Latest few Cakewalk Updates

[steve@baselines.com]

I've had a pretty stable system over the past few years, and always kept up with the updates.  I'm beginning to think that is not a wise thing.  Lately my system has been acting like the bad old days of early Sonar releases.  Normally reliable plugins are sometimes crashing.  And the automations don't seem to make any difference on older song files.  The dreaded foggy white screen of death is once again visiting.  Has anyone else had a similar experience?

[Mark Morgon-Shaw]

No, seems more stable than ever here - I remember with old Sonar certain actions used to make it crash, i.e. whenever I used the reverse audio function it was 50-50 as to whether it was gonna fall over.  Gotta say those days seem gone here.  

[Lord Tim]

I'd agree with Mark, my experience is that it's the most stable it's ever been. However, I have heard a couple of experienced users say that it's been a little odd for them over the last few updates, so there may be something in that for particular system configurations.

If you can come up with any kind of recipe to make it crash, it'd probably help the Bakers track it down and isolate whether it's in CbB or in a plugin, etc.

[NokNod]

More stable than ever for me

[Craig Anderton]

Check for updates with other programs. I like MODO Drum, but one day (perhaps coincidentally, perhaps not, after a Windows update) it decided to start producing different sounds when I recalled a song. If I dragged over a new instance and fed it with MIDI tracks, then it was fine until the next time I saved and re-opened.

I went to the IK site and there indeed was an update. Downloaded, installed, all is well.

[bitflipper]

10 hours ago, steve@baselines.com said:

...Has anyone else had a similar experience?

Sorry, no.

It's inevitable that a new bug is going to creep in once in a while, but it's been a long time since I've seen one that caused a plugin to crash.

Coincidentally, I recently experienced a surprise crash in what had long been an extremely reliable soft synth, Zebra2. There hasn't been an update to Zebra in years, so I at first suspected a new bug in Cakewalk (I am a beta tester). But it wasn't CW's problem, just an obscure Zebra bug that had taken this long to see the right circumstances to reveal itself.

The white fog of death is almost certainly a plugin problem. At least, that's been my experience. Whenever it's happened in the past it has always  been resolved with a plugin update.

[jackson white]

8 hours ago, Lord Tim said:

experienced users say that it's been a little odd for them over the last few updates, so there may be something in that for particular system configurations.

Ya, one might be me.  been running a remarkably stable system for years but hit a dropout speedbump around Mar of this year, went through the well known suspects but there seemed to be dependencies between a couple of moving parts that didn't cooperate as well as they have in the past. LatMon assessment seemed to think something had changed, but did not point to anything directly actionable. Decided to upgrade the OS (Win10 Pro 1909 > 2004) but that seemed to create a new set of interactions. Factors that seemed to help included reinstalling native ASIO drivers post ugrade (>1x), updating/disabling network adapters, changing USB ports!?! and changing ASIO/Recording/Playback buffer sizes from the last known good settings.

Still monitoring the improved error reporting with the newer releases and what looks like potential issues when opening non DAW apps while the transport was running.  Updated all VSTs to the latest release and discarded a couple that seemed a bit dodgy. Sent in a few crash dumps, but CxB does not seem to be the issue despite the lack of a specific 3rd party culprit. 

Running well atm, but wryly noting the veterans who complain about what a pita tape was and feeling there is a digital equivalent, waiting for the UAD product announcement. 

[Noel Borthwick]

17 hours ago, steve@baselines.com said:

I've had a pretty stable system over the past few years, and always kept up with the updates.  I'm beginning to think that is not a wise thing.  Lately my system has been acting like the bad old days of early Sonar releases.  Normally reliable plugins are sometimes crashing.  And the automations don't seem to make any difference on older song files.  The dreaded foggy white screen of death is once again visiting.  Has anyone else had a similar experience?

We can't possibly solve crashes with every known plugin. They have to be addressed by their respective vendors. "Normally reliable" doesn't necessarily mean that they will not crash if they have bugs that are latent.
That said, what specific problems are you seeing. The only way for us to investigate is if you actually submit crash dumps to us. Follow the instructions to capture a crash dump. A white screen is a hang and you can also capture a dump for those. See this article for more info.
 

[chris.r]

I'm getting plugin crashes ever so often across multiple Cakewalk updates so that's a constant for me over the years. Mostly plugins from big vendors like Waves or IK Multimedia. Actually Amplitube is crashing a bit more recently, every few consecutive loading of same project, crashing Cakewalk or screwing synth outputs. Or maybe I'm simply using it more than I used to. But I'd imagine this one would be extremely hard to nail down as from my observation there are more factors involved crossing the same project, plugins from Waves and UVI, all ending up in same track template etc.

As to envelopes I think they had been going through some rewriting recently. Maybe you stumbled onto an new bug with your older songs. Could be worth sending a sample project with your issue to the support.

[steve@baselines.com]

On 7/19/2021 at 3:57 AM, Mark Morgon-Shaw said:

No, seems more stable than ever here - I remember with old Sonar certain actions used to make it crash, i.e. whenever I used the reverse audio function it was 50-50 as to whether it was gonna fall over.  Gotta say those days seem gone here.  

Thanks Mark - I am going to make a list of the recent things I have seen and I will post here.

[steve@baselines.com]

On 7/19/2021 at 5:00 AM, Lord Tim said:

I'd agree with Mark, my experience is that it's the most stable it's ever been. However, I have heard a couple of experienced users say that it's been a little odd for them over the last few updates, so there may be something in that for particular system configurations.

If you can come up with any kind of recipe to make it crash, it'd probably help the Bakers track it down and isolate whether it's in CbB or in a plugin, etc.

Thanks Tim - I am going to do what you said. 

[steve@baselines.com]

On 7/19/2021 at 12:10 PM, Guerilla Genus said:

More stable than ever for me

That's good!  You are lucky.

[steve@baselines.com]

On 7/19/2021 at 12:45 PM, Craig Anderton said:

Check for updates with other programs. I like MODO Drum, but one day (perhaps coincidentally, perhaps not, after a Windows update) it decided to start producing different sounds when I recalled a song. If I dragged over a new instance and fed it with MIDI tracks, then it was fine until the next time I saved and re-opened.

I went to the IK site and there indeed was an update. Downloaded, installed, all is well.

Thank you Craig - I feel most of the issues I see are plugin related.  One is THU.  It works fine but suddenly it will show no input or output activity within the plugin.  I restart everything and it is fine for a while.

[steve@baselines.com]

On 7/19/2021 at 1:29 PM, bitflipper said:

Sorry, no.

It's inevitable that a new bug is going to creep in once in a while, but it's been a long time since I've seen one that caused a plugin to crash.

Coincidentally, I recently experienced a surprise crash in what had long been an extremely reliable soft synth, Zebra2. There hasn't been an update to Zebra in years, so I at first suspected a new bug in Cakewalk (I am a beta tester). But it wasn't CW's problem, just an obscure Zebra bug that had taken this long to see the right circumstances to reveal itself.

The white fog of death is almost certainly a plugin problem. At least, that's been my experience. Whenever it's happened in the past it has always  been resolved with a plugin update.

Thank you for the info.  I do think most of what I see is plugin related.  I'm going to try and update everything.

[steve@baselines.com]

On 7/19/2021 at 1:37 PM, jackson white said:

Ya, one might be me.  been running a remarkably stable system for years but hit a dropout speedbump around Mar of this year, went through the well known suspects but there seemed to be dependencies between a couple of moving parts that didn't cooperate as well as they have in the past. LatMon assessment seemed to think something had changed, but did not point to anything directly actionable. Decided to upgrade the OS (Win10 Pro 1909 > 2004) but that seemed to create a new set of interactions. Factors that seemed to help included reinstalling native ASIO drivers post ugrade (>1x), updating/disabling network adapters, changing USB ports!?! and changing ASIO/Recording/Playback buffer sizes from the last known good settings.

Still monitoring the improved error reporting with the newer releases and what looks like potential issues when opening non DAW apps while the transport was running.  Updated all VSTs to the latest release and discarded a couple that seemed a bit dodgy. Sent in a few crash dumps, but CxB does not seem to be the issue despite the lack of a specific 3rd party culprit. 

Running well atm, but wryly noting the veterans who complain about what a pita tape was and feeling there is a digital equivalent, waiting for the UAD product announcement. 

Thanks for the info on your situation Jackson.  I've been spoiled because up until recently everything was rock solid.  

Steve

 

[steve@baselines.com]

17 hours ago, Noel Borthwick said:

We can't possibly solve crashes with every known plugin. They have to be addressed by their respective vendors. "Normally reliable" doesn't necessarily mean that they will not crash if they have bugs that are latent.
That said, what specific problems are you seeing. The only way for us to investigate is if you actually submit crash dumps to us. Follow the instructions to capture a crash dump. A white screen is a hang and you can also capture a dump for those. See this article for more info.
 

Hi Noel - I understand that.  I'm going to update all plugins and then make a list of what I see.  I always used to send the crash dump, but nothing ever seemed to come from that activity.  I will do that again if I cannot get the issues fixed on my end.  Thank you,

Steve

 

[steve@baselines.com]

1 hour ago, chris.r said:

I'm getting plugin crashes ever so often across multiple Cakewalk updates so that's a constant for me over the years. Mostly plugins from big vendors like Waves or IK Multimedia. Actually Amplitube is crashing a bit more recently, every few consecutive loading of same project, crashing Cakewalk or screwing synth outputs. Or maybe I'm simply using it more than I used to. But I'd imagine this one would be extremely hard to nail down as from my observation there are more factors involved crossing the same project, plugins from Waves and UVI, all ending up in same track template etc.

As to envelopes I think they had been going through some rewriting recently. Maybe you stumbled onto an new bug with your older songs. Could be worth sending a sample project with your issue to the support.

Hi Chris - the envelopes definitely seem to be related to older songs.  I have been trying to modernize some older projects.  In one case, I actually had to copy tracks into a new project and start from scratch to get envelopes that worked.  I'm going to spend some time cleaning up the plugins on my side and see if it corrects the issues I see.

Thanks,

Steve

 

[jackson white]

1 hour ago, steve@baselines.com said:

the envelopes definitely seem to be related to older songs

Noted this with tempo maps. Had a client wanting to revist sides from several years ago. The old tempo maps were updated with a set of "jumps" which I ended up deleting in order to put in a slope. The projects have been stable once reworked to align with the new features. The update is a much appreciated improvement. 

Edited July 20, 2021 by jackson white

[jackson white]

29 minutes ago, steve@baselines.com said:

until recently everything was rock solid

just an opinion/observation here,  but the challenge of maintaining a PC based DAW seems to require a fairly high degree of competency to manage;

1. a wide open computing platform (best bang for the buck, mostly reliable, but with a greater range of potential issues than a closed system)

2.  running on an O/S with a well documented tendency to shoot the user in the foot on a regular basis with unvetted and poorly scheduled updates

3. trying to keep up with demanding realtime processing via 3rd party audio interfaces with varying degrees of driver quality

4. using a very full featured DAW with options on options for configuration and workflow (nice but... ime with the potential to generate dependencies on dependencies given a creative user base with a wide range of personal preferences. There's a school of thought that believes limiting options improves reliability/stability. The general focus on stability/improved feature set of CxB releases since Bandlab tends to support that philosophy. In addition, the workflow enhancements have enabled such a high degree of productivity I feel I'm outstripping either the hardware or the DAWs ability to keep up (speed comping is a great example). 

5. loading said DAW with a host of 3rd party (= unvetted) VSTs that may or may not be compliant with a standard. (understood it's documented, but implementation seems to have some loose ends?) Cakewalk has been super wrt to sorting these out, with both highly reputable devs as well as a few newer less well known ones.

FWIW, this forum has been more helpful than any other resource for sorting out issues, but still spending more time than desired on troubleshooting.  Been thinking about documenting a "Dropout Diary" to distill known good remedial actions into a disciplined checklist, if for no better reason than to stay focused for the next time. 

...

There are times/situations when tracking to tape seems more productive.  ?

[Noel Borthwick]

1 hour ago, steve@baselines.com said:

Hi Noel - I understand that.  I'm going to update all plugins and then make a list of what I see.  I always used to send the crash dump, but nothing ever seemed to come from that activity.  I will do that again if I cannot get the issues fixed on my end.  Thank you,

Steve

 

Most of the fixes you see (and there have been thousands) have come as a direct result of users submitting crash dumps or project files with demonstrable issues. Its the only way for software to improve. Bugs wont fix themselves unfortunately