Audiosnap and other workflow issues

[Craig Reeves]

13 minutes ago, solarlux said:

Yes and Cakewalk now is in new Home and new priorities and main priority is bug fixes but Developers need more info than video where bug showed. 

I've never been told by any of the staff people on this forum that my videos are unclear. My videos aren't unclear to the people that actually watch them.

[solarlux]

3 minutes ago, Craig Reeves said:

I've never been told by any of the staff people on this forum that my videos are unclear. My videos aren't unclear to the people that actually watch them.

All is good but you need write specs and project file under video and then Bakers can download project file and trying same and test it.

Edited February 14, 2021 by solarlux

[Lord Tim]

12 minutes ago, Craig Reeves said:

There are specific instructions in the videos on how to reproduce the bugs. It isn't just "this isn't working", but I'm pointing out exactly what one can do to bring about the bug himself.  Again, you keep mentioning "why" but knowing WHY a bug exists is the developer's job once they go through the code and find the bug. Everything starts with REPRODUCING the bug, THEN you pinpoint the cause. You're putting the cart before the horse, Tim. The Bakers have fixed bugs I've reported in this manner and have never had an issue with the way I report bugs. 

But this is exactly my point - just because they've done that doesn't mean this is the way to make sure this is in the system. We're lucky when our posts get noticed and logged, but it's no guarantee because this is a peer-to-peer forum. Contacting support is the way to guarantee it.

There's nothing at all wrong with what you're posting, in fact it's a great way to get people to corroborate your results. And if you're lucky, one of the devs will also see that. But you just never know how far it'll go.

 

9 minutes ago, Craig Reeves said:

Well people do very often feel like they can't bring up problems with CbB without being vilified for it. It's a serious problem and has been for a long time. As I said I've used Cakewalk for 21 years. I don't need to prove my sincerity to nobody...

Exactly right - 100% agree with you. I do think it's a lot better now than it was in the past on the old forum but we all do need to be a little mindful of not being jerks I think. It's even easy to have what you write be interpreted really wrong, even when you're not trying to be a jerk on purpose, let alone someone who is going out of their way to be abrasive. It doesn't take much to be a decent person, even if you disagree with someone. Definitely on the same page with you there.

Edited February 14, 2021 by Lord Tim

[solarlux]

Problem was when u started comparing Cakewalk with FL studio and Ableton. Don't need compare with children DAW FL Studio where everyone can start music without expierence but FL Studio lacks many proffesional users features, FL studio is good for fast scratching  ideas.

Edited February 14, 2021 by solarlux

[Will.]

On 2/14/2021 at 1:37 AM, solarlux said:

Yes but we all together need Help Bakers to track all these bugs and they can fix it i know. We all can make this DAW Best of all.Many bugs fixed already and i know also Audio snap problems will be fixed. About CAL scripts they are obsolette and Cakewalk don't work with CAL scripting anymo0re.

That's the thing, when it does get mentioned, 10 other users kills your complaint by giving negative comments on it, and apparently you need 10 positive rating for something to get noticed - I was told this twice before. I some where in a topic here. 

There's a few Topics here where members have complaint about it being unstabled, but one answer always popped up . . . that they're asking for a whole new daw.

I mean Studio One has done this before, Pro Tools have also rebuild their engines not so long ago. 

I'm with @Craig Reeves on this one - Maybe not so much as being fedup, mad or frustrated ????. All with good intentions though. 

I know I'm gona get attacked for this too, but I think the feature requests need to stop and focus shifted more to stability.  Rebuilding Cakewalk with modern technology wouldn't be the worse thing. 

I'm gona say this again, I think the issue comes in with the "One Window System" (Multidock) in cakewalk - no other daw have this and since I've been using floating windows, I haven't had much crashes, if not none. 

The other day I'd by accident pressed a wrong key on the keyboard and cakewalk for some reason (not the first time) reset all my windows. As I was busy undocking all of them, guess what happened? It crashed! 

Edited February 15, 2021 by Will_Kaydo

[solarlux]

I 'm very happy about Cakewalk and all what Bakers do is insane and how they respond and are active on forums and also they are developing that all is insane how energetic CbB Team is and they compete with big brands like Ableton which have much bigger teams. Bakers are insane and i respect Cakewalk very much and also i know these small bugs will be fixed only need to be little patient because To do list is Huge.

[Bruno de Souza Lino]

I would be very careful with comparing any company in regards to support with Avid. It took them 8 years to add PDC to ProTools and they were vindictive about it, because the next upgrade that had it was more expensive. Or their free DAW which has 23 plugins, of which 12 are features all other DAWs have built in.

While CbB is rough around the edges, it's still better than many of the free offerings out there.

[Starship Krupa]

2 hours ago, Craig Reeves said:

No other choice but to choose "Skip this file (not recommended)".

That is the result of a couple of bugs in Waves 12. First, there is a Waves background app called "Waves Local Server" that enables the "plug-in browser," that new awesome feature that now lets you browse the same list of plug-ins but with a black background. This server starts when your DAW loads the Waves shell, but fails to stop when you exit the DAW. Second, this program puts a lock on the library sndfile.dll in your Cakewalk program directory that prevents the Cakewalk installer from replacing it.

The issue is the subject of this sticky alert:

 

[Noel Borthwick]

@Craig Reeves as I mentioned before bug fixing has been our number one priority since 2018 and we’ve addressed thousands of issues. While we have had our share of being dinged for stability issues in the past and still have a way to go, at this point we are a lot closer to being normal as far as our share of bugs go (whatever that means lol). Maybe I missed your posts earlier but this is literally the first thread that I’ve seen from you reporting issues directly. Did you ever contact support via the official support channels? If so please quote your ticket numbers so we can follow up on those as well. These peer to peer forums are great becase other knowledgable users can often help find solutions to problems,  but they are not very efficient for troubleshooting actual bugs that requires developer feedback. While we do check the forums we can’t possibly read every post and things may get overlooked. 

I understand your frustration however, and it is jarring when issues get in the way when all we want to do us get on with making music. I havent had a chance to check out your reports, but I’m sure that the issue you you are encountering are real issues. We’ll take a look at them next week.   If you would prefer to communicate directly rather than via the forum you can log support tickets and we can follow up that way. I’m sure most of your issues can be resolved.

In the meantime, lets all take a deep breath and calm down a bit  We all want the same result

[abacab]

15 hours ago, Craig Reeves said:

Cakewalk is the buggiest major DAW and it's not even close. There is a reason Cakewalk failed as a commercial product even against more limited DAWs like Reaper and FL Studio and I can't imagine this not being at least one the reasons. It's unacceptable and embarrassing.

 

Just a suggestion for communicating on public web forums...

Go read your topic title again. That's flame bait.

Then you open up with the quoted paragraph above. So with that first few seconds, you have already set the expectation for a rant to follow. No matter how valid your arguments are from that point forward, how do you think they will be received, once you have poisoned your presentation with that?

I understand that you are frustrated, but please try a more productive style if you want more people to read, watch your videos, and hear what you have to say, which could be very useful. Instead, you are instigating a defensive reaction with your opening statement.

But in spite of all that, kudos go to @Noel Borthwickfor wading into the BS with his serious offer to help. That is the future of Cakewalk! ?

[Jeff Bowman]

7 hours ago, bdickens said:

I'm not attacking you. I asked a simple, direct question to which you replied with a really long winded bit of defensive sniveling about fanboys and gaslighting and whatnot.

 

Plenty of people come on here with issues, ask for help, and get it. Sometimes within minutes. Go ask for help on some other forums and you get crickets.

 

If you put half as much effort into communicating with the developers as you do whining on youtube, you might get some of this stuff fixed.

You proved his point perfectly. If you have nothing useful to add just shut up!

[solarlux]

Need contest who can find more bug he win. This can help in bug tracking CAL script bugs doesn't count . : ) Cakewalk works for me fine. I 'm joking about bug finding contest but it can help to list all bugs what happens  in unusual situations

Edited February 14, 2021 by solarlux

[Craig Anderton]

I've been using software since the mid-70s, and if there's one thing I've learned, it's that bugs are inherent and unavoidable. As computer systems, programs, and the way people use programs multiplies, the number, randomness, and severity of bugs increases. There's really no way around it.

I  recently bought a shiny new computer. It worked fine, but then I started experiencing serious graphics problems after a Windows update. Long story short: the motherboard needed an update.

At this point, I've found that frustration does not fix software, and it just  puts me in a bad mood where I don't think clearly enough to come up with a solution. So, my solution is embodied in the old joke:

[Caller to tech support] "Whenever I sync to SMPTE and select drop frame, if the previous project was at 30 fps and I change to 29.97 while the transport is running, the software crashes."

[Tech support] "Then don't do that."

I'm come to accept that some things just aren't going to work, and those things will be different for different programs, used by different people, on different systems. As long as software is designed by humans, it will have flaws. It's possible that at some point, a combination of AI and machine learning will be able to run software through stress tests that would be impossible for humans to do, but that won't be happening any time soon in consumer-level products.

 

[Glenn Stanton]

3 hours ago, solarlux said:

Need contest who can find more bug he win.

a number of software companies offer bounties for finding bugs... not a lot of money, but whatever gets people looking and reporting them. of course whether or not the bug is fixed remains to be seen ? and then there are "spellcheckers and grammar checkers" (like auto-wreck, er, i mean auto-correct) which don't ever seem to care about getting things right...

i generally agree with what Craig was saying "Me: Doctor, every time i touch my rib, it hurts. Doctor: then don't do that" ? 

[solarlux]

11 minutes ago, Glenn Stanton said:

a number of software companies offer bounties for finding bugs... not a lot of money, but whatever gets people looking and reporting them. of course whether or not the bug is fixed remains to be seen ? and then there are "spellcheckers and grammar checkers" (like auto-wreck, er, i mean auto-correct) which don't ever seem to care about getting things right...

i generally agree with what Craig was saying "Me: Doctor, every time i touch my rib, it hurts. Doctor: then don't do that" ? 

Yes but simple contest and can have a fun without prize : ) We can all trying all in unusual ways

[Craig Anderton]

Real-world example: I went to open Cakewalk a few minutes ago, and a flashing window prevented me from logging in. I couldn't open preferences. The program was totally unuseable.

It turned out the problem was the Generic ASIO Low-Latency Driver .dll (which has been the subject of many frustrated forum posts) that's in the Steinberg ASIO folder. It apparently got put in there when I re-installed Cubase after switching computers. I renamed the .dll...problem solved, Cakewalk opens.

Cakewalk's fault? Steinberg's? Windows? The RealTek chip grabbing on to the driver and not letting go? I have no idea.

Another real-world example was when someone from Cakewalk was about to give a Sonar presentation on his laptop. Sonar was crashing like crazy, doing strange things, and scaring the crap out of him as he rehearsed. It turned out that he had always used a TASCAM interface with his laptop, but had installed ASIO4ALL in case the interface got lost, stolen, crushed by aliens, whatever. Just having ASIO4ALL installed on his computer created a conflict with the TASCAM ASIO drivers he had specified under Preferences in Sonar. As soon as he uninstalled ASIO4ALL, everything worked again. This isn't to start an ASIO4ALL discussion, I know it can work...I'm just the messenger, don't shoot me.

And don't get me started on graphics cards, the gratuitous "hi-def" audio drivers they install, and the never-ending graphics card updates that are issued solely to produce 0.005% faster frame rates in Call of Duty...

[Craig Reeves]

20 minutes ago, Craig Anderton said:

Real-world example: I went to open Cakewalk a few minutes ago, and a flashing window prevented me from logging in. I couldn't open preferences. The program was totally unuseable.

It turned out the problem was the Generic ASIO Low-Latency Driver .dll (which has been the subject of many frustrated forum posts) that's in the Steinberg ASIO folder. It apparently got put in there when I re-installed Cubase after switching computers. I renamed the .dll...problem solved, Cakewalk opens.

Cakewalk's fault? Steinberg's? Windows? The RealTek chip grabbing on to the driver and not letting go? I have no idea.

Another real-world example was when someone from Cakewalk was about to give a Sonar presentation on his laptop. Sonar was crashing like crazy, doing strange things, and scaring the crap out of him as he rehearsed. It turned out that he had always used a TASCAM interface with his laptop, but had installed ASIO4ALL in case the interface got lost, stolen, crushed by aliens, whatever. Just having ASIO4ALL installed on his computer created a conflict with the TASCAM ASIO drivers he had specified under Preferences in Sonar. As soon as he uninstalled ASIO4ALL, everything worked again. This isn't to start an ASIO4ALL discussion, I know it can work...I'm just the messenger, don't shoot me.

And don't get me started on graphics cards, the gratuitous "hi-def" audio drivers they install, and the never-ending graphics card updates that are issued solely to produce 0.005% faster frame rates in Call of Duty...

LOL that last line.  Yeah I feel you. There have been times where I have unfairly blamed Cakewalk myself, sometimes on here for all to see. Anytime that happens, I will usually make sure to indicate where I'm wrong. For instance, I was under the impression that Cakewalk's audio engine was slow because while using it, I found my CPU usage was higher than it should have been for a similar project I had open in Ableton Live. Well, it turns out what was slowing things down was that I had Streamlabs open and forgot to close it. As soon as I did, Cakewalk ran perfectly.

Edited February 14, 2021 by Craig Reeves

[Will.]

I'm gona try and help @Craig Reeves here. 

Go to preferences/Configuration file undwr the Audio Tab. On that window scroll down to Thread Scheduling Module and Switch it's value to 3 "Aggressive" for more stability. 

The aggressive value utilizes more efficient task management that can result in better multi-processing in the daw. 

When you're done with that, scroll up to AutomationDecimationMsec and change it that from 50 to 2 or 5. Personally, mine is set on 2.

I know in RnB and in Pop we do a lot of Automation and we don't want the nodes to get quantized accidentally later in the project and having things sounding weird.  

This should help making things easier in your workflow. I do a lot of automation where I'm riding crazy on the compressor to smooth out things - especially in EDM and Future Bass projects I get and that always caused issues with Cakewalk crashing at some point. Since changing the Thread Scheduling Module value to aggressive hardly any issues. 

It's worth testing out. 

Edited February 15, 2021 by Will_Kaydo

[Lord Tim]

I'm going to counter that and say that Aggressive (3) can really make some systems really unstable, since it's still an experimental option. 

On my particular system, it does nothing under regular load but when I'm really trying to stress it at low latencies, it improves things a lot for me, so in my case it's great. But it's not for everyone.

I'd suggest to try 2 (if it's not set by default) rather than 3 first. 3 is worth trying of course, but don't be surprised if you get worse results from it.

[Bruno de Souza Lino]

16 hours ago, Craig Anderton said:

And don't get me started on graphics cards, the gratuitous "hi-def" audio drivers they install, and the never-ending graphics card updates that are issued solely to produce 0.005% faster frame rates in Call of Duty...

Also don't get me started on the countless bug fixes that involve throwing money at the problem. Steinberg does that. Their DAW is perfect. The problem is always your plugins and your machine. And if that bug is capable of being replicated in high end machines, they just plug their ears and go "lalala, I can't hear you!"

In the perfect bubble of devs, everyone has infinite pools of money, can upgrade at will and always have the latest and greatest enthusiast level hardware.

But I digress. There will be bugs that will never be fixed in CbB either because it would take too much time to do so or would break compatibility with people using old stuff from SONAR. Imagine what would happen if a bug fix solved an issue many had but broke compatibility in such a way that X2 users could no longer use V-Vocal, for example?