2023.09 Feedback

[David Baay]

12 minutes ago, User 905133 said:

Note an output port seems to be missing.

Make sure it's enabled/checked under MIDI Devices in Preferences.

[User 905133]

24 minutes ago, David Baay said:

Make sure it's enabled/checked under MIDI Devices in Preferences.

Excellent point.  I was about to add an update to my post.  The missing port cannot be selected in preferences.  ?

I have found some some TTSSEQ.INI files (for a possible comparison) on my older Audio PC where I used up to 4 identical devices. As I noted, two identical devices worked.  With three there were occasional issues, but with four there frequent issues.

Unfortunately, for the last TTSSEQ.INI (Feb 2020), it looks like I might not have enabled multiple MIDI Outs on the 2x2 interfaces. So a comparison would not be helpful.

I might still have some pngs of the MIDI devices section from the Preferences from before I started exploring the possibility of "going soft" (i.e., using plug-ins instead of hardware).

Still, it is odd that other software (MIDI-OX, Voltage Modular, Kushview Elements) all show the port CbB is missing and allow it to be used (verified multiple times).  

 

Edited September 23, 2023 by User 905133

[David Baay]

9 minutes ago, User 905133 said:

I was about to add an update to my post.  The missing port cannot be selected in preferences. 

So it's not present to be checked in MIDI Devices, but it's available to other apps? I've never tried to use two identical devices so not sure how they're enumerated in Windows, but if other apps have no trouble, CbB should be able to handle it.

[Art Munson]

Noticed a small bug in the 2023.09 update. I can no longer select only one option in the Time Ruler Format. It's now always, any two. This is not the case in earlier versions.  Am I missing something?

[User 905133]

1 hour ago, David Baay said:

So it's not present to be checked in MIDI Devices, but it's available to other apps? 

  Correct.

Also, in addition to Home Studio (from 2017) on my current Audio PC, all 4 output ports are listed and available to CbB (as well as MIDI-OX and Voltage Modular) on my previous Audio PC with 2021.06 build 057.

Again, I can't pinpoint if this issue is new to 2023.09 (current build) or when it might have been introduced.

1 hour ago, David Baay said:

. . .  if other apps have no trouble, CbB should be able to handle it.

  Thanks.

FWIW, here is what the TTSSEQ.INI file looks like with 2021.06:

• [MIDI Input Devices]
  • 0=E-MU Xmidi 2x2
  • 1=MIDIIN2 (E-MU Xmidi 2x2)
  • 2=E-MU XMidi2X2
  • 3=MIDIIN2 (E-MU XMidi2X2)
• MaxInPort=3
• [MIDI Output Devices]
  • 0=E-MU Xmidi 2x2
  • 1=MIDIOUT2 (E-MU Xmidi 2x2)
  • 2=E-MU XMidi2X2
  • 3=MIDIOUT2 (E-MU XMidi2X2)
• MaxOutPort=3
• [MIDI Echo Devices]
• MaxEchoPort=-1

This using the same 2x2 interfaces which used to be able to access all 4 outputs on my current Audio PC. All are available in preferences, all are checked,

Hope this helps.

Edited September 23, 2023 by User 905133
to add contents of a TTSSEQ.INI file showing all ports are seen

[User 905133]

18 hours ago, User 905133 said:

 Also, in addition to Home Studio (from 2017) on my current Audio PC, all 4 output ports are listed and available to CbB (as well as MIDI-OX and Voltage Modular) on my previous Audio PC with 2021.06 build 057.

Again, I can't pinpoint if this issue is new to 2023.09 (current build) or when it might have been introduced.

UPDATE: I am seeing the same problem (CbB missing a MIDI Output) with 2021.12 build 102, 2022.11 build 13, 2022.11 build 22. So, not new with 2023.09.  Not sure if I can narrow down the cause of the issue further. 

NOTE: It is entirely possible that there is something on my current audio computer that is causing attempts at installing older versions of Cakewalk to also be missing an output port that other music software sees.

Edited September 24, 2023 by User 905133
additional details added

[Michael Vogel]

Will there be an update to the Reference Guide to include any changes and updates since the 2022 release of the guide? 

[Keni]

Just thought I should mention... Likely new with this update based on the number of others with what seem related MIDI issues...

I rarely use Iris 2 but as I discovered an update, I started playing with it afterwards...

Same here... I'm using Bias Amp on a guitar track which is a first here...

While going through the Iris sample library I discovered that somehow, sound of some kind was getting into my guitar track and even triggering sound in the fx sends for the guitar track!

I scrutinized every i/o on the page and found if I disable Bias Amp, it goes away! Ao I further scrutinized Bias Amp and found no control related to input...

Then after a number of other ideas, I started changing midi inputs to noe and found it went away! Aha! A lead?

My MIDI input defaults to All External Inputs...

I changed that to include only my MIDI keyboard/controller and... Voila! Problem solved this way. Closer to the root?

So... What's going on here somehow through the Bias Amp plugin, it's accepting  some lind of input as External which it obviously is not Connected to the Bias Amp plugin as not experienced this anywhere else ever before... MIDI and Audio having cross instrument/track effect on one another?

 

[David Baay]

3 hours ago, Keni said:

sound of some kind was getting into my guitar track and even triggering sound in the fx sends for the guitar track!

What kind of sound? It doesn't make sense that having a MIDI track echoing All Exernal Inputs would result in live audio getting into (and out of) some audio track. Did the guitar track have Input Echo enabled or does Bias Amp have a side-chain input? It seems most likely Bias Amp can accept MIDI input (e.g. from a pedal board) and was somehow receiving MIDI via some other MIDI track echoing to it and generating some kind of output from it, but then restricting the MIDI input on the Iris track should not have had any effect. I don't think Iris2 offers MIDI OUT (?), so it should have been a dead end for incoming MIDI, regardless of the source.

Edited September 24, 2023 by David Baay

[Keni]

1 hour ago, David Baay said:

What kind of sound? It doesn't make sense that having a MIDI track echoing All Exernal Inputs would result in live audio getting into (and out of) some audio track. Did the guitar track have Input Echo enabled or does Bias Amp have a side-chain input? It seems most likely Bias Amp can accept MIDI input (e.g. from a pedal board) and was somehow receiving MIDI via some other MIDI track echoing to it and generating some kind of output from it, but then restricting the MIDI input on the Iris track should not have had any effect. I don't think Iris2 offers MIDI OUT (?), so it should have been a dead end for incoming MIDI, regardless of the source.

Exactly the things that were confusing me!

Guitar is an audio track with Bias amp in the fx bin

Pair of tracks MIDI/Audio for the Iris 2 synth

Input echo enabled only on the MIDI track.

No side chain or other routing I can find in any of the plugins or in my Cake paths...

Narrowed it down finally to being somehow midi related. I'm not hearing the actual synth on the guitar track, just a noise enough to even feed the reverb/delay downstream on the guitar track. That's what caught my attention. I went looking to turn off the delay in the Iris patch and found there was none! ?

The solution was easy for now though there could be trouble in more complex situations, but somehow, some kind of midi action coming from  Bias Amp was looping as if external! That's where I realized my solution. I changed the Iris MIDI input to Exclusively my midi controller/keyboard instead of the ALL External Inputs" selection that it defaults to and has been fine for me until now...

But how could the Bias send out midi that Cake reads as External when it is an Internal plugin to begin with?

 

 

[David Baay]

1 hour ago, Keni said:

Narrowed it down finally to being somehow midi related. I'm not hearing the actual synth on the guitar track, just a noise enough to even feed the reverb/delay downstream on the guitar track.

Makes me think it's due to actual physical electro-magnetic interference between the MIDI/Audio sections of your interface, triggered by having CbB open all MIDI ports on the interface for input. Does your system have physical MIDI ports other than USB MIDI from your keyboard?

[Sunshine Dreaming]

On 9/21/2023 at 4:38 PM, Milton Sica said:

I started to receive audio abandonment (9) more consistently, which is recommended to increase the MIDI preparation buffers.
However, I am already at the maximum allowed (1000) and I continue to receive such abandonment.

This now happens with this version.

I get similar dropout error, but code (5), 

I will try to deactivate EIST in BIOS. However, recently the dropouts occurrances increased.  These dropout issues occured also before the latest update. For long time they did not occur, but I froze some tracks with the "freeze" button and thought this would improve speed, and yes CPU usage is much lower, but now these dropouts...

Besides this, overall the 2023.09 version is working very well!

UPDATE: I just noticed the help page https://legacy.cakewalk.com/Documentation?product=Cakewalk&language=1&help=0x20280  and I changed the buffer size for playback in "Audio > Synchronisierung und Cache" from 256 to 1000.

Since that change now it seems to work ok. No dropout since minutes!! Even without touching EIST settings.  Seems to be solved for now. The default value maybe should be higher.

SOLVED! No dropouts anymore.

 

UPDATE: 

I also changed Audio > Configuration File > DropoutMsec = 500    (default 250)

Edited November 13, 2023 by Sunshine Dreaming
help page noticed

[Keni]

53 minutes ago, David Baay said:

Makes me think it's due to actual physical electro-magnetic interference between the MIDI/Audio sections of your interface, triggered by having CbB open all MIDI ports on the interface for input. Does your system have physical MIDI ports other than USB MIDI from your keyboard?

Yes, I have 5pin din MIDI with my Audio interface. I use it to connect with my old ger when needed...

 

All Ports are not selected.... All EXTERNAL Ports was selected... That should not include ANY info from an INTERNAL synth! And creating minute audio? What's that all about? I'm sending MIDI from my keyboard. It's a controller and has no audio?

 

[David Baay]

Yes, I understood 'All External'; Note that I said "all MIDI ports on the interface" , meaning hardware INs. As an aside, CbB will also see ports provided by things like virtual MIDI cables as 'External' (to CbB), but that  may not be relvant here.

As for MIDI making sound, that's why I suggested it might be due to interference at the hardware level. It's not clear that Iris2 has anyting to do with the issue, it could just be that selecting All External Ports would have called all MIDI drivers to open their IN ports which could have consequences at the hardware level. Just speculation at this point, but given the strangeness of the symptoms, something that needs to be condsidered.

[Keni]

15 minutes ago, David Baay said:

Yes, I understood 'All External'; Note that I said "all MIDI ports on the interface" , meaning hardware INs. As an aside, CbB will also see ports provided by things like virtual MIDI cables as 'External' (to CbB), but that  may not be relvant here.

As for MIDI making sound, that's why I suggested it might be due to interference at the hardware level. It's not clear that Iris2 has anyting to do with the issue, it could just be that selecting All External Ports would have called all MIDI drivers to open their IN ports which could have consequences at the hardware level. Just speculation at this point, but given the strangeness of the symptoms, something that needs to be condsidered.

I understand.

A big part of my own "confusion" in this scenario is that it involves the use of two plugins that are unknowns to me. I’ve had Iris 2 but never used it and I just got bias amp 2 yesterday.

Interesting though. I knew that VSTs can spit out midi but seeing the option "all external inputs" inferred that there are internal inputs which I believed were such midi outputs from VSTs. External (to me) implies coming from outside the computer. Be it USB-MIDI or 5-pin DIN-MIDI.

And I still can’t find any settings in bias amp that relate to midi output routing.  Maybe something in Iris 2 is "open" and allowing the interference? Well obviously it's passing midi from my keyboard but some option left open being affected?

Edited September 25, 2023 by Keni

[GreenLight]

On 9/23/2023 at 1:51 PM, John T said:

Have noticed a behaviour change with the new update.

Previously, I had auto crossfade on all the time, which is useful for my workflow, but I could use S (or ALT+click) to split a clip without it doing a crossfade, which is also useful for me.

Now having auto crossfade on also crossfades S-splits. Is there a way to get the old behaviour back? Switching auto crossfade on and off is slowing me down quite a bit.

I just noticed this new behavior as well (it's mentioned in the release notes under "Misc" as "Inconsistent AutoXFade with split clips"). Even if it's a small feature change, I think it's a pretty "big deal" workflow-wise that the Automatic crossfade  setting now also affects split operations and I think it's good to spread the word.

It's potentially a huge time-saver! But I can definitely see a use case where it would be good to be able to directly perform splits with and without crossfades, without having to toggle Automatic crossfades first. Maybe two different keyboard shortcuts would be something for the new Cakewalk Sonar?

Edited September 25, 2023 by GreenLight
Reformulated stuff. :)

[Shinjiman]

I've just updated CbB to version 2023.09 build 062 and prompted to sign in using a Bandlab account. After sign in the Cakewalk app still unable to activate the product with error code 4008, although it shows "Sign out from Bandlab (username)" in the Help menu after signing in. Tried to restart either CbB app and it would be the same.

[Will.]

12 hours ago, GreenLight said:

I just noticed this new behavior as well (it's mentioned in the release notes under "Misc" as "Inconsistent AutoXFade with split clips"). Even if it's a small feature change, I think it's a pretty "big deal" workflow-wise that the Automatic crossfade  setting now also affects split operations and I think it's good to spread the word.

It's potentially a huge time-saver! But I can definitely see a use case where it would be good to be able to directly perform splits with and without crossfades, without having to toggle Automatic crossfades first. Maybe two different keyboard shortcuts would be something for the new Cakewalk Sonar?

I'm not in studio now to check for this, but i think you need to switch Ripple All on. 

[Will.]

On 9/23/2023 at 1:51 PM, John T said:

Have noticed a behaviour change with the new update.

Previously, I had auto crossfade on all the time, which is useful for my workflow, but I could use S (or ALT+click) to split a clip without it doing a crossfade, which is also useful for me.

Now having auto crossfade on also crossfades S-splits. Is there a way to get the old behaviour back? Switching auto crossfade on and off is slowing me down quite a bit.

Not in studio now. Try switching Ripple All on and see if it fixes your issue. 

Edited September 26, 2023 by Will.

[Herky Acuff]

It was a quick and easy install and activation on my end. Seems to be working same as always.