Bill Phillips

I have a 1st gen 18i8 and agree 1st gen USB hardware, firmware & drivers were not up to par. My ancient MOTU 828 mill firewire has lower latency. I wish there was some way to know that before you buy.

I need help understanding and hopefully improving the performance of my DAW PC. While mixing, I experience more or less constant dropouts though the dropouts aren't so bad as to prevent me from mixing and making adjustments. At no point do, either the Cakewalk Performance Monitor or the Windows Resource Monitor show any CPU thread exceeding 25%. Why isn't my CPU working harder? What can I do to improve performance. I've run through Sweetwater's DPC Latency recommendations and results look good. (See 4 attached results screenshots) I've run through Sweetwater's DAW PC Optimazation recommendations and provided more details about my DAW PC in the attached PDF summary. I have Use Multiprocessor Engine and Plug-in Load Balancing ticked. (See attached Audio Driver Settings screenshot) My Focusrite 8i18 (original USB 2.0 version) audio interface adjust the Mixing Latency Buffer Size based on a user selected latency in ms. It's usually set to between 15 ms and the maximum of 20 ms for mixing. A setting of 20 ms sets the Mixing Latency Buffer Size to 883 samples. (See Audio Driver Settings screenshot attached. Also note ASIO reported latency values which far exceed the 883 samples. During playback, all threads hover around the bottom on the Performance module. No threads ever goes above 25% but there's a lot of audible popping and cracking and I don't know why. I've only recently started using the iZotope Production Suite which I really like and I suspect that products represent a significant CPU load, but the CPU doesn't seem to notice them. Any ideas why this is happening or what I can do about it? Mixing projects I'm working on now tend to have 8-12 audio tracks, 8-10 aux tracks and 3 buses. Sample rate is 44.1 or 48 kbps and recording bit depth is 24 bits. I usually record no more that 12 audio tracks at a time with no processing and don't incur any problems. DAW PC Optimization.pdf

Misha, I think you are right. I really like iZotope's user interface, dynamic EQ and compression, the Tonal Balance display and the Masking view. I'm not ready to give up yet. I thought I had a rocket of a machine, but so far it's sputtering and I don't know why. I suspect that I'm doing something really stupid, but being really stupid, I can't figure out what it is. ? I'm going to take scook's advice and make a separate post asking for help with that.

Understood. That makes sense. I'll do that. Thanks for the patience.

Thanks scottfa. I did that and it didn't appear to help. scottfa, I think all these questions in my earlier post quoted below. I've verified that my Focusrite 18i8 drivers are up to date and I'm using the intel Driver Support Assistant to keep other drives up to date.

Thanks scook. Do you mean the Q&A forum or something else? Also, is there a good place on the Cakewalk forum for system issues? Are you referring to setting the audio interface to the maximum latency? Thanks for the suggestions.

Scook, thanks. I'd forgotten about those. Both the Pause and Scroll Lock keys are present on my desktop keyboard and work as described. They reduce dropouts but don't stop them. My main question is why am I getting dropouts at all? My CPU seems to be idling along with plenty of capacity left, but I'm still getting dropouts? Is there anything I can do to make the CPU work harder to reduce dropouts? See quoted DAW performance information below. Thanks.

I have Use Multiprocessor Engine and Plug-in Load Balancing ticked. I'm using iZotope mixing, mastering and metering plugins. My CPU is a 6 core, 12 thread i7-6850K @ 3.6GHz with 32 GB memory. All drives are 256 GB SSD. Two have M.2 interfaces. I have a Radeon R7 250 series video card.The projects I'm working on now tend to have 8-10 audio tracks, 8-10 aux tracks and 3 buses. Sample rate is 44.1 or 48 kbps and recording bit depth is 24 bits. My Focusrite 8i18 (original USB 2.0 version) audio interface adjust the Mixing Latency Buffer Size based on a user selected latency in ms. I have it set to the maximum of 20 ms for mixing which sets the Mixing Latency Buffer Size to 883 samples. See screenshot attached. Also note ASIO reported latency values which far exceed the 883 samples. During playback, all threads hover around the bottom on the Performance module. No threads ever goes above 25% but there's a lot of audible popping and cracking and I don't know why. I've only recently started using the iZotope Production Suite which I really like and I suspect that products represent a significant CPU load, but the CPU doesn't seem to notice them. Any ideas why this is happening or what I can do about it? Under CPU conservation option, I read the link but didn't understand how to implement GPU throttling. I'm sure I'm missing something obvious but I don't even know where the "pause" key is. Also, I keep the Radeon Settings app in the system tray for hidden icons and wonder if that could contribute to the problem.

Can it embed the text album info and ISRC codes and anything else that comercial CDs have? Also, since it's still apparently available through amazon for about $100 do you see any reason, other than it's been discontinued, that I shouldn't buy CD Architect and not Soundforge Pro 12 for $600, (on sale right now for $400)? The Soundforge Pro 15 features list seems to focus on Mastering capabilities that I do in Cakewalk rather than the CD production capabilities that I'm looking to get.

What do you use to use to produce songs for streaming and cd tracks ready for publishing? I'd like to make sure that the cds have the text information that some cd players can read and display (red book), and anything else that should be on a CD, and that both cds and tracks for streaming have any registration codes (like ISRC) needed for proper attribution. I recall hearing that Sony CD Architect was the gold standard, but when I look for information about CD Architect all I get are download sites that seem questionable to me and amazon all referencing version 5.2. I looked on Sony's website and found nothing. Any online reviews or forum discussions (Cakewalk SONAR forum and the SoundonSound articles & forum )I find are really old. Any help appreciated. This article is the most recent thing I could find on CD mastering: https://www.audiorecording.me/how-to-make-a-cd-master-that-complies-with-red-book-cd-audio-standard.html Also it looks like CD Baby offers lots of music publishing assistance but I haven't dug into what it will cost for them to produce tracks suitable for streaming and cd release. Thanks.

Ron, I followed those steps using the File > Open option in attempting to open a new project and the new project folder that I'd just created is what opened. See photo. Now I use individual project folders and the folder created for the new project with just one track from a track template is called 00x which I have since deleted. That seems reasonable to me. Am I missing something? Bill

Thanks. I'll try to check that out.

Thanks. Really appreciate the quick response. Bill

When I check the TH3 authorization under settings I see that TH3 Cakewalk Edition is a Full featured Demo. Is that what's bundled with CbB? Are you seeing any limitations or functionality issues? Thanks.

Grem, thanks for the comprehensive response. My surface is a lot less capable (Surface Pro 3, i5-4300U @ 1.9GHz, 8GB RAM, 250 GB SSD & 128 GB micro SD. My plan is to use it for remote recording, but since that hasn't come up yet, I haven't really tried. I love the Surface Pro and use it a lot, but not so much now that the infrequent cursor loss problem has become routine. I received a recommendation from the support Community to re-install all drivers and a firmware update but that's hard to do with no cursor. What happens is it will disappear or freeze. Sometimes I can get it re-appear and move by using one, two or three fingers which is counter to expected operation.

Grem, on an unrelated matter, does your cursor disappear frequently particularly when using file explorer to copy/move blocks of files. I have a Surface Pro 3 with a Surface 4 type cover and it happens frequently & has for what seems like forever. I've requested help from the community and Microsoft but none of it helps. Also how well does your Surface handle Cakewalk. I installed it but really haven't used it. I currently do all my work on my desktop.

That seems like an improvement to me. My Cakewalk Projects folder has lots of layers and I usually start where I left off.

Yes but you usually include a link to the related section of TFM which provides a bootstrap to the questioner.

Add Protools like playlist.

Add stereo (separate left/right) pan controls for stereo channels and sends like Protools.

Even after de-select all, the track name of one track will be highlighted meaning that operations like import audio will go to the active track not a new track.

I would really appreciate addition of phone/tablet formatted version of CbB documentation. I tend to use downtime away from my DAW to catch up on the Cakewalk forum discussions. The forum topics that interest me often include links to CbB documentation which are difficult for me to read on my Samsung S7 phone. To read the documentation I use landscape view and zoom to make text legible which requires me to scroll left/right to read each line.

Wow, Craig! That things terrific. It produces a detailed report for each and every device attached. So make sure all or your PC connected audio devices are connected. It found that the Intel Memory Manager needed to be updated which may explain why I had what appeared to be a memory leak while I was updating to 1809. It also handled the update process. Really nice. Thanks.,

Thanks. I'll take a look.

Me too. I mainly use forums to find answers to questions. Though I worry that people won't be able to pass up the opportunity of turning some Q&A items into discussions or, worse yet, debates.