Loop recording bug/change of behaviour

[Chris Boshuizen]

Hi all, I just discovered what I think is an unintended change in take lanes when loop recording. Looped recording produces clips that can't be extended or slip edited. 

In the past, if I recorded on a loop, I would get neatly stacked take lanes, and each take is actually just a clip pointing to the same audio file on disk. That meant you could extend any clip boundary and you would get the part of the audio that crossed the loop boundary. This is very useful for pick up lines or tails on phrases. Just grab the end of the clip, slide it across, and the phrase extends into the next bar where it should. 

That no longer works. Instead, each take produces a clip, and like before it still references the same file on disk (I checked), but the clips can no longer be lengthened. Doing so shows silence, as if there is nothing there, and no audio plays. 

What I find strange is that each clip in the take lanes clearly points to the same audio file, and if I find that file and drop it in a track, it is all there and contiguous as it always have been. So I am not entirely sure what limitation is putting a hard edge on the take lane clips. I've never seen clips behave like this in Cakewalk, so I think it's a bug. 

Anybody seen this before?

[Chris Boshuizen]

@Noel Borthwick, @Jesse Jost, any idea guys? This has ground me to a stop in a studio session, would love to find out what's up. Is there a setting I might have changed?

[Chris Boshuizen]

Nobody has any ideas? Please, I need some help here.

[Glenn Stanton]

same results here. even switching to use separate tracks. maybe the only way to edit outside of the comping tools is to use the full WAV file.

[Chris Boshuizen]

Thanks for testing. It used to work differently, so I am stumped.  Maybe it's a consequence of take lane improvements?

[Glenn Stanton]

On 1/13/2021 at 12:53 PM, Chris Boshuizen said:

@Noel Borthwick, @Jesse Jost, any idea guys? This has ground me to a stop in a studio session, would love to find out what's up. Is there a setting I might have changed?

we may need some additional eyes on this one: @msmcleod @scook - any thoughts on this one?

[msmcleod]

I've tried to reproduce the original behaviour you describe in SONAR Platinum and can't. I've never seen the original behaviour you're describing in SONAR or CbB for loop recording.

Regardless of whether you're using a single file for all your clips or not, each clip should be separate and distinct.

The only time you can slip edit to show "hidden" parts of a clip is when you split (or slip edit).  Splitting a clip makes a copy of the whole clip, but just slip edits the ends of both clips. So in this case you can slip them back into view - but this only works because the audio was there in the first place. 

This isn't the case with loop recorded clips, as each clip is separate.

What was the last version of SONAR/Cakewalk you know this worked in, and what were your record settings?

[marcL]

10 hours ago, msmcleod said:

 I've never seen the original behaviour you're describing in SONAR or CbB for loop recording.

Me too, but I started with X3 only! ?

But would't it be a cool feature? When I started with Sonar I copied the previous clip and combined the end with the next in such cases (a little elaborate). Later I began to extend the loop length to avoid losing something, but sometimes that makes it more difficult to play. I mean if I have to play very difficult rhythmics, then it would be easier if I could repeat immediately!

Nowadays I do loop recordings combined with Punch in/out, also with an extended region length. That works okay for me ?. It avoids losing a small part in the beginning or ending of a clip.

[Chris Boshuizen]

I dug up the oldest project I could find of mine on this PC with loop recording, and it doens't work that way either. I'm wondering if I am going completely insane! I could swear I used to do this all the time. I guess it is a feature request now. I admit, I am deeply confused now. 

Here is a puzzle though - can you name any other type of clip in Cakewalk that has this behaviour: two clips point to the same asset on disk, but neither of them can display the full data? Makes no sense to me. Any clip you import and split is going to behave the way I expect, it can be dragged back to full length past the split in either direction until it runs out of audio data. And it works like this until you bounce the clip, at which point a new file is created on disk. For loop recording though, If you check the associated audio file list, two take lanes from the same loop recording pass point to the same audio file! 

[Chris Boshuizen]

12 hours ago, msmcleod said:

I've tried to reproduce the original behaviour you describe in SONAR Platinum and can't. I've never seen the original behaviour you're describing in SONAR or CbB for loop recording.

Thanks for trying! Appreciate it!

12 hours ago, msmcleod said:

The only time you can slip edit to show "hidden" parts of a clip is when you split (or slip edit).  Splitting a clip makes a copy of the whole clip, but just slip edits the ends of both clips. So in this case you can slip them back into view - but this only works because the audio was there in the first place. 

This isn't the case with loop recorded clips, as each clip is separate.

This is half true - yes the clips behave the way you describe, but there is only a single audio file created on disk, so why it behaves any differently than a single split audio file is a mystery.  If, on the other hand, it created one audio file per take lane, then yes, the clip behaviour would make total sense. But given that I can grab the exact same audio file off of the disk, drop it in a track, and have do exactly what I want, this "different" kind of clip seems like an unnecessary programming decision. 

[msmcleod]

42 minutes ago, Chris Boshuizen said:

Thanks for trying! Appreciate it!

This is half true - yes the clips behave the way you describe, but there is only a single audio file created on disk, so why it behaves any differently than a single split audio file is a mystery.  If, on the other hand, it created one audio file per take lane, then yes, the clip behaviour would make total sense. But given that I can grab the exact same audio file off of the disk, drop it in a track, and have do exactly what I want, this "different" kind of clip seems like an unnecessary programming decision. 

The single file for multiple clips is a left-over from the days where the audio files for all projects were store in a single folder.

To cut down the number of files in this folder, Cakewalk would store all the clips in a single file. However, the clips within the file are meant to be separate and distinct.

The fact that you can drop the file into your project and get the behaviour you want, is probably an unintended side-effect.