Craig Reeves

It's been really bad with regard to the crashes. Just about any and everything will make this DAW crash, particular copying and pasting large amounts of clips. It is a productivity killer. Significantly less table than Cakewalk by Bandlab. I have no idea what they did to this but these recent updates have made this DAW so much less stable. Even the simplest things will cause the DAW to crash. I literally am at a standstill in a project because I cannot copy and paste anything without it crashing. It is not justifiable in my view that a DAW so much more unstable than its competition should be priced the same or more than its competition. It's just broken. Simple and plain. Held to gether by duct-tape and bubble-gum. Bandlab just isn't putting enough money into the development to give us a DAW that works. The devs they have I'm sure are doing the best they can so it's not their fault.

Check this video out. This is a simple copy and paste and Cakewalk crashes EVERY TIME I try to perform this simple task. This is problematic.
 

And the worst thing is that it's difficult to report bugs because the crashes are random and unpredictable. A lot of the times moving clips, copying, and pasting clips is something Cakewalk has trouble with. They seriously need to tighten up the code in that area but the thing is, it doesn't happen all the time. Again it's fussy and unpredictable so you just have to be saving all the time. This is not the case in any other DAW but Cakewalk sadly. It's just way, way behind. Again, I blame Bandlab for just not putting enough money into it. It's possible it's just a lot of old code.

I believe Cakewalk will eventually face the same fate as Finale. I've been using Cakewalk for over 25 years so I say all of this with great sadness.

7 hours ago, Noel Borthwick said:

All the DPI awareness work done was for the Sonar application. Cakewalk Next is already vector based.

Cakewalk Sonar is a hybrid DPI aware application. Plugin's need to be independently made DPI aware for them to be scalable. By default, Sonar assumes that plugins are DPI aware and if there are scaling problems noted it can be disabled on a per plugin basis. There is a new "Enhanced Display Scaling" option in the plugin properties settings to control this.
However only a few Cakewalk plugins are fully DPI aware - for example the prochannel modules. For the others you may have to disable the per plugin "Enhanced Display Scaling" for them to work. When Enhanced Display Scaling is off we rely on Windows to handle the scaling when running high dpi monitors.
In the future we may update some cakewalk plugins to also be DPI aware like we're doing with Sonar but it's not on the roadmap ATM.
IOW High DPI support is not available across the board for all plugins. It depends on the specific plugin.

 

With the new vector-based UI, does this mean vertical zoom could show more tracks without scrolling? I've always envied how Logic, PT, Cubase, Studio One and all the other major DAWs could vertical zoom so much you could literally see 100+ tracks without scrolling. This would really help with people who do film scoring where they're working with templates of 200+ tracks or more.

BIG TIP:

When using Opus, make sure to choose as your MIDI Input MIDI Ch. 1 of the MIDI controller. Leaving it at MIDI Omni will cause your MIDI to triple-record.

6 hours ago, scook said:

Try setting ExceptionHandlingSeverity to 7 in Preferences >  Initialization File to force a dump

For more info see the Improved plug-in exception handling / crash reporting section in http://www.cakewalk.com/Documentation?product=Cakewalk&language=3&help=NewFeatures.023.html

That did it! I will send over the crash dump to Cakewalk's support team! Thanks!

3 minutes ago, bitflipper said:

Unable to reproduce here. Did you get a dump? (%appdata%\cakewalk\cakewalk core\minidumps)

No dump was produced in either that folder or the Plugins subfolder.

IK Hammond B-3X does not open in Cakewalk by Bandlab. Opening it crashes the program.  Anyone else able to reproduce this? It opens fine in Ableton and Studio One.

I've requested this before but the only MIDI legato is by running CAL, which is buggy and doesn't work very well. It's one of those features I really miss when coming back from Ableton.

2 hours ago, Noel Borthwick said:

CPU power should not be an issue at all with fast bounce irrespective of 64 bit, since the bounce speed is gated by the CPU power available.
If there were clicks its likely one of the plugins introducing them. Perhaps you can try disabling the plugins one by one to try and find at what point the clicks stop.

I have a feeling it may be Ozone, because it just seems that once I started using it, I began having problems when I leave the 64-bit Engine checked.

1 hour ago, bitflipper said:

More likely it's just because the 64-bit option causes Cakewalk to use twice as much memory during the render. When a process runs out of memory it has to request more from the operating system, which takes a little time. Worst case, you could be running out of physical RAM and forcing Windows to page out chunks of memory to disk. The fact that it correlates to Ozone may just be because Ozone uses (I should say can use, depending on settings) far more memory than most other plugins.

IMO there is no benefit to the 64-bit render option, so regardless of what the actual underlying problem was, you've fixed it.

That's certainly within the realm of possibility. I have 128 GB of RAM, which is the maximum amount of RAM my motherboard can handle. Although I don't know exactly how FAST that RAM is. 

It looks like it was the 64-bit Engine after all that was the culprit. I believe that Ozone 9 may have its own audio processing that it does that doesn't jive with the 64-bit engine. As soon as I unchecked it, my projects are bouncing perfectly. If anyone else has this problem, we'll now know what to tell them. Thanks guys! 

I'll try to reproduce the bug when I get home.

I suspect the issue is related to a plugin, possibly Ozone 9 but I can't be certain of that. I'll try to troubleshoot some more once I get some downtime.

3 hours ago, John Vere said:

I'm not in the habit of bouncing but what comes to mind is your clips are just a bit to hot to begin with so the rendering ( number crunching) pushes something that was too close over the top. I do know this can happen when you export a hot mix that never peaks in the Master bus, but after export will show overs in a wave editor.  I write it off as digital mojo.   I would recommend working at a safer level.  

Just thinking an easy solution would be to put a brickwall limiter set at -.1 or?  in the effects bin of the track( buss) before bouncing. 

I thought that was the case too, so I turned the master bus down to where there was no digital clipping (there wasn't to begin with) and the problem still persisted. I finally got a clean bounce but I had to slow-bounce along with the audio bounce.

Quick question. Does anybody else have issues sometimes with bounced audio containing pops and artifacts, particularly on big transients? I've noticed this problem consistently with a lot of projects but it doesn't happen all the time so it's not the easiest problem to reproduce. Anybody else having this issue or had it before? Pops, clicks and artifacts tend to persist whether I slow-bounce or fast-bounce.

3 hours ago, Noel Borthwick said:

@Craig Reeves @jon sasor [cakewalk] and several others have already replied to your original post and suggested resolutions.
We also received your recent ticket 488179 about quick grouping and will consider it for a future update. Thanks for that.

Many if your issues are relatively minor workflow related teething pains rather than major defects. As such could you please retitle your post to something more appropriate like "Need assistance with AudioSnap" or something more appropriate, since as it stands it looks a bit like clickbait? 
Thanks in advance.

Will do!

22 hours ago, Promidi said:

You can assign a CAL script to a keybinding.

I'm aware. But Legato.cal doesn't work very well and very often fails to do what it is supposed to do.

20 minutes ago, Craig Anderton said:

Real-world example: I went to open Cakewalk a few minutes ago, and a flashing window prevented me from logging in. I couldn't open preferences. The program was totally unuseable.

It turned out the problem was the Generic ASIO Low-Latency Driver .dll (which has been the subject of many frustrated forum posts) that's in the Steinberg ASIO folder. It apparently got put in there when I re-installed Cubase after switching computers. I renamed the .dll...problem solved, Cakewalk opens.

Cakewalk's fault? Steinberg's? Windows? The RealTek chip grabbing on to the driver and not letting go? I have no idea.

Another real-world example was when someone from Cakewalk was about to give a Sonar presentation on his laptop. Sonar was crashing like crazy, doing strange things, and scaring the crap out of him as he rehearsed. It turned out that he had always used a TASCAM interface with his laptop, but had installed ASIO4ALL in case the interface got lost, stolen, crushed by aliens, whatever. Just having ASIO4ALL installed on his computer created a conflict with the TASCAM ASIO drivers he had specified under Preferences in Sonar. As soon as he uninstalled ASIO4ALL, everything worked again. This isn't to start an ASIO4ALL discussion, I know it can work...I'm just the messenger, don't shoot me.

And don't get me started on graphics cards, the gratuitous "hi-def" audio drivers they install, and the never-ending graphics card updates that are issued solely to produce 0.005% faster frame rates in Call of Duty...

LOL that last line.  Yeah I feel you. There have been times where I have unfairly blamed Cakewalk myself, sometimes on here for all to see. Anytime that happens, I will usually make sure to indicate where I'm wrong. For instance, I was under the impression that Cakewalk's audio engine was slow because while using it, I found my CPU usage was higher than it should have been for a similar project I had open in Ableton Live. Well, it turns out what was slowing things down was that I had Streamlabs open and forgot to close it. As soon as I did, Cakewalk ran perfectly.

Basically, a process that achieves the same functionality as the Legato.cal script, but actually works on a consistent basis. Pretty common in other DAWs and I don't believe would be a difficult feature to add. I use Legato all the time and I'm sure others do as well. Hell, we have Retrograde, I think we can include Legato, lol.

13 minutes ago, solarlux said:

Yes and Cakewalk now is in new Home and new priorities and main priority is bug fixes but Developers need more info than video where bug showed. 

I've never been told by any of the staff people on this forum that my videos are unclear. My videos aren't unclear to the people that actually watch them.

6 minutes ago, Lord Tim said:

I will say this though, nobody should feel like they shouldn't be able to bring up problems with CbB here at all. CbB most certainly does have bugs, and certain environmental settings can expose them or make it look like it's a CbB thing. Nobody should feel like this (or any) software is above criticism just because someone else isn't experiencing the problem. It's never going to be better if we just stick our head in the sand, right?

Well people do very often feel like they can't bring up problems with CbB without being vilified for it. It's a serious problem and has been for a long time. As I said I've used Cakewalk for 21 years. I don't need to prove my sincerity to nobody...

2 minutes ago, Lord Tim said:

 

I'm not really defending or condoning anything here, just to be clear - everyone's post and the tone of their post is their own. But the point he was making kind of is correct, regardless of how the tone is presented. 

But again, the videos can only go so far. That's showing that something isn't working correctly, not WHY. This is a peer-to-peer forum and we're lucky enough for the devs to stick their heads in fairly frequently and help when they can, but nothing we say here gets put into the system unless a dev happens to see it and log it.  Just looking at the bug list Noel was talking about from the last 3 years, if there's been thousands of long standing SONAR bugs address since then, think about how much is in the backlog they're getting to. If something isn't in the system and being allocated and prioritised, you don't know of anyone has logged your issue from a video on a user forum at all. Maybe it has? You just don't know.

Again, sorry if anything I've posted is coming across as antagonistic or patronising at all - it's really not the intent. I just think there's other avenues you need to go down before you up-end your desk and write stuff off.

There are specific instructions in the videos on how to reproduce the bugs. It isn't just "this isn't working", but I'm pointing out exactly what one can do to bring about the bug himself.  Again, you keep mentioning "why" but knowing WHY a bug exists is the developer's job once they go through the code and find the bug. Everything starts with REPRODUCING the bug, THEN you pinpoint the cause. You're putting the cart before the horse, Tim. And @bdickens was literally accusing me of just coming on here and whining and not reporting bugs, when I literally put videos up SHOWING exactly what the bug is and how to reproduce it. The Bakers have fixed bugs I've reported in this manner and have never had an issue with the way I report bugs. He clearly did not watch the videos, so there is no point in you defending what he said.

And it is indeed true that the Bakers have addressed many bugs. I acknowledge that. I wouldn't be here if they just didn't care at all. As I mentioned before, I left other DAWs to come here for a reason and I would not have posted what I did in the OP if I didn't think anyone cared. I have WAY, WAY, WAY more issues with Ableton but you don't see me over there now do you?

4 minutes ago, solarlux said:

You need also project file and system specs, : )

As I mentioned before, that's not necessary if the developers can reproduce the error themselves. That means it isn't specific to one's system. Stuff like that only really needs to be done if others can't reproduce the problem. If everybody no matter what system they're on can reproduce the error, that means it doesn't matter what system they're on. Noel nor any of the developers have ever asked me to provide details on my system. But they have asked me to provide instructions on how to reproduce the problem, which I provide.

It is generally poor form to ask someone to provide their system specs before even trying to reproduce the problem yourself. 

9 minutes ago, Lord Tim said:

There's nothing wrong with venting when things aren't working for you - we all do it - and it's certainly fair enough. I've seen you post enough stuff around the forums to definitely not discount what you're saying as a troll, or the rest of us just sticking our fingers in our ears and going "lalala not happening, this guy doesn't know what he's doing."  I believe you're genuinely having some issues there, but I also think  that because you're frustrated that you're not taking all of the steps to fix stuff either. Not having a dig or trying to be insulting here, apologies if it comes off that way.

There's been a few guys with some horrible problems that a lot of us haven't seen before that weren't able to be reproduced, but if you have a scan through the product release threads, because they were reported and documented correctly (not just videos, but environmental settings such as hardware, drivers, installed software, etc.) then it was sorted out - you'll even see Noel mention how he's hopped on to a Teamviewer session to to run tests to get to the bottom of it all, and yes - sometimes this HAS turned out to be an obscure bug or something else that's exposing a problem that most of us aren't seeing. I don't know any other DAW company that does anything like that without charging you a crazy premium for it.

Showing the result of something only helps so much. "Check it out, when I press Alt+A the entire screen turns purple - this is buggy!!" only shows that - yes, that's really weird and looks like a bug - but not WHY. I think this is what @bdickens was getting it - if you don't work with support to get to the bottom of it and just complain about the outcome, how could they know what the issue is?

That sndfile.dll Waves issue I mentioned was a good one. On first glance, CbB is rubbish because it's not able to copy over a file properly and you have to tell it to skip a file during installation. Looks like a bug or horrendous UI programming. But in actual fact, it was a bug in a specific product that is only triggered by a certain sequence of events, and it it's actually getting fixed by the people who can actually do anything about it - the CbB team have no control over it.

You see what I'm getting at?  You have real problems there (outside of certain shortcomings with things that need to be looked at, eg: Audiosnap, CAL, etc.) but whatever is going on in your environment won't get fixed if all we see is the result, and not able to get to the cause. Like I said, I'd be gone if my system was anything like you're experiencing, and if CbB was the app I would really prefer to use, I'd be making Support absolutely sick of my name in less than a week.  

Which is exactly why I post videos on how to reproduce the bug. Notice that I never actually say that I am CERTAIN it is a bug. That's the whole point of providing instructions on how to reproduce the error. Because if others are unable to reproduce the bug, then it is something local to my system or user error that is the cause. For instance, the bug with quick-group latch automation I have tried on four different systems and multiple different versions of Cakewalk. I was able to reproduce the problem. But you cannot dismiss the problem I'm having as specific to something I'm doing wrong until it is demonstrated that others cannot reproduce the error. 

And as far as finding out why a bug exists, you don't do that until you have tried reproducing the error. 

And I honestly can't believe you're defending @bdickens either. Dismissing someone expressing legitimate concerns about Cakewalk as "bitching" is toxic. And he was "getting at" anything but being an a-hole. I've seen some of his past posts. He's like that toward others, not just me.

3 minutes ago, bdickens said:

So, have you submitted any bug reports?

The developers are the ones who need to reproduce them, not all the members of the public forum.

But of course, as a software developer yourself, you already know this.

Yes I have. Where do you think those videos came from? I didn't just make them today. Had you actually watched them you'd know they were dated in the past. And as I'm sure you already know, anyone could watch those videos and reproduce the bugs, whether the person is a developer or not. 

21 minutes ago, solarlux said:

Need to reproduce these bugs for Bakers than they maybe can fix them. But about CAL scripst its not bug but CAL scripts aren't developed and abandoned and will be better sulotion in future.

I provide videos specifically showing how to reproduce the bugs. I really do not know how much clearer I can be in that regard because I'm literally showing you all step by step how to reproduce the bugs. I can't do anything about it if you all choose not to watch them.