A Tolerable Quietude

I'm wondering if there's a way to enable sound-on-sound loop recording on a midi track, which will play back what I've recorded so far as I'm playing? Like what people do when they are live looping, building up the sound as they go, without stopping and restarting each time? From the documentation, it looks like the answer should be NO. This says: "Note: When loop recording in Sound on Sound mode, you will not be able to hear the prior loop passes until you stop recording. This is because takes are only committed after recording is stopped." So why am I even asking? Because, despite what the documentation says, sometimes it actually does work. With a brand new project, if I drop in an instrument track, set loop points and turn on looping, then start sound-on-sound recording, Cakewalk will play back prior loop passes, without having to stop and restart. But try it again on another track, it might or might not work.

I usually start freezing tracks when I start to notice dropouts or other signs that my system is being overtaxed. If everything sounds fine to you, then I wouldn't bother. FYI, you can see what system resources are being used in your project and how close you are to maxing them out with the performance module.

Thanks so much for the very detailed reply and info. Very helpful! I would have thought it would be easier to get this kind of behavior from buses, but I guess not. At the end of the day there's an easy workaround--just mute the bus when I want the track to solo properly. I'm alsoglad that I didn't accidentally mess up a setting somewhere! Thanks again!

Since I couldn't find this anywhere online, I've made a full drum map for Abby Road Modern Drummer by NI. It's all 82 mappings in the "Sparkle Kit", and it works quite well for the other kit in Modern Drummer ("White Kit") which is has identical mappings of almost everything, but slightly different percussion sounds. It should also be a decent starting point for the other Native Instruments Abby Road instruments as well, which generally use the same mappings, but just have fewer drum sounds. With minor modifications/deletions, you should be able to use it for any kit in any of their Abby Road drum instruments. Here it is if it's useful to you. NI Abbey Road Modern.map

Yes David, thanks. Indeed, that's exactly what I do if I'm not using the output of that bus or track in the final mix, but only using it for the sidechain. That can be a great technique to add some dynamic texture to a track! But that's not what I'm talking about here. The drum bus output will still be in the final mix, but I'm talking about soloing tracks briefly while I'm putting the song together, so I can check what a single track sounds like on its own. When I solo a track briefly while I'm working on a project to hear that track in isolation, the other tracks respect that solo and stop going out to the master. The buses also respect that solo and stop going out to the master. If a track has a send on it to a sidechain compressor, it still respects the solo and stops going out to the master (even though it still goes out the send). But for some reason a bus with a send to a sidechain compressor doesn't respect the solo, and it keeps going out to the master too.

Thanks everyone for your thoughtful replies. It still seems like a bug to me, or at least very counter intuitive behavior. I'll try to explain it this way: If I put a send on a drum track to the epiano compressor sidechain and I solo the epiano, the drum track is still sent to the epiano's compressor sidechain, but the drum track no longer goes out to the master bus while the piano is soloed. That's what I expect. When I solo the epiano I only hear the epiano, ducking as it should to drums, but I don't hear the drums themselves. If I put a send on a drum bus to the epiano sidechain and I solo the epiano, the drum bus is still sent to the epiano's compressor sidechain. So far so good. But it's also still sent to the master bus. The other buses and tracks go silent when I solo a track. But not this one. Note that I'm not soloing the bus. I'm soloing a track, but the bus with the sidechain send keeps going out to the master too. I hope that's clearer. One workaround is to solo the track I want to hear, and then mute the drum bus so it doesn't also go out to the master. But it's weird to have to do that. Or maybe an aux track will behave better than a bus for this.

I'm not sure if this is a bug in Cakewalk, or if I'm doing something wrong. I've got a project with various instrument tracks, including some drum instruments. I put a sonitus compressor on an instrument track and a send on a drum instrument track to the compressor sidechain, for some sidechain compression on the instrument. So far so good, everything works as expected. If I solo the instrument track, all I hear is the instrument track (with the volume ducking down where the drums would be sounding) but I don't hear the drum, or anything else. But since I've got more than one drum instrument, I decide to send the drums to a bus, and put a send on the bus to the instrument's compressor sidechain. This is where things get weird. Now if I solo the instrument track with the compressor sidechain coming from the drum bus, I hear the instrument, and I also hear the drums (everything else mutes). This only happens on the track that's got the compressor sidechained to the drum bus send. If I solo a different instrument in the project, everything else mutes, including the drum bus, as expected. I hope this is clear what the issue is. Is this a bug? Or is there a setting I need to adjust to make the bus behave as expected when I solo a track? I'm able to reproduce the result, and I've attached a small cakewalk file that demonstrates this using only stock cakewalk plugins. Try soloing the epiano track and you'll see what I mean. Odd Bus Solo Behavior.cwp