Noel Borthwick

@Dr Morsikas Can you share a link to the specific project file and also the minidump for the crash that you encounter. This may help us reproduce it.

Nobody likes bugs interrupting their workflow but if you think that other programs dont have similar bugs you likely havent used them for very long periods of time or your workflow doesnt expose similar issues. Regarding fixing bugs, it has been an utmost priority for at least the last 3 years. Have you looked at the changelog? We’ve fixed over a thousand issues besides all the optimizations and new features. We are a small team and we do the best we can. Cakewalk is an enormously complex application and can be used in thousands of different ways so a bug that affects one user may never be seen by another. This is the main reason why one person may have flawless performance and another might not. If you take the effort to provide detailed steps most of the time we are able to resolve issues rapidly. CAL is an ancient legacy feature that we hardly ever look at so I’m not surprised that there may be a few issues there. Ultimately we plan on replacing it. We’ll look at the other issues.

A hang on close can be ccaused by multiple reasons. Capture a dump file and it will reveal the culprit. For example plugins with thousands of parameters like Waves Omnichannel could previously cause this. Its been addressed in the January release.

@Yudaidhun Which instruments specifically are you using that have latency? By definition VST instruments are not supposed to have lookahead delay since it will be impossible to play in real time. Cakewalk has traditionally assumed that instruments do not have delay so this is not new to CbB.

Great article. This sums it up ? I've been at Cakewalk over 20 years and have worked on every single version of Cakewalk SONAR as well as several new products that started from scratch. Guess what - the new products didn't have a smaller bug to feature complexity ratio. Its flawed thinking to to assume that something new must be better and is something mostly propagated by inexperienced engineers. To take a somewhat tangential parallel from architecture, a lot of Europe doesn't throw away their old buildings, they maintain and renovate. Why? Obviously in large part its because they see art and value in it but its also because they have strong foundations and value. The fact that we have been releasing high value updates almost monthly for the last 3 years should be enough to convince naysayers that we're actively improving the product and its not "legacy code" whatever that is.

I'm sorry but that article is so full of misguided nonsense I'm not even going to bother commenting. For one I'm not sure when it was posted since the information is completely out of date and speculates on things the author clearly has no knowledge about. I will comment on the commonly quoted reference about "old code". Developers don't rewrite code unless it makes sense to do so. Cakewalk is continually being refactored and new features being added while actively improving the existing features. I wish people didn't write stuff they have no understanding about Here is a link to an article that mentions all the achievements since BandLab acquired Cakewalk. The link Scook posted covers in detail all the improvements and updates to existing features.

@scook All VST3s are not equal. Many VST3's are just VST2 plugin ports that dont implement sample accurate automation. So even though Cbb sends them the data they discard all the intra buffer points. The easy way to test it is artificially run at a large buffer size (use MME or Wasapi exclusive to set high buffer sizes). If the automation is quantized to the buffer size you know that the plugin doesnt support it. I'm not hearing glitches when drawing automation here. You may need to send a project to repro it. Envelopes are rebroadcast while editing however,

The file type is determined by reading the header so the extension probably not used.

This would hardly be a game changer However we plan on doing it at some point. Its mainly a UI change but not that trivial to do.

Aiff files should import fine into cbb. You can also import raw files with no header. Btw cwp and. Wrk files are completely different. Cwp is a more modern format that supports backwards and forwards compatibility which is how we are able to pull off making changes to the format so easily while still retaining project file compatibility. Welcome back to the future btw

@AdK Studios I have implemented changes to automation that greatly improve the sample accuracy of plugin envelopes during playback and bounces. The following is new: VST automation rendering now directly handles all the automation curves natively. Irrespective of the setting of AutomationDecimationMsec it is guaranteed to be buffer accurate. For VST3 plugins Cbb sends intra buffer changes to the plugin when automation curves intersect with the buffer. Depending on the plugin this will be sample accurate. AutomationDecimationMsec default has been reduced to a default of 5 msec. The permissible range is now 1-30 msec. For the greatest accuracy you can set it to 1 msec (it will come at a minor CPU cost) These changes should also improve accuracy of automation for DX plugins. VST3 plugins will have the most benefits (with plugins that actually fully support sample accurate VST3 automation). The Plugin in your test project doesn't support sample intra buffer automation so it will only be accurate to the buffer boundaries. Known VST3 plugins that support sample accurate automation are those from Fabfilter. Also the Kilohearts plugins support this. I have tested with a massive audio buffer size of > 300 milliseconds and the plugins still render sample accurate automation. So filter sweeps will sound smooth independent of the buffer size in VST3. Here is a build (updated to build 102) that has these changes. Could you (and anyone who has an interest in testing this) check it out and let me know if it solves the problem. Please report any issues specific to this if you notice anything. Thanks.

@bcarswell can you please capture a dump file while the app appears hung? Instructions in my signature. Upload it to any file share and PM me a link. A full dump will be a large file so you can zip it.

Please post a link to the minidump. Instructions linked in my sig.

@Luka Bozic you mention SONAR. Was that an error or are you actually still running that? The latest cbb release has some mmcss optimizations and fixes so worth trying it.

Why do you need a new physical file for each take? When loop recording a single file is created and takes are stored in that for efficiency. Of course if you record the takes independently they are stored in separate files.

@Mark Morgon-Shaw when you say track outs do you mean to capture the output of the tracks themselves or the output including downstream effects and automation on buses? The former is already available by exporting with source category set to tracks. Its the latter case that we are discussing here.

I don't work for support I can get the link from them but its quicker to just PM to me.

Interesting. We'll still need the project because thats the quickest way to investigate it. You can trim it down and save as a new project so that the size becomes smaller.

Because its up to the plugin to decide whether the host bypass is automatable or not. This is part of the VST3 specification.

Its solved now please retry. Sorry for the inconvenience.

Ah you mean control points on bezier curves. Yes we plan on improving the curve editing tools in CbB at some point. We already have this in a different product.

If you are bypassing from a bypass button inside the plugin Window the host does not get any notification for this so its not possible. If its VST3 you can use the host bypass button, if available on the header at the top left in the plugin view.

@Chevy please upload it to dropbox, google drive, One drive or any file share of your choice and send a link. You can zip the full project folder.

Thanks for the links. Videos are very good. Perhaps hold off on a new video about this since I hope to set the automation resolution adaptively in the next update rather than requiring a tweak. That way the video wont get obsolete. You can mention the tweak to the settings in your video notes or comments however. Thanks for the suggestions. We are considering adding built in sampling at some point but no time frame yet. I'm not sure what you mean by Automation Curve Point. Re features, there is really no best DAW since every one has different workflows and preferences. Cakewalk has a massive feature set since we've been doing this for over 30 years. It really depends on whether the workflow resonates and lets you work efficiently. For the last 10 years we've been working on streamlining the workflow and of course improving stability. PS: Another tip - Even if you are working at higher latency you can improve the automation tightness at render time by setting the BounceBufSizeMs value in preferences | Configuration file to a value like 5. That will force it to render at 5 millisecond buffers even though you may be playing back at a higher latency.

Have you tried it in an new project with just an audio clip? When that error fires it is normally specific to the project you are doing this which is why we need the steps and the actual project file.