75 workflow improvements to make Cakewalk more intuitive (+ appearance, implementation, etc.)

[Olaf]

On 1/9/2021 at 11:38 PM, murat k. said:

I believe talk solves every problem. Problems can be determinated by investigation. Now we are making that investigation by talking. When we find the reason of it, it can be solved.

@murat k. Thanks for the offer, in theory I agree with you fully, but I don't think this is something that can be mended by settings, adjustments, etc. I've tried many things, and the issues seem to remain constant though the changes. They've always persisted. Things stop working after an update, etc., plugin crashes, CW crashes - which I cannot understand, regardless of plugin behaviors they shouldn't happen, that's a CW philosophy that's mesmerized me - freezes, failures to open, track audio stopping playing - al the same things so many report.

The crackling is not owed to the ASIO settings, it's probably connected - like everything else - to the way CW interacts with Windows and the audio drivers - the reason it reads some 24 bit cards as 16 bit, etc. The behavior I've described to you is not a normal ASIO problem. That when you activate a plugin, the static goes away, and it starts when you deactivate it. It's exactly the opposite of what should normally happen because of CPU load. And it's not even the same plugin, it's different ones at different moments.

Trust me, it's not about the plugins. I've never gotten anything similar in Reason, or Studio One, which I've tried, for instance - or other problems like plugins that fail to load, loaded in there. But beyond that, it's common sense, you can't report hundreds of plugins as flawed, all only in CW, while they work in other DAWs. When you keep blaming a list of hundreds of plugins, that work in other DAWs, for the problems... seriously, who believes that?

Besides, many of the problems are not even plugin related.

Since I've started working with CW, I've changed my mother board, my graphics adapter, installed a new sound interface, changed the RAM modules, changed the Windows version twice, updated, etc. And the problems have always been the same. The only thing I haven't changed is the CPU - that's the only thing that could be personally specific, if CW didn't know how to work with FXs. I was talking to Noel, at some point about that, and he said FX-8350 was 4 core, not 8, although it's 8 with 4 floating points, and every application recognizes it as such, including Windows - even CW's performance meter shows 8 cores - but that's the only constant remaining that could be configuration specific. On the other hand, people have problems on all kinds of configurations, with all kinds of plugins, or not plugin related at all. So... what's the only constant remaining in all this?

When you say you encounter almost no crashes, what crash frequency are you experiencing?

@Bruno de Souza Lino Do you have crashes? If you do, how often?

[Olaf]

8 hours ago, Bruno de Souza Lino said:

It makes no sense for a single plugin to have the ability to take your entire DAW with it when it crashes.

Exactly. I didn't even believe that what was a possibility to be allowed.

Edited January 12, 2021 by Olaf

[Olaf]

15 hours ago, Bruno de Souza Lino said:

Safe Mode works pretty well actually

I disagree, that's another thing, in my opinion, that's not well thought through. I, for one, have maybe around 100 plugins on a project, and individually allowing each one of them on load, for 100 plugins, on the third or fourth crash of the night, to get to the problem one, is just one of the few things that can make you think about slashing your wrist for the first time in your life.

You should have "allow all instances" and "deny all instances" options in the load dialog, for each specific plugin, instead of having to go though every single instance of the same plugin. That way you can skip everything that works in 10 seconds, and not spend 5 minutes clicking - for the third time in half an hour. It's not like one instance won't load, but the others will. It's not even that hard to think about, that's very frustrating. And there's many of these things that are not well thought through. Some things are brilliant - and I've said that - some are just... ?

I didn't even add it to the suggestion list, because my recent impression is there's no point, Besides, since this list, I've gotten maybe another 15 suggestions on things to change in the workflow. Like two takes not being compiled together in the track clip, when you collapse the take lanes ??? resulting in an inexplicable monster wave that you only realize was in there after you've exported - because it shouldn't be in there. Or the previous take clips being automatically split underneath the edge of a clip recorded on the next lane, and needing to be rejoined every time, for reasons beyond understanding. That in a workflow that doesn't allow you to select a very small split, anyway, in a condensed view. Or like rejoined clips missing information because you've resized them, or partially overlapped them, and rejoin is not rejoin but "bounce" - which is stupid as hell. Before you rejoin, you need to move things around, make sure nothing overlaps, then move them back in. And you have to do 20 rejoins. Useless worrying and time spent for concerns that shouldn't even exist. There's nothing to get you out of the mood faster. Right clicking to do something you do with a left click in another place. So on, so forth...

Edited January 12, 2021 by Olaf

[murat k.]

11 hours ago, Bruno de Souza Lino said:

It makes no sense for a single plugin to have the ability to take your entire DAW with it when it crashes.

It makes sense.

3 hours ago, Olaf said:

You should have "allow all instances" and "deny all instances" options in the load dialog, for each specific plugin, instead of having to go though every single instance of the same plugin.

I agree with you.

[Teegarden]

 

13 hours ago, Olaf said:

@murat k. Thanks for the offer, in theory I agree with you fully, but I don't think this is something that can be mended by settings, adjustments, etc. I've tried many things, and the issues seem to remain constant though the changes. They've always persisted. Things stop working after an update, etc., plugin crashes, CW crashes - which I cannot understand, regardless of plugin behaviors they shouldn't happen, that's a CW philosophy that's mesmerized me - freezes, failures to open, track audio stopping playing - al the same things so many report.

The crackling is not owed to the ASIO settings, it's probably connected - like everything else - to the way CW interacts with Windows and the audio drivers - the reason it reads some 24 bit cards as 16 bit, etc. The behavior I've described to you is not a normal ASIO problem. That when you activate a plugin, the static goes away, and it starts when you deactivate it. It's exactly the opposite of what should normally happen because of CPU load. And it's not even the same plugin, it's different ones at different moments.

Trust me, it's not about the plugins. I've never gotten anything similar in Reason, or Studio One, which I've tried, for instance - or other problems like plugins that fail to load, loaded in there. But beyond that, it's common sense, you can't report hundreds of plugins as flawed, all only in CW, while they work in other DAWs. When you keep blaming a list of hundreds of plugins, that work in other DAWs, for the problems... seriously, who believes that?

Besides, many of the problems are not even plugin related.

Since I've started working with CW, I've changed my mother board, my graphics adapter, installed a new sound interface, changed the RAM modules, changed the Windows version twice, updated, etc. And the problems have always been the same. The only thing I haven't changed is the CPU - that's the only thing that could be personally specific, if CW didn't know how to work with FXs. I was talking to Noel, at some point about that, and he said FX-8350 was 4 core, not 8, although it's 8 with 4 floating points, and every application recognizes it as such, including Windows - even CW's performance meter shows 8 cores - but that's the only constant remaining that could be configuration specific. On the other hand, people have problems on all kinds of configurations, with all kinds of plugins, or not plugin related at all. So... what's the only constant remaining in all this?

When you say you encounter almost no crashes, what crash frequency are you experiencing?

@Bruno de Souza Lino Do you have crashes? If you do, how often?

Hi, I get you frustration. It seems like you've got a relatively old AMD processor. In one of the threads on the forum it was explained that AMD processors suffer from some internal latency that has nothing to do with system latency invoked by power settings, drivers etc. I also found this kind of information on other websites (unfortunately forgot which ones). With the introduction of the new Zen 3 Ryzen 5000 processors this problem appears to have been solved, see these threads: https://discuss.cakewalk.com/index.php?/topic/22465-potential-cpu-otimisation-for-ryzen-cpus/
https://discuss.cakewalk.com/index.php?/topic/23055-ryzen-5000-series-unfreaken-believable-in-cbb/

What surprises me, though, is that you didn't have problems with other DAWs. Maybe there's a also communication problem between AMD processors and CbB. As far as I understood the bakers develop everything on Intel systems, so they might not have experienced AMD related issues and therefor not solved issues related to AMD processors? 

I've got a Threadripper 1950X, 32GB Ram, a PCIe RME card and fast SSDs and despite my hopes at the time that it would solve all potential problems, I still had situations where cracks and pops occur even in simple projects, with e.g. a large sampled grand piano (at 24bit, 96kHz, buffer: 256, effective latency 2.7 ms). 
I never saw the cores in the performance part of the control bar go very high, which always surprised me.
After lots of Windows 10 latency tweaking and improved power settings (some are usually hidden, you can unhide them with a program called PowerSettingsExplorer) like 

o   processor idle demote threshold (changed to 100%)
o   processor idle promote threshold  (changed to 100%)

the latency was getting better, with less annoying cracks.

What helped even more was some overclocking with AMD Ryzen Master which significantly reduced the cracks and pops, without overheating my PC.
There's a lot of info on this YouTube channel regarding latency tweaking:
FR33THY optimization for PC, gaming & Windows!. They also provided the first indepth latencymon explanation I could find, explaining the results and how to improve them: Win A-Z Pt14
There's also another good latency tweak tutorial for the latest Windows update: FULLY Optimize Windows 10 For LATENCY & Low Input Lag 

Maybe this will help you out a bit more.

However, despite an overly large standard template filled with tons of tracks, busses, VST instruments and FX plugins I rarely have instability problems like you mentioned, probably because other than the internal AMD latency issue, the Threadripper is a more modern, fast and stable CPU.

I'm planning to switch to a Ryzen 5000 series processor this year, hoping it will completely eliminate all latency related issues like it did for @Bill Ruys . Maybe switching to ZEN3 would also solve your problems.

 

Edited January 12, 2021 by Teegarden

[Bruno de Souza Lino]

That explains the constant dropouts I experience on CbB but not other DAWs. Guess I'll have to stop using the DAW since my old AMD cpu is not supported properly.

[Olaf]

Hey, @Teegarden, thanks a lot for your extensive answer. I'm thinking about switching to Threadripper myself, the 5000 series on the Zen3 architecture I've heard makes a huge performance difference versus the FX, and even earlier Zen1 and Zen2 architectures. But, obviously, in order to do that I'll need to buy every other component anew,  and it adds up to a pretty penny, so I think I'm going to start buying the components one by one.

The issue with the plugins that make the sound smoother when activated has started relatively recently - with one of the more recent updates, though - don't remember which - probably the one 2 or 3 versions ago, and it's really strange. Makes me think of processing algorithms rather than CPU power, in itself.

I'm gonna look at the links you've posted and see if I can find any optimization I've missed. I've made all the optimizations I've found on the net, but there might be something new.

 

@Bruno de Souza Lino You said you've had no problems in CW so far. So, in the end, you, too, have dropouts. Do you have crashes, and how often?

I don't know if the CPU is not supported properly, I was only noting the only hardware component that hasn't been changed, and has remained a constant. I forgot to mention that I've also changed the boot drive to a SSD, and probably gonna upgrade again tomorrow, since my storage spinning plate drive is starting to crap out.

Edited January 14, 2021 by Olaf

[Bruno de Souza Lino]

1 minute ago, Olaf said:

You said you've had no problems in CW so far. So, in the end, you, too, have dropouts. Do you have crashes, and how often?

I don't know if the CPU is not supported properly, I was only noting the only hardware component that hasn't been changed, and has remained a constant. I forgot to mention that I've also changed the boot drive to a SSD, and probably gonna upgrade again tomorrow, since my storage spinning plate drive is starting to crap out.

I only have dropouts, not crashes. They happen at random, usually after having effects running during normal playback. None of those dropouts seem to happen in other DAWs, though I haven't tested that enough. One thing is certain: Intel CPUs tend to favor single threaded performance over multithreaded. If your development setup is entirely Intel, there's a 99% chance that you'll end up optmizing for that architecture even without noticing. I understand that is hard to  get out of 20 years of monopoly, but come on.

[Teegarden]

3 hours ago, Olaf said:

The issue with the plugins that make the sound smoother when activated has started relatively recently - with one of the more recent updates, though - don't remember which - probably the one 2 or 3 versions ago, and it's really strange. Makes me think of processing algorithms rather than CPU power, in itself.

I'm gonna look at the links you've posted and see if I can find any optimization I've missed. I've made all the optimizations I've found on the net, but there might be something new.

Weird that it started recently, I didn't get the impression that the bakers changed much in that respect under the hood. The cracks and pops that I have (or better had), were there also a year ago. I followed the instructions of "FULLY Optimize Windows 10 For LATENCY & Low Input Lag" and it definitely improved things.

Make sure to backup the registry and experiment with the different tools provided in the download provided by the  blogger. With some you can eliminate too many Windows items, it appeared I needed several of them so I reversed changes and started all over until I found the optimal tweaks for me. And one of the directories (the one regarding power plan) is not intended for AMD systems, don't use that one (as also advised in the video).
FWIW, I also disconnect internet and switch off my antivirus when using CbB and switch off any at that moment unnecessary process in the background.

3 hours ago, Bruno de Souza Lino said:

 If your development setup is entirely Intel, there's a 99% chance that you'll end up optmizing for that architecture even without noticing. I understand that is hard to  get out of 20 years of monopoly, but come on.

With the new AMD systems that's all in the past. Just said for many that their old still properly working system is not up to date anymore...and not everyone can afford a new PC just like that. If you can on the other hand, I wouldn't hesitate!

Still I think that with some of the tweaks in the tutorials I mentioned you might get better latency. I did for me anyway.  What also helped me regarding system optimisation was a better understanding of Latencymon thanks to the explanation in "Win A-Z Pt14 ", so I got what I was doing when following the tweaks.

[Olaf]

5 hours ago, Teegarden said:

Weird that it started recently, I didn't get the impression that the bakers changed much in that respect under the hood.

I don't think they've changed something in the engine, but CW updates usually mess up the registry - problems with recognizing plugins, some may stop working and need all their registry keys deleted manually before reinstall, etc., authorisation fails, all kinds of random stuff like that - and the most annoying part is that it is random. Some DAW settings may be reset - for instance after the last update, any time i click on the bottom right double arrow, in Tracks View, to open the Console, it always opens half-screen, which I hate, instead of full view, which is how the project is saved. It always does that on first view switch after open. So it might be caused by something like this, I have no way of knowing...

Another thing that seems very random is that every time I open the PRV or Melodyne, from the Tracks view, after I close the window, I find myself in Console view, for some reason, and I always need to switch back. I don't know why it doesn't revert back to the view they were opened from/over, which would be logical. The VU meter resolutions in the Track view NEVER get saved - and neither do the Show Velocity, and a couple of others. But at least, for a while now, it's saved the show time setting for the timeline cursor.

Check out what this comparison says about stability and crashing.

https://www.slant.co/versus/6431/26342/~reaper_vs_cakewalk-by-bandlab

To be honest, it doesn't crash now 5 times a night, as it did in the good old days, but it still occasionally freezes, crashes on open, or just shuts down on opening a plugin - stuff like that. If something is wrong - or it even imagines it's wrong - with a plugin, it crashes almost as a rule, etc. I deleted the .esr file of a Slate compressor, at some point, to see what that does. So that the plugin didn't open afterwards didn't surprise me, but what I can't understand is why Cakewalk crashes. In Reason, you can go nuke on a plugin - on open it says plugin doesn't work - it usually says why, which is nice and warm, you close the dialog and go on with your life. Not in CW.

5 hours ago, Teegarden said:

Make sure to backup the registry and experiment with the different tools provided in the download provided by the  blogger

Thanks. I have a few tools that I use myself - to deactivate services, remove useless startups, etc., but I'll look into those, too.

5 hours ago, Teegarden said:

I also disconnect internet and switch off my antivirus when using CbB and switch off any at that moment unnecessary process in the background.

You're going full monty on it . I usually leave the antivirus on. I sometimes even have a tv window in the background ? , but that's only a couple of cpu points. Weird thing is that the engine is overloaded when the overall CPU usage may be at 60-70%. Don't know why that happens.

5 hours ago, Teegarden said:

With the new AMD systems that's all in the past

While that's true for WIndows, they've implemented optimizations for AMD multi-core, it may not necessarily be true for CW optimizations.

9 hours ago, Bruno de Souza Lino said:

If your development setup is entirely Intel, there's a 99% chance that you'll end up optmizing for that architecture even without noticing.

That's true, I know they test and run almost exclusively on Intel. Which is a big shame, cause, even if Intel have the highest performance (and price) with their tops of ranges, two steps down and lower, performance wise, AMD have the best price-performance ratio. Unless you're running NASA servers and need to max out, I think you're better off, bang for buck wise, running on AMD.

9 hours ago, Bruno de Souza Lino said:

Intel CPUs tend to favor single threaded performance over multithreaded

True. Conversely AMD are rated in many benchmarks to have the upper hand in multi-thread, provided the processes are optimized for their architecture. So that's a big if.

Edited January 15, 2021 by Olaf

[Bruno de Souza Lino]

With the current setup, I literally have to wait a few seconds before playing back anything after adding an effect or such as that introduces a dropout. Even mundane things, like resetting TBPro's dpMeter cause dropouts. I don't know if it's something with my setup or some configuration in CbB. I don't have those issues in REAPER and Cubase.

[Olaf]

32 minutes ago, Bruno de Souza Lino said:

With the current setup, I literally have to wait a few seconds before playing back anything after adding an effect or such as that introduces a dropout. Even mundane things, like resetting TBPro's dpMeter cause dropouts. I don't know if it's something with my setup or some configuration in CbB. I don't have those issues in REAPER and Cubase.

I think it's safe to say it's not your setup. Just by looking at the number of reports in this forum, or the Cakewalk by Bandlab, or Cakewalk by Bandlab Talk groups on Facebook, there's all kinds of configurations and hundreds of issues reported. On a normal day, there might be 5-10 issues reported in each group. So that's hundreds each month, only on those two groups. I can understand that a plugin has problems, it's fair - 10, 20, ok. But that all of them are flawed, and only in CW, while CW doesn't have a problem, that's cult programming ?. And how are PC module failures explained, in that case, driver issues? All VSTIs output going silent at once, on some random operations, until Stop - I forgot to mention that one.

Look at the comparison link I've posted above. I don't like Reaper at all, I dislike the interface. But the point remains about CW stability.

So don't have guilt over the setup. Even on a poor setup, the behavior still needs to be linear and intuitive. If it's not, the host at least plays a part in it, it's logical. For instance Reason doesn't play with crackles. When pushed to the max it slows down for a couple of secs, then it stops and it says the resources are insufficient.

And that thing with the latency on recording being the same, in CW, no matter the buffer, never happened somewhere else. Weird thing. When I click on TH-U, the latency instantly recovers - so I can play fine then, it's like the Twilight zone. But only when I click on it and highlight it. Then I press Record and it gets back to 1/2 second - or when I click on something else. It's similar to the crackling noise appearing when I deactivate a selected plugin - on the Master bus, I forgot to mention that. So I sometimes keep stuff in there, that I'd otherwise remove, just for the playback to be smooth. It seems plugins directly affect the engine, for some reason, in unpredictable ways.

Edited January 15, 2021 by Olaf

[Bruno de Souza Lino]

2 minutes ago, Olaf said:

I think it's safe to say it's not your setup. Just by looking at the number of reports in this forum, or the Cakewalk by Bandlab, or Cakewalk by Bandlab Talk groups on Facebook, there's all kinds of configurations and hundreds of issues reported. On a normal day, there might be 5-10 issues reported in each group. So that's hundreds each month, only on those two groups. I can understand that a plugin has problems, it's fair - 10, 20, ok. But that all of them are flawed, and only in CW, while CW doesn't have a problem, that's cult programming ?. And how do you explain PC module failures, in that case, driver issues? Look at the comparison link I've posted above. I don't like Reaper, I don't like it at all, I dislike the interface. But the point remains about CW stability.

So don't have guilt over the setup. Even on a poor setup, the behavior still needs to be linear and intuitive. If it's not, the host at least plays a part in it, it's logical. For instance Reason doesn't play with crackles. When pushed to the max it slows down a little, then it stops and it says the resources are insufficient.

And that thing with the latency on recording being the same, no matter the buffer never happened. Weird thing. When I click on TH-U, the latency instantly recovers - so I can play fine then, it's like the Twilight zone. But only when I click on it and highlight it. Then I press Record and it gets back to 1/2 second. Or when I click on something else. It's similar with the crackling noise appearing when I deactivate a selected plugin - on the Master bus, that needs to be stressed.

It seems plugins directly affect the engine, for some reason, in random ways.

If you have Cakewalk's Adaptive Limiter, loading an instance of it crashes CbB. When you re-open CbB, the plugin loads fine. Go figure.

[Olaf]

13 minutes ago, Bruno de Souza Lino said:

If you have Cakewalk's Adaptive Limiter, loading an instance of it crashes CbB. When you re-open CbB, the plugin loads fine. Go figure.

Yeah, exactly. Or resetting plugin settings when messing with the transport. That hasn't happened in a while, with the latest updates.

If it didn't crash, it held settings, and had a few dozen to a hundred workflow operations improved ?, CW would be a great program, one of the best out there.

Edited January 15, 2021 by Olaf

[Xoo]

On 1/12/2021 at 2:36 AM, Olaf said:

Exactly. I didn't even believe that what was a possibility to be allowed.

Interesting comments on this from the developers of Ardour: https://ardour.org/plugins-in-process.html

Edited January 15, 2021 by Kevin Perry

[msmcleod]

1 hour ago, Kevin Perry said:

Interesting comments on this from the developers of Ardour: https://ardour.org/plugins-in-process.html

They've explained it very well in that article.

[Bruno de Souza Lino]

12 hours ago, msmcleod said:

They've explained it very well in that article.

Unfortunately, that's the Ardour team refusing to implement a feature and using technicalities to excuse it. They do that a lot. If you go to their forums, requesting a feature even for mundane things usually results in something along the lines of "this is not how I (the creator) do things, so there's no reason for this feature to exist." Ask unfa or any YouTuber that uses Ardour and actively tries to help with its development.

EDIT - It's also important to note that Ardour's creator was a ProTools user and essentially replicated what the software does...Down to the lack of stability and bugs. It's also even further behind in features than any other DAW out there, having added some rudimentary polishes to their MIDI stuff in the latest version. The creator is very adamant on keeping the software as close to the way he thinks things should be done and if it differs to that, he won't do it or will convince the rest of the team to not do it. If you push the issue, they'll gladly ignore you or tell you to grab the source code and implement it yourself.

Edited January 16, 2021 by Bruno de Souza Lino
Adding more relevant points I forgot.

[Olaf]

On 1/16/2021 at 1:51 AM, Kevin Perry said:

Interesting comments on this from the developers of Ardour: https://ardour.org/plugins-in-process.html

Since I already have half a second latency irrespective of buffer size, I wouldn't mind a 7 ms increase to at least solve the crash problems .

Besides, who of us runs 100+ tracks on a regular basis? I use around 100 plugins, some pretty heavy, but I don't see myself getting to 400 - they don't even fit in my bedroom. I'd say, if you're running that kind of numbers, you're not a home musician, but a pro, so you should (at least afford to) buy a fast computer. So, seriously, that as an argument... Let it crash, cause pros might wanna use it to record on a 386 - and they don't mind the crashes, but they mind buying a new machine. That doesn't fly too high, in my view.

Plus, a 7 ms latency is nothing when mixing - you don't even notice it when you press your Space key, as far as I can tell.

And while tracking, if you record 100 microphones, that's probably an orchestra playing at once, so, again, 7 ms latency is not a concern. It's not even a concern with duplex track-by-track recording, for that number, let alone simultaneous recording.

Besides, there're several DAWs that don't have those problems - and they're pretty fast, too.

So I call bullshit on those explanations.

All that said and aside, getting a little philosophical, I can't see the deep reasoning behind letting a DAW continuously crash until all plugins... become perfect ?. It's like not getting out of the house until all people become nice. The DAW won't wrok well until all plugin behave.  Is that a valid philosophy ??

How would anyone imagine - with the standards continuously evolving, new technologies always being tested, and new plugins coming out every day - that plugins, generally - let alone all plugins - will ever be perfect? Ever. Like, ever. In this very imperfect world ?...  Why do all developers come up with version after version after version? Is it because the plugins are perfect? Does that even exist? I'd like to take this opportunity to call for some realism ? ...

It's like crashing you car at 150 mph, and saying the problem is not the driving, but the brakes had a bug, the tarmac was an older generation, and the road lines should have been clearer, and the traffic was not properly optimized... If someone told you that, how would you look at that guy in about 20 seconds?

Have you noticed that in CW every user reports a different plugin in the crashes - for me, it's been a few dozens so far, at different stages? So we are to believe that ALL plugins have a crash inducing problem. That's what really turns me off - the lack of logic, it's like Kafka. And, on the other hand, those same plugins don't crash other DAWs - constantly overlooked in these savant considerations, although these two things tell you a lot more than all the savant considerations put together.

As a side comment, the necessity of that article on the Ardour site actually tells me that their users are pretty displeased about it crashing, too. And you can see how much market share Ardour is picking up...

Just thinking, why don't these complains happen in Logic or PT - not that I like those, I'm sure they sound great, but I don't like the graphics, the menus, layout - Logic and Ableton least of all - but just as a standard of performance?

Does PT crash every time a plugin craps out? Would CLA use it if it did? Or do they use some magic plugins? Cause I see them using pretty much all we use. Basic questions. And when, as a developer, you miss all that - pretty much common sense - for savant considerations, it's not seeing the forest for the trees. It has a name, "engineer analysis". Not getting the point, the big picture, or the essentials, but knowing all the formulas. Not to say all engineers are contaminated with it, or that they're not necessary, salutary, and life saving sometimes - especially in this business - but it's a general observation.

Besides, many crashes are not even connected to plugins. What's the explanation when there's no plugin ?? Tracks that don't play. So on, so forth, I've talked about them so much, there's no point in repeating them.

So the pick up from this "plugin philosophy" is that the DAW will always crash, and there's no intention to make it stop. That's what I see, explanations aside.

It's either fix it or not - that's the bottom line. Knowing why it crashes doesn't make it not crash, and therefore doesn't keep you warm at night. What would help is all this knowledge being actually used for a solution - that would be revolutionary.

Edited January 17, 2021 by Olaf

[Olaf]

Waves just busted 12 myths... See what we're up against... ☺️

https://www.waves.com/eq-myths-busted-audio-myth-busting?utm_source=wnletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=weekly-content-jan-16-eq-busted

Edited January 16, 2021 by Olaf

[Teegarden]

On 1/15/2021 at 4:22 AM, Bruno de Souza Lino said:

With the current setup, I literally have to wait a few seconds before playing back anything after adding an effect or such as that introduces a dropout. Even mundane things, like resetting TBPro's dpMeter cause dropouts. I don't know if it's something with my setup or some configuration in CbB. I don't have those issues in REAPER and Cubase.

Hi, FWIW, I also had an AMD system about 10 years ago and despite latency I did manage to record music with Sonar.  So if you have really strange and long dropouts there could very well be a configuration problem.

After I tried the tips in the links I gave earlier I've noticed a significant improvement, so certainly worth trying. However, there were still some unexplainable latency issues. Once I looked for additional information in order to solve those and tried different suggestions those issues also became acceptable.

Here are the  latency issues + suggestions:

NDIS.SYS:

1. AMD? In the device manager, find "ATA / ATAPI IDE Controllers", select "AMD Sata controller" and disable it.
2. Disable Driver Verifier:
   Open an elevated Command Prompt by right-clicking on CMD.EXE shortcut in your start menu and selecting Run As Administrator from the context menu.
   Type the following command:
   Code:
   VERIFIER /RESET
   Reboot the computer
   Check if the issues still persist and, in case they do, generate a new trace
3. Disable AV or any program that filters internet packets

TCPIP.SYS:

1. Run TCPOptimizer
2. Uninstall Bonjour.
3. If you have a third party AV with firewall: disable "Windows Defender Firewall" service. Even if its turned off in Control Panel, the "Windows Defender Firewall" service (MpsSvc) can still be running in the background and causing issues. Completely disable the service via the registry and reboot.  HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\MpsSvc
   Change "Start" from "2" to "4"
   Reboot the PC

DXGKRNL.SYS

1. Set NVIDIA Surround, PhysX to GPU, not CPU
2. Check if an IRQ is shared between GPU and something else like USB. Check internet for ways to change IRQs. Tip: If you no longer use legacy ports, disable them in the system BIOS.

Hope this helps