John Vere

This is very true. My Motu M4 is 100% bus powered with no option for a wall wart. I will never buy any interface like this again. I had a terrible time with it until finally had to install a PCI USB 3.1 card to power it with. But I continue to have weird issues. They are assuming people have a USB C port like Mac's do. See the port on the back of the Tascam, USB C. The OP's Tascam does have an optional power supply which I would highly recommend purchasing even if it's not the causing this issue. It would seem they are not using ASIO. But the bus power seems a more likely cause as the interface might be starved for juice. USB bus powered AC Adapter (TASCAM PS-P520E, sold separately)

Everything is right here https://bandlab.github.io/cakewalk/docs/Cakewalk Reference Guide.pdf And here https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL7YqVth30eGsURWrKGeu-fFyg3ETjF-Ox

And watch these videos which explains the difference between using an audio interface or the computer audio. https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PL7YqVth30eGt7K5L5fUIUF_UjCsdAVCbd

I was on my phone so I said the wrong thing, sorry, deleting an envelope only removes one envelope. CLEAR ALL deletes the entire lane. And a closer look at your screen shot it seems all you have is a Volume and a Pan judging by the colours.

The odd thing is the C drive has a Label I put on it that says 2018. The one that died was from 2021. Go figure. My 1 TB spinning data drive is from 2015. But it doesn't get used much and when it does you can hear it spin up, so I guess that's what saves it. I have a bunch of those 1 TB drives some are in drive enclosures. I think over time this is only the second HD that has failed on me. I still have 20 GB Hard drives from my old XP days that I think still spin up. They are all in a shoe box. At least the SSD drive take up less space on the shelf.

There's always multiple way to do anything in Cakewalk. Here's what I do. Insert as many midi tracks as needed. For this you can use the " Insert Multiple tracks" option = open by Right click in a blank place in the Tracks Pane. Now point each midi tracks output to the VST or Hardware synth you will want. RE name colour etc. Highlight the original Midi track using the track number, Now holding CTRL and SHIFT drag the midi track to the new track. CTRL is copy and SHIFT keeps it on the grid. Repeat for each track. But just to say, Midi tracks on there own don't produce sound so the above method would be more likely used for external hardware. It's less screen space to use Instrument tracks ( Simple Instrument tracks) and put the midi data in that track. In that case you would insert all the VST instruments you wanted to use and DRAG /COPY the original midi track into these instruments tracks.

https://bandlab.github.io/cakewalk/docs/Cakewalk Reference Guide.pdf

That is weird that Microphone is not an option in the input drop down yet it seems to be what is selected? Your dropdown actually looks like it could be using ASIO? The Microphone will only be available when using a Computers sound card as your input. Possibly you are using a None ASIO driver that shows the the Tascam correctly. I will almost guarantee the issue will go away if you install and use the ASIO driver. Tascam makes good interfaces and drivers.

Update: I pulled the drive and installed one of the new drives. I copied my Cakewalk files back to the new drive.. Wow. I didn't realize how slow that other drive had been. Cakewalk projects are loading in seconds. SSD drives definatly slow down over time. So this will now be an annual routine. For a lousy $50 for a new drive. I'm going to by a 3rd drive to use for those stupid video files and this one is only for Cakewalk. Anyone else reading this who uses SSD drives as data storage would be wise to do the same. DON'T go by the amount of room on the disk, go by the write size. Obviously deleting files does not 100% remove them and slowly the drive is a scattered mess of data. In my case this is probably all the videos I was working on. Example you run the screen capture and re do takes over and over deleting the files. Nope, they are going to be adding to that quota the disk has. Example after I installed the drive I ran the Samsung Magician and it showed zero writing to the drive. I had to initialize the drive and when I looked at the write amount after that it showed 1.5 GB even though the drive had not been used yet. I transferred 36 GB of Cakewalk files so far. Haven't done anything else and the stats show that 49 GB of Data has been written. Either the Magician is full of S_it or 13 GB of extra data is hidden away somehow. Now to tackle the OS drive.

Yes that's the default. Just for clarification: The following is representing a standard reverb bus scenario. You have a Reverb plug in the FX Rack of a dedicated bus. You put on 100% wet and leave the fader at unity. You add a Send in a Vocal track or the Vocal bus. You turn this send up until the desired amount of reverb is added to the Vocal track. This is normally around 12 o clock. If the send is on the Track it will stop sending when your either turn it all the way down, the the fader is turned down or the mute is engaged. So if you still hear the reverb in the headphones it could be a few possibilities. You are hearing a hidden vocal track. You have the Pre Fader send on ( seems you don't) You have an additional send ( From an effect in the tracks bin? ) Aux track. Then seeing that you say you are recording a new vocal track it is not clear what the set up is for that. I turned reverb off on my vocal track, When you say this are you turning the send on the track right off? Do you have input echo on? You shouldn't hear any effects if you use direct monitoring and keep input echo off.

Midi data is timeless. I use midi files I made in the 80’s. Midi don’t give a hoot about the instrument it plays. So your project is safe from any harm. The only problem is the Cakewalk team has no way to update the TTS-1 code which is in an unsupported DX format. It will be Windows (13?) that finally kills the DX plug in’s not Cakewalk. So we will have lots of warning. On my list is to re make the video on how to easily replace instruments.

The midi driver is installed with the driver for your audio interface. Make sure to check it as an input in Preferences. If you are just starting out you might want to watch my tutorial series to help you get going. The one about connection midi keyboards is down the playlist a bit. https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL7YqVth30eGt7K5L5fUIUF_UjCsdAVCbd

Just be aware of the limitations of Midi 1.0. It is a serial data stream so the larger the data chunk the more latency. Depending on the midi set up a giant chord might take 20-100 ms to make it through. Midi 2.0 using USB C will fix that issue as it will transmit in parallel data chunks.

I think they call it a place holder? It would make more sense to me to show the categories. You can insert a split instrument track using the Add Track dialogue. it’s under the hidden advanced settings. What it seems they did is create a newer dialogue and kept the old one so people who are used to it wouldn’t complain about the change. As a result many long time users are not even aware the new dialogue even exists. I think it took me a year to notice it. One advantage of the new system is being able to choose the output bus as well as inputs and even adding multi tracks. These options were there in the past but scattered all over the place now it’s in one place. It’s odd that it doesn’t have a Midi track tab. Only Audio and. Instrument.

It would also be an interesting research project to see how many threads have only 1 post from the OP! If it was Facebook no one would notice But-they did return the next day which implies they read the posts from April the 3rd , got what they wanted and disappeared probably forever to become a classic one post wonder.

It funny how the longer threads are Usually the ones were the OP never comes back. The must be some sort of logarithm that causes this.

Cakewalk added an Add Track option a long time ago. It is a simple solution to all this babbling about synth racks and very old dialogue boxes. I would not have discovered it if I hadn’t made a tutorial a long time ago about inserting Instruments. I found 9 ways!! that you can insert an instrument track. Most open the ancient dialogue box that is replaced by the dialogue found in the new option. The Add track to me was by far the simplest to use and the quicker. I have used it since. All options are available. And the default is what most people would probably use which is a simple instrument track. click , click done. No synth rack needed.

I’ve never had any real issues with the adaptive limiter it’s just I feel I’m not in control of what is happening. It looks like it should work but my end results suck. Right now I’m using a combination of the new LP multi band and Loud max with very precise results. I tested a lot of Free brick wall limiters and loud max won out hands down. No colour and one of the only ones that if you set it at -1.0 that’s actually what you get. And believe it or not The Boost 11 is actually a good limiter if you don’t push it hard. The adaptive limiter seems more of an AI plug in which of course I fight. The LP multi band is simply brilliant and easy to figure out.

those thousands of songs rolling around my brain that I think I perceive my own songs this way too.

Thanks @mettelus that clarifies a few thing. I did notice the Data Migration tool in the Magician and was considering that for the new C drive. For me it's a toss up as I do like a clean install of everything from time to time. But man what a PITA. If I was keeping this machine for a few more years I would defiantly take the time to do that. But All I would like right now is to make it a bit more dependable. This is an old computer ( 13 years) and it defiantly needs replacing but I just don't have that kind of spare money right now. I'm hoping I can save gig money from the Summer and get something next fall. For now I ordered the 2 drives and 32 GB of RAM. A $150 upgrade which is not waisted. As today progresses I've been slowly transferring the files manually. The important files are all safe, so I'm just looking at some huge folders which have mostly video stuff in them. I have published all those videos and I doubt I'll ever re make them, so if they get left behind no big deal. All my Cakewalk files are very safe. Just Exported files I just completed needed to be copied. That is happening right now. 22 Songs are transferring slowly. The screen shot was taken after about 20 minutes. Normally that would take less than a minute. So far everything I transferred seems 100% OK. Your mention of heat was worth looking into. The Magician is showing 31 C for the C drive and 35 C for the broken drive. Looking this up that seems in the low end of operational range.

I just ordered 2 new Samsung 500 GB 870 EVO drives as my drives are getting older and now one is totally acting up. Before I do the swap I need to back everything up..but.. My computer is set up with the 2 SSD drives both 250GB EVO's. One is OS and the other is all my working DATA, mostly Cakewalk and Movie Maker files. I have a 3rd 1 TB drive as backup which I often copy folders from the working Data drive over to. I will also use an External drive so I'm pretty safe for back ups. First sign of something wrong was a brand new project with 1 audio track kept losing the audio engine? I mucked about scratching my head and finally on a whim I started fresh and used the OS drive for the project. No more problems all that day. I finished the project and exported it. To the Data drive. The export took less than a minute. But I went to copy the folder it was in to a external drive and it was taking forever? It was showing 0 a lot and only as high as 300KB/s. I tried copying to the internal drive, same thing? Copying between all other drives, internal or external is fast and normal. Any attempt to copy ( Read) files from this drive are real slow. as in almost zero speed? I have the Samsung Magician app installed so I ran that and you can see the results below. The problem is there still might be some random stuff I didn't back up, I'm attempting that now as I write, but at this rate it would take a month! So this thread is to see if someone has any ideas on how I can get the transfer speed back? I ran a full scan/ repair tool and it ran for 22 hours and was only 20% done so I gave up. I'm going to pull the drive and put it aside for now but eventually I want to try and retrieve all the data from it. I might run it as an external via my Laptop and let the repair tool run for the predicted 3 days. The main OS drive ( the 750) shows good but interesting it shows a flag about SATA 3 being available ? So I assume it's telling me I'm plugged into a SATA 2 port on the Mobo, good to know. But notice the read speed compared to the one that is not working. And that 10 TB has been written to it?? The Data drive tosses different results every time I run the tests so defiantly some bad sectors ?? The test showed reading speeds of around 2 MB/s here's the first questions. why does it say this 807 GB Good? It that how much Data has been written over time? this is highly probable as I have to constantly move stuff from the drive to my back up to keep the disk half full. Is this what actually created the issue? this is only a 250 GB drive From that drive I can still open Cakewalk projects, they a re very slow to load, but then if I try and save it to a different drive the blue wheel goes round and round and round.

I was only using it as an example of how we have AI type tools and software now that do the playing for you. Some people struggle with things like, coming up with a bass line, or a piano part. The AI to the rescue. I'm not saying its a bad thing at all. It's just yet another persons workflow. Not mine. And yes I have listened to many a BIAB midi creation over the last 3 decades. A good chunk of the free midi downloads where created with it. This info is sometimes imbedded in the midi file itself. The dead giveaway is the drum fills that happen in the wrong place. I actually have an old version that was made for XP. For me it was the hard way to create midi because the parts it generated needed too much editing to start sounding like what I wanted. It seemed to work fine for things like 3 chord Hank Williams songs. Of course I'm sure they have added a million styles since those days. It's good software and well done, but not a workflow that seems to work for me.

I just re did them to add updates and fix errors. Good luck and if there's still an issue get back to us. Watch this one for sure. https://youtu.be/iSJyAInupkU

I'm not sure why he said that as you actually don't have automation enabled as far as I can see, You have the tracks record on. If there was automation you would have had to take steps to draw it and it would show as a green line. Make sure you have installed Tascam's ASIO driver and use ASIO mode. I am only seeing the word "microphone" in the input box,, that is not what one would expect when using a proper interface. That is implying you are not using ASIO. If that doesn't solve the issue then troubleshooting 101 will. We need to determine at what point the audio is being lowered. At the guitar, The cable, At the stomp box, the next cable, At the Amp, next cable, At the interface , the USB connection, or in Cakewalk. A process of elimination is how you do this. Removing or swapping out devices until the issue goes away. Example what happens when you plug the guitar directly into the interface? If nothing happens, then you know the issue is the stomp box or amp. Working backwards. Make sure your direct monitoring is turned on, Does the volume stay the same in your headphones plugged into the interface? If you hear the volume drop then this rules out anything from the USB cable into Cakewalk. The issue is the hardware upstream. Let us know how you make out. I'd be real surprised if it was Cakewalk.

Here you go, Everything is covered. You can cheat and skip ahead on the playlist to the ones about Midi but if your new to Cakewalk it's very advisable to watch them all and you will be up to speed in no time. https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL7YqVth30eGt7K5L5fUIUF_UjCsdAVCbd