UPDATE:OMG Cakewalk by Bandlab killed my Sonar X3 installation!

[Billy Zeppa]

Hi guys.  So i just installed Bandlab Cakewalk on speculation, because my Sonar X3 lacks the audio beat detector features.  I'd heard on a Bandlab sponsored youtube video that bandlab won't affect other Cakewalk programs like Sonar  X3.

So I installed it successfully, but have not run it - instead, to be sure all was still well with Sonar, restarted the machine.  Then i opened Sonar X3.  When opening the same .cwp i had been working on, i encounter an repeating 'press Ok' error message - that reads "cannot find 'bitbridge' ...". 

 

So my question is - how can i contact support engineers, to resolve this issue, email or otherwise, before i end up in even more trouble?  Thanks.  Otherwise i will have to uninstall bandlab and hope it hasn't caused a? permanent malfunction.  I need my Sonar X3 DAW.  If that doesn't get Sonar X3 working again, i'll guess i'll also have to roll the machine back and hope that works.  Anyone have any suggestions or insights?  Thanks all.   

I have not yet run Bandlab cakewalk, 

Windows 10, up to date.  64bit pro, 16Gig  2.6GHz.  i7Q 

[Robert Bone]

12 minutes ago, Billy Zeppa said:

Hi guys.  So i just installed Bandlab Cakewalk on speculation, because my Sonar X3 lacks the audio beat detector features.  I'd heard on a Bandlab sponsored youtube video that bandlab won't affect other Cakewalk programs like Sonar  X3.

So I installed it successfully, but have not run it - instead, to be sure all was still well with Sonar, restarted the machine.  Then i opened Sonar X3.  When opening the same .cwp i had been working on, i encounter an repeating 'press Ok' error message - that reads "cannot find 'bitbridge' ...". 

 

So my question is - how can i contact support engineers, to resolve this issue, email or otherwise, before i end up in even more trouble?  Thanks.  Otherwise i will have to uninstall bandlab and hope it hasn't caused a? permanent malfunction.  I need my Sonar X3 DAW.  If that doesn't get Sonar X3 working again, i'll guess i'll also have to roll the machine back and hope that works.  Anyone have any suggestions or insights?  Thanks all.   

I have not yet run Bandlab cakewalk, 

Windows 10, up to date.  64bit pro, 16Gig  2.6GHz.  i7Q 

Not sure what happened there.  on my system, Bitbridge lives in: C:\Program Files\Cakewalk\Shared Utilities

There is a bitbridge.dll and a bitbridge.exe in the above folder.

Do you find it in the above folder?  I assume both Cakewalk by Bandlab and Sonar X3 have the path hardwired to the above, for Bitbridge, and the other shared utility apps.

All kinds of us other folks have older versions of Sonar, going all the way back to 8.5.3, living alongside Cakewalk by Bandlab, so again - a bit of a mystery as to how Bitbridge would have become a ghost, following an install of Cakewalk by Bandlab.

Please detail where the Sonar X3 related folders are installed, as well as your Cakewalk by Bandlab install steps - thanks. 

Bob Bone

 

[Billy Zeppa]

UPDATE: Ok, in Sonar X3 - when opening a .cwp in Sonar, i continued to click "OK" to the pop up that says it can't find the 'bitBridge' module, for what seemed like a hundred times and finally the pop up went way, and i was able to open and run the .cwp.  This is a major relief, and gives me hope, but something is definitely not right here, so my quest for assistance goes on, and i hope this helps. ?

[scook]

I have X2, X3, Platinum and several versions of CbB installed on the same Win10 machine.
 

29 minutes ago, Billy Zeppa said:

When opening the same .cwp i had been working on, i encounter an repeating 'press Ok' error message - that reads "cannot find 'bitbridge' ...". 

This has nothing to do with beat detection, it is the 32bit plug-in bridge software. It is loaded only when 64bit SONAR/CbB encounter 32bit plug-ins in a project.

While I do open X3 regularly for testing purposes; I do not recall testing 32bit plug-ins in it.

Just tried loading a 32bit plug-in, shutdown X3 saving the project and restarted X3. All worked OK.

 

Installing CbB acts like an upgrade to 64bit SONAR.

This means, the CbB and all of its data are in separate folders EXCEPT for the "shared" folders. These folders are updated with backward compatible files.

BitBridge is in one of the "shared" folders.

It is the shared folders and registry entries that make it necessary to install CbB on the same drive as SONAR.

Is it possible that CbB and X3 are on different drives?

 

On a related note, it may be time to stop using 32bit plug-ins in new projects.

[Billy Zeppa]

Thanks for the help, Robert, scook. 

So - Sonar is on C:/Program Files/Cakewalk/ Sonar X3 Producer.  I am still looking for where Bandlab Cakewalk went.  What is the CbB folder called?  

When i install Bandlab CW, I installed using all default settings, folders and files.

Another thing pointing to the shared utilities folder is this - when i went to uninstall Bandlab i got a warning that i may be removing a shared file or files, so i aborted the uninstall.  

I do see the bitbridge .exe and .dll files there in the  C:\Program Files\Cakewalk\Shared Utilities

In windows 'Start' I see the Cakewalk folder, and inside there are Sonar X3 and Cakewalk by Bandlab.   

 

[scook]

The default location for CbB (Cakewalk by BandLab) is

C:\Program Files\Cakewalk\Cakewalk Core

 

Does CbB load the project OK?

Were there any error messages during CbB install?

 

[John Vere]

Once you use CbB you'll have little reason to regress to X3. It's a giant upgrade with many new features that were introduced during the Splat era before Gibson bailed on us. When Bandlab took over much to our relief they announced they would focus on cleaning up a lot of the bugs that had grown over time in the earlier versions. They did a great job in my opinion. 

X3 is the last version that used a serial number for activation so if CbB ever gets flushed and all the servers go down I'll sadly have to return to X3 or switch to Cubase.  I think X3 would be way to outdated and not optimized for W10 like CbB is. 

[Billy Zeppa]

UPDATE #2:  Thanks all for your suggestions, folks.  I have uninstalled CbB for the moment.  Now i seem to have removed a couple of the 'pro channel' modules from the 'Shared utilities' folder when i uninstalled.  I stopped removing these files during CbB uninstall, but not before i realized what was being removed was 'pro channel' files.

Does anyone know the procedure i should take to make my shared utilities folder whole again?   I'm hoping i can just drop some files in the folder - 'tape' and one other module (i think it was the tube saturation module).     As it is X3 closes program upon not finding these modules in the folder.  Thanks for your help. 

 

Edited June 21, 2020 by Billy Zeppa

[scook]

There are a lot of files shared between SONAR and CbB. Uninstalling one usually affects the other.

Re-running the X3 installers should get all of X3 back on the machine. To skip installing all the plug-ins again run the advanced install option and select what to install.

 

[Billy Zeppa]

2 hours ago, scook said:

There are a lot of files shared between SONAR and CbB. Uninstalling one usually affects the other.

Re-running the X3 installers should get all of X3 back on the machine. To skip installing all the plug-ins again run the advanced install option and select what to install.

 

Thanks, scook.     Success!   That worked to restore X3.  I guess I will wait until this project I started in X3 is finished before trying CbB further.   Now that i'm in the editing and mixing phase of this project, i had hoped to try the 'elastic' audio  features in CbB that started happening in Sonar after X3, to fix a few spots that will otherwise take much longer to repair.  It looks like BbB comes with a lot of good stuff, and the learning curve is right, so i'm going to try to make the two software play well together again in the coming days, i'm sure i just botched something during install.  If there's a way to get an installation wrong i'll find it.  ?  Until then I have CbB instructional videos.     

[razor7music]

I have to add that installing CbB I didn't have any issues with my previous version of SPLAT. I wondered about CbB when it first came out, so my finger was on the mouse button to go back to SPLAT if I needed to, and I never did. So, the issues you're having are not inherent to installing CbB over SPLAT.

Having said all that, I am also a huge proponent of not upgrading or making big changes to my software or computer while I'm in the middle of a project. I have paid the price too many times to do that again.

Edited June 22, 2020 by razor7music

[John Vere]

What you could do is install CbB which should have zero impact on X3. Hundreds of users here have many old versions side by side without issue. 

Now you should have already made back up copies of your projects so use one of those to experiment with in CbB. Your original copy with be safe from harm.