Project suddenly having audio engine dropout on play

[Quinellipe Zorn]

SOLVED - solution below (3rd post)

 

Hi,

A bit out of the blue, just after I updated to the most recent Cakewalk by Bandlab (I am not stating or presuming any causality or relationship at all, it's most likely coincidence, just noting I am on the most recent as of today, just loaded it), a project which I originated last Sunday and had functioned, now indicates "Audio Engine Dropout" and won't play anything as soon as I click on "play." 

The audio outputs, as far as I can see, seem to all go to Master, and the Master out is going to the same audio device output as other projects, which work fine, are, except for the two MIDI tracks which seem to go to identifiable and prior-functioning MIDI instrument tracks as they had before and seems correct.

I've tried deleting all the tracks out of that but one audio track (with no plugins) or one MIDI track + instrument track, same problem in either case.

I can open another Cakewalk project immediately after closing this one after it fails, and the other Cakewalk project works fine (there is no significant configuration difference between the projects).

I know I can recreate the non-playing project, and fortunately this project had just been started on Sunday with a few audio tracks, so it's easy enough to recreate from scratch.  But I'd like to find the issue/cause.  

Any ideas on where to look?    I seem to recall this happening before but it would have been years ago and I can't recall (if my memory is even correct that it happened to one single project like this) the issue.  I did try searching the forum but, surprisingly, no search results are found for "audio engine dropout."  Thank you.

Edited October 20, 2023 by Quinellipe Zorn
not to waste people's time but leave a record in case someone has same issue

[Quinellipe Zorn]

PS - this project is also quite small, just 2 MIDI tracks, each with a corresponding instrument track, and 4 audio tracks; I'm running 100+ track projects with no issue ongoing, as well as now, it's somehow just this one project (as far as I know as of now)

[Quinellipe Zorn]

AH, got it - somehow a 30 tick loop was set, and, yes, that was something that happened years back, too!

I was going to delete above but figured it might help to leave in case someone makes the same error and finds this before they get to realizing there's a nearly-invisible loop.