Steve Moddelmog

Well, I did a restore form Acronis. It took 7 hours to run, said it was successful at the end, but when I tried to reboot, it just hung at the Windows 10 startup logo again.

I'm setting up a new laptop to replace a dying desktop (that actually may have completely died just a few days after I started the laptop setup). One of the worst parts of the setup process: I've got old, old projects that I still go back to work on. Many of them used dxi versions of plugins that won't work in Cakewalk or 64-bit SPLAT, and many, many more used various versions of plugins such as Native Instruments, where new releases are actually new plugins and won't automatically replace older versions and simply load the preset that was loaded in the original project. Think Kontakt, for example, where there are Kontakt through Kontakt 5, and then Kontakt "6" which is simply named "Kontakt." Yesterday I loaded an old project that used Kontakt 2, and of course Cakewalk told me that the plugin was missing because I've only installed the current "Kontakt" on the new computer. Rather than install every version of every Native Instruments plugin I've ever bought, I'd like to just look "inside" the project and see what preset / patch was loaded, and then load it in the current version of Kontakt, Absynth, or whatever. In the past, I've just gone back to my graveyard of old machines if I wanted to find that information. But as I said, my desktop seems to be dead. I know there's a program called Projectscope that will show you what plugins are used in a project, but it doesn't tell you any information about what presets / other parameters were used. Obviously that information is somewhere in the .cwp file since projects load with them every time you re-open the project (if you have the plugin installed, that is). Is there any way of getting to that information? It would be a great Cakewalk feature to be able to get it...

My desktop computer appeared to be headed toward death - second disk in 2-disk RAID configuration reported that it had 30 days of life left. So I bought a laptop to replace the computer and am near the end of the slow setup process. I was hoping the old desktop would keep running so that I would be able to get anything off it that I forgot to copy, and also to look at projects what weren't loading right on the new laptop and see what plugins and presets I was using. I booted the desktop two days ago in search of just that kind of information and it hung at the Windows 10 startup screen (for hours). I rebooted and it came up in repair mode. I tried the option to repair startup and it found errors (probably during CHKDSK) that it attempted to repair. It indicated that repairs had been made. I rebooted and got the same Windows 10 startup screen hang. So back to repair mode - I booted to a CMD prompt to see what the drives looked like. To my surprise, the c drive showed only the system recovery partition, what had been on the main c Windows 10 partition was now on E:, and what had been on secondary drive designated J: was now E:. Is this to be expected? Just a function of not booting fully into Windows? Or does it suggest that something important got scrambled? I have an Acronis backup which I could restore, but is that my best recovery option? I think the Acronis backup is just of the main Windows 10 partition, not the entire c drive. Thanks for any advice.

Ok, thanks.

My Wusik 9 example may have been a little wonky, because somewhere along the way there was an update to Wusik 9 where projects with earlier versions of Wusik 9 would not load properly. This project won't load Wusik 9 even if I delete the 64-bit version so that the 32-bit version becomes available. So I'm curious in general (I think I know the answer to this), if I create a project with a 32-bit version of a plugin and then install the plugin's 64-bit version (so that, per the above, I can no longer see the 32-bit plugin in Cakewalk), will the project open with the 64-bit version of the plugin? I'm guessing no.

I agree with that. What I really want to do is see what presets/ settings I used in the original with the 32-bit and then replace the 32-bit in the project with the 64-bit using the same preset. More recently I've started adding notes with the patch names, but I wasn't always smart about that.

I'll give that a try. But I have rescanned many times and literally watched the 32-bit version on V9 flash by like all the other VSTs, with no hang, error message, or anything.

Can you clarify - the 32-bit version already is in a folder under "C:\Program Files (x86)" that is scanned (and 32-bit plugins that don't have 64-bit versions are showing up fine in Cakewalk). I could remove the 32-bit dll, then re-add it / rescan with logging enabled. Is that what you are suggesting? To see what the log says is happening?

I decided to see what happened if I removed the 64-bit dll from the 64-bit VST folder. When I rescanned, the 32-bit version showed up. So somehow the presence of the 64-bit is suppressing the 32-bit.

Just went through several days of setting up a new DAW - painful. One of the things I've just discovered on my new machine - definitely NOT the way it was on my old machine: if I install both 32-bit and 64-bit versions of plugins, only the 64-bit versions show up in plugin manager and in synths or FXs. All of my 32-bit plugins (for both plugins that ONLY have a 32-bit version and for ones that have 32-bit and 64-bit) are in the same folder. 64-bit plugins have their own folder, as do VST3s. On my "retired" machine (which I replaced just in the nick of time as it will no longer boot), I could see, for example "Wusik Station 9" and "Wusik Station 9 64-bit" in plugin manager and when I would "insert synth." It was actually a little confusing. Now I am trying to load a "not ancient" project where I evidently used the 32-bit version of Wusik 9, I get a "plugin not found" message. I looked in plugin manager and the only instance was the one in the 64-bit VST folder. I tried reinstalling the program being especially careful to install both the 64-bit and 32-bit versions in folders that I have verified are being scanned. I now realize that none of the 32-bit versions of plugins for which I chose to install 32-bit are showing up, although 32-bit plugins that don't have 64-bit versions, all of which reside in the same scanned folder, work fine. I understand the advice to use 64-bit if available, but that is not helpful advice when I'm loading a project like the one I referred to above. Is there a "switch" somewhere that I am missing? I know there's one not to show VST2s if a VST3 is available... Thanks for any help - otherwise, I have a lot of dead projects.

Ah, thank you!

I just set up new DAW and can neither remember nor find how to disable the little "pep talk" messages that pop up when opening a project. Where is the off switch? Thanks.

AAS updated some of their VSTs recently, so I thought I would take a look and see if the updates resolved this problem, which I still have unless I use the workaround suggested above by Teknot. The update didn't fix the problem. But then I tried this: I opened Sonar Platinum, which I still have on my computer, and tried inserting the VST3s of both Ultra-analog VA3 and Chromaphone II into a new project (NOT using the track template workaround). Guess what? SPLAT was able to use both VST3s with no problem. The issue only exists in CBB. What, if anything, does this suggest?

That would be a great feature, and surely it couldn't be difficult to add.

Do you mean like a flat horizontal automation line?

Thanks - that did it. I'm surprised that selecting 41-59 across all tracks and doing Delete Special with all boxes checked didn't do the same thing, and I still wonder what happened. The last time I exported the project everything was fine, and honestly when I opened it this morning I didn't think I'd made any changes since that export.

Sorry, I know I've seen this type of issue posted several times, but I can't seem to come up with the right search terms for it. I have a project that currently ends at measure 41 (1:27). There are no events in Event List past 40:04:720. Nevertheless, if I go to the "end" of the project, I am taken to measure 59 (2:06), and if I export it, I have 18 measures (39 seconds) of silence. I have tried selecting everything from measures 41 to 59 and doing a "Delete Special" will all boxes checked. There is no automation, either on individual tracks or on the master. There is only one audio track (which starts at the beginning of the first measure), and it is 1:27 in length according to File Explorer and is 1:27 if I play it in Windows Media Player. There are 8 other tracks - 4 soft synths and their associated 4 MIDI tracks. There are no MIDI notes long enough in duration to take them past 1:27 . Any thoughts on how to get rid of the 18 empty measures?

Apparently it ran afoul of Windows Defender's ransomware protection by trying to access a "controlled folder." I was able to install it by allowing access and then running the installer again.

The white rectangle is Bandlab Assistant. Did the recent update work for everyone else?

Used your trick and then created a track template from the Chromaphone 3 VST3 track. So now instead of doing Insert/Soft Synth/Chromaphone 2 VST3, I do Insert/Track Template/Chromaphone 2 VST3 (the name I gave my track template). No extra steps and it works fine.

I have the same problem. Didn't have it at first, so I'm not sure if it was a Windows update or a Cakewalk update that broke it. I also have the same problem (and history) with AAS Ultra-Analog. I was able to go back to a project that worked with the VST3 when I first got it and create a Track Template, which I can now use as my way to insert Ultra-Analog VST3 into new projects. I think I've got a project with a working Chromaphone VST3 and may try the same approach. Or I'll try your VST2 / VST3 trick and then try to create a track template from that.

A few years ago for my birthday my wife gave me the Apogee ProTools Duet, which was the first Apogee that ran on Windows (I think). It was bundled with a full version of ProTools, which I fooled around with for a few weeks and then uninstalled. The Windows drivers weren't very good for the Duet and caused a lot of BSODs - one that was released to "fix" the issue seemed to make it even worse. So I stuck it in a closet and started using a 2nd Gen Focusrite 2i4. I noticed recently that there were new drivers for the Duet, so I installed and after working out a few problems, it seems good. Maybe I've fallen prey to their marketing and general online hype, but it sounds noticeably better to me than the Focusrite. But it is a pain to use - no direct monitoring, no standard MIDI in and out (USB MIDI only), and if you record at anything other than 44.1, you have to reset the sample rate to 44.1 if you just want to listen to MP3s and wav files on WMP or other Windows software. So, if you had both devices, which would you use with CbB?

Worked like a charm! Still wish they'd fix it, but it's a perfect solution. Thanks!

Ok, good idea. That would be better since it would let me insert in an already-started project. I'll try it and report back.

OK, just tried it and it worked. Of course I would need to know at the start that I wanted to use the VA-3 VST3 in the project. Still puzzles me that older projects, and now new ones based on this template, don't have the issue.