Noel Borthwick

The issue has to do with how some specific OpenGL versions interact with the Video driver. Its not a host problem as such. Cakewalk itself doesn't use OpenGL but we use normal Windows API's, GDI+ and some Direct 2D to talk to the graphics devices. Nothing special. The LP plugins are built using JUCE which does use opengl. As far as we know the Melda plugins and other plugins that have the opengl issues are also built using JUCE. The JUCE dev's were notified of this back in 2017 and their response was that it was related to some interaction with the version of opengl higher than 2.1. Under this scenario the plugins that use OpenGL end up hanging with some video drivers when initializing opengl. IOW The hang itself doesn't originate from the app itself but in response to the plugin initializing opengl. This is what complicates the issue and makes it difficult for us to address at the host level. The fact that it doesn't hang in another app isn't particularly useful other than indicating that problem won't manifest there because of some other dependencies. Our workaround for the LP plugins was to have a setting that skips opengl altogether. This was done back in 2017 and the plugins have not been updated since then. We'll continue to investigate this to see if there is some workaround that can be handled at the app level.

A 2019.11 Hotfix Release Candidate is now available with several more fixes. We plan to release this soon. Please give this a test run and report back if you encounter any issues.

2019.11 Hotfix Release Candidate (HFRC) installer now available! Thank you to everyone who provided feedback on the official 2019.11 release! This hotfix addresses all problems reported and reproduced since then based on field reports and user feedback. We have also made some improvements to WASAPI mode and fixed some long standing issues to improve device compatibility. Please continue to report any issues in the 2019.11 feedback thread. We plan to officially release this hotfix very soon, so any early testing would be appreciated. Note: The HFRC installer will either update the original 2019.11 release or the prior early access HFEA1 build 59. Please choose the appropriate installer based on the version you are running. Download Hotfix RC for original 2019.11 release Download Hotfix RC for prior early access HFEA1 build 59 What's New WASAPI Shared mode now supports all audio sample rates. This is independent of an audio device's supported native sample rates. All other sample rates will be sample rate converted to the native format. This provides a convenient mechanism to to open even a 384K project on a laptop and play it through its onboard audio device. Full Screen mode now persists globally instead of per project i.e. you can only toggle Full Screen mode via the Full Screen mode button or by pressing F11. Closing or opening projects or switching workspaces will no longer exit Full Screen mode. Track icons are now shown by default in the Console view when using the Basic and Record workspaces. Note: Factory workspaces are always overwritten when installing a new release. If you need to customize a factory workspace, please save your workspace as a new name to prevent it from getting overwritten by a future Cakewalk release. MIDI playback buffer size default value has been raised to 200 milliseconds to accommodate system timing variations and prevent dropped notes on some systems. If you ran the prior .11 release you will have to manually change it to 200 (if you are experiencing dropped notes or noticeable dropouts) Fixes Glitchy audio playback with WASAPI on some devices - particularly with onboard audio since updating to 2019.11 Crash if an ASIO device was disconnected while in use by the application Glitches in WASAPI audio playback since updating to 2019.11 Application could freeze when recording or playing back MIDI under certain buffer settings Onboarding dialog opens unexpectedly after updating to 2019.11 Intermittent Control Bar Transport module progress bar related crash Recording in WASAPI and WDM could record audio at wrong speed depending on selected order of devices in Preferences dialog box Latency slider value was not displayed in WASAPI Shared mode Closing the application with toast notification showing could cause a crash Help > Get Started menu option missing from localized versions of Cakewalk Switching driver modes crashes during playback Melodyne opens without blobs focused in 2019.11 Audio devices fail to open in WASAPI Shared mode at non default sample rates

Yes. All that was done was change the factory supplied workspace templates.

This is because you have a workspace selected. All the factory workspaces have a specific control bar arrangement. When you open a project it inherits the global settings as set by the workspace. You have two choices: 1. Create a custom workspace that is set up with the exact arrangement that you prefer and select that workspace. 2. Select "None" as the workspace. In this mode it behaves just as before and it will retain whatever view layouts are set globally by the app and the loaded project file.

@HeatherHaze we couldn't reproduce the condition where the icon's get "reset" to the defaults. We did see a case where the icons could get hidden however. We have modified the default workspaces to prevent that happening. Are you sure they were actually replaced rather than hidden? If so could you send us a project that exhibits this? Jon also sent you a PM yesterday about this. BTW a caution, please don't rely on resaving over the default workspaces since ihe installer will overwrite them on next install. Rather you should save them as a new version by clicking the + button in the workspace manager and giving them a new name. (First select the workspace you want to change and then click the + button) Thanks for your help.

@Mcu pro I replied to your original thread. Can you post a screenshot or list the dropout code in the message that you get. Have you also tried increasing the MIDI playback buffer size in Preferences | MIDI | Playback and recording. Set it to 100 or 200 and see if it improves. If you are crashing we'll need to see a minidump.

@Mcu pro A few things to check: which version of Cakewalk are you using? Are you using the Apollo ASIO driver? Check that Cakewalk is running in ASIO mode in preferences What audio buffer size are you running at? Are you getting a dropout message? If so please list the dropout code that appears in the message Are you getting a crash or hang? If so please capture a dump file and send me a link to it. This will help diagnose it.

That screenshot is incorrect. The audio driver mode needs to be selected from the audio section instead. If you want other apps to play audio the best mode to use is WASAPI shared because behind the scenes Windows mixes other applications audio streams. Most devices should work with WASAPI shared. Ironically some pro audio interfaces perform poorly in WASAPI mode - likely because vendors only test in ASIO mode.

Hi @kagunmarx thanks for your report. Your support case limited information other than the fact that you saw a hang. We will need a bit more to go on. e.g What audio interface are you running, what version of Windows and is the hang happening on all your projects or a specific one. What is your MIDI and audio buffer sizes. Can you explain when the hang occurs. Is it while playing back or recording? How reproducible is the hang - did it only happen once or is it reproducible? The only way we can diagnose hangs is if you send us a dump file when the application is in a hung state. There is information here about how to do this. You will have to reinstall the .11 release and try and reproduce it again. For the hotfix we have identified a hang situation with recording and playing back MIDI. This is not a new issue but could be more likely to occur in 11 because of the lower MIDI buffer size. Its possible that you ran into this but without seeing a diagnostic dump I have no way to verify it. We have fixed this issue for the upcoming hotfix. If you would like to try it send me a PM and I will give you a download link. If it is the same hang you likely be able to avoid it by setting your MIDI buffer size to a higher number like 200 msec. I'd like to get to the bottom of this so we'd appreciate it if you could try and help us get some more data.

@Zaquria was 100 ms sufficient to correct the issue for you?

If it's only happening to instruments please try increasing the midi playback buffer size as described.

@AxlBrutality I fully understand this. We have excellent relationships with many plugin vendors. Waves, NI, Celemony, Arturia and Steinberg are some big guys who come to mind but there have been numerous others who are extremely responsive when there are compatibility issues. On the other hand others make assumptions without doing the due diligence testing and debugging. Doing a test that compares a plugin in host A and inferring that host B is to blame because it doesn't work there is flawed logic. Software is far more complex than that and most competent developers would never make that assumption. Just in the 09 release I communicated with Steinberg about verified bugs in plugins state management that we have to work around. This is an ongoing problem and not something we can solve directly since none of us have any control over third party vendor timelines and policies. I can say with 100% certainty that when a vendor reports a specific compatibility issue to us we bump that to the highest priority to solve as soon as we can and work with them directly to get to the problem. The bottom line is if a plugin vendor asks you to switch DAW's without supplying evidence that it is actually a DAW issue, its really your call to decide the value proposition of whether you would rather stick with that developer or abandon your DAW. One root issue I have seen is that some plugin developers do not test on Windows systems and can be quick to dismiss plugin bugs as being host specific without actual verification. Some others regurgitate obsolete out of date information. Yes in the past we had compatibility issues but the vast majority of plugin issues have been resolved over the years. Our VST3 implementation is second to none (even by Steinberg's admission).

@chris.r thanks for helping out. I understand wanting to wait. If you would like to try a more recent build of the hotfix contact me. We should be pushing out another build in a day or so. To try the .11 release assuming you are running .9 you can just back up the "C:\Program Files\Cakewalk\Cakewalk Core" programs folder and restore it if you need to go back after installing. Thats the easiest way to A/B the two.

@Zaquria this symptom seems to indicate that the system is dropping out and restarting. In 2019.11 by default the application will restart playback automatically if it senses certain kinds of dropouts. Please try turning off the restart engine after dropout option and see what dropout code gets reported - assuming that it drops out after that. One thing to also try is raising your MIDI playback buffer size to 100.

@chris.r we need to make sure that you are actually experiencing different latency from 09. There can be different causes for latency: PDC in plugins audio latency as set in the driver panel in ASIO MIDI buffer size (prepare using xxx millisecond buffers) in preferences MIDI | playback and recording If PDC override is off on the toolbar then you wont hear PDC delay when playing. Make sure you are comparing with that on. You should confirm that 1 and 2 are the same in your test. 3 was changed in this release but that only impacts how often MIDI data is prebuffered for playback. It will not affect realtime MIDI performance or audio performance in any way.

@HeatherHaze thanks for all your feedback. What did you mean by "all my track icons have reset"? Do they get hidden or changed? We haven't been able to reproduce this so if you can give us a recipe it would be useful. Over time we're working on making workspaces and the rest of the user interface more fluid and intuitive so keep the feedback coming.

@Johnbee58 yes the select cursor was improved in this release. Regarding the MIDI buffer size please raise it to 100 msec. We've been experimenting with ideal default that isnt too big and I now think that 100 might be a better default.

@TheSteven Some follow up questions. Have you confirmed that you were using the exact same audio latency as the prior release? What driver mode were you using in both .9 and .11 What dropout code is being reported when you see the dropout message. In .11 it automatically restarts playback after a dropout by default so I'm curious why you got the dropout message, unless you explicitly set RestartEngineAfterDropout to False in preferences / configuration file. If the dropout code is 9 then please try raising your MIDI buffer size (prepare using xxx millisecond buffers) in preferences MIDI | playback and recording, to a value of 100. Retest your project after that. My hunch is that this is your issue.

@kagunmarx what freezing issue? I don't see any post from you describing this.

@HeatherHaze @jesse g as you probably have discovered by now the reason for the display changes were because you had a workspace set that was globally overriding your settings. We're going to be doing some video's on workspaces to help explain this better as well. Regarding full screen mode, we're planning on disconnecting that completely from workspaces or the project settings. FS mode should be only controlled by the button in the UI. Not sure if we will get to it for the hotfix but its on the radar. This happened because on some systems the installer and app got confused into thinking it was a first time install and launched the onboarding process which suggested the "Basic" workspace as well as may have defaulted to WASAPI. As a result of this after installing the .11 release the app was set up to run the basic workspace which sets up the initial view of the app. The user could have changed it in the onboarding process but if you zipped through it without reading the text then this is likely what happened. I wanted to clarify that this was not intentional and we have fixed this for the upcoming hotfix, so very sorry for the inconvenience and confusion. After installing .11 it should have been set to exactly the way you had Cbb set up. i.e if you had no workspace to start with it should have been left the same way. To go back to your preferred settings you have two choices. Either save versions of a workspace that fits your workflow OR set the workspace to none, in which case it will no longer override settings. You can always go back and tweak a custom workspace later.

@Colin Nicholls Strange. is this a MIDI or audio project? When it goes silent, do you see meter activity on the Main outs in the console?

Its wired to Melodyne always

Yes ARA 2 is aware of selection. There was a change that was deselecting the clip so that made the blobs not visible on execution of the command. If you select something else and then reselect the clip the blobs would be visible again.

@Matthew SorrelsDoes it work for you with CTRL-M?