivers for audio hardware. Ok thanks for the advice. I can say CPU/RAM usage is almost certainly not the problem, this is a pretty powerful laptop running with just a few tabs open. I'll check out that tool and see if it reports anything. Also I'll try asio4all again and verify if that doesn't work. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
scook Posted July 17, 2023 Share Posted July 17, 2023 ASIO4ALL is not recommended 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Andres Medina Posted July 17, 2023 Share Posted July 17, 2023 I know how frustrating is to get sucked into all this technical tangle... but, really, is very important that you get a proper audio card and it's native driver. This issue comes again and again in this and other forums. 2 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Byron Dickens Posted July 18, 2023 Share Posted July 18, 2023 (edited) 1 hour ago, scook said: ASIO4ALL is garbage. Fixed it for you. Edited July 18, 2023 by Byron Dickens 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lord Tim Posted July 18, 2023 Share Posted July 18, 2023 I'll echo what everyone else is saying. A good interface with solid ASIO drivers will sidestep almost every issue you have, and this goes for any DAW too. Failing that, Cakewalk definitely does use WASAPI Exclusive and depending on the interface, you can get some pretty impressive latency out of it (there are some caveats if you use it to record audio). ASIO4ALL uses a windows native driver (WDM) to make it appear like a ASIO driver, but it's not. Cakewalk natively supports every driver model, so it doesn't need this intermediate step in between like some hosts do. In fact, this "driver" can actually cause issues just by being installed and it's definitely recommended not to use it. MME will usually always work but will give you by far the worst performance out of every driver model and isn't recommended at all for DAW usage. If you're getting bad performance from WASAPI Shared, and Exclusive isn't working at all, this is telling me there's something not optimised in your machine for audio. This is separate to CPU or RAM performance in general. Even if your computer can run high end games or a million browser tabs, it still doesn't make a difference if there's some issue preventing low latency audio. The link to LatencyMon earlier is a good place to start. But bottom line is a lot of these issues will be solved for a fraction of the price of your computer (or the cost of a fairly dull night out in the city) just by getting a real interface. You can buy a Ferrari but you can't expect it to win races if you fill the tank with paint thinner... 3 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
OutrageProductions Posted July 18, 2023 Share Posted July 18, 2023 (edited) Under $100 and definitely better than onboard I/O, with real ASIO drivers. https://www.presonus.com/en-US/interfaces/usb-audio-interfaces/audiobox-series/2777700108.html Edited July 18, 2023 by OutrageProductions 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BOBONA Posted July 18, 2023 Author Share Posted July 18, 2023 2 hours ago, Lord Tim said: I'll echo what everyone else is saying. A good interface with solid ASIO drivers will sidestep almost every issue you have, and this goes for any DAW too. Failing that, Cakewalk definitely does use WASAPI Exclusive and depending on the interface, you can get some pretty impressive latency out of it (there are some caveats if you use it to record audio). ASIO4ALL uses a windows native driver (WDM) to make it appear like a ASIO driver, but it's not. Cakewalk natively supports every driver model, so it doesn't need this intermediate step in between like some hosts do. In fact, this "driver" can actually cause issues just by being installed and it's definitely recommended not to use it. MME will usually always work but will give you by far the worst performance out of every driver model and isn't recommended at all for DAW usage. If you're getting bad performance from WASAPI Shared, and Exclusive isn't working at all, this is telling me there's something not optimised in your machine for audio. This is separate to CPU or RAM performance in general. Even if your computer can run high end games or a million browser tabs, it still doesn't make a difference if there's some issue preventing low latency audio. The link to LatencyMon earlier is a good place to start. But bottom line is a lot of these issues will be solved for a fraction of the price of your computer (or the cost of a fairly dull night out in the city) just by getting a real interface. You can buy a Ferrari but you can't expect it to win races if you fill the tank with paint thinner... Ok, for now I did get ASIO4All working (yes, I do understand it's not recommended). I realized I was also using it on my old setup for a few months and it seemed to work fine enough for my needs. LatencyMon did not have anything to report on the issue. Fyi when I said that WASAPI Exclusive isn't working, I meant it seems to actually not be supported by my drivers (when Cakewalk does the channel loading thing, all the channels say unavailable). There might be a driver issue that I can fix but for now I'm happy to use ASIO4All if it works. If I run into more issues in the future, I will likely just invest a bit in an audio interface like you all said. Thanks for the help! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BigT1 Posted July 18, 2023 Share Posted July 18, 2023 Wasapi is not really the problem. With connecting a Midi Controller to computer and expecting to hear the sound is extremely difficult on Windows. This is because the drivers are CHIP based, and by chip-based, I mean the audio chip. RealTek makes most of the chips that go into laptops and they have blanket drivers that even you can download based on the chip ... but those drivers may mess up your system because they are BIOS dependent. In the big scheme of things, it's up to the hardware (laptop) manufacturers to optimize the drivers for the work that they do. No laptop manufacturer is going to waste their time making DAW-centric drivers. Laptop manufacturers are focused on either gamers, office users, or code developers. I've had HP, Dell XPS and Asus Laptops, all with top notch specs. You just cannot get away from the need for an external audio device. Those are just the people that make the drivers that function the best...in Windows. That being said. I cursed myself and bought Apple Silicon Mac. I've not looked back. I still kept my Windows machine because I still have a lot of CWB files from the last fifteen years. I started with Sonar 5 and was never unhappy with any iteration of Sonar or CBB. I was frustrated by the Windows workflow. When you max out buffer settings etc for mixing, any machine can do great work. BUT the tracking side, the low latency, the all-in-one machine is the Macbook Air for low track counts and Macbook Pro for high track counts. I'm just patiently waiting on Cakewalk Next. I can drill buffers sizes down to 128 and track an entire band with PLUGINS and routing in the box... and have non-existent latency... I could never do that on any of my Windows systems. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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