John Vere

This is why I asked about your computer specs. Because some computers can run at very low setting but not so great computers can't. Lot's of people use lower buffers without issues but I find a buffer of 256 handles my project without issue. Defiantly there are effect processor one should avoid especially playing live. You want stability and that comes with only using effects and instruments that are low CPU users. And then the danger is as you increase the buffer size to get stability, you will add more latency which doesn't matter for playback but it sort of sounds like you are trying to process your voice? Guitar? You would need a very powerful laptop to get away with that. The Buffer settings are found in Preferences under Driver settings or open the control panel for your interface.

I'll ditto that as well. I export everything at 48/24 wave. Cakewalks export is too clunky to bother with top and tailing the songs so I load them into Wave Lab to clean that up. If I do need MP3's , which is rare, I use Gold Wave to batch convert. MP3 are becoming obsolete anyhow. I send my friends wave files now because everyone has unlimited bandwidth and fiber optic internet. I upload wave files to Sound Cloud too. MP'3 have gone the way of the 44.1 CD.

Are you setting the Buffers high enough? What are the processer specs on the Surface pro, possibly just not enough for the projects? Also are you using effects on the tracks? That can quickly bring a Whimpey computer to it's knees'.

Thanks I was going to try Amazon.ca. I have blown lots of air on that stupid fan and even gave it a drop of lubricant it’s just a POS.

Seems a loosing battle to me about avoiding the internet or cell data plans. You can keep riding your horse or you can by a Automobile. Nobodies stopping you but you will be left in the dust. I totally sympathize with people who do live where there is no choice or it's overpriced. But that is rare for sure even in the 3rd world. These people might not have an issue once Cakewalk announces it's game plan for purchasing of the new versions. We will wait and see if they remove the time out from CbB

Question- would THIS card work in the Pavilion? One thing I didn't mention is that the currant Video card is fan cooled and real noisy. A Passive card is defiantly what I was looking at. I passed on the one you posted because I didn't think going from 1 GB to 2 GB would make much difference but it would certainly get rid if the terrible fan noise. I actually went to order the Dell you linked and it added a Canadian surcharge which put the price at $230 Can. So I chickened out. But I will still look into that. I usually build my own because any off the self computer will have nothing but underbuilt components that will then need upgrading. But that was years ago since I've done this so possibly things have changed. I have a few Laptops and personally I would never use one as a main DAW. I have an Acer I5 quad core 3.4 with 16 GB RAM and 2 x 240GB SSD drives. It's my portable studio. But it really doesn't work at all for video editing. Screen captures with OBS on it are jerky.

Remove post information wrong.

Thanks everyone I figured as much. After reading these comments I think I'll send it back. I would have no problem figuring this out if it was a computer I built myself. It seems HP actually hides the bios from you and there's only a dummied down systems screen.. in the user manual they want you to send it in to the factory. It works real good for Cakewalk just that in Movie Maker ( Vegas) video editor the preview was super jerky. I have to render the movie to actually see how things like zooming and transitions turned out. It was mostly only one beep at random. But it's not mission critical for this old machine. One more reason to save up for a new one which I will build myself to get the components I need. Updated- Amazon already approved the return. No questions asked. I just printed the return label.

Reading between the lines in the announcements I think they are planning on re issuing effects and instruments that were once available with the paid versions of Cakewalk. Which ones will be offered and if they are included, or for sale as add on’s, is a just wait and see. You can now see the logic and reason they didn’t include these free with CbB. More proof that there always was a plan to start charging for it at some point.

My computer is old- HP Pavilion HPE i7 2600- Sandy Bridge- 1155 4x 3.40GHz. and it doesn't have on board graphics, I came with a NVIDIA GeForce GT 520. It only has 1023 MB of memory. I just upgraded with 3 new 500GB Samsung Evo 870 SSD drives and from 10 GB to 32 GB of RAM. I thought I should also upgrade the video card to see if that would help when editing videos. So because this computer is doomed to be shelved next year or in the fall I didn't want to spend to much so I bought a Zotak GT 730 with 4 GB memory $125. I pulled the old card and put the new one in and the computer just stalls at the Blue bootup screen that usually flashes for about 5 seconds. It say's press ESC to open settings. But even that does nothing. Only thing that makes a change is CRT/ALT/DEL which just changes the screen from blue to black. Meanwhile there is a lot of beeps. One beep mostly but sometimes multiple beeps. Eventually the screen goes dead. But the fact there is a screen tells me the card is actually working and must be seated properly. It is a very basic card , passive cooling and no power supply needed. Here things I tried. I installed the old card. Then I opened settings ( BIOS?) and set it to default. I noticed the boot order is set to Windows Boot manager. Computer boots and runs normally. I disconnected all the DATA drives and only left the DVD drive and the C drive. I thought about installing the driver and decided that was not a good idea. I put the new card back in. It came with a DVD disk which I put in the drive. The drive doesn't spin up on boot. Then a very weird idea came to me but that didn't work either. The Computer was originally W7 so I grabbed a blank SSD drive and put my W7 install disk in the DVD drive. My thinking was this is what would be normal for a brand new build, right? DVD still didn't spin. Blue start up screen, ESC still not opening Settings. I tried re starting about 20 times. I even unplugged it etc. Should I send this card back and try something else? Or it this a HP weird bios thing? The bios seems very bare bones to me.

Personally I think scook’s first method is the easiest. That way the pads will work with all the VST drum kits. Otherwise you’ll have to search for a drum map that matches your device. Google the device and drum maps.

You need to possibly disable USB sleep mode. It’s in Windows settings advanced power options. If it’s not that then the keyboard itself has a power saving option. This happened to me with my Yamaha digital drum kit. I had to go into settings and disable it. You need to disable

The ASIO driver and Cakewalk calculate your round trip latency and use that to place incoming audio in the correct place on the time line. In your case it takes 12.4ms for the playback of the already recorded audio to reach your headphones or monitors. Then you play or sing in perfect sync to that using the direct monitoring system of the interface. Now what you are performing takes another 12.4 ms to return to Cakewalk. No problem Cakewalk knows where that belongs in time because it’s aware of the 24.8 ms delay. So generally in ASIO things are always in perfect sync. BUT! If you add an effect that adds additional latency needed for its processing, Cakewalk can’t properly calculate the additional amount of latency so everything just went out the window. Therefore it is recommended you simply bypass effects while tracking Audio and even midi. And using input echo will make matters worse because your hearing you input 24.8ms after you perform it . That’s why they all have direct monitoring now. No latency. The only exception to input echo is recording a Guitar Sims. Then you will need all other effects bypassed and lower your buffer to at least 64. And a decent computer.

Those are Midi Cables. Midi is not audio it is only data. Watch these tutorials. https://youtu.be/Tce02wE_TPM https://youtu.be/YJlI6U8Rqa0 This is the playlist for all the Cakewalk Tutorials https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PL7YqVth30eGsURWrKGeu-fFyg3ETjF-Ox

I had nothing but trouble with those plug ins so I did the smart thing and moved on. They really don’t do anything that common eq, compressors and whatever do. Best to learn the tried and true tools that don’t crash and are much lower CPU hogs and move on

If you read the announcement about the upcoming changes you will see that Cakewalk by Bandlab will no longer be supported but it is still free. We are not sure how long it will remain available. But installing CbB you can come up to speed with the many bug fixes and updates since Splat. CbB is Sonar. They just reverted the name to the original. The Cakewalk installer is not a bare bones installer. It is the latest version of Sonar. It includes everything but the instruments and Melodyne.

Also beware of checking the 64 bit double precision box. Most of us avoid that and I can’t remember why but it’s something I would disable for now when troubleshooting. As Tim has said it is best to track audio with minimal effects. I always bypass them using the toggle in the Control bar.

It not only takes a lot of time to learn how to use any DAW. It also takes time to learn the language we use to describe things. My advice is to open the Help Module shortcut is Y. Now when you point the cursor at something it will tell you want it is and then you can use the documentation to read up on that feature. Sometimes there’s a “Learn More” tab in the help module to take you directly to the correct page. I prefer the PDF version. You won’t learn how to do anything much in any DAW by diving in blind. They are not intuitive at all. You either read the documents or watch tutorials. Still worth watching are the official ones you will find pinned to the top of the Tutorials sub forum here. They are very outdated but the Sonar/ Cakewalk interface hasn’t changed much so they are still OK .

Of course it can be done thousands of users create projects with midi and audio. Actually trying to use hardware as a midi sound source is more complicated than using VST instruments. Insert a soft synth and point the midi track at that. To explain the details of how Cakewalk works is a huge detailed process. As well as the videos Try the PDF document found at the top of the page here. Everything you need to know is clearly explained

The answer to that will most likely be in the user manual. Roland usually supplied real good manuals. They might even have videos. It will definitely need you to install the driver as it is a dedicated audio/ midi interface. As far as Cakewalk goes once you install the drivers it should show as both a midi device as well as it will be your audio interface so all audio will be going through the keyboard. I would imagine that the output jacks are then connected to your studio monitors. But as I say it’s all going to be clearly explained in the manual.

You realize a compressor used in the way you are describing will not control the clipping of the mixer. Are you using it for levels or as a effect? And you also need to realize there might be a lot of latency in the output.

I spent my last 5 years before retirement working in a care facility as an Activity worker. I know at lot more about dementia than most people would. Music was definitely the one thing even the most far gone souls could hang on to. I had people who were none verbal sing along with me. It was a weird and wonderful job. My Mom got true Alzheimer’s at only 62 years old. My Dad about 10 years later had strokes which is different but same sort of symptoms. I was the prime Caregiver for my Dad, he kinda looked after Mom. But that’s what caused his strokes, the stress. Their diet was terrible and they were both obese sat around didn’t do much. You need to keep a very close eye on you folks if you are their only contact and support. People fall through the cracks. Old folks can put on a good front and fool you into thinking everything is just fine. Defiantly check the fridge for rotten food. So my advice if you want to dodge the bullet is stay healthy by eating right and keep busy. Take up new hobbies. Don’t watch TV. That definitely leads to brain rot.

OK got it, when I googled it, the pictures looked like items that were sort of like PA power amps and would weigh 80lbs. SO can you run that without a speaker cab, like in the studio?

I just turned 70. I still love playing live. Last night at 7PM the owner of the local Brewery called to ask were I was? I said you booked me for next week, not tonight,,, pause, and then she said oh my god you are right,,, any chance you can still make it? I said sure why not. She said they would set up their house PA. OK I grabbed my Guitar, laptop and my road case that still had everything from the last gig in it ( hopefully) and by 8PM I was playing. The house PA was a old Yamaha Box mixer and a set of even older Roland 10" speakers. Oh well, not much low end. It's a supper noisy brew pub all echo's anyhow nobody will notice. They were super impressed that I could show up totally unprepared and jump right in with out any issues other than desperately trying to squeeze something nice out of the PA. But that's what comes with 48 years of doing this stuff. I didn't have time to create a playlist so I played my list in alphabetical order. I skipped songs I didn't want. It's an interesting way to make a set list. IT worked. Started with All my lovin and ended with Whiter Shade of Pale. It's not just to keep your brain active I think it fends off arthritis in the fingers as well. My hands look gnarled up but they still do the trick. Muscle Memory.