Colin Nicholls

Nothing wrong with using multiple DAWs. It's not a zero-sum game. I plan to have ALL the toys, eventually. Studio One is a fine choice. So is Cakewalk. And stripping things down to try and diagnose the root cause is anything but "voodoo". It's the complete opposite.

"It's always a plug-in, isn't it" - Noel Borthwick

This bothers the heck out of me but I ended up making my loop clips two cycles long in my 7/8 sections. I.e. 7/4, effectively

Audio driver problem ? Try updating or re-installing the audio driver and see if this recurs

How about that. I used to use Synful orchestra but I haven't in some time. I remember the results were quite impressive for its time. There are so many orchestral VSTs available these days.

I've been maintaining a copy of Blue Aston. Which image is throwing this error?

MIL-SPEC ALPHA might be a good starting point if you want to try tweaking.

Most of my themes were developed a couple of years ago when I was taking a break from full-time work. I have a full-time job now and any spare time I have (not enough!) is devoted to music making, not theme editing. To be honest, if you can't find an existing theme that makes you comfortable enough in the UI to use the program, then you're probably not going to be happy with one that is as close as possible to the screenshots you posted. And I am a fan of that look-and-feel. It's like a half-way point between Sonar 8.5 and the "skylight" interface they put together for Sonar X1. I know you're joking, but seriously if I had the time I would not take your money, it would be for the fun and challenge. Good themes take time and effort.

If I'd seen this post a couple years ago, I almost certainly would have been inspired to work something up. Now, though... I have no time. And, you know, the uncertainty of what will work in the future...

Cakewalk By Bandlab is currently free to download and and I would be surprised if it can't open those old project files. There may be some plugin license issues, if you've used them. Also, I don't think "9" was a valid version number. The last version was 8.5 if I recall correctly, before Sonar X1 came out.

Heat stroke is a real thing and can do real damage. I don't know where you're based, Bit, but so much of the country is sweltering right now... no-one should be working outside, it's a serious health risk. You gotta protect yourself.

nVidia can get pushy with their drivers and odd software that wants to run in the background, but apart from that, I've not had any problems running with an nVidia card in my DAW.

Advanced Audio Export dialog: Try altering: Format > Dithering; Format > Bounce Buffer size; Mix and Render > [x] Render in Real-time

Looking for a PCI internal audio interface? I have a venerable but top-tier 8in 8out + MIDI device available for the cost of shipping. Well-tested, and works great with Windows 10/64-bit. Updating this post to reflect the fact that this offer is no longer available because someone took me up on it ?

Now that the hardware is in my hot little hands, and the installation bugs (mostly) ironed out, I can confirm that the integrated UHD 770 GPU is not posing a problem. Everything looks great and seems snappy. I realize that's not all down to the video but whatever.

I think I have found the root cause. After all the above, I was more convinced it was due to a specific plug-in, probably one i used a lot, that was misbehaving. I opened the Synth Rack and opened each VSTi properties window in turn, until Modartt Pianoteq 4 informed me that it was not activated. (I'd previously activated v.5,6,7, and 8, but this project - and many others - still used v.4). Once I'd cleared the activation prompt, the UI now responds as expected - smooth and un-interrupted. I am relieved. Given how consistent this visual thing was, and how it went away as soon as I cleared the activation prompt, I'm thinking this must be it. (98% sure) I would love to ask Modartt exactly how and why this happens, though. THANK YOU EVERYONE WHO CONTRIBUTED ADVICE TO THIS THREAD. YOU GUYS ARE THE BEST

Haha good suggestion but my clips pane is scrolling okay, just the UI response is being jerked around. The screen grab doesn't do a great job of showing this but there's four places I've noticed the periodic momentary UI freeze behavior now: Rearranging Control Bar modules Aim Assist tracking the mouse Now Time playback Vertical scrolling the Track Pane I think there must be a common root cause here.

I have updated the top post with a link to a LiceCap screen capture of the issue. More comments up top 2023_Video_Freeze.gif

It was set to "1" . I have set it to "2". It did not appear to make a difference. Good thinking, though.

@scook, re: Anti-Virus software: Good thought, I'll investigate @mettelus, re: Wireless Mouse: don't use them. Wired all the way. @promidi, re: Disabling C-States/Speedstep: I thought this was related to Core Parking which I've definitely altered. I'll do some more research on this although it seems to me that "here be dragons" Also, it bugs me to mess with something that should work in our favor: Parking on Idle = good Looking at the performance monitor module, I wonder... does Cakewalk have an upper core/thread limit? Lots of good information here: https://discuss.cakewalk.com/index.php?/topic/34270-how-to-assign-cakewalk-to-use-all-the-cpu-cores/ @Traveler, re: optimization guide Thanks! I'll review, and post if something makes a difference. This forum is the best, have I said that recently? Onward!

Uh, no, I haven't. That's another good idea. I was about to try the "remove Intel integrated video driver" trick you mentioned above, but instead I had a thought. Cakewalk is not my only DAW: I use Studio One's project page for album mastering, or at least, I used to. (Cakewalk's Audio Export dialog + Arrangement lane - I confess - has largely made that unnecessary) but i still keep it around, and in fact, I recently took advantage of an email offer and upgraded from v.3 to v.6, but hadn't installed it on this new machine yet. Well, I just installed it, and downloaded the Alina Smith demo project. Okay, look, I don't want to turn this into a brand war or anything. For me, this is just another data point: Studio One playback and video redraws was flawless. And that "Rhythm of the Night" demo is pretty heavy as plugins goes. I'm not super-familiar with how to read S1's performance monitor but the CPU meter was hovering at 15% which kind of feels about right. This makes me feel a lot better about my choice of hardware :-). The issue no longer feels like an intrinsic CPU- or Video- driver problem. It feels more like some kind of configuration problem on the Cakewalk side. I want to call this all a "clean Cakewalk install" but the truth is, it may be picking up stuff from my C:\Users or C:\ProgramData folders that I restored as part of moving my files over. That said, I've never experienced this kind of issue in my last two DAW upgrades. Maybe I need to reprofile aud.ini or something like that, could it be that simple? I'm doubtful. I will try it, and also the other things you've suggested. For me, this is still an on-going diagnostic project.

It just does feel like a video driver issue doesn't it. I think I'd have to put the nVidia card back in the slot, or maybe it would revert to "generic video adapter" or some such. And, good call on sysInternals.

Good question. I think if you are not experiencing performance issues then you don't need to worry about it. It's good for laptops and other devices that need to conserve power and aren't running real-time applications. I wouldn't have worried about it either, except that I'm clutching at CPU-shaped straws. In my case it clearly does something because the CPU performance histogram changes substantially.

Concerning networking: I disabled my network adapter, and opened Cakewalk and the project. Noticed that it seemed to stick for a while during loading plugins, on BREVERB BREVERB wasn't activated, and was complaining about demo mode. I reconnected to the Internet, and authorized the plugin with my serial number. Disconnected from Internet. Re-opened project. Commenced playback - no change. Issue persists. Conclusion: The root cause doesn't appear to be related to the availability of the Internet/network. Have I really authorized ALL the plugins? Next Steps: I have difficulty believing this is related to my Focusrite USB interface which is my backup device. I currently don't have a backup-backup but I'm waiting on the delivery of a new Thunderbolt audio interface, so when it arrives, we'll try comparing. And, no doubt, deal with other problems I've not yet known related to Thunderbolt.

Not that I've noticed, JnTuneTech. I'm familiar with Task Manager ?