Associated Audio Files Missing

[AutoDoc Williams]

Version  2024.02.  I create a song with several tracks of audio.  Some, I import from existing audio files elsewhere, and some I record through my existing audio gear.  All is fine.  I wander off somewhere and come back days later and open the project up only to find that all the audio tracks have flatlined.  The clips are still there, but they show zero audio, but just a flat line.  When I look in the folder where I keep the audio files, they are there and play properly when I click on them through Windows Audio Player.  If I right click any of the tracks in Cakewalk and then click :Associated Audio Files, the dialog box shows no files.  If I delete the audio tracks from the project and then re-import them they can now be seen and heard when I play the project.  I Iook in the audio directory where I keep Cakewalk audio, I now see double audio files, both of which contain audio data as Windows will play them.  What gives here?  I'm suspicious that maybe this happens when my PC goes to sleep and wakes back up as I normally just walk away from whatever I'm doing and don't shut Cakewalk down.  Right or wrong, I have always done this and have only recently seen this behavior.  Is it only me?

Edited April 23 by AutoDoc Williams
clarity

[sjoens]

Happened to me a couple of times lately, only the audio files actually are MIA for no discernable reason.  Had to "borrow" them from an earlier project. Some other odd behaviors have forced me to uninstall and reinstall CbB a couple of times to get it all working again.

[David Baay]

13 hours ago, AutoDoc Williams said:

I'm suspicious that maybe this happens when my PC goes to sleep and wakes back up as I normally just walk away from whatever I'm doing and don't shut Cakewalk down.  Right or wrong, I have always done this and have only recently seen this behavior.  Is it only me?

I reglarly do this as well, and have never seen anything like what you describe. As you probably know, flatline clips would usually indicate a problem with the picture cache, so I would start with clearing the cache (or just moving everything to another folder).

If that didn't do the trick, rather than re-importing audio files, I would just temporarily move them (e.g. to a subdirectory of the project audio folder named "temp") so they show up "missing" on opening the project, then move them back into the project audio folder and select the first reported missing one. After that, it should find them all without prompting further and automatically create new picture files.

Then you could bring the moved picture cache files back in to the cache, choosing "No" to replacing duplicate files, so CbB doesn't have to recompute every other picture file as well.

[sjoens]

Nice. 

Picture cache files don't need to me moved or saved as they are redrawn as needed.  They're basically for visual reference and have little impact on performance.

However, clearing the cache regularly is good because, like a backed up gut, things start not happening when the folder gets too full to write to.