Bounce to Clips Slow

[johnegenes@gmail.com]

I've been asking a lot of questions here of late, and I'm appreciative of all the answers. It's really helped a lot in getting settled in with Bandlab's version of Cakewalk. I'm a very longtime user of CW, settling on Sonar 8.5 for years. I installed Producer, Platinum, X3, etc, and never really fell in love with the complicated interface, so I just kept using 8.5. I still use it to do my weekly radio show, since it's so simple, and it still works for the most part. 

Now that I'm getting into Cakewalk Bandlab, I'm sorting a few issues here and there (thanks again for your help...). Here's another issue, though it's not a deal breaker: 

Bouncing to clips, or freezing a track (essentially the same thing) is VERY slow. I have opened the same project in Sonar 8.5 and in CW Bandlab. Both projects work fine, are not overloaded with FX, etc. In fact, the project is a test one, and only has 1 track, with an EQ and a compressor plugged in. 

In Sonar 8.5 it takes less than 3 seconds to bounce to CLIPS. In Cakewalk Bandlab (Ver 2022.11, build 021) it takes almost a minute. This is for a 3 minute mono track. Also, it's slightly quicker in both DAWs if I freeze all tracks beforehand, but in CW Bandlab, it hardly makes a difference. 

Bouncing to TRACKS also takes a long time, as does a quick bounce of a project. Sonar 8.5 will do a quick export of an entire project in about 30 seconds. CW Bandlab takes almost 3 minutes for the same project. And no, I'm not bouncing in real time. To be honest, for a short song, bouncing in real time is quicker! [grin]. 

Not complaining.... just curious as to why it takes so long to do quick bounces in CW Bandlab. I've checked all my ASIO settings, sound card (Focusrite 8i6), and all seem to be working fine. 

[gustabo]

Do you have fast freeze or real time enabled?

[OutrageProductions]

Same sample rate & bit depth? Dither on or off? (IIRC CbB defaults to dither ON, at least on my system.)

[johnegenes@gmail.com]

@gustabo: fast freeze  (also, fast "bounce to clips")

@OutrageProduction: 44.1,  24 bit; Dither = off 

[John Vere]

You have my curiosity I still have 8.5 on my old W7 DAW.  

I export dozens of projects in a day sometimes when updating my backing tracks. Those are all similar and only midi. But there’s a minimum of 5 instrument tracks and then some processing on the master bus including the LP multi band which is a CPU killer. Those projects at the most takes 1 min. To export.  48/24 dithering on.  

Only thing I noticed that slows down the export is this one organ I use sometimes called Colla B. It’s also slow to load.  
 

A quick test would be open a basic template project and drop a 3 min audio file. Now export that.  I just did this and it took about 30 seconds. 
And my computer is 13 years old.  But I do use SSD drives. 

[Xoo]

8.5 is 32 bit version?

[johnegenes@gmail.com]

@kperry: 8.5 is the 64 bit version. I've pretty much switched to 64 bit, though I do run some older 32 bit plugins. It runs Bitbridge in the background, and I see that Bitbridge launches with CW Bandlab as well. Almost all of my projects are now ported over from Sonar 8.5 to CW Bandlab and are working just fine. Just having some problems with a couple of them. But generally, bouncing to clips, exporting audio (quick bounces) is MUCH slower in CW Bandlab. I have some freezing/crashing problems with a couple of projects, which I'm troubleshooting, and will likely post a question about them here. I'm pretty sure they're tied to plugins somehow, and might also be tied to the slowness in bouncing tracks. We'll see... Thanks. 

[Bruno de Souza Lino]

I'm also curious because I have more or less the same issue, but in a different place.

Sample rate conversion is also extremely slow as well in comparison to other DAWs which seem to be able to either do all tracks at once or do them in sequence only presenting them once they're all done. CbB does one track at a time and taking a few seconds for each. A single multi track session which needs to be converted might take several minutes to happen depending on the number of tracks it has. Either things which should be extremely fast, like converting a 44.1 to a 48k fine of the same type takes the same amount of time as converting from a different format.

Edited May 3, 2023 by Bruno de Souza Lino

[johnegenes@gmail.com]

@Bruno:  yes, I'm hoping they get this sorted soon. It's not a deal-breaker, as far as using Cakewalk is concerned, and I'll stick with it. But it IS a bit aggravating. I have both the new Cakewalk and Sonar 8.5 installed, and am slowly migrating projects to the new CW. But 8.5 is so solid and reliable that I spend most of my time there, still. I also have paid for X2, X3,  Platinum, and others over the years, but ended up going back to 8.3 every time, because of various issues like this. I actually prefer the simple interface in Sonar to the more complicated ones in X3, Platinum, and now Cakewalk Bandlab. But I recognize the necessity to move on, with newer software and plugins, etc. Again, hopefully they'll get the bounce (conversion) issues sorted. 

[Bruno de Souza Lino]

I had to change the length of some tracks for a project and the slow behavior was worse. Then I went to Reaper and doing the exact same thing is instantaneous, even on all tracks at once.

[sjoens]

I'm curious as I haven't experienced slow behavior. Just bounced a single 5 min audio clip in less than 2 sec. Then I Exported a 6 min song with 8 audio tracks and NO plugins in less than 4 sec.  Result was a 100 MB wave file.  Then I Exported a similar 6 min song with 7 unrendered softsynths and 3 plugins in less than 1 min. All @48/24. Same song Exported to highest quality mp3 took 1:15 min to make a 13 MB file.

Rendering, Freezing and Bouncing individual clips/tracks & plugins 1st should speed up the Export process.

There may also be other background processes going on affecting the slow down.

[Bruno de Souza Lino]

1 hour ago, sjoens said:

There may also be other background processes going on affecting the slow down.

In my case, I wanted a single clip to be played at half the speed, so I used "Process-Length" and set that to 200%. On a 4 minute mono track, that took about 5 minutes to happen. Then I go on Reaper, with the exact same clip, open its properties, set the playback rate to half and as soon as I confirm it, it's done. No mixing down of audio or progress bar.

[OutrageProductions]

You guys both have something funky running in the background. Have you fed the  processor gerbils lately?

Here on my machine, I just did the same operation as @Bruno de Souza Lino mentioned on a 48k/24bit stereo Wav file from 2:27 to 4:54 (twice as long), and it took 3.27 seconds to complete.

Interestingly enough, on the exact SAME mix printed as an MP3 at 192k and imported into CW in a 48k/24 session, the same process took 4.02 seconds to stretch 200%.

Edited May 4, 2023 by OutrageProductions

[sjoens]

I repeated your scenario with a 6 min mono audio clip using Elastic Pro and it took 8 sec.

However, for some reason when I tried to bounce the processed clip I got a "Catastrophic failure" error. "Process>Length" may not need to be bounced but it shouldn't flash an error either.

So I slip-stretched it 200% and bounced it... took 10 sec. These times may be slower than Reaper but not unreasonable IMO. (worth about  -0.2¢)

There's no doubt "newer" DAWs are more efficient at handling certain tasks, but the times I'm seeing in this thread are far from normal for Sonar/CbB.

Are you running Reaper and CbB at the same time? Try closing all other programs, including antivirus,  before processing or exporting.

[johnegenes@gmail.com]

@sjoens: yes, I tend to agree that there are probably some background processes going on. I have written a script for a batch file that I keep on my desktop. I click the icon, it opens Task Manager, and it kills all the processes listed in the file. I can add or delete files from it. I use it before I open my recording programs, just to keep my computer free from extraneous activities. 
I have my antivirus shut down, have disconnected from the internet, and have a very minimal number of processes going. I've checked, and when I use Sonar 8.5 (which bounces very rapidly), these same background processes are going. So whatever's going on, it's likely a process within Cakewalk. Hoping they can address this. 

[johnegenes@gmail.com]

@Outrage Productions: I agree, it seems like there's something funky running in the background, but my computer is relatively free of extraneous programs and clutter. It might be a Registry thing, too, but I have no idea how to figure that one out. When I look at the Cakewalk Logs, my eyes glaze over. I have no real idea what I'm looking at [grin]. 

I have cleaned up my Registry and have reinstalled Cakewalk from scratch. Though it does share the same Plugins folder as Sonar 8.5, I see no conflicts there. Everything else seems to be running fine. It's just that the Bounce to Clips is very slow. Oh, and Freezing a track is slow (which is essentially, Bounce to Clips). Exporting an entire song is painful. 

[sjoens]

Outrage out times me, but he has better system specs.

Mine: Win 11 laptop Intel i7 12700H 2.3GHz 16GB ram

Edited May 4, 2023 by sjoens

[sjoens]

I have Sonar 8.3 on this system so I'll have to compare it with CbB.

Edit: Took 5 sec to Process>Length 200% the same 6 min clip here, as opposed to 8 sec with CbB. So CbB is slower than old Sonar, but I think it uses a different process.

Edited May 4, 2023 by sjoens

[Bruno de Souza Lino]

51 minutes ago, OutrageProductions said:

You guys both have something funky running in the background. Have you fed the  processor gerbils lately?

Here on my machine, I just did the same operation as @Bruno de Souza Lino mentioned on a 48k/24bit stereo Wav file from 2:27 to 4:54 (twice as long), and it took 3.27 seconds to complete.

Interestingly enough, on the exact SAME mix printed as an MP3 at 192k and imported into CW in a 48k/24 session, the same process took 4.02 seconds to stretch 200%.

Apparently, the funky thing running in the background only affects Cakewalk? Doing this operation in REAPER is instantaneous. I just apply it and it happens.

[OutrageProductions]

6 minutes ago, Bruno de Souza Lino said:

Apparently, the funky thing running in the background only affects Cakewalk?

Every DAW has a different algorithm for summation and export to file; so backgrounding, buffer addressing to the chip set,  and file maintenance will be slightly different.  The same operation in my Cubase 12P took  4.25 seconds, and in Nuendo took 6.4 seconds. I have PT available as well, but hate using it.
But a "fast-bounce" that, in essence, equates to "real time" is beyond question wrong, for whatever reasons.

Edited May 5, 2023 by OutrageProductions