Bakers, bread overbacken, or what?

[Dare Rihter]

Hi All,

reported already bunch of bugs to Bandlab, but like in "Nevermind" post, it seems doesn't make sense because nobody listen. Dear Cakewalk bakers (currently destroyers), when You'll bake some edible bread again? This last release is catastrophic failure and maybe is good idea to write word or two to Your users to explain, what You intend to do to stabilize this crap instead of hiding Your heads into the sand leaving Your ***** outside and pretending it's not important who is kicking Your nuts.   

Please do not reply me with another crap. 

BR, Dare

[Robert Bone]

FYI - the development and support staff have a long history, like decades, of listening, and as far back as I can remember, every single monthly maintenance release has included fixes to user-reported problems.  Additionally, the support folks actually frequently post at all hours and including on many weekends - not sure if you were aware of that or not.

They do have a bit of a balancing act every month, as to which issues they can address in time to meet the schedule for a given month, and the triage process does try to give the user community the most bang for the buck, in terms of what gets addressed - things like widely-experienced crashes or widespread workflow disruptions, are obviously given critical priority, whereas highly-localized bugs may or may not get addressed quite as expeditiously.

Part of the decision making process includes potentially addressing multiple bug fixes in a given section of code, if they are already going into that section of code for some other development or maintenance, for example, if some scrolling error is getting addressed, perhaps some other defect or functionality enhancement deals with that same section of code - that may make a good candidate for including addressing that set of issues in the same monthly release.

Perhaps others in the forum community have run into whatever issues you are currently having - or even just some of them, and if you post whatever details you can, in the Cakewalk by Bandlab forum, perhaps someone can help diagnose the issue - which may in and of itself help the support folks understand the issue better, or perhaps someone who has found a workaround to that issue could post some guidance that might help you until support can address an issue, or, perhaps a given issue is something local to your particular computer's environment, and perhaps with assistance from the forum community, maybe that issue can be resolved by some adjustment to your environment.

I believe the best chances for finding solutions to whatever issues you are having, will come from detailing those issues in the Cakewalk by Bandlab forum, or whatever forum would be most appropriate, and for things like hard crashes, sending dumps and/or mini-dumps to support would help.

Best wishes for success in your getting past whatever issues you have been experiencing, in any case.

Bob Bone

 

[Dare Rihter]

Hi,

I think I sent enough to support team, to get an idea, that things were broken with last releases, the only thing changed on my system was last installed CW version, because on my machine Microsoft is not factor, who dictates all those "urgent" windows upgrades. "Whatever issues i have" are showstoppers produced with so carefully selected "bugfixes" and "improvements", that not so long ago good product goes some alpha state software with obviously inadequate testing (bugs are product of inadequate testing, not programmers errors). Working 30 yrs on software from programmer to top level management and i know almost all about software development. It's touching, when support is dying because of fact, that bug list is growing and growing, believe I get tears in my eyes when somebody tries me to explain, why support works days and nights to compensate mainly management errors and bad decisions, but tears unfortunatelly doesnt help. Entropy is fast growing thing and without control (adding a lot of energy) becomes fatal. And CW is obviously in that stage of life. So, maybe You believe, that more or less political advices will help, but bad news again - forum members or poor support staff cannot solve programmers/testers mistakes or bad organization. Only some diff tool to compare, what is destroyed between versions and reverts if team is not capable to add new features without breaking old WORKING functionalities will help.

Welcome to further debate about my rare and highly specific troubles. Or better kick a** somebody in CW dev team. Suppose, nobody else has troubles like me? Or end users accept testing just because software is free (until it's tested enough, that can be selled to the same users?).

Best wishes for success with political excuses for bad software

Dare Rihter

[Robert Bone]

Well - I will clarify my rationale behind my comments. 

I wasn't trying to excuse or even defend anything - I simply laid out how life in the realm of Cakewalk is currently working.  (and, for whatever the worth, there are actually quite a few folks in the forums with multiple decades of IT experience - I clock in at 38 years, and there are several folks with careers in the field, some with more time in than mine).

And, if you choose not to engage the forum community with whatever your specific issues are, that is obviously your option, though I would suggest that since there AREN'T widespread posts about fatal crashes from the last update, well maybe your bulletproof machine's environment may have one or more things contributing to things failing on your system.  Without any of the details on any of your failing projects, like what we encourage folks to provide, in a 'recipe' (list) of steps that can replicate the failure, well nobody in the forum can possibly assist you.

If you end up choosing to give it a shot, with sharing the details of whatever is failing (or not producing the expected results if not actually crashing), perhaps between us all, we can at the very least confirm it being a general failure, versus one localized to your system, or potentially generate additional information to pass along to support, etc...

Bob Bone

 

[Bill Phillips]

10 hours ago, Dare Rihter said:

Welcome to further debate about my rare and highly specific troubles. Or better kick a** somebody in CW dev team. Suppose, nobody else has troubles like me? Or end users accept testing just because software is free (until it's tested enough, that can be selled to the same users?).

Best wishes for success with political excuses for bad software

Dare, really; who are you debating?

I'm sorry that you are experiencing so many "rare and highly specific showstopper" problems. I'm assuming that you are able to reproduce those problems, describe them in detail in your bug reports, and hopefully can send dump files are even example projects to the support folks. If not, support staff will probably have problems understanding and fixing the bugs you are seeing.

My problem is that I've been a on-again, off-again SONAR and now CbB user for 15 years and somehow I've always been able to use the SONAR/CbB to record and mix audio. I suppose I did experience "showstoppers" from time to time, but they must of been rare, because I don't remember any of them.

So I'm wondering if the problems you're seeing are more related to your DAW hardware, other applications and Windows 10 64x configuration than they are to CbB. Since, you are apparently unable to accomplish anything worthwhile, maybe now would be a good time to clean up, all of your resource/project harddrives, and clean install Windows 10 Creator Edition and CbB along with any other applications on your DAW.

[Dare Rihter]

Hi Bill,

I hope anybody from Bandlab is reading this forum and do something. I highly appreciate forum members trying to help, but... Debate or not, everybody can decide...

In fact, I feel better now, reading Your post, no matter nothing is solved for now. If You run latest CW version on configuration in Your footnote, working for 15 years with CW, I'll respect experience and comments and try to reinvestigate further with CW. And I'll try the same HW configuration in different DAWs with the same VSTs for the same project content.

Did You personally made clean install Win10 Creator to get working system? On that machine i have a lot of worthwhile software that must run for business purposes and that's not really easy decision for me. As SW engineer I know that for rare cases reinstall is the only option, but till now, all SW and OS issues solved with changed appropriates settings, not resetting... Everything worked, before on Windows 7 and later on Win10, just latest 2 or 3 CW versions breaks apart...  

BTW, do You use take lanes for recording? My latest problem on take lanes (multiple on one track) was dissapearing recorded audio materials and total mess up with recorded audio (weird clip splits, putting everything on last lane, some clips simply dissapeared, also from disk (!) etc). 

Thanks and BR, 

Dare

[Jeremy Jensen]

I'm another user who has not experienced a showstopping bug, ever, with Cakewalk/Sonar. Annoying quirks? Yes. Showstoppers. No. I'm not really sure what a Cakewalk person would do with this post, exactly. Especially since you're kind of being a jerk.

[Dare Rihter]

On 10/30/2019 at 7:25 PM, Jeremy Jensen said:

I'm another user who has not experienced a showstopping bug, ever, with Cakewalk/Sonar. Annoying quirks? Yes. Showstoppers. No. I'm not really sure what a Cakewalk person would do with this post, exactly. Especially since you're kind of being a jerk.

Jeremy. My writing speaks about me. Yours, about You. Your tolerancy is Your problem, my is my. If You do not have to say anything meaningful, better shut up instead of insulting. Reported my issues to Bandlab. Hoping that anybody reads about Your annoying quirks etc here. I wish You happy testing. Going to test some other software

P.S. Administrator: no comment. Maybe You must remove me and may posts to return happy no bugs mood to community, but i think You must also remove other insulting jerks. 

Best Regards

Dare

[Starship Krupa]

On 10/28/2019 at 7:25 PM, Robert Bone said:

there AREN'T widespread posts about fatal crashes from the last update

This.

Not to diminish the complaints of any specific user, but as has been pointed out before to other users who have claimed that Cakewalk must have suddenly taken a turn for the buggy/slow/crashy because it suddenly stopped working on their system, this forum would be exploding with complaints if that were the case.

The original post contains ad hominem attacks and negative speculation as to the competence and intentions of the management of the Cakewalk development staff, and nothing specific about the actual troubles the poster is having with the software. As such, it is a mystery what they intended to accomplish with it.

I can only add that I, too am a veteran of both software development and IT and have seen no degradation in the quality of the Cakewalk product over the last few builds. Quite the contrary, it has continued its overall upward path of bug elimination and feature enhancement.

I would suggest that the OP be patient and allow the support staff to do their job or do as suggested and begin with a Windows 10 fresh install.

[David Baay]

Steps:

 

Expected Result:

 

Actual Result:

[Mike B]

Hi @Dare Rihter! I just checked, and it looks like you've sent in 3 inquiries to Cakewalk's support staff, which were all after the latest build. If we find something reproducible and broken, our goal is to fix it, but we do have a roughly scheduled release timetable (which you may have already noticed). At present, we see releases every other month, and even started an Early Access program for users to check out builds prior to the official release. You may find it helpful to keep an eye out for those, and use the Early Access threads to point out any potential issues that still occur. Considering all of your requests were in a single cycle, I'm confident our team will continue working to resolve any issues you may be experiencing. 

Feel free to PM me if you have any concerns, or as stated in comments above, you can always start a thread here in the forum- just be sure to include the steps you've taken, the expected result, and the result you're experiencing. The users here are generally of quite a high caliber, and may be able to assist you even faster than our in-house staff. Use the forum to your advantage- we're all here to help! 

[Jeremy Jensen]

On 10/28/2019 at 6:21 PM, Dare Rihter said:

Hi All,

reported already bunch of bugs to Bandlab, but like in "Nevermind" post, it seems doesn't make sense because nobody listen. Dear Cakewalk bakers (currently destroyers), when You'll bake some edible bread again? This last release is catastrophic failure and maybe is good idea to write word or two to Your users to explain, what You intend to do to stabilize this crap instead of hiding Your heads into the sand leaving Your ***** outside and pretending it's not important who is kicking Your nuts.   

Please do not reply me with another crap. 

BR, Dare

@Dare RihterThis is why I said you were being kind of a jerk. My words to you were far milder than the insults you flung at the Bakers.

[Robert Bone]

I had been engaged in the thread since the beginning, after seeing the initial posts, and was able to convey to him, that since there weren't widespread reports of crashes or major build issues, that the good news was that it meant that whatever was going, was quite likely local to his environment, and that if he were willing to engage, we could likely make some progress on getting things resolved for him.

He seems, for the moment, to have put using Cakewalk on hold, in pursuit of greener pastures with other software, and I also had indicated to him that virtually every piece of recording software I have, has some number of bugs - but no showstoppers.  I wished him luck.

At some point, he may reflect on some of what I had said to him, and if he does choose to give Cakewalk another shot, and has issues, I hope he chooses to engage with the forum folks, and that between everybody, maybe we can get his issues resolved.  

I wish to be as positive as possible, and hopeful, and maybe he will come back and find success using Cakewalk.

Bob Bone

 

 

[abacab]

13 hours ago, David Baay said:

Steps:

 

Expected Result:

 

Actual Result:

Exactly what is needed here to reproduce and confirm any real issues!!!

[Dare Rihter]

14 hours ago, Mike B said:

Hi @Dare Rihter! I just checked, and it looks like you've sent in 3 inquiries to Cakewalk's support staff, which were all after the latest build. If we find something reproducible and broken, our goal is to fix it, but we do have a roughly scheduled release timetable (which you may have already noticed). At present, we see releases every other month, and even started an Early Access program for users to check out builds prior to the official release. You may find it helpful to keep an eye out for those, and use the Early Access threads to point out any potential issues that still occur. Considering all of your requests were in a single cycle, I'm confident our team will continue working to resolve any issues you may be experiencing. 

Feel free to PM me if you have any concerns, or as stated in comments above, you can always start a thread here in the forum- just be sure to include the steps you've taken, the expected result, and the result you're experiencing. The users here are generally of quite a high caliber, and may be able to assist you even faster than our in-house staff. Use the forum to your advantage- we're all here to help! 

Hi, Mike  Cool. I did already. Let's repeat one of my posts recap:

1. Upgrade to new CW version as of BandLab

2. Expected to work as in previous version and hoping to get some bugfix

3. All mentioned in posts sent to You did not work

BTW, I'm not Your employee and I have no intention to test Cakewalk for free. I want to pay for working software. Unreal expectation? 

Currently moving to more stable DAW, I'll try CW some other time. Good luck.

And big THANKS forum users for patience with me, especially Robert Bone  

Best,

Dare

Edited November 1, 2019 by Dare Rihter

[Mike B]

Hey @Dare Rihter- thanks for your reply! When reaching out to any manufacturers support channels (including ours), you normally receive an auto response stating that most inquiries will receive a response within 24-48 hours within normal operating business hours. I did a bit of extra digging and see we actually received six inquiries of yours within a 24 hour span. In an effort to reduce the amount of separate response threads, our team replied with some additional information in one, with a separate followup in a second thread. Apologies if the lack of response to each was taken as not receiving help! While I was not personally involved, I'd be happy to pick up on those conversations if you do decide to give Cakewalk another shot. I'm confident we can work out any issues you were experiencing, but it may require some patience while I gather all the details and make sure all the ducks are in a row!

While I am aware that you are not an employee, the end user is the greatest resource we have. As much as I'd like to say our space is filled with hundreds of different computers and every plugin under the sun to test with, that just isn't the case. With PC's, everything inside the machine is customizable, and when using third party content (there are hundreds of plugin manufacturers), it would be a safe bet that not many rigs are identical. Having users help us identify issues allows us to resolve them, and release updates accordingly. Within our update cycle, we work on a fix, test the fix, send a build to our beta team, and even have an Early Access program in place before a production build is released. If there's truly something that needs to be changed within the program itself, that is something we can be proactive about, and utilize all of these resources for feedback. 

I understand if you choose to try another program. Like a musical instrument, the DAW is a tool for your craft, and it certainly doesn't hurt to work until you find the tools that are best for your workflow. Just know that you have a great support system here in our forum (guys like @Robert Bone are super helpful!), and our team internally is willing to help as well!

 

[Robert Bone]

Thanks to both @Mike B, and @Dare Rihter for the kind words.

I stand ready to assist you, Dare, to the best of my ability, should you choose to circle back to try to see where it all is with Cakewalk, at some point.  Just please shoot me a message whenever you are ready to give it another shot, and I will happily work with you to get you past any issues you run across, at that time. 

Bob Bone

 

[Starship Krupa]

11 hours ago, Dare Rihter said:

I want to pay for working software. Unreal expectation? 

In regard to Cakewalk by BandLab, it is. BandLab has promised that Cakewalk will remain free, and to the disappointment of several doomsayers, they have kept their promise with no sign of changing the policy.

So if your DAW experience must include paying for the license, you must indeed look elsewhere.

[Robert Bone]

On 10/31/2019 at 3:36 PM, Dare Rihter said:

Jeremy. My writing speaks about me. Yours, about You. Your tolerancy is Your problem, my is my. If You do not have to say anything meaningful, better shut up instead of insulting. Reported my issues to Bandlab. Hoping that anybody reads about Your annoying quirks etc here. I wish You happy testing. Going to test some other software

P.S. Administrator: no comment. Maybe You must remove me and may posts to return happy no bugs mood to community, but i think You must also remove other insulting jerks. 

Best Regards

Dare

Hi, Dare - just wanted to mention (meant to do it that night of your posts, but forgot) - I happen to be one of the forum moderators, and I deliberately chose not to scold you, or banish you, or any of that - because you did engage with me - following your initial venting of frustration.  We ALL can get frustrated when we get bogged down in problems that impact us working on the things we INTENDED to work on, when those problems force us to instead go through some number of hoops in dealing with resolving the unforeseen issues. 

SO, I did not negatively react to your initial post - other than to encourage you to engage and work with me - and others in the forum, to try to help you resolve whatever issues were causing your frustration.

And, while it is unfortunate that you have, at least for the moment, seemingly gone off to search for some other DAW software suite - I DO hope you return to give Cakewalk another shot - and perhaps also be a bit more willing to work with me, and the other folks in the forum, to get any issues worked out.

Take care - have a great day, and upcoming weekend, and may both be filled with the sounds of whatever music projects you are working on. 

Bob Bone

[Bill Phillips]

Dare, reading through your comments, it appears that you've abandoned CbB for now and are investigating other DAWs. That seems to be a good idea and will give you another point of reference. So my responses to your questions and explanations below probably won't be much use to you now.  But should you revisit CbB in the future, hopefully some of my responses will be useful then.

On 10/29/2019 at 11:04 AM, Dare Rihter said:

Did You personally made clean install Win10 Creator to get working system?

Yes, as you noted, clean installs are not as important now as they were in the past and they are time consuming, but I still like to start that way. I suggested it to you because the problems you were reporting seemed to be very unlikely which made me think there might be serious problems with your OS or other applications.

On 10/29/2019 at 11:04 AM, Dare Rihter said:

On that machine i have a lot of worthwhile software that must run for business purposes and that's not really easy decision for me.

This other software could be contributing significantly to your problem. You might want to check that out.

On 10/29/2019 at 11:04 AM, Dare Rihter said:

BTW, do You use take lanes for recording? My latest problem on take lanes (multiple on one track) was dissapearing recorded audio materials and total mess up with recorded audio (weird clip splits, putting everything on last lane, some clips simply dissapeared, also from disk (!) etc). 

I am trying to learn to use take lanes. So far they are a challenge. I've learned that doing things in the right order is really important, but I still have problems. One thing that I believe is recommended by documentation is turn of the Comp Smart Tool and then find the Mute tool which took me a while. The Mute tool can quickly undo selection mistakes. Take lanes seem to automatically split take clips that are longer than others which can also cause problems with things like drag moves that tend to leave the automatically generated clips behind or cover them up. I've still got a lot to learn here.