Noel Borthwick

@Xel Ohh thats weird. So you don't get any error popup or anything? It seems like export is running into an error. If you do the operation without creating a task queue (i.e. just export) do you still get an error and if so what is the message? Could you please PM me a link to any project file that can repro the problem? (with the audio zipped) I'm sure its something simple to fix once we can get a repro.

To me this means the plugin is ignoring the sample accurate automation timestamps being sent to it and only using the value at the buffer start. Please contact the plugin developer to fix it. Cakewalk sends the plugin explicit intra-buffer timestamped values.

Thanks for explaining. Even with how you are setting it up, wouldn't it make sense to route all your cymbal tracks to a Cymbals-aux which then goes to the Master? Then use the new "Tracks Through Entire Mix" source category and pick the Cymbals-aux. This will export a stereo mix of just the cymbals.

You have noticed that the MP3 and Windows Media audio settings now have a checkbox to use the same settings for all output files?

This is expected. You can easily recheck all the tasks. Press CTRL-A in the task window and then press SPACEBAR to toggle them back on.

So you want to export all vocals as a stereo mix? If so why not just bus them to stems in your project which is a standard way to do it. You can send them either to buses or to individual aux tracks. Then you can use source category tracks or buses to pick these and export.

Nothing has changed - you misunderstood the statement that offline processes are not dependent on buffer size as far as dropouts go. IOW unlike realtime playback a realtime export cannot fail even if it is running at a sub 1 ms buffer size because there is no such thing as a drop out for offline export. Of course this doesnt apply to a realtime audible bounce.

Buffer size affects performance. Processing 1000 small buffers vs 1 large buffer is a lot more expensive and therefore takes longer. Same reason why low latency is prone to dropouts.

This is a symptom of running plugins that don't support sample accurate automation. i.e only VST3 plugins can deal with sub buffer automation. If you have pitch bends or other plugin automation, when you run at a high buffer size, unless the plugins support sample accurate automation you will hear it applied at the buffer boundaries, hence you get quantization. There is no solution to that other than running at a lower buffer size. One thing I can potentially consider in the future is artificially running plugins are a lower buffer size when they have automation to work around this limitation. BTW @Promidi this problem should not happen for VST3 plugins because we are already sub decimating buffers to 5 msec boundaries. So even if you had a buffer size of 350, VST3 plugins should receive periodic sub buffer automation timestamps every 5 msec. Can you verify that this is not an issue with VST3 plugins?

Not sure what you mean by "Folders". What to export refers to sources within the current project such as tracks, buses, arrangements.

Also to add to what Mark said, tasks are by definition per project so it doesn't make sense to share them across project since they contain information that is keyed to a specific project. MP3 presets would be a different feature that we may consider in the future.

Are you confusing presets with the task queue? The queue and its tasks is saved and recalled as part of a project file.

See my reply mp3 doesn't report bit depth that's normal

Were you also running at a higher bounce buffer size? Mp3 does not report bit depth so that's a red herring.

Very interesting I wasn't aware of any limits with mp3 but perhaps the encoder has limitations. We'll look into this. Perhaps we should lower the max buffer size to 256ms

Which version of Cakewalk are you running. We have not seen any issues with the VST3 version of Kontakt. In fact we worked with NI on ensuring compatibility for the 2021.06 release.

A new early access release is available with several new features. Please check it out and comment in the thread. This is a massive update so any testing and early feedback would be appreciated.

Can you share a copy of the project that has the issue? Include the audio data.

Some perspective from my viewpoint. Best by definition is going to be subjective, because even though Cakewalk is an incredibly deep and powerful DAW with its 30+ year lineage, there are other simpler DAW’s that may be more appropriate to some workflows because of their genre bias or other reasons. Live is a great example - if your primary interest is beatmaking you would be hard pressed to find something better for that workflow. If you leave behind very personal preferences or workflows, to the original question I would say that IMO Cakewalk has by far the deepest feature set of any free DAW out there. Its mature and has decades of experience baked into it which few other DAW’s including many paid ones have. Of course we have our share of quirks and bugs (that arguably others have too) but it has been our highest priority to solve the more serious issues since the last 3 years. To the last point I want to say that since day one our approach has never been “this is a free DAW now, so lets do the minimum to support it”. To the contrary, we have used this generous opportunity to obsessively make this as good as we can for our users. The effort that has gone in the last 3 years has been more than ever in the history of Cakewalk, to focus on improving stability as well as building truly usable and useful features. None of us have a free lunch mindset here - we do this because we care for the product and users and want to excel. As far as users cutting us slack because its free, while some more casual users might, we have thousands of professionals who make a living with this software, where the fact that its free makes no difference - the need to efficiently get their work done. We often work one on one with many users to ensure that our tools are robust and meet their needs as far as possible. The next release has a huge new feature directly based on feedback from many users working in exacting production environments with deadlines. All this to say that its as much of a pro product as anything out there and its being constantly improved with fixes and new features even more than some paid choices. Don’t let the free price tag fool you.

This is completely normal behavior. What you see when drawing is just a preview of the mouse drawing nodes. The actual recorded automation removes redundancy nodes but the net effect will be the same with fewer redundant nodes because they are converted to curves. There is no reason to have extra nodes and they would use excess CPU.

To be honest we are not paying any attention to win 7 anymore. There is zero testing being done on it and we only have a small number of users running it. The latest version of cbb is not installing the edge runtime because of an independent issue but we may use it again in the future.

That's great. Yeah I got a message from them last week and was going to post and mention that it had been fixed by them. Its nice when companies are proactive to work together and resolve problems. It benefits everyone. This is what they told me: "We just released a round of updates for almost all plugins. Those include the fixes for the problems with parameters not being recalled correctly in large Cakewalk projects, as well as the crashes when reopening projects that used our VST3 effect plugins. The only plugins not updated yet are Filterscape, MFM2, TyrellN6 and Uhbik. Those will receive updates later this year, or early next year. All others are now save to use within Cakewalk, after installing the current version."

Can you share the project file in question for us to look into?

Have you read this thread? The point of this new installer is to replace BA.

To be fair unless they tested it in Cakewalk with other synths in a project they wouldn’t have seen a problem. Technically though its not normal for instruments to change output counts its not disallowed in VST, but because of the way we handled port routing in Cakewalk (since the 2000’s really) this affected the port numbering. I’ve changed the code to adapt to changes in outputs now so this shouldn’t happen in the future. Of course older versions of Cakewalk software will still have the issue.