Waldemar Pawlik

Recently I have revisited some of my earlier work with the view of updating and remixing them, ( after all, I now have twenty five years or so experience of working in Cakewalk, so I can now make them better .. yeah)? Well, it hasn’t been without its problems. My idea was to re-record the drums on some, (I am now able to record 16 tracks of audio), and use newer plugins where required, and generally spiff things up. And so I began, and soon the glitches began also. I could start recording ten tracks of drums and very soon the audio engine would stop and throw up an error. I have an Intel I7 processor and 32Gb of Ram and can normally record at a buffer size of 64 but I was getting audio engine dropout all the time. I would disable all plugins, but still the audio engine would drop out. It soon became apparent that the dropouts were occurring in the same places most of the time. In my earlier work I did a lot of editing to the tracks and would leave them in their raw state without bouncing to clips after, and so everything was a bit untidy. I would then bounce down to a stereo track, export to wav and mp3, and that was it…done. Also, often I would be working on a number of different projects at the same time, so I would be back and forth between projects at different times all on the same hard drive. You see where I’m going. My projects were becoming fragmented, although I didn’t realize this at the time. Now I read somewhere that .bun files collected all the audio of a project and kept the files together, so I wondered if this would solve my problem. I had never used .bun files before so I saved a project as a Cakewalk bundle. The saving of the project can take some time as Cakewalk collects all the scattered files together in a new file. I then opened the new .bun file in Cakewalk and played the file to check. I then saved the project as a Normal file, closed the project and then opened the new .cwp file in Cakewalk to check. After saving to bundle .bun files and then to new normal .cwp files I was able to record new tracks without audio engine dropouts. We see many people on these forums complaining of difficulties with audio engine dropout and recording, blaming Cakewalk as problematic, so I wonder if some can be solved in the manner I have explained.

Has any body seen anything like this before and how do you get rid of it? This has appeared in an old project I was re-mixing and belonged to a drums VST instrument and is empty. I am trying to tidy up the tracks by deleting everything that is unwanted, but this one defies being deleted. Instead it just shuts down Cakewalk without any message or explaination. Whoosh ... Cake is gone. Luckily everything still remains intact after re-opening. I have tried save as a new project… See more

I just downloaded and installed the new CbB update directly from inside CbB. It took less than a minute, and was totally painless. At last, the way updates should happen. JOY!

The particular track is part of a client's project and will be going to a mastering engineer when finished. I was just "kicking the tyres", so to speak. But I did like Bandlab's effort.

I just mastered a song in Bandlab's free mastering service, and to my ears, I think it did a reasonable job. I had tried mastering the song myself but was not impressed with my own efforts. I then tried LANDR which only gave me a low resolution MP3 which was I thought was still better than my own effort. However, it requires subscription for higher quality masters for which I'm not ready yet. I then found that Bandlab offers free unlimited masters in CD quality, and I'm already signed up anyway via Cakewalk. I then made a CD quality and a MP3 master and imported them together with LANDR's version, into Cakewalk to compare the differences. The LANDR version was just a dB or so louder, and perhaps just slightly darker than Bandlabs, but apart from that I couldn't determine much difference between the three versions. So, has anybody else here tried these online mastering services and what are your thoughts?

This is good news. Not before time.

Thanks scook. Got it now, but still begs the question of why all the download problems. We are indebted to folk like you who have a knowledge of computer programing, and can finesse what could be the problem. But, for those like me, though I've been with computers since they became consumables, I still don't know what happens "under the bonnet". Cheers

Over the past couple of years of CbB I have read with mild concern for those people who report they have trouble updating their CbB to the latest version. I have been using Cakewalk since the DOS days, and have never had any problems with the computer or the software, and so could never understand how these people were experiencing major problems. Generally, since the Bandlab era I have had some minor update problems, usually resolved by updating the installer app, or after a couple of download attempts. However, this update is different. After numerous attempts at downloading, I have nothing. The installer seems to download, but then goes into a perpetual install. The last attempt, went on for hours and had to be shutdown, after which it wouldn't work until a reboot. Since the introduction of the CbB installer and it's unpredictable nature I have often wondered why the bakers couldn't design a predictable installer, like the previous one we had in SONAR. It worked every time and was much more useful. Anyone else concerned? Still no update.

Loved the music. As always masterly, but I did experience some sort of psycho, auto reaction from the clip. My jaw began to ache.

I just came over from another thread on this topic and all those there, including myself, who had activation problems have now reported that activation is GO. It's time BandLab sorted this craziness. I didn't care much for the Cakewalk Command Centre, but it sure beat this FU.

For what it's worth. I completely uninstalled both CbB and BandLab Assistant, rebooted and downloaded the whole works again and patiently repeated the whole process of installation again and this time........Voila! It works. Go figure.? I hope this is the last time I need to do this. For a while, at least?

I'm a long time user of SONAR and now Cakewalk by BandLab since the change over. Over the last 18 months or so of CbB I have seen many frustrated users post of their problem with that damned BandLab Assistant and counted myself lucky for not ever having encounted any problems with installation or operation. Yesterday that all changed! I needed to do a fresh install of Windows 10. All was well until the installation of Cakewalk. Cakewalk loads well enough but now insists on validation via BandLab Assistant. After numerous attempts of trying, I don't know what else I can do. The problem is, after loading BandLab Assistant and attempting to active, nothing happens. No notification or progress bar appears. Just sits doing nothing, then when closed it can't be restarted again without a reboot! After a complex program like CbB you'd think the programmers could get a simple installer to work properly.

John, I think the recording of your voice is fine. It is a little thin and dry, but could be fattened up with the use of a little eq and put into a space with some light reverb. I don't hear any distortion or other sonic problems. I think perhaps you may need to come to terms with the reality of that is how your voice sounds. I have yet to meet anyone who is entirely happy with how their voice sounds, even good singers. As someone said in an earlier post, it's about context. It's amazing how perceptions change when you hear a voice as part of an ensemble. Don't sweat it too much.

Just did reboot of the system and lo! ..... all is good. STRANGE!!!

Yep, did that. No joy. Even download a new assistant, but no go. This is terrible. I can go back to Splat, but there is something weird going on here.

All of a sudden my CbB has reverted to Demo Mode. It suggests I contact support, but there is nothing there. I'm in the middle of a project and now I can't save anything. Disaster! Has anyone been here and found a way out?

Shawn, how do you get that plugin to show on a Samsung phone? I would love to get stuff up on my Androids.

ShowPlay is a superb program. Back in the early 90's when it was first developed I used it extensively. Back then it was only a MIDI player and displayed lyrics as well and was virtually bullet proof. I think I had only one crash in ten years of use. These days it has moved on and can handle audio as well. Back in the day when I was using it in a duo, I had my hands full of guitar and my partner could cue the next song with key strokes while playing the current one. No mouse or foot pedals needed. Although you can make set list, it is super easy to navigate with single keystrokes so you can find any song in seconds. If you are looking at it, I highly recommend it.

My preferred method of recording is input to mixing desk, then out to Octa, and monitoring in realtime via sends on the board. So I don't have any latency issues. I have never used synths or plugins while tracking, so again, latency is not a problem. Most of my projects are small groups and solo artists so I am looking forward to adding a new Octa to enable larger projects.

My original intention was to purchase an Studio-Capture and try and couple it with my Octa-Capture, but of course the dollars got in the way. I have now ordered the much more affordable Octa-Capture and pair it with the one I already have, which will give me 16 inputs. Enough to do a live band. Have to say that my original Octa has performed flawlessly, so I don't anticipate any problems syncing two of them.

Thanks Sid. How do you run your units? Do you mic directly to the inputs, or do you use a mixing desk first, then input to the Studios?

I'm using a Roland UA 1010 Octa-capture with CbB which allows me to record up to eight tracks simultaneously. I wish to expand and record at least 16 tracks. To this end I can purchase another UA 1010 and link them with the provided SPDIF connection, or, I can purchase the Roland UA 1610 Studio capture which has 16 tracks already available. My question is. Can the UA 1010 and UA 1610 be connected via the SPDIF connection available on each? Does anyone already do this?

Thanks scook. Now that I think about it logically, it makes sense, but for awhile there I was waivering.

I'm having a senior moment here. When a track made up of a number of clips, and includes effects, e.g. eq, compression, is bounce to clip(s), are the effects rendered to the new clip? I know this is basic stuff, but the years are catching up. Cheers