John Vere

I have it on a W7 laptop. I don't really use it but it most certainly opens and loads projects. I only installed it to do some live recording last Summer. And I'm sure others here are using it on W7 as well. Mostly this will happen for the same reason you have. Outdated hardware. That Laptop is from 2008 and has 4 GB of RAM, so no way it would run W 10. But Honestly unless you are really hurtin for cash, you should replace the M audio interface. It's probably why you have the drop outs. Did you try and increase the buffers to like 512?

Is it reverb or is it an echo? There’s a big difference. And as said without knowing what equipment you’re using we can only guess

That set up is soooo outdated I don’t think you can expect good performance. First Sonar is no longer supported. 8.5 was a pretty good version and I still have it installed to get True Pianos. We have come a million miles since then with Cakewalk. I have a Fast Track pro sitting on a shelf that I seem to remember was the worst interface I ever owned. I replaced it in 2008 with a Tascam. Have you tried using the new Cakewalk which is 100 % supported? It still runs on W7 which is as far as your interface made it with driver updates.

All I can say is if a computer has a C drive that is above 60 % you need to get a bigger drive or do some clean up. Otherwise it will have issues .

Melodyne is amazing software but definitely can make a mess of things if overly used. I alway copy the vocal track first to make a working copy track that gets processed. I chop it up into short clips and remove silence between lines. If I hear any glitches after rendering I simply delete the garbage clip and drag copy with Shift/Alt held down from original track to the working track and try again. And I always work in 32 bit no dithering when creating stem or bouncing tracks.

Cakewalk uses formats like DX and VST for soft synths. There is possibly every imaginable sound available and used by majority of DAWs in the VST format. AU are Mac only. VST are universal. Welcome to the world of PC Digital audio. The sounds you want are easily available and most are free as VST.

To clarify outputs: If the hardware device uses 5 pin Mini connection then make sure your interface is selected in Preferences/ Midi/ Devices as an output. The device itself doesn’t need to be connected only the interface. If it uses USB Midi to connect, then it’s best you leave it connected every time you open that project or you will have issues. And as said above, it’s easy to change the PVR view to the regular keyboard. But I can’t see how one would be able to work with out the track producing sound unless you’re program lights

Yes the video will explain what a few others have said. You need to download and install the proper ASIO drivers or ya you’ll have out of sync issues

For me they are the same. I tried those boxes too and made no difference. There will be a deeply hidden button somewhere

By default they should be the same. You may have unchecked the box in preferences " show Strip Colours" possibly this makes a difference, it doesn't on mine but worth a try. There is also a box in the Colour pallet you can try that says "Follow Bus"

You said it was Track 1. I asked if this was a Midi track because there could be a pan event CC10 which will show on event list for the track

SI Drums has drag and drop loops in its left side of GUI. I grab those all the time if I need a Simple pattern.

Most important missing information is are these Midi or Audio tracks. If it audio it is truly a mystery. If it’s Midi then check the event list.

Depends on how many outputs your audio interface has. If it only has 2 then that’s all that can be used.

They come with software you use to program them with. The quality of the software varies with quality of brand. The cheapest ones the software came on a mini CD! It barely loaded into W7. The stealth has solid up to date software as well as my x key system. The Xkey uses a Record function. You set it in record and make your moves with mouse and keyboard and it saves this and when you press that pedal it repeats exactly what you just did. The are designed to be used by factories and machines connected to computers

To create a per project folder for your audio simply use “Save As “ and check the “copy all audio with project “ box. Then browse to a different location and save. All the audio used in the project will always be in the folder from now on. Global folders should be avoided.

I wonder when the developers will take note of how many post we get like this and change the default workspace to either none or advanced? And think of the possible hundreds of new users who don’t understand this and try Cakewalk and abandon it because it’s missing features they wanted? All because they don’t want new users to be overwhelmed by too many buttons?

Exactly why I did reply. Sadly it is not what the OP wanted to hear but threads like this might reach others who still have time to save their butts.

I used to replace my drives every 2 or 3 years starting back in 2002. Not only for safety but drives were getting bigger and better very quickly back then. I still have some of those and they still spin up. I have a pile of around 15 drives that all still work. I think if you retire them early they seem to remain stable for ever. I only just now retired a 120 GB SSD. It was in my wife’s laptop. Just swap it out and keep it just in case. I’m overdue to upgrade my main DAWs 5 year old OS drive ( 250 SSD) but none of my data is stored on it . My Data drive with all my projects on it (500GB SSD) is new. The second data drive(1 TB standard) used for back ups is probably 5 years old but it doesn’t spin up unless I’m copying something to or from it so I’m not worried about it. Then I have a couple of external drives that I dump my entire data drive to from time to time. Not only that but I have a second office computer that is more or less a clone of my main DAW complete with backups and all my software and licences etc. I just spent 10 hour on a project I’m being paid to finish for a client. I can not afford to loose it. And it was a song we recorded in 2005 which guess what- I had the audio file from the master. In my data drive.

I saw this a few hours ago and really didn’t have any answers to your problem other than the usual wagging a finger at you and asking why you don’t have back ups. We all learn the hard way when it comes to digital storage but it has been a few decades now and most of us don’t trust a hard drive any more than we trust the government to do its job. A few thoughts to ponder. Larger spinning hard drives are more likely to die. Thumb drives , SSD drives and DVDs have no moving parts, Think about that. The cloud is mostly free or cheap and possibly won’t die on you. Cakewalks CWP file when opened looks for your audio files in the location it last was saved. As long as that pathway has not become corrupted they should open. If not you are always faced with a nightmare of re assembly. Most of the work we put into our compositions might be Midi. You can save any projects as midi files which are then 100% bullet proof and can be opened in any DAW. Audio tracks are usually named but could have been scattered across the timeline in a zillion locations therefore I always recommend backing up those as Stems that are full tracks. Not small clips. it goes on and on but I personally have never lost a project because of the steps I have taken for a long time now to back myself up in as many ways as possible. I’m just working on a project for a client today and after only one day of work it is now in 4 locations. The working copy on my 250 GB data drive The local backup to a third SSD drive A portable drive A midi file on One Drive I do this before shutting down at end of day, a good habit to have. I have Cakewalk files and midi files on probably 10 storage drives and all still open. I never leave a hard drive in a computer for more than 5 years but now I’m not sure about these SSD drives? So far so good

Most people use the keyboard to input midi data and then use a VST instrument to play it back in Cakewalk. This is less complicated than using hardware as a sound source. If you use the keyboard as a sound source then you have to re record the audio output to an audio track. This is only desirable when the keyboard has sounds that are not available as VST instruments. This is pretty rare, Piano and the other sounds that they generate is well covered by VST’s so no need to use your hardware. Tutorials #2 , 12-13-14 cover this.

Yep. Mostly it’s just for Macs which apparently work just fine with those drivers. But they just don’t report latency to Cakewalk so Cakewalk has to guess what the latency is and it’s most often late buy a least a 1/32 note or worse

I guess Mackie is going Green ? I like paper manuals still but I get the point of on line stuff too. But see what happens is then a well meaning user doesn’t always realize this so is kinda forced to fumble around in the dark. Anyhow your one page of settings looks normal and ASIO drivers are often shared by different devices made by the same company. But ASIO has a limitation of one driver at a time so if the big knob is an ASIO audio interface as well, then it will only show if it does use that same driver. I think it will have a (2) after the device name. The only other option is to use WASAPI shared mode but then tracks will record out of sync so don’t go there When they say an interface is class compliant that is mostly aimed at Mac users. If you didn’t install the ASIO driver the mixer would probably work fine with WASAPI mode but with the syncing issues

You create a Celemony/ Melodyne account and purchase the version you want. The basic version is only $100 us and that’s all you need for audio to midi converting as well as single track processing of things like vocals.

Lots of people never read the instructions that come with stuff? I find this very odd? Mackie usually supplies very good manuals with very easy to understand instructions with sometimes a little humour tossed in. I have 2 of their mixers the Pro EFx and a Mix8. None USB. The Mackie ASIO driver was not that great in the past. Hopefully they have released something better since I last used it.