2021.04 Feedback

[RBH]

The update was the fastest, smoothest install experience yet. It was my first in-app install and less than 2 minutes to update and get working. the CA-2 in the Pro modules is perfect. Very nice work folks.

[Colin Nicholls]

5 hours ago, Noel Borthwick said:

The difference is seen in text rendering when you are running with display scaling set to something higher than 100% in Windows. Take a screenshot before and after the change and you will see the text rendered better if you zoom in.
Fonts are rendered much crisper. But with some plugin's not optimized you may see some perf issues. 

Interesting. I totally missed this in the EA release notes, but now I've set it to 1 to see what effect it has.

I run my monitor at 3840 x 2160 and Scale 125% and I definitely can tell the difference, to the greatest degree in the Track View dropdown menus (View, Options, Tracks, etc). Also the TOAST notification text is crisper. I have not noticed a difference in the "Add Instrument/Plugin" menu structure; it looks the same as it did with the value set to 0.

I haven't noticed any negative effects yet. I'll run like this for a while and see how it goes.

[Hopital]

New problem in Staff view display update.
To show :
1) select one or two measures
2) shift ("nudge") the selection to the right or left with menu or numpad
3) only the selection indicator above the staff is shifted
4) you have to click somewhere in the Staff view so that the notes are also moved !

[Skyline_UK]

I just applied the update and SHIFT +F doesn't work as before.  Instead of optimising the view of the project, which the key binding setup says, it equalises the track heights but only truncates the view to about half way across the screen as if there are invisible events after that, which I know there aren't.  I've loaded a few projects and the fault is the same.  I use SHIFT +F a lot - every few minutes when working on a project - so this is a big nuisance.

Edit:  All works as before in a new project, but all previous projects are affected.

Edit 2:  No, it appears random on previous projects, some load and SHIFT+F works and others don't, for no apparent reason.  I loaded one project and did the 'delete all to the right' (even though there is nothing there) and SHIFT+F then went into toggle mode:  do it once - full project as expected, do it again and the width of the project is truncated to under halfway, repeat ad nauseam.

There is something not right here!

Edit 3:  Explanation.  But still a bug?  When I opened the Tempo inspector in the offending projects, somehow a rogue tempo node had been inserted, in one project where the last tempo change was at bar 52, a 'new' tempo change appeared at bar 192!!  I checked my other projects and this is what has happened when loading each one - phantom tempo changes I couldn't possible have inserted, usually after bar 180 or thereabouts.

 

Edited May 1, 2021 by Skyline_UK
Expanded comments and added explanation of weird tempo track behaviour in pre-update projects.

[Štefan Gorej]

The latest version of Cakewalk crashes everytime during load of a project with u-he Presswerk or Sating (both the latest available versions) in FX slots.
With previous Cakewal beta / preview everything worked fine.

Crash occurs on project load and only with VST3 versions of plugins. When I use VST2 versions, projects load without crash.
I also tried to create new project with these plugins - successfully added these VST3 plugins, everything works, project successfully saved, but anly project load attempt causes crash every single try.

Other VST3 plugins don't cause crash on project load. In other DAW (Studio One) projects with these VST3 pugins also load correctly.

Actually I'm unable to load my recent Cakewalk work where I use these u-he VST3 plugins.

I can provide minidump files from cakewalk.

I love other improvements anyway! Great work and keep going.

[Noel Borthwick]

8 hours ago, Colin Nicholls said:

Interesting. I totally missed this in the EA release notes, but now I've set it to 1 to see what effect it has.

I run my monitor at 3840 x 2160 and Scale 125% and I definitely can tell the difference, to the greatest degree in the Track View dropdown menus (View, Options, Tracks, etc). Also the TOAST notification text is crisper. I have not noticed a difference in the "Add Instrument/Plugin" menu structure; it looks the same as it did with the value set to 0.

I haven't noticed any negative effects yet. I'll run like this for a while and see how it goes.

It was only done this week so it's after the EA.

I run at 2K (1440p) at 100% scaling and didn't notice a difference until I changed the scale to 150%. Since it's new we didn't enable this by default so any feedback is useful.

[Noel Borthwick]

2 hours ago, Milton Sica said:

I have already had 2 dropouts at the opening of projects. Simply when preparing the projects for editing the application closed. Where can I get more information about these abandonments and provide support?

 

Dropouts on opening projects are not something to worry about. Well look into masking these in a future update.

[Noel Borthwick]

1 hour ago, Štefan Gorej said:

The latest version of Cakewalk crashes everytime during load of a project with u-he Presswerk or Sating (both the latest available versions) in FX slots.
With previous Cakewal beta / preview everything worked fine.

Crash occurs on project load and only with VST3 versions of plugins. When I use VST2 versions, projects load without crash.
I also tried to create new project with these plugins - successfully added these VST3 plugins, everything works, project successfully saved, but anly project load attempt causes crash every single try.

Other VST3 plugins don't cause crash on project load. In other DAW (Studio One) projects with these VST3 pugins also load correctly.

Actually I'm unable to load my recent Cakewalk work where I use these u-he VST3 plugins.

I can provide minidump files from cakewalk.

I love other improvements anyway! Great work and keep going.

Look at the crash dialog does it say the plugin crashed? If so you should send the dump to u-he.  We're catching more crashes in plugins now so if the plugin does something bad it will be reported. Prior to this the application could randomly be shut down in this scenario.

About loading in another daw, please read the faq on diagnosing crashes. 

Please also send a link to the dump and we can follow up with them if necessary.

[Noel Borthwick]

41 minutes ago, Milton Sica said:

Não sei se é um problema de operação ou versão. Eu tenho uma faixa auxiliar que eu uso como um envio de outra faixa. Acontece que ele só está habilitado a funcionar conforme envio quando aciono o monitoramento da pista.

 ------------------------------------> 

 

An aux track is a patch point connected to the track input. Therefore aux tracks need to have monitoring enabled just like normal audio tracks.
Please refer to the signal flow chart. 

PS: Please translate to english before posting if you want replies since this forum is in english.

[Lord Tim]

45 minutes ago, Noel Borthwick said:

It was only done this week so it's after the EA.

I run at 2K (1440p) at 100% scaling and didn't notice a difference until I changed the scale to 150%. Since it's new we didn't enable this by default so any feedback is useful.

I won't be back in the studio for a couple of days to test this, but I'm running a 5120x1440 resolution monitor, essentially 2x 1440p monitors as one big wide behemoth. Is this something that would kick in for me or is it more something that factors in vertical resolution?

[Noel Borthwick]

15 minutes ago, Lord Tim said:

I won't be back in the studio for a couple of days to test this, but I'm running a 5120x1440 resolution monitor, essentially 2x 1440p monitors as one big wide behemoth. Is this something that would kick in for me or is it more something that factors in vertical resolution?

What is your windows display scaling set to? If its > 100% then you should see an improvement.
Let us know your findings.
BTW is it one monitor or two physical monitors with spanning enabled? If so each monitor would have its own resolution irrespective of whether you are spanning.

[Lord Tim]

@Noel Borthwick  It's at 100% but I'll give it a good test all the same.  

[Noel Borthwick]

At 100% I didnt see a visible difference since the option affects display scaling.

[John]

I really love the VST menu that you have implemented. So much easier to find a plugin.  

[KSband]

The waveforms are weird looking after the update, kind of out of focus looking.

[Colin Nicholls]

@KurtS, are you sure it isn't the new waveform outline feature you're seeing? Try turning it off (see the release notes)

[KSband]

That was it, thanks! What is the purpose of that feature?

[Štefan Gorej]

@Noel Borthwick Thanks for your reply.

Yes, Cakewalk reported the crash of VST plugin, as you assumed (see my screenshot).

As I already mentioned, previous versions of Cakewalk (including the latest preview) did't reported this, started right with this new update.
I didn't observe any misbehavior of these plugins within previous Cakewalk versions, but as you stated, it doesn't mean that there were no issues.

I also don't observe any problem with these plugins in other hosts / daws, so maybe specific combination of these u-he fx vst3s and Cakewalk? Maybe something specific about how DAW feeds state data to plugin during it's initialization?

Anyway, I'm also attaching the minidump file, unfortunatelly, I'm unable to analyze it by myself.
I'll also send it to u-he with specific info on DAW (Cakewalk version), so they can analyze this scenarios.

From my point of view, it looks like there is some issue with plugin instance state "deserialization" during plugin initialization phase?
I also tried this:

- Uninstalled VST3 version of Presswerk from my PC (actually moved .vst3 files out of the vst3 folder).
- Loaded Cakewalk project containing this plugin into DAW (project did load successfully, with plugin instances placeholders).
- I saved FX chain state to fxc file (also attached - FX1.zip), assuming it will save also the plugins state.
- Re-installed VST3 files of presswerk while Cakewalk still running, rescanned VSTs, checked Presswek (VST3) is present and enabled).
- Loaded FXC file back into bus - it also caused crash of Presswerk VST3 plugin, caught by Cakewalk.

Question: Is there anyhow possible for me to restore plugin instance state stored within existing cakewalk project, so I can set parameters of the VST2 instance of this plugin with exactly same values? Unfortunatelly I didn't same the plugin state as standalone preset and I want to try restore Presswerk and Satin settings using VST2 instances.

Thank you, Noel, and wish you all the best.

2021-02-25_05012021_191305.dmp.zip FX1.zip

Edited May 1, 2021 by Štefan Gorej
Typos

[Noel Borthwick]

@Štefan Gorej I’m curious if you insert this plugin in a new project, change its settings, save as a new project and open it does it also crash?
You can’t restore VST3 plugin state into a VST2 plugin unless the plugin supports it.
Waves support going from VST2 to VST3 but most other vendors do not.

I looked at your dump file. Its definitely a crash solely in the plugin caused by it accessing a null location. So the stricter error handling is doing its job in pointing this out and stopping execution. While bugs like this may have sometimes gone undetected in the past in some cases they could corrupt the memory state leading to all kinds of instability in the app. So its critical that issues like this are fixed in the plugins to avoid destabilizing the entire project.

According to the dump I don't see Cakewalk loading the project in the stack so perhaps the crash occurred after the project loaded. Was it still loading the project when it crashed? Sometimes its hard to see from the dump since the data doesn't always accurately report the rest of the state.

---
Unhandled exception at 0x00007FFC38DF5D64 (Presswerk(x64).vst3) in 2021-02-25_05012021_191305.dmp: 0xC0000005: Access violation reading location 0x0000000000000000.

Presswerk_x64_+3d5d64
00007ffc`38df5d64 8b11            mov     edx,dword ptr [rcx]

EXCEPTION_RECORD:  (.exr -1)
ExceptionAddress: 00007ffc38df5d64 (Presswerk_x64_+0x00000000003d5d64)
   ExceptionCode: c0000005 (Access violation)
Attempt to read from address 0000000000000000

DEFAULT_BUCKET_ID:  NULL_POINTER_READ

PROCESS_NAME:  Cakewalk.exe

ERROR_CODE: (NTSTATUS) 0xc0000005 - The instruction at 0x%p referenced memory at 0x%p. The memory could not be %s.

FOLLOWUP_IP: 
Presswerk_x64_+3d5d64
00007ffc`38df5d64 8b11            mov     edx,dword ptr [rcx]
 

 

[Herbert Zio]

As I mentioned in the other topic, this is a bug for me when comparing with Sonar Platinum. And when you open the Bus Pane and lift it to the top, when you collect it by the button, that separation disappears on Cakewalk.

Sonar Platinum

Cakewalk By Bandlab