CbB 2024.12 Feedback

[Corg24]

I have had major latency issues since the update.  Had been working like a dream up until now.  Had been researching solutions when i found this forum.  
Running a Intel I7 2.93gh
16gb RAM
Win 10 Pro 22h2
asio 
interface is a Tascam US-1800
 

[Cobus Prinsloo]

Has anyone else had latency issues after the update?

[chris.r]

On 10/5/2024 at 1:46 PM, Cobus Prinsloo said:

Has anyone else had latency issues after the update?

I didn't check the latest version but I had to move back from 2023.09 to 2022.09 because I was getting annoying issues with latency when recording instrument takes (plugins, Kontakt, etc). Issues occurred at some point while working on the project, i.e. not in freshly new projects, not at the beginnings. Weird.

[StephanKim]

Hi everyone,

I'm using a multi-CPU system.

Recently, while working on some mixing projects, I noticed that the system load felt higher than usual.

You all probably know the kind of issues that come up in these situations, like the audio engine stopping or sound cutting out intermittently.

So, I opened Task Manager and found that only one of the two CPUs was being loaded.

I'm attaching some screenshots—one with the Plug-in Load Balance feature turned on and the other with it turned off.

Previously, the system would utilize all CPU cores, but something seems off now. 

And another thing, I noticed is that when the Plug-in Load Balance is enabled, the load is distributed more evenly, but instead of feeling more stable, it seems like the overall load is actually increasing.

What's the problem here?

I've noticed this before, which is why I often end up turning off the Plug-in Load Balance feature while using the program.

[Terry Kelley]

First off, none of the “cpu load” indicators are very accurate.  I’ve got projects that the processor can’t handle when using too many of a certain VST and neither the Cakewalk/ Sonar performance meter nor the Task Manager show it. Sure, they show an increase but nothin* goes red or bangs the ceiling. 
 

So don’t depend or focus  on them. They are often an interesting indicator but nothing more.
 

Focus on the cause of the problem which is almost always too small of a buffer or  a VST that inhales the processor and cores (like Arturia’s Augmented anything.) 

Edited October 28 by Terry Kelley

[pwallie]

sysinternals process explorer might give you more info

[Enissay Beats]

we want driver asio support like the new cakewalk sonar

 

[Jeremy Oakes]

23 hours ago, Enissay Beats said:

we want driver asio support like the new cakewalk sonar

 

AFAIA there is no difference. Both work as expected for me. What is your issue ?

J

[gustabo]

On 11/10/2024 at 1:12 PM, Enissay Beats said:

we want driver asio support like the new cakewalk sonar

 

It has ASIO driver support.

[StephanKim]

On 10/29/2024 at 2:22 AM, Terry Kelley said:

First off, none of the “cpu load” indicators are very accurate.  I’ve got projects that the processor can’t handle when using too many of a certain VST and neither the Cakewalk/ Sonar performance meter nor the Task Manager show it. Sure, they show an increase but nothin* goes red or bangs the ceiling. 
 

So don’t depend or focus  on them. They are often an interesting indicator but nothing more.
 

Focus on the cause of the problem which is almost always too small of a buffer or  a VST that inhales the processor and cores (like Arturia’s Augmented anything.) 

I’ve been using Sonar and Cakewalk for over 20 years.
This issue has only started happening recently, and it doesn’t seem to be related to any specific plugin but rather a change in the performance settings of the program itself.

The reason I say this is because I’m currently testing on a new workstation with a freshly installed Win11 OS(10, before), and CbB is still only utilizing one of the two CPUs.

It seems that in a recent version update, the behavior of the Multiprocessing Engine was changed—previously, it utilized all CPUs and cores, but now it appears to only use the cores of one CPU.

If a developer sees this post, I’d appreciate it if they could look into this.

[Nigel Mackay]

I have 12 cores. All 12 used with or without load balancing. My load is only enough to rise by 1 unit, but all 12 twinkle on and off, so all are being used. This is reflected in Resource Monitor.

[StephanKim]

On 10/22/2024 at 5:32 AM, StephanKim said:

Hi everyone,

I'm using a multi-CPU system.

Recently, while working on some mixing projects, I noticed that the system load felt higher than usual.

You all probably know the kind of issues that come up in these situations, like the audio engine stopping or sound cutting out intermittently.

So, I opened Task Manager and found that only one of the two CPUs was being loaded.

I'm attaching some screenshots—one with the Plug-in Load Balance feature turned on and the other with it turned off.

Previously, the system would utilize all CPU cores, but something seems off now. 

And another thing, I noticed is that when the Plug-in Load Balance is enabled, the load is distributed more evenly, but instead of feeling more stable, it seems like the overall load is actually increasing.

What's the problem here?

I've noticed this before, which is why I often end up turning off the Plug-in Load Balance feature while using the program.

I’m attaching screenshots from tests I conducted on the new system. All tests were performed with the same project.

I tested with the latest versions of both CbB and Sonar, and the results are even more extreme compared to the screenshots I shared earlier. It seems like one of the CPU cores/threads is completely unused.

Interestingly, Sonar appears to utilize some of the second CPU’s cores more than CbB does.(Sorry No screenshots saved in this time)

However, there was no difference in NUMA settings, and there weren’t any significant differences in the MMCSS configuration either.

I also discovered that my workstation system has a feature allowing me to view and adjust how processes set processor affinity. Upon checking, both CbB and Sonar showed similar behavior, with only partial utilization of one of the two CPUs.

I even tried forcing the process to use all cores, but this didn’t result in any significant changes.

Given that this behavior has been noticed recently (due to the perceived performance drop), I can’t help but wonder if it’s related to the latest updates to Windows 10 (on my previous system) or Windows 11 (on my current system).

I’m not a software engineer, so I don’t fully understand what might be causing this, but I hope someone with technical expertise can look into the issue.

It’s a bit confusing—if the software only uses one CPU, what’s the point of investing in an expensive multi-core system?

[David Baay]

17 hours ago, StephanKim said:

I’m not a software engineer, so I don’t fully understand what might be causing this, but I hope someone with technical expertise can look into the issue.

My expertise in this area is not great, either, but I've always been under the impression that dual-processor Xeon systems were not expecially great as DAW platforms primarily because they tend to run lower clock speeds, and overall DAW performance tends to benefit more from higher clock speeds than from having scads of cores.  In any case, if one CPU is not being utilized at all, I would expect that's more a function of how the system and O/S are presenting them to the application.

[pwallie]

i guess multi-core optimisation results depend on the multi-core system the dev is optimising against?

[StephanKim]

On 11/23/2024 at 9:55 AM, StephanKim said:

I’m attaching screenshots from tests I conducted on the new system. All tests were performed with the same project.

I tested with the latest versions of both CbB and Sonar, and the results are even more extreme compared to the screenshots I shared earlier. It seems like one of the CPU cores/threads is completely unused.

Interestingly, Sonar appears to utilize some of the second CPU’s cores more than CbB does.(Sorry No screenshots saved in this time)

However, there was no difference in NUMA settings, and there weren’t any significant differences in the MMCSS configuration either.

I also discovered that my workstation system has a feature allowing me to view and adjust how processes set processor affinity. Upon checking, both CbB and Sonar showed similar behavior, with only partial utilization of one of the two CPUs.

I even tried forcing the process to use all cores, but this didn’t result in any significant changes.

Given that this behavior has been noticed recently (due to the perceived performance drop), I can’t help but wonder if it’s related to the latest updates to Windows 10 (on my previous system) or Windows 11 (on my current system).

I’m not a software engineer, so I don’t fully understand what might be causing this, but I hope someone with technical expertise can look into the issue.

It’s a bit confusing—if the software only uses one CPU, what’s the point of investing in an expensive multi-core system?

I have found a reason for this issue.  I will post about it through a new topic

[Noel Borthwick]

On 11/21/2024 at 11:41 PM, StephanKim said:

I’ve been using Sonar and Cakewalk for over 20 years.
This issue has only started happening recently, and it doesn’t seem to be related to any specific plugin but rather a change in the performance settings of the program itself.

The reason I say this is because I’m currently testing on a new workstation with a freshly installed Win11 OS(10, before), and CbB is still only utilizing one of the two CPUs.

It seems that in a recent version update, the behavior of the Multiprocessing Engine was changed—previously, it utilized all CPUs and cores, but now it appears to only use the cores of one CPU.

If a developer sees this post, I’d appreciate it if they could look into this.

Please post this in the Sonar forum. CbB is not in development anymore other than getting minor maintenance updates. Sonar has a lot of CPU optimizations comparatively. The latest Sonar version we just shipped also has some more CPU core optimizations. Plugin load balancing is greatly improved in Sonar as well.

You can send me a PM and we can check if Sonar is using all the cores exposed by the OS. If the OS exposes all cores used by dual processor Sonar will use them. Sonar is in fact unaware that there are actually dual processors in use since the OS abstracts that information. All we see is a count of virtual processors. In your case there would be 72 virtual processors and threads. As long as you have about 72 tracks and buses it will utilize those. If you have less than that, it will only use a subset of those cores.

The easiest test is to make a project with 72 tracks with the same load on each and you should see typically all cores being loaded. (turn off plugin load balancing for simplicity since that will try and use more threads)

[pistolpete]

Version 2024.07 seemed to have broken a few things. I ended up having to update to 2024.11 and it seems to have fixed them. Mostly with things missing. I spent too many hours looking for things because the interface scrambled.

I have been a Cakewalk/Sonar/GT (in various forms) user for many many years. There have been some good versions and not so good versions. Lately it seems to me like it's going downhill fast.  Too many unnecessary "enhancements" have made the screen a jumbled mess that needs to be rearranged after every update.  ASIO  always breaks too. Having to run CbB in administrator mode? Really? That's not good coding practice. 

And now I see ads for subscriptions.

I have hundreds and hundreds of hours of work put into numerous projects  and now have to look at migrating to another DAW. I don't trust a company that uses subscription extortion.

You should just leave CbB ACTIVE and stop updating.  Then offer more features on the "pay-for" products.

When is the stop date for CbB?

[pwallie]

3 minutes ago, pistolpete said:

When is the stop date for CbB?

there isn't one, that's part of the issue/user frustration, bandlab marketing are the most secretive marketing i've come across

[pistolpete]

Quote

There are no functional changes other than a few of maintenance updates. You should post a video. The new project dialog has certainly not changed in many years.

The layout of my screen gets rearranged after the last few updates and I have to waste a lot of time putting things back. This time the video view was missing too. After searching around I was able to get it back. There also is now an abundance of knobs, that I have no use for, everywhere. Some of my projects ended up with 32 empty tracks that I didn't have there before the update. I had to waste time hiding them because they could not be deleted.

Quote

Re asio it looks like something has affected your driver.

The CbB update. It takes some work to get it to work again.

Quote

Posting a video may be more informative.

I've already fixed it this time.  Besides, if you are pulling the plug on CbB, why bother?

[David Baay]

1 hour ago, pistolpete said:

Too many unnecessary "enhancements" have made the screen a jumbled mess that needs to be rearranged after every update. 

I'm curious what this means, exactly. For me, the initial migration of a project from CbB to Sonar's scalable UI requires adjusting the position of some pane splitters and changing timeline zoom level to make the layout of a given project look exactly the same, but it's far from 'a jumbled mess', and doesn't change with 'every update'.

1 hour ago, pistolpete said:

Having to run CbB in administrator mode? Really? That's not good coding practice. 

That's expressly not recommended as was implied earlier in this thread. Maybe you mis-interpreted that statement...?

Edited December 3 by David Baay