Fran Kinsey

Auto-save is set to appropriate settings and works correctly UNLESS you are editing in the latest Melodyne Editor 5.4.1.004. When the Melodyne editing window is open, Auto-save is constant, like every few seconds. Thanks!

THIS WORKS GREAT! Cakewalk plays perfectly on the laptop built-in audio. Play is nearly instant. The audio seems correct on my daily high-end mixing headphones. Can play as loud as you can stand. My new computer is a nicely provisioned Dell Latitude 7640. Sound device is the built-in Realtek ALC3281, Dell-supplied driver. 16" is the biggest screen for this model. Special things to know: Don't remove the Waves Audio utility. In fact, don't remove anything related to audio. Critical: Waves' garbage "enhancements" need to be turned off for each category of device, eg Speakers or Headphones. The off setting will persist. On Win 11 (probably also 10), access the "enhancements" via Setup > System > Sound. Under Output, see Speakers and Headphones lines. Open the greater than sign > and turn off Audio Enhancements and Spatial Sound. Do this for Speakers and Headphones, whatever is in there. This setting stays put. Waves thinks it knows how to EQ or "spacialize" your different devices. Garbage. Waves will prompt you for what kind of device you plugged into the 1/8" jack. Plug in headphones BEFORE starting Cakewalk because it won't notice the device if it's already running. Cakewalk Playback and Recording menu, Driver Mode should be changed to WASAPI Exclusive. I tried others but this one works perfectly. For example ASIO is awful. I tested with a huge project with 50 tracks, many hours long, with a hundreds of clips and around 100 plugins. The built-in audio will never be used to record to I don't care how the mic input sounds.

Thanks everyone. Looks like this is doable. Will never need to record with internal or multitrack out with internal. Even my tiny (2i2) is just more junk and anoeth wire piled on a coffee shop table. I don't mix loud (and neither should you lol). Latency does not matter in this context. I don't care much about audio quality because I would never finish a mix on small cheap headphones in a coffee shop. By "horsepower" I mean actually handling the audio processing, some of which is done in the interface. Worst case is I merely have an awesome new laptop that I need anyway. @sjoens OMG SoundBlaster! My first one was in 1998 ish! I think it had MIDI and GM sounds.

Bummer. Seems it should be commonplace to mix at a coffee shop with just laptop and headphones. :~(

Probably been asked 1000 times... I run Cakewalk on multiple laptops that are pretty old. The built-in audio doesn't have enough horsepower to mix on so I always have to use an external interface, more stuff to carry around. Anyone have a good result with built-in audio in a modern Windows laptop of some model ish? I often have say 50 tracks and as many plug-ins TIA!

Every day I wish I could search for text inside the Markers window. I record albums all in one project, same as I record multitrack concerts all in one project. Every project ends up with a ton of Markers, 50, 100, more (see attached screen cap). Song names, take numbers, best takes, best take lane solos, eff-ups, tempo wobbles, fixit notes, whole verse replacement start and stop, locations of solos, chorii etc . . . But there is no way to search. And even worse, every time you open and close the Markers dialog it loses the place you were working so you have to start at the top and scroll and scroll until you find the place you are. All day long. Even worse, during a tracking session it takes so long to locate any Marker, like a solo, that the band starts asking what's wrong and even speculating that I forgot to record it. It's embarrassing, every tracking or dubbing session. The attached image shows an album in-progress with well over 100 markers and the kind on instructions I send myself. I've learned to tag the best takes with *** as a visual aid while scrolling and scrolling. I add a whole bunch of empty Markers to make a glaringly large whitespace as a visual aid while scrolling to locate the session date (this project has 3). BUT as always, Cakewalk is incredible and ~~~RAAAWKS~~~ !!!

I also find this "feature" the most destructive and irritating (way beyond irritating) thing ever added to Cakewalk. I submitted a feature request to support. If enough people do the same, maybe we'll get an off switch for it some day.