My cakewalk project fails rendering at the same point every time.

[Santiago Nelson]

Every time I try and export my audio project, it quits at the same point, roughly 3/4ths of the way through, displaying the above message ^
I've also been having issues with the automations on the Bus tracks falling behind and etc (yes I set automation sampling settings to 1 millisecond or whatever). Setting it to render in realtime seems to fix that issue but now only sometimes.

I've tried rendering outside of live playback to just see if that would get it past the 3/4th mark but still no (and I need live playback anyways as mentioned above)
and I've frozen/archived EVERY SINGLE TRACK and it still just fails at the same spot. (I use a 32bit plugin and thought it might have been making issues, so I thought that might have worked)

I also tried turning off bus effects in the render settings to see if that would make it work, and weirdly, that made it fail 1/4th of the way in instead.
I don't know what could be causing this issue or what I can do to try and find out/solve it, any ideas?

my render settings are as follows:

I use wasapi exclusive (only one I can use (yeah, probably not ideal)) (I am using 32 bit depth because I think 24 bit had some issues once, I can't remember honestly)

PC SPECS:
CPU: 13th Gen Intel(R) Core(TM) i9-13900K (3.00 GHz)
RAM: 96GBs DDR5
STORAGE: Samsung SSD 990 PRO  2TB (30 gbs roughly remaining)
OS: Windows 11 64-bit operating system, x64-based processor

Cakewalk Version: 2024.12 (build 125, 64 bit)

If there is some information that is needed that I haven't covered please let me know, thanks!

Edited 13 hours ago by Santiago Nelson

[mettelus]

Have you tried it with Global FX bypass enabled to see if that works? With such a high sample rate and bit depth going, your CPU may be struggling as well. If the project is set to 44.1K, why are you exporting to 88.2K?

You could also try opening the Windows task manager during an export to check (will probably crash it for sure, but at least you would see what the computer is doing as it goes).

[Santiago Nelson]

1 hour ago, mettelus said:

Have you tried it with Global FX bypass enabled to see if that works? With such a high sample rate and bit depth going, your CPU may be struggling as well. If the project is set to 44.1K, why are you exporting to 88.2K?

You could also try opening the Windows task manager during an export to check (will probably crash it for sure, but at least you would see what the computer is doing as it goes).

 

I will be honest in that I don't really understand the technicalities of how sound works that well when it comes to cakewalk, I was under the impression that the sample rate of what the project is set to purely determined what it records in, and what you hear during playback, but that the render could be higher or whatnot, Perhaps I'm wrong about that? I really don't know.

Of course, regardless, 88.2k is overkill lol, any sample library/vst I'm using is almost certainly not close to that high res, but I believe I just stuck with it because it sounded weird/had a hiss unless it was set to that, or that it had some crashing issue, I can't remember for sure though. But I suppose I will try rendering at a different more normal/reasonable level now and see if it works, perhaps I just misremember.
 

Quote

Have you tried it with Global FX bypass enabled to see if that works?

I'm not sure what you mean by this? Are you referring to the button here?

If so, yes, I enabled that, and clicked "disable bus fx" on the export settings as well

[Santiago Nelson]

Okay, I tried rendering with some more normal render settings (24bit, 44.1k) and it sounds fine, a bit more crisp though, but it still crashed in the same spot, I'm noticing though that it's also crashing in the same point were these strings start:

but when I try just exporting a little snippet of the project with it in (like the range in that selection above) it doesn't crash where the strings start, so, idk if they're a problem? I will try and export it with that track deleted.

[mettelus]

That was the other question I was going to ask earlier is if you had any VSTis kicking in where the glitch occurs, since your track count scrolled off the screen. This can happen when new samples are loaded during playback with some VSTis, other VSTis load the sample set into RAM when a bank is selected so there is no read delay. A couple things you can try with your situation:

1. Play the song through before the export so samples are already in RAM (this is not always 100%, and adds time to the process).
2. Bounce/freeze just those offending tracks so that they are now "just audio" rather than a VSTi processing samples (this should work and saves the time of having to play the track through).

[Santiago Nelson]

Okay I tried deleting that track and rendering the entire thing through and it still stops in the same spot, so I don't believe it is that track.
Also I have frozen/archived all of the tracks already

[Santiago Nelson]

I'm going to try rendering at the lower settings without the bus effects again, see if maybe it's something to do with that in tandem with the old export settings I had [UPDATE: tried it, still just quits even earlier when I do that oddly]

Edited 9 hours ago by Santiago Nelson

[mettelus]

26 minutes ago, Santiago Nelson said:

I will be honest in that I don't really understand the technicalities of how sound works that well when it comes to cakewalk, I was under the impression that the sample rate of what the project is set to purely determined what it records in, and what you hear during playback, but that the render could be higher or whatnot, Perhaps I'm wrong about that? I really don't know.

I wanted to touch base on this at a high level for you quick. You cannot "add detail" to something that wasn't recorded, so larger sample rates will just add a CPU hit; and larger bit depth/word lengths will just add file size, but neither will give you more detail than you had in the project. By default, projects save at 24-bit, but the DAW process at 32-bit "under the hood" to allow more detail with calculations and prevent clipping inside the DAW. While you can increase detail with upsampling, it is actually the VSTi or FX used that are adding the detail, since they have more data points to play with. Regardless, the sample rate needs to be at least double what humans can hear (essentially 20KHz) to prevent audible distortion. 44.1KHz was chosen for CDs, but with video production becoming the mainstay, 48KHz is a better "default" just in case you want to use your work in videos at some point (it is easier to downsample than upsample). The debate on higher sample rates has been perpetual, but the reality is most young adults cannot hear over 16KHz, and it just goes downhill from there.

 

[Santiago Nelson]

Ah, interesting! I assumed I may as well just go a bit high just for reverb or whatever but yeah I suppose it's not really noticeable, (All my instruments are 48 khz at the most anyways) still when I try with lower settings it is still crashing. interestingly when I set it to "export entire project" rather then a selection, it quits faster, does that tell anything?

Edited 9 hours ago by Santiago Nelson

[mettelus]

29 minutes ago, Santiago Nelson said:

I'm going to try rendering at the lower settings without the bus effects again, see if maybe it's something to do with that in tandem with the old export settings I had [UPDATE: tried it, still just quits even earlier when I do that oddly]

If you go into Preferences->Audio->Sync and Caching (be sure "Advanced" is checked at the bottom of the preferences window), do you have read and write caching enabled? For larger files, enabling those and setting either 512 (I think this is the default) or 1024 may help with disc reads/writes.

Is the CPU meter in Sonar showing high usage during that export? Intense FX, especially ones with lookahead buffers can cause issues in larger projects. A notable example is iZotope's Ozone, that is a mastering plugin, so is not intended to be used on tracks.

Edited 9 hours ago by mettelus

[Santiago Nelson]

I did not have write caching enabled, I went ahead and enabled it.
read caching is set to 500, I could bump it up to 1024 perhaps and see if that helps at all.

I'll check the cpu meter on audio processing when I attempt to export it again, but I don't recall seeing it spike or anything.
Also yes, I do have quite a few Ozone plugins on my instrument tracks to add subtle width to some instruments I felt were really mono (such as the drums, for example)
perhaps this is a really bad practice lol ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ I don't really know what I'm doing. However, I do have all those tracks frozen, So I don't think it should contribute?

regardless, I'll try again and check the levels. I appreciate your help and patience 👍

[Santiago Nelson]

still failed at the same spot, here's what it looked like at the moment as well, stayed the same pretty much throughout the entire time

[mettelus]

When something is that repeatable, it is often something coming online (FX or instrument) at that point in time. Are there any other tracks that start where the glitch is occurring?

[Santiago Nelson]

there are 2 tracks I can see that come like a second or two before it, I'll try and remove those and see if it works then

[Santiago Nelson]

Unfortunately it is still crashing at the same moment, I really have no idea why
I'm maybe just going to try deleting one track at a time until it works tomorrow

[Bass Guitar]

Ya your choices of sample and bit rates is a unusual.  I'd most certainly stick with 44.1/ 24 or 48/24 as the default for projects. I doubt that a cheapo Realtek chip is even that capable of recording audio at 32.  As a matter of fact your problem could possibly be caused by something like that. 

Here's a cool way to find out fast what track is causing the issue. 

Open the export dialogue and choose " Tracks through entire mix"        I recommend setting it at 44.1/ 32 because that was your project rate and then nothing gets converted.  Leave dither off. 

This will export each track as a stem. 

The  cool trick here is that it solos each track as it exports in turn.  You can watch the progress as it solos and renders each track. 

If it gets to a certain track and you get the error you will now know which one caused this to happen. 

If it doesn't choke then you at least now have stems you can re create the project with. ( in any Daw)