Project file corrupted?

[Michael Menser]

I have a Cakewalk project that suddenly gives me a popping noise followed by silence. When this happens the Mix bus and Master bus both show the meters going into red. I've found that if I disable the effects from the Mix bus then enable them again the project usually goes back to normal. This also happens if I delete a track from the project...when that happens I have to close the project and reopen it to get it work again.  I tried creating a new bus to replace the mix bus... that didn't help. The only plugin I have on the mix bus is Neutron 3 elements for EQ and Compression. 

Also, when I tried to export an audio file of the project in its current state the resulting audio file begins with a pop followed by several minutes of silence.

I decided to copy all of the audio tracks over to a new project. Strangely, I get the exact same problem. I've repeated this process a few times with the same end result. 

I don't have this issue on any of my other projects. Does anyone have a suggestion to fix this? 

[Max Arwood]

I have had this happen as well. I had a ton of plugins loaded. Turning off master bus effects made the file play sometime. I sent a cwp file to support. Nothing from them about it.  Did you have a lot of effects in the project? Was the cakewalk cpu/disc meter high? I would like to get to the bottom of this too. My meters were pegged after the pop. My export was a pop then there was a full volume wave form.I didn’t analyze it to see what frequency it was.

To get help.  
You need to furnish ->

what audio card?

what is the latency set to?

computer cpu memory?

What versions -

Cakewalk?

Windows?

You should also report this to support  

https://help.cakewalk.com/hc/en-us/requests/new
 

 

 

[Bristol_Jonesey]

10 hours ago, Michael Menser said:

I have a Cakewalk project that suddenly gives me a popping noise followed by silence. When this happens the Mix bus and Master bus both show the meters going into red. I've found that if I disable the effects from the Mix bus then enable them again the project usually goes back to normal. This also happens if I delete a track from the project...when that happens I have to close the project and reopen it to get it work again.  I tried creating a new bus to replace the mix bus... that didn't help. The only plugin I have on the mix bus is Neutron 3 elements for EQ and Compression. 

Also, when I tried to export an audio file of the project in its current state the resulting audio file begins with a pop followed by several minutes of silence.

I decided to copy all of the audio tracks over to a new project. Strangely, I get the exact same problem. I've repeated this process a few times with the same end result. 

I don't have this issue on any of my other projects. Does anyone have a suggestion to fix this? 

Delete the Neutron

Do a save as with a new name to a new location. Make sure "copy audio with project is checked"

Now see if the project plays ok

If it does, you'll know it was a problem with the Neutron and you can delete the old project

[Michael Menser]

On 10/14/2022 at 2:00 AM, Max Arwood said:

I have had this happen as well. I had a ton of plugins loaded. Turning off master bus effects made the file play sometime. I sent a cwp file to support. Nothing from them about it.  Did you have a lot of effects in the project? Was the cakewalk cpu/disc meter high? I would like to get to the bottom of this too. My meters were pegged after the pop. My export was a pop then there was a full volume wave form.I didn’t analyze it to see what frequency it was.

To get help.  
You need to furnish ->

what audio card?

what is the latency set to?

computer cpu memory?

What versions -

Cakewalk?

Windows?

 

 

I'm using Cakewalk version 28.9.0.27 (currently the latest version)

Buffer size set to 256 samples

Windows 10

i7-4790K processor

8 GB ram (planning to upgrade soon)

I'm using M-Audio Air 192/6 audio interface - ASIO

There are quite a few effect plugins on this project but not really much more than an average project for me. I have several instances of Neutron in the project. I'm also using a few Arturia plugins.  The cpu/disk meter doesn't go up when the error occurs (assuming I'm looking at the correct thing for this).

[Michael Menser]

22 hours ago, Bristol_Jonesey said:

Delete the Neutron

Do a save as with a new name to a new location. Make sure "copy audio with project is checked"

Now see if the project plays ok

If it does, you'll know it was a problem with the Neutron and you can delete the old project

Thanks for the suggestion. I tried it. It seemed okay for about half an hour but unfortunately it  messed up again

[paulo]

This happens to me from time to time. It's usually a frozen synth track that has "clipped" for want of a better term and the clue for me is which track has the meter pegged in the red. Zoom in on that waveform and there will be some glitch at exactly the place where the audio stops. I say "clipped" because the waveform shows some big spike, but it shouldn't have really as pretty much proven when unfreezing the track and then freezing again without touching anything else at all makes it go away. No idea why this happens, just something that I've learnt to live with over the years. To get audio to play again I have to close and re-open the project. Nothing else seems to work.

[chris.r]

I can confirm as well. In my case this happens on occasion in a Dexed instrument track. Closing and reopening project is the only solution I could find.

[Xoo]

11 minutes ago, chris.r said:

I can confirm as well. In my case this happens on occasion in a Dexed instrument track. Closing and reopening project is the only solution I could find.

I found Dexed buggy as anything with this kind of thing happening all the time.  I found that deleting the VST from the disk the best thing to do ?

[bitflipper]

I've seen this phenomenon many times. It's not a corrupt project file.

Every time it's come down to a plugin, usually something on the master bus, but never reproducible on command. It acts as though a plugin doesn't initialize properly, because if you bypass all fx and play back a little of the project, it'll play fine, and then continue to play fine after re-enabling fx.

[Millzy]

I too have suffered a similar fate, at random, and the culprit turned out to be the Channel Tools plugin. For whatever reason some of my projects didnt like me adjusting it whilst in play. I would echo everyone elses suggestions and look for a plugin or synth that may be the cause. 

[Starship Krupa]

I'll chime in here and say that I, too have had this happen, and each time, I traced it down to a plug-in or plug-ins in combination not playing nice. I've had it happen with both FX and instruments. Sometimes everything will just go silent until I restart the audio engine.

Yes, sometimes 2 plug-ins that work fine separately don't like being in the same project or on the same track. Try leaving Neutron enabled, and then disabling the FX on each channel one by one and see if the problem disappears, then you might have just such a situation.

The only thing you can do once you narrow it down is, depending on how important the plug-in(s) are, contact both Cakewalk support and the plug-in(s) manufacturers with your findings. And substitute, if you can, other plug-ins in order to get the project finished.

Neutron is a very common suite that is marketed by the manufacturer as compatible with Cakewalk, so if something is going wrong with it, all parties need to know.

[Noel Borthwick]

This is unlikely to be related to your project file. Meters going into the red are a sign of the plugins generating garbage floating point data or denormals. Most likely caused by bugs or corrupt data in the plugins themselves. Some plugins also intermittently misbehave when the double precision engine is enabled or with Plugin load balancing active so you can experiment with disabling those options.
If the issue persists contact the respective plugin vendor to troubleshoot further since its not a host problem.

[Will.]

For me its always a plugin that is on the Master Bus. 

Edited October 21, 2022 by Will.

[Max Arwood]

I found mine! 

Problem Report (#724283). 

Figured it out kind of. For me it was a combination of GW MixCentric, AR, TG Mastering and IMPusher in the bus area.  It took a LONG time to figure this out. Thanks to Bitfilpper for suggesting plugins in the bus area might be the problem. I don't know what happened. After mixing all night as usual, LOL, I opened the file the next day and there was a pop then no sound. All I had to do is to was to delete these three plugins and put them back in. Simple enough, but there were 69 tracks with 96 plugins on them, including the bus effects. It took a bunch of time to figure out which it was.  

Ok, but what caused this to happen to this song to begin with. It was playing just fine the night before and did not play the next day? If I can do anything to help let me know.

 

[Noel Borthwick]

11 hours ago, Max Arwood said:

I found mine! 

Problem Report (#724283). 

Figured it out kind of. For me it was a combination of GW MixCentric, AR, TG Mastering and IMPusher in the bus area.  It took a LONG time to figure this out. Thanks to Bitfilpper for suggesting plugins in the bus area might be the problem. I don't know what happened. After mixing all night as usual, LOL, I opened the file the next day and there was a pop then no sound. All I had to do is to was to delete these three plugins and put them back in. Simple enough, but there were 69 tracks with 96 plugins on them, including the bus effects. It took a bunch of time to figure out which it was.  

Ok, but what caused this to happen to this song to begin with. It was playing just fine the night before and did not play the next day? If I can do anything to help let me know.

 

Not use those plugins maybe  

[Max Arwood]

1 hour ago, Noel Borthwick said:

Not use those plugins maybe  

No way. Those are great plugins. Glad to know how to fix it. Thanks!!