Lord Tim

Sorry, I probably wasn't as clear as I should have been in my first reply. Got to love text for communication, right? ? Glad we're on the same page with it now

^^ Mark pretty much nailed what I was trying to get at. I definitely wasn't suggesting user error got a project into this kind of mess, or that anything you're seeing wasn't real or serious or anything, but *something* is going on to cause this corruption. If we can work out how it got into this state, there's a better chance someone will be able to fix it.

Just to add to what I was saying earlier, I don't want this to come across as me being a Cakewalk apologist who is putting my fingers in my ears and going "LALALA not happening" or anything. If you guys are experiencing this horrible stuff, don't get angry, get it fixed. The more info you can give, the more demonstrations of the problems, the more crash dumps, reproductible steps, etc, the better chance you can give this info to a Baker and they can actually solve the problem, or at least point you in a direction to fix something that may be environmental that's making these problems happen. Like I said, I'd be gone if it was anywhere near this bad for me, so I totally get where you guys are coming from! Let's try and fix it

Look around the forum, if it was this bad for most people here, this place would be on fire. I know I wouldn't be here, I rely on this software to just work, and if it was anything close to the stuff you're experiencing, I'd be gone. I'm a working professional, I need the tools to be reliable. Not saying there isn't bugs - all software has bugs, and I've reported my fair share of Cakewalk bugs over the years too - but I'd actually call Cakewalk some of the least buggy software I've used, especially lately. Clearly something is not right on your end somewhere. I've never seen anything like what you're saying though, so there's no precedent of advice I can give you. Are you able to grab a screen recording of what's going on so we can see this in action? It might provide some clues as to whatever you're doing that might be causing this weirdness. (Not pointing fingers here, just working methodically to narrow down possible causes so we're not just taking blind shots in the dark)

Thank you, sir! Believe it or not, this is all Addictive Drums 2, split to its own discrete tracks and processed separately rather than all in the plugin though. The thing that really makes it work is the combination of reverbs, which I've set up to mimic a small club so you're getting that cool small venue slapback, as well as a longer reverb to add size to it all. Take those off and the snare especially sounds pretty rough! Honestly, it's probably a *little* stiffer than I'd like for the drums overall, but the guitarist liked the idea of using a few loops in there, so we made the decision of going more "locked in pop" rather than more organic folk/country like on some of the other songs. Works well for the goal for this one though.

And here's another song from My Whisper, that I produced and did sessions for everything else except guitars, bass and vocals (actually I even snuck in a low harmony vocal in the chorus - shh!). The songwriting, however, is something I sadly can't take any credit for - this is 100% the band, and it's awesome. The video was a lot of fun too. Basically it's the story of an initial misunderstanding by two people who somehow managed to get it all mixed up further, rather than just sticking their head up from their phones to notice that they were not only both on the same page with how they were feeling, but actually were just missing each other in person too. I'm pretty sure we've all been guilty of something similar! Filmed on beautiful Sydney Harbour, which we found out on the day that we needed both a filming permit for pro video, and a specific busking permit, even if it's just dragging their guitars out in the vicinity of the Opera House. Whoops! So it was a case of being as stealthy as we could be, looking as much like tourists as possible, and (thankfully) having a cinema camera that looks like any other tourist DSLR/Mirrorless unless you look closer. Run and gun ahoy! HAHA! Came up well, all things considered. Cheers to the security dude who wandered right past us during a take and either didn't realise what we were doing or just let us get away with it! Champion! Anyway, check it out, and if you dig it, give 'em a like on YouTube or grab an album or a stream/download.

Then, no. I haven't.

I'm pretty sure the rest of us don't sound like the rest of us either, so that generalisation probably doesn't apply to many of the people in this thread, let alone the forum. Many of us are working industry professionals with a vast plethora of different hardware configurations, much like yourself. Mark has given you the link to the update to X3e, and as you've been told, Cakewalk by Bandlab essentially *is* X3, with thousands of bug fixes and enhancements (and not the Bandlab app you saw online). Leaning into what you were saying in your post, one of the great things about CbB is that you can show or hide as much of the UI as you like, so you can limit all of the distractions and just focus on the job at hand. Rather than trying to fight against it all, going into it with an open mind definitely has its rewards. I was someone who really didn't enjoy the transition from 2.2 to the X series either, but it was a relatively short amount of time to get used to it in the scheme of things, now looking back. CbB is LIGHT YEARS beyond the X series, but still very familiar if you've gotten used to X3.

@spacey - if you go to Help > About, what version of Cakewalk are you running? And which version of Windows are you on? People are here to help you if you want it, but we're not mind-readers - this may need a few questions answered so we're not giving you bad instructions.

It looks like it's in the plugin itself, but you'll see a link to a .dmp file in that error box - that file is something that you should be getting over to Cakewalk Support and the plugin vendor to see exactly where the problem is happening.

You know Cakewalk by Bandlab actually is X3 without the bugs, pretty much? Plus current, ongoing support, something that will eventually be a problem once hardware moves on and software no longer supports newer hardware. 2.2 to X3 was a big jump. X3 to Cakewalk, aside from the fixes, is more "ahh that makes life so much easier" enhancements. I definitely couldn't go back now.

Drop support a line: support@cakewalk.com They've helped a few old users recover their accounts, from what I've seen people mention on the forum here.

If I remember rightly, some processes need to be all run on the same thread (Noel is the expert here, I'm sure he'll be along to school me if I'm wrong!), and these will be active even if the project isn't actually playing at all - if you turn off the audio engine or disable the effects this stuff will go away. Have a look here to see if Plugin Load Balancing might help: https://www.cakewalk.com/Documentation?product=SONAR&language=3&help=NewFeatures.017.html Like I said, sometimes things need to run in the one thread so it might not actually help things. Definitely worth a shot!

Follow the instructions here: https://help.cakewalk.com/hc/en-us/articles/360034066393-Clean-Install-Cakewalk-by-BandLab

But definitely re-install Cakewalk again after that to make sure any old libraries aren't copied over the current ones.

Get this dump file off to the devs at Cakewalk as well - I'm sure if this is a problem on Cakewalk's end, they'd want it sorted out.

Yep, I agree with this - start with the plugins first. The first load could be taking a while because of that, and the next could be disc caching. Instruments with a lot of samples, or plugins that expose a lot of parameters are huge culprits for this. The other thing could be waiting for a device (control surface, etc.) to initialise. But start with your plugins. Pair them down until you get a consistently fast load (obviously don't save over your original project!) and, if that does turn out to be the problem, let us know which one so we can determine where the problem is - in the instrument/plugin itself, or how CbB is communicating with it. It may well be some kind of bug in CbB, but we need to work out where the issue is happening first.

This could be really anything, you haven't really told us anything about your computer specs, operating system version, which audio interface, which version of Cakewalk is installed, etc. If this used to work OK in the past, my money is on something you've installed, or some system or program update that's causing an issue somehow. There's a lot of smart and helpful people here on the forum, so the more info you can provide, the more you'll be able to get some help to fix it.

Yeah: Saved Mix Recall Presets:. Mix1, Mix1, Mix2final, MixARRRRGH, Mix?☠️, etc ☹️ No, just kidding! Mix Recall is fantastic - my project, Time to Fly, in the Cakewalk demo projects uses Mix Recall for different versions of the song, and it's great for dumping out a bunch of variations for you during export, while you're off having lunch. Good for a picky client ?

More realistic naming conventions: Mix1.cwp, Mix2.cwp, Mix2-final.cwp, Mix2-final-revised.cwp, Mix2-ffs-definitelyfinal.cwp, Mix2-AAAARRGH.cwp, Mix3-killme-definitelyfinal-nomorechanges.cwp ? .... Mix4.cwp ☹️

No, but that's a good feature request I guess you could have several versions of your aud.ini file that you could rename before starting Cakewalk that has the relevant settings in there. Not elegant but would get you over the line until a feature like this is implemented.

^^ this was mentioned as the interface, which is THIS THING. Looks like PG's version of IK Multimedia's iRig, basically.

Do you mean delete the track or delete the frozen clip? Deleting the track, it doesn't really matter which thing you choose, honestly. It'll delete the track and unload the synth automatically once the track with the synth on it is gone. But if you mean delete the frozen clip, it's best to just unfreeze it because anything you do with this clip in its frozen state will be undone if you ever unfreeze it.

I'm sure John's video spells it out well, but basically you can only use one ASIO device at a time. If you want to use more than one audio device, you'll need to switch to WASAPI mode. But bear in mind that unless you have a way to lock their timing together somehow (usually with some kind of wordclock cable) then you'll get timing drift between the different devices. How much of that actually bothers you is up to how you plan to use the devices and how sensitive the timing needs to be for your recording. That said, it looks like you only really have one interface and you're trying to run Bias as its own app outside of Cakewalk. Why? It works great as a plugin just inserted into a track, and you'll likely get FAR better performance out of ASIO than trying to wrangle multiple devices and apps with WASAPI.

That does seem quiet, but how quiet is the actual performance itself? If it's a very dynamic performance with a lot of low velocity values, then it could very well be quiet overall. There's nothing wrong with turning the MIDI track's volume up. And, ultimately, it really doesn't matter how you get the level you need at the end, so long as it works.