Whole Cakewalk is extremely BUGgy, unworkable. Can't take it anymore.

[PeterWalker87]

In my view, I've not really had difficulties with Cakewalk over the years. It has been pretty much rock solid. In the last couple of years if a bug cropt up, it has been usually been fixed in the subsequent update. The workflow is easy and I can get a project tracked, mixed and mastered fairly rapidly. For me, that last update has caused a fundemental flaw which makes it unworkable for the time being. I have tried since November to find a solution. The only thing left to is to fully uninstall and reinstall, which I'm quite reluctant to do as I don't want to lose work, setups  or plugins. I still have Sonar Platinum installed, just in case it broke anything if I removed it.

[PeterWalker87]

I'll try sometime in the next few days to do a full backup of my PC (clone disk), remove both Sonar and Cakewalk, and then reinstall Cakewalk. I'll post the results and see if it fixes the latency. It bugs me that the latency is on everything, i.e. two different audio devices and also the midi controller/keyboard. However, no such problem on my other DAW.

Edited March 29, 2023 by PeterWalker87

[Bristol_Jonesey]

10 hours ago, PeterWalker87 said:

I'll try sometime in the next few days to do a full backup of my PC (clone disk), remove both Sonar and Cakewalk, and then reinstall Cakewalk. I'll post the results and see if it fixes the latency. It bugs me that the latency is on everything, i.e. two different audio devices and also the midi controller/keyboard. However, no such problem on my other DAW.

Do a clean install

https://help.cakewalk.com/hc/en-us/articles/360034066393-Clean-Install-Cakewalk-by-BandLab

[pulsewalk]

19 hours ago, rfssongs said:

Sorry - Peter with the crash. It was just a thought - nothing more.

 

BTW: I don't feel like Cakewalk is buggy but I do feel like there are so many shortcuts assigned that it might seem that way at times. It usually doesn't cause problem but I hit wrong keys semi regularly. Strange things can happen. (Backups, Backups, Backups)

Unfortunately backups doesn't help the problems I have with corrupted tracks. The corruptions lay latent and can come up 10, 100, or 1000 (etc.) working hours after they was generated, it seems.

So backing up is really no cure for this. For sure, one can go a version back to avoid the latest corruption, but it will still be there latent, and explode once again if one touches the "wrong" track

[rfssongs]

3 hours ago, pulsewalk said:

Unfortunately backups doesn't help the problems I have with corrupted tracks. The corruptions lay latent and can come up 10, 100, or 1000 (etc.) working hours after they was generated, it seems.

So backing up is really no cure for this. For sure, one can go a version back to avoid the latest corruption, but it will still be there latent, and explode once again if one touches the "wrong" track

Are you sure your hard drive is OK ?

(again just a thought)

[Starship Krupa]

On 3/27/2023 at 11:28 AM, pulsewalk said:

Don't the DEV's have tools for opening CW project files and look at construct of them?

Indeed they do, and it may be of value to them for you to wrap it up as a .ZIP or .CWB and get it to them. I think if you send it to BandLab/Cakewalk support and notify them that it's for the devs, that will close the loop.

While they probably won't be able to figure out the initial cause, they might at least look at how it is now and get some idea of how to prevent it. They can also possibly slip you a build that has error reporting triggers in it that will write to a log file. Their call.

I'll emphasize this because a few years back, I had one project that exhibited multiple issues with sluggishness, and submitted it to the devs. As it turned out, it exposed multiple issues with Cakewalk due to some uncommon settings I was using. So the devs wrenched on the code and it resulted in multiple improvements to things like drawing speed and input response. This was across the board, whether someone was using my settings or not. This kind of error reporting can help all users.

On 3/27/2023 at 11:31 AM, pulsewalk said:

Also, is there no tool/function to check the health of a project? Corruptions or whatever? There are such things for Indesign, for example, where one can check problems with the document and let the software auto correct it. Same for Adobe PDF files and so forth.

Whoa, that is an excellent idea. Even if it just did an integrity check. I'm sure the support staff would love it.

But really, except in your unfortunate cases, corruption is, unlike in other human endeavors, relatively rare.

@rfssongs, the OP mentioned that this is happening across multiple computers, which would seem to rule out hardware issues like disk sector or RAM flakiness. Seem to. ? With this level of oddness, anything is possible.

Edited March 30, 2023 by Starship Krupa

[Starship Krupa]

On 3/28/2023 at 2:06 AM, PeterWalker87 said:

According to the release notes, the last update made a fundemental change to the way the Audio drivers are utilised in Cakewalk. In my experience, big changes in software like this cause unforeseen problems. The point was that the development team work on the reported bugs and get some updates released. This won't be the only one.

I've championed Cakewalk and Sonar for years and like the user friendly interface and simple easy to use structure. I just want it to work.

To that end, I suggest you roll back to the previous version of CbB. I think there's a description of how to do that in the Early Access subforum.

If that solves it, then let the devs know, I'm sure they'll want to know that some change in the last version borked your setup. There is a beta team, but they probably have newer and/or higher end interfaces.

I agree that if an interface works with all of your other audio software and not with Cakewalk, Cakewalk needs to be examined.

If rolling back doesn't solve it....yikes, maybe something else changed on your system around that time.

[azslow3]

With Freezing it always was a bit fancy.

One of related bugs seems like just visual, so "Freeze" button is grayed while freezing is possible. I can't reproduce with exact sequence, but I managed to get it in that state within 1 minute. Project saving/reopening  as well as mute/unmute the track helps to get that Very old trick toggling mute brings that in consistent state.In general it is better have Rack visible when working with freeze, it sometimes shows different picture.

When having problems, check routing. I mean which tracks are pointing to the synth and how its output is routed. I have never used MIDI-Output from synth (it was never working for me good), but I guess that also can influence some internal logic.

A bit strange behavior with routing is reproducible:
* one simple instrument track, muted. Freeze is available. Frozen. Silence is rendered. It was muted, so  logical. Unfreeze.
* add new midi track, set output to the same synth. Freeze the first (still muted) track. It is rendered using both MIDI tracks. This time not really logical... ?

[Light Grenade]

58 minutes ago, azslow3 said:

When having problems, check routing. I mean which tracks are pointing to the synth and how its output is routed. I have never used MIDI-Output from synth (it was never working for me good), but I guess that also can influence some internal logic.

Yes, this was the cause of the biggest issue I've had with Cakewalk, which are somewhat similar to OP's. 

The inputs and outputs of some aux tracks were all over the place. For example, my 'bass master' aux input was set to a guitar delay send, instead of 'bass master'. It would make Cakewalk hard quit upon trying to playback. 

[Lord Tim]

^^ That tangled Aux thing I *have* seen, and it's a tricky one to get a definitive repro on to get over to the devs. I haven't seen a crash from it, but it's certainly annoying trying to work out why your bass sounds underwater and finding out later its output is set to your Reverb bus.

I know for sure if someone could get a repeatable "before and after" project over to the Bakers, they'd appreciate it!

[PeterWalker87]

I've changed / cloned my original hard drive (a 256Gb M2 2280 Gen1) to a 1Tb Samsung SSD SV850. I thought I'd try it out before reinstalling Cakewalk, the system has improved in performance, but was still not in synch.

I played about with the Audio settings (which I've done numerous times since November 2022), and its now back in synch. Seems to be down to the WASPAPI drivers, they were putting on about 30msecs of latency to any recording.

I've reverted to the WDM/KS driver and its working fine, fully locked in synch. I had tried this before and it hadn't worked previously.

Many thanks for the help and support.

[pulsewalk]

On 3/30/2023 at 2:04 AM, rfssongs said:

Are you sure your hard drive is OK ?

(again just a thought)

It does not matter if I copy the project to another location on the harddrive or to another harddrive. No difference.

And I'm quite sure my harddrive is ok though. Have not had any problems with it. No read or write errors.

[pulsewalk]

On 3/30/2023 at 4:11 AM, Starship Krupa said:

Indeed they do, and it may be of value to them for you to wrap it up as a .ZIP or .CWB and get it to them. I think if you send it to BandLab/Cakewalk support and notify them that it's for the devs, that will close the loop.

While they probably won't be able to figure out the initial cause, they might at least look at how it is now and get some idea of how to prevent it. They can also possibly slip you a build that has error reporting triggers in it that will write to a log file. Their call.

I'll emphasize this because a few years back, I had one project that exhibited multiple issues with sluggishness, and submitted it to the devs. As it turned out, it exposed multiple issues with Cakewalk due to some uncommon settings I was using. So the devs wrenched on the code and it resulted in multiple improvements to things like drawing speed and input response. This was across the board, whether someone was using my settings or not. This kind of error reporting can help all users.

I rather don't send out my complete projects. The best would be if they could release a tool that could run such a check on the users computer and save the info in a text file or whatever form it should be saved, which the user could send back to the DEV's. Also, this log file shall not contain any musical information etc., as there's sometimes quite rigid copyright issues and what not.

[Byron Dickens]

14 minutes ago, pulsewalk said:

I rather don't send out my complete projects. The best would be if they could release a tool that could run such a check on the users computer and save the info in a text file or whatever form it should be saved, which the user could send back to the DEV's. Also, this log file shall not contain any musical information etc., as there's sometimes quite rigid copyright issues and what not.

Oh dear Jesus....

[azslow3]

8 hours ago, pulsewalk said:

I rather don't send out my complete projects. The best would be if they could release a tool that could run such a check on the users computer and save the info in a text file or whatever form it should be saved, which the user could send back to the DEV's. Also, this log file shall not contain any musical information etc., as there's sometimes quite rigid copyright issues and what not.

You are asking a company to provide you a tool to locally debug a problem in the software of that company because you don't trust the company.
Oh man... You've made my day. ?

PS. I am a programmer/admin.

[chris.r]

Just had a bizzare one where I made some simple edits in PRV, moving and copying notes around. After one Edit>Undo a step, Cakewalk suddenly started playing a different note instead of a note off, even though there was nothing else I could see in take lanes and event list. Saving and reloading project and bug was gone. There's no way to catch these bizzaries, it's just too evenescent.

[Philip Jones]

From my experience with older version data imported to new version software, the data is always corrupt, I'll explain.

For many years I've always used Cakewalk products ever since it was called Cakewalk Pro Audio, and settled on CW Sonar X3 PE, then came CbB, So I installed it, so now I have CbB and Sonar X3, so, I tried to open a Sonar Project in CbB, and it opened fine, nut there was missing VST's that were only available in X3, so, I added the X3 VST location to CbB plugins search, which as I suspected, threw up error after error after error, mainly about modules missing and Lua script errors, so, I removed the location and did a new scan using CbB default locations which was successful, but importing X3 projects still showed missing VST's, but CbB still kept the parameters of those VST's, so what I did was to remove all the VST's inserted and re-insert different ones, and the project worked, so, the moral of this story, is "Don't use old data on new software, it WILL fail".  If you're going to use new software IE CbB, then import the old data, and completely detach all VST's from the tracks that show as missing, and replace them with newer VST's, but I only use CbB if I absolutely need to, I have and will always use Sonar X3.

[Starship Krupa]

14 minutes ago, Philip Jones said:

From my experience with older version data imported to new version software, the data is always corrupt, I'll explain.

For many years I've always used Cakewalk products ever since it was called Cakewalk Pro Audio, and settled on CW Sonar X3 PE, then came CbB, So I installed it, so now I have CbB and Sonar X3, so, I tried to open a Sonar Project in CbB, and it opened fine, nut there was missing VST's that were only available in X3, so, I added the X3 VST location to CbB plugins search, which as I suspected, threw up error after error after error, mainly about modules missing and Lua script errors, so, I removed the location and did a new scan using CbB default locations which was successful, but importing X3 projects still showed missing VST's.

It’s unfortunate that you had those issues, but it is unusual (obviously not unheard-of). The SONAR-to-Cakewalk migration is designed to go as seamlessly as any other SONAR update and usually does.

[Noel Borthwick]

Were you using the 32 bit version of X3? VST’s that loaded in prior versions should definitely load as long as they have been scanned in CbB. Check your scan paths.

Edited April 11, 2023 by Noel Borthwick

[Noel Borthwick]

On 4/10/2023 at 1:55 AM, Starship Krupa said:

It’s unfortunate that you had those issues, but it is unusual (obviously not unheard-of). The SONAR-to-Cakewalk migration is designed to go as seamlessly as any other SONAR update and usually does.

I have literally never heard of this issue. There is no “migration” unless you are loading really old projects from the 90’s with the wrk file format! Products from the X series all load natively since the project files are backwards compatible. You mention LUA scripts - that is not specific to Cakewalk perhaps some third party wrapper is throwing those errors.

Edited April 11, 2023 by Noel Borthwick