CWBL won't launch, gets stuck on driver

[OPunWide]

I've been trying to get ready for the new Sonar, and as part of that I reinstalled the old Sonar 3 Producer. Why? I have about 300 Cakewalk/Sonar projects and I'm trying to make sure than most of them transition properly with all the plugins.

Sonar didn't work right, so I add ASIO4ALL (which previously worked on a different computer). That caused other problems, one of them was a warning that CWBL didn't work well with ASIO.

So I uninstalled the ASIO4ALL. Now Cakewalk won't launch.

I'm using an old AudioBox USB interface, and it works fine with Windows 11. What doesn't work is launching CWBL.

It gets the small splash screen, and behind that screen it's doing driver profiles. Then those close, and it gives up.

I've tried launching with SHIFT, rebooting, etc.  It's writing the driver results to "\AppData\Roaming\Cakewalk\Cakewalk Core\WaveProf.Txt" and that looks reasonable (I'm guessing).

I've rebooted, powered down, tried launching with the AudioBox unplugged and then plugged in as normal.

Any suggestions? I'm very hesitant to go to Sonar 2025 unless the older programs are working right.

 

[57Gregy]

Au contraire. Cakewalk recommends using an ASIO audio interface, just not the RealTek ASIO driver, or any of the wrappers like ASIO4All or any generic drivers . I'm about to run out but someone should be able to help you soon.

[OPunWide]

Thanks to @57Gregy I persisted with ASIO and got old Sonar to work using ASIO, without ASIO4ALL.

Now I probably just need a way to force CWBL to start over in deciding which driver to use.

[OutrageProductions]

As @57Gregy started on; completely delete anything that is ASIO4ALL related on your system and in the registry.

You may need to do the same with the Realtek driver system, but it causes lesser issues in about half of all systems, and may reinstall if it is on your MOBO.

The Audiobox should only use the Presonus ASIO drivers that were either supplied or can be DL'd from their support pages.

I've used one for 18 years with RT latency as low as 5.3ms and no other issues.

Any time you see anything relating to "wave profile" (or derivations thereof,) you are using the Win OS WDM/Wasapi style driver set, which have far inferior response specifications. 

Edited 19 hours ago by OutrageProductions

[John Vere]

Best practices. 
Download and install the latest Drivers from the manufacturer website.
Important- Follow the instructions! Make sure the version says that it supports your current OS. 
Connect the interface when instructed to. 
Look in Windows settings/ Sound and confirm that the device is the default. 
Disable all other audio devices especially HDMI. 
Set Windows to the same sample rate you want to use in your Daw. 
Now open your Daw and set the driver to ASIO. 
 

Cakewalk/ Sonar will have an issue if there’s any Generic audio drivers present on your system. They should be removed completely from the apps list and in the register. 

[OPunWide]

@OutrageProductions I never thought about the "wave profiler" being about  WDM/Wasapi style drivers only. The popup behind the CWBL splash screen does show "WDM kernel streaming". Since I can't start Cakewalk I can't change what it does at launch.

It seems the responses here (adding @John Vere to this) assume that the computer is only used for Cakewalk.

Thanks to both of you for the inputs so far.

I've used both the Presonus and a Scarlett interface on this in the past. Sometimes I just use the standard 1/8" audio for Zoom meetings. I plan to go back to the Scarlett in the future. So I'm not sure I can (or want to) disable all of the stuff that has been working.

I did disable the HDMI device that goes to the monitor speakers since I never use those.

>> I suspect most of the current problem is from ASIO4ALL, which I uninstalled.

>> I also suspect that there's a problem in the AUD.ini file. That seems a likely place for a start-up issue. I don't want to randomly start hacking at it, but it does still have ASIO4ALL entries.

Is there a guide to that ini file somewhere? I'd be concerned about deleting it and having the break Sonar 3, but have no idea if that's a reasonable concern.

Everything but Cakewalk Bandlab works. Even Sonar 3 works. Audacity works, etc.

 

I have verified that the AudioBox is the default device. It has the most recent drivers (which are ancient) and was reinstalled using the latest appropriate version of their "PreSonus Universal Control". 

I have verified that the sample rate in Windows matches the AudioBox (it only support 44.1).

As far as the registry:

• There are no ASIO4ALL entries other than one in Cakwalk. (I'm ignoring recent files, etc.)
• There is only one entry in "Cakewalk\Core\DriverCompatibility":
• Computer\HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Cakewalk Music Software\Cakewalk\Core\DriverCompatibility\{232685C6-6548-49D8-846D-4141A3EF7560}
• That has the NAME field set to "ASIO4ALL v2".

CWBL was working 2 days ago with this setup, meaning all of the drivers other than ASIO4ALL. Maybe Something may have been corrupted by Sonar 3, but then I'd probably have to reinstall CWBL to overwrite that. I don't think that's possible at this point.

 

Does it make sense to focus on the AUD.ini? Should I delete the "DriverCompatibility" registry entry?

[OutrageProductions]

You can rename the Aud.ini to aud.OLD and it will get rebuilt on next open of the DAW.

In the registry under (IIRC) HKLM a section for ASIO (just search the reg for ASIO) and make sure that any "ASIO" named drivers for ASIO4ALL, Realtek, Nvidia HDMI  etc. are deleted, reboot & restart CW.

Make sure that you have the ASIO drivers for your I/F installed (Presonus or Scarlett) and try again.

Interesting that you can only get 44.1SR. My 18 year old Audiobox has always been set at 48k/24b and works perfectly. 

Edited 2 hours ago by OutrageProductions

[Jeremy Oakes]

4 minutes ago, OutrageProductions said:

You can rename the Aud.ini to aud.OLD and it will get rebuilt on next open of the DAW.

In the registry under (IIRC) HKLM a section for ASIO (just search the reg for ASIO) and make sure that any "ASIO" named drivers for ASIO4ALL, Realtek, Nvidia HDMI  etc. are deleted, reboot & restart CW.

Make sure that you have the ASIO drivers for your I/F installed (Presonus or Scarlett) and try again.

And also anything to do with Magix, Fruity Loops, Steinberg, Low Latency  …….

J

[OPunWide]

Nothing in registry for ASIO other that Presonus and Scarlett.

To be safe I followed the full instructions to uninstall the Presonus Universal Controller, reboot, install again, reboot, plug in AudioBox, try Cakewalk. Same crash during open.

Rename AUD.ini, rebuild looks cleaner, still crashes.

Last resort, removed the reg entry in Cakewalk that referenced ASIO4ALL: Computer\HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Cakewalk Music Software\Cakewalk\Core\DriverCompatibility

No change.

In summary: Sonar 3 works. CWBL starts, makes it far enough to update the AUD.ini file, then silently crashes. It does create an entry like this in the Event log on every crash:

This happens every time I try to launch, from the Event Viewer...

Faulting application name: Cakewalk.exe, version: 29.9.0.125, time stamp: 0x676089bc
Faulting module name: Cakewalk.exe, version: 29.9.0.125, time stamp: 0x676089bc
Exception code: 0xc0000094
Fault offset: 0x000000000051d66f
Faulting process id: 0x3A1C
Faulting application start time: 0x1DBF6899F352B24
Faulting application path: C:\Program Files\Cakewalk\Cakewalk Core\Cakewalk.exe
Faulting module path: C:\Program Files\Cakewalk\Cakewalk Core\Cakewalk.exe
Report Id: f0ad3f56-4e33-4701-9040-3cd0f2f1f985
Faulting package full name: 
Faulting package-relative application ID: