BUGS and BIGS ISSUES EXPLAINED IN THIS VIDEO

[Jaime Ramírez]

 

Edited April 16, 2019 by Jaime Ramírez

[Grem]

The first problem he has, I know James (forgot his handle) complained about this very thing many times. But could never find reproducible steps. It happened to him many times. It has happened to me once or twice, but like the guy in the video, I thought I did something until I saw James posts.

The space bar thing has happened to me also. But it's no biggie to me. It mostly happens on my Surface Pro, so I think it's system related. I don't remember it happening on my Music PC.

 

I did have the PC missing plugins. But it wasn't a big fix and I don't even remember what I did to fix it. Something simple, not all the stuff he went through. 

I think plugins are getting more CPU intensive. I am still running my system on a i7 2600k. On DDR3! So I don't think CbB is using more CPU power to run now. 

It was a good video Jaime. Haven't seen a farewell video before! Hope you good luck and well wishes. 

[bitman]

We couldn't directly link video and pics before. I hope this doesn't become a trend. video rants.

 

[razor7music]

I believe the video host said his name is, Scott--but it was a little *hard to make out.

Well, I don't want to make things worse, but I have a few issues with this video being posted here as well. First, let me just say I watched/ listened to the entire video--start to finish, and Scott has some reasonable complaints about issues he's having with Cakewalk. Anyone that's used the software for a decent length of time I'm sure can identify with the frustration--I know I can.

Having said that, my first issue is posting what we have to call a 'rant' about a product on that product's forum, and to say they are switching over to Reaper, etc. is just bad form.  This is a forum of users that have and like Cakewalk and some like myself have used it successfully for many, many years. Scott did say he would finish some tutorial videos because that's fair, but what are you expecting to get out of posting this video here? To say,  just telling people you're not going to finish a particular video series wouldn't be completely transparent. It's obvious you wanted to vent your frustrations, primarily.

Finally, and I hope you don't take this the wrong way--but I can only hope, when someone starts a video rant saying we know something's up because they have the video turned on and are having a beer--and sounds like that wasn't their first one (*dude, people couldn't even understand you say your name),  some of the credibility of your message is lost--on me, IMHO.

My suggestion is to remove this OP. Jot down your issues with the bugs, and report them to the engineers so they can fix them for you--and for everyone. Yes, the keyboard functions stopped responding sometimes--big bug IMO. That just started, and I and a number of people have already complained about it. You have Reaper and a half a dozen of other DAW's you can use to finish your project. Do the productive thing and just report the CW issues. 

(If anyone reads my comments and thinks I'm flaming or have any malice at all for Scott, then you didn't understand my intent or you didn't really read my post.)

Cheers all--I'm off to work on my next track that I'm actually really digging--just trying not to mess it up! ?

Edited April 16, 2019 by razor7music

[msmcleod]

I agree that posting the video here isn't really good form, but as far as Scott's comments in the video... these bugs have been reported by many users here. The bugs have been there for a while, so I guess the Scott is just frustrated that they've been around so long and they're still not fixed.

[Jaime Ramírez]

5 hours ago, razor7music said:

I believe the video host said his name is, Scott--but it was a little *hard to make out.

Well, I don't want to make things worse, but I have a few issues with this video being posted here as well. First, let me just say I watched/ listened to the entire video--start to finish, and Scott has some reasonable complaints about issues he's having with Cakewalk. Anyone that's used the software for a decent length of time I'm sure can identify with the frustration--I know I can.

Having said that, my first issue is posting what we have to call a 'rant' about a product on that product's forum, and to say they are switching over to Reaper, etc. is just bad form.  This is a forum of users that have and like Cakewalk and some like myself have used it successfully for many, many years. Scott did say he would finish some tutorial videos because that's fair, but what are you expecting to get out of posting this video here? To say,  just telling people you're not going to finish a particular video series wouldn't be completely transparent. It's obvious you wanted to vent your frustrations, primarily.

Finally, and I hope you don't take this the wrong way--but I can only hope, when someone starts a video rant saying we know something's up because they have the video turned on and are having a beer--and sounds like that wasn't their first one (*dude, people couldn't even understand you say your name),  some of the credibility of your message is lost--on me, IMHO.

My suggestion is to remove this OP. Jot down your issues with the bugs, and report them to the engineers so they can fix them for you--and for everyone. Yes, the keyboard functions stopped responding sometimes--big bug IMO. That just started, and I and a number of people have already complained about it. You have Reaper and a half a dozen of other DAW's you can use to finish your project. Do the productive thing and just report the CW issues. 

(If anyone reads my comments and thinks I'm flaming or have any malice at all for Scott, then you didn't understand my intent or you didn't really read my post.)

Cheers all--I'm off to work on my next track that I'm actually really digging--just trying not to mess it up! ?

Hi Mr... First of all,, I am a sucesfully cakewalk user since 1998, 1999 since Cakewalk 9 Pro. The only reason a share this is because the bugs are real and think that bandlab people have to see this. I spend too much time too dealing with a few bugs that delays me in my jobs and dateline. I don't have Reaper like you said. I respect you, i don't know if you respect me, but i am sorry ,forgive me if I did not do it in the best way. I am trying to delete this "Topic" but i don't how.... Sorry for my little english.

[Jaime Ramírez]

Hi everyone.. The only reason a share this is because the bugs are real and think that bandlab people have to see this. I spend too much time too dealing with a few bugs that delays me in my jobs and dateline.. Forgive me if I did not do it in the best way. I am trying to delete this "Topic" but i don't how.... Sorry for my little english.

[msmcleod]

I agree, it's important that BandLab take these bugs seriously.

IMHO the main issue raise by the video is the plugin settings one.

I appreciate that there's a workaround (i.e. save it as a Cakewalk preset), but to be honest this workaround is totally impractical for any reasonably sized project. Even on a 25 track project with 3 plugins per track, that's 75 presets, which you'd have to save individually each time you tweak a setting.  Not to mention the mess your preset folders would get in once you've got a number of projects.

To be honest I've not noticed this issue personally (i.e. it might have happened, but I've missed it), but it is a real worrying one. 

I suspect it's a real nightmare for BandLab to reproduce reliably as well, and as to finding out what the underlying cause is, that would be another nightmare.

My guess is it's a timing issue, where Cakewalk is restoring the settings before the plugin has fully initialised itself. The plugin then initialises itself to its default settings overwriting the settings Cakewalk has just applied.

I wonder if when you load a project, and the project immediately thinks it's changed (i.e. there's a * next to the filename at the top), is an indicator that this has happened.

If this is the case, I suspect taking a mix snap shot just before you save a project, and restoring the snapshot just after you load a project would be a usable workaround.

[synkrotron]

Please note, people, that the video in the OP is not by the author of the post.

[Feral State Sound]

I have followed Scott videos since I have started to use Cakewalk SONAR on 2016 if I remember well. In those times, Chernobyl Studios was the only "serious" channel that was making free updated and quality material about that DAW. So much was this way that even Cakewalk had contacted Scott for making the last official Cakewalk videos and to provide official Demo projects that are still present on CbB. I was truly disappointed for the Bandlab decision of not contacting him for keep making quality official Cakewalk content. I hope that at least Bandlab consider to listen some of his (more than reasonable) criticisms. 

Edited April 16, 2019 by Feral State Sound

[marcL]

The worst bug, reset plugin settings, did never happen to me or as Mark has said above, I may have missed it.

But regarding the space bar problem I am surely also affected by. Additionally I want to add that it makes me really crazy (and I always spew a loud curse) when I hit the space bar to stop playing and it jumps to the beginning of the song instead of going back to the starting point (I know that it should if I stay too long on the space bar, but I did not!). Or when it stops arbitrarily at the current location although I use the setting that it should go back to the starting point. And it happens very often on different PCs! Even if these behaviours may seem unimportant to some of you, but it really interrupts creativity and efficiency in your work.

Regarding the drop-outs I have reported several times that Sonar/CbB has performance problems compared to other DAWs. And it's not only in mixing when you have a lot of tracks and plugins, also when you do intensive loop recordings with only a handful of tracks and maybe 1 or 2 plugins. I always have to set the asio buffer 1 or 2 steps bigger than with other DAWs, and that's a real issue with recording!

On the other hand I like Sonar/CbB, the workflow, the user interface, the functionality, ... Those few but sever issues are the only bitter pill!

[synkrotron]

9 hours ago, razor7music said:

Having said that, my first issue is posting what we have to call a 'rant' about a product on that product's forum

Well, like I said, the person that created that "rant" didn't actually post it here, so kudos to @ChernobylStudios as far as I am concerned for deciding not to post it himself. Scott is a YouTube content provider and I think that it was right for him to tell his subscribers where he was with that particular series. And I do feel for the guy as his problems appear to be genuine.

 

[Brian Walton]

I would understand the plugin resetting issue, though I've never experienced it with over 200 projects.  So I wonder if this is truly isolated to the CBL program, if this was happening to a ton of people, the forum would be filled with complaints.  

The other issues are anything but show stoppers.  

They video author says things like "maybe all those complaints were right," really?  He claims to be a long time user and never had isssues before this.  

I've had way more problems with Waves plugins which are market leaders.  Yet I still use them.  

Instead of abandoing the software and learing a whole new system, why not try to look at the variables.  There have been multiple reports on other platforms of FabFilter losing settings for example.  

[Craig Anderton]

4 hours ago, Feral State Sound said:

I was truly disappointed for the Bandlab decision of not contacting him for keep making quality official Cakewalk content. 

Which reminds me...I wonder whatever happened to the content I created for Sonar (like the 30th anniversary material and the Anderton Collection FX Chains), and the Rapture Expansion Packs that were never released.

As to the video, I'm about ready to do one like that on the latest Windows 10 update, which bricked my computer (even with multiple attempts), until I did a pre-update system restore. I think Cakewalk and other companies might be having a hard time trying to keep up with the moving goal posts. I realize some of these bugs have been around for a long time, but as Mark said:

5 hours ago, msmcleod said:

I suspect it's a real nightmare for BandLab to reproduce reliably as well, and as to finding out what the underlying cause is, that would be another nightmare.

...and it would be even worse if the problem is due to something that keeps changing. Also, Brian's comment is telling:

33 minutes ago, Brian Walton said:

Instead of abandoing the software and learing a whole new system, why not try to look at the variables.  There have been multiple reports on other platforms of FabFilter losing settings for example.   

So if Mark's theory is correct and CbB loads the plug-in before it initializes itself - i.e., Cakewalk is faster than another program - then the other, less efficient program would appear to be working correctly whereas Cakewalk (and similarly efficient programs) would not be.

For any program, I try to stay within the program's ecosystem as much as possible. Thankfully I still have all my old Sonar plug-ins so I can still use mostly Cakewalk plug-ins in my CbB projects. The other stalwarts I use in all my other DAWs - Waves, IK, and Native Instruments - don't give me any problems. I haven't personally experienced the issues the video references.

[Jonathan Sasor]

Just to chime in here, when it comes to Scott's plugin settings disappearing, it's possible he's having issues related with using VST2 and VST3 of the same plugin instances. I haven't used Fab Filter in a while, but I regularly work with a number of different third party plugins (including Waves) and have not seen that issue myself. If there's a concrete case where we can see a problem with Cakewalk not retaining settings with a project, we would fix that ASAP. Sometimes problems like this are on the plugin side, and we frequently will work with third party developers to troubleshoot where any potential breakdown is happening.

As for his spacebar issue, that's the first I've heard of it. It sounds like possibly he was doing something on his system that was preventing Cakewalk from having the proper focus for the shortcuts to work. 

We are always interested in resolving pain points for users. If something doesn't seem right, we recommend you contact us. A lot of times, something on the system might just need to be adjusted, and we can help with that. Otherwise we can verify any potential issues and fix them. We're always working to make Cakewalk by BandLab be the best program it can be. 

[razor7music]

@Jaime Ramírez

I figured out after my reply that you had posted a video from Scott (I was on my mobile at the time). All is well. I think everyone here has handled their responses respectfully--that may not have happened on another forum with a similar post. It would have been like a bug running into a beehive and yelling, "Your honey sucks!" and then expecting not to get stung.

The pros here is just another "feature" of working with Cakewalk! ?

[Larry Jones]

10 hours ago, synkrotron said:

Please note, people, that the video in the OP is not by the author of the post.

This had me confused. Scott has used more than one name on this and the old forum, so I thought maybe "Jaime" was another psuedonym. I was further led astray by the Mexican beer Scott was drinking. ?

[synkrotron]

1 minute ago, Larry Jones said:

Scott has used more than one name on this and the old forum

I must admit that I never kept abreast of all the shenanigans over at the old forum

[Larry Jones]

8 hours ago, Craig Anderton said:

...I wonder whatever happened to the content I created...

Seems like if anyone has standing to ask about this it would be you. ?

[Starship Krupa]

If anyone has given it a fair shake, I'd say @ChernobylStudios/Scott has.

He's having hassles that just aren't happening in the other DAW's he's started using.

He didn't say flat out "avoid Cakewalk by BandLab, it's junk," he said that he had found it unsuitable, but that new users should still give it a try. That's pretty balanced at the frustration level he was expressing. He also said that he's going to continue his tips and tricks video series using CbB.

I've seen lagginess too, had it with a couple of projects where I'd start the transport and it would take up to 4 seconds to start rolling. I traced it to CbB streaming a zillion muted clips from the disk, takes that were not currently in use that I now realize need to somehow be put in Archive mode when I go to mixing. I've requested that Archiving be allowed for Lanes as well, which would take care of that problem.

My response to finding defects in this software that I was being allowed to use for free was to ask if I could help out by filing detailed reports and working with the developers. His response, after years of paying for the commercial version and perhaps seeing certain issues go unaddressed, is to post a public complaint and maybe hope that it stimulates the developers to fix the issues he's complaining about. I don't think either of them is invalid. One might be considered more directly constructive, but it's a matter of how we each choose to spend our time.

As far as Jaime posting it, it's just food for discussion and I'm glad he did.

As CWAF! as I am, I think it's still a work in progress. There's still way funky stuff that goes on in the Lanes subsystem when recording multiple audio takes in Loop mode that should not be happening, and that I have to clean up after every time I track drums in my studio.

Speed Comping, as handy and slick as it is once you figure it out, I believe might make comping in CbB needlessly difficult for new users to pick up. It was to me. I got into trouble with it. I still do. I would like to have a way to switch some of the features off if the user chooses to work in a more simplified way. A great feature that could use a little tuning, maybe.