David Baay

Plugin Load Balancing is not always guaranteed to improve overall performance, especially when the distribution of load across cores is already good without it. I generally leave it off as I don't often use that many FX plugins in a single bin (or in a whole project for that matter), and most of my load comes from VST instruments which can't be load-balanced. The documentation provides guidelines for when it can be helpful and when it might not: https://www.cakewalk.com/Documentation?product=Cakewalk&language=3&help=AudioPerformance.14.html

Maybe try re-naming AUD.INI, and let CW build a new default one. Do you have any of the old SONAR demo projects and bundled plugins? I'd be curious to know what kind of performance you see with a known baseline. EDIT: A couple other possibilities... any chance you have the Steinberg Generic Low latency ASIO Driver installed or have enabled the non-default 'aggressive' ThreadSchedulingModel=3 in AUD.INI (Preferences > Audio > Config File)? These suggestions come from a similar thread from last year: And a golden oldie problem generator: Setting Windows processor scheduling for best performance of Background Services in Advanced System Settings

That DPC latency would be on the high side if you were trying to run a 32-64-sample buffer, but should not be a problem at 1024. In a well-optimized system, I would expect to see consistently under 300us. Mine manages that even with WiFi enabled. Beyond that, I'd be looking at the project content. It would have to be a pretty heavy-duty project to run a 16-core processor that hard at that buffer size. Seems likely there are just some individual plugins driving the engine load that be can't load-balanced any further. I would suggest you try selectively disabling plugins, and see if anything is driving the engine load particularly hard. Then search for reports of issues with the efficiency of that particular plugin - may just be the nature of the beast in some cases.

Care to share a screenshot of LatencyMon after letting it run for 10+ minutes? Also, if you hover your mouse over the Performance Meter in Cakewalk while you are hearing "peaks, clicks, etc." does it show the empty buffer count increasing?

If the issue is clicks/pops/dropouts when streaming audio in real time, you probably have issues with Deferred Procedure Call (DPC) latency spiking. Check it with LatencyMon, and go after the usual suspects: WIFI and Bluetooth drivers: https://www.resplendence.com/latencymon Also be sure to disable CPU-throttling functions in BIOS like Speedstep and C-States as well as turning off all Windows power-saving measures.

Oops, missed that second post. I did a quick test and confirmed the 140-samples of uncompensated delay using independent audio clips and Channel Tools with upsampling enabled for both playback and render. I also encountered some issues bouncing the master bus to a track with 64-bit DPE enabled. I reported it all to the Bakers for investigation. Incidentally. setting your three nudge values to something like 1, 12, and 24 samples makes measuring sync errors a lot easier; just count the nudges, and add/subtract as you go until the zoomed waveforms are aligned or the audio is nulling.

I could be wrong, and would have to test myself, but I suspect there's a logical problem in using a send to an aux track instead of a separate signal source. What I'm thinking is that any plugin delay compensation applied to the source track to keep it in sync with the upsampling delay will delay the send signal as well such that it's basically no possible to sync the two outputs unless the timing of the send is divorced from the delay of the track output signal. I haven't completely thought through how this squares with the plugin's internal upsampling being properly compensated, but i'd be interested to see if the problem reproduces when both tracks have an indepenndent-but-identical audio source

There's an option to allow only one project open at a time (Preferences > File > Advanced), but it shouldn't be a problem to have a several open at once. I pretty regularly have two or three open, but not so often more than that. My guess would be it's project/plugin-specific. You might try raising the ExceptionHandlingSeverity value in Preferences > File - Initialization File, and seeing if it helps intercept the 'crash to desktop' and provide more information:

Selecting MIDi Omni for both tracks should not have caused a crash, but it's best to select the specific port and channel that your keyboard is transmitting on to prevent routing confusion. Assuming the two tracks were inserted as Simple Instrument tracks, each will be using an independent virtual MIDI port between the MIDI side of the track and the instrument in the synth rack so there is no need to differentiate channels. For Input, select the keyboard port and Channel 1. You won't need to worry about channels unless and until your start using multi-timbral instruments. By default, Cakewalk will only echo MIDI to the synth associated with the track that is currently focused because 'Always Echo Current MIDI Track' is enabled by default in Preferences. This will be indicated by the Input Echo button in the track header lighting up with an 'A' in the icon, and you should only hear that instrument when performing on the keyboard. Or you can disable Always Echo in Preferences, and manually toggle input Echo buttons on and off to determine which track is echoing input from your controller.

That's working as designed. By default the control is disabled as indicated by parentheses around the value, and will have no effect. Moving it enables it, and then the value you set will be sent to the synth every time the project is opened, and every time playback is started.

Right-click the Volume control in the MIDI track, and choose Disable.

I actually had to Google 'snare drag' when I first saw your post, and a video I watched showed it involved using both hands/sticks with the right hand playing a quick two-hit 'diddle' before the primary hit with left (though it can be done the other way around). So it makes some sense that the MIDI would have the 'diddle' notes on D3, which I assume is an alternate snare articulation. But I know some drum synths have the multi-hit 'diddle' sound recorded as a single sample, requiring only a single note to trigger it. So it's not clear which implementation is used in this case.

In the event list, I see a lot of D3s with what looks like 0 duration, and I think these are corresponding to the fast sequence of notes for the drag. Try Select by Filter, and raise their duration to 15 or 30 or whatever will fit without overlap. EDIT: I also see some of those D3s are on the same timestamp, e.g. 2:02:244 - not good.

Don't have MODO Drum (yet), but... is the MIDI using controllers or key switches to generate the drag or is it just done with note events?

Nah, just an old-timer. ;^) Glad to help. Tell all the kids on Facebook that the most experienced and knowledgeable guys (and a few gals) are all over here on the CW forum. ?

Insert the Event Filter MIDI FX in the bin of each MIDI track with appropriate min and max 'key' settings. Keep in mind that the default octave numbering in Cakewalk designates Middle as C5: https://www.cakewalk.com/Documentation?product=Cakewalk&language=3&help=EditingMIDI.64.html

Region muting documentation showing the dotted waveform outline: https://www.cakewalk.com/Documentation?product=Cakewalk&language=4&help=Arranging.49.html

As noted, region muting/umuting requires dragging across the region to be muted/unmuted, not just clicking as you would to mute/unmute the whole clip

Thanks, Jackson. I got some things figured out over the weekend, but the template will still be helpful.

Poor CPU performance should not not change latency, it just leads to pops, crackles, gaps, and eventually a complete dropouts of the audio engine. The issue with the guitar synth was probably Plugin Delay Compensation (PDC). I posted in a thread a while ago about some acoustic guitar synth that had 50ms (!) of latency built-in. I guess you were supposed to record the MIDI using some other synth sound (or sequence it), and then substitute the guitar synth...? Some guitar sims will add some latency, but not usually so much that they become unplayable. In any case, when you start getting latency, you should check for plugins that need PDC - typically these are intended to be used at mixing/mastering phase of production, and not while tracking. Synths/samplers that stream samples from disk (or use up all your RAM) or use physical modeling can also overwhelm an under-powered machine, especially a laptop that has both a slow CPU and a single, slow, spinning drive). Raising disk buffers, and making sure that all CPU 'throttling' and power-saving functions are disabled can help, along with other common optimizations like disabling virus scanning of audio-related folders, and turning off WiFi and Bluetooth in BIOS. Optimizing Deferred Producer Call (DPC) latency (not to be confused with audio latency or PDC, but the ability to run small ASIO buffer sizes to get low audio latency is dependent on low, stable DPC latency) is a good place to start: https://www.resplendence.com/latencymon

Thanks for the guidance, Jackson. Any chance you could save a Track Template of one of your setups using an included kit and share it to give me a head start? Appreciate the overview in any case.

That's what needs to be verified, and shared with the Bakers if true. Push the button, Max!

Now that you've got a good copy with everything intact and nothing extra, I'm curious to know of running Clean Audio on the 'cluttered' project will actually break it by removing files that are in use. I suggest you make a copy of that whole project folder in another location outside your normal projects path with Cakewalk closed, just using Windows Explorer, and if Clean Audio *does* in fact break it, zip up a copy of the original folder and send it to the Bakers as a bug. They will surely want to know about anything that can cause data loss, and they might also be able to discern how the extra files were created.

Thanks for the tip, Steve. I guess that's worth registering on the forum and browsing posts for 10 minutes to get permission to PM. ;^)

I also had a sense that the software might be going nowhere after reading about the acquisition and seeing that they are offering this bargain basement upgrade price from any previous release, including ECO, but went for it just to to replace the 32-bit ECO, and maybe get some new sounds and capabilities on the cheap. I had no trouble with auth process, but the download and installation of the sound library was extremely slow, and I eventually had to run the program installer directly from the downloads folder because the freshly installed auth manager was hanging in the middle saying it neede to update itself (?). Go figure. Beyond that, my first impression was not great when going to assign output channels to track inputs, and finding they don't have the friendly channel names that ECO did like OH, Room, Kick, Snare, etc. Instead you just get a long list of numbered stereo mono channels, and it's not immediately clear how the channel names shown as track inputs correspond to the output channel assignments you make for strips in the BFD console. Its been a while since I used ECO so maybe I customized something there that gave me the friendly names... ? It'll probably be easiest if I can get hold of a multi-out track template that someone else has already built.