David Baay

Cool. Glad to help. Regarding the audio engine problem; I can't really think of anything you could toggle on from the keyboard that would have shoot it in the foot like that. It may well be plugin-related. Any Izotope mastering plugins recently added to the project? They generally need a larger buffer to run smoothly. Beyond that, I would just check the usual suspects, starting with DPC latency: https://www.resplendence.com/latencymon

Possibly you have 'o' bound to Offset Mode, and inadvertenty changed gain or volume of the master bus while in Offset. It'as not a default binding but the default bindings of those keys would not otherwise alter the sound of a project. The two "o"s in 'Doctor' should have just toggled you in and back out of Offset Mode, but if you hit something in between, it could have changed the level.

I think I need an example situation to fully understand the use case, and how it's not currently covered.. Also, some other modifier will be needed as Alt-clicking a widget currently enables dragging it to re-order widgets.

Yes, I can confirm this is a longstanding issue. I believe I've reported it myself in the past.

Sorry, but that's not accurate. Solo override ensures that a track remains audible when anything else is soloed - exclusively or not - but does not cause the track to play solo when nothing else is soloed as a regular solo does. What it's doing is overriding the muting effect that soloing some other track(s) would normally have without causing any muting itself. I agree that using the same icon for both functions is a bit confusing, but it's not the functionality that needs to change, just the icon. There might still be a need for some additional soloing functionality but changing what Solo Override does is not the right approach. I use it for what it's designed to do currently and would not want it to change.

First, as a best practice you should set the Input of the new traack to the specific port and channel that you intend to record, not All Inputs. Then check the properties of whatever synth the re-recorded track is driving, and make sure it's not unintentionally echoing MIDI input to a virtual OUT.

That's right. Virtual MIDI port drivers working at the O/S level look just like hardware ports to Sonar, and you can apply an Instrument definition to them just like any hardware port. Only ports presented by plugins within the project cannot be used in this way.

So that sounds like a solution, though it doesn't explain the cause of the problem with the original project. Any time a project won't load normally but will load fully using Safe mode, I'm inclined to think some sort of 'race condition' is occuring on loading plugins or other content. Re-saving may have changed the order in which things load, eliminating the race condition. I'm guessing this is part of Noel's investigation.

Just for the record, my preferred approach is to Output the 'Master Bounce' track direct to the main hardware outs (i.e. in parallel with the Master bus) and group that track's Mute in opposition to the Master bus Mute. Then you can freely A/B between them with one click, and your live mix is ready for further work any time.

It looked to me like the PC he has is state-of-the-art enough to be quite servicable for at least a couple more years. Unless he's selling it to pay for the Mac...?

My expertise in this area is not great, either, but I've always been under the impression that dual-processor Xeon systems were not expecially great as DAW platforms primarily because they tend to run lower clock speeds, and overall DAW performance tends to benefit more from higher clock speeds than from having scads of cores. In any case, if one CPU is not being utilized at all, I would expect that's more a function of how the system and O/S are presenting them to the application.

You should be seeing its effect on the Master bus meter unles you have bus meters set Pre-fader...? FWIW, I typically use a 'Pre-Master' bus with no FX on it to sum all tracks and sub-buses and allow metering/managing the input to the Master.

If you're exporting only the Master, I think the only way the level of the file could be higher than the Master is if you've raised the level on the virtual hardware out bus at some point. If you don't see hardware outs in the Console view, drag the splitter at the far right to the left to reveal them.

I have seen this mentioned a few times with regard to the dark themes. The gridlines are good in the Mercury Classic theme I prefer.

There's also the per-project Clean Audio Folder option under Utilities. It cleans tha audio folder of only the currently open project.

I have used that utility only once and the results were catastrophic for me. I've used it for years without ever losing anything. So long as all the projects are on the same drive as the audio they reference, CWAF should not mis-identify files as Orphaned. That said, after running it, I move the files it identifies as Orphaned to a folder that's excluded from its scan and run it again to make sure nothing is identified as Missing before I empty that folder.

Sending a track to a bus with no FX on it simply duplicates the signal. If both the send and bus levels are at the default 0dB, the net result will be 6dB gain in the contribution of that track to the full mix. Louder always sounds better.

Yes, Bounce to Clip(s) converts a MIDI Groove Clip back to a conventional MIDI clip.

When you say "unison", do you mean voices on the same pitch or an octave apart? Either way, the two voices would first need to be combined in a single MIDI clip (with events on different channels if they're on the same pitch). Then it would be possible to write a CAL to do that but I don't know of one that exists, and it wouldn't be trivial enough for me to want to try it for fun. ;^) Do you run into this situation enough to justify needing a script for it? I would think it's not that difficult to do manually in the PRV with the two voices in separate tracks.

The combination of missing files and corrupted files suggests some systemic failure or 3rd-party software involvement. As Mettelus suggested, it's virtually impossible to have Cakewalk lose track of audio or delete it unintentionally without someone or something meddling with the file system directly.

I can confirm it's a problem in Sonar, but not that it's persisted for years. CbB works as expected for me.

@Noel Borthwick This is a pretty interesting observation. I can confirm that dragging a MIDI Groove Clip out does not stop the audio engine. Bounce that same clip to normal MIDI, and it will stop the engine when dragged out to the file system.

I mentioned earlier that I verified "Suspend Audio Engine..." is not enabled in Sonar. And even with that option enabled in CbB, the engine is interrupted only for a moment before the clip is dropped outisde the UI. With it disabled in CbB, there's no interruption at all.

Unfortunately I'm not finding anything. If not a configuration issue, I think it's likely audio-driver-specific and not OS-dependent because I'm seeing it on both Win10 and Win11.