Cakewalk Regularly Crashing and Freezing

[Stephen Power]

Windows 11, i5, 64GB Ram. Asio driver.

Cakewalk (latest version, up to date), has become very unstable in the last few weeks. I get 'is not responding' freezes and/or shut down crashes every 3 or times I make changes, or add a plugin, or even try to close the project.

Also, when it does close, it is not closing fully, and I have to go into Task Manager to 'end task'.

Any help on what to do about it is welcome.

Edited May 21 by Stephen Power

[Wookiee]

2 hours ago, Xoo said:

That's actually the Realtek one - ASIO4All can definitely have issues with grabbing audio ports and not letting go which can cause people problems - so it's thought easier to just warn/block it.

So ASIO4all from Realtek is not the same ASIO4all that other use, strange as the ASIO4all name is copyright protected, which means, to me, it is the same driver, just a different supplier. 

But I don't care to be honest. The recommendation is to use the ASIO driver your interface supplier writes. Personally if an interface manufacturer doesn't supply their own ASIO driver, then I wouldn't buy their interface irrespective of how many bells and whistles it came with.

[Xoo]

No, Realtek provide an ASIO driver which fails the check routines; ASIO4All is a wrapper ASIO driver that passes but had issues with CbB and.Sonar.

[Wookiee]

57 minutes ago, Xoo said:

No, Realtek provide an ASIO driver which fails the check routines; ASIO4All is a wrapper ASIO driver that passes but had issues with CbB and.Sonar.

It was said within these forums that ASIO4all failed the test, not the Realtek ASIO driver.

Again ASIO4all is WDM/KS Windows XP driver in a wrapper to make it appear like ASIO. Required back in the 90's when interface makers were not providing their own ASIO driver, which upset Cubase.

[Xoo]

No, the Realtek one is the one that fails.  Go and find the threads about it.

ASIO4All (and others) are also a way for DAW creators to only have to support an ASIO interface (API), rather than having to write for WDM, WASAPI, ASIO, MME...a different but entirely reasonable difference from how Cakewalk have done things.

Edited May 23 by Xoo

[msmcleod]

2 hours ago, Xoo said:

No, the Realtek one is the one that fails.  Go and find the threads about it.

ASIO4All (and others) are also a way for DAW creators to only have to support an ASIO interface (API), rather than having to write for WDM, WASAPI, ASIO, MME...a different but entirely reasonable difference from how Cakewalk have done things.

Correct.

To be clear though, the issue with ASIO4ALL specifically is, once opened, it then opens ALL of the audio devices in WDM mode and keeps hold of them, which can cause issues if you then try to either open or use the native ASIO driver.

Cakewalk evaluates the available ASIO devices on start up, so if it happens to open ASIO4ALL first, then it causes problems with some devices when trying to open the native ASIO driver.

Too may noobs were installing ASIO4ALL just because some YouTuber suggested it, then blamed Cakewalk for it performing badly and/or causing issues.

The Realtek ASIO driver is just plain broken and definitely WILL cause issues in Cakewalk - constant hanging / freezing up is typical with that driver.