TVR PRODUCTIONS Posted February 5, 2022 Share Posted February 5, 2022 I am finishing up a song. Maybe a total of 20 tracks. 10 are drums. 6 are Serum synths. So, nothing crazy. For the first time in all of my years using Cakewalk, when I add an FX, I get a spinning wheel and I have to wait. Never happened before. It eventually adds in after a minute. Then, during mixing, I get random drops in volume. At first, I thought one or both of my monitor cables were bad, but then noticed it is happening with headphones. I thought it was possibly my 18 month old Steinberg interface which has been rock solid. But then, I mixed the project and exported and the volume drops are there. If it was the interface, this wouldn’t happen since there is no interface involved during the mix down. any ideas? I have all SSD drives, an i7, 32 GB Ram, etc. this system is blazing fast so it isn’t that. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
John Vere Posted February 6, 2022 Share Posted February 6, 2022 Most important info missing is what is the effect you are trying to use? This is obviously the cause of the problem 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TVR PRODUCTIONS Posted February 6, 2022 Author Share Posted February 6, 2022 (edited) Everything. When I click the +FX button, no matter what I choose, there is a long wait. Which effect? Fabfilter EQ. Waves G Reverb. Nothing special. Have used them for years, i disabled all FX and it played fine. I just have to see whixh is causing a problem. The only other effects I have are on the master bus, which has a limiter, compressor and fab filter eq. I will play it back and add them one at a time to see which causes the problem. Edited February 6, 2022 by TVR PRODUCTIONS Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TVR PRODUCTIONS Posted February 10, 2022 Author Share Posted February 10, 2022 (edited) Well, I added the three effects on the master bus back (Limiter, Compressor and EQ) and it played back all the way all night on Monday. I listened to the mix on various speakers and it wasn't so great. I just remixed and the problem is back again. I am not sure where to go from here. Obviously, all three effects, which never gave me a problem on any other project, work fine MOST of the time. No idea why they would not work SOME of the time. I am not doing anything different. I don't think it is anything in my project causing it because I solo'd a commercial recording as a reference track and the sound is fizzing out occasionally. The slight volume drop is completely at random times. I cannot reproduce it in the same spot ever. My biggest confusion is why this is happening while exporting. I can rule out my audio interface since it is only monotoring what is coming out of Cakewalk Edited February 10, 2022 by TVR PRODUCTIONS Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TVR PRODUCTIONS Posted February 10, 2022 Author Share Posted February 10, 2022 Looks like no one has any ideas. I had to export the song out three times last night so I could cut them up to make one song without dropout. That was fun. I will just uninstall Cakewalk completely and re-install clean. After that, I have no ideas. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
David Baay Posted February 11, 2022 Share Posted February 11, 2022 I thought about this one for a while, but had no really bright ideas. Pretty weird set of symptoms. I actually would not expect it to be fixed by a re-install. Something's going on with the plugin handling or possibly the project is corrupted. If the routing and plugin setup is not hugely complex, I would suggest importing the tracks to a new project started from the Basic template (rather than some potentially bad/ancient custom template), and see if the new project behaves better. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TVR PRODUCTIONS Posted February 11, 2022 Author Share Posted February 11, 2022 This project was started from a basic empty template. Aside from a vocal track, the entire project is done using a few vst instruments. It would be hell to start over again. Is there a way to export the midi instrument tracks to a new project? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
scook Posted February 11, 2022 Share Posted February 11, 2022 Save as a MIDI file, then open the file, add the plug-ins and copy the audio tracks from the old project. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
David Baay Posted February 11, 2022 Share Posted February 11, 2022 4 hours ago, TVR PRODUCTIONS said: This project was started from a basic empty template. Hmmm... that makes it less likely a new project is going to help . I dunno... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
WalkerTalker Posted February 11, 2022 Share Posted February 11, 2022 Maybe one of your FX plugins have somehow lost authorization? I know there are protection systems which mute audio periodically if the software is unlicensed. Could this be a variation of that?? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TVR PRODUCTIONS Posted February 11, 2022 Author Share Posted February 11, 2022 Its not really a mute. It almost fizzles out for a brief second but never totally silent. And like I mentioned, it worked fine all last weekend, acted up toward the end. Then, a couple of days later, it worked totally fine all night. I figured the first time was a glitch and reinstalled my audio interface drivers. But then it returned for no reason after working for a day or two. So, I don't think one of the fx lost authorization or it wouldn't have worked those couple of days. Thanks for the suggestion though. I would not have thought of that. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TVR PRODUCTIONS Posted February 11, 2022 Author Share Posted February 11, 2022 11 hours ago, scook said: Save as a MIDI file, then open the file, add the plug-ins and copy the audio tracks from the old project. I will try this when I get home tonight. Do all of the automations (volume and pan) get exported too? If not, that is going to take me days to get everything right again, Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
scook Posted February 11, 2022 Share Posted February 11, 2022 2 minutes ago, TVR PRODUCTIONS said: Do all of the automations (volume and pan) get exported too? No, only MIDI data. Automation will have to be copied like the audio. Freezing may be an option too. Start with a copy of the project, freeze the tracks, bounce and archive the buses until the project is all audio. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TVR PRODUCTIONS Posted February 11, 2022 Author Share Posted February 11, 2022 (edited) Is there a way to open two instances of cakewalk simultaneously? It would make dragging a track from one project to another much easier. I do this with After Effects all the time. Edited February 11, 2022 by TVR PRODUCTIONS Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
scook Posted February 11, 2022 Share Posted February 11, 2022 Yes, make sure "Allow Only One Open Project at a Time" is unchecked in Preferences > File > Advanced. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TVR PRODUCTIONS Posted February 12, 2022 Author Share Posted February 12, 2022 I decided to change one of the vst instruments to the Cakewalk Drums and it crashed CW both times. This is too unstable for me. I just did a complete uninstall of everything, including all registry keys. I am going to re-install since I never had any issues with CW in the 3 years I have been using it. If it continues to behave this way, I will switch back to samplitude. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TVR PRODUCTIONS Posted February 12, 2022 Author Share Posted February 12, 2022 Just to follow up, reinstalling everything fresh did not work, just as someone predicted. I’m just going to make a few changes, export it out a few times and hope I can stitch together one good version and be done with it. If I see this problem continue with outer projects, I will ditch CW but I don’t think it will. It worked for me rock solid for years until now. Thanks for any suggestions that were given. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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