John Vere

Mabey Cakewalk does not like the pathway for some reason. Possibly you entered it manually by typing? If you get it wrong Cakewalk will just default back to original location. To select the pathway are you using the icon my arrow is pointing at? I have mine set to the root of my Data drive because I have about 6 Cakewalk containment folders there. I have different Albums, Bands and Clients in each. You can also see I have a folder there for exports.

I’m not sure if I’m following the issue properly here so ignore this if it’s wrong info. I have always stored my Cakewalk projects on a second data drive. It’s as simple as setting that up in Preferences/ folders There is a default folder on C drive but it’s obviously empty and that’s after 5 years of almost daily use of Cakewalk There’s no need for and complicated junctions etc. Ive never lost or miss placed a project ever.

Audio interface has nothing to do with the audio process ITB. You would get same results with a Real Tech chip. I have their Analog Lab I just scored free after I bought Izotope Phoenix’ verb for $7 from Plug in Boutique. How’s that for a deal! I see if I can freeze it. I spent 3 hours playing with my new toy last night. Pretty impressed for free. And just now I get an Email from Plug in Alliance with a $25 voucher for customer loyalty! I don’t think I’ve actually bought anything from them ?Only grabbed freebies.

Are you using an audio interface in ASIO mode? Do you have any heavy use effects running?

The foot switch should come with software you install to get the drivers and set up what each switch does. I’ve never used a Behringer but I have 3 types of USB foot switches and even the one I paid $25 for came with software. It will also hopefully have a manual to explain all this.

The beauty of track templates is they not only add the track they also create the associated bus if it’s not there yet. They are pretty simple to create. What I’ve done is if I have a song that I really like how it turned out I save those tracks as templates and I leave myself a little clue about the song. Example “AD drums Song 1 “ If I’m starting a similar song I can quickly recreate the sound of the original song. And yes drums take forever to get them right so this is a huge time saver. I found if I tried that with a project template I’d end up with a bunch of tracks I didn’t need.

+ 1 I was going to ask the OP where the faders were. The other place I check is the GUI of the instrument. Some of them the Volume seems disconnected from the track fader. I've run into hidden volume changes in the past with downloaded midi files that I could not find. Dragging the midi data to a new track and Changing the midi channel always solved the problem. Don't know why.

Instead of project template I only use track templates. I found I never use the same project template twice. So I can just open a blank project and use track templates to create what I need.

What’s important here is you’re happy with your creation. If your goal is to make yourself happy then you've achieved that goal. That's awesome. We all have a standard of quality for what we create. That standard is based on our expectations of what we want to compare ourselves to and our ability to achieve that goal. It also gets higher and higher as our abilities to create improve. Recording music can have a very high standard if we wish to sound like a hit record. For many of us this has been our lifelong goal. I want my songs to play side by side with commercially made material. I most certainly realize most of those recordings where produced by some of the worlds most talented musicians and studio engineers. How can I even begin to think I can achieve this? Is that too high a standard for a small town guy in a Home Studio with a Cheap guitar and a computer? I'm a Capricorn, my standards are going to be a lot higher than others and I'm up for that challenge. Bottom line is, each individual will set their own standards and be happy if they have the ability to achieve that goal. Your song is so far below my standards that I dare not comment, that is not fair, I have a lot of trouble keeping my mouth shut on the song forum. I need to remind myself of what I have stated above. I truly love this hobby and want others to join in and enjoy it too. I would rather offer encouragement-- that you too can raise your standards if you keep at it. Take this song and file it away, keep creating more songs. Crank them out and keep studying the art of recording ( and singing) . A few year's from now your talent and abilities will greatly improve and you can come back to this song and re do it to your new higher standards. Don't obsess too much over your first creations you'll get discouraged and quit. Just keep at it.

@charles kasler It looks like you are correctly using it as a bus with a send from a vocal track. When using effects buses you need to set the wet level to 100%. In your screen shot you have the wet level at 21.5%.. That would be a correct setting if it was in a tracks effects bin.

He's my favorite Plug in for smoothing my vocals on a day when I'm struggling. There is a lot to be said for a bit of vocal training. I sang for years without it and sucked. Good thing in those day's so did PA systems so nobody really noticed. But then there was the eye opening day I wrote an original song and tried to record it! This is in the days of tape so no digital turd polishers to be found. I went to a local piano teacher friend of mine and in a very short period of time she had me on track. I would assume there are lot's of tutorials available on You Tube that teach the basics for free. A note about Melodyne- It can most certainly correct minor and even major pitch issues and if you get good at it you can do all sorts of wonderful things like split notes, fade in's etc. But you have to have a light touch with those tools or your track will start to sound like it's been through a meat grinder. It's taken me 2 years and 100 hours to start to understand how to use it properly ( I'm hoping) But absolutely the best approach I find is if I'm fighting a phrase or line it's best to grab the Glenfiddich VST and re do it.

The safest way to handle weirdness is to use "save as" with the "copy Audio" box checked to a new location and re name the project with todays date. Everything will be in the new project folder.

I get this from time to time. You hit the space bar and it takes 2 seconds for playback to start. I find 2 things that can cause this. Certain "look ahead" mastering plug ins, like the Adaptive limiter as example, and DPC issues from background processing. First I'll toggle the Global effects bypass on the transport and if that corrects the issue, problem solved. Then it might be a DPC issue. Then shutting off the internet might solve the issue, If not, further digging with Latency Monitor might be required. https://www.resplendence.com/latencymon

Holly cow I wasn’t just imagining this. I’ve been converting a whole bunch of older 44.1 projects to 48. I even made a tutorial on the method which is to use the export and the Tracks. Preset. I’ve had the odd re imported track clipping now I know why. Will keep tabs on this and I guess I’ll have to re make the tutorial if things change.

Ya of course but it’s pretty rare anybody else is using hardware these days and it can get complicated to set up. But hardware is a great way to feed a drummer a click track with out it being part of the DAW audio output for live performances. I had never used the midi metronome mostly because I rarely used the metronome as I usually start with a simple drum track. But to make the tutorial I dug in a little deeper and that’s when I figured out you need the Wavetable synth checked in midi outputs for it to work.Something I uncheck 24 years ago! But then you won’t hear the wavetable synth with out somehow sending its output to your monitors so it’s a bit too convoluted for newbies

The Midi metronome uses the MS Wavetable midi which sucks. There's nothing wrong with the Audio metronome so use it. 17-Exporting the Metronome https://youtu.be/f44mdLdmlBE

The very first tutorial in this series shows you how to properly set up your audio system for Cakewalk, I think it might help

You need to watch a few tutorials because it sounds like you haven't grasped the basics of how Midi or Cakewalk works.

I think you just pointed something out that I was too stupid to realize but now I do. When I saw that Airplane mode down in the network icon in the bottom taskbar I thought, Oh, this is quicker than opening network settings and disabling my LAN and the Wireless. I now realize it probably only disables the wireless network and not the LAN, will check this out tomorrow, I already shut down for the day. My other computers don't have wireless, only LAN. That would explain the lack of the Airplane mode. Duh!

I have very similar specs on a Laptop and it is just fine with my projects which are usually 10 to 14 tracks and a mix of midi and audio. But I'm not a heavy user of unnecessary effects. You could have 50 audio tracks running on your PC without an issue,, but change that to 10 VST instruments and dozens of effects on every track and that would probably kill it dead. If your planning on recording audio, like guitar and vocals then you will also need to invest in an Audio Interface. Here's my Cakewalk Tutorials that cover everything you need to know to get started, have fun.

Yes the new dialog needs a bit more work. The way it totally forgets what you set up and you have tp start all over again just to then forget something important ( like Mono) and screw up the export. It would be nice if it stayed exactly like you set it for each project. Sure you can save pre sets but I'd end up with 2 pages of them if I did that.

Yes don't underestimate the value of the add ons. Focusrite seems to have a good little package that it includes. I scored Addictive Keys for free. The Motu only came with Performer lite which is about as useful to me as ***** on a bull. @rsinger My issues might just be my computer is 12 years old, but I still find it odd that my old interfaces work better on the same machine. But I use the M4 mostly because I rely on the Loopback to be able to record screen captures and stay in ASIO mode with Cakewalk. My set up is very basic these days but making videos has got me now 100% on 48hz. I convert all my old projects to 48 right away before I continue working. The M4 seems happier these days since the last driver update. But that distorted audio is an unsolved mystery. And I put my computer in Airplane mode unless I need the internet. It's an odd feature that my other computers don't have.

By default Cakewalk signal flow is top to bottom on the channel strips. The pro channel is at the top and as said the design is like the way we used insert sends on analog mixing desks. I still have a bunch of those cables I used for compressors and eq. So like the others have mentioned I use it that same way I used insert effects and mostly the gloss EQ.

In your screen shot I see 5 identical midi tracks? Are you just trying different sounds? What’s also odd is you have a mix of instruments including drums? Is this midi track multi channel?