HOOK

Is there a known issue with Reaper and Cakewalk on the same machine? I installed Reaper a few days ago and spent a few days working there exclusively. A few days later, I went back to Cakewalk to play something for a writing partner, and now I have kooky playback issues...occasional stuttering and digital beeps. Had none of that before the Reaper install. Thanks for your input.

Will we be able to import and use our current CwB workspaces, custom buttons, fx presets, track templates, plugin folders and project templates into the new Sonar? In other words, will this coming paid update keep our customized workflow intact, or will we have to rebuild? Thx.

Back in the mid 90's I had a writing partner and we wrote/recorded a bunch of tunes with early versions of Cakewalk, when computers really weren't up to the task of aggressive audio tracking and mixing. We managed. But they weren't as cool as what we can do with today's Cakewalk and today's computer power. In late 2022 we decided to finally revisit and re-record some of those songs from the ground up. This one is called Fall For You.

☝️THAT

I may not be following your routing completely, but this sounds like you have input echo on at the track level. Turn that off and check it out.

I tend to reach for Edit/Undo with the mouse instead of Ctrl/Z shortcut. I also have a custom button setup so I can just reach up there and click Undo quickly, multiple times if needed. But I find, quite often, that the Undo step that is listed under the Edit/Undo menu is one step behind what I'm actually undoing - showing the thing I just undid, instead of the thing I actually want to undo. Anyone else see this bug?

I live on the other side of this fence. Cakewalk works, and I'm making music. Updates can give a guy the blues...and down time. There are already 1,000 features I'm not using. I don't really feel like I need more.

Thanks, Andre. I actually returned that unit for several reasons. One of the biggest being that the Thunderbolt driver was red-hot garbage on my PC. Crash after crash when changing buffer or sampling settings.

If you're referring to Exclusive Solo Mode, it's discussed on page 301 in the Cakewalk reference guide. There are 202 hits on "exclusive" in the reference guide.

I'll tell you from very recent experience that a Universal Audio interface via Thunderbolt on a Windows system is a total mess. I had blue screen after blue screen. I returned it and went with Lynx Aurora (n) via Thunderbolt on the same machine with the same Thunderbolt add on card and it works great.

I'm sure this doesn't help...but I'll be honest with you. I've used Cakewalk since the mid 90's and I learned early on that scrubbing is a surefire way to a crash...and I haven't even tried it since then. I'd be curious to see if any other long-timers have always felt this way.

THIS... 100%. And I'll add....nobody cares if you used a little pitch correction here and there as long as it's not audible. Sometimes, a client will sing better and take more chances if he/she knows that you got their back like that. And good things happen when a singer is feeling confident. Hell. I've even (fairly often) fixed a vocal line for a singer if they keep delivering one note wrong. It's REALLY hard to get a singer to deliver it differently if they've been practicing wrong. Once they hear it right they have an "aha moment". Then, they can run though it and practice with the tuned take and get the muscle memory rewired....and they nail it on the next take.

Thanks. I do understand all that. I'm specifically asking about the use of the zoom faders. The horizontal zoom fader centers the track view to the now marker and zooms in/out from there. And finally, just now, figured out that the vertical zoom fader focuses on whatever clip has the track name highlighted in the audio track strip, on the left, not the actual clip that is highlighted. I can single click and highlight a clip all day long, but the vertical zoom fader still doesn't focus on that clip unless I also have the clip name highlighted in the audio track strip. I just discovered that I can double click a clip and the name will highlight in the audio track strip. Then the vertical zoom fader snaps that track to the top of the track view and is focused on the clip I'm intending to zoom in on. I find it odd, and it might be an oversight in Cakewalk...if I single click a clip (say on track 7), the highlighted track number changes in the audio track strip, but the highlighted track name remains highlighted for previous track I was working on (say track 10). So I have a track number that's highlighted on track 7, but the track name is still highlighted on say track 10. In this case, the vertical zoom fader is focused on the wrong track.

When using the vertical zoom fader in the lower right hand corner of the clips pane, I can't seem to figure out what the trick is to getting the correct track to be the focus of that zoom activity. Is there a way to do this? Horizontal is no problem. Zooming starts from where the Now Marker is and centers on the screen...zooming in and out from there.

You could start by shutting off notifications. It's in the manual....page 205.

Glad you're sorted out. Personally, I don't think the Lynx driver plays nice with Windows and Cakewalk at the same time.

Yes...this is a problem as well. I don't use the grid for timing, opting to do it freehand, but I have to reset it to OFF every time.

I upgraded to Assistant 5 within the last 30 days or so. I'm having issues with it not initially lining up to the timeline. Sometimes....often...the blobs aren't even visible the first time I insert the Region FX. I have to undo and redo to get it to show. Also having issues with it reverting to the rhythmic algo rather than the melodic one. I'm in the middle of a lot of re-recording of old songs, and I'm also having issues dragging clips to the timeline to build the automatic tempo map. It usually locks up Cakewalk. I have to shut it down with task manager and then try again. If I'm lucky, I can see the tempo before it crashes so that I can manually enter it when I open the project again.

Alan...I'm using the Aurora (n) 8. All good here. Have you looked at Cakewalk preferences to make sure it knows to use 1&2 as your main output? Is your master buss assigned accordingly? I have Cakewalk set to: Playback Timing Master and Record Timing Master set to Lynx 1&2. Also, within the ASIO panel (also accessible via Cakewalk preferences), you should be able to turn on and off which channels of the Lynx are available to Cakewalk. Just have to make sure that 1&2 are checked off. Then, hopefully, you'll be able to get your mains pointed in the right direction.

Yeah...I fat-fingered the V many times. As well as other shortcuts. Drove me bananas. I eventually went through the keyboard shortcut menu and pretty much wiped out every keyboard shortcut that isn't part of my normal workflow.

Low-end rumble is generally dealt with via hi-pass filter. The one in Pro-Channel should suffice. It does for me.

This problem, with certain plugins, has always existed. Some of my favorites cause latency and droputs if I try to track with them in-line. The trick is to figure out which ones and only use them when mixing or mastering. Soundtoys, Cakewalk, Slate, Waves...I have plugins from each of these that make it impossible to track with them. Like Bill, I also have a template set up for mastering, and do that completely separately from the project after I settle on and export a mix.

I'm using this trick to re-record some 20 year old songs where I want to keep vocals and some keys from the original multi tracks - while re-recording drums, bass, guitars, etc. But there's only a very slight drift over a 4 minute window from the original drum machine I used. I could be wrong but it may be that a better solution for the OP might be to use audio stretch to force the random performance to follow the drums instead - depending on how badly that performance swings. I'm no audio stretch pro. I've never been able to get my head around it no matter how many videos I've watched.

Historically, I've been MANY versions of Cakewalk behind the current version because the older versions worked well for what I did. And since I had clients constantly in, I couldn't afford to have stuff break on update, which happened a couple times before I just abandoned updates for as long as possible. But now that I'm only using Cakewalk for my own songs, I use the current version. And I'm still constantly looking for the "Clone Track" option. I'm not sure when this disappeared exactly, or why the nomenclature had to change to "Duplicate Track".

I got a chance to setup the RME UFX II USB this weekend and compare it to the Lynx Aurora (n) Thunderbolt. Good lord....that was a hard decision. The RME USB driver is pretty shockingly great! I ended up choosing the Lynx because I thought it sounded slightly better. But that RME UFX II brings a lot to the table and the converters sound great, although I thought the higher frequencies were sweeter, and the low end was a little tighter on the Lynx. I wasn't in love with the tiny screen for input and output meters on the RME. I found that the RME was turning the meter to red to indicate clipping when things actually weren't. That was annoying. The RME was good enough that I almost kept it.