John Vere

Reading this I wonder if a wave editor would be a better tool for the job. There’s lots of Wave editors and a few free ones. Wave lab is what I use and I think they have a demo version you could try. Gold Wave and Audacity are free Sound Forge is very good too and they also have a demo.

I'll agree that they are small but I can read them and let me tell you I have pretty bad eyesight. I have a special pair of Computer glasses that are at the correct focus and have blue blocker.

In my humble opinion if it’s a brickwall limiter you need the Loud Max and Boost11 do the job with out colouring the sound at all. Limiters should not colour. Boost11 is included with cakewalk. Loudmax is free. The above mentioned limiter# 6 colours the sound. That is important and is the big difference in all compressors and limiters that you need to be aware of. Some add saturation some don’t and some have an option of both. I found 90 different free compressors and limiters and I tested them all. Cakewalks PC 2A leveling amp is actually the CA-2A with out side chaining option. It doesn’t get any better than that for a coloured compressor. A very good all round none coloured compressor is the Melda which is part of the free bundle.

No ! don’t do that I lie a lot! I tell people to use asio4all ?

Cakewalk is weird because they keep old dialogue boxes that are scattered all over the place. Making the tutorials forced me to explore every possible nook and cranny and you'd find things you would otherwise have never known about. Just recently while doing a Control bar tutorial I found that you can change the performance module to show different things. It's probably been there since X1. I think it's pretty normal to learn enough about your software to get things done, but what this process taught me is that software becomes way more easy and quicker to use once you fully understand the features and all of their options. You have to take an occasional break from creating music and start poking around at all those little menus. Or actually pick a random page of the PDF users guide and read what's there. I'll guarantee that if you do this you will learn something new, and it might be something important to your workflow. I had been using Sonar and Cakewalk since 2004. I learned a lot just from reading this and the old forum. 3 years ago I think I had about a 30% understanding after all that time. That was plenty for me to make a zillion recordings. Now after going thought the software with a different goal in mind, teaching people how to use it, I'm just might be at over 80% understanding. It is amazing how that has increased my productivity and how quickly I can finish any projects now. And a Biggy is not being stumped when something goes wrong. I now know where to look for the solution. So that's my workflow tip- Take a little time out to learn about the software. Everything is in that PDF and it's posted right at the top of this page.

Did you save it to a different location, like an external drive? I sort of doubt that changing the name would fix a corrupted project but you never know! If it created a crash dump file you can report this to the staff and they will look into it for you.

Can't say I ever created anything with more than 6 midi tracks in my life so I was unaware of the 16 track limitation. I guess it saves by the Channel. SOmeone else here must have experience with this. Then seems your best route would be a fresh project. It will be a lot of work but it is possible to do. Just an Idea, but what about saving the originals track by track as track templates? Create an empty project then populate it with the track templates. I think if you put a midi event at ground zero in each track then you can drag those from project to project and they will be in sync. And I think You would need any Banks and Patch changes stored in the track header and not the Instrument.

A common way to deal with a corrupted project is to start a new project and copy the data over. There’s a few options available you can try. First save the project as a template. Now open the template and see it it is also acting up. If it is, then the issue is with in the project file itself and not you audio or midi. This is not something you can fix so you need to abandon the project file and rebuild. If it seems fine then you can use it to rebuild by copying the data from the corrupted project. I would test each track as I go. Second method: You say this is all midi. Save the project as a midi file. Now open that and replace the instruments. This is especially preferable because the midi clips will be in the correct places on the time line. I am not dead sure about automation but I would hope it is saved as midi events. Any instruments or effects used you would save a preset and name it. When inserted into the fresh project then recall the pre set.

If all you are doing is putting ideas down you can’t go wrong with a Zoom or Tascam hand held recorder . My partner has a stereo Zoom recorder he paid about $100 for. I have the 4 channel Tascam DR 40. It was more cash but I’ve had it for 10 years or more and used it for a zillion things. We both keep them in our guitar cases and lots of great jams and song ideas were recorded at the press of a button. Amazing sound quality.

I'm still not sure why they haven't removed those pages. I actually got messed up by it the other day while researching something. And I find it strange that people don't notice the links that are at the top of this page that take you to the Proper support pages. https://help.cakewalk.com/hc/en-us

This could not have been the issue other than possibly you were monitoring the output instead of the input. Audio is recorded directly from your interface to the Hard drive. The input level of the recording are 100% controlled by your audio interface. You can turn all the levels right off in Cakewalk and the audio will stay the same level set at the input of the interface. You should be using your interfaces direct monitoring so you will be able to critically hear what is being recorded. You do not turn on input echo while recording most audio. The exception is using a Guitar Sim where you want to hear the results. You said you didn't have input echo on but there's no way you can hear any Reverb or Compression in the headphones while recording unless you do. All you should hear is the playback from already recorded material and the direct/ dry sound of your mike. Which brings up the question which audio interface are you using and does it have a software mixer?

Being someone who just had a Samsung SSD drive that was only 2 years old suddenly became slow I would look at the external. Simple test I did was save my project to my C drive and the issue went away. Drives are dirt cheap now.

Just an update for the benefit of future reading. I used Samsung Magician to Migrate C drive to the other new drive. Took about 30 minutes. Done. Only XLN had an issue with the change which was something I already new how to fix by going to the web site etc. So the old girl now has 32 GB of ram and 2 x 500 GB SSD drives which I will now be swapping out on a more regular basis. Cakewalk is now running better that it ever did all for around $150. I will now see how it goes with my other issues in Movie Maker. It has been freezing up when editing. I can now see why this might happen. I’m going to purchase a 3 drive for Video editing and storage as well as using it for Cakewalk internal backup.

Ok I see what you are doing. I might be still a mile off base but if you change the midi tracks output to the instrument and choose the Channel in the channel box of the track header doesn't that globally change that tracks output to the instrument and the channel desired? I just took a downloaded midi file with 9 tracks and channels and it opened with the TTS-1. I took a track that was assigned Channel 1 and changed it to Channel 15 in the dialogue shown in the screen shot.. TTS-1 1 played the correct instrument in channel 15 now instead of 1. The event list still listed it as Channel 1. Cakewalks Track header overrules all other parameters. It took me a long time to sort this out as like most of us old school hardware users I always wanted the channel changed in the event list. I thought the Cakewalk event list sucked compared to any other sequencers I had used. Seems that's not how Cakewalk works. It's event list is not really for editing I guess.

There's a very simple solution. There's no need for channels. Channels are only used for Hardware and the TTS-1. All modern VST don;t care what channel you use. Insert the synth(s) you will use as a Simple instrument track. This is the instrument track default if you don't select split instrument track. It's Icon is as below B. Holding down SHIFT drag the midi data from the original track to the new instrument track. Done. Repeat for all tracks and when done delete the TTS-1 and the now empty midi tracks tracks.

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.