mettelus

Yeah, sorry. Here is also the documentation page that gives more detail on how it can be used.

The term you are seeking in the OP is "Control Group."

Or... do a performance with studio musicians (e.g., Toto) then decline the award in person when presented, similar to what Marlon Brando did in 1973. Nothing puts the "powers that be" on the spot more than a highly publicized face-to-face put down. They cannot hide that with social media white wash, and it would last forever.

There can be a lot of variables at play that can cause this (other apps, plugins, driver settings, audio buffers, graphics, system settings, etc.). The best place to start is to download and run LatencyMon, which will give insight into the processes running on your machine (tab on the top of LatencyMon). Run that in tandem with CbB, and if you are getting crashes while recording, you can also try simple playback of the project to see what the results are. Run LatencyMon for a few minutes, then stop it and look through the tabs at the top (specifically "Stats" and "Processes"). You can order the columns when reading that by clicking on the very top of each column, and you specifically want to find what processes have the highest values.

Not sure, that could very well be a defunct plugin. When I first saw it I clicked on the "Home Page" button and it went no where. The people who made it may no longer exist or maintain it. The date on that maintenance page is 2022, so that doesn't bode well Sorry about that. Actually... specifically searching for Monster Drum revealed a version 2 at this site. I just downloaded the VST3 version to be sure it was there, but did not install it. The installation instructions are on that page. The last comment on that page is from a month ago, so that is a good sign.

Noise removal/stem separation tools are rarely something that are "fire and forget" unfortunately. Pretty much all instruments overlap the midrange, so the timbre is often what differentiates them. Even with advances in AI algorithms, many instruments (voice included) have frequency ranges that get separated into the wrong bucket, so there can be a lot of surgical manipulation/recombination required to get the actual instrument isolated. The higher end tools (e.g., iZotope RX, Steinberg SpectraLayers, etc.) actually have drawing tools for the spectrogram to assist in that surgery. My ultimate concern is that most audio apps deal with visual representations of audio, so unless it is a "fire and forget" operation, you could be delving into something you weren't anticipating. Again, if you are willing to post that audio for others to look at (either here or via private messages), I think you might be surprised by those willing to help you out. It also gives folks an immediate understanding of the complexity of your undertaking, or even alternative methods to achieve your goals.

It seems most cajon sounds either require a full version of Kontakt, or are included as a kit piece for another drum VST. Ironically, Monster Drum came up with a typo in my Google search (but disappeared when I corrected it) and it has a a cajon bank included with it.

@treesha beat me to it, but this sounds like a one-off scenario. In addition to a Noise Print Capture/Removal, it sounds like you also have transient material issues with that file. Both of these are more visually focused with the spectrogram, so even having such an app may cause you more grief than good. If you are willing to post a link (or even send that link in a PM so it is not public), folks here including myself can take a look at that for you and send the results back to you. I typically only sit still in late evening hours, but being able to actually process that file for you would be significantly faster than you trying to learn a new app and do it yourself.

I am not sure which Overloud VSTs you are referring to specifically, but the TH series (used to) default to "Stereo" in the Master Controls ("Master" button at the top). If your input source is truly mono (via the interface), be sure to select the appropriate input source. Having that set to Stereo for a Mono input caused some issues in the past. If that issue persists, you might have better luck reaching out to both vendors to get them to talk to each other directly.

Couple quick questions for this. 1) Is the other person using the a controller also, and if so, on which tracks? 2) Are the presets you see changing coming up as if they were "default" inserts (i.e., if you were creating a track from scratch)? When multiple people are accessing the same file, Cakewalk tries to keep track of things; but if what it expects to see is not there, it will do its "best guess." If that file was created (or modified) with another controller (or VSTs, or even software version), there may be mismatches in how that is interpreted on each system. If you change those back to what you expect, save the project, then close and reopen it are your changes preserved? When you send that back to them, are they seeing the same issue? This may not have anything to do with your system or setup, but the fact that another has touched that file before you got it back.

One thing you can try that will duplicate a track (with that data included) between projects is to drag the cwp file (from the Cakewalk Browser) that you want to replicate the track from into the new project (the sample rates must match for this to work, OR the new project needs to be blank so the imported project will set the sample rate). What this does is import ALL the tracks from the imported cwp into the new project, so may require cleanup. From a "template" perspective, you can speed this process up by saving only the tracks you want to transfer as a new cwp, so that it only contains the tracks you need that data from (delete the unneeded tracks, and save with a new project name). As far as the clip contents themselves, that may require (a lot) more tweaking depending on how big the differences are between the new and imported projects.

This is my initial hunch as well, since RAM issues will not be consistent in behavior. If it is loading the OS on boot, you can run SFC/DISM to verify the OS build is accurate (if it will run the entire cycle for you). MemTest is an application you can run booting the machine from a USB to test the RAM on the system. While reseating RAM can sometimes fix things, a module going wonky can be one of the most frustrating things to troubleshoot (but replacing them is not terrifying). Again, please look up your specific model to check hardware. We were going to upgrade memory in a thin HP laptop at work years ago, and not only were those modules proprietary (most others were too big to fit), but the one in it was soldered in... never seen such a thing before, but that was that.

I am a little confused by the OP, is the system not booting into a stable condition at all during startup (i.e., no apps launched by you at all)? It seems this is the case, but not sure when you mention the audio interface or Cakewalk. The UEFI/BIOS will cycle through hardware to try and detect missing/damaged/replaced items (can reboot repeatedly trying to sort things out). If you can launch into the UEFI/BIOS you can look to see if what it says is available coincides with what you expect. Failing RAM modules can tend to cause it to cycle without apparent rhyme or reason. You would need to check the specific model of our machine, since error codes on total startup failure are often flashes on the motherboard. For a laptop, opening them up is not often an easy chore. If the system does boot into a stable condition (i.e., just logging in an looking at the desktop), there are much more diagnostic options available, but I wanted to verify that it is not booting to that point first.

Have you tried cycling Windows scaling to another value and back to see if that has any effect? It is possible that you did alter display drivers and Cakewalk is using one that may be affecting you. Is the video still active in the project and where did you get the codecs from? K-Lite has codec packs that are robust, and one nice thing about the installer is that it will detect/remove known bad codecs (quite a few older apps may fall into this category). It can get rather complex if you delve into customized installation (unnecessary in most cases), but there is a pretty streamlined process to install otherwise (just run with defaults). The bakers would need to chime in if having a video in a project can affect the resolution settings (I am not sure on this one). When working with video, it is often better to split/re-assemble audio in a dedicated video editor. More and more of them have expanded their audio workflows to be more DAW-like which can make using a DAW for simpler tasks unnecessary these days.

Check the obvious first with this. What is the "Master" output set to for your project? If your headphones work with other apps on your machine, then there is more likely a routing issue (track->busses->Master). Cakewalk will shift the Master output at times if the default device is not seen, and it may be set to None on you.