David Baay

I read this to mean Instrument track. Is that right, and what instrument?

Track View > Options > Stop at Project End

Glad to help.

Glad you got it sorted. Two thoughts: - Even though many synths will treat anything over 63 as pedal down, the convention for on/off values is to use 127 and 0, and I would recommend that so that the clip will 'play nice' with a synth that honors continuous pedal messages (a.k.a. half-pedaling) with variable damping should you ever happen to use one. Also, 0 and 127 give you the clearest representation. - I highly recommend getting a basic velocity-sensitive MIDI controller keyboard with a sustain pedal and starting to record in real time. Even if you have no keyboard skills at all, I wager you will quickly get to a point where fixing a wonky real-time recording is faster and yields a more natural-sounding result than drawing everything in with a mouse and trying to "humanize" it after the fact. Plus it's just way more fun and rewarding!

That's a key piece of information, and promising, but I'm not sure what to do with it since there doesn't seem to be any relevant setting on the interface and the only way CbB can record its metronome internally is via a Send from the Metronome bus to an Aux track which isn't something you'd be likely to set up accidentally or forget about when troubleshooting. To understnad better where the problem lies, I suggest the following: - Check if it happens with a new project started from the Basic template with no input plugged into the interface. - Check if it happens with the Alesis interface disconneted/powere down and CbB using onboard sound via WASAPI. - Set up the Alesis with a free/demo version of another DAW and see if the problem reproduces.

I'm guessing you have a positive (above 0dB) Volume set in Offset mode.

Might help to share your test project.

I have used it recently and not seen any of the mentioned issues. I just checked that project, did some temporary re-arranging and all seems good. Are you starting playback by the button in the Arrangements section? If you start playback normally by the Tranport module or Spacebar, the whole project will play through normally without regard to any arrangement. And the Event Overlap Threshold function you mentioned is present at the bottom of the MIDI tab in the Track View submenu.

I completely agree with this. In fact, "pricing" as stated was already a very poorly thought out strategy, but..... I also agree... but I think it's the hand-wringers who should not have said anything. ?

Probably best not to get in the habit of abbreviating it that way. The trolls will have a field day with it.

Changing the initial tempo after setting one at 3:04 should not have had any effect unless you've changed the Timebase property of some clips to Absolute...? But it wouldn't get the result you're after, either. By default the Timebase of both MIDI and Audio Clips is "Musical". This means that when you change tempos, their start times will stay locked to the Measure/Beat they're on. But they will go out of sync with each other after that because audio will maintian its Absolute duration, but MIDI will folllow the new tempo. So entering a different tempo at 3:03 would immediately have caused a sync problem, but changing the initial tempo would not have affected anything because everything is still starting at 4:01, and subject only to the tempo at 3:04. The best way for me to explain what you need to do would be to share a zipped copy of the project folder somewhere and PM me a link. I can fix the tempo issues and tell you the steps it took. Regarding Session Drummer, it was part of the paid versions of SONAR and is not available for free download, legally. But there are free drum synths available that offer multiple outs. Here's one: https://www.powerdrumkit.com/

Yes, definitely keep an eye out for even a semi-reproducible case and submit it to Support if possible.

Sound Center is a 32-bit synth. As such, it's subject to a bug in Bitbridge that causes frozen/bounced/exported audio to have an empty buffer of audio added to the rendered output. If you're running a large audio buffer like 1024 (21.3ms at 48kHz), that error can become noticable. If you use a non-default Bounce Buffer size in AUD.INI or specified in the Export dialog, it can be even worse. But that causes the opposite problem: Realtime audio is in sync, and frozen/bounced/exported audio is late. And I verified that's what I get here. I'm seeing that Sound Center is a little slow to respond in real time (which might also be due to Bitbridge), but that latency is on the order of 2 milliseconds - not really noticeable. The piano has slightly slow attack that might add another couple milliseconds to the perceived timing, but still not really egregious. Switching to sidestick sound eliminated that, but the 2-millisecond latency remained. Bottom line. Sound Center is far from a state-of-the art, and should probably be retired, but I'm not seeing a significant problem in real time, only with the Bitbridge freezing bug when the buffer size is high, and that's a longstanding issue, not new to this release. The 3rd-party Jbridge does not have this issue.

I can repro that. Definitely a bug. And it's not new; reproducible in Sonar Platinum.

Ideally you should get the tempo matched before doing anything with MIDI because MIDI will follow any tempo changes you make later, throwing audio and MIDI out of sync. The exception to this is if you use Set Measure/Beat At Now (SM/BAN) to align the timeline to the audio and MIDI which effectively alters the timeline tempo around both audio and MIDI, adjusting the MIDI event timing and duration to preserve its absolute playback timing at the new tempo(s). If the audio is starting with a downbeat at 1:01:000, you can just play the project, counting time out to, say 9:01, stop playback, snap the Now Time to the transient or MIDI note that should be on that beat, hit Shift+M to open the SM/BAN dialog, enter measure 9, beat 1, and OK. CbB will change the initial tempo to make that happen. If the audio wasn't recorded to a click, you may need to 'Set' additional points to get the timeline in sync everywhere. If it was recorded to a click, and you find the new initial tempo is within a few hundreths of some whole number, you can undo the 'Set', snap the Now time to the Measure = Current Tempo +1, Shift+M, enter measure = Target Tempo +1, beat 1, and OK. Some may suggest using the the drag-audio-to-timeline feature of Melodyne to have it create a tempo map automatically, but in my experience, the results can be hit or miss, depending on the material, and never as precise as doing it manually.

The best way to ensure you get everything is to select nothing; CbB will include everything by default (including mistakenly hidden tracks) when nothing is selected. Also, I always recommend to select Buses as Source Category, Ctrl+Shift+click one to deselect all, and then select only the Master and export that. The same reason F1 drivers wear helmets and fire-proof suits even though they are the best in the business and not planning to crash, and good carpenters measure twice and cut once. It's insurance against 'stuff' happening. Even if you and CbB do everything right every time (ha, ha, ha), plugins that don't play nice with fast bounce can throw a wrench in the works.

Right-click > Bounce to Clip(s) will generate new audio file, discarding that parts hidden by slip-editing. Right-click > Apply Trimming is a semi-destructive alternative in that it will effectively flatline the part of the clip that's been slip-edited out, but the clip will still be referencing the original file. For MIDI, you can also use either Bounce to Clip(s) or Apply Trimming, and you can also disable 'Non-destructive MIDI Editing' in Preference > Customization > Editing so that when you split MIDI clips or delete events in either the Track View or the Piano Roll View , the events are discarded rather then hidden by slip editing. It's not clear what happened when you dragged everything. In general that should have worked as expected. It's especially unusual that FX changed - not sure how that would happen. But if everything was off the beat, your tempo setting was probably not correct. The approach you need to take to match tempos depends on whether you are all-MIDI or still have a mix of MIDI and Audio. It's difficult to give steps without knowing details of what's in the project. If the drum instruments changed, it sounds like you inadvertently changed pitch. Holding Shift when dragging will constrain movement to one dimension (time or pitch, whichever changes first). The Reference Guide is here:

Yes, or just temporarily move them to a location that's not scanned. This may well be faster than OKing the load of every plugin you want to keep in Safe Mode.

My point, exactly.

I don't recall ever having audio completely omitted from an export that didn't turn out to be due to an oversight on my part or some kind of plugin misbehavior when fast-bouncing. But because these and other issues can happen, I always recommend bouncing the Master bus to a phase-inverted track that outputs directly to main outs and playing it through against the live mix on the Master bus to hear if there are any gross nulling failures. Unfrozen synths and FX that behave slightly differently from one render to the next may produce slight nulling failures, but a significant omission of audio content or automation processing should be obvious. If that checks out, you can export that 'Master Bounce' track in whataver format is required, and you have a reference copy saved inside the project.

The number one biggest factor in DAW host performance is Deferred Procedure Call (DPC latency). It needs to be both low and stable (consistently less than 300us is good, less than 150us is better, and I have heard tell of machines that run in the 25-50 range). DPC latency is highly dependent on motherboard architecture, chipsets and chipset drivers, and the activity of background processes that call them. The power management hardware, drivers and processes of battery-powered laptops tend to make them inherently inferior to desktops in this regard - even when plugged in - but some are better than others. Bluetooth and WiFi are two of the other common offenders and these also tend to be active on laptops and not so often on desktops. Another big factor is clock speed and, again, desktops usually have an advantage over laptops because they can afford the extra power and cooling requirements of a higher clock speed at any given core count, and it's easier to keep them from throttling back because they're overheating or the power supply is not keeping up. As a result of all this, laptops tend to be kind of a crapshoot for DAW performance because you have little or no control over the hardware that goes into them, and the only way to know in advance what you're going to get is to have firsthand reports from a reliable source who has tested and optimized the exact machine you're considering.

You don't even need to do that. Excluding plugins just hides them from the menus so they can't be added to a new project; it won't stop the plugin from being loaded in an existing project that uses it. FWIW, I just loaded Groove Synth into a project and ran some MIDI through it. Seems fine. DXs don't use Btibridge. Any DX that's working in an x64 DAW has been ported to x64. A Bitbridge crash would be related to some 32-bit VST - could be an FX as well as an instrument. I second the proposal to use Safe Mode.

Everything should just be working in CbB as it was in Sonar 8.5. The main challenge will be getting up to speed with the 'Skylight' interface, but you will soon come to appreciate CbB's many, many new features and improvements. Have fun!

I suspect this is right. And I have to agree with John that any interface that doesn't have native ASIO drivers and 24-bit converters is pretty much a non-starter. If it's not too late, I'd suggest you return the Alesis and get one of the more popular audio interfaces from Focusrite, MOTU, Presonus, Roland, UAD, etc. if your budget it tight, buy used.

Make sure the lower left button in the Select module (must be sized large to see them) to 'Select Events with Sections' is enabled.