Troubleshooting no sound

[Jana Cole]

I'm still getting to know this DAW, and I need to be able to figure out why I'm not getting sound. The set up I have now was working before — at least I think it was the same set up. I changed the driver mode from ASIO to WASAPI shared, and that worked before.

What do I need to check to figure out where the issue is? It looks like it's set up right to me. When I play, the meters don't respond at all. Any suggestions gratefully appreciated.

 

Edited February 24, 2020 by Jana Cole

[Jana Cole]

On 2/25/2020 at 11:07 AM, scook said:

I was getting ready to send this when the post immediately above hit.

 

This is typical of sample playing plug-ins. Normally the plug-ins start up empty. In that state they will make no sound. There are two ways to get samples loaded in the plug-in either by explicitly loading samples or by loading a plug-in preset.

When it comes to presets there can be multiple preset managers. Cakewalk supplies one ("A" in the image below); it is above every plug-in in the standard header -

You can read about it here. For most synth plug-ins this preset manager starts up with "No Preset" selected.

Most plug-ins have their own preset manager (sometimes multiple ones depending on the plug-ins). These are separate from the preset manager in the Cakewalk standard header. For their use refer to the plug-in's documentation.

 

Regardless, at the point I mentioned preset or sample in this thread, it occurred to me the plug-in may not have been setup to make sound. The subsequent mention of violin samples answered that question but raised the issue of the MIDI notes being out of range. When looking at the PRV keyboard do not make assumptions about the MIDI note value. The note names displayed in the PRV are based on the "Base Octave for Pitches" setting.  Cakewalk starts with MIDI note 0 being C0. This means MIDI note 48 is C4. If you want C4 to play MIDI note 60 the "Base Octave for Pitches" needs to be set to -1.

The question about a full string section was an attempt to find a string library for the sampler with a broader range of playable notes. Some sample players have them. Again not having the benefit of working with Play puts me at a disadvantage in providing solutions.

There are users on the forum that use Play but they may not read this thread because the subject and OP start off reading like a generic CbB configuration problem.

If you want specific help with Play, a new thread in Instruments & Effects may get replies from users of that product.

Thank you. This is exactly the kind of nuts and bolts info I need, about the controls on plug-ins in general. I'll also head over to Instruments and Effects.