No sound from Cakewalk

[John Nicholson]

I have just downloaded and installed the new Cakewalk by Bandlab - very excited! I used the old Cakewalk many years ago to write music for pipe organ.
But I am having a problem. No sound comes from Cakewalk so I can't hear anything. I can see the signal line go fuzzy when I record but nothing happens when I try to playback. Youtube and Audacity work fine, so it is not a fault with speakers or sound card. 
Can anyone explain what is wrong?

[Promidi]

Can you tell us a bit about your set up. 

Using on board or an Audio Interface?

Updated all hardware drivers?

Audio configured properly in Cakewalk preferences?

[John Nicholson]

I have a Motu 24Ao. This is because the PC is mainly used as a Hauptwerk virtual pipe organ.  It has lots of speakers. Drivers all work for Hauptwerk and normal PC use - like for Youtube, running in Linux or in Windows 10 .  

But since I wrote on this help board I seem to have fixed the problem.  Can I remember what I did? I think it was in Edit, preferences, driver mode I change to MME (32 BIT).  Suddenly it worked.  What I find very difficult is the techno abbreviations people use.  For me a computer is a tool to do things with, rather than a toy to play computers at.  I still don't know what people mean by 'a door'.  I wish there was a gazetteer of abbreviations somewhere, with a short description of what things do.  Like 'COMPRESSOR = takes away from the too loud moments and adds to the soft bits.'

JN

[Promidi]

There are three driver modes that you can choose for your audio.  Of the three, ASIO would be preferable.  While MME works, you would only ever using this when the other two absolutely refuse to work.

I googled the the Motu 24Ao, and it appears that you would want to be using its native ASIO driver rather than MME.  The non DAW applications - like for Youtube, running in Linux or in Windows 10, use a different driver mode - not ASIO.

Note: 'a door' is actually a DAW > Digital Audio Workstation.  

For those "techno abbreviations people use" - Google is your friend.

[David Baay]

It sounds like possibly you haven't installed the ASIO driver for the MOTU. See 'AVB / Pro audio' section of this page:

https://motu.com/download

Top Google hit on 'ASIO acronym' (from Wikipedia):

Audio Stream Input/Output

Audio Stream Input/Output (ASIO) is a computer sound card driver protocol for digital audio specified by Steinberg, providing a low-latency and high fidelity interface between a software application and a computer's sound card.

 

 

[Jim Fogle]

@John Nicholson, Hi.  Welcome to the forum and to Cakewalk by BandLab or CbB.  At the top left of each forum webpage is a "Cakewalk by BandLab" tab.  Select the tab and then select the "Reference Guide PDF" link to download the "Cakewalk by BandLab Reference Guide".

The Reference Guide is more than 1700 pages of information about CbB, digital audio workstations (DAWs) in general, midi, loops and computer audio.   More than 1700 pages is a lot of information so an easy way to find specific information is to open the document in Adobe Acrobat and then press the Control + F keys at the same time on your computer keyboard.  Ctrl + F opens a search window where you enter words.  Adobe Acrobat will report how many times the word occurs in the document along with providing "previous" and "next" buttons to navigate to each time the word appears.

As an example, in the Cakewalk by BandLab Reference Guide the word "glossary" appears 14 times.  The first time you select "next" you discover there is a glossary which starts on page 1675.  Select the "previous" button and you'll see the glossary ends on page 1686.

A popular online glossary has been maintained by the online music store, Sweetwater since 1997.  The online glossary is available here:  https://www.sweetwater.com/insync/category/glossary/

Merry Christmas and have a happy, prosperous and healthy New Year!

[John Nicholson]

Thanks Jim!  I did not know about that link at the top, and that there is such a thorough instruction manual for Cakewalk available.  I have so far been relying upon the many videos on Youtube.   Especially kind of you to write to me on Christmas Day!  Although I used a very old version of Cakewalk many years ago, there is now so much more to learn about with this new version.  I seem to remember the old version could also create a normal music stave display that was printable.  Does the current Bandlab version also do this?

John N

[scook]

Yes, see the link to Printing in Notation and Lyrics