Returned to work in Cakewalk after a several month hiatus; suddenly have no audio in a project. At my wits' end.

[AxlBrutality]

Please bear with me, as I am going to make this as detailed and thorough as possible to show my troubleshooting work and thought process.

I had several projects I was working on back in January in CbB.  Everything was functioning fine back then, at least as far as basic things like having sound and such is concerned.  Due to a variety of circumstances, I have not opened or touched anything in CbB since then...until today.

I opened up one of my projects in CbB this morning.  (Got the warning about no more activations and that whole "thing", but it seemingly let me refresh my activation so I didn't think anything of it.  Just fyi, I've been completely out of the loop about that whole thing until this morning, lol.)  Anyway...

Press play, no audio.  At all.  Not from my MIDI instruments/tracks, not from my audio tracks, nothing.  There is also no activity whatsoever on the audio meters (the meters on my MIDI track for the drums, and the metronome, are active).  Weird, but okay.

After checking all the usual suspects (which I will elaborate on in a moment), I figured that maybe it was intended behavior/sabotage with the sunsetting of CbB.  So I go ahead and download Cakewalk Sonar under a free membership.  That goes smoothly, and I reopen the old project in the new Sonar with zero issue.

Still no sound.  So now I do a deep dive into checking and rechecking everything I can think of.

-No tracks are mistakenly solo'd, turned down, etc.

-Windows, Sonar, and my audio interface's drivers are all up to date.

-I attempted restarts of the audio engine, Cakewalk itself, and my entire system....as well as disconnecting/reconnecting my interface.

-My inputs/outputs on the tracks are all still as they should be (for example, on a standard guitar track, my input is the corresponding input of my interface, and the output is to the Master), and the output of my Master is pointing to my interface.  Everything is the same as it ever was.

-My driver mode is ASIO (as it should be), however as a test I switched to WASAPI Shared and then back again to trigger the Wave Profiler.

-All other programs on my computer interact with my interface just fine and just as they ever did.  I get sound through my interface with everything else.  So the problem is exclusive to both CbB and Sonar. 

So then I take the next logical step and open a new/blank demo project.  I have sound!  Now I'm super curious.....I go open my other pre-existing CbB projects, and they all have sound as well!

I go back to the original project....no sound.  Okay, so we've isolated the issue to this project for whatever weird reason.

I do a "Save As" and open that version.  No sound.

I insert a new audio track, double check I/O and attempt to record/play new audio, as well as copy/paste existing audio from other tracks, there.  No sound.

I'm running out of ideas.  It seems as though audio information is suddenly not actually being sent to the input of any given track (in this project only) and I have no idea why.

I have attached a screenshot of one of the tracks as it is playing as an example.  You'll notice there is no activity on the meter.

Any ideas?

 

 

 

[Amberwolf]

I see that track's Solo button is clicked.  Is it possible that the main Solo mode is set to something (dim, exclusive, etc) that is causing (incorrectly or not) no audio out because of a bus or other routing that sends the audio thru something that ends up not within the soloed path (even if it should be)?

 

Or that a plugin that is in this project but not in another, has some problem (disabled within it's UI, broken authorization, etc).  

 

If you route a track directly to the hardware out, no plugins, no solos / etc, do you get audio? 

 

 

Edited 2 hours ago by Amberwolf

[AxlBrutality]

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I see that track's Solo button is clicked.  Is it possible that the main Solo mode is set to something (dim, exclusive, etc) that is causing (incorrectly or not) no audio out because of a bus or other routing that sends the audio thru something that ends up not within the soloed path (even if it should be)? 

Nah;  I had solod this track just before this screenshot for other reasons while troubleshooting.  As mentioned, this problem occurs when nothing in the entire project is solod at all.

 

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Or that a plugin that is in this project but not in another, has some problem (disabled within it's UI, broken authorization, etc).

 

Bingo.  I don't know why I didn't think to bypass the FX racks and test this, but I did so and I have audio.  I then began isolating and discovered that there's something weird going on with the authorization for my Plugin Alliance Plugins that I'm now knee-deep in trying to figure out/resolve.  Might have something to do with the AWS issues today, or maybe the change in their subscription plans recently....idk.  But yea, none of my PA plugins are working.

There's no plugins that are unique to any of these projects, so  without opening the other projects I'm assuming they happen to be bypassed currently in the other projects.

Quote

If you route a track directly to the hardware out, no plugins, no solos / etc, do you get audio? 

I will also keep this step in mind for future issues, though it seems we've found the issue already.

Thanks! 

Edited 1 hour ago by AxlBrutality

[itzaStudio]

A real longshot here... but could the actual wave-files been moved or deleted? Is the project file moved som the vave files can't be found?
As the waveforms show but no meter movement.

Could there be a plugin in demo mode that is no longer active and therefore makes the playback silent?

Could the input gain on the channel mistakenly been pulled down? 

I know that the last two suggestions aren't likely as I understood you have more channels than one...

Edited 1 hour ago by itzaStudio
I guess you found that the problem was indeed plugins