Issue with multi processing and thread sync

[Will.]

[Lord Tim]

The mention of price and a competitor's product in every post is starting to sound like an ad, honestly.

There's a lot of things wrong with those replies in general, but we're fairly cool about leaving comparisons and chat about other DAWs on here, if for no other reason it can add perspective to the features that Cakewalk has and dispell a lot of misconceptions too when the devs come into a thread and explain things, like they have here (although this advice is being entirely ignored). But if this devolves into something that looks like there's an agenda, this thread will be removed or locked.

[OutrageProductions]

5 hours ago, Henrizzle said:

 I'm outta here, no more Cakewalk madness for me. 

Bye Felicia!

[Will.]

1 hour ago, Lord Tim said:

The mention of price and a competitor's product in every post is starting to sound like an ad, honestly.

Agreed!

Best to lock this thread. 

[Colin Nicholls]

Nothing wrong with using multiple DAWs. It's not a zero-sum game. I plan to have ALL the toys, eventually.

Studio One is a fine choice. So is Cakewalk. And stripping things down to try and diagnose the root cause is anything but "voodoo". It's the complete opposite.

[Larioso]

9 hours ago, Henrizzle said:

I just did another giant mix this morning in StudioOne, took about an hour and a half. Same mix as I have done in Cakewalk. In Cakewalk, it took weeks sometimes months because there seems to be this scratchy-ness that is mixed in and you can never get it to sound clear. I'm here to tell you, spend $99 on StudioOne, the cost of this free software is now your sanity. I'm outta here, no more Cakewalk madness for me. Good luck everyone and stop giving all the voodoo advise, the issue is plain and simple, this software is buggy and not maintained because it is free. 

So you just got married a month ago and now on your honey moon with your new partner.

- and think this happiness will last forever since you know your partner so well

 

I was married to your current spouse a couple of years ago and really wish you two well.

 

You used Cakewalk for 20 years successfully and now suddenly with the last project you run into some problems.

- and your 25 years of programming make you conclude this is nothing to do with your last project

- must be a programming error outside of your control

 

I suggested early in this thread you try change threadscheduling model to "1" since you will use legacy WaitForSingleObject to sync threads, which would be known to you as programmer.

- but you missed that completely as far as I can tell

- because you already knew what the problem was, and it was not on you

 

I had 6-7 feature requests on StudioOne Pro up to 4.7 and it became clear to me

- all this already exist in Sonar

- so went back to good old Sonar

 

StudioOne has no sysex support, no surround mixing support, no real track templates with busses and stuff, and looks is simplistic compared to Sonar and not much you can do about it either since no theme editor

- and I really hope you are not into realtime recording midi and CC, then you are in for a treat

- the honey moon will end abruptly...

[bvideo]

On 8/10/2023 at 11:50 AM, Simon Payne said:

Solved it Cakewalk. Make your plugin chainer apply the vsts in parallel as apposed to series. They can then properly distribute the processing over multiple cores and threads. Until then Blule Cats Patchwork dose the job. 

Perhaps you are thinking of processing the plugins in parallel while streaming audio data through the chain. Maybe a good name for it would be "plug-in load balancing". That name is already in use, however, in Cakewalk. It's the name of a feature that processes the plug-ins in parallel to distribute the load across multiple cores when possible.?

[Glenn Stanton]

On 8/20/2023 at 10:54 AM, Will. said:

We sometimes forget to do oversampling in a plugin or virtual instrument on a track.

oversampling is different than bit depth -- but both can impact the quality of what you hear. i think bit depth is more important for most people (24-bit vs 16-bit). sample rate after a certain point (imho 96Khz) is less detectable to most people, and definitely more storage space consuming.

https://www.izotope.com/en/learn/digital-audio-basics-sample-rate-and-bit-depth.html

?

[Michael Richards]

On 8/20/2023 at 1:03 PM, Henrizzle said:

I just did another giant mix this morning in StudioOne, took about an hour and a half. Same mix as I have done in Cakewalk. In Cakewalk, it took weeks sometimes months because there seems to be this scratchy-ness that is mixed in and you can never get it to sound clear. I'm here to tell you, spend $99 on StudioOne, the cost of this free software is now your sanity. I'm outta here, no more Cakewalk madness for me. Good luck everyone and stop giving all the voodoo advise, the issue is plain and simple, this software is buggy and not maintained because it is free. 

I have been using Cakewalk for more than 30 years and have never experienced scratchy-ness in my mixes. Also, I am not so quick to jump ship. Years ago I produced an industry (not this one) newsletter and many Mac people came to me saying "you can't do that with a PC." I did, and soon began to understand the lure of a Mac. It looks cool and more importantly doesn't have any issues, because you aren't using it. Once you use it, it will have issues. Guaranteed. If it doesn't, then you aren't pushing it. I have DPC problems with my powerful Dell. Once I spent several months trying to solve this problem I eventually found out that the problem has existed for years with different manufacturers, different motherboards, different video cards, etc.

Maybe you are correct and Cakewalk is scratchy, then you are very fortunate that you found a product that you could mix with in 90 minutes in what used to be in more than 30 days. 

[Max Arwood]

I have Definitely spent weeks and months on some mixes in cakewalk. I can promise you it had nothing to do with cakewalk lol!?

 

[Will.]

On 8/21/2023 at 6:19 PM, Glenn Stanton said:

oversampling is different than bit depth 

Uhmm! When did i say they were the same? Best you read that post again. 

[Glenn Stanton]

4 hours ago, Will. said:

Uhmm! When did i say they were the same? Best you read that post again. 

i only wanted to support your comment on oversampling as there is the potential for bit depth expansion in some cases as well - e.g. 32-bit float processing then truncated to 24-bit whilst performing the oversampling process as well.

[Will.]

4 hours ago, Glenn Stanton said:

i only wanted to support your comment on oversampling as there is the potential for bit depth expansion in some cases as well - e.g. 32-bit float processing then truncated to 24-bit whilst performing the oversampling process as well.

Apologies then. Appreciate your input.  I do agree with that actually. 

Edited August 23, 2023 by Will.

[Terry Kelley]

I know this an older thread (where's Byron when you need him) but the OP's "scratchy-ness" observation might be valid. I've been experiencing a scratchy-ness (sp) occasionally. 

It's hard to describe but seems to be related to the types of sounds/tracks being mixed. It sort of sounds like someone is very, very lightly crinkling cellophane. You spend time trying to figure out what it is to the point of frustration. I've been through oversampling, dithering, mixing with more headroom than should be needed, swapping FX, listening closely to the tracks totally dry to see if it's there. On and on. I can't reproduce it in my two other DAWs but also I can't create an identical mix either to compare either. But it's not there.

It's super subtle but it's there and you can't un-hear it. It is definitely some sort of artifact. And sometimes the content just doesn't manifest it.

I'm wondering if anyone sometimes gets this.

Edited April 30 by Terry Kelley

[Heath Row]

I could be wrong, but I think he's referring to the great Biro's snarky shots at people bringing to life old threads.

[David Baay]

11 hours ago, Terry Kelley said:

It's super subtle but it's there and you can't un-hear it. It is definitely some sort of artifact. And sometimes the content just doesn't manifest it.

Pics or it didn't happen, i.e. please share a project that manifests this.

[Terry Kelley]

When I get a chance I’ll fire up Cakewalk and look for one of the project versions  that did it.  I should have noted that it appears in the mixdown of highly layered tracks. 

But I’m looking for anyone else that might have sensed this same artifact.  It could be totally psycho-acoustic too for all I know. 

[David Baay]

It could be a lot of things, all of which are more likely than that there's an inherent flaw in Cakewalk's mix engine that could be resolved simply by moving to a different DAW with everything else being equal, and that hasn't been noticed by people who have done many, many dense mixes with CW over the years like Lord Tim.

[bvideo]

To eliminate certain artifact-producing settings, you could see if it happens with 64-bit audio set/not set and plug-in load balancing set/not set.

[Terry Kelley]

I agree. It could be anything and unless I can figure it out, it hampers its usefulness. No doubt TONS of great clean tracks are made on Cakewalk. Overall, I like Cakewalk over the others.

I’ve been up and down the preferences, VSTs, FX, levels, interfaces, etc. trying stuff but I have  to export each time to test it. There are times when turning off dithering appeared to clear it up.  But with the new Sonar pricing limits I have been testing other DAWs and haven’t run into but it could certainly rear its head. 

Again, since it’s difficult to nail I was wondering if anyone else notices it (and it sounds like the OP did if we are talking the same thing. ) Then we can compare notes. 

Maybe I am suffering from Harrison Mixbus syndrome. LOL. People say it has a better sound but my listening and null tests don’t show it. 
 

I think some of the OPs other comments aren’t justified.

Edited April 30 by Terry Kelley