Junk Heap

A portion of ppl bash Cakewalk, but it's one of the three first DAWs on the market. Some may say 'so?', and that's fair, because all DAWs have similarities, but Cakewalk declined in support many years ago after Roland tossed it, then Gibson grabbed it and ran it into the ground; its support declined (possibly less $$ going into its upkeep). The latest Indo-Asian company that's behind Bandlab has been bringing Cakewalk out of the ashes, and I was surprised to see that after plenty of software updates to the software they stopped updating Cakewalk by Bandlab... that's because they are working on a revamped version of Cakewalk Sonar( https://www.bandlab.com/products/cakewalk?lang=en ) . I am a bit cynical of all of this because I've watched the software decline support/online-presence-wise. I moved to Cubase, but may come back if they do well for the DAW in the long-run. I hate being with a company that has little dedication to such an old but excellent piece of software - OVER THE LONG-TERM. So far the ppl behind Cakewalk look to be bringing it back into competition against the other big players, but we'll see. If they do a solid job I'll switch from Cubase as I find I've used Cakewalk for so long that music creation has become tedious in Cubase i.e. having to learn the in's and out's of new software. No small feat when talking about a DAW. Don't let anyone tell you it's easy.

Also... another thing that might be causing the 80004002 error is an old computer. I am running into this error with VST3 plugins where it shouldn't have been an issue before. I bought my computer in 2017 if you can believe it (HP Omen). ...but I believe, understandably, that some companies are moving on from supporting past a certain age.

Also, another thing I just discovered is that if a plugin isn't properly authorized and activated through the plugin manufacturer CWbB will complain. Companies update their products all of the time. Also, issues can occur if you use an iLok, and probably various other ways. Make sure to log into your plugin websites to ensure that everything is up-to-date; you have the latest and greatest version; and, if you're using a Product portal app provided by the company, go through all of the entries to make sure all is up-to-date. Good luck.

I disagree with the 'too many plugins on a track' idea. Seems 80004002 can be a number of things. Try changing the culprit vst that you're using from VST3 to VST2. See if that works. In one example, I've used Addictive Drums 2 for years and suddenly this error started to appear. I've never known XLN Software to be behind or wrong about updates that they push out to clientele. Second, I had a FabFilter Timeless 3 plugin suddenly start showing this error, worked before. I switched from VST 3 to 2 on the FF plugin and all is well (haven't tried that with AD2 yet). But why do all of the other plugins from the same company function w/o issue? Anyway, hopefully that helps.

Thank you @Noel Borthwick for mentioning to set the BounceFlushTailsMaxDurationSec setting to zero. I was at my wits end with this issue. Not sure which plugin didn't like the flush and crashed Cakewalk, possibly Soothe2, or just having too many plugins running. But thanks again for this, what a time-saver. Dave