OPunWide

To clarify, the single .ins file I created just had my own instruments, then I imported it. The advantage is that it will be available to import again when something breaks and they suggest reinstalling Sonar. The midi routing I did was only in the Preferences area. I haven't made it to any projects yet other than a test one that I copied. Now that you mentioned it, I probably don't have any project routings because I've been using the same old hardware for decades. I want the old projects to work with a minimum of hassles, so I try to not change anything that doesn't need to be changed. One of those items just died, so I might have to learn if per-project routing is even possible.

I guess I thought they were telling the truth that our projects would just work when we switched to Sonar. 🤣 I dug up my old ins files and combined them into a single file, and the import was fine. Warning to others: all the midi routing information will be gone. (example: I use channel 7 for my D-50 in projects where I use it). Once the ins imports are done, do that routing in preferences / MIDI to be able to see the project patch names, etc. While any Help button in my Sonar goes to a search in the legacy section of cakewal.com, documents do exist: https://bandlab.github.io/cakewalk/docs/Cakewalk Sonar Reference Guide.pdf

Today I installed and launched Sonar. It froze. I waited for the "not responding" popup, and clicked "wait..." to give it a second chance. Nope, so I selected close when it came up again. I relaunched and it opened. I did the basic setup and made sure it was functional. I copied an older very simple project to a new location and opened it. Good news: the right noises seemed to be coming out from an external synth. Bad news: all (most?) of the instrument definition information seems to be missing. So I clicked Help/Documentation. It took me to the legacy site, where I can get some support for Sonar Platinum. I remembered that the definitions are in Preferences, so went there. It looked like default midi instrument information (I assume, because it's not mine). So I clicked on Help and it was back to the Legacy site. Any idea how to get the old ins information into the new product? Any idea if there is actual help for this product?

It's finally working! This was the solution from support after more than one week of back and forth and talking them out of a full uninstall of CWBL. There were no other changes made that aren't covered earlier in this thread. Hopefully this will help someone else during the few days of life that CWBL has remaining. ================= Support: Right now, it seems like the WDM driver profiling is the main thing tripping us up. There’s a way we can try to reset that without needing to boot into a project or mess with clean installs. Here's what I'd suggest next: Open the Windows Registry Editor Navigate to this key: HKEY_CURRENT_USER\SOFTWARE\Cakewalk Music Software\Cakewalk\Core Find the entry called OnboardingShown and set its value to 0 Launch Cakewalk by BandLab This should force the onboarding wizard to appear the next time you run CbB. When it asks you to choose a driver mode, try selecting WASAPI Shared instead of ASIO or WDM to see if it allows the app to open cleanly. If that still doesn’t work, there’s one more trick you can try: Temporarily disable all sound devices in Device Manager, then launch CbB in Safe Mode. This can sometimes bypass driver-related hangs. ================= Me: The OnboardingShown change had no effect. The popup was still there. I left the setting at 0 and tried the other suggestion. After disabling all the drivers I did a Safe Mode start and CWBL opened. I knew I was going to need the ASIO drivers for the AudioBox, so I selected that instead of the suggested WASAPI. To be safe I rebooted, then reenabled the AudioBox, then started CWBL and it worked. After that I re-enable the rest of the audio drivers because I knew I would need them too. (To be clear: the ASIO4ALL had been completely removed and stayed removed.)

@John Vere I know it's oldest first. The problem that started this mess was that I found some of my plugins were missing so I reinstalled Sonar 3 to get them. Thanks for mentioning the Audacity stem tool! I didn't know it existed and got it this morning. I think I'm going to find it very useful. You may have also pointed out a potential problem: I never had CCC installed, and didn't know it existed. Perhaps I had it on one of my old computers and forgot about it. It sounds like it is (was?) optional. I've been installing things by CD, and then the minimal set after one computer refused to install Old Sonar 1.

Sonar 3 Producer Edition. I've typed it so many times I kept abbreviating it more and more, and I guess took it too far. Thanks for your answers. They make me less worried about the damage that might get caused. But it also sounds like I need to get CWBL running. Your note about not uninstalling CWBL after everything is working should be a BOLD sticky post. In browsing all these threads for a solution, the "should I uninstall" it question comes up a lot.

I completely agree. It's just like "Reinstall Windows". It might work, but it will be really painful. I guess I need to go find out what Windbg is. Yours is the 2nd mention.

@Jeremy Oakes Yes, I'm probably overthinking, but I've had decades of issues with Cakewalk variations. It's great when it works. Other times I spend days like I'm doing now just trying to get it to function. Further, I tend to overthink everything. To make things worse, I'm a retired engineer, so I tend to want to know way too many details. But enough about me. 😀 I'll answer your easier questions first. I'm not concerned with the projects themselves. They are in a separate area and have multiple backups. My concern is for the stuff that is stored somewhere in Cakewalk. That concern was raised as a response to the suggestion that I follow the full uninstall process from a link above, which requires removing registry entries and folders. There was a warning that settings and plugin presets would be lost, among other things. Yes, I have reinstalled CWLB from the Product Center (twice), but I did not go through the uninstall process. The prep I referred to was described early, but in brief I had to reinstall Sonar 3 to get some plugins that were missing in an older project. I installed ASIO4ALL because S3 wasn't working, which broken CWBL. My bad, so uninstalled ASIO4ALL (details above). Sonar3 works CWBL does not. Audio drivers are fresh install... etc. This is all above in this thread if you want more details. Why I'm hesitant to just try it... If I thought it was safe to install New Sonar over a broken CWBL, I'd do it just because I'm sick of working on this. Nobody seems to KNOW if this safe or what it would do to the CWBL installation. There are a lot of "just try it" type of suggestions. Since CWBL won't launch and I don't know how NewSonar migrates, I don't know what damage that might do to CWBL if the migration fails. From a preference standpoint, I'd like to do what I first intended: clean up some of the CWBL project (perhaps export bus tracks, things like that) in case NewSonar breaks something because it doesn't support it. Are Sonitus effect supported? I've read yes and no. Older Cakewalk plugs from previous version? It depends, probably. Old DX effects? I'm pretty sure DXi instruments won't work. In the various threads I've read definitive yes and no answers to a lot of questions. Yeah, if there was a way I knew I could go backwards if things crash from the migration, I would do it. I'd prefer not to lose the ability to remix the last couple of years of songs, as a minimum. I'd like to have the starting point of when I last worked on them. Old Sonar 3 can access the stuff before that if there's a problem. Community support is great when people know the answers and I've had quite a few things solved that way. I'm more nervous about excessive optimism if I don't know how to recover from it. Here's a basic question: Does NewSonar use all different registry entries and install in different folders than the old one? If it did, it would add to my comfort level that no disasters will happen.

@Bristol_Jonesey Thanks for the full instructions. First another question: does following those instructions also uninstall the old Sonar(s) that are on that system? Unfortunately, I can't back anything up using their instructions (" back these up separately if you like, using Utilities menu > Cakewalk Plug-in Manager, Edit > Preferences >..." if I can't launch CWBL. So it seems all of my project setting for plugins will be gone if any are saved as part of Cakewalk. There's another bigger problem: the link at the bottom of that page is only a link to install Sonar. That mean that my Bandlab would be gone, I will have lost all of its settings, and who knows what new Sonar will decide to import of the older Sonar/Cakewalk installations. If that's my only option I may as well just cross my fingers and install Sonar and potentially save some part of the current setup. That would depend on how Sonar migrates the old information. Other then generalities it seems every bit of the migration process is on a need-to-know basis, and nobody but the developers need to know. A few days ago, when I started this process, I though I would do some system prep to make the "upgrade" more likely to work. Then I'd ask what happens during the transition if I'm using a ProChannel effects chain. Do the effects disappear? If I could get an answer, then I could modify some projects before mandatory transition. Now it's a question of if I can save any of it. I still can't tell from what's been published what I'm going to lose, but I've read a lot of conflicting opinions about it. (Rant over.) If the upgrade needs a working copy of CWBL I'm screwed. If only only needs to grab the setting from the files there is hope. That same need-to-know issue.

I searched the entire registry multiple times. There's nothing unexpected in that key. But thanks for another tip and helping.

@OutrageProductions Thanks, that's what I was thinking too. I couldn't find the post you mentioned -- at least not one the led to a way to reinstall. It seems that they have removed all the installation links and all that remains is new Sonar and Next. At least everything I've found by searching through this forum ends up going back to the page for those products. All CWBL references have been scrubbed other than general information and really old pages. I did a reinstall using the Product Center and it had no effect. I tried to submit a Legacy bug report, with every field filled, and it just kept coming back to the same page with the data I had tried to submit still filling the form. I'm feeling pretty abandoned by this company. I suspect we'll get one shot at doing the new Sonar upgrade and if that doesn't go well the old installation will likely be corrupted. If anyone knows of a way to do an uninstall / reinstall where all of the setups won't be lost I'd like to hear about it.

Nothing in registry for ASIO other that Presonus and Scarlett. To be safe I followed the full instructions to uninstall the Presonus Universal Controller, reboot, install again, reboot, plug in AudioBox, try Cakewalk. Same crash during open. Rename AUD.ini, rebuild looks cleaner, still crashes. Last resort, removed the reg entry in Cakewalk that referenced ASIO4ALL: Computer\HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Cakewalk Music Software\Cakewalk\Core\DriverCompatibility No change. In summary: Sonar 3 works. CWBL starts, makes it far enough to update the AUD.ini file, then silently crashes. It does create an entry like this in the Event log on every crash: This happens every time I try to launch, from the Event Viewer... Faulting application name: Cakewalk.exe, version: 29.9.0.125, time stamp: 0x676089bc Faulting module name: Cakewalk.exe, version: 29.9.0.125, time stamp: 0x676089bc Exception code: 0xc0000094 Fault offset: 0x000000000051d66f Faulting process id: 0x3A1C Faulting application start time: 0x1DBF6899F352B24 Faulting application path: C:\Program Files\Cakewalk\Cakewalk Core\Cakewalk.exe Faulting module path: C:\Program Files\Cakewalk\Cakewalk Core\Cakewalk.exe Report Id: f0ad3f56-4e33-4701-9040-3cd0f2f1f985 Faulting package full name: Faulting package-relative application ID:

@OutrageProductions I never thought about the "wave profiler" being about WDM/Wasapi style drivers only. The popup behind the CWBL splash screen does show "WDM kernel streaming". Since I can't start Cakewalk I can't change what it does at launch. It seems the responses here (adding @John Vere to this) assume that the computer is only used for Cakewalk. Thanks to both of you for the inputs so far. I've used both the Presonus and a Scarlett interface on this in the past. Sometimes I just use the standard 1/8" audio for Zoom meetings. I plan to go back to the Scarlett in the future. So I'm not sure I can (or want to) disable all of the stuff that has been working. I did disable the HDMI device that goes to the monitor speakers since I never use those. >> I suspect most of the current problem is from ASIO4ALL, which I uninstalled. >> I also suspect that there's a problem in the AUD.ini file. That seems a likely place for a start-up issue. I don't want to randomly start hacking at it, but it does still have ASIO4ALL entries. Is there a guide to that ini file somewhere? I'd be concerned about deleting it and having the break Sonar 3, but have no idea if that's a reasonable concern. Everything but Cakewalk Bandlab works. Even Sonar 3 works. Audacity works, etc. I have verified that the AudioBox is the default device. It has the most recent drivers (which are ancient) and was reinstalled using the latest appropriate version of their "PreSonus Universal Control". I have verified that the sample rate in Windows matches the AudioBox (it only support 44.1). As far as the registry: There are no ASIO4ALL entries other than one in Cakwalk. (I'm ignoring recent files, etc.) There is only one entry in "Cakewalk\Core\DriverCompatibility": Computer\HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Cakewalk Music Software\Cakewalk\Core\DriverCompatibility\{232685C6-6548-49D8-846D-4141A3EF7560} That has the NAME field set to "ASIO4ALL v2". CWBL was working 2 days ago with this setup, meaning all of the drivers other than ASIO4ALL. Maybe Something may have been corrupted by Sonar 3, but then I'd probably have to reinstall CWBL to overwrite that. I don't think that's possible at this point. Does it make sense to focus on the AUD.ini? Should I delete the "DriverCompatibility" registry entry?

Thanks to @57Gregy I persisted with ASIO and got old Sonar to work using ASIO, without ASIO4ALL. Now I probably just need a way to force CWBL to start over in deciding which driver to use.

I've been trying to get ready for the new Sonar, and as part of that I reinstalled the old Sonar 3 Producer. Why? I have about 300 Cakewalk/Sonar projects and I'm trying to make sure than most of them transition properly with all the plugins. Sonar didn't work right, so I add ASIO4ALL (which previously worked on a different computer). That caused other problems, one of them was a warning that CWBL didn't work well with ASIO. So I uninstalled the ASIO4ALL. Now Cakewalk won't launch. I'm using an old AudioBox USB interface, and it works fine with Windows 11. What doesn't work is launching CWBL. It gets the small splash screen, and behind that screen it's doing driver profiles. Then those close, and it gives up. I've tried launching with SHIFT, rebooting, etc. It's writing the driver results to "\AppData\Roaming\Cakewalk\Cakewalk Core\WaveProf.Txt" and that looks reasonable (I'm guessing). I've rebooted, powered down, tried launching with the AudioBox unplugged and then plugged in as normal. Any suggestions? I'm very hesitant to go to Sonar 2025 unless the older programs are working right.

@SirWillyDS12 I guess I forgot you couldn't have the both. Most of the strips I looked at already had a compressors so I didn't see it as an option. Operator error. Thanks for the help.

I have a Cakewalk Bandlab project that uses the "PC4K S-Type Bus Compressor" in the ProChannel on one bus. It's a great compressor, and it exists somewhere in the software because my project is using it. I use it for the sidechain capabilities. The only other thing available with sidechain is the old Sonitus fx:compressor. The PC4K is not listed in the available ProChannel modules, so I can't add it to any of the other busses. I can't replace other modules in the same strip with it. Or add it to other projects. I probably got it with a Sonar or X1 or some old installation, perhaps on a different computer, but it exists and functions. I've lost a lot of stuff due to freebies that were included in old version that can no longer be installed because Windows doesn't like them. Does anybody have any idea how I might be able to get PC4K to install elsewhere? I've looked in all the places suggested on pages that mention the PC4K, but no luck. Maybe a DLL or something that I can drag in from an old installation disc or something? Thanks in advance on the odd chance that somebody can answer this.

Yeah, and it will only get worse with another product names Sonar. Marketing people are a mystery to me. But for me, at least I can find something. The manual if fine if I'm trying to figure out had to do something that I'm already familiar with. Trying to find out the difference between "Save as" and "Save copy as" (which I was going over again yesterday) is somewhat pointless. I'm much more likely to find something useful here, which brings me back to Google to try to find it.

Thanks, it's what I was looking for as a solution. I use Chrome, and it's slightly easier, using the "View site information" next to the URL, but had forgotten about that as an option to fix it. I would of course prefer that they just move the content to a secure server and fix the problem for everyone.

Thanks for the detailed response. I had found all of that before I posted. I get frustrated with the pdf search, but it works. I was really surprised that the local help was such an old Windows Help format. I didn't know it was even possible to make those any more. After putting setting to Local Help, I found the file and then added a link to it so I can use it when CWBL isn't open. Then switched back to online help.

It seems the online documentation for Cakewalk is now in the "https://legacy.cakewalk.com/Documentation" area. Perhaps because of that, the formatting is screwed up. Images are missing, which makes parts of the manual useless. As an example, the page on Mix Recall, https://legacy.cakewalk.com/Documentation?product=Cakewalk&language=3&help=Mixing.48.html The problem may be that the images are coming from an http server, but the document is coming from https. At least that's what the Chrome Browser's Inspector implies. I noticed this a while ago, but didn't look into it, hoping someone would fix it. No such luck. Is all the Cakewalk stuff going to just get abandoned and left to slowly rot, or was it just that nobody noticed how broken the help is? There's also the chance I'm doing something wrong. I've always had trouble finding things in the Cakewalk docs because I don't know exactly what to search for, so I rely on Google to find answers. The downside of that is that 75% of the answers it finds are from old Sonar and Cakewalk version.

I know this is the wrong thread, but it's not worth starting a new one... I really wish they weren't using the name Sonar. When I Google for Cakewalk help, 90% of what shows up is for the old product. Sometimes the info still helps, but usually it ends up suggesting that there's a New Product! Since I rarely find anything useful in the new site, it's back to Google for a repeat search. Calling it anything other than Sonar would help to avoid that in the future, assuming I'm willing to pay again for what, in some cases, I could never activate because I couldn't get access to my old account. I know it's too late for a name change -- once Marketing makes a logo nothing gets changed. I really like CW/Sonar, especially for the value it used to offer. I have far too many old versions of it that won't install making me hesitant to invest more. On the bright side, having CWBL did let me resurrect some of my old Sonar projects since I could install it on a new computer when the old one died. I guess my todo list now has a lot of files to export and projects to finish before, at some point, CWBL no longer loads. It could be something as simple as a Windows update killing it if they don't plan to do any updates it in the future. Why the end rant? CWBL has crashed 3 times today, and looking for help I found out about the new product. Learned how to submit a bug report, which requires a dump. But the dump file won't load because it's too big (yes, I compressed it) and it takes too long (on a very fast connection), so they drop the connection.

I have a (somewhat) related issue. I'm trying to fix the timing on a single beat in the Step Sequencer. I just tried using the step sequencer instead of piano roll. Everything was working well until I... Well, not exactly sure what I did, but in the end a flam beat showed up as a single beat in the piano roll. It was the later of the two notes. I've been able to edit it again in the Sequencer and turn flam on and off for the note, but it is always based on the late note. I've deleted the note, made a new one, but it always remembers the old location, which is delayed. I'd like to move only that one note forward. I'm fairly sure I could unlink and do it in piano roll, but then I would lose all the the probability settings for the other notes. I think I'm stuck but then I remembered this forum, so thought I'd give it a try.

I signed up for an account just to comment on this. I didn't know the forum still existed. I'm about to resurrect an old Sonar setup. The old computer died due to age related illness. It was still running Windows 2000 (long story...). Essentially I'm starting over because current computers don't support the ISA interface on my old sound card. And that's why I've been asking the same USB 2 vs 3 question. I was really surprised by @msmcleod's answer; dubious actually. I quickly found an article that supports it. https://www.soundonsound.com/techniques/usb-firewire-thunderbolt-which-best-audio#:~:text=The%20USB%202%20specification%20states,a%20throughput%20closer%20to%20280Mbps. The bottom line being: "At the theoretical maximum USB 2 bandwidth, you’d be able to record just over 40 tracks of 24-bit, 96kHz audio, while halving the sample rate to 48kHz would give you 80 tracks. Staying at 24-bit/48kHz, consider a more realistic real-world USB 2 bandwidth of 240Mbps (a slightly conservative figure, giving us plenty of overhead to allow for the connection limitations discussed earlier): you’d still have the ability to work with up to 40 channels of broadcast-quality audio simultaneously! Yet there are some companies who squeeze far higher channel counts from their USB 2 audio interfaces by building their own USB controllers. These tend to be among the more costly options, due to the extra work and design choices that go into developing and optimising this sort of solution. By way of example, RME’s MADIFace USB is a USB 2 bus-powered 128-channel digital audio interface. This is made possible by the use of the MADI protocol for handling the data transmission, which is far more efficient than the native audio-over-USB standard." Maybe I won't wait for USB 3 interfaces after all!